john stuart mill: his life and works twelve sketches by herbert spencer, henry fawcett, frederic harrison, and other distinguished authors boston: james r osgood and company (late ticknor & field and fields osgood, & co.) contents. john stuart mill i. a sketch of his life. h. r. fox bourne ii. his career in the india house. w. t. thornton iii. his moral character. herbert spencer iv. his botanical studies. henry trimen v. his place as a critic. w. minto vi. his work in philosophy. j. h. levy vii. his studies in morals and jurisprudence. w. a. hunter viii. his work in political economy. j. e. cairnes ix. his influence at the universities. henry fawcett x. his influence as a practical politician. millicent garrett fawcett xi. his relation to positivism. frederic harrison xii. his position as a philosopher. w. a. hunter i. a sketch of his life john stuart mill was born on the th of may, . "i am glad," wrote george grote to him in , with reference to a forthcoming article on his "examination of sir william hamilton's philosophy," "to get an opportunity of saying what i think about your 'system of logic' and 'essay on liberty,' but i am still more glad to get (or perhaps to _make_) an opportunity of saying something about your father. it has always rankled in my thoughts that so grand and powerful a mind as his left behind it such insufficient traces in the estimation of successors." that regret was natural. the grand and powerful mind of james mill left very notable traces, however, in the philosophical literature of his country, and in the training of the son who was to carry on his work, and to be the most influential teacher in a new school of thought and action, by which society is likely to be revolutionized far more than it has been by any other agency since the period of erasmus and martin luther. james mill was something more than the disciple of bentham and ricardo. he was a profound and original philosopher, whose depth and breadth of study were all the more remarkable because his thoughts were developed and his knowledge was acquired mainly by his own exertions. he had been helped out of the humble life into which he had been born by sir john stuart, who assisted him to attend the lectures of dugald stewart and others at edinburgh with a view to his becoming a minister in the church of scotland. soon finding that calling distasteful to him, he had, in or near the year , settled in london as a journalist, resolved by ephemeral work to earn enough money to maintain him and his family in humble ways while he spent his best energies in the more serious pursuits to which he was devoted. his talents soon made him friends, and the greatest of these was jeremy bentham. as erroneous opinions have been current as to the relations between bentham and james mill and have lately been repeated in more than one newspaper, it may be well here to call attention to the contradiction of them that was published by the son of the latter in "the edinburgh review" for . "mr. mill and his family," we there read, "lived with mr. bentham for half of four years at ford abbey,"--that is, between and ,--"and they passed small portions of previous summers with him at barrow green. his last visit to barrow green was of not more than a month's duration, and the previous ones all together did not extend to more than six months, or seven at most. the pecuniary benefit which mr. mill derived from his intimacy with bentham consisted in this,--that he and his family lived with him as his guests, while he was in the country, periods amounting in all to about two years and a half. i have no reason to think that his hospitality was either given or accepted as pecuniary assistance, and i will add that the obligation was not exclusively on one side. bentham was not then, as he was afterwards, surrounded by persons who courted his society, and were ever ready to volunteer their services, and, to a man of his secluded habits, it was no little advantage to have near him such a man as mr. mill, to whose advice and aid he habitually had recourse in all business transactions with the outward world of a troublesome or irksome nature. such as the connection was, it was not of mr. mill's seeking." on the same unquestionable authority we learn, that "mr. mill never in his life was in debt, and his income, whatever it might be, always covered his expenses." it is clear, that, from near the commencement of the present century, james mill and bentham lived for many years on terms of great intimacy, in which the poorer man was thoroughly independent, although it suited the other to make a fair return for the services rendered to him. a very characteristic letter is extant, dated , in which james mill proposes that the relations between him and his "dear friend and master" shall be to some extent altered, but only in order that their common objects may be the more fully served. "in reflecting," he says, "upon the duty which we owe to our principles,--to that system of important truths of which you have the immortal honor to be the author, but of which i am a most faithful and fervent disciple, and hitherto, i have fancied, my master's favorite disciple,--i have considered that there was nobody at all so likely to be your real successor as myself. of talents it would be easy to find many superior. but, in the first place, i hardly know of anybody who has so completely taken up the principles, and is so thoroughly of the same way of thinking with yourself. in the next place, there are very few who have so much of the necessary previous discipline, my antecedent years having been wholly occupied in acquiring it. and, in the last place, i am pretty sure you cannot think of any other person whose whole life will be devoted to the propagation of the system." "there was during the last few years of bentham's life," said james mill's son, "less frequency and cordiality of intercourse than in former years, chiefly because bentham had acquired newer, and to him more agreeable intimacies, but mr. mill's feeling never altered towards him, nor did he ever fail, publicly or privately, in giving due honor to bentham's name and acknowledgment of the intellectual debt he owed to him." those extracts are made, not only in justice to the memory of james mill, but as a help towards understanding the influences by which his son was surrounded from his earliest years. james mill was living in a house at pentonville when this son was born, and partly because of the peculiar abilities that the boy displayed from the first, partly because he could not afford to procure for him elsewhere such teaching as he was able himself to give him, he took his education entirely into his own hands. with what interest--even jealous interest, it would seem--bentham watched that education, appears from a pleasant little letter addressed to him by the elder mill in . "i am not going to die," he wrote, "notwithstanding your zeal to come in for a legacy. however, if i were to die any time before this poor boy is a man, one of the things that would pinch me most sorely would be the being obliged to leave his mind unmade to the degree of excellence of which i hope to make it. but another thing is, that the only prospect which would lessen that pain would be the leaving him in your hands. i therefore take your offer quite seriously, and stipulate merely that it shall be made as soon as possible; and then we may perhaps leave him a successor worthy of both of us." it was a bold hope, but one destined to be fully realized. at the time of its utterance, the "poor boy" was barely more than six years old. the intellectual powers of which he gave such early proof were carefully, but apparently not excessively, cultivated. mrs. grote, in her lately-published "personal life of george grote," has described him as he appeared in , the year in which her husband made the acquaintance of his father. "john stuart mill, then a boy of about twelve years old,"--he was really only eleven,--"was studying, with his father as sole preceptor, under the paternal roof. unquestionably forward for his years, and already possessed of a competent knowledge of greek and latin, as well as of some subordinate though solid attainments, john was, as a boy, somewhat repressed by the elder mill, and seldom took any share in the conversation carried on by the society frequenting the house." it is perhaps not strange that a boy of eleven, at any rate a boy who was to become so modest a man, should not take much part in general conversation; and mr. mill himself never, in referring to his father, led his hearers to suppose that he had, as a child, been in any way unduly repressed by him. the tender affection with which he always cherished his father's memory in no way sanctions the belief that he was at any time subjected to unreasonable discipline. by him his father was only revered as the best and kindest of teachers. there was a break in the home teaching in . james mill, after bearing bravely with his early difficulties, had acquired so much renown by his famous "history of india," that, in spite of its adverse criticisms of the east-india company, the directors of the company in honorably bestowed upon him a post in the india house, where he steadily and rapidly rose to a position which enabled him to pass the later years of his life in more comfort than had hitherto been within his reach. the new employment, however, interfered with his other occupation as instructor to his boy; and for this reason, as well probably as for others tending to his advancement, the lad was, in the summer of , sent to france for a year and a half. for several months he lived in paris, in the house of jean baptiste say, the political economist. the rest of his time was passed in the company of sir samuel bentham, jeremy bentham's brother. early in , before he was eighteen, he returned to london, soon to enter the india office as a clerk in the department of which his father was chief. in that office he remained for five and thirty years, acquitting himself with great ability, and gradually rising to the most responsible position that could be there held by a subordinate. but, though he was thus early started in life as a city clerk, his self-training and his education by his father were by no means abandoned. the ancient and modern languages, as well as the various branches of philosophy and philosophical thought in which he was afterwards to attain such eminence, were studied by him in the early mornings, under the guidance of his father, before going down to pass his days in the india office. during the summer evenings, and on such holidays as he could get, he began those pedestrian exploits for which he afterwards became famous, and in which his main pleasure appears to have consisted in collecting plants and flowers in aid of the botanical studies that were his favorite pastime, and something more than a pastime, all through his life. his first printed writings are said to have been on botany, in the shape of some articles contributed to a scientific journal while he was still in his teens, and it is probable, that, could they now be detected, we should find in other periodicals traces of his work, at nearly if not quite as early a period in other lines of study. that he worked early and with wonderful ability in at least one very deep line, appears from the fact that while he was still only a lad, jeremy bentham intrusted to him the preparation for the press, and the supplementary annotation, of his "rationale of judicial evidence." that work, for which he was highly commended by its author, published in , contains the first publicly acknowledged literary work of john stuart mill. while he was producing that result of laborious study in a special and intricate subject, his education in all sorts of other ways was continued. in evidence of the versatility of his pursuits, the veteran author of a short and ungenerous memoir that was published in "the times" of may the th contributes one interesting note. "it is within our personal knowledge," he says, "that he was an extraordinary youth when, in , he took the lead at the london debating club in one of the most remarkable collections of 'spirits of the age' that ever congregated for intellectual gladiatorship, he being by two or three years the junior of the clique. the rivalry was rather in knowledge and reasoning than in eloquence, mere declamation was discouraged; and subjects of paramount importance were conscientiously thought out." in evidence of his more general studies, we may here repeat a few sentences from an account, by an intimate friend of both these great men, of the life of mr. grote, which was published in our columns two years ago. "about this time a small society was formed for readings in philosophical subjects. the meetings took place at mr. grote's house in threadneedle street, on certain days from half past eight till ten in the morning, at which hour the members (all in official employment) had to repair to their respective avocations. the members were grote, john mill, roebuck, william ellice, william henry prescott, two brothers whitmore, and george john graham. the mentor of their studies was the elder mr. mill. the meetings were continued for two or three years. the readings embraced a small manual of logic, by du trieu, recommended by mr. mill, and reprinted for the purpose, whately's logic, hobbes's logic, and hartley on man, in priestley's edition. the manner of proceeding was thorough. each paragraph, on being read, was commented on by every one in turn, discussed and rediscussed, to the point of total exhaustion. in the meetings ceased; but they were resumed in , upon mill's 'analysis of the mind,' which was gone over in the same manner." these philosophical studies were not only of extreme advantage in strengthening and developing the merits of mr. mill and his friends, nearly all of whom were considerably older than he was, they also served to unite the friends in close and lasting intimacy of the most refined and elevating sort. mr. grote, his senior by twelve years, was perhaps the most intimate, as he was certainly the ablest, of all the friends whom mr. mill thus acquired. many of these friends were contributors to the original "westminster review," which was started by bentham in . bentham himself and the elder mill were its chief writers at first; and in , if not sooner, the younger mill joined the number. in that year he reviewed whately's logic; and it is probable that in the ensuing year he contributed numerous other articles. his first literary exploit, however, which he cared to reproduce in his "dissertations and discussions" was an article that appeared in "the jurist," in , entitled "corporation and church property." that essay, in some respects, curiously anticipated the irish church legislation of nearly forty years later. in the same year he published, in "the monthly repository," a remarkably able and quite a different production,--"poetry and its varieties," showing that in the department of _belles-lettres_ he could write with nearly as much vigor and originality as in the philosophical and political departments of thought to which, ostensibly, he was especially devoted. shortly after that he embarked in a bolder literary venture. differences having arisen concerning "the westminster review," a new quarterly journal--"the london review"--was begun by sir william molesworth, with mr. mill for editor, in . "the london" was next year amalgamated with "the westminster," and then the nominal if not the actual editorship passed into the hands of mr. john robertson. mr. mill continued, however, to be one of its most constant and able contributors until the review passed into other hands in . he aided much to make and maintain its reputation as the leading organ of bold thought on religious and social as well as political matters. besides such remarkable essays as those on civilization, on armand carrel, on alfred de vigny, on bentham, and on coleridge, which, with others, have been republished in his collection of minor writings, he contributed many of great importance. one on mr. tennyson, which was published in , is especially noteworthy. others referred more especially to the politics of the day. from one, which appeared in , reviewing albany fonblanque's "england under seven administrations," and speaking generally in high terms of the politics of "the examiner," we may extract a few sentences which define very clearly the political ground taken by mr. mill, mr. fonblanque, and those who had then come to be called philosophical radicals. "there are divers schools of radicals," said mr. mill. "there are the historical radicals, who demand popular institutions as the inheritance of englishmen, transmitted to us from the saxons or the barons of runnymede. there are the metaphysical radicals, who hold the principles of democracy, not as means to good government, but as corollaries from some unreal abstraction,--from 'natural liberty' or 'natural rights.' there are the radicals of occasion and circumstance, who are radicals because they disapprove the measures of the government for the time being. there are, lastly, the radicals of position, who are radicals, as somebody said, because they are not lords. those whom, in contradistinction to all these, we call philosophical radicals, are those who in politics observe the common manner of philosophers; that is, who, when they are discussing means, begin by considering the end, and, when they desire to produce effects, think of causes. these persons became radicals because they saw immense practical evils existing in the government and social condition of this country, and because the same examination which showed them the evils showed also that the cause of those evils was the aristocratic principle in our government,--the subjection of the many to the control of a comparatively few, who had an interest, or fancied they had an interest, in perpetuating those evils. these inquirers looked still farther, and saw, that, in the present imperfect condition of human nature, nothing better than this self-preference was to be expected from a dominant few; that the interests of the many were sure to be in their eyes a secondary consideration to their own ease or emolument. perceiving, therefore, that we are ill-governed, and perceiving that, so long as the aristocratic principle continued predominant in our government, we could not expect to be otherwise, these persons became radicals; and the motto of their radicalism was, enmity to the aristocratical principle." the period of mr. mill's most intimate connection with "the london and westminster review" forms a brilliant episode in the history of journalism; and his relations, then and afterwards, with other men of letters and political writers,--some of them as famous as mr. carlyle and coleridge, charles buller and sir henry taylor, sir william molesworth, sir john bowring, and mr. roebuck,--yield tempting materials for even the most superficial biography; but we must pass them by for the present. and here we shall content ourselves with enumerating, in the order of their publication, those lengthier writings with which he chiefly occupied his leisure during the next quarter of a century; though that work was frequently diversified by important contributions to "the edinburgh" and "the westminster review," "fraser's magazine," and other periodicals. his first great work was "a system of logic," the result of many years' previous study, which appeared in . that completed, he seems immediately to have paid chief attention to politico-economical questions. in appeared "essays on some unsettled questions of political economy," which were followed, in , by the "principles of political economy." after that there was a pause of ten years, though the works that were issued during the next six years show that he had not been idle during the interval. in were published two volumes of the "dissertations and discussions," consisting solely of printed articles, the famous essay "on liberty," and the "thoughts on parliamentary reform." "considerations on representative government" appeared in , "utilitarianism," in , "auguste comte and positivism" and the "examination of sir william hamilton's philosophy," in . after that, besides the very welcome "inaugural address" at st. andrew's in , his only work of importance was "the subjection of women," published in . a fitting conclusion to his more serious literary labors appeared also in in his annotated edition of his father's "analysis of the phenomena of the human mind." when we remember how much and what varied knowledge is in those learned books, it is almost difficult to believe, that, during most of the years in which he was preparing them, mr. mill was also a hard worker in the india house, passing rapidly, and as the reward only of his assiduity and talent, from the drudgery of a junior clerk to a position involving all the responsibility, if not quite all the dignity, of a secretary of state. one of his most intimate friends, and the one who knew far more of him in this respect than any other, has in another column penned some reminiscences of his official life; but if all the state papers that he wrote, and all the correspondence that he carried on with indian officials and the native potentates of the east, could be explored, more than one volume would have to be written in supplement to his father's great "history of british india." having retired from the india house in , mr. mill went to spend the winter in avignon, in the hope of improving the broken health of the wife to whom he was devotedly attached. he had not been married many years, but mrs. mill, who was the widow of mr. john taylor, a london merchant, had been his friend since , or even earlier. during more than twenty years he had been aided by her talents, and encouraged by her sympathy, in all the work he had undertaken, and to her rare merits he afterwards paid more than one tribute in terms that have no equal for the intensity of their language, and the depth of affection contained in them. mrs. mill's weak state of health seems to have hardly repressed her powers of intellect. by her was written the celebrated essay on "the enfranchisement of women" contributed to "the westminster review," and afterwards reprinted in the "dissertations and discussions," with a preface avowing, that by her mr. mill had been greatly assisted in all that he had written for some time previous. but the assistance was to end now. mrs. mill died at avignon on the d of november, , and over her grave was placed one of the most pathetic and eloquent epitaphs that have been ever penned. "her great and loving heart, her noble soul, her clear, powerful, original, and comprehensive intellect," it was there written, "made her the guide and support, the instructor in wisdom, and the example in goodness, as she was the sole earthly delight, of those who had the happiness to belong to her. as earnest for all public good as she was generous and devoted to all who surrounded her, her influence has been felt in many of the greatest improvements of the age, and will be in those still to come. were there even a few hearts and intellects like hers, this earth would already become the hoped-for heaven." henceforth, during the fourteen years and a half that were to elapse before he should be laid in the same grave, avignon was the chosen haunt of mr. mill. passing much of his time in the modest house that he had bought, that he might be within sight of his wife's tomb, mr. mill was also frequently in london, whither he came especially to facilitate the new course of philosophical and political writing on which he entered. he found relief also in excursions, one of which was taken nearly every year, in company with his step-daughter, miss helen taylor, into various parts of europe. italy, switzerland, and many other districts, were explored, partly on foot, with a keen eye both to the natural features of the localities, especially in furtherance of those botanical studies to which mr. mill now returned with the ardor of his youth, and also to their social and political institutions. perhaps the longest and most eventful of these excursions was taken in to greece. on this occasion it had been proposed that his old friend, mr. grote, should accompany him. "to go through those scenes, and especially to go through them in your company," wrote mr. grote in january, "would be to me pre-eminently delightful; but, alas! my physical condition altogether forbids it. i could not possibly stay away from london, without the greatest discomfort, for so long a period as two months. still less could i endure the fatigue of horse and foot exercise which an excursion in greece must inevitably entail." the journey occupied more than two months; but in the autumn mr. mill was at avignon; and, returning to london in december, he spent christmas week with mr. grote at his residence, barrow green,--bentham's old house, and the one in which mr. mill had played himself when he was a child. "he is in good health and spirits," wrote mr. grote to sir g.c. lewis after that visit; "violent against the south in this american struggle; embracing heartily the extreme abolitionist views, and thinking about little else in regard to the general question." it was only to be expected that mr. mill would take much interest in the american civil war, and sympathize strongly with the abolitionist party. his interest in politics had been keen, and his judgment on them had been remarkably sound all through life, as his early articles in "the morning chronicle" and "the london and westminster review," and his later contributions to various periodicals, helped to testify; but towards the close of his life the interest was perhaps keener, as the judgment was certainly more mellowed. it was not strange, therefore, that his admirers among the working classes, and the advanced radicals of all grades, should have urged him, and that, after some hesitation, he should have consented, to become a candidate for westminster at the general election of . that candidature will be long remembered as a notable example of the dignified way in which an honest man, and one who was as much a philosopher in practice as in theory, can do all that is needful, and avoid all that is unworthy, in an excited electioneering contest, and submit without injury to the insults of political opponents and of political time-servers professing to be of his own way of thinking. the result of the election was a far greater honor to the electors who chose him than to the representative whom they chose; though that honor was greatly tarnished by mr. mill's rejection when he offered himself for re-election three years later. this is hardly the place in which to review at much length mr. mill's parliamentary career, though it may be briefly referred to in evidence of the great and almost unlooked-for ability with which he adapted himself to the requirements of a philosophical politician as distinct from a political philosopher. his first speech in the house of commons, delivered very soon after its assembling, was on the occasion of the second reading of the cattle diseases bill, on the th of february, , when he supported mr. bright in his opposition to the proposals of mr. lowe for compensation to their owners for the slaughter of such animals as were diseased or likely to spread infection. his complaint against the bill was succinctly stated in two sentences, which fairly illustrated the method and basis of all his arguments upon current politics. "it compensates," he said, "a class for the results of a calamity which is borne by the whole community. in justice, the farmers who have not suffered ought to compensate those who have; but the bill does what it ought not to have done, and leaves undone what it ought to have done, by not equalizing the incidence of the burden upon that class, inasmuch as, from the operation of the local principle adopted, that portion of an agricultural community who have not suffered at all will not have to pay at all, and those who have suffered little will have to pay little; while those who have suffered most will have to pay a great deal." "an aristocracy," he added, in words that as truly indicate the way in which he subjected all matters of detail to the test of general principles of truth and expediency,--"an aristocracy should have the feelings of an aristocracy; and, inasmuch as they enjoy the highest honors and advantages, they ought to be willing to bear the first brunt of the inconveniences and evils which fall on the country generally. this is the ideal character of an aristocracy: it is the character with which all privileged classes are accustomed to credit themselves; though i am not aware of any aristocracy in history that has fulfilled those requirements." that, and the later speeches that mr. mill delivered on the cattle diseases bill, at once announced to the house of commons and the public, if they needed any such announcement, the temper and spirit in which he was resolved to execute his legislative functions. the same spirit and temper appeared in the speech on the habeas corpus suspension (ireland) bill, which he delivered on the th of february; but his full strength as a debater was first manifested during the discussion on mr. gladstone's reform bill of , which was brought on for second reading on the th of april. his famous speech on that occasion, containing the most powerful arguments offered by any speaker in favor of the measure, and his shorter speech during its discussion on the st of may, need not here be recapitulated. they were only admirable developments in practical debate of those principles of political science which he had already enforced in his published works. the other leading topics handled by mr. mill during the session of were the expediency of reducing the national debt, which he urged on the occasion of mr. neate's proposal on the th of april; the tenure and improvement of land (ireland) bill, on which he spoke at length and with force on the th of may, then practically initiating the movement in favor of land-reform, which he partly helped to enforce in part with regard to ireland, and for the more complete adoption of which in england he labored to the last; the jamaica outbreak, and the conduct of governor eyre, on which he spoke on the st of july; and the electoral disabilities of women, which he first brought within the range of practical politics by moving, on the th of july, for a return of the numbers of householders, and others who, "fulfilling the conditions of property or rental prescribed by law as the qualification for the electoral franchise, are excluded from the franchise by reason of their sex." in the session of mr. mill took a prominent part in the discussions on the metropolitan poor bill; and he spoke on various other topics,--his introduction of the women's electoral disabilities removal bill being in some respects the most notable: but his chief action was with reference to mr. disraeli's reform bill, several clauses of which he criticised and helped to alter in committee. though he was as zealous as ever, however, in his attendance to public business, he made fewer great speeches, being content to set a wise example to other and less able men in only speaking when he felt it absolutely necessary to do so, and in generally performing merely the functions of a "silent member." in he was, if not more active, somewhat more prominent. on march the th, on the occasion of mr. shaw-lefevre's motion respecting the "alabama claims," he forcibly expressed his opinions as to the wrong done by england to the united states during the civil war, and the need of making adequate reparation; and on the th of the same month he spoke with equal boldness on mr. maguire's motion for a committee to inquire into the state of ireland, repeating anew and enforcing the views he had lately put forward in his pamphlet on ireland, and considerably aiding by anticipation the passage of mr. gladstone's two great measures of irish reform. he took an important part in the discussion of the election petitions and corrupt practices bill; and among a great number of other measures on which he spoke was the married women's property bill of mr. shaw-lefevre. soon after that the house of commons was dissolved, and mr. mill's too brief parliamentary career came to an end. the episode, however, had to some extent helped to quicken his always keen interest in political affairs. this was proved, among other ways, by the publication of his pamphlet on "england and ireland" in , and of his treatise "on the subjection of women" in , as well as by the especial interest which he continued to exhibit in two of the most important political movements of the day,--all the more important because they are yet almost in their infancy,--the one for the political enfranchisement of women, the other for a thorough reform of our system of land tenure. the latest proof of his zeal on the second of these important points appeared in the address which he delivered at exeter hall on the th of last march, and in two articles which he contributed to "the examiner" at the commencement of the present year. we may be permitted to add that it was his intention to use some of the greater quiet that he expected to enjoy during his stay at avignon in writing frequent articles on political affairs for publication in these columns. he died while his intellectual powers were as fresh as they had ever been, and when his political wisdom was only ripened by experience. in this paper we purposely limit ourselves to a concise narrative of the leading events of mr. mill's life, and abstain as far as possible from any estimate of either the value or the extent of his work in philosophy, in economics, in politics, or in any other of the departments of thought and study to which, with such depth and breadth of mind, he applied himself; but it is impossible for us to lay down the pen without some slight reference, however inadequate it may be, to the nobility of his character, and the peculiar grace with which he exhibited it in all his dealings with his friends and with the whole community among whom he lived, and for whom he worked with the self-sacrificing zeal of an apostle. if to labor fearlessly and ceaselessly for the good of society, and with the completest self-abnegation that is consistent with healthy individuality, be the true form of religion, mr. mill exhibited such genuine and profound religion--so permeating his whole life, and so engrossing his every action--as can hardly be looked for in any other man of this generation. great as were his intellectual qualities, they were dwarfed by his moral excellences. he did not, it is true, aim at any fanciful ideal, or adopt any fantastic shibboleths. he was only a utilitarian. he believed in no inspiration but that of experience. he had no other creed or dogma or gospel than bentham's axiom,--"the greatest happiness of the greatest number." but many will think that herein was the chief of all his claims to the honor of all men, and the best evidence of his worth. at any rate, he set a notable example of the way in which a man, making the best use in his power of merely his own reason and the accumulated reason of those who have gone before him, wisely exercising the faculties of which he finds himself possessed, and seeking no guidance or support from invisible beacons and intangible props, may lead a blameless life, and be one of the greatest benefactors of his race. no one who had any personal knowledge of him could fail to discern the singular purity of his character; and to those who knew him best that purity was most apparent. he may have blundered and stumbled in his pursuit of truth; but it was part of his belief that stumbling and blundering are necessary means towards the finding of truth, and that honesty of purpose is the only indispensable requisite for the nearest approach towards truth of which each individual is capable. that belief rendered him as charitable towards others as he was modest concerning his own attainments. he never boasted; and he despised no one. the only things really hateful to him were arrogance and injustice, and for these he was, to say the least, as willing and eager to find excuse as could be the most devout utterer of the prayer, "father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." we had noted many instances, coming within our own very limited observation, of his remarkable, almost unparalleled magnanimity and generosity; but such details would here be almost out of place, and they who need such will doubtless before long receive much more convincing proof of his moral excellence. we shall not here dilate on those minor qualities of mind and heart that made mr. mill's society so charming to all who were fortunate enough to have any share in it; and these, especially in recent years, were many. when the first burden of his grief at the loss of his wife had passed,--perhaps partly as a relief from the solitude, save for one devoted companion, that would otherwise have been now forced upon him,--he mixed more freely than he had done before in the society of all whose company could yield him any satisfaction or by whom his friendship was really valued. his genial and graceful bearing towards every one who came near him must be within the knowledge of very many who will read this column; and they will remember, besides his transparent nobility of character, and the genial ways in which it exhibited itself, certain intellectual qualities for which he was remarkable. we here refer, not to his higher abilities as a thinker, but to such powers of mind as displayed themselves in conversation. without any pedantry,--without any sort of intentional notification to those with whom he conversed that he was the greatest logician, metaphysician, moralist, and economist of the day,--his speech was always, even on the most trivial subjects, so clear and incisive, that it at once betrayed the intellectual vigor of the speaker. not less remarkable also than his uniform refinement of thought, and the deftness with which he at all times expressed it, were the grasp and keenness of his observation, and the strength of memory with which he stored up every thing he had ever seen, heard, or read. nothing escaped his notice at the time of its occurrence: nothing was forgotten by him afterwards. his friends often found, to their astonishment, that he knew far more about any passages in their lives that he had been made aware of than they could themselves remember; and, whenever that disclosure was made to them, they must have been rejoiced to think, that this memory of his, instead of being, as it might well have been, a dangerous garner of severe judgments and fairly-grounded prejudices, was a magic mirror, in which their follies and foibles were hardly at all reflected, and only kindly reminiscences and generous sympathies found full expression. but he is dead now. although the great fruits of his life--a life in which mind and heart, in which senses and emotions, were singularly well balanced--are fruits that cannot die, all the tender ties of friendship, all the strictly personal qualities that so much aided his work as a teacher of the world, as the foremost leader of his generation in the search after truth and righteousness, are now snapped forever. only four weeks ago he left london for a three-months' stay in avignon. two weeks ago he was in his customary health. on the th of may he was attacked by a virulent form of erysipelas. on the th he died. on the th he was buried in the grave to which he had, through fourteen years, looked forward as a pleasant resting-place, because during fourteen years there had been in it a vacant place beside the remains of the wife whom he so fondly loved. h. r. fox bourne. ii. his career in the india house i have undertaken to prepare a sketch of mr. mill's official career, but find, on inquiry, scarcely any thing to add to the few particulars on the subject which have already found their way into print. of his early official associates, all have, with scarcely an exception, already passed away; and there is no one within reach to whom i can apply for assistance in verifying or correcting my own impressions. these are in substance the following. in the few last decades of its existence, the east-india company's establishment, in leadenhall street, consisted of three divisions,--the secretary's, military secretary's, and examiners' offices,--in the last of which most of the despatches and letters were composed which were afterwards signed by the directors or the secretary. into this division, in the year , the directors, perceiving an infusion of new blood to be very urgently required, introduced, as assistant examiners, four outsiders,--mr. strachey (father of the present sir john and major-gen. richard strachey), thomas love peacock (author of "headlong hall"), mr. harcourt, and mr. james mill; the selection of the last-named being all the more creditable to them, because, in his "history of british india," he had animadverted with much severity on some parts of the company's administration. two years afterwards, in , the historian's son, the illustrious subject of these brief memoirs, then a lad of seventeen, obtained a clerkship under his father. according to the ordinary course of things in those days, the newly-appointed junior would have had nothing to do, except a little abstracting, indexing, and searching, or pretending to search, into records; but young mill was almost immediately set to indite despatches to the governments of the three indian presidencies, on what, in india-house phraseology, were distinguished as "political" subjects,--subjects, that is, for the most part growing out of the relations of the said governments with "native" states or foreign potentates. this continued to be his business almost to the last. in he was promoted to be assistant examiner, and in he succeeded to the post of chief examiner; after which his duty consisted rather in supervising what his assistants had written than in writing himself: but for the three and twenty years preceding he had had immediate charge of the political department, and had written almost every "political" despatch of any importance that conveyed the instructions of the merchant princes of leadenhall street to their pro-consuls in asia. of the quality of these documents, it is sufficient to say, that they were john mill's; but, in respect to their quantity, it may be worth mentioning that a descriptive catalogue of them completely fills a small quarto volume of between three hundred and four hundred pages, in their author's handwriting, which now lies before me; also that the share of the court of directors in the correspondence between themselves and the indian governments used to average annually about ten huge vellum-bound volumes, foolscap size, and five or six inches thick, and that of these volumes two a year, for more than twenty years running, were exclusively of mill's composition; this, too, at times, when he was engaged upon such voluntary work in addition as his "logic" and "political economy." in broke out the sepoy war, and in the following year the east-india company was extinguished in all but the name, its governmental functions being transferred to the crown. that most illustrious of corporations died hard; and with what affectionate loyalty mill struggled to avert its fate is evidenced by the famous petition to parliament which he drew up for his old masters, and which opens with the following effective antithesis: "your petitioners, at their own expense, and by the agency of their own civil and military servants, originally acquired for this country its magnificent empire in the east. the foundations of this empire were laid by your petitioners, at that time neither aided nor controlled by parliament, at the same period at which a succession of administrations under the control of parliament were losing, by their incapacity and rashness, another great empire on the opposite side of the atlantic." i am fortunate enough to be the possessor of the original ms. of this admirable state paper, which i mention, because i once heard its real authorship denied in that quarter of all others in which it might have been supposed to be least likely to be questioned. on one of the last occasions of the gathering together of the proprietors of east-india stock, i could scarcely believe my ears, when one of the directors, alluding to the petition, spoke of it as having been written by a certain other official who was silting by his side, adding, after a moment's pause, "with the assistance, as he understood, of mr. mill," likewise present. as soon as the court broke up, i burst into mill's room, boiling over with indignation, and exclaiming, "what an infamous shame!" and no doubt adding a good deal more that followed in natural sequence on such an exordium. "what's the matter?" replied mill as soon as he could get a word in. "m----[the director] was quite right. the petition was the joint work of ---- and myself."--"how can you be so perverse?" i retorted. "you know that i know you wrote every word of it."--"no," rejoined mill, "you are mistaken: one whole line on the second page was put in by----." in august, , the east-india company's doom was pronounced by parliament. the east-india house was completely re-organized, its very name being changed into that of the india office, and a secretary of state in council taking the place of the court of directors. but a change of scarcely secondary importance to many of those immediately concerned was mill's retirement on a pension. a few months after he had left us an attempt was made to bring him back. at that time only one-half of the council were nominated by the crown, the other half having been elected, and the law prescribing that any vacancy among these latter should be filled by election on the part of the remaining elected members. on the first occasion of the kind that occurred, mill was immediately proposed; and i had the honor of being commissioned to sound him on the subject of the intended offer, and to endeavor to overcome the objections to acceptance which it was feared he might entertain. i went accordingly to his house at blackheath, but had no sooner broached the subject than i saw that my mission was hopeless. the anguish of his recent bereavement was as yet too fresh. he sought eagerly for some slight alleviation of despair in hard literary labor; but to face the outside world was for the present impossible. here my scanty record must end, unless i may be permitted to supplement its meagreness by one or two personal--not to say egotistical--reminiscences. the death of mr. mill senior, in , had occasioned a vacancy at the bottom of the examiner's office, to which i was appointed through the kindness of sir james carnac, then chairman of the company, in whose gift it was. within a few months, however, i was transferred to a newly-created branch of the secretary's office; owing to which cause, and perhaps also to a little (or not a little) mutual shyness, i for some years came so seldom into contact with mr. mill, that, though he of course knew me by sight, we scarcely ever spoke, and generally passed each other without any mark of recognition when we happened to meet in or out of doors. early in , however, i sent him a copy of a book i had just brought out, on "over-population." a day or two afterwards he came into my room to thank me for it; and during the half-hour's conversation that thereupon ensued, sprang up, full grown at its birth, an intimate friendship, of which i feel that i am not unduly boasting in declaring it to have been equally sincere and fervent on both sides. from that time for the next ten or twelve years, a day seldom passed without, if i did not go into his room, his coming into mine, often telling me as he entered, that he had nothing particular to say; but that, having a few minutes to spare, he thought we might as well have a little talk. and what talks we have had on such occasions, and on what various subjects! and not unfrequently, too, when the room was mill's, grote, the historian, would join us, first announcing his advent by a peculiar and ever-welcome rat-tat with his walking-stick on the door. i must not dwell longer over these recollections; but there are two special obligations of my own to mill which i cannot permit myself to pass over. when, in , he became examiner, he had made it, as i have been since assured by the then chairman of the east-india company, a condition of his acceptance of the post, that i, whose name very likely the chairman had never before heard, should be associated with him as one of his assistant examiners; and i was placed, in consequence, in charge of the public-works department. not long afterwards, having lapsed into a state of nervous weakness, which for nearly a year absolutely incapacitated me for mental labor, i should, but for mill, have been compelled to retire from the service. from this, however, he saved me by quietly taking upon himself, and for the space of twelve months discharging, the whole of my official duties, in addition to his own. is it wonderful that such a man, supposed by those who did not know him to be cold, stern, and dry, should have been enthusiastically beloved by those who did? it is little to say, that my own friendship with him was, from first to last, never once ruffled by difference or misunderstanding of any kind. differences of opinion we had in abundance; but my open avowal of them was always recognized by him as one of the strongest proofs of respect, and served to cement instead of weakening our attachment.[ ] the nearest approach made throughout our intercourse to any thing of an unpleasant character was about the time of his retirement from the india house. talking over that one day with two or three of my colleagues, i said it would not do to let mill go without receiving some permanently-visible token of our regard. the motion was no sooner made than it was carried by acclamation. every member of the examiners' office--for we jealously insisted on confining the affair to ourselves--came tendering his subscription, scarcely waiting to be asked; in half an hour's time some fifty or sixty pounds--i forget the exact sum--was collected, which in due course was invested in a superb silver inkstand, designed by our friend, digby wyatt, and manufactured by messrs. elkington. before it was ready, however, an unexpected trouble arose. in some way or other, mill had got wind of our proceeding, and, coming to me in consequence, began almost to upbraid me as its originator. i had never before seen him so angry. he hated all such demonstrations, he said, and was quite resolved not to be made the subject of them. he was sure they were never altogether genuine or spontaneous; there were always several persons who took part in them merely because they did not like to refuse; and, in short, whatever we might do, he would have none of it. in vain i represented how eagerly everybody, without exception, had come forward; that we had now gone too far to recede; that, if he would not take the inkstand, we should be utterly at a loss what to do with it; and that i myself should be in a specially embarrassing position. mill was not to be moved. this was a question of principle, and on principle he could not give way. there was nothing left, therefore, but resort to a species of force. i arranged with messrs. elkington that our little testimonial should be taken down to mr. mill's house at blackheath by one of their men, who, after leaving it with the servant, should hurry away without waiting for an answer. this plan succeeded; but i have always suspected, though she never told me so, that its success was mainly due to miss helen taylor's good offices. but for her, the inkstand would almost certainly have been returned, instead of being promoted, as it eventually was, to a place of honor in her own and her father's drawing-room. mine is scarcely just now the mood in which i should have been naturally disposed to relate anecdotes like this; but, in the execution of my present task, i have felt bound chiefly to consider what would be likely to interest the reader. w.t. thornton. footnotes: [ ] i may be permitted here, without mr. thornton's knowledge, to recall a remark made by mr. mill only a few weeks ago. we were speaking of mr. thornton's recently published "old-fashioned ethics and common-sense metaphysics," when i remarked on mr. mill's wide divergence from most of the views contained in it. "yes," he replied, "it is pleasant to find _something_ on which to differ from thornton." mr. mill's prompt recognition of the importance of mr. thornton's refutation of the wage-fund theory is only one out of numberless instances of his peculiar magnanimity.--b. iii. his moral character. to dilate upon mr. mill's achievements, and to insist upon the wideness of his influence over the thought of his time and consequently over the actions of his time, seems to me scarcely needful. the facts are sufficiently obvious, and are recognized by all who know any thing about the progress of opinion during the last half century. my own estimate of him, intellectually considered, has been emphatically though briefly given on an occasion of controversy between us, by expressing my regret at 'having to contend against the doctrine of one whose agreement i should value more than that of any other thinker.' while, however, it is almost superfluous to assert of him that intellectual height so generally admitted there is more occasion for drawing attention to a moral elevation that is less recognized partly because his activities in many directions afforded no occasion for exhibiting it, and partly because some of its most remarkable manifestations in conduct are known only to those whose personal relations with him have called them forth. i feel especially prompted to say something on this point, because, where better things might have been expected, there has been, not only a grudging recognition of intellectual rank, but a marked blindness to those fine traits of character, which, in the valuation of men, must go for more than superiority of intelligence. it might indeed have been supposed, that even those who never enjoyed the pleasure of personal acquaintance with mr. mill would have been impressed with the nobility of his nature as indicated in his opinions and deeds. how entirely his public career has been determined by a pure and strong sympathy for his fellow men, how entirely this sympathy has subordinated all desires for personal advantage, how little even the fear of being injured in reputation or position has deterred him from taking the course which he thought equitable or generous--ought to be manifest to every antagonist, however bitter. a generosity that might almost be called romantic was obviously the feeling prompting sundry of those courses of action which have been commented upon as errors. and nothing like a true conception of him can be formed, unless, along with dissent from them, there goes recognition of the fact that they resulted from the eagerness of a noble nature impatient to rectify injustice and to further human welfare. it may perhaps be that my own perception of this pervading warmth of feeling has been sharpened by seeing it exemplified, not in the form of expressed opinions only, but in the form of private actions, for mr. mill was not one of those, who, to sympathy with their fellow men in the abstract, join indifference to them in the concrete. there came from him generous acts that corresponded with his generous sentiments. i say this, not from second-hand knowledge, but having in mind a remarkable example known only to myself and a few friends. i have hesitated whether to give this example, seeing that it has personal implications. but it affords so clear an insight into mr. mill's character, and shows so much more vividly than any description could do how fine were the motives swaying his conduct, that i think the occasion justifies disclosure of it. some seven years ago, after bearing as long as was possible the continued losses entailed on me by the publication of the "system of philosophy," i notified to the subscribers that i should be obliged to cease at the close of the volume then in progress. shortly after the issue of this announcement i received from mr. mill a letter, in which, after expressions of regret, and after naming a plan which he wished to prosecute for re-imbursing me, he went on to say, "in the next place ... what i propose is, that you should write the next of your treatises, and that i should guarantee the publisher against loss; i.e., should engage, after such length of time as may be agreed on, to make good any deficiency that may occur, not exceeding a given sum,--that sum being such as the publisher may think sufficient to secure him." now, though these arrangements were of kinds that i could not bring myself to yield to, they none the less profoundly impressed me with mr. mill's nobility of feeling, and his anxiety to further what he regarded as a beneficial end. such proposals would have been remarkable even had there been entire agreement of opinion, but they were the more remarkable as being made by him under the consciousness that there existed between us certain fundamental differences, openly avowed. i had, both directly and by implication, combated that form of the experiential theory of human knowledge which characterizes mr. mill's philosophy: in upholding realism, i had opposed in decided ways those metaphysical systems to which his own idealism was closely allied; and we had long carried on a controversy respecting the test of truth, in which i had similarly attacked mr. mill's positions in an outspoken manner. that, under such circumstances, he should have volunteered his aid, and urged it upon me, as he did, on the ground that it would not imply any personal obligation, proved in him a very exceptional generosity. quite recently i have seen afresh illustrated this fine trait,--this ability to bear with unruffled temper, and without any diminution of kindly feeling, the publicly-expressed antagonism of a friend. the last evening i spent at his house was in the company of another invited guest, who, originally agreeing with him entirely on certain disputed questions, had some fortnight previously displayed his change of view,--nay, had publicly criticised some of mr. mill's positions in a very undisguised manner. evidently, along with his own unswerving allegiance to truth, there was in mr. mill an unusual power of appreciating in others a like conscientiousness, and so of suppressing any feeling of irritation produced by difference,--suppressing it, not in appearance only, but in reality, and that, too, under the most trying circumstances. i should say indeed, that mr. mill's general characteristic, emotionally considered, was an unusual predominance of the higher sentiments,--a predominance which tended, perhaps, both in theory and practice, to subordinate the lower nature unduly. that rapid advance of age which has been conspicuous for some years past, and which doubtless prepared the way for his somewhat premature death, may, i think, be regarded as the outcome of a theory of life which made learning and working the occupations too exclusively considered. but when we ask to what ends he acted out this theory, and in so doing too little regarded his bodily welfare, we see that even here the excess, if such we call it, was a noble one. extreme desire to further human welfare was that to which he sacrificed himself. herbert spencer. iv. his botanical studies. if we would have a just idea of any man's character, we should view it from as many points, and under as many aspects, as we can. the side-lights thrown by the lesser occupations of a life are often very strong, and bring out its less obvious parts into startling prominence. much especially is to be learned of character by taking into consideration the employment of times of leisure or relaxation; the occupation of such hours being due almost solely to the natural bent of the individual, without the interfering action of necessity or expediency. most men, perhaps especially eminent men, have a "hobby",--some absorbing object, the pursuit of which forms the most natural avocation of their mind, and to which they turn with the certainty of at least satisfaction, if not of exquisite pleasure. the man who follows any branch of natural science in this way is almost always especially happy in its prosecution; and his mental powers are refreshed and invigorated for the more serious and engrossing if less congenial occupation of his life. mr. mill's hobby was practical field botany; surely in all ways one very well suited to him. of the tens of thousands who are acquainted with the philosophical writings of mr. mill, there are probably few beyond the circle of his personal friends who are aware that he was also an author in a modest way on botanical subjects, and a keen searcher after wild plants. his short communications on botany were chiefly if not entirely published in a monthly magazine called "the phytologist," edited, from its commencement in , by the late george luxford, till his death, in , and afterwards conducted by mr. a. irvine of chelsea, an intimate friend of mr. mill's, till its discontinuance in . in the early numbers of this periodical especially will be found frequent notes and short papers on the facts of plant distribution brought to light by mr. mill during his botanical rambles. his excursions were chiefly in the county of surrey, and especially in the neighborhood of guildford and the beautiful vale of the sittingbourne, where he had the satisfaction of being the first to notice several plants of interest, as _polygonum dumetorum_, _isatis tinctoria_, and _impatiens fulva_, an american species of balsam, affording a very remarkable example of complete naturalization in the wey and other streams connected with the lower course of the thames. mr. mill says he first observed this interloper in at albury, a date which probably marks about the commencement of his botanical investigations, if not that of the first notice of the plant in this country. mr. mill's copious ms lists of observations in surrey were subsequently forwarded to the late mr. salmon of godalming, and have been since published with the large collection of facts made by that botanist in the "flora of surrey," printed under the auspices of the holmesdale (reigate) natural history club. mr. mill also contributed to the same scientific magazine some short notes on hampshire botany, and is believed to have helped in the compilation of mr. g.g. mill's "catalogue of the plants of great marlow, bucks." the mere recording of isolated facts of this kind of course affords no scope for any style in composition. it may, however, be thought worth while to reproduce here the concluding paragraph of a short article on "spring flowers in the south of europe," as a sample of mr. mill's popular manner, as well as for its own sake as a fine description of a matchless scene. he is describing the little mountain range of albano, beloved of painters, and, after comparing its vernal flora with that in england, goes on:-- 'if we would ascend the highest member of the mountain group, the monte cavo, we must make the circuit of the north flank of the mountains of marino, on the edge of the albano lake, and rocca di tassa, a picturesque village in the hollow mountain side, from which we climb through woods, abounding in _galanthus nivalis_ and _corydalis cava_, to that summit which was the _arx_ of jupiter latialis, and to which the thirty latian cities ascended in solemn procession to offer their annual sacrifice. the place is now occupied by a convent, under the wall of which i gathered _orinthogalum nutans_; and from its neighborhood i enjoyed a panoramic view, surely the most glorious, in its combination of natural beauty and grandeur of historical recollections, to be found anywhere on earth. the eye ranged from terracina on one side to veii on the other, and beyond veii to the hills of sutrium and nepete, once covered by the cimmian forests, then deemed an impenetrable barrier between the interior of etruria and rome. below my feet the alban mountain, with all its forest-covered folds, and in one of them the dark-blue lake of nemi; that of albano, i think, was invisible. to the north, in the dim distance, the eternal city, to the west the eternal sea, for eastern boundary, the long line of sabine mountains from soracte past tibur and away towards proeneste. the range then passed behind the alban group, but re-appeared to the south-east as the mountain crescent of cora and pometia, enclosing between its horns the pontine marshes, which lay spread out below as far as the sea line, extending east and west from terracina in the bay of fondi, the volscian anxur, to the angle of the coast where rises suddenly, between the marshes and the sea, the mountain promontory of circeii, celebrated alike in history and in fable. within the space visible from this one point, the destinies of the human race were decided. it took the romans nearly five hundred years to vanquish and incorporate the warlike tribes who inhabited that narrow tract, but, this being accomplished, two hundred more sufficed them to complete the conquest of the world. during the frequent and latterly prolonged residence at avignon, mr. mill, carrying on his botanical propensities, had become very well acquainted with the vegetation of the district, and at the time of his death had collected a mass of notes and observations on the subject. it is believed to have been his intention to have printed these as the foundation of a flora of avignon. in the slight contributions to the literature of botany made by mr. mill, there is nothing which gives any inkling of the great intellectual powers of their writer. though always clear and accurate, they are merely such notes as any working botanical collector is able to supply in abundance. mainly content with the pursuit as an outdoor occupation, with such an amount of home work as was necessary to determine the names and affinities of the species, mr. mill never penetrated deeply into the philosophy of botany, so as to take rank among those who have, like herbert spencer, advanced that science by original work either of experiment or generalization, or have entered into the battle-field where the great biological questions of the day are being fought over. the writer of this notice well remembers meeting, a few years since, the (at that time) parliamentary logician, with his trousers turned up out of the mud, and armed with the tin insignia of his craft, busily occupied in the search after a marsh-loving rarity in a typical spongy wood on the clay to the north of london. but however followed, the investigation of nature cannot fail to influence the mind in the direction of a more just appreciation of the necessity of system in arrangement, and of the principles which must regulate all attempts to express notions of system in a classification. traces of this are not difficult to find in mr. mill's writings. it may be safely stated, that the chapters on classification in the "logic" would not have taken the form they have, had not the writer been a naturalist as well as a logician. the views expressed so clearly in these chapters are chiefly founded on the actual needs experienced by the systematic botanist; and the argument is largely sustained by references to botanical systems and arrangements. most botanists agree with mr. mill in his objections to dr. whewell's views of a natural classification by resemblance to "types," instead of in accordance with well-selected characters; and indeed the whole of these chapters are well deserving the careful study of naturalists, notwithstanding that the wonderfully rapid progress in recent years of new ideas, lying at the very root of all the natural sciences, may be thought by some to give the whole argument, in spite of its logical excellence, a somewhat antiquated flavor. how fully mr. mill recognized the great importance of the study of biological classifications, and the influence such a study must have had on himself, may be judged from the following quotation:-- "although the scientific arrangements of organic nature afford as yet the only complete example of the true principles of rational classification, whether as to the formation of groups or of series, those principles are applicable to all cases in which mankind are called upon to bring the various parts of any extensive subject into mental co-ordination. they are as much to the point when objects are to be classed for purposes of art or business as for those of science. the proper arrangement, for example, of a code of laws, depends on the same scientific conditions as the classifications in natural history; nor could there be a better preparatory discipline for that important function than the study of the principles of a natural arrangement, not only in the abstract, but in their actual application to the class of phenomena for which they were first elaborated, and which are still the best school for learning their use. of this, the great authority on codification, bentham, was perfectly aware; and his early 'fragment on government,' the admirable introduction to a series of writings unequalled in their department, contains clear and just views (as far as they go) on the meaning of a natural arrangement, such as could scarcely have occurred to any one who lived anterior to the age of linnaeus and bernard de jussieu" (_system of logic_, ed. , ii., p. ). henry trimen. v his place as a critic mr. mill's achievements as an economist, logician, psychologist, and politician are known more or less vaguely to all educated men; but his capacity and his actual work as a critic are comparatively little regarded. in the three volumes of his collected miscellaneous writings, very few of the papers are general reviews either of books or of men; and even these volumes derive their character from the essays they contain on the severer subjects with which mr. mill's name has been more peculiarly associated. nobody buys his "dissertations and discussions" for the sake of his theory of poetry, or his essays on armand carrel and alfred de vigny, noble though these are in many ways. his essay on coleridge is very celebrated; but it deals, not with coleridge's place as a poet, but with his place as a thinker--with coleridge as the antagonistic power to bentham in forming the opinions of the generation now passing away. still at such a time as this it is interesting to make some endeavor to estimate the value of what mr. mill has done in the way of criticism. it is at least worth while to examine whether one who has shown himself capable of grappling effectively with the driest and most abstruse problems that vex the human intellect was versatile enough to study poetry with an understanding heart, and to be alive to the distinctive powers of individual poets. it was in his earlier life, when his enthusiasm for knowledge was fresh, and his active mind, "all as hungry as the sea," was reaching out eagerly and strenuously to all sorts of food for thought,--literary, philosophical, and political,--that mr. mill set himself, among other things, to study and theorize upon poetry and the arts generally. he could hardly have failed to know the most recent efflorescence of english poetry, living as he did in circles where the varied merits of the new poets were largely and keenly discussed. he had lived also for some time in france, and was widely read in french poetry. he had never passed through the ordinary course of greek and latin at school and college, but he had been taught by his father to read these languages, and had been accustomed from the first to regard their literature as literature, and to read their poetry as poetry. these were probably the main elements of his knowledge of poetry. but it was not his way to dream or otherwise luxuriate over his favorite poets for pure enjoyment. mr. mill was not a cultivator of art for art's sake. his was too fervid and militant a soul to lose itself in serene love and culture of the calmly beautiful. he read poetry for the most part with earnest, critical eye, striving to account for it, to connect it with the tendencies of the age, or he read to find sympathy with his own aspirations after heroic energy. he read de vigny and other french poets of his generation, with an eye to their relations to the convulsed and struggling state of france, and because they were compelled by their surroundings to take life _au sérieux_, and to pursue, with all the resources of their art, something different from beauty in the abstract. luxurious passive enjoyment or torpid half-enjoyment must have been a comparatively rare condition of his finely-strung, excitable, and fervid system. i believe that his moral earnestness was too imperious to permit much of this. he was capable indeed of the most passionate admiration of beauty, but even that feeling seems to have been interpenetrated by a certain militant apostolic fervor; his love was as the love of a religious soldier for a patron saint who extends her aid and countenance to him in his wars. i do not mean to say that his mind was in a perpetual glow: i mean only that this surrender to impassioned transports was more characteristic of the man than serene openness to influx of enjoyment. his "thoughts on poetry and its varieties," while clear and strenuous as most of his thoughts were, are neither scientifically precise, nor do they contain any notable new idea not previously expressed by coleridge, except perhaps the idea, that emotions are the main links of association in the poetic mind: still his working out of the definition of poetry, his distinction between novels and poems, and between poetry and eloquence, is interesting as throwing light upon his own poetic susceptibilities. he holds that poetry is the delineation of the deeper and more secret workings of human emotion. it is curious to find one who is sometimes assailed as the advocate of a grovelling philosophy complaining that the chivalrous spirit has almost disappeared from books of education, that the youth of both sexes of the educated classes are growing up unromantic. "catechisms," he says, "will be found a poor substitute for the old romances, whether of chivalry or faery, which, if they did not give a true picture of actual life, did not give a false one, since they did not profess to give any, but (what was much better) filled the youthful imagination with pictures of heroic men, and of what are at least as much wanted,--heroic women." if mr. mill did not love poetry with a purely disinterested love, but with an eye to its moral causes and effects, neither did he study character from mere delight in observing the varieties of mankind. armand carrel the republican journalist, alfred de vigny the royalist poet, coleridge the conservative, and bentham the reformer, are taken up and expounded, not as striking individuals, but as types of influences and tendencies. this habit of keeping in view mind in the abstract, or men in the aggregate, may have been in a large measure a result of his education by his father; but i am inclined to think that he was of too ardent and pre-occupied a disposition, perhaps too much disposed to take favorable views of individuals, to be very sensitive to differences of character. it should not, however, be forgotten that in one memorable case he showed remarkable discrimination. soon after mr. tennyson published his second issue of poems, mr. mill reviewed them in "the westminster review" for july, , and, with his usual earnestness and generosity, applied all his powers to making a just estimate of the new aspirant. to have reprinted this among his miscellaneous writings might have seemed rather boastful, as claiming credit for the first full recognition of a great poet: still it is a very remarkable review; and one would hope it will not be omitted if there is to be any further collection of his casual productions. i shall quote two passages which seem obvious enough now, but which required true insight, as well as courageous generosity, to write them in -- "of all the capacities of a poet, that which seems to have arisen earliest in mr. tennyson, and in which he most excels, is that of scene-painting in the higher sense of the term; not the mere power of producing that rather vapid species of composition usually termed descriptive poetry,--for there is not in these volumes one passage of pure description,--but the power of creating scenery in keeping with some state of human feeling, so fitted to it as to be the embodied symbol of it, and to summon up the state of feeling itself with a force not to be surpassed by any thing but reality." * * * * * "the poems which we have quoted from mr. tennyson prove incontestably that he possesses in an eminent degree the natural endowment of a poet,--the poetic temperament. and it appears clearly, not only from a comparison of the two volumes, but of different poems in the same volume, that with him the other element of poetic excellence, intellectual culture, is advancing both steadily and rapidly; that he is not destined, like so many others, to be remembered for what he might have done rather than for what he did; that he will not remain a poet of mere temperament, but is ripening into a true artist.... we predict, that, as mr. tennyson advances in general spiritual culture, these higher aims will become more and more predominant in his writings; that he will strive more and more diligently, and, even without striving, will be more and more impelled by the natural tendencies of an expanding character, towards what has been described as the highest object of poetry,--'to incorporate the everlasting reason of man in forms visible to his sense, and suitable to it.'" this last sentence might easily be construed into a prediction of "in memoriam" and "the idyls of the king." if it is asked why mr. mill, with all his width of knowledge and sympathy, has achieved so little of a reputation as a miscellaneous writer, part of the reason no doubt is, that he sternly repressed his desultory tendencies, and devoted his powers to special branches of knowledge, attaining in them a distinction that obscured his other writings. another reason is, that, although his style is extremely clear, he was for popular purposes dangerously familiar with terms belonging more or less to the schools. he employed these in literary generalizations, without remembering that they were not equally familiar to his readers; and thus general readers, like tom moore, or the author of the recent notice in "the times," who read more for amusement than instruction, were disposed to consider mr. mill's style "vastly unreadable." w. minto. vi. his work in philosophy to a savage contemplating a railway train in motion, the engine would present itself as the master of the situation,--the determining cause of the motion and direction of the train. it visibly takes the lead, it looks big and important, and it makes a great noise. even people a long way up in the scale of civilization are in the habit of taking these attributes, perhaps not as the essential ones of leadership, but at all events as those by which a leader may be recognized. still that blustering machine, which puffs and snorts, and drags a vast multitude in its wake, is moving along a track determined by a man hidden away from the public gaze. a line of rail lies separated from an adjacent one, the pointsman moves a handle, and the foaming giant, that would, it may be, have sped on to his destruction and that of the passive crew who follow in his rear, is shunted to another line running in a different direction and to a more desirable goal. the great intellectual pointsman of our age--the man who has done more than any other of this generation to give direction to the thought of his contemporaries--has passed away; and we are left to measure the loss to humanity by the result of his labors. mr. mill's achievements in both branches of philosophy are such as to give him the foremost place in either. whether we regard him as an expounder of the philosophy of mind or the philosophy of society, he is _facile princeps_. still it is his work in mental science which will, in our opinion, be in future looked upon as his great contribution to the progress of thought. his work on political economy not only put into thorough repair the structure raised by adam smith, malthus, and ricardo, but raised it at least one story higher. his inestimable "system of logic" was a revolution. it hardly needs, of course, to be said that he owed much to his predecessors,--that he borrowed from whewell much of his classification, from brown the chief lines of his theory of causation, from sir john herschel the main principles of the inductive methods. those who think this a disparagement of his work must have very little conception of the mass of original thought that still remains to mr. mill's credit, the great critical power that could gather valuable truths from so many discordant sources, and the wonderful synthetic ability required to weld these and his own contributions into one organic whole. when mr. mill commenced his labors, the only logic recognized was the syllogistic. reasoning consisted solely, according to the then dominant school, in deducing from general propositions other propositions less general. it was even asserted confidently, that nothing more was to be expected,--that an inductive logic was impossible. this conception of logical science necessitated some general propositions to start with; and these general propositions being _ex hypothesi_ incapable of being proved from other propositions, it followed, that, if they were known to us at all, they must be original data of consciousness. here was a perfect paradise of question begging. the ultimate major premise in every argument being assumed, it could of course be fashioned according to the particular conclusion it was called in to prove. thus an 'artificial ignorance,' as locke calls it, was produced, which had the effect of sanctifying prejudice by recognizing so-called necessities of thought as the only bases of reasoning. it is true, that outside of the logic of the schools great advances had been made in the rules of scientific investigation; but these rules were not only imperfect in themselves, but their connection with the law of causation was but imperfectly realized, and their true relation to syllogism hardly dreamt of. mr. mill altered all this. he demonstrated that the general type of reasoning is neither from generals to particulars, nor from particulars to generals, but from particulars to particulars. "if from our experience of john, thomas, &c., who once were living, but are now dead, we are entitled to conclude that all human beings are mortal, we might surely, without any logical inconsequence, have concluded at once from those instances, that the duke of wellington is mortal. the mortality of john, thomas, and others is, after all, the whole evidence we have for the mortality of the duke of wellington. not one iota is added to the proof by interpolating a general proposition." we not only may, according to mr. mill, reason from some particular instances to others, but we frequently do so. as, however, the instances which are sufficient to prove one fresh instance must be sufficient to prove a general proposition, it is most convenient to at once infer that general proposition, which then becomes a formula according to which (but not from which) any number of particular inferences may be made. the work of deduction is the interpretation of these formulas, and therefore, strictly speaking, is not inferential at all. the real inference was accomplished when the universal proposition was arrived at. it will easily be seen that this explanation of the deductive process completely turns the tables on the transcendental school. all reasoning is shown to be at bottom inductive. inductions and their interpretation make up the whole of logic; and to induction accordingly mr. mill devoted his chief attention. for the first time induction was treated as the _opus magnum_ of logic, and the fundamental principles of science traced to their inductive origin. it was this, taken with his theory of the syllogism, which worked the great change. both his "system of logic" and his "examination of sir william hamilton's philosophy" are for the most part devoted to fortifying this position, and demolishing beliefs inconsistent with it. as a systematic psychologist mr. mill has not done so much as either professor bain or mr. herbert spencer. the perfection of his method, its application, and the uprooting of prejudices which stood in its way,--this was the task to which mr. mill applied himself with an ability and success rarely matched and never surpassed. the biggest lion in the path was the doctrine of so-called "necessary truth." this doctrine was especially obnoxious to him, as it set up a purely subjective standard of truth, and a standard--as he was easily able to show--varying according to the psychological history of the individual. such thinkers as dr. whewell and mr. herbert spencer had to be met in intellectual combat. dr. whewell held, not that the inconceivability of the contradictory of a proposition is a proof of its truth co-equal with experience, but that its value transcends experience. experience may tell us what _is_; but it is by the impossibility of conceiving it otherwise that we know it _must be_. mr. herbert spencer, too, holds that propositions whose negation is inconceivable have "a higher warrant than any other whatever." it is through this door that ontological belief was supposed to enter. "things in themselves" were to be believed in because we could not help it. modern noumenalists agree that we can know nothing more of "things in themselves" than their existence, but this they continue to assert with a vehemence only equalled by its want of meaning. in his "examination of sir william hamilton's philosophy," mr. mill gives battle to this mode of thought. after reviewing, in an opening chapter, the various views which have been held respecting the relativity of human knowledge, and stating his own doctrine, he proceeds to judge by this standard the philosophy of the absolute and sir william hamilton's relation to it. the argument is really on the question whether we have or have not an intuition of god, though, as mr. mill says, "the name of god is veiled under two extremely abstract phrases,--'the infinite' and 'the absolute.'" so profound and friendly a thinker as the late mr. grote held this raising of the veil inexpedient, but he proved, by a mistake he fell into, the necessity of looking at the matter in the concrete. he acknowledged the force of mr. mill's argument, that "the infinite" must include "a farrago of contradictions;" but so also, he said, does the finite. now undoubtedly finite things, taken distributively, have contradictory attributes, but not as a class. still less is there any one individual thing, "the finite," in which these contradictory attributes inhere. but it was against a corresponding being, "the infinite," that mr. mill was arguing. it is this that he calls a "fasciculus of contradictions," and regarded as the _reductio ad absurdissimum_ of the transcendental philosophy. mr. mill's religious tendencies may very well be gathered from a passage in his review of auguste comte, a philosopher with whom he agreed on all points save those which are specially m. comte's. "candid persons of all creeds may be willing to admit, that if a person has an ideal object, his attachment and sense of duty towards which are able to control and discipline all his other sentiments and propensities, and prescribe to him a rule of life, that person has a religion; and though every one naturally prefers his own religion to any other, all must admit, that if the object of his attachment, and of this feeling of duty, is the aggregate of our fellow-creatures, this religion of the infidel cannot in honesty and conscience be called an intrinsically bad one. many indeed may be unable to believe that this object is capable of gathering round it feelings sufficiently strong; but this is exactly the point on which a doubt can hardly remain in an intelligent reader of m. comte: and we join with him in contemning, as equally irrational and mean, the conception of human nature as incapable of giving its love, and devoting its existence, to any object which cannot afford in exchange an eternity of personal enjoyment." never has the libel of humanity involved in the current theology been more forcibly pointed out, with its constant appeal to low motives of personal gain, or still lower motives of personal fear. never has the religious sentiment which must take the place of the present awe of the unknown been more clearly indicated. it is this noble sentiment which shines out from every page of mr. mill's writings and all his relations to his fellow-creatures: the very birds about his dwelling seemed to recognize it. it is this noble sentiment which infuses a soul of life into his teachings, and the enunciation and acting-out of which constitute him, not only the great philosopher, but also the great prophet of our time. j. h. levy. vii his studies in morals and jurisprudence the two chief characteristics of mr. mill's mind are conspicuous in the field of morals and jurisprudence. he united in an extraordinary degree an intense delight in thinking for its own sake, with an almost passionate desire to make his intellectual excursions contribute to the amelioration of the lot of mankind, especially of the poorer and suffering part of mankind. and yet he never allowed those high aims to clash with one another: he did not degrade his intellect to the sophistical office of finding reasons for a policy arising from mere emotion, nor did he permit it to run waste in barren speculations, which might have excited admiration, but never could have done any good. this is the reason why so many persons have been unable to understand him as the prophet of utilitarianism. a man of such exquisite feeling, of such pure conscientiousness, of such self-denying life, must surely be an advocate of what is called absolute morality. utilitarianism is the proper creed of hard unemotional natures, who do not respond to the more subtle moral influences. such is the view natural to those who cannot dissociate the word "utilitarianism" from the narrow meaning of utility, as contrasted with the pleasures of art. the infirmity of human language excuses such errors; for the language in which controversy is conducted is so colored by sentiment that it may well happen that two shall agree on the thing, and fight to the death about the word. we need the support of such reflections when we recall the history of such a word as "pleasure." to pursue pleasure, say the anti-utilitarians, is a swinish doctrine. "yes," replied mr. mill, "if men were swine, and capable only of the pleasures appropriate to that species of animals." those who could not answer this argument, and at the same time cannot divest themselves of the association of pleasure with the ignoble, took refuge in the charge of inconsistency, and, finding there was not less but more nobility in mr. mill's writing than their own theory, accused him of abandoning the tradition of his school. mahomet would not go to the mountain, and they pleased themselves with the thought that the mountain had gone to mahomet. such a charge is really tantamount to a confession that popular antipathy was more easily excited by the word than by the real doctrine. nevertheless mr. mill did an incalculable service in showing not less by his whole life, than by his writings, that utilitarianism takes account of all that is good in man's nature, and includes the highest emotions, as well as those that are more commonplace. he took away a certain reproach of narrowness, which was never in the doctrine, and which was loudly, though perhaps with little reason, urged against some of its most conspicuous supporters. an important addition to the theory of morals is also contained in the book on "utilitarianism." his analysis of "justice" is one of the happiest efforts of inductive definition to be found in any book on ethics. from any point of view, it must be regarded as a valuable addition to the literature of ethical philosophy. the somewhat technical subject of jurisprudence was not too much for mr. mill's immense power of assimilation. one of his earliest efforts was as editor of bentham's "rationale of judicial evidence." he must, therefore, at an early period, have been master of the most original and enlightened theory of judicial evidence that the world has seen. he lived to see nearly all the important innovations proposed by bentham become part and parcel of the law of the land; one of the last relics of bigotry--the exclusion of honest atheists (and only of such) from the witness-box--having been removed two or three years ago. mr. mill, in after years, attended austin's famous lectures on jurisprudence, taking extensive notes; so that he was able to supply the matter wanting to complete two important lectures, as they were printed in the first edition of austin's works. among the "dissertations and discussions," is a criticism of austin's work, which shows that he was far more than a scholar,--a most competent judge of his master. he pointed out in austin's definition of "right" a real defect. one of the points that austin elaborated most was a classification such as might serve for a scientific code of law. mr. mill fully acknowledged the merits of the scheme, but laid his finger unerringly on its weakest part. his remarks show, that, if he had followed up the subject with an adequate knowledge of any good system of law, he would have rivalled or surpassed his achievements in other departments of knowledge. w. a. hunter. viii. his work in political economy. the task of fairly estimating the value of mr. mill's achievements in political economy--and indeed the same remark applies to what he has done in every department of philosophy--is rendered particularly difficult by a circumstance which constitutes their principal merit. the character of his intellectual, no less than of his moral nature, led him to strive to connect his thoughts, whatever was the branch of knowledge at which he labored, with the previously-existing body of speculation, to fit them into the same framework, and exhibit them as parts of the same scheme; so that it might be truly said of him, that he was at more pains to conceal the originality and independent value of his contributions to the stock of knowledge than most writers are to set forth those qualities in their compositions. as a consequence of this, hasty readers of his works, while recognizing the comprehensiveness of his mind, have sometimes denied its originality; and in political economy in particular he has been frequently represented as little more than an expositor and popularizer of ricardo. it cannot be denied that there is a show of truth in this representation; about as much as there would be in asserting that laplace and herschel were the expositors and popularizers of newton, or that faraday performed a like office for sir humphry davy. in truth, this is an incident of all progressive science. the cultivators in each age may, in a sense, be said to be the interpreters and popularizers of those who have preceded them; and it is in this sense, and in this sense only, that this part can be attributed to mill. in this respect he is to be strongly contrasted with the great majority of writers on political economy, who, on the strength perhaps of a verbal correction or an unimportant qualification of a received doctrine, if not on the score of a pure fallacy, would fain persuade us that they have achieved a revolution in economic doctrine, and that the entire science must be rebuilt from its foundation in conformity with their scheme. this sort of thing has done infinite mischief to the progress of economic science; and one of mill's great merits is, that both by example and by precept he steadily discountenanced it. his anxiety to affiliate his own speculations to those of his predecessors is a marked feature in all his philosophical works, and illustrates at once the modesty and comprehensiveness of his mind. it is quite true that mill, as an economist, was largely indebted to ricardo; and he has so fully and frequently acknowledged the debt, that there is some danger of rating the obligation too highly. as he himself used to put it, ricardo supplied the backbone of the science; but it is not less certain that the limbs, the joints, the muscular developments,--all that renders political economy a complete and organized body of knowledge,--have been the work of mill. in ricardo's great work, the fundamental doctrines of production, distribution, and exchange have been laid down, but for the most part in mere outline; so much so, that superficial students are in general wholly unable to connect his statement of principles with the facts, as we find them, of industrial life. hence we have innumerable "refutations of ricardo,"--almost invariably refutations of the writers' own misconceptions. in mill's exposition, the connection between principles and facts becomes clear and intelligible. the conditions and modes of action are exhibited by which human wants and desires--the motive powers of industry--come to issue in the actual phenomena of wealth, and political economy becomes a system of doctrines susceptible of direct application to human affairs. as an example, i may refer to mill's development of ricardo's doctrine of foreign trade. in ricardo's pages, the fundamental principles of that department of exchange are indeed laid down with a master's hand; but for the majority of readers they have little relation to the actual commerce of the world. turn to mill, and all becomes clear. principles of the most abstract kind are translated into concrete language, and brought to explain familiar facts; and this result is achieved, not simply or chiefly by virtue of mere lucidity of exposition, but through the discovery and exhibition of modifying conditions and links in the chain of causes overlooked by ricardo. it was in his "essays on unsettled questions in political economy" that his views upon this subject were first given to the world,--a work of which m. cherbuliez of geneva speaks as "un travail le plus important et le plus original dont la science economique se soit enrichie depuis une vingtaine d'années." on some points, however, and these points of supreme importance, the contributions of mill to economic science are very much more than developments--even though we understand that term in its largest sense--of any previous writer. no one can have studied political economy in the works of its earlier cultivators without being struck with the dreariness of the outlook which, in the main, it discloses for the human race. it seems to have been ricardo's deliberate opinion, that a substantial improvement in the condition of the mass of mankind was impossible. he considered it as the normal state of things that wages should be at the _minimum_ requisite to support the laborer in physical health and strength, and to enable him to bring up a family large enough to supply the wants of the labor-market. a temporary improvement indeed, as the consequence of expanding commerce and growing capital, he saw that there might be; but he held that the force of the principle of population was always powerful enough so to augment the supply of labor as to bring wages ever again down to the _minimum_ point. so completely had this belief become a fixed idea in ricardo's mind, that he confidently drew from it the consequence, that in no case could taxation fall on the laborer, since--living, as a normal state of things, on the lowest possible stipend adequate to maintain him and his family--he would inevitably, he argued, transfer the burden to his employer; and a tax nominally on wages would in the result become invariably a tax upon profits. on this point mill's doctrine leads to conclusions directly opposed to ricardo's, and to those of most preceding economists. and it will illustrate his position as a thinker, in relation to them, if we note how this result was obtained. mill neither denied the premises nor disputed the logic of ricardo's argument: he accepted both; and in particular he recognized fully the force of the principle of population; but he took account of a further premise which ricardo had overlooked, and which, duly weighed, led to a reversal of ricardo's conclusion. the _minimum_ of wages, even such as it exists in the case of the worst-paid laborer, is not the very least sum that human nature can subsist upon: it is something more than this; in the case of all above the worst-paid class it is decidedly more. the _minimum_ is, in truth, not a physical but a moral _minimum_, and as such, is capable of being altered with the changes in the moral character of those whom it affects. in a word, each class has a certain standard of comfort below which it will not consent to live, or at least to multiply,--a standard, however, not fixed, but liable to modification with the changing circumstances of society, and which, in the case of a progressive community, is, in point of fact, constantly rising, as moral and intellectual influences are brought more and more effectually to bear on the masses of the people. this was the new premise brought by mill to the elucidation of the wages question; and it sufficed to change the entire aspect of human life regarded from the point of view of political economy. the practical deductions made from it were set forth in the celebrated chapter on "the future of the industrial classes,"--a chapter which it is no exaggeration to say places a gulf between mill and all who preceded him, and opens an entirely new vista to economic speculation. the doctrine of the science with which mill's name has been most prominently associated within the last few years is that which relates to the economic nature of land, and the consequences to which this should lead in practical legislation. it is very commonly believed, that on this point mill has started aside from the beaten highway of economic thought, and propounded views wholly at variance with those generally entertained by orthodox economists. no economist need be told that this is an entire mistake. in truth, there is no portion of the economic field in which mill's originality is less conspicuous than in that which deals with the land. his assertion of the peculiar nature of landed property, and again his doctrine as to the "unearned increment" of value arising from land with the growth of society, are simply direct deductions from ricardo's theory of rent, and cannot be consistently denied by any one who accepts that theory. all that mill has done here has been to point the application of principles all but universally accepted to the practical affairs of life. this is not the place to consider how far the plan proposed by him for this purpose is susceptible of practical realization; but it may at least be confidently stated, that the scientific basis on which his proposal rests is no strange novelty invented by him, but simply a principle as fundamental and widely recognized as any within the range of the science of which it forms a part. i have just remarked that mill's originality is less conspicuous in relation to the economic theory of land than in other problems of political economy, but the reader must not understand me from this to say, that he has not very largely contributed to the elucidation of this topic. he has indeed done so, though not, as is commonly supposed, by setting aside principles established by his predecessors, but, as his manner was, while accepting those principles, by introducing a new premise into the argument. the new premise introduced in this case was the influence of custom as modifying the action of competition. the existence of an active competition, on the one hand between farmers seeking farms, on the other between farming and other modes of industry as offering inducements to the investment of capital, is a constant assumption in the reasoning by which ricardo arrived at his theory of rent. granting this assumption, it followed that farmers as a rule would pay neither higher nor lower rents than would leave them in possession of the average profits on their capital current in the country. mill fully acknowledged the force of this reasoning, and accepted the conclusion as true wherever the conditions assumed were realized; but he proceeded to point out, that, in point of fact, the conditions are not realized over the greater portion of the world, and, as a consequence, that the rent actually paid by the cultivators to the owners of the soil by no means, as a general rule, corresponds with that portion of the produce which ricardo considered as properly "rent." the real regulator of actual rent over the greater part of the habitable globe was, he showed, not competition, but custom; and he further pointed out that there are countries in which the actual rent paid by the cultivators is governed neither by the causes set forth by ricardo, nor yet by custom, but by a third cause different from either,--the absolute will of the owners of the soil, controlled only by the physical exigencies of the cultivator, or by the fear of his vengeance if disturbed in his holding. the recognition of this state of things threw an entirely new light over the whole problem of land-tenure, and plainly furnished grounds for legislative interference in the contracts between landlords and tenants. its application to ireland was obvious; and mill himself, as the world knows, did not hesitate to urge the application with all the energy and enthusiasm which he invariably threw into every cause that he espoused. in the above remarks, i have attempted to indicate briefly some few of the salient features in mill's contributions to the science of political economy. there is still one more which ought not to be omitted from even the most meagre summary. mill was not the first to treat political economy as a science; but he was the first, if not to perceive, at least to enforce the lesson, that, just because it is a science, its conclusions carried with them no obligatory force with reference to human conduct. as a science, it tells us that certain modes of action lead to certain results; but it remains for each man to judge of the value of the results thus brought about, and to decide whether or not it is worth while to adopt the means necessary for their attainment. in the writings of the economists who preceded mill, it is very generally assumed, that to prove that a certain course of conduct tends to the most rapid increase of wealth suffices to entail upon all who accept the argument the obligation of adopting the course which leads to this result. mill absolutely repudiated this inference, and, while accepting the theoretic conclusion, held himself perfectly free to adopt in practice whatever course he preferred. it was not for political economy or for any science to say what are the ends most worthy of being pursued by human beings; the task of science is complete when it shows us the means by which the ends may be attained; but it is for each individual man to decide how far the end is desirable at the cost which its attainment involves. in a word, the sciences should be our servants, and not our masters. this was a lesson which mill was the first to enforce, and by enforcing which he may be said to have emancipated economists from the thraldom of their own teaching. it is in no slight degree through the constant recognition of its truth, that he has been enabled to divest of repulsiveness even the most abstract speculations, and to impart a glow of human interest to all that he has touched. j. e. cairnes. ix. his influence at the universities. some time ago, when there was no reason to suppose that we should so soon have to mourn the loss of the great thinker and of the kind friend who has just passed away, i had occasion to remark upon the influence which mr. mill had exercised at the universities. i will quote my words as they stand, because it is difficult to write with impartiality about one whose recent death we are deploring; and mr. mill would, i am sure, have been the first to say, that it is certainly not honoring the memory of one who is dead to lavish upon him praise which would not be bestowed upon him if he were living. i will therefore repeat my words exactly as they were written two years since: 'any one who has resided during the last twenty years at either of our universities must have noticed that mr. mill is the author who has most powerfully influenced nearly all the young men of the greatest promise.' in thus referring to the powerful influence exercised by mr. mill's works, i do not wish it to be supposed that this influence is to be measured by the extent to which his books form a part of the university _curriculum_. his "logic" has no doubt become a standard examination-book at oxford. at cambridge the mathematical and classical triposes still retain their former _prestige_. the moral science tripos, though increasing in importance, still attracts a comparatively small number of students, and there is probably no other examination for which it is necessary to read mr. mill's "logic" and "political economy." this fact affords the most satisfactory evidence that the influence he has exerted is spontaneous, and is therefore likely to be lasting in its effects. if students had been driven to read his books by the necessity which examinations impose, it is quite possible, that, after the examination, the books might never be looked at again. a resident, however, at the university can scarcely fail to be struck with the fact, that many who perfectly well know that they will never in any examination be asked to answer a question in logic or political economy are among the most diligent students of mr. mill's books. when i was an undergraduate, i well remember that most of my friends who were likely to take high mathematical honors were already so ultimately acquainted with mr. mill's writings, and were so much imbued with their spirit, that they might have been regarded as his disciples. many looked up to him as their teacher; many have since felt that he then instilled into them principles, which, to a great extent, have guided their conduct in after life. any one who is intimately acquainted with mr. mill's writings will readily understand how it is that they possess such peculiar attractiveness for the class of readers to whom i am now referring. there is nothing more characteristic in his writings than generosity and courage. he always states his opponent's case with the most judicial impartiality. he never shrinks from the expression of opinion because he thinks it unpopular; and there is nothing so abhorrent to him as that bigotry which prevents a man from appreciating what is just and true in the views of those who differ from him. this toleration, which is so predominant a feature of his writings, is probably one of the rarest of all qualities in a controversialist. those who do not possess it always produce an impression that they are unfair; and this impression, once produced, exercises a repelling influence upon the young. another cause of the attractiveness of mr. mill's writings is the precision with which his views are expressed, and the systematic form which is given to his opinions. confidence is reposed in him as a guide, because it is found that there is some definite goal to which he is leading his readers: he does not conduct them they know not whither, as a traveller who has lost his way in a mist, or a navigator who is steering his ship without a compass. the influence exercised by mr. mill does not chiefly depend upon the originality of his writings. he did not make any great discovery which will form an epoch in the history of human thought; he did not create a new science, or become the founder of a new system of philosophy. there is perhaps not so much originality in his "political economy" as in ricardo's; but there are thousands who never thought of reading ricardo who were so much attracted by mr. mill's book, that its influence might be traced throughout the rest of their lives. no doubt one reason of his attractiveness as a writer, in addition to other circumstances to which allusion has already been made, is the unusual power he possessed in applying philosophical principles to the facts of ordinary life. to those who believe that the influence mr. mill has exercised at the universities has been in the highest degree beneficial,--to those who think that his books not only afford the most admirable intellectual training, but also are calculated to produce a most healthy moral influence,--it may be some consolation, now that we are deploring his death, to know, that, although he has passed away, he may still continue to be a teacher and a guide. i believe he never visited the english universities: it was consequently entirely through his books that he was known. not one of those who were his greatest admirers at cambridge, when i was an undergraduate, ever saw him till many years after they had left the university. i remember that we often used to say, that there was nothing we should esteem so great a privilege as to spend an hour in mr. mill's society. there is probably no bond of attachment stronger than that which unites a pupil to one who has attracted him to new intellectual pursuits, and has awakened in him new interests in life. some four or five years after taking my degree, i met mr. mill for the first time; and from that hour an intimate friendship commenced, which i shall always regard as a peculiarly high privilege to have enjoyed. intimacy with mr. mill convinced me, that, if he had happened to live at either of the universities, his personal influence would have been no less striking than his intellectual influence. nothing, perhaps, was so remarkable in his character as his tenderness to the feelings of others, and the deference with which he listened to those in every respect inferior to himself. there never was a man who was more entirely free from that intellectual conceit which breeds disdain. nothing is so discouraging and heart-breaking to young people as the sneer of an intellectual cynic. a sarcasm about an act of youthful mental enthusiasm not only often casts a fatal chill over the character, but is resented as an injury never to be forgiven. the most humble youth would have found in mr. mill the warmest and most kindly sympathy. it may be said, if mr. mill has not become the founder of a new philosophical school at the universities where must we seek the result of his influence? i cannot give any thing like a complete reply to this question now; but any one who has observed the marked change which has come over the mode of thought in the universities in the last few years will be able to form some idea of the kind of influence which has been exercised by mr. mill. speaking generally, he has obtained a very wide acceptance of the utilitarian doctrines: they were presented by bentham in a form so harsh and unattractive as to produce an almost repelling effect. mr. mill, on the contrary, showed that the utilitarian philosophy might inspire the most active benevolence and the most generous enthusiasm. this acceptance of utilitarianism has produced a very striking effect in modifying the political opinions prevalent in the universities. for many years what has been known as the liberalism of young oxford and cambridge is in many respects fundamentally different from what is known as liberalism outside the universities. the liberalism of the universities, as well as that of the manchester school, are both popularly described as advanced but between the two there is in many essentials the widest possible divergence. what is known as philosophical radicalism will long bear the impression of mr. mill's teaching. it should be particularly remembered, that, avowing himself a liberal, he never forgot that it is the essence of true liberalism to be tolerant of opinions from which one differs, and to appreciate the advantages of branches of learning to which one has not devoted special attention. it is somewhat rare to find that those who profess themselves undoubted liberals are prepared to accept a consistent application of their principles. there is almost sure to be some region of inquiry which they regard as so dangerous that they regret that any one should enter upon it. sometimes it is said that freedom of thought, though admirable in politics, is mischievous in theology: some, advancing what they believe to be one step further, express a general approbation of freedom of thought, but stigmatize free-thinkers. again, it may be not infrequently observed that devotion to some particular study makes men illiberal to other branches of knowledge. metaphysicians and physiologists who have never taken the trouble to master mathematical principles dogmatically denounce the influence of mathematics. eminent classics and mathematicians have too frequently sneered at each other's studies. no one was ever more free from this kind of bigotry than mr. mill, and it probably constitutes one of the main causes of his influence. some years ago i happened to be conversing at cambridge with three men who were respectively of great eminence in mathematics, classics, and physiology. we were discussing the inaugural address which mr. mill had just delivered as rector of the st. andrew's university. the mathematician said, that he had never seen the advantages to be derived from the study of mathematics so justly and so forcibly described; the same remark was made by the classic about classics, and by the physiologist about natural science. no more fitting homage can probably be offered to the memory of one to whom so many of us are bound by the strongest ties of gratitude and affection, than if, profiting by his example, we endeavor to remember, that above all things he was just to his opponents, that he appreciated opinions from which he differed, and that one of his highest claims to our admiration was his general sympathy with all branches of knowledge. henry fawcett. x. his influence as a practical politician. every one must be familiar with the often expressed opinion, that, as a practical politician, mr. mill's career was essentially a failure. it has been said a thousand times that the principal result of his brief representation of westminster was to furnish an additional proof, if one were wanted, that a philosopher is totally incapable of exercising any useful influence in the direction of practical politics. it is proposed briefly to examine this opinion, though it may, indeed, with truth be urged that the present time is not calculated to make the examination an impartial one. the inquiry involves an almost constant reference, either expressed or implied, to mr. mill's personal character and influence, and it is hardly possible for those who are mourning him as a friend to speak of these dispassionately. it is perhaps hardly necessary at such a time as this to ask the indulgence of the reader if this unworthy tribute to the memory of a great man is colored by personal reverence and gratitude. when, it is said that mr. mill failed as a practical politician, there are two questions to be asked: "who says he has failed?" and "what is it said that he failed in?" now, it seems that the persons who are loudest in the assertion of his failure are precisely those to whom the reforms advocated by mr. mill in his writings are distasteful. they are those who pronounce all schemes of electoral reform embodying the principle of proportional representation to be the result of a conspiracy of fools and rogues; they are those who sneer at the "fanciful rights of women;" they are those who think our present land tenure eminently calculated to make the rich contented, and keep the poor in their proper places; they are those who believe that republicans and atheists ought to be treated like vermin, and exterminated accordingly; they are those who think that all must be well with england if her imports and exports are increasing, and that we are justified in repudiating our foreign engagements, if to maintain them would have an injurious effect upon trade. the assertion of failure coming from such persons does not mean that mr. mill failed to promote the practical success of those objects the advocacy of which forms the chief feature of his political writings. it is rather a measure of his success in promoting these objects, and of the disgust with which his success is regarded by those who are opposed to his political ideas. it was known, or ought to have been known, by every one who supported mr. mill's candidature in , that he was a powerful advocate of proportional representation, and that he attributed the very greatest importance to the political, industrial, and social emancipation of women; he advocated years ago, in his "political economy," the scheme of land tenure reform with which his name is now practically associated; his essay "on liberty" left no doubt as to his opinions upon the value of maintaining freedom of thought and speech, his article entitled "a few words on non-intervention" might have warned the partisans of the manchester school that he had no sympathy with their views on foreign policy. there is little doubt that the majority of mr. mill's supporters in did not know what his political opinions were, and that they voted for him simply on his reputation as a great thinker. a large number, however, probably supported him, knowing in a general way the views advocated in his writings, but thinking that he would probably be like many other politicians, and not allow his practice to be in the least degree influenced by his theories. just as radical heirs apparent are said to lay aside all inconvenient revolutionary opinions when they come to the throne, it was believed that mr. mill in parliament would be an entirely different person from mr. mill in his study. it was one thing to write an essay in favor of proportional representation it was another thing to assist in the insertion of the principle of proportional representation in the reform bill, and to form a school of practical politicians who took care to insure the adoption of this principle in the school board elections. it was one thing to advocate theoretically the claims of women to representation it was another to introduce the subject into the house of commons, to promote an active political organization in its favor, and thus to convert it, from a philosophical dream, into a question of pressing and practical importance. it was one thing to advocate freedom of thought and discussion in all political and religious questions it was another to speak respectfully of mr. odger, and to send mr. bradlaugh a contribution toward the expenses of his candidature for northampton. the discovery that mr. mill's chief objects in parliament were the same as his chief objects out of parliament branded him at once as an unpractical man: and his success in promoting these objects constituted his "failure" as a politician. his fearless disregard of unpopularity, as manifested in his prosecution, in conjunction with mr. p.a. taylor, of ex-governor eyre, was another proof that he was entirely unlike the people who call themselves "practical politicians." his persistency in conducting this prosecution was one of the main causes of his defeat at the election of . if to be unpopular because he promoted the practical success of the opinions his life had been spent in advocating is to have failed, then mr. mill failed. if, however, the success of a politician is to be measured by the degree in which he is able personally to influence the course of politics, and attach to himself a school of political thought, then mr. mill, in the best meaning of the words, has succeeded. if mr. mill had died ten years ago, is it probable that his views on representative reform would have received so much practical recognition as they have obtained during the last five years? if he had never entered the house of commons, would the women's-suffrage question be where it now is? before he introduced the subject into the house of commons in , it may be said to have had no political existence in this country. the whole question was held in such contempt by "practical politicians," that the house would probably have refused to listen to any member, except mr. mill, who advocated the removal of the political disabilities of women. mr. mill was the one member of parliament whose high intellectual position enabled him to raise the question without being laughed down as a fool. to every one's astonishment, seventy-four members followed mr. mill into the lobby: the most sanguine estimate, previous to the division, of the number of his supporters had been thirty. since that time, the movement in favor of women's suffrage has made rapid and steady progress. like all genuine political movements, it has borne fruit in many measures which are intended to remove the grievances of which those who advocate the movement complain: among these collateral results of the agitation for women's suffrage, may be enumerated the married women's property act, the custody of infants bill, and the admission of women to the municipal and educational franchises and to seats upon school-boards. a large part of the present anxiety to improve the education of girls and women is also due to the conviction that the political disabilities of women will not be maintained. in this question of the general improvement of the position of women, mr. mill's influence can scarcely be over-estimated. all through his life he regarded it as a question of first-rate importance; and the extent to which he was able practically to promote it is sufficient in itself to make his career as a politician a success. a strong proof of the vitality of the movement, of which he was the principal originator, is that his death cannot injuriously affect its activity or its prospects of ultimate success. what he has done for women is final: he gave to their service the best powers of his mind and the best years of his life. his death consecrates the gift: it can never lessen its value. what is true of mr. mill's influence on the women's-suffrage question is true also of the other political movements in which he took an active interest. he was able in all of these powerfully to influence the political history of his day in the direction in which he desired to influence it. if this is failure, failure is worth much more than success. of the influence of mr. mill's personal character on those who were his political associates, it is difficult to speak too warmly. no one could be with him or work with him without being conscious of breathing a purer moral atmosphere: he made mean personal ambitions and rivalries seem despicable and ridiculous, not so much by any thing that he said directly on the subject, as by contrast with his own noble, strong, and generous nature. it is almost impossible to imagine that any one could be so insensible to the high morality of mr. mill's character as to suggest to him any course of conduct that was not entirely upright and consistent. a year or two ago, however, a story was told of a gentleman who asked mr. mill to stand for an irish constituency, and stated that the only opinion it would be necessary for him to change was the one he had so often expressed against denominational education. a smile at the man's stupidity, and the remark, "i should like to have seen mill's face when he heard this suggestion," is the almost invariable comment on this story. it is a very suggestive indication of the impression mr. mill's moral influence made on those who knew him. an apology is due to the readers of these pages that the task of speaking of mr. mill as a practical politician has not fallen into more competent hands. no one can be more deeply sensible of my inability to deal adequately with the subject than i am myself. this sketch ought to have been written by one who is in every way more qualified to speak of mr. mill's political career than i am. unavoidable circumstances, however, prevented his undertaking the work; and as the time was too short to allow of any being spent in a search that might have proved fruitless, the honor of writing these lines has devolved upon me. millicent garrett fawcett. xi. his relation to positivism.[ ] the present course of lectures on a special subject has made no pretension to present the religious aspect of positivism, and i shall not venture to intrude on one of its gravest functions the due commemoration of the dead. but nothing that is spoken here should have a merely scientific form, nor can i be satisfied until i have tried to give expression to the feeling which must be foremost in the minds of all present. it is impossible to forget that it was by mr. mill that comte was first made known in this country, and that by him first in this country the great doctrines of positive thought, the supreme reign of law in the moral and social world, no less than in the intellectual world, were reduced to system and life. this conception as a whole has been gradually forming in the minds of all modern thinkers; but its full scope and force were presented to englishmen for the first time by mr. mill. the growth of my own mind, and of that of all those with whom i have been associated, has been simply the recognition of this truth in all its bearings and force; and it was in minds saturated with this principle by the teaching of mr. mill that the great phases of english thought have germinated in our day. in this place it is impossible to forget, that, in introducing to the english world the principles of comte, mr. mill so clearly and ardently professed the positive philosophy at that time restricted to its earlier phase alone. in this place it is impossible, too, to forget the generous assistance which he extended to comte, whereby he was enabled to continue his labors in philosophy, impossible also to forget the active communion of mind between them, and the large space which their intercourse occupied in the thoughts and labors of both. nor can i, and many present here, forget the many occasions on which we have been guided by his counsel and supported by his help in many a practical work in which we have depended on his example and experience. it is needless to repeat, for it must be present to all minds, how many and deep are the differences which separate him from the later doctrines of comte, and how completely he repudiated connection with the religious reconstruction of positivism. we here, at any rate, shall claim mr. mill for positivism in no other sense than that in which he claimed it for himself in his own latest writings. these differences we shall neither exaggerate nor veil. they stand all written most clearly for all men to weigh and to use. but naturally we shall point, as one of us has already publicly pointed, to the cardinal features of agreement, and the vast importance of the features for which we may claim the whole weight of his authority. yet i would not pretend that it is only on this side of his connection with the founder and principles of positivism, that we dwell on the memory of mr. mill with admiration and sympathy. we reverence that unfaltering fearlessness of spirit, that warmth of generous emotion, that guileless simplicity of nature, which made his life heroic. neither insult, failure, nor abandonment could shake his sense of duty, or touch his gentle and serene fortitude. for us his high example, his noble philosophic calm, continue to live and to teach. he, being dead, yet speaketh. and, if his great heart and brain are no longer amongst us as visible and conscious agencies, his spirit lives yet in all that he has given to the generation of to-day: the work of his spirit is not ended, nor the task of his life accomplished; but we feel that his nature is entering on a new and greater life amongst us,--one that is entirely spiritual, intellectual, and moral. frederic harrison. footnotes: [ ] part of a lecture on "political institutions," delivered at the positivist school, may . xii. his position as a philosopher. it is always hazardous to forecast the estimation in which any man will be held by posterity. in one sense truly we have no right to anticipate the judgment of the future, sufficient for us to form opinions satisfactory within the limits of our own generation. sometimes, by evil chance, a great name is covered with undeserved reproach; and it is reserved for a distant future to do it justice. but such a work as mr. carlyle did for cromwell we may confidently anticipate will never be required for the name of john stuart mill. he is already enrolled among the first of contemporary thinkers, and from that list his name will never be erased. the nature of mr. mill's work is such as to make it easy to predict the character of his future reputation. his is the kind of philosophy that is destined to become the commonplace of the future. we may anticipate that many of his most remarkable views will become obsolete in the best sense: they will become worked up into practice, and embodied in institutions. indeed, the place that he will hold will probably be closely resembling that of the great father of english philosophy,--john locke. there is indeed, amid distinguishing differences, a remarkable similarity between the two men, and the character of their influence on the world. what locke was to the liberal movements of the seventeenth century, mr. mill has more than been to the liberal movement of the nineteenth century. the intellectual powers of the two men had much in common, and they were exercised upon precisely similar subjects. the "essay on the human understanding" covered doubtless a field more purely psychological than the "logic;" but we must remember that the "analysis of the mind" by the elder mill had recently carried the inductive study of mind to an advanced point. if, however, we regard less the topics on which these two illustrious men wrote, than the special service rendered by each of them to intellectual progress, we may not unfittingly compare the work of locke--the descent from metaphysics to psychology--to the noble purpose of redeeming logic from the superstition of the aristotelians, and exalting it to something higher than a mere verbal exercise for school-boys. the attack that locke opened with such tremendous effect on the _a priori_ school of philosophy was never more ably supported than by the "logic" and controversial writings of mr. mill. the remarkable fact in regard to both these great thinkers--these conquerors in the realms of abstract speculation--is their relation to politics. locke was the political philosopher of the revolution of ; mr. mill has been the political philosopher of the democracy of the nineteenth century. the vast space that lies between their treatises represents a difference, not in the men, but in the times. locke found opposed to the common weal an odious theory of arbitrary and absolute power. it is interesting to remember what were the giants necessary to be slain in those days. the titles of his first chapters on "government" significantly attest the rudimentary condition of political philosophy in locke's day. adam was generally considered to have had a divine power of government, which was transmitted to a favored few of his descendants. accordingly locke disposes of adam's title to sovereignty to whatever origin it may have been ascribed,--to "creation," "donation," "the subjection of eve," or "fatherhood." there is something almost ludicrous in discussing fundamental questions of government with reference to such scriptural topics; and it is a striking evidence of the change that has passed over england since the revolution, that, whereas locke's argument looks like a commentary on the bible, even the bishops now do not in parliament quote the bible on the question of marriage with a deceased wife's sister. nevertheless locke clearly propounded the great principle, which, in spite of many errors and much selfishness, has been the fruitful heritage of the whig party. "political power, then, i take to be a right of making laws with penalties of death, and consequently all less penalties, for the regulating and preserving of property, and of employing the force of the community in the execution of such laws, and in the defence of the commonwealth from foreign injury, _and all this only for the public good_." locke also enounced the maxim, that the state of nature is one of equality. mr. mill's special views on the land question are not without parallel in locke; for that acute thinker distinctively laid down that "labor" was the true ground even of property in land. still it must be confessed that locke's political philosophy is much cruder than mr. mill's. his "essay on government" is as the rough work of a boy of genius, the "representative government" a finished work of art of the experienced master. and this difference corresponds with the rate of political progress. the english constitution, as we now understand it, was unknown at the revolution: it had to be slowly created. now the great task of the future is to raise the mass of the people to a higher standard of political intelligence and material comfort. to that great end no man has contributed so much as mr. mill. perhaps the one writing for which above all others mr. mill's disciples will love his memory is his essay "on liberty." in this undertaking mr. mill followed the noble precedent of locke, with greater largeness of view and perfection of work. locke's four letters "concerning toleration" constitute a splendid manifesto of the liberals of the seventeenth century. the principle, that the ends of political society are life, health, liberty, and immunity from harm, and not the salvation of souls, has taken nearly two centuries to root itself in english law, but has long been recognized by all but the shallowest bigots. and yet locke spoke of "atheism being a crime, which, for its madness as well as guilt, ought to shut a man out of all sober and civil society." here again, what a stride does the _liberty_ make? it is, once more, the difference of the times, rather than of the men. the same noble and prescient insight into the springs of national greatness and social progress characterizes the work of both men, but in what different measures? again, we must say, the disciple is greater than the master. closely bearing on this topic is the relation of the two men to christianity. locke not only wrote to show the "reasonableness of christianity," but paraphrased several of the books of the new testament. mr. mill has never written one sentence to give the least encouragement to christianity. but, although a contrast appears to exist, there is really none. locke was what may be called a bible christian. he rejected all theological systems, and constructed his religious belief in the truly protestant way,--with the bible and his inner consciousness. his creed was the bible as conformed to reason; but he never doubted which, in the event of a conflict, ought to give way. to him the destructive criticism of biblical scholars and the discoveries of geology had given no disquietude; and he died with the happy conviction, that, without abandoning his religious teaching, he could remain faithful to reason. mr. mill inherited a vast controversy, and he had to make a choice like locke, he remained faithful only to reason. perhaps, it might be urged, this comparison leaves out of account the very greatest work of mr. mill,--his 'political economy.' locke lived too soon to be an adam smith; but, curiously enough, the parallel is not broken even at this point. in and again in he wrote, "some considerations of the consequences of the lowering of interest, and raising the value of money," in which he propounded among other views, that, "taxes, however contrived, and out of whose hands soever immediately taken, do, in a country where the great fund is in land for the most part terminate upon land." there is of course no comparison between the two men on this head: nevertheless it is interesting to note in prototype the germs of the great work of mr. mill. it shows the remarkable and by no means accidental similarity between the men. the parallel is already too much drawn out, otherwise it would be worth observing on the characters and lives of these two men. enough, however, has been said to show that we may not unreasonably anticipate for mr. mill a future such as has fallen to locke. his wisdom will be the commonplace of other times: his theories will be realized in political institutions; and we may hope and believe the working-class will rise to such a standard of wealth and culture and political power as to realize the generous aspirations of one of england's greatest sons. w.a. hunter. everyman's library founded by j. m. dent (d. ) edited by ernest rhys (d. ) essays & belles-lettres sartor resartus _and_ on heroes by thomas carlyle · introduction by professor w. h. hudson thomas carlyle, born in at ecclefechan, the son of a stonemason. educated at edinburgh university. schoolmaster for a short time, but decided on a literary career, visiting paris and london. retired in to dumfriesshire to write. in moved to cheyne row, chelsea, and died there in . sartor resartus on heroes hero worship thomas carlyle london: j. m. dent & sons ltd. new york: e. p. dutton & co. inc. _all rights reserved made in great britain at the temple press letchworth for j. m. dent & sons ltd. aldine house bedford st. london first published in this edition last reprinted _ introduction one of the most vital and pregnant books in our modern literature, "sartor resartus" is also, in structure and form, one of the most daringly original. it defies exact classification. it is not a philosophic treatise. it is not an autobiography. it is not a romance. yet in a sense it is all these combined. its underlying purpose is to expound in broad outline certain ideas which lay at the root of carlyle's whole reading of life. but he does not elect to set these forth in regular methodic fashion, after the manner of one writing a systematic essay. he presents his philosophy in dramatic form and in a picturesque human setting. he invents a certain herr diogenes teufelsdröckh, an erudite german professor of "allerley-wissenschaft," or things in general, in the university of weissnichtwo, of whose colossal work, "die kleider, ihr werden und wirken" (on clothes: their origin and influence), he represents himself as being only the student and interpreter. with infinite humour he explains how this prodigious volume came into his hands; how he was struck with amazement by its encyclopædic learning, and the depth and suggestiveness of its thought; and how he determined that it was his special mission to introduce its ideas to the british public. but how was this to be done? as a mere bald abstract of the original would never do, the would-be apostle was for a time in despair. but at length the happy thought occurred to him of combining a condensed statement of the main principles of the new philosophy with some account of the philosopher's life and character. thus the work took the form of a "life and opinions of herr teufelsdröckh," and as such it was offered to the world. here, of course, we reach the explanation of its fantastic title--"sartor resartus," or the tailor patched: the tailor being the great german "clothes-philosopher," and the patching being done by carlyle as his english editor. as a piece of literary mystification, teufelsdröckh and his treatise enjoyed a measure of the success which nearly twenty years before had been scored by dietrich knickerbocker and his "history of new york." the question of the professor's existence was solemnly discussed in at least one important review; carlyle was gravely taken to task for attempting to mislead the public; a certain interested reader actually wrote to inquire where the original german work was to be obtained. all this seems to us surprising; the more so as we are now able to understand the purposes which carlyle had in view in devising his dramatic scheme. in the first place, by associating the clothes-philosophy with the personality of its alleged author (himself one of carlyle's splendidly living pieces of characterisation), and by presenting it as the product and expression of his spiritual experiences, he made the mystical creed intensely human. stated in the abstract, it would have been a mere blank _-ism_; developed in its intimate relations with teufelsdröckh's character and career, it is filled with the hot life-blood of natural thought and feeling. secondly, by fathering his own philosophy upon a german professor carlyle indicates his own indebtedness to german idealism, the ultimate source of much of his own teaching. yet, deep as that indebtedness was, and anxious as he might be to acknowledge it, he was as a humourist keenly alive to certain glaring defects of the great german writers; to their frequent tendency to lose themselves among the mere minutiæ of erudition, and thus to confuse the unimportant and the important; to their habit of rising at times into the clouds rather than above the clouds, and of there disporting themselves in regions "close-bordering on the impalpable inane;" to their too conspicuous want of order, system, perspective. the dramatic machinery of "sartor resartus" is therefore turned to a third service. it is made the vehicle of much good-humoured satire upon these and similar characteristics of teutonic scholarship and speculation; as in the many amusing criticisms which are passed upon teufelsdröckh's volume as a sort of "mad banquet wherein all courses have been confounded;" in the burlesque parade of the professor's "omniverous reading" (_e.g._, book i, chap. v); and in the whole amazing episode of the "six considerable paper bags," out of the chaotic contents of which the distracted editor in search of "biographic documents" has to make what he can. nor is this quite all. teufelsdröckh is further utilised as the mouthpiece of some of carlyle's more extravagant speculations and of such ideas as he wished to throw out as it were tentatively, and without himself being necessarily held responsible for them. there is thus much point as well as humour in those sudden turns of the argument, when, after some exceptionally wild outburst on his _eidolon's_ part, carlyle sedately reproves him for the fantastic character or dangerous tendency of his opinions. it is in connection with the dramatic scheme of the book that the third element, that of autobiography, enters into its texture, for the story of teufelsdröckh is very largely a transfigured version of the story of carlyle himself. in saying this, i am not of course thinking mainly of carlyle's outer life. this, indeed, is in places freely drawn upon, as the outer lives of dickens, george eliot, tolstoi are drawn upon in "david copperfield," "the mill on the floss," "anna karénina." entepfuhl is only another name for ecclefechan; the picture of little diogenes eating his supper out-of-doors on fine summer evenings, and meanwhile watching the sun sink behind the western hills, is clearly a loving transcript from memory; even the idyllic episode of blumine may be safely traced back to a romance of carlyle's youth. but to investigate the connection at these and other points between the mere externals of the two careers is a matter of little more than curious interest. it is because it incorporates and reproduces so much of carlyle's inner history that the story of teufelsdröckh is really important. spiritually considered, the whole narrative is, in fact, a "symbolic myth," in which the writer's personal trials and conflicts are depicted with little change save in setting and accessories. like teufelsdröckh, carlyle while still a young man had broken away from the old religious creed in which he had been bred; like teufelsdröckh, he had thereupon passed into the "howling desert of infidelity;" like teufelsdröckh, he had known all the agonies and anguish of a long period of blank scepticism and insurgent despair, during which, turn whither he would, life responded with nothing but negations to every question and appeal. and as to teufelsdröckh in the rue saint-thomas de l'enfer in paris, so to carlyle in leith walk, edinburgh, there had come a moment of sudden and marvellous illumination, a mystical crisis from which he had emerged a different man. the parallelism is so obvious and so close as to leave no room for doubt that the story of teufelsdröckh is substantially a piece of spiritual autobiography. this admitted, the question arises whether carlyle had any purpose, beyond that of self-expression, in thus utilising his own experiences for the human setting of his philosophy. it seems evident that he had. as he conceived them, these experiences possessed far more than a merely personal interest and meaning. he wrote of himself because he saw in himself a type of his restless and much-troubled epoch; because he knew that in a broad sense his history was the history of thousands of other young men in the generation to which he belonged. the age which followed upon the vast upheaval of the revolution was one of widespread turmoil and perplexity. men felt themselves to be wandering aimlessly "between two worlds, one dead, the other powerless to be born." the old order had collapsed in shapeless ruin; but the promised utopia had not been realised to take its place. in many directions the forces of reaction were at work. religion, striving to maintain itself upon the dogmatic creeds of the past, was rapidly petrifying into a mere "dead letter of religion," from which all the living spirit had fled; and those who could not nourish themselves on hearsay and inherited formula knew not where to look for the renewal of faith and hope. the generous ardour and the splendid humanitarian enthusiasms which had been stirred by the opening phases of the revolutionary movement, had now ebbed away; revulsion had followed, and with it the mood of disillusion and despair. the spirit of doubt and denial was felt as a paralysing power in every department of life and thought, and the shadow of unbelief lay heavy on many hearts. it was for the men of this "sad time" that carlyle wrote teufelsdröckh's story; and he wrote it not merely to depict the far-reaching consequences of their pessimism but also to make plain to them their true path out of it. he desired to exhibit to his age the real nature of the strange malady from which it was suffering in order that he might thereupon proclaim the remedy. what, then, is the moral significance of carlyle's "symbolic myth"? what are the supreme lessons which he uses it to convey? we must begin by understanding his diagnosis. for him, all the evils of the time could ultimately be traced back to their common source in what may be briefly described as its want of real religion. of churches and creeds there were plenty; of living faith little or nothing was left. men had lost all vital sense of god in the world; and because of this, they had taken up a fatally wrong attitude to life. they looked at it wholly from the mechanical point of view, and judged it by merely utilitarian standards. the "body-politic" was no longer inspired by any "soul-politic." men, individually and in the mass, cared only for material prosperity, sought only outward success, made the pursuit of happiness the end and aim of their being. the divine meaning of virtue, the infinite nature of duty, had been forgotten, and morality had been turned into a sort of ledger-philosophy, based upon calculations of profit and loss. it was thus that carlyle read the signs of the times. in such circumstances what was needed? nothing less than a spiritual rebirth. men must abandon their wrong attitude to life, and take up the right attitude. everything hinged on that. and that they might take up this right attitude it was necessary first that they should be convinced of life's essential spirituality, and cease in consequence to seek its meaning and test its value on the plane of merely material things. carlyle thus throws passionate emphasis upon religion as the only saving power. but it must be noted that he does not suggest a return to any of the dogmatic creeds of the past. though once the expression of a living faith, these were now for him mere lifeless formulas. nor has he any new dogmatic creed to offer in their place. that mystical crisis which had broken the spell of the everlasting no was in a strict sense--he uses the word himself--a conversion. but it was not a conversion in the theological sense, for it did not involve the acceptance of any specific articles of faith. it was simply a complete change of front; the protest of his whole nature, in a suddenly aroused mood of indignation and defiance, against the "spirit which denies;" the assertion of his manhood against the cowardice which had so long kept him trembling and whimpering before the facts of existence. but from that change of front came presently the vivid apprehension of certain great truths which his former mood had thus far concealed from him; and in these truths he found the secret of that right attitude to life in the discovery of which lay men's only hope of salvation from the unrest and melancholy of their time. from this point of view the burden of carlyle's message to his generation will be readily understood. men were going wrong because they started with the thought of self, and made satisfaction of self the law of their lives; because, in consequence, they regarded happiness as the chief object of pursuit and the one thing worth striving for; because, under the influence of the current rationalism, they tried to escape from their spiritual perplexities through logic and speculation. they had, therefore, to set themselves right upon all these matters. they had to learn that not self-satisfaction but self-renunciation is the key to life and its true law; that we have no prescriptive claim to happiness and no business to quarrel with the universe if it withholds it from us; that the way out of pessimism lies, not through reason, but through honest work, steady adherence to the simple duty which each day brings, fidelity to the right as we know it. such, in broad statement, is the substance of carlyle's religious convictions and moral teaching. like kant he takes his stand on the principles of ethical idealism. god is to be sought, not through speculation, or syllogism, or the learning of the schools, but through the moral nature. it is the soul in action that alone finds god. and the finding of god means, not happiness as the world conceives it, but blessedness, or the inward peace which passes understanding. the connection between the transfigured autobiography which serves to introduce the directly didactic element of the book and that element itself, will now be clear. stripped of its whimsicalities of phraseology and its humorous extravagances, carlyle's philosophy stands revealed as essentially idealistic in character. spirit is the only reality. visible things are but the manifestations, emblems, or clothings of spirit. the material universe itself is only the vesture or symbol of god; man is a spirit, though he wears the wrappings of the flesh; and in everything that man creates for himself he merely attempts to give body or expression to thought. the science of carlyle's time was busy proclaiming that, since the universe is governed by natural laws, miracles are impossible and the supernatural is a myth. carlyle replies that the natural laws are themselves only the manifestation of spiritual force, and that thus miracle is everywhere and all nature supernatural. we, who are the creatures of time and space, can indeed apprehend the absolute only when he weaves about him the visible garments of time and space. thus god reveals himself to sense through symbols. but it is as we regard these symbols in one or other of two possible ways that we class ourselves with the foolish man or with the wise. the foolish man sees only the symbol, thinks it exists for itself, takes it for the ultimate fact, and therefore rests in it. the wise man sees the symbol, knows that it is only a symbol, and penetrates into it for the ultimate fact or spiritual reality which it symbolises. remote as such a doctrine may at first sight seem to be from the questions with which men are commonly concerned, it has none the less many important practical bearings. since "all forms whereby spirit manifests itself to sense, whether outwardly or in the imagination, are clothes," civilisation and everything belonging to it--our languages, literatures and arts, our governments, social machinery and institutions, our philosophies, creeds and rituals--are but so many vestments woven for itself by the shaping spirit of man. indispensable these vestments are; for without them society would collapse in anarchy, and humanity sink to the level of the brute. yet here again we must emphasise the difference, already noted, between the foolish man and the wise. the foolish man once more assumes that the vestments exist for themselves, as ultimate facts, and that they have a value of their own. he, therefore, confuses the life with its clothing; is even willing to sacrifice the life for the sake of the clothing. the wise man, while he, too, recognises the necessity of the vestments, and indeed insists upon it, knows that they have no independent importance, that they derive all their potency and value from the inner reality which they were fashioned to represent and embody, but which they often misrepresent and obscure. he therefore never confuses the life with the clothing, and well understands how often the clothing has to be sacrificed for the sake of the life. thus, while the utility of clothes has to be recognised to the full, it is still of the essence of wisdom to press hard upon the vital distinction between the outer wrappings of man's life and that inner reality which they more or less adequately enfold. the use which carlyle makes of this doctrine in his interpretation of the religious history of the world and of the crisis in thought of his own day, will be anticipated. all dogmas, forms and ceremonials, he teaches, are but religious vestments--symbols expressing man's deepest sense of the divine mystery of the universe and the hunger and thirst of his soul for god. it is in response to the imperative necessities of his nature that he moulds for himself these outward emblems of his ideas and aspirations. yet they are only emblems; and since, like all other human things, they partake of the ignorance and weakness of the times in which they were framed, it is inevitable that with the growth of knowledge and the expansion of thought they must presently be outgrown. when this happens, there follows what carlyle calls the "superannuation of symbols." men wake to the fact that the creeds and formulas which have come down to them from the past are no longer living for them, no longer what they need for the embodiment of their spiritual life. two mistakes are now possible, and these are, indeed, commonly made together. on the one hand, men may try to ignore the growth of knowledge and the expansion of thought, and to cling to the outgrown symbols as things having in themselves some mysterious sanctity and power. on the other hand, they may recklessly endeavour to cast aside the reality symbolised along with the discredited symbol itself. given such a condition of things, and we shall find religion degenerating into formalism and the worship of the dead letter, and, side by side with this, the impatient rejection of all religion, and the spread of a crude and debasing materialism. religious symbols, then, must be renewed. but their renewal can come only from within. form, to have any real value, must grow out of life and be fed by it. the revolutionary quality in the philosophy of "sartor resartus" cannot, of course, be overlooked. everything that man has woven for himself must in time become merely "old clothes"; the work of his thought, like that of his hands, is perishable; his very highest symbols have no permanence or finality. carlyle cuts down to the essential reality beneath all shows and forms and emblems: witness his amazing vision of a naked house of lords. under his penetrating gaze the "earthly hulls and garnitures" of existence melt away. men's habit is to rest in symbols. but to rest in symbols is fatal, since they are at best but the "adventitious wrappages" of life. clothes "have made men of us"--true; but now, so great has their influence become that "they are threatening to make clothes-screens of us." hence "the beginning of all wisdom is to look fixedly on clothes ... till they become transparent." the logical tendency of such teaching may seem to be towards utter nihilism. but that tendency is checked and qualified by the strong conservative element which is everywhere prominent in carlyle's thought. upon the absolute need of "clothes" the stress is again and again thrown. they "have made men of us." by symbols alone man lives and works. by symbols alone can he make life and work effective. thus even the world's "old clothes"--its discarded forms and creeds--should be treated with the reverence due to whatever has once played a part in human development. thus, moreover, we must be on our guard against the impetuosity of the revolutionary spirit and all rash rupture with the past. to cast old clothes aside before new clothes are ready--this does not mean progress, but sansculottism, or a lapse into nakedness and anarchy. * * * * * the lectures "on heroes and hero-worship," here printed with "sartor resartus," contain little more than an amplification, through a series of brilliant character-studies, of those fundamental ideas of history which had already figured among teufelsdröckh's social speculations. simple in statement and clear in doctrine, this second work needs no formal introduction. it may, however, be of service just to indicate one or two points at which, apart from its set theses, it expresses or implies certain underlying principles of all carlyle's thought. in the first place, his philosophy of history rests entirely on "the great man theory." "universal history, the history of what man has accomplished in the world," is for him "at bottom the history of the great men who have worked here." this conception, of course, brings him into sharp conflict with that scientific view of history which was already gaining ground when "heroes and hero-worship" was written, and which since then has become even more popular under the powerful influence of the modern doctrine of evolution. a scientific historian, like buckle or taine, seeks to explain all changes in thought, all movements in politics and society, in terms of general laws; his habit is, therefore, to subordinate, if not quite to eliminate, the individual; the greatest man is treated as in a large measure the product and expression of the "spirit of the time." for carlyle, individuality is everything. while, as he is bound to admit, "no one works save under conditions," external circumstances and influences count little. the great man is supreme. he is not the creature of his age, but its creator; not its servant, but its master. "the history of the world is but the biography of great men." anti-scientific in his reading of history, carlyle is also anti-democratic in the practical lessons he deduces from it. he teaches that our right relations with the hero are discipular relations; that we should honestly acknowledge his superiority, look up to him, reverence him. thus on the personal side he challenges that tendency to "level down" which he believed to be one alarming result of the fast-spreading spirit of the new democracy. but more than this. he insists that the one hope for our distracted world of to-day lies in the strength and wisdom of the few, not in the organised unwisdom of the many. the masses of the people can never be safely trusted to solve for themselves the intricate problems of their own welfare. they need to be guided, disciplined, at times even driven, by those great leaders of men, who see more deeply than they see into the reality of things, and know much better than they can ever know what is good for them, and how that good is to be attained. political machinery, in which the modern world had come to put so much faith, is only another delusion of a mechanical age. the burden of history is for him always the need of the able man. "i say, find me the true _könning_, king, able man, and he _has_ a divine right over me." carlyle thus throws down the gauntlet at once to the scientific and to the democratic movements of his time. his pronounced antagonism to the modern spirit in these two most important manifestations must be kept steadily in mind in our study of him. finally, we have to remember that in the whole tone and temper of his teaching carlyle is fundamentally the puritan. the dogmas of puritanism he had indeed outgrown; but he never outgrew its ethics. his thought was dominated and pervaded to the end, as froude rightly says, by the spirit of the creed he had dismissed. by reference to this one fact we may account for much of his strength, and also for most of his limitations in outlook and sympathy. those limitations the reader will not fail to notice for himself. but whatever allowance has to be made for them, the strength remains. it is, perhaps, the secret of carlyle's imperishable greatness as a stimulating and uplifting power that, beyond any other modern writer, he makes us feel with him the supreme claims of the moral life, the meaning of our own responsibilities, the essential spirituality of things, the indestructible reality of religion. if he had thus a special message for his own generation, that message has surely not lost any of its value for ours. "put carlyle in your pocket," says dr. hal to paul kelver on his starting out in life. "he is not all the voices, but he is the best maker of men i know." and as a maker of men, carlyle's appeal to us is as great as ever. william henry hudson. _life of schiller_ (_lond. mag._, - ), , . (supplement published in the people's edition, ). _wilhelm meister apprenticeship_, . _elements of geometry and trigonometry_ (from the french of legendre), . _german romance_, . _sartor resartus_ (_fraser's mag._, - ), (boston), . _french revolution_, , . _critical and miscellaneous essays_, , , , . (in these were reprinted articles from _edinburgh review_, _foreign review_, _foreign quarterly review_, _fraser's magazine_, _westminster review_, _new monthly magazine_, _london and westminster review_, _keepsake proceedings of the society of antiquaries of scotland_, _times_). _chartism_, . _heroes, hero-worship, and the heroic in history_, . _past and present_, . _oliver cromwell's letters and speeches: with elucidations_, . _thirty-five unpublished letters of oliver cromwell_, (fraser). _original discourses on the negro question_ (fraser, ), . _latter-day pamphlets_, . _life of john sterling_, . _history of friedrich ii. of prussia_, - . _inaugural address at edinburgh_, . _shooting niagara: and after?_ (from "macmillan"). _the early kings of norway; also an essay on the portraits of john knox_, . there were also contributions to brewster's _edinburgh encyclopædia_, vols. xiv., xv., and xvi.; to _new edinburgh review_, , ; _fraser's magazine_, , ; _the times_, june, ("mazzini"); november, ; may, ; _examiner_, ; _spectator_, . first collected edition of works, - ( vols.). _reminiscences_, ed. by froude in , but superseded by c. e. norton's edition of . norton has also edited two volumes of _letters_ ( ), and carlyle's correspondence with emerson ( ) and with goethe ( ). other volumes of correspondence are _new letters_ ( ), _carlyle intime_ ( ), _love letters_ ( ), _letters to mill, sterling, and browning_ ( ), all ed. by alexander carlyle. see also _last words of carlyle_, . the fullest _life_ is that by d. a. wilson. the first of six volumes appeared in , and by only one remained to be published. contents sartor resartus book i chap. page i. preliminary ii. editorial difficulties iii. reminiscences iv. characteristics v. the world in clothes vi. aprons vii. miscellaneous-historical viii. the world out of clothes ix. adamitism x. pure reason xi. prospective book ii i. genesis ii. idyllic iii. pedagogy iv. getting under way v. romance vi. sorrows of teufelsdrÖckh vii. the everlasting no viii. centre of indifference ix. the everlasting yea x. pause book iii i. incident in modern history ii. church-clothes iii. symbols iv. helotage v. the phoenix vi. old clothes vii. organic filaments viii. natural supernaturalism ix. circumspective x. the dandiacal body xi. tailors xii. farewell appendix--testimonies of authors summary on heroes, hero-worship, and the heroic in history lecture i the hero as divinity. odin. paganism: scandinavian mythology lecture ii the hero as prophet. mahomet: islam lecture iii the hero as poet. dante; shakspeare lecture iv the hero as priest. luther; reformation: knox; puritanism lecture v the hero as man of letters. johnson, rousseau, burns lecture vi the hero as king. cromwell, napoleon: modern revolutionism index sartor resartus book first chapter i preliminary considering our present advanced state of culture, and how the torch of science has now been brandished and borne about, with more or less effect, for five-thousand years and upwards; how, in these times especially, not only the torch still burns, and perhaps more fiercely than ever, but innumerable rush-lights, and sulphur-matches, kindled thereat, are also glancing in every direction, so that not the smallest cranny or doghole in nature or art can remain unilluminated,--it might strike the reflective mind with some surprise that hitherto little or nothing of a fundamental character, whether in the way of philosophy or history, has been written on the subject of clothes. our theory of gravitation is as good as perfect: lagrange, it is well known, has proved that the planetary system, on this scheme, will endure forever; laplace, still more cunningly, even guesses that it could not have been made on any other scheme. whereby, at least, our nautical logbooks can be better kept; and water-transport of all kinds has grown more commodious. of geology and geognosy we know enough: what with the labours of our werners and huttons, what with the ardent genius of their disciples, it has come about that now, to many a royal society, the creation of a world is little more mysterious than the cooking of a dumpling; concerning which last, indeed, there have been minds to whom the question, _how the apples were got in_, presented difficulties. why mention our disquisitions on the social contract, on the standard of taste, on the migrations of the herring? then, have we not a doctrine of rent, a theory of value; philosophies of language, of history, of pottery, of apparitions, of intoxicating liquors? man's whole life and environment have been laid open and elucidated; scarcely a fragment or fibre of his soul, body, and possessions, but has been probed, dissected, distilled, desiccated, and scientifically decomposed: our spiritual faculties, of which it appears there are not a few, have their stewarts, cousins, royer collards: every cellular, vascular, muscular tissue glories in its lawrences, majendies, bichâts. how, then, comes it, may the reflective mind repeat, that the grand tissue of all tissues, the only real tissue, should have been quite overlooked by science,--the vestural tissue, namely, of woollen or other cloth; which man's soul wears as its outmost wrappage and overall; wherein his whole other tissues are included and screened, his whole faculties work, his whole self lives, moves, and has its being? for if, now and then, some straggling, broken-winged thinker has cast an owl's-glance into this obscure region, the most have soared over it altogether heedless; regarding clothes as a property, not an accident, as quite natural and spontaneous, like the leaves of trees, like the plumage of birds. in all speculations they have tacitly figured man as a _clothed animal_; whereas he is by nature a _naked animal_; and only in certain circumstances, by purpose and device, masks himself in clothes. shakespeare says, we are creatures that look before and after: the more surprising that we do not look round a little, and see what is passing under our very eyes. but here, as in so many other cases, germany, learned, indefatigable, deep-thinking germany comes to our aid. it is, after all, a blessing that, in these revolutionary times, there should be one country where abstract thought can still take shelter; that while the din and frenzy of catholic emancipations, and rotten boroughs, and revolts of paris, deafen every french and every english ear, the german can stand peaceful on his scientific watch-tower; and, to the raging, struggling multitude here and elsewhere, solemnly, from hour to hour, with preparatory blast of cowhorn, emit his _höret ihr herren und lasset's euch sagen_; in other words, tell the universe, which so often forgets that fact, what o'clock it really is. not unfrequently the germans have been blamed for an unprofitable diligence; as if they struck into devious courses, where nothing was to be had but the toil of a rough journey; as if, forsaking the gold-mines of finance and that political slaughter of fat oxen whereby a man himself grows fat, they were apt to run goose-hunting into regions of bilberries and crowberries, and be swallowed up at last in remote peat-bogs. of that unwise science, which, as our humorist expresses it,-- 'by geometric scale doth take the size of pots of ale;' still more, of that altogether misdirected industry, which is seen vigorously thrashing mere straw, there can nothing defensive be said. in so far as the germans are chargeable with such, let them take the consequence. nevertheless, be it remarked, that even a russian steppe has tumuli and gold ornaments; also many a scene that looks desert and rock-bound from the distance, will unfold itself, when visited, into rare valleys. nay, in any case, would criticism erect not only finger-posts and turnpikes, but spiked gates and impassable barriers, for the mind of man? it is written, 'many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.' surely the plain rule is, let each considerate person have his way, and see what it will lead to. for not this man and that man, but all men make up mankind, and their united tasks the task of mankind. how often have we seen some such adventurous, and perhaps much-censured wanderer light on some out-lying, neglected, yet vitally-momentous province; the hidden treasures of which he first discovered, and kept proclaiming till the general eye and effort were directed thither, and the conquest was completed;--thereby, in these his seemingly so aimless rambles, planting new standards, founding new habitable colonies, in the immeasurable circumambient realm of nothingness and night! wise man was he who counselled that speculation should have free course, and look fearlessly towards all the thirty-two points of the compass, whithersoever and howsoever it listed. perhaps it is proof of the stunted condition in which pure science, especially pure moral science, languishes among us english; and how our mercantile greatness, and invaluable constitution, impressing a political or other immediately practical tendency on all english culture and endeavour, cramps the free flight of thought,--that this, not philosophy of clothes, but recognition even that we have no such philosophy, stands here for the first time published in our language. what english intellect could have chosen such a topic, or by chance stumbled on it? but for that same unshackled, and even sequestered condition of the german learned, which permits and induces them to fish in all manner of waters, with all manner of nets, it seems probable enough, this abstruse inquiry might, in spite of the results it leads to, have continued dormant for indefinite periods. the editor of these sheets, though otherwise boasting himself a man of confirmed speculative habits, and perhaps discursive enough, is free to confess, that never, till these last months, did the above very plain considerations, on our total want of a philosophy of clothes, occur to him; and then, by quite foreign suggestion. by the arrival, namely, of a new book from professor teufelsdröckh of weissnichtwo; treating expressly of this subject, and in a style which, whether understood or not, could not even by the blindest be overlooked. in the present editor's way of thought, this remarkable treatise, with its doctrines, whether as judicially acceded to, or judicially denied, has not remained without effect. '_die kleider, ihr werden und wirken_ (clothes, their origin and influence): _von diog. teufelsdröckh, j.u.d. etc._ _stillschweigen und co^{gnie}._ _weissnichtwo_, . 'here,' says the _weissnichtwo'sche anzeiger_, 'comes a volume of that extensive, close-printed, close-meditated sort, which, be it spoken with pride, is seen only in germany, perhaps only in weissnichtwo. issuing from the hitherto irreproachable firm of stillschweigen and company, with every external furtherance, it is of such internal quality as to set neglect at defiance.' * * * * 'a work,' concludes the wellnigh enthusiastic reviewer, 'interesting alike to the antiquary, the historian, and the philosophic thinker; a masterpiece of boldness, lynx-eyed acuteness, and rugged independent germanism and philanthropy (_derber kerndeutschheit und menschenliebe_); which will not, assuredly, pass current without opposition in high places; but must and will exalt the almost new name of teufelsdröckh to the first ranks of philosophy, in our german temple of honour.' mindful of old friendship, the distinguished professor, in this the first blaze of his fame, which however does not dazzle him, sends hither a presentation-copy of his book; with compliments and encomiums which modesty forbids the present editor to rehearse; yet without indicated wish or hope of any kind, except what may be implied in the concluding phrase: _möchte es_ (this remarkable treatise) _auch im brittischen boden gedeihen_! chapter ii editorial difficulties if for a speculative man, 'whose seedfield,' in the sublime words of the poet, 'is time,' no conquest is important but that of new ideas, then might the arrival of professor teufelsdröckh's book be marked with chalk in the editor's calendar. it is indeed an 'extensive volume,' of boundless, almost formless contents, a very sea of thought; neither calm nor clear, if you will; yet wherein the toughest pearl-diver may dive to his utmost depth, and return not only with sea-wreck but with true orients. directly on the first perusal, almost on the first deliberate inspection, it became apparent that here a quite new branch of philosophy, leading to as yet undescried ulterior results, was disclosed; farther, what seemed scarcely less interesting, a quite new human individuality, an almost unexampled personal character, that, namely, of professor teufelsdröckh the discloser. of both which novelties, as far as might be possible, we resolved to master the significance. but as man is emphatically a proselytising creature, no sooner was such mastery even fairly attempted, than the new question arose: how might this acquired good be imparted to others, perhaps in equal need thereof: how could the philosophy of clothes, and the author of such philosophy, be brought home, in any measure, to the business and bosoms of our own english nation? for if new-got gold is said to burn the pockets till it be cast forth into circulation, much more may new truth. here, however, difficulties occurred. the first thought naturally was to publish article after article on this remarkable volume, in such widely-circulating critical journals as the editor might stand connected with, or by money or love procure access to. but, on the other hand, was it not clear that such matter as must here be revealed, and treated of, might endanger the circulation of any journal extant? if, indeed, all party-divisions in the state could have been abolished, whig, tory, and radical, embracing in discrepant union; and all the journals of the nation could have been jumbled into one journal, and the philosophy of clothes poured forth in incessant torrents therefrom, the attempt had seemed possible. but, alas, what vehicle of that sort have we, except _fraser's magazine_? a vehicle all strewed (figuratively speaking) with the maddest waterloo-crackers, exploding distractively and destructively, wheresoever the mystified passenger stands or sits; nay, in any case, understood to be, of late years, a vehicle full to overflowing, and inexorably shut! besides, to state the philosophy of clothes without the philosopher, the ideas of teufelsdröckh without something of his personality, was it not to insure both of entire misapprehension? now for biography, had it been otherwise admissible, there were no adequate documents, no hope of obtaining such, but rather, owing to circumstances, a special despair. thus did the editor see himself, for the while, shut out from all public utterance of these extraordinary doctrines, and constrained to revolve them, not without disquietude, in the dark depths of his own mind. so had it lasted for some months; and now the volume on clothes, read and again read, was in several points becoming lucid and lucent; the personality of its author more and more surprising, but, in spite of all that memory and conjecture could do, more and more enigmatic; whereby the old disquietude seemed fast settling into fixed discontent,--when altogether unexpectedly arrives a letter from herr hofrath heuschrecke, our professor's chief friend and associate in weissnichtwo, with whom we had not previously corresponded. the hofrath, after much quite extraneous matter, began dilating largely on the 'agitation and attention' which the philosophy of clothes was exciting in its own german republic of letters; on the deep significance and tendency of his friend's volume; and then, at length, with great circumlocution, hinted at the practicability of conveying 'some knowledge of it, and of him, to england, and through england to the distant west': a work on professor teufelsdröckh 'were undoubtedly welcome to the _family_, the _national_, or any other of those patriotic _libraries_, at present the glory of british literature'; might work revolutions in thought; and so forth;--in conclusion, intimating not obscurely, that should the present editor feel disposed to undertake a biography of teufelsdröckh, he, hofrath heuschrecke, had it in his power to furnish the requisite documents. as in some chemical mixture, that has stood long evaporating, but would not crystallise, instantly when the wire or other fixed substance is introduced, crystallisation commences, and rapidly proceeds till the whole is finished, so was it with the editor's mind and this offer of heuschrecke's. form rose out of void solution and discontinuity; like united itself with like in definite arrangement: and soon either in actual vision and possession, or in fixed reasonable hope, the image of the whole enterprise had shaped itself, so to speak, into a solid mass. cautiously yet courageously, through the twopenny post, application to the famed redoubtable oliver yorke was now made: an interview, interviews with that singular man have taken place; with more of assurance on our side, with less of satire (at least of open satire) on his, than we anticipated;--for the rest, with such issue as is now visible. as to those same 'patriotic _libraries_,' the hofrath's counsel could only be viewed with silent amazement; but with his offer of documents we joyfully and almost instantaneously closed. thus, too, in the sure expectation of these, we already see our task begun; and this our _sartor resartus_, which is properly a 'life and opinions of herr teufelsdröckh,' hourly advancing. * * * * * of our fitness for the enterprise, to which we have such title and vocation, it were perhaps uninteresting to say more. let the british reader study and enjoy, in simplicity of heart, what is here presented him, and with whatever metaphysical acumen and talent for meditation he is possessed of. let him strive to keep a free, open sense; cleared from the mists of prejudice, above all from the paralysis of cant; and directed rather to the book itself than to the editor of the book. who or what such editor may be, must remain conjectural, and even insignificant:[ ] it is a voice publishing tidings of the philosophy of clothes; undoubtedly a spirit addressing spirits: whoso hath ears, let him hear. [ ] with us even he still communicates in some sort of mask, or muffler: and, we have reason to think, under a feigned name!--o. y. on one other point the editor thinks it needful to give warning: namely, that he is animated with a true though perhaps a feeble attachment to the institutions of our ancestors; and minded to defend these, according to ability, at all hazards; nay, it was partly with a view to such defence that he engaged in this undertaking. to stem, or if that be impossible, profitably to divert the current of innovation, such a volume as teufelsdröckh's, if cunningly planted down, were no despicable pile, or floodgate, in the logical wear. for the rest, be it nowise apprehended, that any personal connexion of ours with teufelsdröckh, heuschrecke, or this philosophy of clothes can pervert our judgment, or sway us to extenuate or exaggerate. powerless, we venture to promise, are those private compliments themselves. grateful they may well be; as generous illusions of friendship; as fair mementos of bygone unions, of those nights and suppers of the gods, when, lapped in the symphonies and harmonies of philosophic eloquence, though with baser accompaniments, the present editor revelled in that feast of reason, never since vouchsafed him in so full measure! but what then? _amicus plato, magis amica veritas_; teufelsdröckh is our friend, truth is our divinity. in our historical and critical capacity, we hope we are strangers to all the world; have feud or favour with no one,--save indeed the devil, with whom, as with the prince of lies and darkness, we do at all times wage internecine war. this assurance, at an epoch when puffery and quackery have reached a height unexampled in the annals of mankind, and even english editors, like chinese shopkeepers, must write on their door-lintels _no cheating here_,--we thought it good to premise. chapter iii reminiscences to the author's private circle the appearance of this singular work on clothes must have occasioned little less surprise than it has to the rest of the world. for ourselves, at least, few things have been more unexpected. professor teufelsdröckh, at the period of our acquaintance with him, seemed to lead a quite still and self-contained life: a man devoted to the higher philosophies, indeed; yet more likely, if he published at all, to publish a refutation of hegel and bardili, both of whom, strangely enough, he included under a common ban; than to descend, as he has here done, into the angry noisy forum, with an argument that cannot but exasperate and divide. not, that we can remember, the philosophy of clothes once touched upon between us. if through the high, silent, meditative transcendentalism of our friend we detected any practical tendency whatever, it was at most political, and towards a certain prospective, and for the present quite speculative, radicalism; as indeed some correspondence, on his part, with herr oken of jena was now and then suspected; though his special contribution to the _isis_ could never be more than surmised at. but, at all events, nothing moral, still less anything didactico-religious, was looked for from him. well do we recollect the last words he spoke in our hearing; which indeed, with the night they were uttered in, are to be forever remembered. lifting his huge tumbler of _gukguk_,[ ] and for a moment lowering his tobacco-pipe, he stood up in full coffee-house (it was _zur grünen gans_, the largest in weissnichtwo, where all the virtuosity, and nearly all the intellect of the place assembled of an evening); and there, with low, soul-stirring tone, and the look truly of an angel, though whether of a white or of a black one might be dubious, proposed this toast: _die sache der armen in gottes und teufels namen_ (the cause of the poor, in heaven's name and ----'s)! one full shout, breaking the leaden silence; then a gurgle of innumerable emptying bumpers, again followed by universal cheering, returned him loud acclaim. it was the finale of the night: resuming their pipes; in the highest enthusiasm, amid volumes of tobacco-smoke; triumphant, cloud-capt without and within, the assembly broke up, each to his thoughtful pillow. _bleibt doch ein echter spass- und galgen-vogel_, said several; meaning thereby that, one day, he would probably be hanged for his democratic sentiments. _wo steckt doch der schalk?_ added they, looking round: but teufelsdröckh had retired by private alleys, and the compiler of these pages beheld him no more. [ ] gukguk is unhappily only an academical-beer. in such scenes has it been our lot to live with this philosopher, such estimate to form of his purposes and powers. and yet, thou brave teufelsdröckh, who could tell what lurked in thee? under those thick locks of thine, so long and lank, overlapping roof-wise the gravest face we ever in this world saw, there dwelt a most busy brain. in thy eyes too, deep under their shaggy brows, and looking out so still and dreamy, have we not noticed gleams of an ethereal or else a diabolic fire, and half-fancied that their stillness was but the rest of infinite motion, the _sleep_ of a spinning-top? thy little figure, there as, in loose, ill-brushed threadbare habiliments, thou sattest, amid litter and lumber, whole days, to 'think and smoke tobacco,' held in it a mighty heart. the secrets of man's life were laid open to thee; thou sawest into the mystery of the universe, farther than another; thou hadst _in petto_ thy remarkable volume on clothes. nay, was there not in that clear logically-founded transcendentalism of thine; still more, in thy meek, silent, deep-seated sansculottism, combined with a true princely courtesy of inward nature, the visible rudiments of such speculation? but great men are too often unknown, or what is worse, misknown. already, when we dreamed not of it, the warp of thy remarkable volume lay on the loom; and silently, mysterious shuttles were putting in the woof! * * * * * how the hofrath heuschrecke is to furnish biographical data, in this case, may be a curious question; the answer of which, however, is happily not our concern, but his. to us it appeared, after repeated trial, that in weissnichtwo, from the archives or memories of the best-informed classes, no biography of teufelsdröckh was to be gathered; not so much as a false one. he was a stranger there, wafted thither by what is called the course of circumstances; concerning whose parentage, birthplace, prospects, or pursuits, curiosity had indeed made inquiries, but satisfied herself with the most indistinct replies. for himself, he was a man so still and altogether unparticipating, that to question him even afar off on such particulars was a thing of more than usual delicacy: besides, in his sly way, he had ever some quaint turn, not without its satirical edge, wherewith to divert such intrusions, and deter you from the like. wits spoke of him secretly as if he were a kind of melchizedek, without father or mother of any kind; sometimes, with reference to his great historic and statistic knowledge, and the vivid way he had of expressing himself like an eye-witness of distant transactions and scenes, they called him the _ewige jude_, everlasting, or as we say, wandering jew. to the most, indeed, he had become not so much a man as a thing; which thing doubtless they were accustomed to see, and with satisfaction; but no more thought of accounting for than for the fabrication of their daily _allgemeine zeitung_, or the domestic habits of the sun. both were there and welcome; the world enjoyed what good was in them, and thought no more of the matter. the man teufelsdröckh passed and repassed, in his little circle, as one of those originals and nondescripts, more frequent in german universities than elsewhere; of whom, though you see them alive, and feel certain enough that they must have a history, no history seems to be discoverable; or only such as men give of mountain rocks and antediluvian ruins: that they may have been created by unknown agencies, are in a state of gradual decay, and for the present reflect light and resist pressure; that is, are visible and tangible objects in this phantasm world, where so much other mystery is. it was to be remarked that though, by title and diploma, _professor der allerley-wissenschaft_, or as we should say in english, 'professor of things in general,' he had never delivered any course; perhaps never been incited thereto by any public furtherance or requisition. to all appearance, the enlightened government of weissnichtwo, in founding their new university, imagined they had done enough, if 'in times like ours,' as the half-official program expressed it, 'when all things are, rapidly or slowly, resolving themselves into chaos, a professorship of this kind had been established; whereby, as occasion called, the task of bodying somewhat forth again from such chaos might be, even slightly, facilitated.' that actual lectures should be held, and public classes for the 'science of things in general,' they doubtless considered premature; on which ground too they had only established the professorship, nowise endowed it; so that teufelsdröckh, 'recommended by the highest names,' had been promoted thereby to a name merely. great, among the more enlightened classes, was the admiration of this new professorship: how an enlightened government had seen into the want of the age (_zeitbedürfniss_); how at length, instead of denial and destruction, we were to have a science of affirmation and reconstruction; and germany and weissnichtwo were where they should be, in the vanguard of the world. considerable also was the wonder at the new professor, dropt opportunely enough into the nascent university; so able to lecture, should occasion call; so ready to hold his peace for indefinite periods, should an enlightened government consider that occasion did not call. but such admiration and such wonder, being followed by no act to keep them living, could last only nine days; and, long before our visit to that scene, had quite died away. the more cunning heads thought it was all an expiring clutch at popularity, on the part of a minister, whom domestic embarrassments, court intrigues, old age, and dropsy soon afterwards finally drove from the helm. as for teufelsdröckh, except by his nightly appearances at the _grüne gans_, weissnichtwo saw little of him, felt little of him. here, over his tumbler of gukguk, he sat reading journals; sometimes contemplatively looking into the clouds of his tobacco-pipe, without other visible employment: always, from his mild ways, an agreeable phenomenon there; more especially when he opened his lips for speech; on which occasions the whole coffee-house would hush itself into silence, as if sure to hear something noteworthy. nay, perhaps to hear a whole series and river of the most memorable utterances; such as, when once thawed, he would for hours indulge in, with fit audience: and the more memorable, as issuing from a head apparently not more interested in them, not more conscious of them, than is the sculptured stone head of some public fountain, which through its brass mouth-tube emits water to the worthy and the unworthy; careless whether it be for cooking victuals or quenching conflagrations; indeed, maintains the same earnest assiduous look, whether any water be flowing or not. to the editor of these sheets, as to a young enthusiastic englishman, however unworthy, teufelsdröckh opened himself perhaps more than to the most. pity only that we could not then half guess his importance, and scrutinise him with due power of vision! we enjoyed, what not three men in weissnichtwo could boast of, a certain degree of access to the professor's private domicile. it was the attic floor of the highest house in the wahngasse; and might truly be called the pinnacle of weissnichtwo, for it rose sheer up above the contiguous roofs, themselves rising from elevated ground. moreover, with its windows it looked towards all the four _orte_, or as the scotch say, and we ought to say, _airts_: the sitting-room itself commanded three; another came to view in the _schlafgemach_ (bedroom) at the opposite end; to say nothing of the kitchen, which offered two, as it were, _duplicates_, and showing nothing new. so that it was in fact the speculum or watch-tower of teufelsdröckh; wherefrom, sitting at ease, he might see the whole life-circulation of that considerable city; the streets and lanes of which, with all their doing and driving (_thun und treiben_), were for the most part visible there. "i look down into all that wasp-nest or bee-hive," have we heard him say, "and witness their wax-laying and honey-making, and poison-brewing, and choking by sulphur. from the palace esplanade, where music plays while serene highness is pleased to eat his victuals, down to the low lane, where in her door-sill the aged widow, knitting for a thin livelihood, sits to feel the afternoon sun, i see it all; for, except the schlosskirche weathercock, no biped stands so high. couriers arrive bestrapped and bebooted, bearing joy and sorrow bagged-up in pouches of leather: there, top-laden, and with four swift horses, rolls-in the country baron and his household; here, on timber-leg, the lamed soldier hops painfully along, begging alms: a thousand carriages, and wains, and cars, come tumbling-in with food, with young rusticity, and other raw produce, inanimate or animate, and go tumbling out again with produce manufactured. that living flood, pouring through these streets, of all qualities and ages, knowest thou whence it is coming, whither it is going? _aus der ewigkeit, zu der ewigkeit hin_: from eternity, onwards to eternity! these are apparitions: what else? are they not souls rendered visible: in bodies, that took shape and will lose it, melting into air? their solid pavement is a picture of the sense; they walk on the bosom of nothing, blank time is behind them and before them. or fanciest thou, the red and yellow clothes-screen yonder, with spurs on its heels and feather in its crown, is but of today, without a yesterday or a tomorrow; and had not rather its ancestor alive when hengst and horsa overran thy island? friend, thou seest here a living link in that tissue of history, which inweaves all being: watch well, or it will be past thee, and seen no more." "_ach, mein lieber!_" said he once, at midnight, when we had returned from the coffee-house in rather earnest talk, "it is a true sublimity to dwell here. these fringes of lamplight, struggling up through smoke and thousandfold exhalation, some fathoms into the ancient reign of night, what thinks boötes of them, as he leads his hunting-dogs over the zenith in their leash of sidereal fire? that stifled hum of midnight, when traffic has lain down to rest; and the chariot-wheels of vanity, still rolling here and there through distant streets, are bearing her to halls roofed-in, and lighted to the due pitch for her; and only vice and misery, to prowl or to moan like nightbirds, are abroad: that hum, i say, like the stertorous, unquiet slumber of sick life, is heard in heaven! oh, under that hideous covelet of vapours, and putrefactions, and unimaginable gases, what a fermenting-vat lies simmering and hid! the joyful and the sorrowful are there; men are dying there, men are being born; men are praying,--on the other side of a brick partition, men are cursing; and around them all is the vast, void night. the proud grandee still lingers in his perfumed saloons, or reposes within damask curtains; wretchedness cowers into truckle-beds, or shivers hunger-stricken into its lair of straw: in obscure cellars, _rouge-et-noir_ languidly emits its voice-of-destiny to haggard hungry villains; while councillors of state sit plotting, and playing their high chess-game, whereof the pawns are men. the lover whispers his mistress that the coach is ready; and she, full of hope and fear, glides down, to fly with him over the borders: the thief, still more silently, sets-to his picklocks and crowbars, or lurks in wait till the watchmen first snore in their boxes. gay mansions, with supper-rooms and dancing-rooms, are full of light and music and high-swelling hearts; but, in the condemned cells, the pulse of life beats tremulous and faint, and bloodshot eyes look-out through the darkness, which is around and within, for the light of a stern last morning. six men are to be hanged on the morrow: comes no hammering from the _rabenstein_?--their gallows must even now be o' building. upwards of five-hundred-thousand two-legged animals without feathers lie round us, in horizontal positions; their heads all in nightcaps, and full of the foolishest dreams. riot cries aloud, and staggers and swaggers in his rank dens of shame; and the mother, with streaming hair, kneels over her pallid dying infant, whose cracked lips only her tears now moisten.--all these heaped and huddled together, with nothing but a little carpentry and masonry between them;--crammed in, like salted fish in their barrel;--or weltering, shall i say, like an egyptian pitcher of tamed vipers, each struggling to get its _head above_ the others: _such_ work goes on under that smoke-counterpane!--but i, _mein werther_, sit above it all; i am alone with the stars." we looked in his face to see whether, in the utterance of such extraordinary night-thoughts, no feeling might be traced there; but with the light we had, which indeed was only a single tallow-light, and far enough from the window, nothing save that old calmness and fixedness was visible. these were the professor's talking seasons: most commonly he spoke in mere monosyllables, or sat altogether silent, and smoked; while the visitor had liberty either to say what he listed, receiving for answer an occasional grunt; or to look round for a space, and then take himself away. it was a strange apartment; full of books and tattered papers, and miscellaneous shreds of all conceivable substances, 'united in a common element of dust.' books lay on tables, and below tables; here fluttered a sheet of manuscript, there a torn handkerchief, or nightcap hastily thrown aside; ink-bottles alternated with bread-crusts, coffee-pots, tobacco-boxes, periodical literature, and blücher boots. old lieschen (lisekin, 'liza), who was his bed-maker and stove-lighter, his washer and wringer, cook, errand-maid, and general lion's-provider, and for the rest a very orderly creature, had no sovereign authority in this last citadel of teufelsdröckh; only some once in the month she half-forcibly made her may thither, with broom and duster, and (teufelsdröckh hastily saving his manuscripts) effected a partial clearance, a jail-delivery of such lumber as was not literary. these were her _erdbeben_ (earthquakes), which teufelsdröckh dreaded worse than the pestilence; nevertheless, to such length he had been forced to comply. glad would he have been to sit here philosophising forever, or till the litter, by accumulation, drove him out of doors: but lieschen was his right-arm, and spoon, and necessary of life, and would not be flatly gainsayed. we can still remember the ancient woman; so silent that some thought her dumb; deaf also you would often have supposed her; for teufelsdröckh, and teufelsdröckh only, would she serve or give heed to; and with him she seemed to communicate chiefly by signs; if it were not rather by some secret divination that she guessed all his wants, and supplied them. assiduous old dame! she scoured, and sorted, and swept, in her kitchen, with the least possible violence to the ear; yet all was tight and right there: hot and black came the coffee ever at the due moment; and the speechless lieschen herself looked out on you, from under her clean white coif with its lappets, through her clean withered face and wrinkles, with a look of helpful intelligence, almost of benevolence. few strangers, as above hinted, had admittance hither: the only one we ever saw there, ourselves excepted, was the hofrath heuschrecke, already known, by name and expectation, to the readers of these pages. to us, at that period, herr heuschrecke seemed one of those purse-mouthed, crane-necked, clean-brushed, pacific individuals, perhaps sufficiently distinguished in society by this fact, that, in dry weather or in wet, 'they never appear without their umbrella.' had we not known with what 'little wisdom' the world is governed; and how, in germany as elsewhere, the ninety-and-nine public men can for most part be but mute train-bearers to the hundredth, perhaps but stalking-horses and willing or unwilling dupes,--it might have seemed wonderful how herr heuschrecke should be named a rath, or councillor, and counsellor, even in weissnichtwo. what counsel to any man, or to any woman, could this particular hofrath give; in whose loose, zigzag figure; in whose thin visage, as it went jerking to and fro, in minute incessant fluctuation,--you traced rather confusion worse confounded; at most, timidity and physical cold? some indeed said withal, he was 'the very spirit of love embodied': blue earnest eyes, full of sadness and kindness; purse ever open, and so forth; the whole of which, we shall now hope, for many reasons, was not quite groundless. nevertheless friend teufelsdröckh's outline, who indeed handled the burin like few in these cases, was probably the best: _er hat gemüth und geist, hat wenigstens gehabt, doch ohne organ, ohne schicksals-gunst; ist gegenwärtig aber halb-zerrüttet, halb-erstarrt_, "he has heart and talent, at least has had such, yet without fit mode of utterance, or favour of fortune; and so is now half-cracked, half-congealed."--what the hofrath shall think of this when he sees it, readers may wonder: we, safe in the stronghold of historical fidelity, are careless. the main point, doubtless, for us all, is his love of teufelsdröckh, which indeed was also by far the most decisive feature of heuschrecke himself. we are enabled to assert that he hung on the professor with the fondness of a boswell for his johnson. and perhaps with the like return; for teufelsdröckh treated his gaunt admirer with little outward regard, as some half-rational or altogether irrational friend, and at best loved him out of gratitude and by habit. on the other hand, it was curious to observe with what reverent kindness, and a sort of fatherly protection, our hofrath, being the elder, richer, and as he fondly imagined far more practically influential of the two, looked and tended on his little sage, whom he seemed to consider as a living oracle. let but teufelsdröckh open his mouth, heuschrecke's also unpuckered itself into a free doorway, besides his being all eye and all ear, so that nothing might be lost: and then, at every pause in the harangue, he gurgled-out his pursy chuckle of a cough-laugh (for the machinery of laughter took some time to get in motion, and seemed crank and slack), or else his twanging nasal, _bravo! das glaub' ich_; in either case, by way of heartiest approval. in short, if teufelsdröckh was dalai-lama, of which, except perhaps in his self-seclusion, and god-like indifference, there was no symptom, then might heuschrecke pass for his chief talapoin, to whom no dough-pill he could knead and publish was other than medicinal and sacred. in such environment, social, domestic, physical, did teufelsdröckh, at the time of our acquaintance, and most likely does he still, live and meditate. here, perched-up in his high wahngasse watch-tower, and often, in solitude, outwatching the bear, it was that the indomitable inquirer fought all his battles with dulness and darkness; here, in all probability, that he wrote this surprising volume on _clothes_. additional particulars: of his age, which was of that standing middle sort you could only guess at; of his wide surtout; the colour of his trousers, fashion of his broad-brimmed steeple-hat, and so forth, we might report, but do not. the wisest truly is, in these times, the greatest; so that an enlightened curiosity, leaving kings and suchlike to rest very much on their own basis, turns more and more to the philosophic class: nevertheless, what reader expects that, with all our writing and reporting, teufelsdröckh could be brought home to him, till once the documents arrive? his life, fortunes, and bodily presence, are as yet hidden from us, or matter only of faint conjecture. but, on the other hand, does not his soul lie enclosed in this remarkable volume, much more truly than pedro garcia's did in the buried bag of doubloons? to the soul of diogenes teufelsdröckh, to his opinions, namely, on the 'origin and influence of clothes,' we for the present gladly return. chapter iv characteristics it were a piece of vain flattery to pretend that this work on clothes entirely contents us; that it is not, like all works of genius, like the very sun, which, though the highest published creation, or work of genius, has nevertheless black spots and troubled nebulosities amid its effulgence,--a mixture of insight, inspiration, with dulness, double-vision, and even utter blindness. without committing ourselves to those enthusiastic praises and prophesyings of the _weissnichtwo'sche anzeiger_, we admitted that the book had in a high degree excited us to self-activity, which is the best effect of any book; that it had even operated changes in our way of thought; nay, that it promised to prove, as it were, the opening of a new mine-shaft, wherein the whole world of speculation might henceforth dig to unknown depths. more especially it may now be declared that professor teufelsdröckh's acquirements, patience of research, philosophic and even poetic vigour, are here made indisputably manifest; and unhappily no less his prolixity and tortuosity and manifold ineptitude; that, on the whole, as in opening new mine-shafts is not unreasonable, there is much rubbish in his book, though likewise specimens of almost invaluable ore. a paramount popularity in england we cannot promise him. apart from the choice of such a topic as clothes, too often the manner of treating it betokens in the author a rusticity and academic seclusion, unblamable, indeed inevitable in a german, but fatal to his success with our public. of good society teufelsdröckh appears to have seen little, or has mostly forgotten what he saw. he speaks-out with a strange plainness; calls many things by their mere dictionary names. to him the upholsterer is no pontiff, neither is any drawing-room a temple, were it never so begilt and overhung: 'a whole immensity of brussels carpets, and pier-glasses, and or-molu,' as he himself expresses it, 'cannot hide from me that such drawing-room is simply a section of infinite space, where so many god-created souls do for the time meet together.' to teufelsdröckh the highest duchess is respectable, is venerable; but nowise for her pearl bracelets and malines laces: in his eyes, the star of a lord is little less and little more than the broad button of birmingham spelter in a clown's smock; 'each is an implement,' he says, 'in its kind; a tag for _hooking-together_; and, for the rest, was dug from the earth, and hammered on a smithy before smith's fingers.' thus does the professor look in men's faces with a strange impartiality, a strange scientific freedom; like a man unversed in the higher circles, like a man dropped thither from the moon. rightly considered, it is in this peculiarity, running through his whole system of thought, that all these short-comings, over-shootings, and multiform perversities, take rise: if indeed they have not a second source, also natural enough, in his transcendental philosophies, and humour of looking at all matter and material things as spirit; whereby truly his case were but the more hopeless, the more lamentable. to the thinkers of this nation, however, of which class it is firmly believed there are individuals yet extant, we can safely recommend the work: nay, who knows but among the fashionable ranks too, if it be true, as teufelsdröckh maintains, that 'within the most starched cravat there passes a windpipe and weasand, and under the thickliest embroidered waistcoat beats a heart,'--the force of that rapt earnestness may be felt, and here and there an arrow of the soul pierce through? in our wild seer, shaggy, unkempt, like a baptist living on locusts and wild honey, there is an untutored energy, a silent, as it were unconscious, strength, which, except in the higher walks of literature, must be rare. many a deep glance, and often with unspeakable precision, has he cast into mysterious nature, and the still more mysterious life of man. wonderful it is with what cutting words, now and then, he severs asunder the confusion; shears down, were it furlongs deep, into the true centre of the matter; and there not only hits the nail on the head, but with crushing force smites it home, and buries it.--on the other hand, let us be free to admit, he is the most unequal writer breathing. often after some such feat, he will play truant for long pages, and go dawdling and dreaming, and mumbling and maundering the merest commonplaces, as if he were asleep with eyes open, which indeed he is. of his boundless learning, and how all reading and literature in most known tongues, from _sanchoniathon_ to _dr lingard_, from your oriental _shasters_, and _talmuds_, and _korans_, with cassini's _siamese tables_, and laplace's _mécanique céleste_, down to _robinson crusoe_ and the _belfast town and country almanack_, are familiar to him,--we shall say nothing: for unexampled as it is with us, to the germans such universality of study passes without wonder, as a thing commendable, indeed, but natural, indispensable, and there of course. a man that devotes his life to learning, shall he not be learned? in respect of style our author manifests the same genial capability, marred too often by the same rudeness, inequality, and apparent want of intercourse with the higher classes. occasionally, as above hinted, we find consummate vigour, a true inspiration; his burning thoughts step forth in fit burning words, like so many full-formed minervas, issuing amid flame and splendour from jove's head; a rich, idiomatic diction, picturesque allusions, fiery poetic emphasis, or quaint tricksy turns; all the graces and terrors of a wild imagination, wedded to the clearest intellect, alternate in beautiful vicissitude. were it not that sheer sleeping and soporific passages; circumlocutions, repetitions, touches even of pure doting jargon, so often intervene! on the whole, professor teufelsdröckh is not a cultivated writer. of his sentences perhaps not more than nine-tenths stand straight on their legs; the remainder are in quite angular attitudes, buttressed-up by props (of parentheses and dashes), and ever with this or the other tagrag hanging from them; a few even sprawl-out helplessly on all sides, quite broken-backed and dismembered. nevertheless, in almost his very worst moods, there lies in him a singular attraction. a wild tone pervades the whole utterance of the man, like its keynote and regulator; now screwing itself aloft as into the song of spirits, or else the shrill mockery of fiends; now sinking in cadences, not without melodious heartiness, though sometimes abrupt enough, into the common pitch, when we hear it only as a monotonous hum; of which hum the true character is extremely difficult to fix. up to this hour we have never fully satisfied ourselves whether it is a tone and hum of real humour, which we reckon among the very highest qualities of genius, or some echo of mere insanity and inanity, which doubtless ranks below the very lowest. under a like difficulty, in spite even of our personal intercourse, do we still lie with regard to the professor's moral feeling. gleams of an ethereal love burst forth from him, soft wailings of infinite pity; he could clasp the whole universe into his bosom, and keep it warm; it seems as if under that rude exterior there dwelt a very seraph. then again he is so sly and still, so imperturbably saturnine; shows such indifference, malign coolness towards all that men strive after; and ever with some half-visible wrinkle of a bitter sardonic humour, if indeed it be not mere stolid callousness,--that you look on him almost with a shudder, as on some incarnate mephistopheles, to whom this great terrestrial and celestial round, after all, were but some huge foolish whirligig, where kings and beggars, and angels and demons, and stars and street-sweepings, were chaotically whirled, in which only children could take interest. his look, as we mentioned, is probably the gravest ever seen: yet it is not of that cast-iron gravity frequent enough among our own chancery suitors; but rather the gravity as of some silent, high-encircled mountain-pool, perhaps the crater of an extinct volcano; into whose black deeps you fear to gaze: those eyes, those lights that sparkle in it, may indeed be reflexes of the heavenly stars, but perhaps also glances from the region of nether fire! certainly a most involved, self-secluded, altogether enigmatic nature, this of teufelsdröckh! here, however, we gladly recall to mind that once we saw him _laugh_; once only, perhaps it was the first and last time in his life; but then such a peal of laughter, enough to have awakened the seven sleepers! it was of jean paul's doing: some single billow in that vast world-mahlstrom of humour, with its heaven-kissing coruscations, which is now, alas, all congealed in the frost of death! the large-bodied poet and the small, both large enough in soul, sat talking miscellaneously together, the present editor being privileged to listen; and now paul, in his serious way, was giving one of those inimitable 'extra-harangues'; and, as it chanced, on the proposal for a _cast-metal king_: gradually a light kindled in our professor's eyes and face, a beaming, mantling, loveliest light; through those murky features, a radiant, ever-young apollo looked; and he burst forth like the neighing of all tattersall's,--tears streaming down his cheeks, pipe held aloft, foot clutched into the air,--loud, long-continuing, uncontrollable; a laugh not of the face and diaphragm only, but of the whole man from head to heel. the present editor, who laughed indeed, yet with measure, began to fear all was not right: however, teufelsdröckh composed himself, and sank into his old stillness; on his inscrutable countenance there was, if anything, a slight look of shame; and richter himself could not rouse him again. readers who have any tincture of psychology know how much is to be inferred from this; and that no man who has once heartily and wholly laughed can be altogether irreclaimably bad. how much lies in laughter: the cipher-key, wherewith we decipher the whole man! some men wear an everlasting barren simper; in the smile of others lies a cold glitter as of ice: the fewest are able to laugh, what can be called laughing, but only sniff and titter and snigger from the throat outwards; or at best, produce some whiffling husky cachinnation, as if they were laughing through wool: of none such comes good. the man who cannot laugh is not only fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils; but his whole life is already a treason and a stratagem. considered as an author, herr teufelsdröckh has one scarcely pardonable fault, doubtless his worst: an almost total want of arrangement. in this remarkable volume, it is true, his adherence to the mere course of time produces, through the narrative portions, a certain show of outward method; but of true logical method and sequence there is too little. apart from its multifarious sections and subdivisions, the work naturally falls into two parts; a historical-descriptive, and a philosophical-speculative: but falls, unhappily, by no firm line of demarcation; in that labyrinthic combination, each part overlaps, and indents, and indeed runs quite through the other. many sections are of a debatable rubric or even quite nondescript and unnameable; whereby the book not only loses in accessibility, but too often distresses us like some mad banquet, wherein all courses had been confounded, and fish and flesh, soup and solid, oyster-sauce, lettuces, rhine-wine and french mustard, were hurled into one huge tureen or trough, and the hungry public invited to help itself. to bring what order we can out of this chaos shall be part of our endeavour. chapter v the world in clothes 'as montesquieu wrote a _spirit of laws_,' observes our professor, 'so could i write a _spirit of clothes_; thus, with an _esprit des lois_, properly an _esprit de coutumes_, we should have an _esprit de costumes_. for neither in tailoring nor in legislating does man proceed by mere accident, but the hand is ever guided on by mysterious operations of the mind. in all his modes, and habilatory endeavours, an architectural idea will be found lurking; his body and the cloth are the site and materials whereon and whereby his beautified edifice, of a person, is to be built. whether he flow gracefully out in folded mantles, based on light sandals; tower-up in high headgear, from amid peaks, spangles and bell-girdles; swell-out in starched ruffs, buckram stuffings, and monstrous tuberosities; or girth himself into separate sections, and front the world an agglomeration of four limbs,--will depend on the nature of such architectural idea: whether grecian, gothic, later-gothic, or altogether modern, and parisian or anglo-dandiacal. again, what meaning lies in colour! from the soberest drab to the high-flaming scarlet, spiritual idiosyncrasies unfold themselves in choice of colour: if the cut betoken intellect and talent, so does the colour betoken temper and heart. in all which, among nations as among individuals, there is an incessant, indubitable, though infinitely complex working of cause and effect: every snip of the scissors has been regulated and prescribed by ever-active influences, which doubtless to intelligences of a superior order are neither invisible nor illegible. 'for such superior intelligences a cause-and-effect philosophy of clothes, as of laws, were probably a comfortable winter-evening entertainment: nevertheless, for inferior intelligences, like men, such philosophies have always seemed to me uninstructive enough. nay, what is your montesquieu himself but a clever infant spelling letters from a hieroglyphical prophetic book, the lexicon of which lies in eternity, in heaven?--let any cause-and-effect philosopher explain, not why i wear such and such a garment, obey such and such a law; but even why _i_ am _here_, to wear and obey anything!--much, therefore, if not the whole, of that same _spirit of clothes_ i shall suppress, as hypothetical, ineffectual, and even impertinent: naked facts, and deductions drawn therefrom in quite another than that omniscient style, are my humbler and proper province.' acting on which prudent restriction, teufelsdröckh has nevertheless contrived to take-in a well-nigh boundless extent of field; at least, the boundaries too often lie quite beyond our horizon. selection being indispensable, we shall here glance-over his first part only in the most cursory manner. this first part is, no doubt, distinguished by omnivorous learning, and utmost patience and fairness: at the same time, in its results and delineations, it is much more likely to interest the compilers of some _library_ of general, entertaining, useful, or even useless knowledge than the miscellaneous readers of these pages. was it this part of the book which heuschrecke had in view, when he recommended us to that joint-stock vehicle of publication, 'at present the glory of british literature'? if so, the library editors are welcome to dig in it for their own behoof. to the first chapter, which turns on paradise and fig-leaves, and leads us into interminable disquisitions of a mythological, metaphorical, cabalistico-sartorial and quite antediluvian cast, we shall content ourselves with giving an unconcerned approval. still less have we to do with 'lilis, adam's first wife, whom, according to the talmudists, he had before eve, and who bore him, in that wedlock, the whole progeny of aerial, aquatic, and terrestrial devils,'--very needlessly, we think. on this portion of the work, with its profound glances into the _adam-kadmon_, or primeval element, here strangely brought into relation with the _nifl_ and _muspel_ (darkness and light) of the antique north, it may be enough to say, that its correctness of deduction, and depth of talmudic and rabbinical lore have filled perhaps not the worst hebraist in britain with something like astonishment. but, quitting this twilight region, teufelsdröckh hastens from the tower of babel, to follow the dispersion of mankind over the whole habitable and habilable globe. walking by the light of oriental, pelasgic, scandinavian, egyptian, otaheitean, ancient and modern researches of every conceivable kind, he strives to give us in compressed shape (as the nürnbergers give an _orbis pictus_) an _orbis vestitus_; or view of the costumes of all mankind, in all countries, in all times. it is here that to the antiquarian, to the historian, we can triumphantly say: fall to! here is learning: an irregular treasury, if you will; but inexhaustible as the hoard of king nibelung, which twelve wagons in twelve days, at the rate of three journeys a day, could not carry off. sheepskin cloaks and wampum belts; phylacteries, stoles, albs; chlamydes, togas, chinese silks, afghaun shawls, trunk-hose, leather breeches, celtic philibegs (though breeches, as the name _gallia braccata_ indicates, are the more ancient), hussar cloaks, vandyke tippets, ruffs, fardingales, are brought vividly before us,--even the kilmarnock nightcap is not forgotten. for most part, too, we must admit that the learning, heterogeneous as it is, and tumbled-down quite pell-mell, is true concentrated and purified learning, the drossy parts smelted out and thrown aside. philosophical reflections intervene, and sometimes touching pictures of human life. of this sort the following has surprised us. the first purpose of clothes, as our professor imagines, was not warmth or decency, but ornament. 'miserable indeed,' says he, 'was the condition of the aboriginal savage, glaring fiercely from under his fleece of hair, which with the beard reached down to his loins, and hung round him like a matted cloak; the rest of his body sheeted in its thick natural fell. he loitered in the sunny glades of the forest, living on wild-fruits; or, as the ancient caledonian, squatted himself in morasses, lurking for his bestial or human prey; without implements, without arms, save the ball of heavy flint, to which, that his sole possession and defence might not be lost, he had attached a long cord of plaited thongs; thereby recovering as well as hurling it with deadly unerring skill. nevertheless, the pains of hunger and revenge once satisfied, his next care was not comfort but decoration (_putz_). warmth he found in the toils of the chase; or amid dried leaves, in his hollow tree, in his bark shed, or natural grotto: but for decoration he must have clothes. nay, among wild people we find tattooing and painting even prior to clothes. the first spiritual want of a barbarous man is decoration, as indeed we still see among the barbarous classes in civilised countries. 'reader, the heaven-inspired melodious singer; loftiest serene highness; nay thy own amber-locked, snow-and-rose-bloom maiden, worthy to glide sylphlike almost on air, whom thou lovest, worshippest as a divine presence, which, indeed, symbolically taken, she is,--has descended, like thyself, from that same hair-mantled, flint-hurling aboriginal anthropophagus! out of the eater cometh forth meat; out of the strong cometh forth sweetness. what changes are wrought, not by time, yet in time! for not mankind only, but all that mankind does or beholds, is in continual growth, regenesis and self-perfecting vitality. cast forth thy act, thy word, into the ever-living, ever-working universe: it is a seed-grain that cannot die; unnoticed to-day (says one), it will be found flourishing as a banyan-grove (perhaps, alas, as a hemlock-forest!) after a thousand years. 'he who first shortened the labour of copyists by device of _movable types_ was disbanding hired armies, and cashiering most kings and senates, and creating a whole new democratic world: he had invented the art of printing. the first ground handful of nitre, sulphur, and charcoal drove monk schwartz's pestle through the ceiling: what will the last do? achieve the final undisputed prostration of force under thought, of animal courage under spiritual. a simple invention it was in the old-world grazier,--sick of lugging his slow ox about the country till he got it bartered for corn or oil,--to take a piece of leather, and thereon scratch or stamp the mere figure of an ox (or _pecus_); put it in his pocket, and call it _pecunia_, money. yet hereby did barter grow sale, the leather money is now golden and paper, and all miracles have been out-miracled: for there are rothschilds and english national debts; and whoso has sixpence is sovereign (to the length of sixpence) over all men; commands cooks to feed him, philosophers to teach him, kings to mount guard over him,--to the length of sixpence.--clothes too, which began in foolishest love of ornament, what have they not become! increased security and pleasurable heat soon followed: but what of these? shame, divine shame (_schaam_, modesty), as yet a stranger to the anthropophagous bosom, arose there mysteriously under clothes; a mystic grove-encircled shrine for the holy in man. clothes gave us individuality, distinctions, social polity; clothes have made men of us; they are threatening to make clothes-screens of us. 'but, on the whole,' continues our eloquent professor, 'man is a tool-using animal (_handthierendes thier_). weak in himself, and of small stature, he stands on a basis, at most for the flattest-soled, of some half-square foot, insecurely enough; has to straddle out his legs, lest the very wind supplant him. feeblest of bipeds! three quintals are a crushing load for him; the steer of the meadow tosses him aloft, like a waste rag. nevertheless he can use tools, can devise tools: with these the granite mountain melts into light dust before him; he kneads glowing iron, as if it were soft paste; seas are his smooth highway, winds and fire his unwearying steeds. nowhere do you find him without tools; without tools he is nothing, with tools he is all.' here may we not, for a moment, interrupt the stream of oratory with a remark, that this definition of the tool-using animal, appears to us, of all that animal-sort, considerably the precisest and best? man is called a laughing animal: but do not the apes also laugh, or attempt to do it; and is the manliest man the greatest and oftenest laugher? teufelsdröckh himself, as we said, laughed only once. still less do we make of that other french definition of the cooking animal; which, indeed, for rigorous scientific purposes, is as good as useless. can a tartar be said to cook, when he only readies his steak by riding on it? again, what cookery does the greenlander use, beyond stowing-up his whale-blubber, as a marmot, in the like case, might do? or how would monsieur ude prosper among those orinocco indians, who, according to humboldt, lodge in crow-nests, on the branches of trees; and, for half the year, have no victuals but pipe-clay, the whole country being under water? but, on the other hand, show us the human being, of any period or climate, without his tools: those very caledonians, as we saw, had their flint-ball, and thong to it, such as no brute has or can have. 'man is a tool-using animal,' concludes teufelsdröckh in his abrupt way; 'of which truth clothes are but one example: and surely if we consider the interval between the first wooden dibble fashioned by man, and those liverpool steam-carriages, or the british house of commons, we shall note what progress he has made. he digs up certain black stones from the bosom of the earth, and says to them, _transport me and this luggage at the rate of five-and-thirty miles an hour_; and they do it: he collects, apparently by lot, six-hundred and fifty-eight miscellaneous individuals, and says to them, _make this nation toil for us, bleed for us, hunger and sorrow and sin for us_; and they do it.' chapter vi aprons one of the most unsatisfactory sections in the whole volume is that on _aprons_. what though stout old gao, the persian blacksmith, 'whose apron, now indeed hidden under jewels, because raised in revolt which proved successful, is still the royal standard of that country'; what though john knox's daughter, 'who threatened sovereign majesty that she would catch her husband's head in her apron, rather than he should lie and be a bishop'; what though the landgravine elizabeth, with many other apron worthies,--figure here? an idle wire-drawing spirit, sometimes even a tone of levity, approaching to conventional satire, is too clearly discernible. what, for example, are we to make of such sentences as the following? 'aprons are defences; against injury to cleanliness, to safety, to modesty, sometimes to roguery. from the thin slip of notched silk (as it were, the emblem and beatified ghost of an apron), which some highest-bred housewife, sitting at nürnberg workboxes and toyboxes, has gracefully fastened on; to the thick-tanned hide, girt round him with thongs, wherein the builder builds, and at evening sticks his trowel; or to those jingling sheet-iron aprons, wherein your otherwise half-naked vulcans hammer and smelt in their smelt-furnace,--is there not range enough in the fashion and uses of this vestment? how much has been concealed, how much has been defended in aprons! nay, rightly considered, what is your whole military and police establishment, charged at uncalculated millions, but a huge scarlet-coloured, iron-fastened apron, wherein society works (uneasily enough); guarding itself from some soil and stithy-sparks, in this devil's-smithy (_teufelsschmiede_) of a world? but of all aprons the most puzzling to me hitherto has been the episcopal or cassock. wherein consists the usefulness of this apron? the overseer (_episcopus_) of souls, i notice, has tucked-in the corner of it, as if his day's work were done: what does he shadow forth thereby?' &c. &c. or again, has it often been the lot of our readers to read such stuff as we shall now quote? 'i consider those printed paper aprons, worn by the parisian cooks, as a new vent, though a slight one, for typography; therefore as an encouragement to modern literature, and deserving of approval: nor is it without satisfaction that i hear of a celebrated london firm having in view to introduce the same fashion, with important extensions, in england.'--we who are on the spot hear of no such thing; and indeed have reason to be thankful that hitherto there are other vents for our literature, exuberant as it is.--teufelsdröckh continues: 'if such supply of printed paper should rise so far as to choke-up the highways and public thoroughfares, new means must of necessity be had recourse to. in a world existing by industry, we grudge to employ fire as a destroying element, and not as a creating one. however, heaven is omnipotent, and will find us an outlet. in the mean while, is it not beautiful to see five-million quintals of rags picked annually from the laystall; and annually, after being macerated, hot-pressed, printed-on, and sold,--returned thither; filling so many hungry mouths by the way? thus is the laystall, especially with its rags or clothes-rubbish, the grand electric battery, and fountain-of-motion, from which and to which the social activities (like vitreous and resinous electricities) circulate, in larger or smaller circles, through the mighty, billowy, storm-tost chaos of life, which they keep alive!'--such passages fill us, who love the man, and partly esteem him, with a very mixed feeling. farther down we meet with this: 'the journalists are now the true kings and clergy: henceforth historians, unless they are fools, must write not of bourbon dynasties, and tudors and hapsburgs; but of stamped broad-sheet dynasties, and quite new successive names, according as this or the other able editor, or combination of able editors, gains the world's ear. of the british newspaper press, perhaps the most important of all, and wonderful enough in its secret constitution and procedure, a valuable descriptive history already exists, in that language, under the title of _satan's invisible world displayed_; which, however, by search in all the weissnichtwo libraries, i have not yet succeeded in procuring (_vermöchte nicht aufzutreiben_).' thus does the good homer not only nod, but snore. thus does teufelsdröckh, wandering in regions where he had little business, confound the old authentic presbyterian witchfinder with a new, spurious, imaginary historian of the _brittische journalistik_; and so stumble on perhaps the most egregious blunder in modern literature! chapter vii miscellaneous-historical happier is our professor, and more purely scientific and historic, when he reaches the middle ages in europe, and down to the end of the seventeenth century; the true era of extravagance in costume. it is here that the antiquary and student of modes comes upon his richest harvest. fantastic garbs, beggaring all fancy of a teniers or a callot, succeed each other, like monster devouring monster in a dream. the whole too in brief authentic strokes, and touched not seldom with that breath of genius which makes even old raiment live. indeed, so learned, precise, graphical, and everyway interesting have we found these chapters, that it may be thrown-out as a pertinent question for parties concerned, whether or not a good english translation thereof might henceforth be profitably incorporated with mr. merrick's valuable work _on ancient armour_? take, by way of example, the following sketch; as authority for which paulinus's _zeitkürzende lust_ (ii. ) is, with seeming confidence, referred to: 'did we behold the german fashionable dress of the fifteenth century, we might smile; as perhaps those bygone germans, were they to rise again, and see our haberdashery, would cross themselves, and invoke the virgin. but happily no bygone german, or man, rises again; thus the present is not needlessly trammelled with the past; and only grows out of it, like a tree, whose roots are not intertangled with its branches, but lie peaceably underground. nay it is very mournful, yet not useless, to see and know, how the greatest and dearest, in a short while, would find his place quite filled-up here, and no room for him; the very napoleon, the very byron, in some seven years, has become obsolete, and were now a foreigner to his europe. thus is the law of progress secured; and in clothes, as in all other external things whatsoever, no fashion will continue. 'of the military classes in those old times, whose buff-belts, complicated chains and gorgets, huge churn-boots, and other riding and fighting gear have been bepainted in modern romance, till the whole has acquired somewhat of a sign-post character,--i shall here say nothing: the civil and pacific classes, less touched upon, are wonderful enough for us. 'rich men, i find, have _teusinke_' (a perhaps untranslateable article); 'also a silver girdle, whereat hang little bells; so that when a man walks, it is with continual jingling. some few, of musical turn, have a whole chime of bells (_glockenspiel_) fastened there; which, especially in sudden whirls, and the other accidents of walking, has a grateful effect. observe too how fond they are of peaks, and gothic-arch intersections. the male world wears peaked caps, an ell long, which hang bobbing over the side (_schief_): their shoes are peaked in front, also to the length of an ell, and laced on the side with tags; even the wooden shoes have their ell-long noses: some also clap bells on the peak. further, according to my authority, the men have breeches without seat (_ohne gesäss_): these they fasten peakwise to their shirts; and the long round doublet must overlap them. 'rich maidens, again, flit abroad in gowns scolloped out behind and before, so that back and breast are almost bare. wives of quality, on the other hand, have train-gowns four or five ells in length; which trains there are boys to carry. brave cleopatras, sailing in their silk-cloth galley, with a cupid for steersman! consider their welts, a handbreadth thick, which waver round them by way of hem; the long flood of silver buttons, or rather silver shells, from throat to shoe, wherewith these same welt-gowns are buttoned. the maidens have bound silver snoods about their hair, with gold spangles, and pendent flames (_flammen_), that is, sparkling hair-drops: but of their mother's headgear who shall speak? neither in love of grace is comfort forgotten. in winter weather you behold the whole fair creation (that can afford it) in long mantles, with skirts wide below, and, for hem, not one but two sufficient hand-broad welts; all ending atop in a thick well-starched ruff, some twenty inches broad: these are their ruff-mantles (_kragenmäntel_). 'as yet among the womankind hoop-petticoats are not; but the men have doublets of fustian, under which lie multiple ruffs of cloth, pasted together with batter (_mit teig zusammengekleistert_), which create protuberance enough. thus do the two sexes vie with each other in the art of decoration; and as usual the stronger carries it.' our professor, whether he hath humour himself or not, manifests a certain feeling of the ludicrous, a sly observance of it, which, could emotion of any kind be confidently predicated of so still a man, we might call a real love. none of those bell-girdles, bushel-breeches, cornuted shoes, or other the like phenomena, of which the history of dress offers so many, escape him: more especially the mischances, or striking adventures, incident to the wearers of such, are noticed with due fidelity. sir walter raleigh's fine mantle, which he spread in the mud under queen elizabeth's feet, appears to provoke little enthusiasm in him; he merely asks, whether at that period the maiden queen 'was red-painted on the nose, and white-painted on the cheeks, as her tire-women, when from spleen and wrinkles she would no longer look in any glass, were wont to serve her?' we can answer that sir walter knew well what he was doing, and had the maiden queen been stuffed parchment dyed in verdigris, would have done the same. thus too, treating of those enormous habiliments, that were not only slashed and galooned, but artificially swollen-out on the broader parts of the body, by introduction of bran,--our professor fails not to comment on that luckless courtier, who having seated himself on a chair with some projecting nail on it, and therefrom rising, to pay his _devoir_ on the entrance of majesty, instantaneously emitted several pecks of dry wheat-dust: and stood there diminished to a spindle, his galoons and slashes dangling sorrowful and flabby round him. whereupon the professor publishes this reflection: 'by what strange chances do we live in history? erostratus by a torch; milo by a bullock; henry darnley, an unfledged booby and bustard, by his limbs; most kings and queens by being born under such and such a bed-tester; boileau despréaux (according to helvetius) by the peck of a turkey; and this ill-starred individual by a rent in his breeches,--for no memoirist of kaiser otto's court omits him. vain was the prayer of themistocles for a talent of forgetting: my friends, yield cheerfully to destiny, and read since it is written.'--has teufelsdröckh to be put in mind that, nearly related to the impossible talent of forgetting, stands that talent of silence, which even travelling englishmen manifest? 'the simplest costume,' observes our professor, 'which i anywhere find alluded to in history, is that used as regimental, by bolivar's cavalry, in the late columbian wars. a square blanket, twelve feet in diagonal, is provided (some were wont to cut-off the corners, and make it circular): in the centre a slit is effected eighteen inches long; through this the mother-naked trooper introduces his head and neck: and so rides shielded from all weather, and in battle from many strokes (for he rolls it about his left arm); and not only dressed, but harnessed and draperied.' with which picture of a state of nature, affecting by its singularity, and old-roman contempt of the superfluous, we shall quit this part of our subject. chapter viii the world out of clothes if in the descriptive-historical portion of this volume, teufelsdröckh, discussing merely the _werden_ (origin and successive improvement) of clothes, has astonished many a reader, much more will he in the speculative-philosophical portion, which treats of their _wirken_, or influences. it is here that the present editor first feels the pressure of his task; for here properly the higher and new philosophy of clothes commences: an untried, almost inconceivable region, or chaos; in venturing upon which, how difficult, yet how unspeakably important is it to know what course, of survey and conquest, is the true one; where the footing is firm substance and will bear us, where it is hollow, or mere cloud, and may engulf us! teufelsdröckh undertakes no less than to expound the moral, political, even religious influences of clothes; he undertakes to make manifest, in its thousandfold bearings, this grand proposition, that man's earthly interests 'are all hooked and buttoned together, and held up, by clothes.' he says in so many words, 'society is founded upon cloth'; and again, 'society sails through the infinitude on cloth, as on a faust's mantle, or rather like the sheet of clean and unclean beasts in the apostle's dream; and without such sheet or mantle, would sink to endless depths, or mount to inane limboes, and in either case be no more.' by what chains, or indeed infinitely complected tissues, of meditation this grand theorem is here unfolded, and innumerable practical corollaries are drawn therefrom, it were perhaps a mad ambition to attempt exhibiting. our professor's method is not, in any case, that of common school logic, where the truths all stand in a row, each holding by the skirts of the other; but at best that of practical reason, proceeding by large intuition over whole systematic groups and kingdoms; whereby, we might say, a noble complexity, almost like that of nature, reigns in his philosophy, or spiritual picture of nature: a mighty maze, yet, as faith whispers, not without a plan. nay we complained above, that a certain ignoble complexity, what we must call mere confusion, was also discernible. often, also, we have to exclaim: would to heaven those same biographical documents were come! for it seems as if the demonstration lay much in the author's individuality; as if it were not argument that had taught him, but experience. at present it is only in local glimpses, and by significant fragments, picked often at wide-enough intervals from the original volume, and carefully collated, that we can hope to impart some outline or foreshadow of this doctrine. readers of any intelligence are once more invited to favour us with their most concentrated attention: let these, after intense consideration, and not till then, pronounce, whether on the utmost verge of our actual horizon there is not a looming as of land; a promise of new fortunate islands, perhaps whole undiscovered americas, for such as have canvas to sail thither?--as exordium to the whole, stand here the following long citation: 'with men of a speculative turn,' writes teufelsdröckh, 'there come seasons, meditative, sweet, yet awful hours, when in wonder and fear you ask yourself that unanswerable question: who am _i_; the thing that can say "i" (_das wesen das sich_ ich _nennt_)? the world, with its loud trafficking, retires into the distance; and, through the paper-hangings, and stone-walls, and thick-plied tissues of commerce and polity, and all the living and lifeless integuments (of society and a body), wherewith your existence sits surrounded,--the sight reaches forth into the void deep, and you are alone with the universe, and silently commune with it, as one mysterious presence with another. 'who am i; what is this me? a voice, a motion, an appearance;--some embodied, visualised idea in the eternal mind? _cogito, ergo sum._ alas, poor cogitator, this takes us but a little way. sure enough, i am; and lately was not: but whence? how? whereto? the answer lies around, written in all colours and motions, uttered in all tones of jubilee and wail, in thousand-figured, thousand-voiced, harmonious nature: but where is the cunning eye and ear to whom that god-written apocalypse will yield articulate meaning? we sit as in a boundless phantasmagoria and dream-grotto; boundless, for the faintest star, the remotest century, lies not even nearer the verge thereof: sounds and many-coloured visions flit round our sense; but him, the unslumbering, whose work both dream and dreamer are, we see not; except in rare half-waking moments, suspect not. creation, says one, lies before us, like a glorious rainbow; but the sun that made it lies behind us, hidden from us. then, in that strange dream, how we clutch at shadows as if they were substances; and sleep deepest while fancying ourselves most awake! which of your philosophical systems is other than a dream-theorem; a net quotient, confidently given out, where divisor and dividend are both unknown? what are all your national wars, with their moscow retreats, and sanguinary hate-filled revolutions, but the somnambulism of uneasy sleepers? this dreaming, this somnambulism is what we on earth call life; wherein the most indeed undoubtingly wander, as if they knew right hand from left; yet they only are wise who know that they know nothing. 'pity that all metaphysics had hitherto proved so inexpressibly unproductive! the secret of man's being is still like the sphinx's secret: a riddle that he cannot rede; and for ignorance of which he suffers death, the worst death, a spiritual. what are your axioms, and categories, and systems, and aphorisms? words, words. high air-castles are cunningly built of words, the words well bedded also in good logic-mortar, wherein, however, no knowledge will come to lodge. _the whole is greater than the part_: how exceedingly true! _nature abhors a vacuum_: how exceedingly false and calumnious! again, _nothing can act but where it is_: with all my heart; only, where is it? be not the slave of words: is not the distant, the dead, while i love it, and long for it, and mourn for it, here, in the genuine sense, as truly as the floor i stand on? but that same where, with its brother when, are from the first the master-colours of our dream-grotto; say rather, the canvas (the warp and woof thereof) whereon all our dreams and life-visions are painted! nevertheless, has not a deeper meditation taught certain of every climate and age, that the where and when, so mysteriously inseparable from all our thoughts, are but superficial terrestrial adhesions to thought; that the seer may discern them where they mount up out of the celestial everywhere and forever: have not all nations conceived their god as omnipresent and eternal; as existing in a universal here, an everlasting now? think well, thou too wilt find that space is but a mode of our human sense, so likewise time; there _is_ no space and no time: we are--we know not what;--light-sparkles floating in the æther of deity! 'so that this so solid-seeming world, after all, were but an air-image, our me the only reality: and nature, with its thousandfold production and destruction, but the reflex of our own inward force, the "phantasy of our dream"; or what the earth-spirit in _faust_ names it, _the living visible garment of god_: "in being's floods, in action's storm, i walk and work, above, beneath, work and weave in endless motion! birth and death, an infinite ocean; a seizing and giving the fire of living: 'tis thus at the roaring loom of time i ply, and weave for god the garment thou seest him by." of twenty millions that have read and spouted this thunder-speech of the _erdgeist_, are there yet twenty units of us that have learned the meaning thereof? 'it was in some such mood, when wearied and fordone with these high speculations, that i first came upon the question of clothes. strange enough, it strikes me, is this same fact of there being tailors and tailored. the horse i ride has his own whole fell: strip him of the girths and flaps and extraneous tags i have fastened round him, and the noble creature is his own sempster and weaver and spinner; nay his own bootmaker, jeweller, and man-milliner; he bounds free through the valleys, with a perennial rain-proof court-suit on his body; wherein warmth and easiness of fit have reached perfection; nay, the graces also have been considered, and frills and fringes, with gay variety of colour, featly appended, and ever in the right place, are not wanting. while i--good heaven!--have thatched myself over with the dead fleeces of sheep, the bark of vegetables, the entrails of worms, the hides of oxen or seals, the felt of furred beasts; and walk abroad a moving rag-screen, overheaped with shreds and tatters raked from the charnel-house of nature, where they would have rotted, to rot on me more slowly! day after day, i must thatch myself anew; day after day, this despicable thatch must lose some film of its thickness; some film of it, frayed away by tear and wear, must be brushed-off into the ashpit, into the laystall; till by degrees the whole has been brushed thither, and i, the dust-making, patent rag-grinder, get new material to grind down. o subter-brutish! vile! most vile! for have not i too a compact all-enclosing skin, whiter or dingier? am i a botched mass of tailors' and cobblers' shreds, then; or a tightly-articulated, homogeneous little figure, automatic, nay alive? 'strange enough how creatures of the human-kind shut their eyes to plainest facts; and by the mere inertia of oblivion and stupidity, live at ease in the midst of wonders and terrors. but indeed man is, and was always, a blockhead and dullard; much readier to feel and digest, than to think and consider. prejudice, which he pretends to hate, is his absolute lawgiver; mere use-and-wont everywhere leads him by the nose; thus let but a rising of the sun, let but a creation of the world happen _twice_, and it ceases to be marvellous, to be noteworthy, or noticeable. perhaps not once in a lifetime does it occur to your ordinary biped, of any country or generation, be he gold-mantled prince or russet-jerkined peasant, that his vestments and his self are not one and indivisible; that _he_ is naked, without vestments, till he buy or steal such, and by forethought sew and button them. 'for my own part, these considerations, of our clothes-thatch, and how, reaching inwards even to our heart of hearts, it tailorises and demoralises us, fill me with a certain horror at myself and mankind; almost as one feels at those dutch cows, which, during the wet season, you see grazing deliberately with jackets and petticoats (of striped sacking), in the meadows of gouda. nevertheless there is something great in the moment when a man first strips himself of adventitious wrappages; and sees indeed that he is naked, and, as swift has it, "a forked straddling animal with bandy legs"; yet also a spirit, and unutterable mystery of mysteries.' chapter ix adamitism let no courteous reader take offence at the opinions broached in the conclusion of the last chapter. the editor himself, on first glancing over that singular passage, was inclined to exclaim: what, have we got not only a sansculottist, but an enemy to clothes in the abstract? a new adamite, in this century, which flatters itself that it is the nineteenth, and destructive both to superstition and enthusiasm? consider, thou foolish teufelsdröckh, what benefits unspeakable all ages and sexes derive from clothes. for example, when thou thyself, a watery, pulpy, slobbery freshman and new-comer in this planet, sattest muling and puking in thy nurse's arms; sucking thy coral, and looking forth into the world in the blankest manner, what hadst thou been without thy blankets, and bibs, and other nameless hulls? a terror to thyself and mankind! or hast thou forgotten the day when thou first receivedst breeches, and thy long clothes became short? the village where thou livedst was all apprised of the fact; and neighbour after neighbour kissed thy pudding-cheek, and gave thee, as handsel, silver or copper coins, on that the first gala-day of thy existence. again, wert not thou, at one period of life, a buck, or blood, or macaroni, or incroyable, or dandy, or by whatever name, according to year and place, such phenomenon is distinguished? in that one word lie included mysterious volumes. nay, now when the reign of folly is over, or altered, and thy clothes are not for triumph but for defence, hast thou always worn them perforce, and as a consequence of man's fall; never rejoiced in them as in a warm movable house, a body round thy body, wherein that strange thee of thine sat snug, defying all variations of climate? girt with thick double-milled kerseys; half-buried under shawls and broad-brims, and overalls and mud-boots, thy very fingers cased in doeskin and mittens, thou hast bestrode that 'horse i ride'; and, though it were in wild winter, dashed through the world, glorying in it as if thou wert its lord. in vain did the sleet beat round thy temples; it lighted only on thy impenetrable, felted or woven, case of wool. in vain did the winds howl,--forests sounding and creaking, deep calling unto deep,--and the storms heap themselves together into one huge arctic whirlpool: thou flewest through the middle thereof, striking fire from the highway; wild music hummed in thy ears, thou too wert as a 'sailor of the air'; the wreck of matter and the crash of worlds was thy element and propitiously wafting tide. without clothes, without bit or saddle, what hadst thou been; what had thy fleet quadruped been?--nature is good, but she is not the best: here truly was the victory of art over nature. a thunderbolt indeed might have pierced thee; all short of this thou couldst defy. or, cries the courteous reader, has your teufelsdröckh forgotten what he said lately about 'aboriginal savages,' and their 'condition miserable indeed'? would he have all this unsaid; and us betake ourselves again to the 'matted cloak,' and go sheeted in a 'thick natural fell'? nowise, courteous reader! the professor knows full well what he is saying; and both thou and we, in our haste, do him wrong. if clothes, in these times, 'so tailorise and demoralise us,' have they no redeeming value; can they not be altered to serve better; must they of necessity be thrown to the dogs? the truth is, teufelsdröckh, though a sansculottist, is no adamite; and much perhaps as he might wish to go forth before this degenerate age 'as a sign,' would nowise wish to do it, as those old adamites did, in a state of nakedness. the utility of clothes is altogether apparent to him: nay perhaps he has an insight into their more recondite, and almost mystic qualities, what we might call the omnipotent virtue of clothes, such as was never before vouchsafed to any man. for example: 'you see two individuals,' he writes, 'one dressed in fine red, the other in coarse threadbare blue: red says to blue, "be hanged and anatomised"; blue hears with a shudder, and (o wonder of wonders!) marches sorrowfully to the gallows; is there noosed-up, vibrates his hour, and the surgeons dissect him, and fit his bones into a skeleton for medical purposes. how is this; or what make ye of your _nothing can act but where it is_? red has no physical hold of blue, no _clutch_ of him, is nowise in _contact_ with him: neither are those ministering sheriffs and lord-lieutenants and hangmen and tipstaves so related to commanding red, that he can tug them hither and thither; but each stands distinct within his own skin. nevertheless, as it is spoken, so is it done: the articulated word sets all hands in action; and rope and improved-drop perform their work. 'thinking reader, the reason seems to me twofold: first, that _man is a spirit_, and bound by invisible bonds to _all men_; secondly, that _he wears clothes_, which are the visible emblems of that fact. has not your red hanging-individual a horsehair wig, squirrel-skins, and a plush-gown; whereby all mortals know that he is a judge?--society, which the more i think of it astonishes me the more, is founded upon cloth. 'often in my atrabiliar-moods, when i read of pompous ceremonials, frankfort coronations, royal drawing-rooms, levees, couchees; and how the ushers and macers and pursuivants are all in waiting; how duke this is presented by archduke that, and colonel a by general b, and innumerable bishops, admirals, and miscellaneous functionaries, are advancing gallantly to the anointed presence; and i strive, in my remote privacy, to form a clear picture of that solemnity,--on a sudden, as by some enchanter's wand, the--shall i speak it?--the clothes fly-off the whole dramatic corps; and dukes, grandees, bishops, generals, anointed presence itself, every mother's son of them, stand straddling there, not a shirt on them; and i know not whether to laugh or weep. this physical or psychical infirmity, in which perhaps i am not singular, i have, after hesitation, thought right to publish, for the solace of those afflicted with the like.' would to heaven, say we, thou hadst thought right to keep it secret! who is there now that can read the five columns of presentations in his morning newspaper without a shudder? hypochondriac men, and all men are to a certain extent hypochondriac, should be more gently treated. with what readiness our fancy, in this shattered state of the nerves, follows out the consequences which teufelsdröckh, with a devilish coolness, goes on to draw: 'what would majesty do, could such an accident befall in reality; should the buttons all simultaneously start, and the solid wool evaporate, in very deed, as here in dream? _ach gott!_ how each skulks into the nearest hiding-place; their high state tragedy (_haupt- und staats-action_) becomes a pickleherring-farce to weep at, which is the worst kind of farce; _the tables_ (according to horace), and with them, the whole fabric of government, legislation, property, police, and civilised society, _are dissolved_, in wails and howls.' lives the man that can figure a naked duke of windlestraw addressing a naked house of lords? imagination, choked as in mephitic air, recoils on itself, and will not forward with the picture. the woolsack, the ministerial, the opposition benches--_infandum! infandum!_ and yet why is the thing impossible? was not every soul, or rather every body, of these guardians of our liberties, naked, or nearly so, last night; 'a forked radish with a head fantastically carved'? and why might he not, did our stern fate so order it, walk out to st stephen's, as well as into bed, in that no-fashion; and there, with other similar radishes, hold a bed of justice? 'solace of those afflicted with the like!' unhappy teufelsdröckh, had man ever such a 'physical or psychical infirmity' before? and now how many, perhaps, may thy unparalleled confession (which we, even to the sounder british world, and goaded-on by critical and biographical duty, grudge to re-impart) incurably infect therewith! art thou the malignest of sansculottists, or only the maddest? 'it will remain to be examined,' adds the inexorable teufelsdröckh, 'in how far the scarecrow, as a clothed person, is not also entitled to benefit of clergy, and english trial by jury: nay perhaps, considering his high function (for is not he too a defender of property, and sovereign armed with the _terrors_ of the law?), to a certain royal immunity and inviolability; which, however, misers and the meaner class of persons are not always voluntarily disposed to grant him.' * * * * * * 'o my friends, we are (in yorick sterne's words) but as "turkeys driven with a stick and red clout, to the market": or if some drivers, as they do in norfolk, take a dried bladder and put peas in it, the rattle thereof terrifies the boldest!' chapter x pure reason it must now be apparent enough that our professor, as above hinted, is a speculative radical, and of the very darkest tinge; acknowledging, for most part, in the solemnities and paraphernalia of civilised life, which we make so much of, nothing but so many cloth-rags, turkey-poles, and 'bladders with dried peas.' to linger among such speculations, longer than mere science requires, a discerning public can have no wish. for our purposes the simple fact that such a _naked world_ is possible, nay actually exists (under the clothed one), will be sufficient. much, therefore, we omit about 'kings wrestling naked on the green with carmen,' and the kings being thrown: 'dissect them with scalpels,' says teufelsdröckh; 'the same viscera, tissues, livers, lights, and other life-tackle are there: examine their spiritual mechanism; the same great need, great greed, and little faculty; nay ten to one but the carman, who understands draught-cattle, the rimming of wheels, something of the laws of unstable and stable equilibrium, with other branches of wagon-science, and has actually put forth his hand and operated on nature, is the more cunningly gifted of the two. whence, then, their so unspeakable difference? from clothes.' much also we shall omit about confusion of ranks, and joan and my lady, and how it would be everywhere 'hail fellow well met,' and chaos were come again: all which to any one that has once fairly pictured-out the grand mother-idea, _society in a state of nakedness_, will spontaneously suggest itself. should some sceptical individual still entertain doubts whether in a world without clothes, the smallest politeness, polity, or even police, could exist, let him turn to the original volume, and view there the boundless serbonian bog of sansculottism, stretching sour and pestilential: over which we have lightly flown; where not only whole armies but whole nations might sink! if indeed the following argument, in its brief riveting emphasis, be not of itself incontrovertible and final: 'are we opossums; have we natural pouches, like the kangaroo? or how, without clothes, could we possess the master-organ, soul's seat, and true pineal gland of the body social: i mean, a purse?' nevertheless, it is impossible to hate professor teufelsdröckh; at worst, one knows not whether to hate or to love him. for though, in looking at the fair tapestry of human life, with its royal and even sacred figures, he dwells not on the obverse alone, but here chiefly on the reverse; and indeed turns out the rough seams, tatters, and manifold thrums of that unsightly wrong-side, with an almost diabolic patience and indifference, which must have sunk him in the estimation of most readers,--there is that within which unspeakably distinguishes him from all other past and present sansculottists. the grand unparalleled peculiarity of teufelsdröckh is, that with all this descendentalism, he combines a transcendentalism, no less superlative; whereby if on the one hand he degrade man below most animals, except those jacketed gouda cows, he, on the other, exalts him beyond the visible heavens, almost to an equality with the gods. 'to the eye of vulgar logic,' says he, 'what is man? an omnivorous biped that wears breeches. to the eye of pure reason what is he? a soul, a spirit, and divine apparition. round his mysterious me, there lies, under all those wool-rags, a garment of flesh (or of senses), contextured in the loom of heaven; whereby he is revealed to his like, and dwells with them in union and division; and sees and fashions for himself a universe, with azure starry spaces, and long thousands of years. deep-hidden is he under that strange garment; amid sounds and colours and forms, as it were, swathed-in, and inextricably over-shrouded: yet it is sky-woven, and worthy of a god. stands he not thereby in the centre of immensities, in the conflux of eternities? he feels; power has been given him to know, to believe; nay does not the spirit of love, free in its celestial primeval brightness, even here, though but for moments, look through? well said saint chrysostom, with his lips of gold, "the true shekinah is man": where else is the god's-presence manifested not to our eyes only, but to our hearts, as in our fellow-man?' in such passages, unhappily too rare, the high platonic mysticism of our author, which is perhaps the fundamental element of his nature, bursts forth, as it were, in full flood: and, through all the vapour and tarnish of what is often so perverse, so mean in his exterior and environment, we seem to look into a whole inward sea of light and love;--though, alas, the grim coppery clouds soon roll together again, and hide it from view. such tendency to mysticism is everywhere traceable in this man; and indeed, to attentive readers, must have been long ago apparent. nothing that he sees but has more than a common meaning, but has two meanings: thus, if in the highest imperial sceptre and charlemagne-mantle, as well as in the poorest ox-goad and gipsy-blanket, he finds prose, decay, contemptibility; there is in each sort poetry also, and a reverend worth. for matter, were it never so despicable, is spirit, the manifestation of spirit: were it never so honourable, can it be more? the thing visible, nay the thing imagined, the thing in any way conceived as visible, what is it but a garment, a clothing of the higher, celestial invisible, 'unimaginable, formless, dark with excess of bright'? under which point of view the following passage, so strange in purport, so strange in phrase, seems characteristic enough: 'the beginning of all wisdom is to look fixedly on clothes, or even with armed eyesight, till they become _transparent_. "the philosopher," says the wisest of this age, "must station himself in the middle": how true! the philosopher is he to whom the highest has descended, and the lowest has mounted up; who is the equal and kindly brother of all. 'shall we tremble before clothwebs and cobwebs, whether woven in arkwright looms, or by the silent arachnes that weave unrestingly in our imagination? or, on the other hand, what is there that we cannot love; since all was created by god? 'happy he who can look through the clothes of a man (the woollen, and fleshly, and official bank-paper and state-paper clothes) into the man himself; and discern, it may be, in this or the other dread potentate, a more or less incompetent digestive-apparatus; yet also an inscrutable venerable mystery, in the meanest tinker that sees with eyes!' for the rest, as is natural to a man of this kind, he deals much in the feeling of wonder; insists on the necessity and high worth of universal wonder; which he holds to be the only reasonable temper for the denizen of so singular a planet as ours. 'wonder,' says he, 'is the basis of worship: the reign of wonder is perennial, indestructible in man; only at certain stages (as the present), it is, for some short season, a reign _in partibus infidelium_.' that progress of science, which is to destroy wonder, and in its stead substitute mensuration and numeration, finds small favour with teufelsdröckh, much as he otherwise venerates these two latter processes. 'shall your science,' exclaims he, 'proceed in the small chink-lighted, or even oil-lighted, underground workshop of logic alone; and man's mind become an arithmetical mill, whereof memory is the hopper, and mere tables of sines and tangents, codification, and treatises of what you call political economy, are the meal? and what is that science, which the scientific head alone, were it screwed off, and (like the doctor's in the arabian tale) set in a basin to keep it alive, could prosecute without shadow of a heart,--but one other of the mechanical and menial handicrafts, for which the scientific head (having a soul in it) is too noble an organ? i mean that thought without reverence is barren, perhaps poisonous; at best, dies like cookery with the day that called it forth; does not live, like sowing, in successive tilths and wider-spreading harvests, bringing food and plenteous increase to all time.' in such wise does teufelsdröckh deal hits, harder or softer, according to ability; yet ever, as we would fain persuade ourselves, with charitable intent. above all, that class of 'logic-choppers, and treble-pipe scoffers, and professed enemies to wonder; who, in these days, so numerously patrol as night-constables about the mechanics' institute of science, and cackle, like true old-roman geese and goslings round their capitol, on any alarm, or on none; nay who often, as illuminated sceptics, walk abroad into peaceable society, in full day-light, with rattle and lantern, and insist on guiding you and guarding you therewith, though the sun is shining, and the street populous with mere justice-loving men': that whole class is inexpressibly wearisome to him. hear with what uncommon animation he perorates: 'the man who cannot wonder, who does not habitually wonder (and worship) were he president of innumerable royal societies, and carried the whole _mécanique céleste_ and _hegel's philosophy_, and the epitome of all laboratories and observatories with their results, in his single head,--is but a pair of spectacles behind which there is no eye. let those who have eyes look through him, then he may be useful. 'thou wilt have no mystery and mysticism; wilt walk through thy world by the sunshine of what thou callest truth, or even by the hand-lamp of what i call attorney-logic; and "explain" all, "account" for all, or believe nothing of it? nay, thou wilt attempt laughter; whoso recognises the unfathomable, all-pervading domain of mystery, which is everywhere under our feet and among our hands; to whom the universe is an oracle and temple, as well as a kitchen and cattlestall,--he shall be a delirious mystic; to him thou, with sniffing charity, wilt protrusively proffer thy hand-lamp, and shriek, as one injured, when he kicks his foot through it?--_armer teufel!_ doth not thy cow calve, doth not thy bull gender? thou thyself, wert thou not born, wilt thou not die? "explain" me all this, or do one of two things: retire into private places with thy foolish cackle; or, what were better, give it up, and weep, not that the reign of wonder is done, and god's world all disembellished and prosaic, but that thou hitherto art a dilettante and sandblind pedant.' chapter xi prospective the philosophy of clothes is now to all readers, as we predicted it would do, unfolding itself into new boundless expansions, of a cloudclapt, almost chimerical aspect, yet not without azure loomings in the far distance, and streaks as of an elysian brightness; the highly questionable purport and promise of which it is becoming more and more important for us to ascertain. is that a real elysian brightness, cries many a timid wayfarer, or the reflex of pandemonian lava? is it of a truth leading us into beatific asphodel meadows, or the yellow-burning marl of a hell-on-earth? our professor, like other mystics, whether delirious or inspired, gives an editor enough to do. ever higher and dizzier are the heights he leads us to; more piercing, all-comprehending, all-confounding are his views and glances. for example, this of nature being not an aggregate but a whole: 'well sang the hebrew psalmist: "if i take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the universe, god is there." thou thyself, o cultivated reader, who too probably art no psalmist, but a prosaist, knowing god only by tradition, knowest thou any corner of the world where at least force is not? the drop which thou shakest from thy wet hand, rests not where it falls, but to-morrow thou findest it swept away; already on the wings of the northwind, it is nearing the tropic of cancer. how came it to evaporate, and not lie motionless? thinkest thou there is aught motionless; without force, and utterly dead? 'as i rode through the schwarzwald, i said to myself: that little fire which grows star-like across the dark-growing (_nachtende_) moor, where the sooty smith bends over his anvil, and thou hopest to replace thy lost horse-shoe,--is it a detached, separated speck, cut-off from the whole universe; or indissolubly joined to the whole? thou fool, that smithy-fire was (primarily) kindled at the sun; is fed by air that circulates from before noah's deluge, from beyond the dogstar; therein, with iron force, and coal force, and the far stranger force of man, are cunning affinities and battles and victories of force brought about; it is a little ganglion, or nervous centre, in the great vital system of immensity. call it, if thou wilt, an unconscious altar, kindled on the bosom of the all; whose iron sacrifice, whose iron smoke and influence reach quite through the all; whose dingy priest, not by word, yet by brain and sinew, preaches forth the mystery of force; nay preaches forth (exoterically enough) one little textlet from the gospel of freedom, the gospel of man's force, commanding, and one day to be all-commanding. 'detached, separated! i say there is no such separation: nothing hitherto was ever stranded, cast aside; but all, were it only a withered leaf, works together with all; is borne forward on the bottomless, shoreless flood of action, and lives through perpetual metamorphoses. the withered leaf is not dead and lost, there are forces in it and around it, though working in inverse order; else how could it _rot_? despise not the rag from which man makes paper, or the litter from which the earth makes corn. rightly viewed no meanest object is insignificant; all objects are as windows, through which the philosophic eye looks into infinitude itself.' again, leaving that wondrous schwarzwald smithy-altar, what vacant, high-sailing air-ships are these, and whither will they sail with us? 'all visible things are emblems; what thou seest is not there on its own account; strictly taken, is not there at all: matter exists only spiritually, and to represent some idea, and _body_ it forth. hence clothes, as despicable as we think them, are so unspeakably significant. clothes, from the king's mantle downwards, are emblematic not of want only, but of a manifold cunning victory over want. on the other hand, all emblematic things are properly clothes, thought-woven or hand-woven: must not the imagination weave garments, visible bodies, wherein the else invisible creations and inspirations of our reason are, like spirits, revealed, and first become all-powerful;--the rather if, as we often see, the hand too aid her, and (by wool clothes or otherwise) reveal such even to the outward eye? 'men are properly said to be clothed with authority, clothed with beauty, with curses, and the like. nay, if you consider it, what is man himself, and his whole terrestrial life, but an emblem; a clothing or visible garment for that divine me of his, cast hither, like a light-particle, down from heaven? thus is he said also to be clothed with a body. 'language is called the garment of thought: however, it should rather be, language is the flesh-garment, the body, of thought. i said that imagination wove this flesh-garment; and does not she? metaphors are her stuff: examine language; what, if you except some few primitive elements (of natural sound), what is it all but metaphors, recognised as such, or no longer recognised; still fluid and florid, or now solid-grown and colourless? if those same primitive elements are the osseous fixtures in the flesh-garment, language,--then are metaphors its muscles and tissues and living integuments. an unmetaphorical style you shall in vain seek for: is not your very _attention_ a _stretching-to_? the difference lies here: some styles are lean, adust, wiry, the muscle itself seems osseous; some are even quite pallid, hunger-bitten and dead-looking; while others again glow in the flush of health and vigorous self-growth, sometimes (as in my own case) not without an apoplectic tendency. moreover, there are sham metaphors, which overhanging that same thought's-body (best naked), and deceptively bedizening, or bolstering it out, may be called its false stuffings, superfluous show-cloaks (_putz-mäntel_), and tawdry woollen rags: whereof he that runs and reads may gather whole hampers,--and burn them.' than which paragraph on metaphors did the reader ever chance to see a more surprisingly metaphorical? however, that is not our chief grievance; the professor continues: 'why multiply instances? it is written, the heavens and the earth shall fade away like a vesture; which indeed they are: the time-vesture of the eternal. whatsoever sensibly exists, whatsoever represents spirit to spirit, is properly a clothing, a suit of raiment, put on for a season, and to be laid off. thus in this one pregnant subject of clothes, rightly understood, is included all that men have thought, dreamed, done, and been: the whole external universe and what it holds is but clothing; and the essence of all science lies in the philosophy of clothes.' towards these dim infinitely-expanded regions, close-bordering on the impalpable inane, it is not without apprehension, and perpetual difficulties, that the editor sees himself journeying and struggling. till lately a cheerful daystar of hope hung before him, in the expected aid of hofrath heuschrecke; which daystar, however, melts now, not into the red of morning, but into a vague, gray half-light, uncertain whether dawn of day or dusk of utter darkness. for the last week, these so-called biographical documents are in his hand. by the kindness of a scottish hamburg merchant, whose name, known to the whole mercantile world, he must not mention; but whose honourable courtesy, now and often before spontaneously manifested to him, a mere literary stranger, he cannot soon forget,--the bulky weissnichtwo packet, with all its custom-house seals, foreign hieroglyphs, and miscellaneous tokens of travel, arrived here in perfect safety, and free of cost. the reader shall now fancy with what hot haste it was broken up, with what breathless expectation glanced over; and, alas, with what unquiet disappointment it has, since then, been often thrown down, and again taken up. hofrath heuschrecke, in a too long-winded letter, full of compliments, weissnichtwo politics, dinners, dining repartees, and other ephemeral trivialities, proceeds to remind us of what we know well already: that however it may be with metaphysics, and other abstract science originating in the head (_verstand_) alone, no life-philosophy (_lebensphilosophie_), such as this of clothes pretends to be, which originates equally in the character (_gemüth_), and equally speaks thereto, can attain its significance till the character itself is known and seen; 'till the author's view of the world (_weltansicht_), and how he actively and passively came by such view, are clear: in short till a biography of him has been philosophico-poetically written, and philosophico-poetically read.' 'nay,' adds he, 'were the speculative scientific truth even known, you still, in this inquiring age, ask yourself, whence came it, and why, and how?--and rest not, till, if no better may be, fancy have shaped-out an answer; and either in the authentic lineaments of fact, or the forged ones of fiction, a complete picture and genetical history of the man and his spiritual endeavour lies before you. but why,' says the hofrath, and indeed say we, 'do i dilate on the uses of our teufelsdröckh's biography? the great herr minister von goethe has penetratingly remarked that "man is properly the _only_ object that interests man": thus i too have noted, that in weissnichtwo our whole conversation is little or nothing else but biography or auto-biography; ever humano-anecdotical (_menschlich-anekdotisch_). biography is by nature the most universally profitable, universally pleasant of all things: especially biography of distinguished individuals. 'by this time, _mein verehrtester_ (my most esteemed),' continues he, with an eloquence which, unless the words be purloined from teufelsdröckh, or some trick of his, as we suspect, is well-nigh unaccountable, 'by this time you are fairly plunged (_vertieft_) in that mighty forest of clothes-philosophy; and looking round, as all readers do, with astonishment enough. such portions and passages as you have already mastered, and brought to paper, could not but awaken a strange curiosity touching the mind they issued from; the perhaps unparalleled psychical mechanism, which manufactured such matter, and emitted it to the light of day. had teufelsdröckh also a father and mother; did he, at one time, wear drivel-bibs, and live on spoon-meat? did he ever, in rapture and tears, clasp a friend's bosom to his; looks he also wistfully into the long burial-aisle of the past, where only winds, and their low harsh moan, give inarticulate answer? has he fought duels;--good heaven! how did he comport himself when in love? by what singular stair-steps, in short, and subterranean passages, and sloughs of despair, and steep pisgah hills, has he reached this wonderful prophetic hebron (a true old-clothes jewry) where he now dwells? 'to all these natural questions the voice of public history is as yet silent. certain only that he has been, and is, a pilgrim, and traveller from a far country; more or less footsore and travel-soiled; has parted with road-companions; fallen among thieves, been poisoned by bad cookery, blistered with bug-bites; nevertheless at every stage (for they have let him pass), has had the bill to discharge. but the whole particulars of his route, his weather-observations, the picturesque sketches he took, though all regularly jotted down (in indelible sympathetic-ink by an invisible interior penman), are these nowhere forthcoming? perhaps quite lost: one other leaf of that mighty volume (of human memory) left to fly abroad, unprinted, unpublished, unbound up, as waste paper; and to rot, the sport of rainy winds? 'no, _verehrtester herr herausgeber_, in no wise! i here, by the unexampled favour you stand in with our sage, send not a biography only, but an autobiography: at least the materials for such; wherefrom, if i misreckon not, your perspicacity will draw fullest insight: and so the whole philosophy and philosopher of clothes will stand clear to the wondering eyes of england, nay thence, through america, through hindostan, and the antipodal new holland, finally conquer (_einnehmen_) great part of this terrestrial planet!' and now let the sympathising reader judge of our feeling when, in place of this same autobiography with 'fullest insight,' we find--six considerable paper-bags, carefully sealed, and marked successively, in gilt china-ink, with the symbols of the six southern zodiacal signs, beginning at libra; in the inside of which sealed bags lie miscellaneous masses of sheets, and oftener shreds and snips, written in professor teufelsdröckh's scarce legible _cursiv-schrift_; and treating of all imaginable things under the zodiac and above it, but of his own personal history only at rare intervals, and then in the most enigmatic manner. whole fascicles there are, wherein the professor, or, as he here, speaking in the third person, calls himself, 'the wanderer,' is not once named. then again, amidst what seems to be a metaphysico-theological disquisition, 'detached thoughts on the steam-engine,' or, 'the continued possibility of prophecy,' we shall meet with some quite private, not unimportant biographical fact. on certain sheets stand dreams, authentic or not, while the circumjacent waking actions are omitted. anecdotes, oftenest without date of place or time, fly loosely on separate slips, like sibylline leaves. interspersed also are long purely autobiographical delineations; yet without connexion, without recognisable coherence; so unimportant, so superfluously minute, they almost remind us of 'p.p. clerk of this parish.' thus does famine of intelligence alternate with waste. selection, order, appears to be unknown to the professor. in all bags the same imbroglio; only perhaps in the bag _capricorn_, and those near it, the confusion a little worse confounded. close by a rather eloquent oration, 'on receiving the doctor's-hat,' lie washbills, marked _bezahlt_ (settled). his travels are indicated by the street-advertisements of the various cities he has visited; of which street-advertisements, in most living tongues, here is perhaps the completest collection extant. so that if the clothes-volume itself was too like a chaos, we have now instead of the solar luminary that should still it, the airy limbo which by intermixture will farther volatilise and discompose it! as we shall perhaps see it our duty ultimately to deposit these six paper-bags in the british museum, farther description, and all vituperation of them, may be spared. biography or autobiography of teufelsdröckh there is, clearly enough, none to be gleaned here: at most some sketchy, shadowy fugitive likeness of him may, by unheard-of efforts, partly of intellect, partly of imagination, on the side of editor and of reader; rise up between them. only as a gaseous-chaotic appendix to that aqueous-chaotic volume can the contents of the six bags hover round us, and portions thereof be incorporated with our delineation of it. daily and nightly does the editor sit (with green spectacles) deciphering these unimaginable documents from their perplexed _cursiv-schrift_; collating them with the almost equally unimaginable volume, which stands in legible print. over such a universal medley of high and low, of hot, cold, moist and dry, is he here struggling (by union of like with like, which is method) to build a firm bridge for british travellers. never perhaps since our first bridge-builders, sin and death, built that stupendous arch from hell-gate to the earth, did any pontifex, or pontiff, undertake such a task as the present editor. for in this arch too, leading, as we humbly presume, far otherwards than that grand primeval one, the materials are to be fished-up from the weltering deep, and down from the simmering air, here one mass, there another, and cunningly cemented, while the elements boil beneath: nor is there any supernatural force to do it with; but simply the diligence and feeble thinking faculty of an english editor, endeavouring to evolve printed creation out of a german printed and written chaos, wherein, as he shoots to and fro in it, gathering, clutching, piercing the why to the far-distant wherefore, his whole faculty and self are like to be swallowed up. patiently, under these incessant toils and agitations, does the editor, dismissing all anger, see his otherwise robust health declining; some fraction of his allotted natural sleep nightly leaving him, and little but an inflamed nervous-system to be looked for. what is the use of health, or of life, if not to do some work therewith? and what work nobler than transplanting foreign thought into the barren domestic soil; except indeed planting thought of your own, which the fewest are privileged to do? wild as it looks, this philosophy of clothes, can we ever reach its real meaning, promises to reveal new-coming eras, the first dim rudiments and already-budding germs of a nobler era, in universal history. is not such a prize worth some striving? forward with us, courageous reader; be it towards failure, or towards success! the latter thou sharest with us; the former also is not all our own. book second chapter i genesis in a psychological point of view, it is perhaps questionable whether from birth and genealogy, how closely scrutinised soever, much insight is to be gained. nevertheless, as in every phenomenon the beginning remains always the most notable moment; so, with regard to any great man, we rest not till, for our scientific profit or not, the whole circumstances of his first appearance in this planet, and what manner of public entry he made, are with utmost completeness rendered manifest. to the genesis of our clothes-philosopher, then, be this first chapter consecrated. unhappily, indeed, he seems to be of quite obscure extraction; uncertain, we might almost say, whether of any: so that this genesis of his can properly be nothing but an exodus (or transit out of invisibility into visibility); whereof the preliminary portion is nowhere forthcoming. 'in the village of entepfuhl,' thus writes he, in the bag _libra_, on various papers, which we arrange with difficulty, 'dwelt andreas futteral and his wife; childless, in still seclusion, and cheerful though now verging towards old age. andreas had been grenadier sergeant, and even regimental schoolmaster under frederick the great; but now, quitting the halbert and ferule for the spade and pruning-hook, cultivated a little orchard, on the produce of which he, cincinnatus-like, lived not without dignity. fruits, the peach, the apple, the grape, with other varieties came in their season; all which andreas knew how to sell: on evenings he smoked largely, or read (as beseemed a regimental schoolmaster), and talked to neighbours that would listen about the victory of rossbach; and how fritz the only (_der einzige_) had once with his own royal lips spoken to him, had been pleased to say, when andreas as camp-sentinel demanded the pass-word, "_schweig hund_ (peace, hound)!" before any of his staff-adjutants could answer. "_das nenn' ich mir einen könig_, there is what i call a king," would andreas exclaim: "but the smoke of kunersdorf was still smarting his eyes." 'gretchen, the housewife, won like desdemona by the deeds rather than the looks of her now veteran othello, lived not in altogether military subordination; for, as andreas said, "the womankind will not drill (_wer kann die weiberchen dressiren_)": nevertheless she at heart loved him both for valour and wisdom; to her a prussian grenadier sergeant and regiment's schoolmaster was little other than a cicero and cid: what you see, yet cannot see over, is as good as infinite. nay, was not andreas in very deed a man of order, courage, downrightness (_geradheit_); that understood büsching's _geography_, had been in the victory of rossbach, and left for dead in the camisade of hochkirch? the good gretchen, for all her fretting, watched over him and hovered round him as only a true housemother can: assiduously she cooked and sewed and scoured for him; so that not only his old regimental sword and grenadier-cap, but the whole habitation and environment, where on pegs of honour they hung, looked ever trim and gay: a roomy painted cottage, embowered in fruit-trees and forest-trees, evergreens and honeysuckles; rising many-coloured from amid shaven grass-plots, flowers struggling-in through the very windows; under its long projecting eaves nothing but garden-tools in methodic piles (to screen them from rain), and seats where, especially on summer nights, a king might have wished to sit and smoke, and call it his. such a _bauergut_ (copyhold) had gretchen given her veteran; whose sinewy arms, and long-disused gardening talent, had made it what you saw. 'into this umbrageous man's-nest, one meek yellow evening or dusk, when the sun, hidden indeed from terrestrial entepfuhl, did nevertheless journey visible and radiant along the celestial balance (_libra_), it was that a stranger of reverend aspect entered; and, with grave salutation, stood before the two rather astonished housemates. he was close-muffled in a wide mantle; which without further parley unfolding, he deposited therefrom what seemed some basket, overhung with green persian silk; saying only: _ihr lieben leute, hier bringe ein unschätzbares verleihen; nehmt es in aller acht, sorgfältigst benützt es: mit hohem lohn, oder wohl mit schweren zinsen, wird's einst zurückgefordert._ "good christian people, here lies for you an invaluable loan; take all heed thereof, in all carefulness employ it: with high recompense, or else with heavy penalty, will it one day be required back." uttering which singular words, in a clear, bell-like, forever memorable tone, the stranger gracefully withdrew; and before andreas or his wife, gazing in expectant wonder, had time to fashion either question or answer, was clean gone. neither out of doors could aught of him be seen or heard; he had vanished in the thickets, in the dusk; the orchard-gate stood quietly closed: the stranger was gone once and always. so sudden had the whole transaction been, in the autumn stillness and twilight, so gentle, noiseless, that the futterals could have fancied it all a trick of imagination, or some visit from an authentic spirit. only that the green-silk basket, such as neither imagination nor authentic spirits are wont to carry, still stood visible and tangible on their little parlour-table. towards this the astonished couple, now with lit candle, hastily turned their attention. lifting the green veil, to see what invaluable it hid, they descried there, amid down and rich white wrappages, no pitt diamond or hapsburg regalia, but, in the softest sleep, a little red-coloured infant! beside it, lay a roll of gold friedrichs, the exact amount of which was never publicly known; also a _taufschein_ (baptismal certificate), wherein unfortunately nothing but the name was decipherable; other document or indication none whatever. 'to wonder and conjecture was unavailing, then and always thenceforth. nowhere in entepfuhl, on the morrow or next day, did tidings transpire of any such figure as the stranger; nor could the traveller, who had passed through the neighbouring town in coach-and-four, be connected with this apparition, except in the way of gratuitous surmise. meanwhile, for andreas and his wife, the grand practical problem was: what to do with this little sleeping red-coloured infant? amid amazements and curiosities, which had to die away without external satisfying, they resolved, as in such circumstances charitable prudent people needs must, on nursing it, though with spoon-meat, into whiteness, and if possible into manhood. the heavens smiled on their endeavour: thus has that same mysterious individual ever since had a status for himself in this visible universe, some modicum of victual and lodging and parade-ground; and now expanded in bulk, faculty and knowledge of good and evil, he, as herr diogenes teufelsdrÖckh, professes or is ready to profess, perhaps not altogether without effect, in the new university of weissnichtwo, the new science of things in general.' our philosopher declares here, as indeed we should think he well might, that these facts, first communicated, by the good gretchen futteral, in his twelfth year, 'produced on the boyish heart and fancy a quite indelible impression. who this reverend personage,' he says, 'that glided into the orchard cottage when the sun was in libra, and then, as on spirit's wings, glided out again, might be? an inexpressible desire, full of love and of sadness, has often since struggled within me to shape an answer. ever, in my distresses and my loneliness, has fantasy turned, full of longing (_sehnsuchtsvoll_), to that unknown father, who perhaps far from me, perhaps near, either way invisible, might have taken me to his paternal bosom, there to lie screened from many a woe. thou beloved father, dost thou still, shut out from me only by thin penetrable curtains of earthly space, wend to and fro among the crowd of the living? or art thou hidden by those far thicker curtains of the everlasting night, or rather of the everlasting day, through which my mortal eye and outstretched arms need not strive to reach? alas, i know not, and in vain vex myself to know. more than once, heart-deluded, have i taken for thee this and the other noble-looking stranger; and approached him wistfully, with infinite regard; but he too had to repel me; he too was not thou. 'and yet, o man born of woman,' cries the autobiographer, with one of his sudden whirls, 'wherein is my case peculiar? hadst thou, any more than i, a father whom thou knowest? the andreas and gretchen, or the adam and eve, who led thee into life, and for a time suckled and pap-fed thee there, whom thou namest father and mother; these were, like mine, but thy nursing-father and nursing-mother: thy true beginning and father is in heaven, whom with the bodily eye thou shalt never behold, but only with the spiritual.' 'the little green veil,' adds he, among much similar moralising, and embroiled discoursing, 'i yet keep; still more inseparably the name, diogenes teufelsdröckh. from the veil can nothing be inferred: a piece of now quite faded persian silk, like thousands of others. on the name i have many times meditated and conjectured; but neither in this lay there any clue. that it was my unknown father's name i must hesitate to believe. to no purpose have i searched through all the herald's books, in and without the german empire, and through all manner of subscriber-lists (_pränumeranten_), militia-rolls, and other name-catalogues; extraordinary names as we have in germany, the name teufelsdröckh, except as appended to my own person, nowhere occurs. again, what may the unchristian rather than christian "diogenes" mean? did that reverend basket-bearer intend, by such designation, to shadow-forth my future destiny, or his own present malign humour? perhaps the latter, perhaps both. thou ill-starred parent, who like an ostrich hadst to leave thy ill-starred offspring to be hatched into self-support by the mere sky-influences of chance, can thy pilgrimage have been a smooth one? beset by misfortune thou doubtless hast been; or indeed by the worst figure of misfortune, by misconduct. often have i fancied how, in thy hard life-battle, thou wert shot at, and slung at, wounded, hand-fettered, hamstrung, browbeaten and bedevilled by the time-spirit (_zeitgeist_) in thyself and others, till the good soul first given thee was seared into grim rage; and thou hadst nothing for it but to leave in me an indignant appeal to the future, and living speaking protest against the devil, as that same spirit not of the time only, but of time itself, is well named! which appeal and protest, may i now modestly add, was not perhaps quite lost in air. 'for indeed, as walter shandy often insisted, there is much, nay almost all, in names. the name is the earliest garment you wrap round the earth-visiting me; to which it thenceforth cleaves, more tenaciously (for there are names that have lasted nigh thirty centuries) than the very skin. and now from without, what mystic influences does it not send inwards, even to the centre; especially in those plastic first-times, when the whole soul is yet infantine, soft, and the invisible seedgrain will grow to be an all overshadowing tree! names? could i unfold the influence of names, which are the most important of all clothings, i were a second greater trismegistus. not only all common speech, but science, poetry itself is no other, if thou consider it, than a right _naming_. adam's first task was giving names to natural appearances: what is ours still but a continuation of the same; be the appearances exotic-vegetable, organic, mechanic, stars or starry movements (as in science); or (as in poetry) passions, virtues, calamities, god-attributes, gods?--in a very plain sense the proverb says, _call one a thief, and he will steal_; in an almost similar sense may we not perhaps say, _call one diogenes teufelsdröckh, and he will open the philosophy of clothes?_' * * * * * 'meanwhile the incipient diogenes, like others, all ignorant of his why, his how or whereabout, was opening his eyes to the kind light; sprawling-out his ten fingers and toes; listening, tasting, feeling; in a word, by all his five senses, still more by his sixth sense of hunger, and a whole infinitude of inward, spiritual, half-awakened senses, endeavouring daily to acquire for himself some knowledge of this strange universe where he had arrived, be his task therein what it might. infinite was his progress; thus in some fifteen months, he could perform the miracle of--speech! to breed a fresh soul, is it not like brooding a fresh (celestial) egg; wherein as yet all is formless, powerless; yet by degrees organic elements and fibres shoot through the watery albumen; and out of vague sensation grows thought, grows fantasy and force, and we have philosophies, dynasties, nay poetries and religions! 'young diogenes, or rather young gneschen, for by such diminutive had they in their fondness named him, travelled forward to those high consummations, by quick yet easy stages. the futterals, to avoid vain talk, and moreover keep the roll of gold friedrichs safe, gave-out that he was a grand-nephew; the orphan of some sister's daughter, suddenly deceased, in andreas's distant prussian birthland; of whom, as of her indigent sorrowing widower, little enough was known at entepfuhl. heedless of all which, the nurseling took to his spoon-meat, and throve. i have heard him noted as a still infant, that kept his mind much to himself; above all, that seldom or never cried. he already felt that time was precious; that he had other work cut-out for him than whimpering.' * * * * * such, after utmost painful search and collation among these miscellaneous paper-masses, is all the notice we can gather of herr teufelsdröckh's genealogy. more imperfect, more enigmatic it can seem to few readers than to us. the professor, in whom truly we more and more discern a certain satirical turn, and deep undercurrents of roguish whim, for the present stands pledged in honour, so we will not doubt him: but seems it not conceivable that, by the 'good gretchen futteral,' or some other perhaps interested party, he has himself been deceived? should these sheets, translated or not, ever reach the entepfuhl circulating library, some cultivated native of that district might feel called to afford explanation. nay, since books, like invisible scouts, permeate the whole habitable globe, and timbuctoo itself is not safe from british literature, may not some copy find out even the mysterious basket-bearing stranger, who in a state of extreme senility perhaps still exists; and gently force even him to disclose himself; to claim openly a son, in whom any father may feel pride? chapter ii idyllic 'happy season of childhood!' exclaims teufelsdröckh: 'kind nature, that art to all a bountiful mother; that visitest the poor man's hut with auroral radiance; and for thy nurseling hast provided, a soft swathing of love, and infinite hope, wherein he waxes and slumbers, danced-round (_umgaukelt_) by sweetest dreams! if the paternal cottage still shuts us in, its roof still screens us; with a father we have as yet a prophet, priest and king, and an obedience that makes us free. the young spirit has awakened out of eternity, and knows not what we mean by time; as yet time is no fast-hurrying stream, but a sportful sunlit ocean; years to the child are as ages: ah! the secret of vicissitude, of that slower or quicker decay and ceaseless down-rushing of the universal world-fabric, from the granite mountain to the man or day-moth, is yet unknown; and in a motionless universe, we taste, what afterwards in this quick-whirling universe is forever denied us, the balm of rest. sleep on, thou fair child, for thy long rough journey is at hand! a little while, and thou too shalt sleep no more, but thy very dreams shall be mimic battles; thou too, with old arnauld, wilt have to say in stern patience: "rest? rest? shall i not have all eternity to rest in?" celestial nepenthe! though a pyrrhus conquer empires, and an alexander sack the world, he finds thee not; and thou hast once fallen gently, of thy own accord, on the eyelids, on the heart of every mother's child. for as yet, sleep and waking are one: the fair life-garden rustles infinite around, and everywhere is dewy fragrance, and the budding of hope; which budding, if in youth, too frostnipt, it grow to flowers, will in manhood yield no fruit, but a prickly, bitter-rinded stone-fruit, of which the fewest can find the kernel.' in such rose-coloured light does our professor, as poets are wont, look back on his childhood; the historical details of which (to say nothing of much other vague oratorical matter) he accordingly dwells on with an almost wearisome minuteness. we hear of entepfuhl standing 'in trustful derangement' among the woody slopes; the paternal orchard flanking it as extreme out-post from below; the little kuhbach gushing kindly by, among beech-rows, through river after river, into the donau, into the black sea, into the atmosphere and universe; and how 'the brave old linden,' stretching like a parasol of twenty ells in radius, overtopping all other rows and clumps, towered-up from the central _agora_ and _campus martius_ of the village, like its sacred tree; and how the old men sat talking under its shadow (gneschen often greedily listening), and the wearied labourers reclined, and the unwearied children sported, and the young men and maidens often danced to flute-music. 'glorious summer twilights,' cries teufelsdröckh, 'when the sun, like a proud conqueror and imperial taskmaster, turned his back, with his gold-purple emblazonry, and all his fireclad body-guard (of prismatic colours); and the tired brickmakers of this clay earth might steal a little frolic, and those few meek stars would not tell of them!' then we have long details of the _weinlesen_ (vintage), the harvest-home, christmas, and so forth; with a whole cycle of the entepfuhl children's-games, differing apparently by mere superficial shades from those of other countries. concerning all which, we shall here, for obvious reasons, say nothing. what cares the world for our as yet miniature philosopher's achievements under that 'brave old linden'? or even where is the use of such practical reflections as the following? 'in all the sports of children, were it only in their wanton breakages and defacements, you shall discern a creative instinct (_schaffenden trieb_): the mankin feels that he is a born man, that his vocation is to work. the choicest present you can make him is a tool; be it knife or pen-gun, for construction or for destruction; either way it is for work, for change. in gregarious sports of skill or strength, the boy trains himself to coöperation, for war or peace, as governor or governed: the little maid again, provident of her domestic destiny, takes with preference to dolls.' perhaps, however, we may give this anecdote, considering who it is that relates it: 'my first short-clothes were of yellow serge; or rather, i should say, my first short-cloth, for the vesture was one and indivisible, reaching from neck to ankle, a mere body with four limbs: of which fashion how little could i then divine the architectural, how much less the moral significance!' more graceful is the following little picture: 'on fine evenings i was wont to carry-forth my supper (bread-crumb boiled in milk), and eat it out-of-doors. on the coping of the orchard-wall, which i could reach by climbing, or still more easily if father andreas would set-up the pruning-ladder, my porringer was placed: there, many a sunset, have i, looking at the distant western mountains, consumed, not without relish, my evening meal. those hues of gold and azure, that hush of world's expectation as day died, were still a hebrew speech for me; nevertheless i was looking at the fair illuminated letters, and had an eye for their gilding.' with 'the little one's friendship for cattle and poultry' we shall not much intermeddle. it may be that hereby he acquired a 'certain deeper sympathy with animated nature': but when, we would ask, saw any man, in a collection of biographical documents, such a piece as this: 'impressive enough (_bedeutungsvoll_) was it to hear, in early morning, the swineherd's horn; and know that so many hungry happy quadrupeds were, on all sides, starting in hot haste to join him, for breakfast on the heath. or to see them at eventide, all marching-in again, with short squeak, almost in military order; and each, topographically correct, trotting-off in succession to the right or left, through its own lane, to its own dwelling; till old kunz, at the village-head, now left alone, blew his last blast, and retired for the night. we are wont to love the hog chiefly in the form of ham; yet did not these bristly thick-skinned beings here manifest intelligence, perhaps humour of character; at any rate, a touching, trustful submissiveness to man,--who, were he but a swineherd, in darned gabardine, and leather breeches more resembling slate or discoloured-tin breeches, is still the hierarch of this lower world?' it is maintained, by helvetius and his set, that an infant of genius is quite the same as any other infant, only that certain surprisingly favourable influences accompany him through life, especially through childhood, and expand him, while others lie closefolded and continue dunces. herein, say they, consists the whole difference between an inspired prophet and a double-barrelled game-preserver: the inner man of the one has been fostered into generous development; that of the other, crushed-down perhaps by vigour of animal digestion, and the like, has exuded and evaporated, or at best sleeps now irresuscitably stagnant at the bottom of his stomach. 'with which opinion,' cries teufelsdröckh, 'i should as soon agree as with this other, that an acorn might, by favourable or unfavourable influences of soil and climate, be nursed into a cabbage, or the cabbage-seed into an oak. 'nevertheless,' continues he, 'i too acknowledge the all-but omnipotence of early culture and nurture: hereby we have either a doddered dwarf bush, or a high-towering, wide-shadowing tree; either a sick yellow cabbage, or an edible luxuriant green one. of a truth, it is the duty of all men, especially of all philosophers, to note-down with accuracy the characteristic circumstances of their education, what furthered, what hindered, what in any way modified it: to which duty, nowadays so pressing for many a german autobiographer, i also zealously address myself.'--thou rogue! is it by short-clothes of yellow serge, and swineherd horns, that an infant of genius is educated? and yet, as usual, it ever remains doubtful whether he is laughing in his sleeve at these autobiographical times of ours, or writing from the abundance of his own fond ineptitude. for he continues: 'if among the ever-streaming currents of sights, hearings, feelings for pain or pleasure, whereby, as in a magic hall, young gneschen went about environed, i might venture to select and specify, perhaps these following were also of the number: 'doubtless, as childish sports call forth intellect, activity, so the young creature's imagination was stirred up, and a historical tendency given him by the narrative habits of father andreas; who, with his battle-reminiscences, and gay austere yet hearty patriarchal aspect, could not but appear another ulysses and "much-enduring man." eagerly i hung upon his tales, when listening neighbours enlivened the hearth; from these perils and these travels, wild and far almost as hades itself, a dim world of adventure expanded itself within me. incalculable also was the knowledge i acquired in standing by the old men under the linden-tree: the whole of immensity was yet new to me; and had not these reverend seniors, talkative enough, been employed in partial surveys thereof for nigh fourscore years? with amazement i began to discover that entepfuhl stood in the middle of a country, of a world; that there was such a thing as history, as biography; to which i also, one day, by hand and tongue, might contribute. 'in a like sense worked the _postwagen_ (stage-coach), which, slow-rolling under its mountains of men and luggage, wended through our village: northwards, truly, in the dead of night; yet southwards visibly at eventide. not till my eighth year did i reflect that this postwagen could be other than some terrestrial moon, rising and setting by mere law of nature, like the heavenly one; that it came on made highways, from far cities towards far cities; weaving them like a monstrous shuttle into closer and closer union. it was then that, independently of schiller's _wilhelm tell_, i made this not quite insignificant reflection (so true also in spiritual things): _any road, this simple entepfuhl road, will lead you to the end of the world!_ 'why mention our swallows, which, out of far africa, as i learned, threading their way over seas and mountains, corporate cities and belligerent nations, yearly found themselves, with the month of may, snug-lodged in our cottage lobby? the hospitable father (for cleanliness' sake) had fixed a little bracket plumb under their nest: there they built, and caught flies, and twittered, and bred; and all, i chiefly, from the heart loved them. bright, nimble creatures, who taught _you_ the mason-craft; nay, stranger still, gave you a masonic incorporation, almost social police? for if, by ill chance, and when time pressed, your house fell, have i not seen five neighbourly helpers appear next day; and swashing to and fro, with animated, loud, long-drawn chirpings, and activity almost super-hirundine, complete it again before nightfall? 'but undoubtedly the grand summary of entepfuhl child's-culture, where as in a funnel its manifold influences were concentrated and simultaneously poured-down on us, was the annual cattle-fair. here, assembling from all the four winds, came the elements of an unspeakable hurly-burly. nutbrown maids and nutbrown men, all clear-washed, loud-laughing, bedizened and beribanded; who came for dancing, for treating, and if possible, for happiness. topbooted graziers from the north; swiss brokers, italian drovers, also topbooted, from the south; these with their subalterns in leather jerkins, leather skull-caps, and long oxgoads; shouting in half-articulate speech, amid the inarticulate barking and bellowing. apart stood potters from far saxony, with their crockery in fair rows; nürnberg pedlars, in booths that to me seemed richer than ormuz bazaars; showmen from the lago maggiore; detachments of the _wiener schub_ (offscourings of vienna) vociferously superintending games of chance. ballad-singers brayed, auctioneers grew hoarse; cheap new wine (_heuriger_) flowed like water, still worse confounding the confusion; and high over all, vaulted, in ground-and-lofty tumbling, a particoloured merry-andrew, like the genius of the place and of life itself. 'thus encircled by the mystery of existence; under the deep heavenly firmament; waited-on by the four golden seasons, with their vicissitudes of contribution, for even grim winter brought its skating-matches and shooting-matches, its snow-storms and christmas-carols,--did the child sit and learn. these things were the alphabet, whereby in aftertime he was to syllable and partly read the grand volume of the world; what matters it whether such alphabet be in large gilt letters or in small ungilt ones, so you have an eye to read it? for gneschen, eager to learn, the very act of looking thereon was a blessedness that gilded all: his existence was a bright, soft element of joy; out of which, as in prospero's island, wonder after wonder bodied itself forth, to teach by charming. 'nevertheless, i were but a vain dreamer to say, that even then my felicity was perfect. i had, once for all, come down from heaven into the earth. among the rainbow colours that glowed on my horizon, lay even in childhood a dark ring of care, as yet no thicker than a thread, and often quite overshone; yet always it reappeared, nay ever waxing broader and broader; till in after-years it almost over-shadowed my whole canopy, and threatened to engulf me in final night. it was the ring of necessity whereby we are all begirt; happy he for whom a kind heavenly sun brightens it into a ring of duty, and plays round it with beautiful prismatic diffractions; yet ever, as basis and as bourne for our whole being, it is there. * * * * * 'for the first few years of our terrestrial apprenticeship, we have not much work to do; but, boarded and lodged gratis, are set down mostly to look about us over the workshop, and see others work, till we have understood the tools a little, and can handle this and that. if good passivity alone, and not good passivity and good activity together, were the thing wanted, then was my early position favourable beyond the most. in all that respects openness of sense, affectionate temper, ingenuous curiosity, and the fostering of these, what more could i have wished? on the other side, however, things went not so well. my active power (_thatkraft_) was unfavourably hemmed-in; of which misfortune how many traces yet abide with me! in an orderly house, where the litter of children's sports is hateful enough, your training is too stoical; rather to bear and forbear than to make and do. i was forbid much: wishes in any measure bold i had to renounce; everywhere a strait bond of obedience inflexibly held me down. thus already freewill often came in painful collision with necessity; so that my tears flowed, and at seasons the child itself might taste that root of bitterness, wherewith the whole fruitage of our life is mingled and tempered. 'in which habituation to obedience, truly, it was beyond measure safer to err by excess than by defect. obedience is our universal duty and destiny; wherein whoso will not bend must break: too early and too thoroughly we cannot be trained to know that would, in this world of ours, is as mere zero to should, and for most part as the smallest of fractions even to shall. hereby was laid for me the basis of worldly discretion, nay, of morality itself. let me not quarrel with my upbringing! it was rigorous, too frugal, compressively secluded, everyway unscientific: yet in that very strictness and domestic solitude might there not lie the root of deeper earnestness, of the stem from which all noble fruit must grow? above all, how unskilful soever, it was loving, it was well-meant, honest; whereby every deficiency was helped. my kind mother, for as such i must ever love the good gretchen, did me one altogether invaluable service: she taught me, less indeed by word than by act and daily reverent look and habitude, her own simple version of the christian faith. andreas too attended church; yet more like a parade-duty, for which he in the other world expected pay with arrears,--as, i trust, he has received; but my mother, with a true woman's heart, and fine though uncultivated sense, was in the strictest acceptation religious. how indestructibly the good grows, and propagates itself, even among the weedy entanglements of evil! the highest whom i knew on earth i here saw bowed down, with awe unspeakable, before a higher in heaven: such things, especially in infancy, reach inwards to the very core of your being; mysteriously does a holy of holies build itself into visibility in the mysterious deeps; and reverence, the divinest in man, springs forth undying from its mean envelopment of fear. wouldst thou rather be a peasant's son that knew, were it never so rudely, there was a god in heaven and in man; or a duke's son that only knew there were two-and-thirty quarters on the family-coach?' to which last question we must answer: beware, o teufelsdröckh, of spiritual pride! chapter iii pedagogy hitherto we see young gneschen, in his indivisible case of yellow serge, borne forward mostly on the arms of kind nature alone; seated, indeed, and much to his mind, in the terrestrial workshop; but (except his soft hazel eyes, which we doubt not already gleamed with a still intelligence) called upon for little voluntary movement there. hitherto, accordingly, his aspect is rather generic, that of an incipient philosopher and poet in the abstract; perhaps it would trouble herr heuschrecke himself to say wherein the special doctrine of clothes is as yet foreshadowed or betokened. for with gneschen, as with others, the man may indeed stand pictured in the boy (at least all the pigments are there); yet only some half of the man stands in the child, or young boy, namely, his passive endowment, not his active. the more impatient are we to discover what figure he cuts in this latter capacity; how when, to use his own words, 'he understands the tools a little, and can handle this or that,' he will proceed to handle it. here, however, may be the place to state that, in much of our philosopher's history, there is something of an almost hindoo character: nay perhaps in that so well-fostered and everyway excellent 'passivity' of his, which, with no free development of the antagonist activity, distinguished his childhood, we may detect the rudiments of much that, in after days, and still in these present days, astonishes the world. for the shallow-sighted, teufelsdröckh is oftenest a man without activity of any kind, a no-man; for the deep-sighted, again, a man with activity almost superabundant, yet so spiritual, close-hidden, enigmatic, that no mortal can foresee its explosions, or even when it has exploded, so much as ascertain its significance. a dangerous, difficult temper for the modern european; above all, disadvantageous in the hero of a biography! now as heretofore it will behove the editor of these pages, were it never so unsuccessfully, to do his endeavour. among the earliest tools of any complicacy which a man, especially a man of letters, gets to handle, are his class-books. on this portion of his history, teufelsdröckh looks down professedly as indifferent. reading he 'cannot remember ever to have learned'; so perhaps had it by nature. he says generally: 'of the insignificant portion of my education, which depended on schools, there need almost no notice be taken. i learned what others learn; and kept it stored-by in a corner of my head, seeing as yet no manner of use in it. my schoolmaster, a downbent, brokenhearted, underfoot martyr, as others of that guild are, did little for me, except discover that he could do little: he, good soul, pronounced me a genius, fit for the learned professions; and that i must be sent to the gymnasium, and one day to the university. meanwhile, what printed thing soever i could meet with i read. my very copper pocket-money i laid-out on stall-literature; which, as it accumulated, i with my own hands sewed into volumes. by this means was the young head furnished with a considerable miscellany of things and shadows of things: history in authentic fragments lay mingled with fabulous chimeras, wherein also was reality; and the whole not as dead stuff, but as living pabulum, tolerably nutritive for a mind as yet so peptic.' that the entepfuhl schoolmaster judged well, we now know. indeed, already in the youthful gneschen, with all his outward stillness, there may have been manifest an inward vivacity that promised much; symptoms of a spirit singularly open, thoughtful, almost poetical. thus, to say nothing of his suppers on the orchard-wall, and other phenomena of that earlier period, have many readers of these pages stumbled, in their twelfth year, on such reflections as the following? 'it struck me much, as i sat by the kuhbach, one silent noontide, and watched it flowing, gurgling, to think how this same streamlet had flowed and gurgled, through all changes of weather and of fortune, from beyond the earliest date of history. yes, probably on the morning when joshua forded jordan; even as at the midday when cæsar, doubtless with difficulty, swam the nile, yet kept his _commentaries_ dry,--this little kuhbach, assiduous as tiber, eurotas or siloa, was murmuring on across the wilderness, as yet unnamed, unseen: here, too, as in the euphrates and the ganges, is a vein or veinlet of the grand world-circulation of waters, which, with its atmospheric arteries, has lasted and lasts simply with the world. thou fool! nature alone is antique, and the oldest art a mushroom; that idle crag thou sittest on is six-thousand years of age.' in which little thought, as in a little fountain, may there not lie the beginning of those well-nigh unutterable meditations on the grandeur and mystery of time, and its relation to eternity, which play such a part in this philosophy of clothes? over his gymnasic and academic years the professor by no means lingers so lyrical and joyful as over his childhood. green sunny tracts there are still; but intersected by bitter rivulets of tears, here and there stagnating into sour marshes of discontent. 'with my first view of the hinterschlag gymnasium,' writes he, 'my evil days began. well do i still remember the red sunny whitsuntide morning, when, trotting full of hope by the side of father andreas, i entered the main street of the place, and saw its steeple-clock (then striking eight) and _schuldthurm_ (jail), and the aproned or disaproned burghers moving-in to breakfast: a little dog, in mad terror, was rushing past; for some human imps had tied a tin-kettle to its tail; thus did the agonised creature, loud-jingling, career through the whole length of the borough, and become notable enough. fit emblem of many a conquering hero, to whom fate (wedding fantasy to sense, as it often elsewhere does) has malignantly appended a tin-kettle of ambition, to chase him on; which the faster he runs, urges him the faster, the more loudly and more foolishly! fit emblem also of much that awaited myself, in that mischievous den; as in the world, whereof it was a portion and epitome! 'alas, the kind beech-rows of entepfuhl were hidden in the distance: i was among strangers, harshly, at best indifferently, disposed towards me; the young heart felt, for the first time, quite orphaned and alone.' his schoolfellows, as is usual, persecuted him: 'they were boys,' he says, 'mostly rude boys, and obeyed the impulse of rude nature, which bids the deerherd fall upon any stricken hart, the duck-flock put to death any broken-winged brother or sister, and on all hands the strong tyrannise over the weak.' he admits, that though 'perhaps in an unusual degree morally courageous,' he succeeded ill in battle, and would fain have avoided it; a result, as would appear, owing less to his small personal stature (for in passionate seasons he was 'incredibly nimble'), than to his 'virtuous principles': 'if it was disgraceful to be beaten,' says he, 'it was only a shade less disgraceful to have so much as fought; thus was i drawn two ways at once, and in this important element of school-history, the war-element, had little but sorrow.' on the whole, that same excellent 'passivity,' so notable in teufelsdröckh's childhood, is here visibly enough again getting nourishment. 'he wept often; indeed to such a degree that he was nicknamed _der weinende_ (the tearful), which epithet, till towards his thirteenth year, was indeed not quite unmerited. only at rare intervals did the young soul burst-forth into fire-eyed rage, and, with a stormfulness (_ungestüm_) under which the boldest quailed, assert that he too had rights of man, or at least of mankin.' in all which, who does not discern a fine flower-tree and cinnamon-tree (of genius) nigh choked among pumpkins, reed-grass and ignoble shrubs; and forced if it would live, to struggle upwards only, and not outwards; into a _height_ quite sickly, and disproportioned to its _breadth_? we find, moreover, that his greek and latin were 'mechanically' taught; hebrew scarce even mechanically; much else which they called history, cosmography, philosophy, and so forth, no better than not at all. so that, except inasmuch as nature was still busy; and he himself 'went about, as was of old his wont, among the craftsmen's workshops, there learning many things'; and farther lighted on some small store of curious reading, in hans wachtel the cooper's house, where he lodged,--his time, it would appear, was utterly wasted. which facts the professor has not yet learned to look upon with any contentment. indeed, throughout the whole of this bag _scorpio_, where we now are, and often in the following bag, he shows himself unusually animated on the matter of education, and not without some touch of what we might presume to be anger. 'my teachers,' says he, 'were hide-bound pedants, without knowledge of man's nature, or of boy's; or of aught save their lexicons and quarterly account-books. innumerable dead vocables (no dead language, for they themselves knew no language) they crammed into us, and called it fostering the growth of mind. how can an inanimate, mechanical gerund-grinder, the like of whom will, in a subsequent century, be manufactured at nürnberg out of wood and leather, foster the growth of anything; much more of mind, which grows, not like a vegetable (by having its roots littered with etymological compost), but like a spirit, by mysterious contact of spirit; thought kindling itself at the fire of living thought? how shall _he_ give kindling, in whose own inward man there is no live coal, but all is burnt-out to a dead grammatical cinder? the hinterschlag professors knew syntax enough; and of the human soul thus much: that it had a faculty called memory, and could be acted-on through the muscular integument by appliance of birch-rods. 'alas, so is it everywhere, so will it ever be; till the hodman is discharged, or reduced to hodbearing, and an architect is hired, and on all hands fitly encouraged: till communities and individuals discover, not without surprise, that fashioning the souls of a generation by knowledge can rank on a level with blowing their bodies to pieces by gunpowder; that with generals and fieldmarshals for killing, there should be world-honoured dignitaries, and were it possible, true god-ordained priests, for teaching. but as yet, though the soldier wears openly, and even parades, his butchering-tool, nowhere, far as i have travelled, did the schoolmaster make show of his instructing-tool: nay, were he to walk abroad with birch girt on thigh, as if he therefrom expected honour, would there not, among the idler class, perhaps a certain levity be excited?' in the third year of this gymnasic period, father andreas seems to have died: the young scholar, otherwise so maltreated, saw himself for the first time clad outwardly in sables, and inwardly in quite inexpressible melancholy. 'the dark bottomless abyss, that lies under our feet, had yawned open; the pale kingdoms of death, with all their innumerable silent nations and generations, stood before him; the inexorable word, never! now first showed its meaning. my mother wept, and her sorrow got vent; but in my heart there lay a whole lake of tears, pent-up in silent desolation. nevertheless the unworn spirit is strong; life is so healthful that it even finds nourishment in death: these stern experiences, planted down by memory in my imagination, rose there to a whole cypress-forest, sad but beautiful; waving, with not unmelodious sighs, in dark luxuriance, in the hottest sunshine, through long years of youth:--as in manhood also it does, and will do; for i have now pitched my tent under a cypress-tree; the tomb is now my inexpugnable fortress, ever close by the gate of which i look upon the hostile armaments, and pains and penalties of tyrannous life placidly enough, and listen to its loudest threatenings with a still smile. o ye loved ones, that already sleep in the noiseless bed of rest, whom in life i could only weep for and never help; and ye, who wide-scattered still toil lonely in the monster-bearing desert, dyeing the flinty ground with your blood,--yet a little while, and we shall all meet there, and our mother's bosom will screen us all; and oppression's harness, and sorrow's fire-whip, and all the gehenna bailiffs that patrol and inhabit ever-vexed time, cannot thenceforth harm us any more!' close by which rather beautiful apostrophe, lies a laboured character of the deceased andreas futteral; of his natural ability, his deserts in life (as prussian sergeant); with long historical inquiries into the genealogy of the futteral family, here traced back as far as henry the fowler: the whole of which we pass over, not without astonishment. it only concerns us to add, that now was the time when mother gretchen revealed to her foster-son that he was not at all of this kindred, or indeed of any kindred, having come into historical existence in the way already known to us. 'thus was i doubly orphaned,' says he; 'bereft not only of possession, but even of remembrance. sorrow and wonder, here suddenly united, could not but produce abundant fruit. such a disclosure, in such a season, struck its roots through my whole nature: ever till the years of mature manhood, it mingled with my whole thoughts, was as the stem whereon all my day-dreams and night-dreams grew. a certain poetic elevation, yet also a corresponding civic depression, it naturally imparted: _i was like no other_; in which fixed-idea, leading sometimes to highest, and oftener to frightfullest results, may there not lie the first spring of tendencies, which in my life have become remarkable enough? as in birth, so in action, speculation, and social position, my fellows are perhaps not numerous.' * * * * * in the bag _sagittarius_, as we at length discover, teufelsdröckh has become a university man; though, how, when, or of what quality, will nowhere disclose itself with the smallest certainty. few things, in the way of confusion and capricious indistinctness, can now surprise our readers; not even the total want of dates, almost without parallel in a biographical work. so enigmatic, so chaotic we have always found, and must always look to find, these scattered leaves. in _sagittarius_, however, teufelsdröckh begins to show himself even more than usually sibylline: fragments of all sorts; scraps of regular memoir, college-exercises, programs, professional testimoniums, milkscores, torn billets, sometimes to appearance of an amatory cast; all blown together as if by merest chance, henceforth bewilder the sane historian. to combine any picture of these university, and the subsequent, years; much more, to decipher therein any illustrative primordial elements of the clothes-philosophy, becomes such a problem as the reader may imagine. so much we can see; darkly, as through the foliage of some wavering thicket: a youth of no common endowment, who has passed happily through childhood, less happily yet still vigorously through boyhood, now at length perfect in 'dead vocables,' and set down, as he hopes, by the living fountain, there to superadd ideas and capabilities. from such fountain he draws, diligently, thirstily, yet never or seldom with his whole heart, for the water nowise suits his palate; discouragements, entanglements, aberrations are discoverable or supposable. nor perhaps are even pecuniary distresses wanting; for 'the good gretchen, who in spite of advices from not disinterested relatives has sent him hither, must after a time withdraw her willing but too feeble hand.' nevertheless in an atmosphere of poverty and manifold chagrin, the humour of that young soul, what character is in him, first decisively reveals itself; and, like strong sunshine in weeping skies, gives out variety of colours, some of which are prismatic. thus, with the aid of time and of what time brings, has the stripling diogenes teufelsdröckh waxed into manly stature; and into so questionable an aspect, that we ask with new eagerness, how he specially came by it, and regret anew that there is no more explicit answer. certain of the intelligible and partially significant fragments, which are few in number, shall be extracted from that limbo of a paper-bag, and presented with the usual preparation. as if, in the bag _scorpio_, teufelsdröckh had not already expectorated his antipedagogic spleen; as if, from the name _sagittarius_, he had thought himself called upon to shoot arrows, we here again fall-in with such matter as this: 'the university where i was educated still stands vivid enough in my remembrance, and i know its name well; which name, however, i, from tenderness to existing interests and persons, shall in nowise divulge. it is my painful duty to say that, out of england and spain, ours was the worst of all hitherto discovered universities. this is indeed a time when right education is, as nearly as may be, impossible: however, in degrees of wrongness there is no limit: nay, i can conceive a worse system than that of the nameless itself; as poisoned victual may be worse than absolute hunger. 'it is written, when the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch: wherefore, in such circumstances, may it not sometimes be safer, if both leader and led simply--sit still? had you, anywhere in crim tartary; walled-in a square enclosure; furnished it with a small, ill-chosen library; and then turned loose into it eleven-hundred christian striplings, to tumble about as they listed, from three to seven years: certain persons, under the title of professors, being stationed at the gates, to declare aloud that it was a university, and exact considerable admission-fees,--you had, not indeed in mechanical structure, yet in spirit and result, some imperfect resemblance of our high seminary. i say, imperfect; for if our mechanical structure was quite other, so neither was our result altogether the same: unhappily, we were not in crim tartary, but in a corrupt european city, full of smoke and sin; moreover, in the middle of a public, which, without far costlier apparatus than that of the square enclosure, and declaration aloud, you could not be sure of gulling. 'gullible, however, by fit apparatus, all publics are; and gulled, with the most surprising profit. towards anything like a _statistics of imposture_, indeed, little as yet has been done: with a strange indifference, our economists, nigh buried under tables for minor branches of industry, have altogether overlooked the grand all-overtopping hypocrisy branch; as if our whole arts of puffery, of quackery, priestcraft, kingcraft, and the innumerable other crafts and mysteries of that genus, had not ranked in productive industry at all! can any one, for example, so much as say, what moneys, in literature and shoeblacking, are realised by actual instruction and actual jet polish; what by fictitious-persuasive proclamation of such; specifying, in distinct items, the distributions, circulations, disbursements, incomings of said moneys, with the smallest approach to accuracy? but to ask, how far, in all the several infinitely-complected departments of social business, in government, education, in manual, commercial, intellectual fabrication of every sort, man's want is supplied by true ware; how far by the mere appearance of true ware:--in other words, to what extent, by what methods, with what effects, in various times and countries, deception takes the place of wages of performance: here truly is an inquiry big with results for the future time, but to which hitherto only the vaguest answer can be given. if for the present, in our europe, we estimate the ratio of ware to appearance of ware so high even as at one to a hundred (which, considering the wages of a pope, russian autocrat, or english game-preserver, is probably not far from the mark),--what almost prodigious saving may there not be anticipated, as the _statistics of imposture_ advances, and so the manufacturing of shams (that of realities rising into clearer and clearer distinction therefrom) gradually declines, and at length becomes all but wholly unnecessary! 'this for the coming golden ages. what i had to remark, for the present brazen one, is, that in several provinces, as in education, polity, religion, where so much is wanted and indispensable, and so little can as yet be furnished, probably imposture is of sanative, anodyne nature, and man's gullibility not his worst blessing. suppose your sinews of war quite broken; i mean your military chest insolvent, forage all but exhausted; and that the whole army is about to mutiny, disband, and cut your and each other's throat,--then were it not well could you, as if by miracle, pay them in any sort of fairy-money, feed them on coagulated water, or mere imagination of meat; whereby, till the real supply came up, they might be kept together and quiet? such perhaps was the aim of nature, who does nothing without aim, in furnishing her favourite, man, with this his so omnipotent or rather omnipatient talent of being gulled. 'how beautifully it works, with a little mechanism; nay, almost makes mechanism for itself! these professors in the nameless lived with ease, with safety, by a mere reputation, constructed in past times, and then too with no great effort, by quite another class of persons. which reputation, like a strong, brisk-going undershot wheel, sunk into the general current, bade fair, with only a little annual repainting on their part, to hold long together, and of its own accord assiduously grind for them. happy that it was so, for the millers! they themselves needed not to work; their attempts at working, at what they called educating, now when i look back on it, filled me with a certain mute admiration. 'besides all this, we boasted ourselves a rational university; in the highest degree hostile to mysticism; thus was the young vacant mind furnished with much talk about progress of the species, dark ages, prejudice, and the like; so that all were quickly enough blown out into a state of windy argumentativeness; whereby the better sort had soon to end in sick, impotent scepticism; the worser sort explode (_crepiren_) in finished self-conceit, and to all spiritual intents become dead.--but this too is portion of mankind's lot. if our era is the era of unbelief, why murmur under it; is there not a better coming, nay come? as in long-drawn systole and long-drawn diastole, must the period of faith alternate with the period of denial; must the vernal growth, the summer luxuriance of all opinions, spiritual representations and creations, be followed by, and again follow, the autumnal decay, the winter dissolution. for man lives in time, has his whole earthly being, endeavour and destiny shaped for him by time: only in the transitory time-symbol is the ever-motionless eternity we stand on made manifest. and yet, in such winter-seasons of denial, it is for the nobler-minded perhaps a comparative misery to have been born, and to be awake and work; and for the duller a felicity, if, like hibernating animals, safe-lodged in some salamanca university, or sybaris city, or other superstitious or voluptuous castle of indolence, they can slumber-through, in stupid dreams, and only awaken when the loud-roaring hailstorms have all done their work, and to our prayers and martyrdoms the new spring has been vouchsafed.' that in the environment, here mysteriously enough shadowed forth, teufelsdröckh must have felt ill at ease, cannot be doubtful. 'the hungry young,' he says, 'looked up to their spiritual nurses; and, for food, were bidden eat the east-wind. what vain jargon of controversial metaphysic, etymology, and mechanical manipulation falsely named science, was current there, i indeed learned, better perhaps than the most. among eleven-hundred christian youths, there will not be wanting some eleven eager to learn. by collision with such, a certain warmth, a certain polish was communicated; by instinct and happy accident, i took less to rioting (_renommiren_), than to thinking and reading, which latter also i was free to do. nay from the chaos of that library, i succeeded in fishing-up more books perhaps than had been known to the very keepers thereof. the foundation of a literary life was hereby laid : i learned, on my own strength, to read fluently in almost all cultivated languages, on almost all subjects and sciences; farther, as man is ever the prime object to man, already it was my favourite employment to read character in speculation, and from the writing to construe the writer. a certain groundplan of human nature and life began to fashion itself in me; wondrous enough, now when i look back on it; for my whole universe, physical and spiritual, was as yet a machine! however, such a conscious, recognised groundplan, the truest i had, _was_ beginning to be there, and by additional experiments might be corrected and indefinitely extended.' thus from poverty does the strong educe nobler wealth; thus in the destitution of the wild desert does our young ishmael acquire for himself the highest of all possessions, that of self-help. nevertheless a desert this was, waste, and howling with savage monsters. teufelsdröckh gives us long details of his 'fever-paroxysms of doubt'; his inquiries concerning miracles, and the evidences of religious faith; and how 'in the silent night-watches, still darker in his heart than over sky and earth, he has cast himself before the all-seeing, and with audible prayers cried vehemently for light, for deliverance from death and the grave. not till after long years, and unspeakable agonies, did the believing heart surrender; sink into spell-bound sleep, under the night-mare, unbelief; and, in this hag-ridden dream, mistake god's fair living world for a pallid, vacant hades and extinct pandemonium. but through such purgatory pain,' continues he, 'it is appointed us to pass; first must the dead letter of religion own itself dead, and drop piecemeal into dust, if the living spirit of religion, freed from this its charnel-house, is to arise on us, newborn of heaven, and with new healing under its wings.' to which purgatory pains, seemingly severe enough, if we add a liberal measure of earthly distresses, want of practical guidance, want of sympathy, want of money, want of hope; and all this in the fervid season of youth, so exaggerated in imagining, so boundless in desires, yet here so poor in means,--do we not see a strong incipient spirit oppressed and overloaded from without and from within; the fire of genius struggling-up among fuel-wood of the greenest, and as yet with more of bitter vapour than of clear flame? from various fragments of letters and other documentary scraps, it is to be inferred that teufelsdröckh, isolated, shy, retiring as he was, had not altogether escaped notice: certain established men are aware of his existence; and, if stretching-out no helpful hand, have at least their eyes on him. he appears, though in dreary enough humour, to be addressing himself to the profession of law;--whereof, indeed, the world has since seen him a public graduate. but omitting these broken, unsatisfactory thrums of economical relation, let us present rather the following small thread of moral relation; and therewith, the reader for himself weaving it in at the right place, conclude our dim arras-picture of these university years. 'here also it was that i formed acquaintance with herr towgood, or, as it is perhaps better written, herr toughgut; a young person of quality (_von adel_), from the interior parts of england. he stood connected, by blood and hospitality, with the counts von zähdarm, in this quarter of germany; to which noble family i likewise was, by his means, with all friendliness, brought near. towgood had a fair talent, unspeakably ill-cultivated; with considerable humour of character: and, bating his total ignorance, for he knew nothing except boxing and a little grammar, showed less of that aristocratic impassivity, and silent fury, than for most part belongs to travellers of his nation. to him i owe my first practical knowledge of the english and their ways; perhaps also something of the partiality with which i have ever since regarded that singular people. towgood was not without an eye, could he have come at any light. invited doubtless by the presence of the zähdarm family, he had travelled hither, in the almost frantic hope of perfecting his studies; he, whose studies had as yet been those of infancy, hither to a university where so much as the notion of perfection, not to say the effort after it, no longer existed! often we would condole over the hard destiny of the young in this era: how, after all our toil, we were to be turned-out into the world, with beards on our chins indeed, but with few other attributes of manhood; no existing thing that we were trained to act on, nothing that we could so much as believe. "how has our head on the outside a polished hat," would towgood exclaim, "and in the inside vacancy, or a froth of vocables and attorney-logic! at a small cost men are educated to make leather into shoes; but at a great cost, what am i educated to make? by heaven, brother! what i have already eaten and worn, as i came thus far, would endow a considerable hospital of incurables."--"man, indeed," i would answer, "has a digestive faculty, which must be kept working, were it even partly by stealth. but as for our mis-education, make not bad worse; waste not the time yet ours, in trampling on thistles because they have yielded us no figs. _frisch zu, bruder!_ here are books, and we have brains to read them; here is a whole earth and a whole heaven, and we have eyes to look on them: _frisch zu!_" 'often also our talk was gay; not without brilliancy, and even fire. we looked-out on life, with its strange scaffolding, where all at once harlequins dance, and men are beheaded and quartered: motley, not unterrific was the aspect; but we looked on it like brave youths. for myself, these were perhaps my most genial hours. towards this young warmhearted, strongheaded and wrongheaded herr towgood i was even near experiencing the now obsolete sentiment of friendship. yes, foolish heathen that i was, i felt that, under certain conditions, i could have loved this man, and taken him to my bosom, and been his brother once and always. by degrees, however, i understood the new time, and its wants. if man's _soul_ is indeed, as in the finnish language, and utilitarian philosophy, a kind of _stomach_, what else is the true meaning of spiritual union but an eating together? thus we, instead of friends, are dinner-guests; and here as elsewhere have cast away chimeras.' so ends, abruptly as is usual, and enigmatically, this little incipient romance. what henceforth becomes of the brave herr towgood, or toughgut? he has dived-under, in the autobiographical chaos, and swims we see not where. does any reader 'in the interior parts of england' know of such a man? chapter iv getting under way 'thus, nevertheless,' writes our autobiographer, apparently as quitting college, 'was there realised somewhat; namely, i, diogenes teufelsdröckh: a visible temporary figure (_zeitbild_), occupying some cubic feet of space, and containing within it forces both physical and spiritual; hopes, passions, thoughts; the whole wondrous furniture, in more or less perfection, belonging to that mystery, a man. capabilities there were in me to give battle, in some small degree, against the great empire of darkness: does not the very ditcher and delver, with his spade, extinguish many a thistle and puddle; and so leave a little order, where he found the opposite? nay your very daymoth has capabilities in this kind; and ever organises something (into its own body, if no otherwise), which was before inorganic; and of mute dead air makes living music, though only of the faintest, by humming. 'how much more, one whose capabilities are spiritual; who has learned, or begun learning, the grand thaumaturgic art of thought! thaumaturgic i name it; for hitherto all miracles have been wrought thereby, and henceforth innumerable will be wrought; whereof we, even in these days, witness some. of the poet's and prophet's inspired message, and how it makes and unmakes whole worlds, i shall forbear mention: but cannot the dullest hear steam-engines clanking around him? has he not seen the scottish brassmith's idea (and this but a mechanical one) travelling on fire-wings round the cape, and across two oceans; and stronger than any other enchanter's familiar, on all hands unweariedly fetching and carrying: at home, not only weaving cloth, but rapidly enough overturning the whole old system of society; and, for feudalism and preservation of the game, preparing us, by indirect but sure methods, industrialism and the government of the wisest? truly a thinking man is the worst enemy the prince of darkness can have; every time such a one announces himself, i doubt not, there runs a shudder through the nether empire; and new emissaries are trained, with new tactics, to, if possible, entrap him, and hoodwink and handcuff him. 'with such high vocation had i too, as denizen of the universe, been called. unhappy it is, however, that though born to the amplest sovereignty, in this way, with no less than sovereign right of peace and war against the time-prince (_zeitfürst_), or devil, and all his dominions, your coronation-ceremony costs such trouble, your sceptre is so difficult to get at, or even to get eye on!' by which last wiredrawn similitude does teufelsdröckh mean no more than that young men find obstacles in what we call 'getting under way'? 'not what i have,' continues he, 'but what i do is my kingdom. to each is given a certain inward talent, a certain outward environment of fortune; to each, by wisest combination of these two, a certain maximum of capability. but the hardest problem were ever this first: to find by study of yourself, and of the ground you stand on, what your combined inward and outward capability specially is. for, alas, our young soul is all budding with capabilities, and we see not yet which is the main and true one. always too the new man is in a new time, under new conditions; his course can be the _fac-simile_ of no prior one, but is by its nature original. and then how seldom will the outward capability fit the inward: though talented wonderfully enough, we are poor, unfriended, dyspeptical, bashful; nay what is worse than all, we are foolish. thus, in a whole imbroglio of capabilities, we go stupidly groping about, to grope which is ours, and often clutch the wrong one: in this mad work must several years of our small term be spent, till the purblind youth, by practice, acquire notions of distance, and become a seeing man. nay, many so spend their whole term, and in ever-new expectation, ever-new disappointment, shift from enterprise to enterprise, and from side to side: till at length, as exasperated striplings of threescore-and-ten, they shift into their last enterprise, that of getting buried. 'such, since the most of us are too ophthalmic, would be the general fate; were it not that one thing saves us: our hunger. for on this ground, as the prompt nature of hunger is well known, must a prompt choice be made: hence have we, with wise foresight, indentures and apprenticeships for our irrational young; whereby, in due season, the vague universality of a man shall find himself ready-moulded into a specific craftsman; and so thenceforth work, with much or with little waste of capability as it may be; yet not with the worst waste, that of time. nay even in matters spiritual, since the spiritual artist too is born blind, and does not, like certain other creatures, receive sight in nine days, but far later, sometimes never,--is it not well that there should be what we call professions, or bread-studies (_brodzwecke_), pre-appointed us? here, circling like the gin-horse, for whom partial or total blindness is no evil, the bread-artist can travel contentedly round and round, still fancying that it is forward and forward; and realise much: for himself victual; for the world an additional horse's power in the grand corn-mill or hemp-mill of economic society. for me too had such a leading-string been provided; only that it proved a neck-halter, and had nigh throttled me, till i broke it off. then, in the words of ancient pistol, did the world generally become mine oyster, which i, by strength or cunning, was to open, as i would and could. almost had i deceased (_fast wär ich umgekommen_), so obstinately did it continue shut.' we see here, significantly foreshadowed, the spirit of much that was to befall our autobiographer; the historical embodiment of which, as it painfully takes shape in his life, lies scattered, in dim disastrous details, through this bag _pisces_, and those that follow. a young man of high talent, and high though still temper, like a young mettled colt, 'breaks-off his neck-halter,' and bounds forth, from his peculiar manger, into the wide world; which, alas, he finds all rigorously fenced-in. richest clover-fields tempt his eye; but to him they are forbidden pasture: either pining in progressive starvation, he must stand; or, in mad exasperation, must rush to and fro, leaping against sheer stone-walls, which he cannot leap over, which only lacerate and lame him; till at last, after thousand attempts and endurances, he, as if by miracle, clears his way; not indeed into luxuriant and luxurious clover, yet into a certain bosky wilderness where existence is still possible, and freedom, though waited on by scarcity, is not without sweetness. in a word, teufelsdröckh having thrown-up his legal profession, finds himself without landmark of outward guidance; whereby his previous want of decided belief, or inward guidance, is frightfully aggravated. necessity urges him on; time will not stop, neither can he, a son of time; wild passions without solacement, wild faculties without employment, ever vex and agitate him. he too must enact that stern monodrama, _no object and no rest_; must front its successive destinies, work through to its catastrophe, and deduce therefrom what moral he can. yet let us be just to him, let us admit that his 'neck-halter' sat nowise easy on him; that he was in some degree forced to break it off. if we look at the young man's civic position, in this nameless capital, as he emerges from its nameless university, we can discern well that it was far from enviable. his first law-examination he has come through triumphantly; and can even boast that the _examen rigorosum_ need not have frightened him: but though he is hereby 'an _auscultator_ of respectability,' what avails it? there is next to no employment to be had. neither, for a youth without connexions, is the process of expectation very hopeful in itself; nor for one of his disposition much cheered from without. 'my fellow auscultators,' he says, 'were auscultators: they dressed, and digested, and talked articulate words; other vitality showed they almost none. small speculation in those eyes, that they did glare withal! sense neither for the high nor for the deep, nor for aught human or divine, save only for the faintest scent of coming preferment.' in which words, indicating a total estrangement on the part of teufelsdröckh, may there not also lurk traces of a bitterness as from wounded vanity? doubtless these prosaic auscultators may have sniffed at him, with his strange ways; and tried to hate, and what was much more impossible, to despise him. friendly communion, in any case, there could not be: already has the young teufelsdröckh left the other young geese; and swims apart, though as yet uncertain whether he himself is cygnet or gosling. perhaps, too, what little employment he had was performed ill, at best unpleasantly. 'great practical method and expertness' he may brag of; but is there not also great practical pride, though deep-hidden, only the deeper-seated? so shy a man can never have been popular. we figure to ourselves, how in those days he may have played strange freaks with his independence, and so forth: do not his own words betoken as much? 'like a very young person, i imagined it was with work alone, and not also with folly and sin, in myself and others, that i had been appointed to struggle.' be this as it may, his progress from the passive auscultatorship, towards any active assessorship, is evidently of the slowest. by degrees, those same established men, once partially inclined to patronise him, seem to withdraw their countenance, and give him up as 'a man of genius': against which procedure he, in these papers, loudly protests. 'as if,' says he, 'the higher did not presuppose the lower; as if he who can fly into heaven, could not also walk post if he resolved on it! but the world is an old woman, and mistakes any gilt farthing for a gold coin; whereby being often cheated, she will thenceforth trust nothing but the common copper.' how our winged sky-messenger, unaccepted as a terrestrial runner, contrived, in the mean while, to keep himself from flying skyward without return, is not too clear from these documents. good old gretchen seems to have vanished from the scene, perhaps from the earth; other horn of plenty, or even of parsimony, nowhere flows for him; so that 'the prompt nature of hunger being well known,' we are not without our anxiety. from private tuition, in never so many languages and sciences, the aid derivable is small; neither, to use his own words, 'does the young adventurer hitherto suspect in himself any literary gift; but at best earns bread-and-water wages, by his wide faculty of translation. nevertheless,' continues he, 'that i subsisted is clear, for you find me even now alive.' which fact, however, except upon the principle of our true-hearted, kind old proverb, that 'there is always life for a living one,' we must profess ourselves unable to explain. certain landlords' bills, and other economic documents, bearing the mark of settlement, indicate that he was not without money; but, like an independent hearth-holder, if not house-holder, paid his way. here also occur, among many others, two little mutilated notes, which perhaps throw light on his condition. the first has now no date, or writer's name, but a huge blot; and runs to this effect: 'the (_inkblot_), tied-down by previous promise, cannot, except by best wishes, forward the herr teufelsdröckh's views on the assessorship in question; and sees himself under the cruel necessity of forbearing, for the present, what were otherwise his duty and joy, to assist in opening the career for a man of genius, on whom far higher triumphs are yet waiting.' the other is on gilt paper; and interests us like a sort of epistolary mummy now dead, yet which once lived and beneficently worked. we give it in the original: '_herr teufelsdröckh wird von der frau gräfinn, auf donnerstag, zum_ Æsthetischen thee _schönstens eingeladen._' thus, in answer to a cry for solid pudding, whereof there is the most urgent need, comes, epigrammatically enough, the invitation to a wash of quite fluid _Æsthetic tea!_ how teufelsdröckh, now at actual handgrips with destiny herself, may have comported himself among these musical and literary dilettanti of both sexes, like a hungry lion invited to a feast of chickenweed, we can only conjecture. perhaps in expressive silence, and abstinence: otherwise if the lion, in such case, is to feast at all, it cannot be on the chickenweed, but only on the chickens. for the rest, as this frau gräfinn dates from the _zähdarm house_, she can be no other than the countess and mistress of the same; whose intellectual tendencies, and good-will to teufelsdröckh, whether on the footing of herr towgood, or on his own footing, are hereby manifest. that some sort of relation, indeed, continued, for a time, to connect our autobiographer, though perhaps feebly enough, with this noble house, we have elsewhere express evidence. doubtless, if he expected patronage, it was in vain; enough for him if he here obtained occasional glimpses of the great world, from which we at one time fancied him to have been always excluded. 'the zähdarms,' says he, 'lived in the soft, sumptuous garniture of aristocracy; whereto literature and art, attracted and attached from without, were to serve as the handsomest fringing. it was to the _gnädigen frau_ (her ladyship) that this latter improvement was due: assiduously she gathered, dextrously she fitted-on, what fringing was to be had; lace or cobweb, as the place yielded.' was teufelsdröckh also a fringe, of lace or cobweb; or promising to be such? 'with his _excellenz_ (the count),' continues he, 'i have more than once had the honour to converse; chiefly on general affairs, and the aspect of the world, which he, though now past middle life, viewed in no unfavourable light; finding indeed, except the outrooting of journalism (_die auszurottende journalistik_), little to desiderate therein. on some points, as his _excellenz_ was not uncholeric, i found it more pleasant to keep silence. besides, his occupation being that of owning land, there might be faculties enough, which, as superfluous for such use, were little developed in him.' that to teufelsdröckh the aspect of the world was nowise so faultless, and many things besides 'the outrooting of journalism' might have seemed improvements, we can readily conjecture. with nothing but a barren auscultatorship from without, and so many mutinous thoughts and wishes from within, his position was no easy one. 'the universe,' he says, 'was as a mighty sphinx-riddle, which i knew so little of, yet must rede, or be devoured. in red streaks of unspeakable grandeur, yet also in the blackness of darkness, was life, to my too-unfurnished thought, unfolding itself. a strange contradiction lay in me; and i as yet knew not the solution of it; knew not that spiritual music can spring only from discords set in harmony; that but for evil there were no good, as victory is only possible by battle.' 'i have heard affirmed (surely in jest),' observes he elsewhere, 'by not unphilanthropic persons, that it were a real increase of human happiness, could all young men from the age of nineteen be covered under barrels, or rendered otherwise invisible; and there left to follow their lawful studies and callings, till they emerged, sadder and wiser, at the age of twenty-five. with which suggestion, at least as considered in the light of a practical scheme, i need scarcely say that i nowise coincide. nevertheless it is plausibly urged that, as young ladies (_mädchen_) are, to mankind, precisely the most delightful in those years; so young gentlemen (_bübchen_) do then attain their maximum of detestability. such gawks (_gecken_) are they; and foolish peacocks, and yet with such a vulturous hunger for self-indulgence; so obstinate, obstreperous, vainglorious; in all senses, so froward and so forward. no mortal's endeavour or attainment will, in the smallest, content the as yet unendeavouring, unattaining young gentleman; but he could make it all infinitely better, were it worthy of him. life everywhere is the most manageable matter, simple as a question in the rule-of-three: multiply your second and third term together, divide the product by the first, and your quotient will be the answer,--which you are but an ass if you cannot come at. the booby has not yet found-out, by any trial, that, do what one will, there is ever a cursed fraction, oftenest a decimal repeater, and no net integer quotient so much as to be thought of.' in which passage does not there lie an implied confession that teufelsdröckh himself, besides his outward obstructions, had an inward, still greater, to contend with; namely, a certain temporary, youthful, yet still afflictive derangement of head? alas, on the former side alone, his case was hard enough. 'it continues ever true,' says he, 'that saturn, or chronos, or what we call time, devours all his children: only by incessant running, by incessant working, may you (for some threescore-and-ten years) escape him; and you too he devours at last. can any sovereign, or holy alliance of sovereigns, bid time stand still; even in thought, shake themselves free of time? our whole terrestrial being is based on time, and built of time; it is wholly a movement, a time-impulse; time is the author of it, the material of it. hence also our whole duty, which is to move, to work,--in the right direction. are not our bodies and our souls in continual movement, whether we will or not; in a continual waste, requiring a continual repair? utmost satisfaction of our whole outward and inward wants were but satisfaction for a space of time; thus, whatso we have done, is done, and for us annihilated, and ever must we go and do anew. o time-spirit, how hast thou environed and imprisoned us, and sunk us so deep in thy troublous dim time-element, that only in lucid moments can so much as glimpses of our upper azure home be revealed to us! me, however, as a son of time, unhappier than some others, was time threatening to eat quite prematurely; for, strive as i might, there was no good running, so obstructed was the path, so gyved were the feet.' that is to say, we presume, speaking in the dialect of this lower world, that teufelsdröckh's whole duty and necessity was, like other men's, 'to work,--in the right direction,' and that no work was to be had; whereby he became wretched enough. as was natural: with haggard scarcity threatening him in the distance; and so vehement a soul languishing in restless inaction, and forced thereby, like sir hudibras's sword by rust, to eat into itself for lack of something else to hew and hack! but on the whole, that same 'excellent passivity,' as it has all along done, is here again vigorously flourishing; in which circumstance may we not trace the beginnings of much that now characterises our professor; and perhaps, in faint rudiments, the origin of the clothes-philosophy itself? already the attitude he has assumed towards the world is too defensive; not, as would have been desirable, a bold attitude of attack. 'so far hitherto,' he says, 'as i had mingled with mankind, i was notable, if for anything, for a certain stillness of manner, which, as my friends often rebukingly declared, did but ill express the keen ardour of my feelings. i, in truth, regarded men with an excess both of love and of fear. the mystery of a person, indeed, is ever divine to him that has a sense for the god-like. often, notwithstanding, was i blamed, and by half-strangers hated, for my so-called hardness (_härte_), my indifferentism towards men; and the seemingly ironic tone i had adopted, as my favourite dialect in conversation. alas, the panoply of sarcasm was but as a buckram case, wherein i had striven to envelop myself; that so my own poor person might live safe there, and in all friendliness, being no longer exasperated by wounds. sarcasm i now see to be, in general, the language of the devil; for which reason i have long since as good as renounced it. but how many individuals did i, in those days, provoke into some degree of hostility thereby! an ironic man, with his sly stillness, and ambuscading ways, more especially an ironic young man, from whom it is least expected, may be viewed as a pest to society. have we not seen persons of weight and name coming forward, with gentlest indifference, to tread such a one out of sight, as an insignificancy and worm, start ceiling-high (_balkenhoch_), and thence fall shattered and supine, to be borne home on shutters, not without indignation, when he proved electric and a torpedo!' alas, how can a man with this devilishness of temper make way for himself in life; where the first problem, as teufelsdröckh too admits, is 'to unite yourself with some one and with somewhat (_sich anzuschliessen_)'? division, not union, is written on most part of his procedure. let us add too that, in no great length of time, the only important connexion he had ever succeeded in forming, his connexion with the zähdarm family, seems to have been paralysed, for all practical uses, by the death of the 'not uncholeric' old count. this fact stands recorded, quite incidentally, in a certain _discourse on epitaphs_, huddled into the present bag, among so much else; of which essay the learning and curious penetration are more to be approved of than the spirit. his grand principle is, that lapidary inscriptions, of what sort soever, should be historical rather than lyrical. 'by request of that worthy nobleman's survivors,' says he, 'i undertook to compose his epitaph; and not unmindful of my own rules, produced the following; which however, for an alleged defect of latinity, a defect never yet fully visible to myself, still remains unengraven';--wherein, we may predict, there is more than the latinity that will surprise an english reader: hic jacet philippus zaehdarm, cognomine magnus, zaehdarmi comes, ex imperii concilio, velleris aurei, periscelidis, necnon vulturis nigri eques. qui dum sub luna agebat, quinquies mille perdices plumbo confecit: varii cibi centumpondia millies centena millia, per se, perque servos quadrupedes bipedesve haud sine tumultu devolvens, in stercus palam convertit. nunc a labore requiescentem opera sequuntur. si monumentum quÆris, fimetum adspice. primum in orbe dejecit [_sub dato_]; postremum [_sub dato_]. chapter v romance 'for long years,' writes teufelsdröckh, 'had the poor hebrew, in this egypt of an auscultatorship, painfully toiled, baking bricks without stubble, before ever the question once struck him with entire force: for what?--_beym himmel!_ for food and warmth! and are food and warmth nowhere else, in the whole wide universe, discoverable?--come of it what might, i resolved to try.' thus then are we to see him in a new independent capacity, though perhaps far from an improved one. teufelsdröckh is now a man without profession. quitting the common fleet of herring-busses and whalers, where indeed his leeward, laggard condition was painful enough, he desperately steers-off, on a course of his own, by sextant and compass of his own. unhappy teufelsdröckh! though neither fleet, nor traffic, nor commodores pleased thee, still was it not _a fleet_, sailing in prescribed track, for fixed objects; above all, in combination, wherein, by mutual guidance, by all manner of loans and borrowings, each could manifoldly aid the other? how wilt thou sail in unknown seas; and for thyself find that shorter north-west passage to thy fair spice-country of a nowhere?--a solitary rover, on such a voyage, with such nautical tactics, will meet with adventures. nay, as we forthwith discover, a certain calypso-island detains him at the very outset; and as it were falsifies and oversets his whole reckoning. 'if in youth,' writes he once, 'the universe is majestically unveiling, and everywhere heaven revealing itself on earth, nowhere to the young man does this heaven on earth so immediately reveal itself as in the young maiden. strangely enough, in this strange life of ours, it has been so appointed. on the whole, as i have often said, a person (_persönlichkeit_) is ever holy to us: a certain orthodox anthropomorphism connects my _me_ with all _thees_ in bonds of love: but it is in this approximation of the like and unlike, that such heavenly attraction, as between negative and positive, first burns-out into a flame. is the pitifullest mortal person, think you, indifferent to us? is it not rather our heartfelt wish to be made one with him; to unite him to us, by gratitude, by admiration, even by fear; or failing all these, unite ourselves to him? but how much more, in this case of the like-unlike! here is conceded us the higher mystic possibility of such a union, the highest in our earth; thus, in the conducting medium of fantasy, flames-forth that _fire_-development of the universal spiritual electricity, which, as unfolded between man and woman, we first emphatically denominate love. 'in every well-conditioned stripling, as i conjecture, there already blooms a certain prospective paradise, cheered by some fairest eve; nor, in the stately vistas, and flowerage and foliage of that garden, is a tree of knowledge, beautiful and awful in the midst thereof, wanting. perhaps too the whole is but the lovelier, if cherubim and a flaming sword divide it from all footsteps of men; and grant him, the imaginative stripling, only the view, not the entrance. happy season of virtuous youth, when shame is still an impassable celestial barrier; and the sacred air-cities of hope have not shrunk into the mean clay-hamlets of reality; and man, by his nature, is yet infinite and free! 'as for our young forlorn,' continues teufelsdröckh, evidently meaning himself, 'in his secluded way of life, and with his glowing fantasy, the more fiery that it burnt under cover, as in a reverberating furnace, his feeling towards the queens of this earth was, and indeed is, altogether unspeakable. a visible divinity dwelt in them; to our young friend all women were holy, were heavenly. as yet he but saw them flitting past, in their many-coloured angel-plumage; or hovering mute and inaccessible on the outskirts of _Æsthetic tea_: all of air they were, all soul and form; so lovely, like mysterious priestesses, in whose hand was the invisible jacob's-ladder, whereby man might mount into very heaven. that he, our poor friend, should ever win for himself one of these gracefuls (_holden_)--_ach gott!_ how could he hope it; should he not have died under it? there was a certain delirious vertigo in the thought. 'thus was the young man, if all-sceptical of demons and angels such as the vulgar had once believed in, nevertheless not unvisited by hosts of true sky-born, who visibly and audibly hovered round him whereso he went; and they had that religious worship in his thought, though as yet it was by their mere earthly and trivial name that he named them. but now, if on a soul so circumstanced, some actual air-maiden, incorporated into tangibility and reality, should cast any electric glance of kind eyes, saying thereby, "thou too mayest love and be loved"; and so kindle him,--good heaven, what a volcanic, earthquake-bringing, all-consuming fire were probably kindled!' such a fire, it afterwards appears, did actually burst-forth, with explosions more or less vesuvian, in the inner man of herr diogenes; as indeed how could it fail? a nature, which, in his own figurative style, we might say, had now not a little carbonised tinder, of irritability; with so much nitre of latent passion, and sulphurous humour enough; the whole lying in such hot neighbourhood, close by 'a reverberating furnace of fantasy': have we not here the components of driest gunpowder, ready, on occasion of the smallest spark, to blaze-up? neither, in this our life-element, are sparks anywhere wanting. without doubt, some angel, whereof so many hovered round, would one day, leaving 'the outskirts of _Æsthetic tea_,' flit nigher; and, by electric promethean glance, kindle no despicable firework. happy, if it indeed proved a firework, and flamed-off rocketwise, in successive beautiful bursts of splendour, each growing naturally from the other, through the several stages of a happy youthful love; till the whole were safely burnt-out; and the young soul relieved with little damage! happy, if it did not rather prove a conflagration and mad explosion; painfully lacerating the heart itself; nay perhaps bursting the heart in pieces (which were death); or at best, bursting the thin walls of your 'reverberating furnace,' so that it rage thenceforth all unchecked among the contiguous combustibles (which were madness): till of the so fair and manifold internal world of our diogenes, there remained nothing, or only the 'crater of an extinct volcano!' from multifarious documents in this bag _capricornus_, and in the adjacent ones on both sides thereof, it becomes manifest that our philosopher, as stoical and cynical as he now looks, was heartily and even frantically in love: here therefore may our old doubts whether his heart were of stone or of flesh give way. he loved once; not wisely but too well. and once only: for as your congreve needs a new case or wrappage for every new rocket, so each human heart can properly exhibit but one love, if even one; the 'first love which is infinite' can be followed by no second like unto it. in more recent years, accordingly, the editor of these sheets was led to regard teufelsdröckh as a man not only who would never wed, but who would never even flirt; whom the grand-climacteric itself, and _st. martin's summer_ of incipient dotage, would crown with no new myrtle-garland. to the professor, women are henceforth pieces of art; of celestial art, indeed; which celestial pieces he glories to survey in galleries, but has lost thought of purchasing. psychological readers are not without curiosity to see how teufelsdröckh, in this for him unexampled predicament, demeans himself; with what specialties of successive configuration, splendour and colour, his firework blazes-off. small, as usual, is the satisfaction that such can meet with here. from amid these confused masses of eulogy and elegy, with their mad petrarchan and werterean ware lying madly scattered among all sorts of quite extraneous matter, not so much as the fair one's name can be deciphered. for, without doubt, the title _blumine_, whereby she is here designated, and which means simply goddess of flowers, must be fictitious. was her real name flora, then? but what was her surname, or had she none? of what station in life was she; of what parentage, fortune, aspect? specially, by what pre-established harmony of occurrences did the lover and the loved meet one another in so wide a world; how did they behave in such meeting? to all which questions, not unessential in a biographic work, mere conjecture must for most part return answer. 'it was appointed,' says our philosopher, 'that the high celestial orbit of blumine should intersect the low sublunary one of our forlorn; that he, looking in her empyrean eyes, should fancy the upper sphere of light was come down into this nether sphere of shadows; and finding himself mistaken, make noise enough.' we seem to gather that she was young, hazel-eyed, beautiful, and some one's cousin; highborn, and of high spirit; but unhappily dependent and insolvent; living, perhaps, on the not-too-gracious bounty of monied relatives. but how came 'the wanderer' into her circle? was it by the humid vehicle of _Æsthetic tea_, or by the arid one of mere business? was it on the hand of herr towgood; or of the gnädige frau, who, as ornamental artist, might sometimes like to promote flirtation, especially for young cynical nondescripts? to all appearance, it was chiefly by accident, and the grace of nature. 'thou fair waldschloss,' writes our autobiographer, 'what stranger ever saw thee, were it even an absolved auscultator, officially bearing in his pocket the last _relatio ex actis_ he would ever write, but must have paused to wonder! noble mansion! there stoodest thou, in deep mountain amphitheatre, on umbrageous lawns, in thy serene solitude; stately, massive, all of granite; glittering in the western sunbeams, like a palace of el dorado, overlaid with precious metal. beautiful rose up, in wavy curvature, the slope of thy guardian hills; of the greenest was their sward, embossed with its dark-brown frets of crag, or spotted by some spreading solitary tree and its shadow. to the unconscious wayfarer thou wert also as an ammon's temple, in the libyan waste; where, for joy and woe, the tablet of his destiny lay written. well might he pause and gaze; in that glance of his were prophecy and nameless forebodings.' but now let us conjecture that the so presentient auscultator has handed-in his _relatio ex actis_; been invited to a glass of rhine-wine; and so, instead of returning dispirited and athirst to his dusty town-home, is ushered into the gardenhouse, where sit the choicest party of dames and cavaliers: if not engaged in Æsthetic tea, yet in trustful evening conversation, and perhaps musical coffee, for we hear of 'harps and pure voices making the stillness live.' scarcely, it would seem, is the gardenhouse inferior in respectability to the noble mansion itself. 'embowered amid rich foliage, rose-clusters, and the hues and odours of thousand flowers, here sat that brave company; in front, from the wide-opened doors, fair outlook over blossom and bush, over grove and velvet green, stretching, undulating onwards to the remote mountain peaks: so bright, so mild, and everywhere the melody of birds and happy creatures: it was all as if man had stolen a shelter from the sun in the bosom-vesture of summer herself. how came it that the wanderer advanced thither with such forecasting heart (_ahndungsvoll_), by the side of his gay host? did he feel that to these soft influences his hard bosom ought to be shut; that here, once more, fate had it in view to try him; to mock him, and see whether there were humour in him? 'next moment he finds himself presented to the party; and especially by name to--blumine! peculiar among all dames and damosels glanced blumine, there in her modesty, like a star among earthly lights. noblest maiden! whom he bent to, in body and in soul; yet scarcely dared look at, for the presence filled him with painful yet sweetest embarrassment. 'blumine's was a name well known to him; far and wide was the fair one heard of, for her gifts, her graces, her caprices: from all which vague colourings of rumour, from the censures no less than from the praises, had our friend painted for himself a certain imperious queen of hearts, and blooming warm earth-angel, much more enchanting than your mere white heaven-angels of women, in whose placid veins circulates too little naphtha-fire. herself also he had seen in public places; that light yet so stately form; those dark tresses, shading a face where smiles and sunlight played over earnest deeps: but all this he had seen only as a magic vision, for him inaccessible, almost without reality. her sphere was too far from his; how should she ever think of him; o heaven! how should they so much as once meet together? and now that rose-goddess sits in the same circle with him; the light of _her_ eyes has smiled on him; if he speak, she will hear it! nay, who knows, since the heavenly sun looks into lowest valleys, but blumine herself might have aforetime noted the so unnotable; perhaps, from his very gainsayers, as he had from hers, gathered wonder, gathered favour for him? was the attraction, the agitation mutual, then; pole and pole trembling towards contact, when once brought into neighbourhood? say rather, heart swelling in presence of the queen of hearts; like the sea swelling when once near its moon! with the wanderer it was even so: as in heavenward gravitation, suddenly as at the touch of a seraph's wand, his whole soul is roused from its deepest recesses; and all that was painful and that was blissful there, dim images, vague feelings of a whole past and a whole future, are heaving in unquiet eddies within him. 'often, in far less agitating scenes, had our still friend shrunk forcibly together; and shrouded-up his tremors and flutterings, of what sort soever, in a safe cover of silence, and perhaps of seeming stolidity. how was it, then, that here, when trembling to the core of his heart, he did not sink into swoons, but rose into strength, into fearlessness and clearness? it was his guiding genius (_dämon_) that inspired him; he must go forth and meet his destiny. show thyself now, whispered it, or be forever hid. thus sometimes it is even when your anxiety becomes transcendental, that the soul first feels herself able to transcend it; that she rises above it, in fiery victory; and borne on new-found wings of victory, moves so calmly, even because so rapidly, so irresistibly. always must the wanderer remember, with a certain satisfaction and surprise, how in this case he sat not silent, but struck adroitly into the stream of conversation; which thenceforth, to speak with an apparent not a real vanity, he may say that he continued to lead. surely, in those hours, a certain inspiration was imparted him, such inspiration as is still possible in our late era. the self-secluded unfolds himself in noble thoughts, in free, glowing words; his soul is as one sea of light, the peculiar home of truth and intellect; wherein also fantasy bodies-forth form after form, radiant with all prismatic hues.' it appears, in this otherwise so happy meeting, there talked one 'philistine'; who even now, to the general weariness, was dominantly pouring-forth philistinism (_philistriositäten_); little witting what hero was here entering to demolish him! we omit the series of socratic, or rather diogenic utterances, not unhappy in their way, whereby the monster, 'persuaded into silence,' seems soon after to have withdrawn for the night. 'of which dialectic marauder,' writes our hero, 'the discomfiture was visibly felt as a benefit by most: but what were all applauses to the glad smile, threatening every moment to become a laugh, wherewith blumine herself repaid the victor? he ventured to address her, she answered with attention: nay what if there were a slight tremor in that silver voice; what if the red glow of evening were hiding a transient blush! 'the conversation took a higher tone, one fine thought called forth another: it was one of those rare seasons, when the soul expands with full freedom, and man feels himself brought near to man. gaily in light, graceful abandonment, the friendly talk played round that circle; for the burden was rolled from every heart; the barriers of ceremony, which are indeed the laws of polite living, had melted as into vapour; and the poor claims of _me_ and _thee_, no longer parted by rigid fences, now flowed softly into one another; and life lay all harmonious, many-tinted, like some fair royal champaign, the sovereign and owner of which were love only. such music springs from kind hearts, in a kind environment of place and time. and yet as the light grew more aërial on the mountain-tops, and the shadows fell longer over the valley, some faint tone of sadness may have breathed through the heart; and, in whispers more or less audible, reminded every one that as this bright day was drawing towards its close, so likewise must the day of man's existence decline into dust and darkness; and with all its sick toilings, and joyful and mournful noises sink in the still eternity. 'to our friend the hours seemed moments; holy was he and happy: the words from those sweetest lips came over him like dew on thirsty grass; all better feelings in his soul seemed to whisper: it is good for us to be here. at parting, the blumine's hand was in his: in the balmy twilight, with the kind stars above them, he spoke something of meeting again, which was not contradicted; he pressed gently those small soft fingers, and it seemed as if they were not hastily, not angrily withdrawn.' poor teufelsdröckh! it is clear to demonstration thou art smit: the queen of hearts would see a 'man of genius' also sigh for her; and there, by art-magic, in that preternatural hour, has she bound and spell-bound thee. 'love is not altogether a delirium,' says he elsewhere; 'yet has it many points in common therewith. i call it rather a discerning of the infinite in the finite, of the idea made real; which discerning again may be either true or false, either seraphic or demoniac, inspiration or insanity. but in the former case too, as in common madness, it is fantasy that superadds itself to sight; on the so petty domain of the actual plants its archimedes-lever, whereby to move at will the infinite spiritual. fantasy i might call the true heaven-gate and hell-gate of man: his sensuous life is but the small temporary stage (_zeitbühne_), whereon thick-streaming influences from both these far yet near regions meet visibly, and act tragedy and melodrama. sense can support herself handsomely, in most countries, for some eighteenpence a day; but for fantasy planets and solar-systems will not suffice. witness your pyrrhus conquering the world, yet drinking no better red wine than he had before.' alas! witness also your diogenes, flame-clad, scaling the upper heaven, and verging towards insanity, for prize of a 'high-souled brunette,' as if the earth held but one and not several of these! he says that, in town, they met again: 'day after day, like his heart's sun, the blooming blumine shone on him. ah! a little while ago, and he was yet in all darkness; him what graceful (_holde_) would ever love? disbelieving all things, the poor youth had never learned to believe in himself. withdrawn, in proud timidity, within his own fastnesses; solitary from men, yet baited by night-spectres enough, he saw himself, with a sad indignation, constrained to renounce the fairest hopes of existence. and now, o now! "she looks on thee," cried he: "she the fairest, noblest; do not her dark eyes tell thee, thou art not despised? the heaven's-messenger! all heaven's blessings be hers!" thus did soft melodies flow through his heart; tones of an infinite gratitude; sweetest intimations that he also was a man, that for him also unutterable joys had been provided. 'in free speech, earnest or gay, amid lambent glances, laughter, tears, and often with the inarticulate mystic speech of music: such was the element they now lived in; in such a many-tinted, radiant aurora, and by this fairest of orient light-bringers must our friend be blandished, and the new apocalypse of nature unrolled to him. fairest blumine! and, even as a star, all fire and humid softness, a very light-ray incarnate! was there so much as a fault, a "caprice," he could have dispensed with? was she not to him in very deed a morning-star; did not her presence bring with it airs from heaven? as from Æolian harps in the breath of dawn, as from the memnon's statue struck by the rosy finger of aurora, unearthly music was around him, and lapped him into untried balmy rest. pale doubt fled away to the distance; life bloomed-up with happiness and hope. the past, then, was all a haggard dream; he had been in the garden of eden, then, and could not discern it! but lo now! the black walls of his prison melt away; the captive is alive, is free. if he loved his disenchantress? _ach gott!_ his whole heart and soul and life were hers, but never had he named it love: existence was all a feeling, not yet shaped into a thought.' nevertheless, into a thought, nay into an action, it must be shaped; for neither disenchanter nor disenchantress, mere 'children of time,' can abide by feeling alone. the professor knows not, to this day, 'how in her soft, fervid bosom the lovely found determination, even on hest of necessity, to cut-asunder these so blissful bonds.' he even appears surprised at the 'duenna cousin,' whoever she may have been, 'in whose meagre, hunger-bitten philosophy, the religion of young hearts was, from the first, faintly approved of.' we, even at such distance, can explain it without necromancy. let the philosopher answer this one question: what figure, at that period, was a mrs. teufelsdröckh likely to make in polished society? could she have driven so much as a brass-bound gig, or even a simple iron-spring one? thou foolish 'absolved auscultator,' before whom lies no prospect of capital, will any yet known 'religion of young hearts' keep the human kitchen warm? pshaw! thy divine blumine when she 'resigned herself to wed some richer,' shows more philosophy, though but 'a woman of genius,' than thou, a pretended man. our readers have witnessed the origin of this love-mania, and with what royal splendour it waxes, and rises. let no one ask us to unfold the glories of its dominant state; much less the horrors of its almost instantaneous dissolution. how from such inorganic masses, henceforth madder than ever, as lie in these bags, can even fragments of a living delineation be organised? besides, of what profit were it? we view, with a lively pleasure, the gay silk montgolfier start from the ground, and shoot upwards, cleaving the liquid deeps, till it dwindle to a luminous star: but what is there to look longer on, when once, by natural elasticity, or accident of fire, it has exploded? a hapless air-navigator, plunging amid torn parachutes, sand-bags, and confused wreck, fast enough into the jaws of the devil! suffice it to know that teufelsdröckh rose into the highest regions of the empyrean, by a natural parabolic track, and returned thence in a quick perpendicular one. for the rest, let any feeling reader, who has been unhappy enough to do the like, paint it out for himself: considering only that if he, for his perhaps comparatively insignificant mistress, underwent such agonies and frenzies, what must teufelsdröckh's have been, with a fire-heart, and for a nonpareil blumine! we glance merely at the final scene: 'one morning, he found his morning-star all dimmed and dusky-red; the fair creature was silent, absent, she seemed to have been weeping. alas, no longer a morning-star, but a troublous skyey portent, announcing that the doomsday had dawned! she said, in a tremulous voice, they were to meet no more.' the thunder-struck air-sailor is not wanting to himself in this dread hour: but what avails it? we omit the passionate expostulations, entreaties, indignations, since all was vain, and not even an explanation was conceded him; and hasten to the catastrophe. '"farewell, then, madam!" said he, not without sternness, for his stung pride helped him. she put her hand in his, she looked in his face, tears started to her eyes: in wild audacity he clasped her to his bosom; their lips were joined, their two souls, like two dew-drops, rushed into one,--for the first time, and for the last!' thus was teufelsdröckh made immortal by a kiss. and then? why, then--'thick curtains of night rushed over his soul, as rose the immeasurable crash of doom; and through the ruins as of a shivered universe was he falling, falling, towards the abyss.' chapter vi sorrows of teufelsdrÖckh we have long felt that, with a man like our professor, matters must often be expected to take a course of their own; that in so multiplex, intricate a nature, there might be channels, both for admitting and emitting, such as the psychologist had seldom noted; in short, that on no grand occasion and convulsion, neither in the joy-storm nor in the woe-storm, could you predict his demeanour. to our less philosophical readers, for example, it is now clear that the so passionate teufelsdröckh, precipitated through 'a shivered universe' in this extraordinary way, has only one of three things which he can next do: establish himself in bedlam; begin writing satanic poetry; or blow-out his brains. in the progress towards any of which consummations, do not such readers anticipate extravagance enough; breast-beating, brow-beating (against walls), lion-bellowings of blasphemy and the like, stampings, smitings, breakages of furniture, if not arson itself? nowise so does teufelsdröckh deport him. he quietly lifts his _pilgerstab_ (pilgrim-staff), 'old business being soon wound-up'; and begins a perambulation and circumambulation of the terraqueous globe! curious it is, indeed, how with such vivacity of conception, such intensity of feeling, above all, with these unconscionable habits of exaggeration in speech, he combines that wonderful stillness of his, that stoicism in external procedure. thus, if his sudden bereavement, in this matter of the flower-goddess, is talked of as a real doomsday and dissolution of nature, in which light doubtless it partly appeared to himself, his own nature is nowise dissolved thereby; but rather is compressed closer. for once, as we might say, a blumine by magic appliances has unlocked that shut heart of his, and its hidden things rush-out tumultuous, boundless, like genii enfranchised from their glass phial: but no sooner are your magic appliances withdrawn, than the strange casket of a heart springs-to again; and perhaps there is now no key extant that will open it; for a teufelsdröckh, as we remarked, will not love a second time. singular diogenes! no sooner has that heart-rending occurrence fairly taken place, than he affects to regard it as a thing natural, of which there is nothing more to be said. 'one highest hope, seemingly legible in the eyes of an angel, had recalled him as out of death-shadows into celestial life: but a gleam of tophet passed-over the face of his angel; he was rapt away in whirlwinds, and heard the laughter of demons. it was a calenture,' adds he, 'whereby the youth saw green paradise-groves in the waste ocean-waters: a lying vision, yet not wholly a lie, for _he_ saw it.' but what things soever passed in him, when he ceased to see it; what ragings and despairings soever teufelsdröckh's soul was the scene of, he has the goodness to conceal under a quite opaque cover of silence. we know it well; the first mad paroxysm past, our brave gneschen collected his dismembered philosophies, and buttoned himself together; he was meek, silent, or spoke of the weather and the journals: only by a transient knitting of those shaggy brows, by some deep flash of those eyes, glancing one knew not whether with tear-dew or with fierce fire,--might you have guessed what a gehenna was within; that a whole satanic school were spouting, though inaudibly, there. to consume your own choler, as some chimneys consume their own smoke; to keep a whole satanic school spouting, if it must spout, inaudibly, is a negative yet no slight virtue, nor one of the commonest in these times. nevertheless, we will not take upon us to say, that in the strange measure he fell upon, there was not a touch of latent insanity; whereof indeed the actual condition of these documents in _capricornus_ and _aquarius_ is no bad emblem. his so unlimited wanderings, toilsome enough, are without assigned or perhaps assignable aim; internal unrest seems his sole guidance; he wanders, wanders, as if that curse of the prophet had fallen on him, and he were 'made like unto a wheel.' doubtless, too, the chaotic nature of these paper-bags aggravates our obscurity. quite without note of preparation, for example, we come upon the following slip: 'a peculiar feeling it is that will rise in the traveller, when turning some hill-range in his desert road, he descries lying far below, embosomed among its groves and green natural bulwarks, and all diminished to a toybox, the fair town, where so many souls, as it were seen and yet unseen, are driving their multifarious traffic. its white steeple is then truly a starward-pointing finger; the canopy of blue smoke seems like a sort of life-breath: for always, of its own unity, the soul gives unity to whatsoever it looks on with love; thus does the little dwelling place of men, in itself a congeries of houses and huts, become for us an individual, almost a person. but what thousand other thoughts unite thereto, if the place has to ourselves been the arena of joyous or mournful experiences; if perhaps the cradle we were rocked in still stands there, if our loving ones still dwell there, if our buried ones there slumber!' does teufelsdröckh, as the wounded eagle is said to make for its own eyrie, and indeed military deserters, and all hunted outcast creatures, turn as if by instinct in the direction of their birthland,--fly first, in this extremity, towards his native entepfuhl; but reflecting that there no help awaits him, take but one wistful look from the distance, and then wend elsewhither? little happier seems to be his next flight: into the wilds of nature; as if in her mother-bosom he would seek healing. so at least we incline to interpret the following notice, separated from the former by some considerable space, wherein, however, is nothing noteworthy: 'mountains were not new to him; but rarely are mountains seen in such combined majesty and grace as here. the rocks are of that sort called primitive by the mineralogists, which always arrange themselves in masses of a rugged, gigantic character; which ruggedness, however, is here tempered by a singular airiness of form, and softness of environment: in a climate favourable to vegetation, the gray cliff, itself covered with lichens, shoots-up through a garment of foliage or verdure; and white, bright cottages, tree-shaded, cluster round the everlasting granite. in fine vicissitude, beauty alternates with grandeur: you ride through stony hollows, along straight passes, traversed by torrents, overhung by high walls of rock; now winding amid broken shaggy chasms, and huge fragments; now suddenly emerging into some emerald valley, where the streamlet collects itself into a lake, and man has again found a fair dwelling, and it seems as if peace had established herself in the bosom of strength. 'to peace, however, in this vortex of existence, can the son of time not pretend: still less if some spectre haunt him from the past; and the future is wholly a stygian darkness, spectre-bearing. reasonably might the wanderer exclaim to himself: are not the gates of this world's happiness inexorably shut against thee; hast thou a hope that is not mad? nevertheless, one may still murmur audibly, or in the original greek if that suit better: "whoso can look on death will start at no shadows." 'from such meditations is the wanderer's attention called outwards; for now the valley closes-in abruptly, intersected by a huge mountain mass, the stony water-worn ascent of which is not to be accomplished on horseback. arrived aloft, he finds himself again lifted into the evening sunset light; and cannot but pause, and gaze round him, some moments there. an upland irregular expanse of wold, where valleys in complex branchings are suddenly or slowly arranging their descent towards every quarter of the sky. the mountain-ranges are beneath your feet, and folded together: only the loftier summits look down here and there as on a second plain; lakes also lie clear and earnest in their solitude. no trace of man now visible; unless indeed it were he who fashioned that little visible link of highway, here, as would seem, scaling the inaccessible, to unite province with province. but sunwards, lo you! how it towers sheer up, a world of mountains, the diadem and centre of the mountain region! a hundred and a hundred savage peaks, in the last light of day; all glowing, of gold and amethyst, like giant spirits of the wilderness; there in their silence, in their solitude, even as on the night when noah's deluge first dried! beautiful, nay solemn, was the sudden aspect to our wanderer. he gazed over those stupendous masses with wonder, almost with longing desire; never till this hour had he known nature, that she was one, that she was his mother, and divine. and as the ruddy glow was fading into clearness in the sky, and the sun had now departed, a murmur of eternity and immensity, of death and of life, stole through his soul; and he felt as if death and life were one, as if the earth were not dead, as if the spirit of the earth had its throne in that splendour, and his own spirit were therewith holding communion. 'the spell was broken by a sound of carriage-wheels. emerging from the hidden northward, to sink soon into the hidden southward, came a gay barouche-and-four: it was open; servants and postillions wore wedding-favours: that happy pair, then, had found each other, it was their marriage evening! few moments brought them near: _du himmel!_ it was herr towgood and--blumine! with slight unrecognising salutation they passed me; plunged down amid the neighbouring thickets, onwards, to heaven, and to england; and i, in my friend richter's words, _i remained alone, behind them, with the night_.' were it not cruel in these circumstances, here might be the place to insert an observation, gleaned long ago from the great _clothes-volume_, where it stands with quite other intent: 'some time before small-pox was extirpated,' says the professor, 'there came a new malady of the spiritual sort on europe: i mean the epidemic, now endemical, of view-hunting. poets of old date, being privileged with senses, had also enjoyed external nature; but chiefly as we enjoy the crystal cup which holds good or bad liquor for us; that is to say, in silence, or with slight incidental commentary: never, as i compute, till after the _sorrows of werter_, was there man found who would say: come let us make a description! having drunk the liquor, come let us eat the glass! of which endemic the jenner is unhappily still to seek.' too true! we reckon it more important to remark that the professor's wanderings, so far as his stoical and cynical envelopment admits us to clear insight, here first take their permanent character, fatuous or not. that basilisk-glance of the barouche-and-four seems to have withered-up what little remnant of a purpose may have still lurked in him: life has become wholly a dark labyrinth; wherein, through long years, our friend, flying from spectres, has to stumble about at random, and naturally with more haste than progress. foolish were it in us to attempt following him, even from afar, in this extraordinary world-pilgrimage of his; the simplest record of which, were clear record possible, would fill volumes. hopeless is the obscurity, unspeakable the confusion. he glides from country to country, from condition to condition; vanishing and reappearing, no man can calculate how or where. through all quarters of the world he wanders, and apparently through all circles of society. if in any scene, perhaps difficult to fix geographically, he settles for a time, and forms connexions, be sure he will snap them abruptly asunder. let him sink out of sight as private scholar (_privatisirender_), living by the grace of god in some european capital, you may next find him as hadjee in the neighbourhood of mecca. it is an inexplicable phantasmagoria, capricious, quick-changing; as if our traveller, instead of limbs and high-ways, had transported himself by some wishing-carpet, or fortunatus' hat. the whole, too, imparted emblematically, in dim multifarious tokens (as that collection of street-advertisements); with only some touch of direct historical notice sparingly interspersed: little light-islets in the world of haze! so that, from this point, the professor is more of an enigma than ever. in figurative language, we might say he becomes, not indeed a spirit, yet spiritualised, vaporised fact unparalleled in biography: the river of his history, which we have traced from its tiniest fountains, and hoped to see flow onward, with increasing current, into the ocean, here dashes itself over that terrific lover's leap; and, as a mad-foaming cataract, flies wholly into tumultuous clouds of spray! low down it indeed collects again into pools and plashes; yet only at a great distance, and with difficulty, if at all, into a general stream. to cast a glance into certain of those pools and plashes, and trace whither they run, must, for a chapter or two, form the limit of our endeavour. for which end doubtless those direct historical notices, where they can be met with, are the best. nevertheless, of this sort too there occurs much, which, with our present light, it were questionable to emit. teufelsdröckh, vibrating everywhere between the highest and the lowest levels, comes into contact with public history itself. for example, those conversations and relations with illustrious persons, as sultan mahmoud, the emperor napoleon, and others, are they not as yet rather of a diplomatic character than of a biographic? the editor, appreciating the sacredness of crowned heads, nay perhaps suspecting the possible trickeries of a clothes-philosopher, will eschew this province for the present; a new time may bring new insight and a different duty. if we ask now, not indeed with what ulterior purpose, for there was none, yet with what immediate outlooks; at all events, in what mood of mind, the professor undertook and prosecuted this world-pilgrimage,--the answer is more distinct than favourable. 'a nameless unrest,' says he, 'urged me forward; to which the outward motion was some momentary lying solace. whither should i go? my loadstars were blotted out; in that canopy of grim fire shone no star. yet forward must i; the ground burnt under me; there was no rest for the sole of my foot. i was alone, alone! ever too the strong inward longing shaped fantasms for itself: towards these, one after the other, must i fruitlessly wander. a feeling i had, that for my fever-thirst there was and must be somewhere a healing fountain. to many fondly imagined fountains, the saints' wells of these days, did i pilgrim; to great men, to great cities, to great events: but found there no healing. in strange countries, as in the well-known; in savage deserts, as in the press of corrupt civilisation, it was ever the same: how could your wanderer escape from--_his own shadow_? nevertheless still forward! i felt as if in great haste; to do i saw not what. from the depths of my own heart, it called to me, forwards! the winds and the streams, and all nature sounded to me, forwards! _ach gott_, i was even, once for all, a son of time.' from which is it not clear that the internal satanic school was still active enough? he says elsewhere: 'the _enchiridion of epictetus_ i had ever with me, often as my sole rational companion; and regret to mention that the nourishment it yielded was trifling.' thou foolish teufelsdröckh! how could it else? hadst thou not greek enough to understand thus much: _the end of man is an action, and not a thought_, though it were the noblest? 'how i lived?' writes he once: 'friend, hast thou considered the "rugged all-nourishing earth," as sophocles well names her; how she feeds the sparrow on the house-top, much more her darling, man? while thou stirrest and livest, thou hast a probability of victual. my breakfast of tea has been cooked by a tartar woman, with water of the amur, who wiped her earthen kettle with a horse-tail. i have roasted wild-eggs in the sand of sahara; i have awakened in paris _estrapades_ and vienna _malzleins_, with no prospect of breakfast beyond elemental liquid. that i had my living to seek saved me from dying,--by suicide. in our busy europe, is there not an everlasting demand for intellect, in the chemical, mechanical, political, religious, educational, commercial departments? in pagan countries, cannot one write fetishes? living! little knowest thou what alchemy is in an inventive soul; how, as with its little finger, it can create provision enough for the body (of a philosopher); and then, as with both hands, create quite other than provision; namely, spectres to torment itself withal.' poor teufelsdröckh! flying with hunger always parallel to him; and a whole infernal chase in his rear; so that the countenance of hunger is comparatively a friend's! thus must he, in the temper of ancient cain, or of the modern wandering jew,--save only that he feels himself not guilty and but suffering the pains of guilt,--wend to and fro with aimless speed. thus must he, over the whole surface of the earth (by footprints), write his _sorrows of teufelsdröckh_; even as the great goethe, in passionate words, had to write his _sorrows of werter_, before the spirit freed herself, and he could become a man. vain truly is the hope of your swiftest runner to escape 'from his own shadow'! nevertheless, in these sick days, when the born of heaven first descries himself (about the age of twenty) in a world such as ours, richer than usual in two things, in truths grown obsolete, and trades grown obsolete,--what can the fool think but that it is all a den of lies, wherein whoso will not speak lies and act lies, must stand idle and despair? whereby it happens that, for your nobler minds, the publishing of some such work of art, in one or the other dialect, becomes almost a necessity. for what is it properly but an altercation with the devil, before you begin honestly fighting him? your byron publishes his _sorrows of lord george_, in verse and in prose, and copiously otherwise: your bonaparte represents his _sorrows of napoleon_ opera, in an all-too stupendous style; with music of cannon-volleys, and murder-shrieks of a world; his stage-lights are the fires of conflagration; his rhyme and recitative are the tramp of embattled hosts and the sound of falling cities.--happier is he who, like our clothes-philosopher, can write such matter, since it must be written, on the insensible earth, with his shoe-soles only; and also survive the writing thereof! chapter vii the everlasting no under the strange nebulous envelopment, wherein our professor has now shrouded himself, no doubt but his spiritual nature is nevertheless progressive, and growing: for how can the 'son of time,' in any case, stand still? we behold him, through those dim years, in a state of crisis, of transition: his mad pilgrimings, and general solution into aimless discontinuity, what is all this but a mad fermentation; wherefrom, the fiercer it is, the clearer product will one day evolve itself? such transitions are ever full of pain: thus the eagle when he moults is sickly; and, to attain his new beak, must harshly dash-off the old one upon rocks. what stoicism soever our wanderer, in his individual acts and motions, may affect, it is clear that there is a hot fever of anarchy and misery raging within; coruscations of which flash out: as, indeed, how could there be other? have we not seen him disappointed, bemocked of destiny, through long years? all that the young heart might desire and pray for has been denied; nay, as in the last worst instance, offered and then snatched away. ever an 'excellent passivity'; but of useful, reasonable activity, essential to the former as food to hunger, nothing granted: till at length, in this wild pilgrimage, he must forcibly seize for himself an activity, though useless, unreasonable. alas, his cup of bitterness, which had been filling drop by drop, ever since that first 'ruddy morning' in the hinterschlag gymnasium, was at the very lip; and then with that poison-drop, of the towgood-and-blumine business, it runs over, and even hisses over in a deluge of foam. he himself says once, with more justice than originality: 'man is, properly speaking, based upon hope, he has no other possession but hope; this world of his is emphatically the place of hope.' what, then, was our professor's possession? we see him, for the present, quite shut-out from hope; looking not into the golden orient, but vaguely all round into a dim copper firmament, pregnant with earthquake and tornado. alas, shut-out from hope, in a deeper sense than we yet dream of! for, as he wanders wearisomely through this world, he has now lost all tidings of another and higher. full of religion, or at least of religiosity, as our friend has since exhibited himself, he hides not that, in those days, he was wholly irreligious: 'doubt had darkened into unbelief,' says he; 'shade after shade goes grimly over your soul, till you have the fixed, starless, tartarean black.' to such readers as have reflected, what can be called reflecting, on man's life, and happily discovered, in contradiction to much profit-and-loss philosophy, speculative and practical, that soul is _not_ synonymous with stomach; who understand, therefore, in our friend's words, 'that, for man's well-being, faith is properly the one thing needful; how, with it, martyrs, otherwise weak, can cheerfully endure the shame and the cross; and without it, worldlings puke-up their sick existence, by suicide, in the midst of luxury': to such it will be clear that, for a pure moral nature, the loss of his religious belief was the loss of everything. unhappy young man! all wounds, the crush of long-continued destitution, the stab of false friendship and of false love, all wounds in thy so genial heart, would have healed again, had not its life-warmth been withdrawn. well might he exclaim, in his wild way: 'is there no god, then; but at best an absentee god, sitting idle, ever since the first sabbath, at the outside of his universe, and _see_ing it go? has the word duty no meaning; is what we call duty no divine messenger and guide, but a false earthly fantasm, made-up of desire and fear, of emanations from the gallows and from dr. graham's celestial-bed? happiness of an approving conscience! did not paul of tarsus, whom admiring men have since named saint, feel that _he_ was "the chief of sinners"; and nero of rome, jocund in spirit (_wohlgemuth_), spend much of his time in fiddling? foolish word-monger and motive-grinder, who in thy logic-mill hast an earthly mechanism for the godlike itself, and wouldst fain grind me out virtue from the husks of pleasure,--i tell thee, nay! to the unregenerate prometheus vinctus of a man, it is ever the bitterest aggravation of his wretchedness that he is conscious of virtue, that he feels himself the victim not of suffering only, but of injustice. what then? is the heroic inspiration we name virtue but some passion; some bubble of the blood, bubbling in the direction others _profit_ by? i know not: only this i know, if what thou namest happiness be our true aim, then are we all astray. with stupidity and sound digestion man may front much. but what, in these dull unimaginative days, are the terrors of conscience to the diseases of the liver! not on morality, but on cookery, let us build our stronghold: there brandishing our frying-pan, as censer, let us offer sweet incense to the devil, and live at ease on the fat things _he_ has provided for his elect!' thus has the bewildered wanderer to stand, as so many have done, shouting question after question into the sibyl-cave of destiny, and receive no answer but an echo. it is all a grim desert, this once-fair world of his; wherein is heard only the howling of wild-beasts, or the shrieks of despairing, hate-filled men; and no pillar of cloud by day, and no pillar of fire by night, any longer guides the pilgrim. to such length has the spirit of inquiry carried him. 'but what boots it (_was thut's_)?' cries he: 'it is but the common lot in this era. not having come to spiritual majority prior to the _siècle de louis quinze_, and not being born purely a loghead (_dummkopf_), thou hadst no other outlook. the whole world is, like thee, sold to unbelief; their old temples of the godhead, which for long have not been rainproof, crumble down; and men ask now: where is the godhead; our eyes never saw him?' pitiful enough were it, for all these wild utterances, to call our diogenes wicked. unprofitable servants as we all are, perhaps at no era of his life was he more decisively the servant of goodness, the servant of god, than even now when doubting god's existence. 'one circumstance i note,' says he: 'after all the nameless woe that inquiry, which for me, what it is not always, was genuine love of truth, had wrought me, i nevertheless still loved truth, and would bate no jot of my allegiance to her. "truth"! i cried, "though the heavens crush me for following her: no falsehood! though a whole celestial lubberland were the price of apostasy." in conduct it was the same. had a divine messenger from the clouds, or miraculous handwriting on the wall, convincingly proclaimed to me _this thou shalt do_, with what passionate readiness, as i often thought, would i have done it, had it been leaping into the infernal fire. thus, in spite of all motive-grinders, and mechanical profit-and-loss philosophies, with the sick ophthalmia and hallucination they had brought on, was the infinite nature of duty still dimly present to me: living without god in the world, of god's light i was not utterly bereft; if my as yet sealed eyes, with their unspeakable longing, could nowhere see him, nevertheless in my heart he was present, and his heaven-written law still stood legible and sacred there.' meanwhile, under all these tribulations, and temporal and spiritual destitutions, what must the wanderer, in his silent soul, have endured! 'the painfullest feeling,' writes he, 'is that of your own feebleness (_unkraft_); ever, as the english milton says, to be weak is the true misery. and yet of your strength there is and can be no clear feeling, save by what you have prospered in, by what you have done. between vague wavering capability and fixed indubitable performance, what a difference! a certain inarticulate self-consciousness dwells dimly in us; which only our works can render articulate and decisively discernible. our works are the mirror wherein the spirit first sees its natural lineaments. hence, too, the folly of that impossible precept, _know thyself_; till it be translated into this partially possible one, _know what thou canst work-at_. 'but for me, so strangely unprosperous had i been, the net-result of my workings amounted as yet simply to--nothing. how then could i believe in my strength, when there was as yet no mirror to see it in? ever did this agitating, yet, as i now perceive, quite frivolous question, remain to me insoluble: hast thou a certain faculty, a certain worth, such even as the most have not; or art thou the completest dullard of these modern times? alas! the fearful unbelief is unbelief in yourself; and how could i believe? had not my first, last faith in myself, when even to me the heavens seemed laid open, and i dared to love, been all-too cruelly belied? the speculative mystery of life grew ever more mysterious to me: neither in the practical mystery had i made the slightest progress, but been everywhere buffeted, foiled, and contemptuously cast-out. a feeble unit in the middle of a threatening infinitude, i seemed to have nothing given me but eyes, whereby to discern my own wretchedness. invisible yet impenetrable walls, as of enchantment, divided me from all living: was there, in the wide world, any true bosom i could press trustfully to mine? o heaven, no, there was none! i kept a lock upon my lips: why should i speak much with that shifting variety of so-called friends, in whose withered, vain and too-hungry souls friendship was but an incredible tradition? in such cases, your resource is to talk little, and that little mostly from the newspapers. now when i look back, it was a strange isolation i then lived in. the men and women around me, even speaking with me, were but figures; i had, practically, forgotten that they were alive, that they were not merely automatic. in midst of their crowded streets and assemblages, i walked solitary; and (except as it was my own heart, not another's, that i kept devouring) savage also, as the tiger in his jungle. some comfort it would have been, could i, like a faust, have fancied myself tempted and tormented of the devil; for a hell, as i imagine, without life, though only diabolic life, were more frightful: but in our age of down-pulling and disbelief, the very devil has been pulled down, you cannot so much as believe in a devil. to me the universe was all void of life, of purpose, of volition, even of hostility: it was one huge, dead, immeasurable steam-engine, rolling on, in its dead indifference, to grind me limb from limb. o, the vast, gloomy, solitary golgotha, and mill of death! why was the living banished thither companionless, conscious? why, if there is no devil; nay, unless the devil is your god'? a prey incessantly to such corrosions, might not, moreover, as the worst aggravation to them, the iron constitution even of a teufelsdröckh threaten to fail? we conjecture that he has known sickness; and, in spite of his locomotive habits, perhaps sickness of the chronic sort. hear this, for example: 'how beautiful to die of broken-heart, on paper! quite another thing in practice; every window of your feeling, even of your intellect, as it were, begrimed and mud-bespattered, so that no pure ray can enter; a whole drugshop in your inwards; the fordone soul drowning slowly in quagmires of disgust!' putting all which external and internal miseries together, may we not find in the following sentences, quite in our professor's still vein, significance enough? 'from suicide a certain aftershine (_nachschein_) of christianity withheld me: perhaps also a certain indolence of character; for, was not that a remedy i had at any time within reach? often, however, was there a question present to me: should some one now, at the turning of that corner, blow thee suddenly out of space, into the other world, or other no-world, by pistol-shot,--how were it? on which ground, too, i have often, in sea-storms and sieged cities and other death-scenes, exhibited an imperturbability, which passed, falsely enough, for courage.' 'so had it lasted,' concludes the wanderer, 'so had it lasted, as in bitter protracted death-agony, through long years. the heart within me, unvisited by any heavenly dewdrop, was smouldering in sulphurous, slow-consuming fire. almost since earliest memory i had shed no tear; or once only when i, murmuring half-audibly, recited faust's deathsong, that wild _selig der den er im siegesglanze findet_ (happy whom _he_ finds in battle's splendour), and thought that of this last friend even i was not forsaken, that destiny itself could not doom me not to die. having no hope, neither had i any definite fear, were it of man or of devil: nay, i often felt as if it might be solacing, could the arch-devil himself, though in tartarean terrors, but rise to me, that i might tell him a little of my mind. and yet, strangely enough, i lived in a continual, indefinite, pining fear; tremulous, pusillanimous, apprehensive of i knew not what: it seemed as if all things in the heavens above and the earth beneath would hurt me; as if the heavens and the earth were but boundless jaws of a devouring monster, wherein i, palpitating, waited to be devoured. 'full of such humour, and perhaps the miserablest man in the whole french capital or suburbs, was i, one sultry dog-day, after much perambulation, toiling along the dirty little _rue saint-thomas de l'enfer_, among civic rubbish enough, in a close atmosphere, and over pavements hot as nebuchadnezzar's furnace; whereby doubtless my spirits were little cheered; when, all at once, there rose a thought in me, and i asked myself: "what _art_ thou afraid of? wherefore, like a coward, dost thou forever pip and whimper, and go cowering and trembling? despicable biped! what is the sum-total of the worst that lies before thee? death? well, death; and say the pangs of tophet too, and all that the devil and man may, will or can do against thee! hast thou not a heart; canst thou not suffer whatsoever it be; and, as a child of freedom, though outcast, trample tophet itself under thy feet, while it consumes thee? let it come, then; i will meet it and defy it!" and as i so thought, there rushed like a stream of fire over my whole soul; and i shook base fear away from me forever. i was strong, of unknown strength; a spirit, almost a god. ever from that time, the temper of my misery was changed: not fear or whining sorrow was it, but indignation and grim fire-eyed defiance. 'thus had the everlasting no (_das ewige nein_) pealed authoritatively through all the recesses of my being, of my me; and then was it that my whole me stood up, in native god-created majesty, and with emphasis recorded its protest. such a protest, the most important transaction in life, may that same indignation and defiance, in a psychological point of view, be fitly called. the everlasting no had said: "behold, thou are fatherless, outcast, and the universe is mine (the devil's)"; to which my whole me now made answer: "_i_ am not thine, but free, and forever hate thee!" 'it is from this hour that i incline to date my spiritual new-birth, or baphometic fire-baptism; perhaps i directly thereupon began to be a man.' chapter viii centre of indifference though, after this 'baphometic fire-baptism' of his, our wanderer signifies that his unrest was but increased; as, indeed, 'indignation and defiance,' especially against things in general, are not the most peaceable inmates; yet can the psychologist surmise that it was no longer a quite hopeless unrest; that henceforth it had at least a fixed centre to revolve round. for the fire-baptised soul, long so scathed and thunder-riven, here feels its own freedom, which feeling is its baphometic baptism: the citadel of its whole kingdom it has thus gained by assault, and will keep inexpugnable; outwards from which the remaining dominions, not indeed without hard battling, will doubtless by degrees be conquered and pacificated. under another figure, we might say, if in that great moment, in the _rue saint-thomas de l'enfer_, the old inward satanic school was not yet thrown out of doors, it received peremptory judicial notice to quit;--whereby, for the rest, its howl-chantings, ernulphus-cursings, and rebellious gnashings of teeth, might, in the meanwhile, become only the more tumultuous, and difficult to keep secret. accordingly, if we scrutinise these pilgrimings well, there is perhaps discernible henceforth a certain incipient method in their madness. not wholly as a spectre does teufelsdröckh now storm through the world; at worst as a spectre-fighting man, nay who will one day be a spectre-queller. if pilgriming restlessly to so many 'saints' wells,' and ever without quenching of his thirst, he nevertheless finds little secular wells, whereby from time to time some alleviation is ministered. in a word, he is now, if not ceasing, yet intermitting to 'eat his own heart'; and clutches round him outwardly on the not-me for wholesomer food. does not the following glimpse exhibit him in a much more natural state? 'towns also and cities, especially the ancient, i failed not to look upon with interest. how beautiful to see thereby, as through a long vista, into the remote time; to have, as it were, an actual section of almost the earliest past brought safe into the present, and set before your eyes! there, in that old city, was a live ember of culinary fire put down, say only two thousand years ago; and there, burning more or less triumphantly, with such fuel as the region yielded, it has burnt, and still burns, and thou thyself seest the very smoke thereof. ah! and the far more mysterious live ember of vital fire was then also put down there; and still miraculously burns and spreads; and the smoke and ashes thereof (in these judgment-halls and churchyards), and its bellows-engines (in these churches), thou still seest; and its flame, looking out from every kind countenance, and every hateful one, still warms thee or scorches thee. 'of man's activity and attainment the chief results are aeriform, mystic, and preserved in tradition only: such are his forms of government, with the authority they rest on; his customs, or fashions both of cloth-habits and of soul-habits; much more his collective stock of handicrafts, the whole faculty he has acquired of manipulating nature: all these things, as indispensable and priceless as they are, cannot in any way be fixed under lock and key, but must flit, spirit-like, on impalpable vehicles, from father to son; if you demand sight of them, they are nowhere to be met with. visible ploughmen and hammermen there have been, ever from cain and tubalcain downwards: but where does your accumulated agricultural, metallurgic, and other manufacturing skill lie warehoused? it transmits itself on the atmospheric air, on the sun's rays (by hearing and by vision); it is a thing aeriform, impalpable, of quite spiritual sort. in like manner, ask me not, where are the laws; where is the government? in vain wilt thou go to schönbrunn, to downing street, to the palais bourbon: thou findest nothing there but brick or stone houses, and some bundles of papers tied with tape. where, then, is that same cunningly-devised almighty government of theirs to be laid hands on? everywhere, yet nowhere: seen only in its works, this too is a thing aeriform, invisible; or if you will, mystic and miraculous. so spiritual (_geistig_) is our whole daily life: all that we do springs out of mystery, spirit, invisible force; only like a little cloud-image, or armida's palace, air-built, does the actual body itself forth from the great mystic deep. 'visible and tangible products of the past, again, i reckon-up to the extent of three: cities, with their cabinets and arsenals; then tilled fields, to either or to both of which divisions roads with their bridges may belong; and thirdly----books. in which third truly, the last invented, lies a worth far surpassing that of the two others. wondrous indeed is the virtue of a true book. not like a dead city of stones, yearly crumbling, yearly needing repair; more like a tilled field, but then a spiritual field: like a spiritual tree, let me rather say, it stands from year to year, and from age to age (we have books that already number some hundred-and-fifty human ages); and yearly comes its new produce of leaves (commentaries, deductions, philosophical, political systems; or were it only sermons, pamphlets, journalistic essays), every one of which is talismanic and thaumaturgic, for it can persuade men. o thou who art able to write a book, which once in the two centuries or oftener there is a man gifted to do, envy not him whom they name city-builder, and inexpressibly pity him whom they name conqueror or city-burner! thou too art a conqueror and victor: but of the true sort, namely over the devil: thou too hast built what will outlast all marble and metal, and be a wonder-bringing city of the mind, a temple and seminary and prophetic mount, whereto all kindreds of the earth will pilgrim.--fool! why journeyest thou wearisomely, in thy antiquarian fervour, to gaze on the stone pyramids of geeza, or the clay ones of sacchara? these stand there, as i can tell thee, idle and inert, looking over the desert, foolishly enough, for the last three-thousand years: but canst thou not open thy hebrew bible, then, or even luther's version thereof?' no less satisfactory is his sudden appearance not in battle, yet on some battle-field; which, we soon gather, must be that of wagram; so that here, for once, is a certain approximation to distinctness of date. omitting much, let us impart what follows: 'horrible enough! a whole marchfeld strewed with shell-splinters, cannon-shot, ruined tumbrils, and dead men and horses; stragglers still remaining not so much as buried. and those red mould heaps: ay, there lie the shells of men, out of which all the life and virtue has been blown; and now are they swept together, and crammed-down out of sight, like blown egg-shells!--did nature, when she bade the donau bring down his mould-cargoes from the carinthian and carpathian heights, and spread them out here into the softest, richest level,--intend thee, o marchfeld, for a corn-bearing nursery, whereon her children might be nursed; or for a cockpit, wherein they might the more commodiously be throttled and tattered? were thy three broad highways, meeting here from the ends of europe, made for ammunition-wagons, then? were thy wagrams and stillfrieds but so many ready-built casemates, wherein the house of hapsburg might batter with artillery, and with artillery be battered? könig ottokar, amid yonder hillocks, dies under rodolf's truncheon; here kaiser franz falls a-swoon under napoleon's: within which five centuries, to omit the others, how has thy breast, fair plain, been defaced and defiled! the greensward is torn-up and trampled-down; man's fond care of it, his fruit-trees, hedgerows, and pleasant dwellings, blown-away with gunpowder; and the kind seedfield lies a desolate, hideous place of sculls.--nevertheless, nature is at work; neither shall these powder-devilkins with their utmost devilry gainsay her: but all that gore and carnage will be shrouded-in, absorbed into manure; and next year the marchfeld will be green, nay greener. thrifty unwearied nature, ever out of our great waste educing some little profit of thy own,--how dost thou, from the very carcass of the killer, bring life for the living! 'what, speaking in quite unofficial language, is the net-purport and upshot of war? to my own knowledge, for example, there dwell and toil, in the british village of dumdrudge, usually some five-hundred souls. from these, by certain "natural enemies" of the french, there are successively selected, during the french war, say thirty able-bodied men: dumdrudge, at her own expense, has suckled and nursed them: she has, not without difficulty and sorrow, fed them up to manhood, and even trained them to crafts, so that one can weave, another build, another hammer, and the weakest can stand under thirty stone avoirdupois. nevertheless, amid much weeping and swearing, they are selected; all dressed in red; and shipped away, at the public charges, some two-thousand miles, or say only to the south of spain; and fed there till wanted. and now to that same spot, in the south of spain, are thirty similar french artisans, from a french dumdrudge, in like manner wending: till at length, after infinite effort, the two parties come into actual juxtaposition; and thirty stands fronting thirty, each with a gun in his hand. straightway the word "fire!" is given: and they blow the souls out of one another; and in place of sixty brisk useful craftsmen, the world has sixty dead carcasses, which it must bury, and anew shed tears for. had these men any quarrel? busy as the devil is, not the smallest! they lived far enough apart; were the entirest strangers; nay, in so wide a universe, there was even, unconsciously, by commerce, some mutual helpfulness between them. how then? simpleton! their governors had fallen-out; and, instead of shooting one another, had the cunning to make these poor blockheads shoot.--alas, so is it in deutschland, and hitherto in all other lands; still as of old, "what devilry soever kings do, the greeks must pay the piper!"--in that fiction of the english smollet, it is true, the final cessation of war is perhaps prophetically shadowed forth; where the two natural enemies, in person, take each a tobacco-pipe, filled with brimstone; light the same, and smoke in one another's faces, till the weaker gives in: but from such predicted peace-era, what blood-filled trenches, and contentious centuries, may still divide us!' thus can the professor, at least in lucid intervals, look away from his own sorrows, over the many-coloured world, and pertinently enough note what is passing there. we may remark, indeed, that for the matter of spiritual culture, if for nothing else, perhaps few periods of his life were richer than this. internally, there is the most momentous instructive course of practical philosophy, with experiments, going on; towards the right comprehension of which his peripatetic habits, favourable to meditation, might help him rather than hinder. externally, again, as he wanders to and fro, there are, if for the longing heart little substance, yet for the seeing eye sights enough: in these so boundless travels of his, granting that the satanic school was even partially kept down, what an incredible knowledge of our planet, and its inhabitants and their works, that is to say, of all knowable things, might not teufelsdröckh acquire! 'i have read in most public libraries,' says he, 'including those of constantinople and samarcand: in most colleges, except the chinese mandarin ones, i have studied, or seen that there was no studying. unknown languages have i oftenest gathered from their natural repertory, the air, by my organ of hearing; statistics, geographics, topographics came, through the eye, almost of their own accord. the ways of man, how he seeks food, and warmth, and protection for himself, in most regions, are ocularly known to me. like the great hadrian, i meted-out much of the terraqueous globe with a pair of compasses that belonged to myself only. 'of great scenes why speak? three summer days, i lingered reflecting, and even composing (_dichtete_), by the pinechasms of vaucluse; and in that clear lakelet moistened my bread. i have sat under the palm-trees of tadmor; smoked a pipe among the ruins of babylon. the great wall of china i have seen; and can testify that it is of gray brick, coped and covered with granite, and shows only second-rate masonry.--great events, also, have not i witnessed? kings sweated-down (_ausgemergelt_) into berlin-and-milan customhouse-officers; the world well won, and the world well lost; oftener than once a hundred-thousand individuals shot (by each other) in one day. all kindreds and peoples and nations dashed together, and shifted and shovelled into heaps, that they might ferment there, and in time unite. the birth-pangs of democracy, wherewith convulsed europe was groaning in cries that reached heaven, could not escape me. 'for great men i have ever had the warmest predilection; and can perhaps boast that few such in this era have wholly escaped me. great men are the inspired (speaking and acting) texts of that divine book of revelations, whereof a chapter is completed from epoch to epoch, and by some named history; to which inspired texts your numerous talented men, and your innumerable untalented men, are the better or worse exegetic commentaries, and wagonload of too-stupid, heretical or orthodox, weekly sermons. for my study the inspired texts themselves! thus did not i, in very early days, having disguised me as tavern-waiter, stand behind the field-chairs, under that shady tree at treisnitz by the jena highway; waiting upon the great schiller and greater goethe; and hearing what i have not forgotten. for----' ----but at this point the editor recalls his principle of caution, some time ago laid down, and must suppress much. let not the sacredness of laurelled, still more, of crowned heads, be tampered with. should we, at a future day, find circumstances altered, and the time come for publication, then may these glimpses into the privacy of the illustrious be conceded; which for the present were little better than treacherous, perhaps traitorous eavesdroppings. of lord byron, therefore, of pope pius, emperor tarakwang, and the 'white water-roses' (chinese carbonari) with their mysteries, no notice here! of napoleon himself we shall only, glancing from afar, remark that teufelsdröckh's relation to him seems to have been of very varied character. at first we find our poor professor on the point of being shot as a spy; then taken into private conversation, even pinched on the ear, yet presented with no money; at last indignantly dismissed, almost thrown out of doors, as an 'ideologist.' 'he himself,' says the professor, 'was among the completest ideologists, at least ideopraxists: in the idea (_in der idee_) he lived, moved and fought. the man was a divine missionary, though unconscious of it; and preached, through the cannon's throat, that great doctrine, _la carrière ouverte aux talens_ (the tools to him that can handle them), which is our ultimate political evangel, wherein alone can liberty lie. madly enough he preached, it is true, as enthusiasts and first missionaries are wont, with imperfect utterance, amid much frothy rant; yet as articulately perhaps as the case admitted. or call him, if you will, an american backwoodsman, who had to fell unpenetrated forests, and battle with innumerable wolves, and did not entirely forbear strong liquor, rioting, and even theft; whom, notwithstanding, the peaceful sower will follow, and, as he cuts the boundless harvest, bless.' more legitimate and decisively authentic is teufelsdröckh's appearance and emergence (we know not well whence) in the solitude of the north cape, on that june midnight. he has 'a light-blue spanish cloak' hanging round him, as his 'most commodious, principal, indeed sole upper garment'; and stands there, on the world-promontory, looking over the infinite brine, like a little blue belfry (as we figure), now motionless indeed, yet ready, if stirred, to ring quaintest changes. 'silence as of death,' writes he; 'for midnight, even in the arctic latitudes, has its character: nothing but the granite cliffs ruddy-tinged, the peaceable gurgle of that slow-heaving polar ocean, over which in the utmost north the great sun hangs low and lazy, as if he too were slumbering. yet is his cloud-couch wrought of crimson and cloth-of-gold; yet does his light stream over the mirror of waters, like a tremulous fire-pillar, shooting downwards to the abyss, and hide itself under my feet. in such moments, solitude also is invaluable; for who would speak, or be looked on, when behind him lies all europe and africa, fast asleep, except the watchmen; and before him the silent immensity, and palace of the eternal, whereof our sun is but a porch-lamp? 'nevertheless, in this solemn moment comes a man, or monster, scrambling from among the rock-hollows; and, shaggy, huge as the hyperborean bear, hails me in russian speech: most probably, therefore, a russian smuggler. with courteous brevity, i signify my indifference to contraband trade, my humane intentions, yet strong wish to be private. in vain: the monster, counting doubtless on his superior stature, and minded to make sport for himself, or perhaps profit, were it with murder, continues to advance; ever assailing me with his importunate train-oil breath; and now has advanced, till we stand both on the verge of the rock, the deep sea rippling greedily down below. what argument will avail? on the thick hyperborean, cherubic reasoning, seraphic eloquence were lost. prepared for such extremity, i, deftly enough, whisk aside one step; draw out, from my interior reservoirs, a sufficient birmingham horse-pistol, and say, "be so obliging as retire, friend (_er ziehe sich zurück, freund_), and with promptitude!" this logic even the hyperborean understands; fast enough, with apologetic, petitionary growl, he sidles off; and, except for suicidal as well as homicidal purposes, need not return. 'such i hold to be the genuine use of gunpowder: that it makes all men alike tall. nay, if thou be cooler, cleverer than i, if thou have more _mind_, though all but no body whatever, then canst thou kill me first, and art the taller. hereby, at last, is the goliath powerless, and the david resistless; savage animalism is nothing, inventive spiritualism is all. 'with respect to duels, indeed, i have my own ideas. few things, in this so surprising world, strike me with more surprise. two little visual spectra of men, hovering with insecure enough cohesion in the midst of the unfathomable, and to dissolve therein, at any rate, very soon,--make pause at the distance of twelve paces asunder; whirl round; and, simultaneously by the cunningest mechanism, explode one another into dissolution; and off-hand become air, and non-extant! deuce on it (_verdammt_), the little spitfires!--nay, i think with old hugo von trimberg: "god must needs laugh outright, could such a thing be, to see his wondrous manikins here below."' * * * * * but amid these specialties, let us not forget the great generality, which is our chief quest here: how prospered the inner man of teufelsdröckh under so much outward shifting? does legion still lurk in him, though repressed; or has he exorcised that devil's brood? we can answer that the symptoms continue promising. experience is the grand spiritual doctor; and with him teufelsdröckh has now been long a patient, swallowing many a bitter bolus. unless our poor friend belong to the numerous class of incurables, which seems not likely, some cure will doubtless be effected. we should rather say that legion, or the satanic school, was now pretty well extirpated and cast out, but next to nothing introduced in its room; whereby the heart remains, for the while, in a quiet but no comfortable state. 'at length, after so much roasting,' thus writes our autobiographer, 'i was what you might name calcined. pray only that it be not rather, as is the more frequent issue, reduced to a _caput-mortuum_! but in any case, by mere dint of practice, i had grown familiar with many things. wretchedness was still wretched; but i could now partly see through it, and despise it. which highest mortal, in this inane existence, had i not found a shadow-hunter, or shadow-hunted; and, when i looked through his brave garnitures, miserable enough? thy wishes have all been sniffed aside, thought i: but what, had they even been all granted! did not the boy alexander weep because he had not two planets to conquer; or a whole solar system; or after that, a whole universe? _ach gott_, when i gazed into these stars, have they not looked down on me as if with pity, from their serene spaces; like eyes glistening with heavenly tears over the little lot of man! thousands of human generations, all as noisy as our own, have been swallowed-up of time, and there remains no wreck of them any more; and arcturus and orion and sirius and the pleiades are still shining in their courses, clear and young, as when the shepherd first noted them in the plain of shinar. pshaw! what is this paltry little dog-cage of an earth; what art thou that sittest whining there? thou art still nothing, nobody: true; but who, then, is something, somebody? for thee the family of man has no use; it rejects thee; thou art wholly as a dissevered limb: so be it; perhaps it is better so!' too-heavy-laden teufelsdröckh! yet surely his bands are loosening; one day he will hurl the burden far from him, and bound forth free and with a second youth. 'this,' says our professor, 'was the centre of indifference i had now reached; through which whoso travels from the negative pole to the positive must necessarily pass.' chapter ix the everlasting yea 'temptations in the wilderness!' exclaims teufelsdröckh: 'have we not all to be tried with such? not so easily can the old adam, lodged in us by birth, be dispossessed. our life is compassed round with necessity; yet is the meaning of life itself no other than freedom, than voluntary force: thus have we a warfare; in the beginning, especially, a hard-fought battle. for the god-given mandate, _work thou in welldoing_, lies mysteriously written, in promethean prophetic characters, in our hearts; and leaves us no rest, night or day, till it be deciphered and obeyed; till it burn forth, in our conduct, a visible, acted gospel of freedom. and as the clay-given mandate, _eat thou and be filled_, at the same time persuasively proclaims itself through every nerve,--must not there be a confusion, a contest, before the better influence can become the upper? 'to me nothing seems more natural than that the son of man, when such god-given mandate first prophetically stirs within him, and the clay must now be vanquished, or vanquish,--should be carried of the spirit into grim solitudes, and there fronting the tempter do grimmest battle with him; defiantly setting him at naught, till he yield and fly. name it as we choose: with or without visible devil, whether in the natural desert of rocks and sands, or in the populous moral desert of selfishness and baseness,--to such temptation are we all called. unhappy if we are not! unhappy if we are but half-men, in whom that divine handwriting has never blazed forth, all-subduing, in true sun-splendour; but quivers dubiously amid meaner lights: or smoulders, in dull pain, in darkness, under earthly vapours!--our wilderness is the wide world in an atheistic century; our forty days are long years of suffering and fasting: nevertheless, to these also comes an end. yes, to me also was given, if not victory, yet the consciousness of battle, and the resolve to persevere therein while life or faculty is left. to me also, entangled in the enchanted forests, demon-peopled, doleful of sight and of sound, it was given, after weariest wanderings, to work out my way into the higher sunlit slopes--of that mountain which has no summit, or whose summit is in heaven only!' he says elsewhere, under a less ambitious figure; as figures are, once for all, natural to him: 'has not thy life been that of most sufficient men (_tüchtigen männer_) thou hast known in this generation? an out-flush of foolish young enthusiasm, like the first fallow-crop, wherein are as many weeds as valuable herbs: this all parched away, under the droughts of practical and spiritual unbelief, as disappointment, in thought and act, often-repeated gave rise to doubt, and doubt gradually settled into denial! if i have had a second-crop, and now see the perennial greensward, and sit under umbrageous cedars, which defy all drought (and doubt); herein too, be the heavens praised, i am not without examples, and even exemplars.' so that, for teufelsdröckh also, there has been a 'glorious revolution': these mad shadow-hunting and shadow-hunted pilgrimings of his were but some purifying 'temptation in the wilderness,' before his apostolic work (such as it was) could begin; which temptation is now happily over, and the devil once more worsted! was 'that high moment in the _rue de l'enfer_,' then, properly the turning-point of the battle; when the fiend said, _worship me or be torn in shreds_; and was answered valiantly with an _apage satana_?--singular teufelsdröckh, would thou hadst told thy singular story in plain words! but it is fruitless to look there, in those paper-bags, for such. nothing but innuendoes, figurative crotchets: a typical shadow, fitfully wavering, prophetico-satiric; no clear logical picture. 'how paint to the sensual eye,' asks he once, 'what passes in the holy-of-holies of man's soul; in what words, known to these profane times, speak even afar-off of the unspeakable?' we ask in turn: why perplex these times, profane as they are, with needless obscurity, by omission and by commission? not mystical only is our professor, but whimsical; and involves himself, now more than ever, in eye-bewildering _chiaroscuro_. successive glimpses, here faithfully imparted, our more gifted readers must endeavour to combine for their own behoof. he says: 'the hot harmattan wind had raged itself out; its howl went silent within me; and the long-deafened soul could now hear. i paused in my wild wanderings; and sat me down to wait, and consider; for it was as if the hour of change drew nigh. i seemed to surrender, to renounce utterly, and say: fly, then, false shadows of hope; i will chase you no more, i will believe you no more. and ye too, haggard spectres of fear, i care not for you; ye too are all shadows and a lie. let me rest here: for i am way-weary and life-weary; i will rest here, were it but to die: to die or to live is alike to me; alike insignificant.'--and again: 'here, then, as i lay in that centre of indifference; cast, doubtless by benignant upper influence, into a healing sleep, the heavy dreams rolled gradually away, and i awoke to a new heaven and a new earth. the first preliminary moral act, annihilation of self (_selbst-tödtung_), had been happily accomplished; and my mind's eyes were now unsealed, and its hands ungyved.' might we not also conjecture that the following passage refers to his locality, during this same 'healing sleep'; that his pilgrim-staff lies cast aside here, on 'the high table-land'; and indeed that the repose is already taking wholesome effect on him? if it were not that the tone, in some parts, has more of riancy, even of levity, than we could have expected! however, in teufelsdröckh, there is always the strangest dualism: light dancing, with guitar-music, will be going on in the fore-court, while by fits from within comes the faint whimpering of woe and wail. we transcribe the piece entire: 'beautiful it was to sit there, as in my skyey tent, musing and meditating; on the high table-land, in front of the mountains; over me, as roof, the azure dome, and around me, for walls, four azure-flowing curtains,--namely, of the four azure winds, on whose bottom-fringes also i have seen gilding. and then to fancy the fair castles that stood sheltered in these mountain hollows; with their green flower-lawns, and white dames and damosels, lovely enough: or better still, the straw-roofed cottages, wherein stood many a mother baking bread, with her children round her:--all hidden and protectingly folded-up in the valley-folds; yet there and alive, as sure as if i beheld them. or to see, as well as fancy, the nine towns and villages, that lay round my mountain-seat, which, in still weather, were wont to speak to me (by their steeple-bells) with metal tongue; and, in almost all weather, proclaimed their vitality by repeated smoke-clouds; whereon, as on a culinary horologe, i might read the hour of the day. for it was the smoke of cookery, as kind housewives at morning, midday, eventide, were boiling their husbands' kettles; and ever a blue pillar rose up into the air, successively or simultaneously, from each of the nine, saying, as plainly as smoke could say: such and such a meal is getting ready here. not uninteresting! for you have the whole borough, with all its love-makings and scandal-mongeries, contentions and contentments, as in miniature, and could cover it all with your hat.--if, in my wide wayfarings, i had learned to look into the business of the world in its details, here perhaps was the place for combining it into general propositions, and deducing inferences therefrom. 'often also could i see the black tempest marching in anger through the distance: round some schreckhorn, as yet grim-blue, would the eddying vapour gather, and there tumultuously eddy, and flow down like a mad witch's hair; till, after a space, it vanished, and, in the clear sunbeam, your schreckhorn stood smiling grim-white, for the vapour had held snow. how thou fermentest and elaboratest, in thy great fermenting-vat and laboratory of an atmosphere, of a world, o nature!--or what is nature? ha! why do i not name thee god? art not thou the "living garment of god"? o heavens, is it, in very deed, he, then, that ever speaks through thee; that lives and loves in thee, that lives and loves in me? 'fore-shadows, call them rather fore-splendours, of that truth, and beginning of truths, fell mysteriously over my soul. sweeter than dayspring to the shipwrecked in nova zembla; ah, like the mother's voice to her little child that strays bewildered, weeping, in unknown tumults; like soft streamings of celestial music to my too-exasperated heart, came that evangel. the universe is not dead and demoniacal, a charnel-house with spectres; but godlike, and my father's! 'with other eyes, too, could i now look upon my fellow man; with an infinite love, an infinite pity. poor, wandering, wayward man! art thou not tired, and beaten with stripes, even as i am? ever, whether thou bear the royal mantle or the beggar's gabardine, art thou not so weary, so heavy-laden; and thy bed of rest is but a grave. o my brother, my brother, why cannot i shelter thee in my bosom, and wipe away all tears from thy eyes! truly, the din of many-voiced life, which, in this solitude, with the mind's organ, i could hear, was no longer a maddening discord, but a melting one; like inarticulate cries, and sobbings of a dumb creature, which in the ear of heaven are prayers. the poor earth, with her poor joys, was now my needy mother, not my cruel stepdame; man, with his so mad wants and so mean endeavours, had become the dearer to me; and even for his sufferings and his sins, i now first named him brother. thus was i standing in the porch of that "_sanctuary of sorrow_;" by strange, steep ways had i too been guided thither; and ere long its sacred gates would open, and the "_divine depth of sorrow_" lie disclosed to me.' the professor says, he here first got eye on the knot that had been strangling him, and straightway could unfasten it, and was free. 'a vain interminable controversy,' writes he, 'touching what is at present called origin of evil, or some such thing, arises in every soul, since the beginning of the world; and in every soul, that would pass from idle suffering into actual endeavouring, must first be put an end to. the most, in our time, have to go content with a simple, incomplete enough suppression of this controversy; to a few some solution of it is indispensable. in every new era, too, such solution comes-out in different terms; and ever the solution of the last era has become obsolete, and is found unserviceable. for it is man's nature to change his dialect from century to century; he cannot help it though he would. the authentic _church-catechism_ of our present century has not yet fallen into my hands: meanwhile, for my own private behoof, i attempt to elucidate the matter so. man's unhappiness, as i construe, comes of his greatness; it is because there is an infinite in him, which with all his cunning he cannot quite bury under the finite. will the whole finance ministers and upholsterers and confectioners of modern europe undertake, in jointstock company, to make one shoeblack happy? they cannot accomplish it, above an hour or two; for the shoeblack also has a soul quite other than his stomach; and would require, if you consider it, for his permanent satisfaction and saturation, simply this allotment, no more, and no less: _god's infinite universe altogether to himself_, therein to enjoy infinitely, and fill every wish as fast as it rose. oceans of hochheimer, a throat like that of ophiuchus: speak not of them; to the infinite shoeblack they are as nothing. no sooner is your ocean filled, than he grumbles that it might have been of better vintage. try him with half of a universe, of an omnipotence, he sets to quarrelling with the proprietor of the other half, and declares himself the most maltreated of men.--always there is a black spot in our sunshine: it is even as i said, the _shadow of ourselves_. 'but the whim we have of happiness is somewhat thus. by certain valuations, and averages, of our own striking, we come upon some sort of average terrestrial lot; this we fancy belongs to us by nature, and of indefeasible right. it is simple payment of our wages, of our deserts; requires neither thanks nor complaint; only such _overplus_ as there may be do we account happiness; any _deficit_ again is misery. now consider that we have the valuation of our own deserts ourselves, and what a fund of self-conceit there is in each of us,--do you wonder that the balance should so often dip the wrong way, and many a blockhead cry: see there, what a payment; was ever worthy gentleman so used!--i tell thee, blockhead, it all comes of thy vanity; of what thou _fanciest_ those same deserts of thine to be. fancy that thou deservest to be hanged (as is most likely), thou wilt feel it happiness to be only shot: fancy that thou deservest to be hanged in a hair-halter, it will be a luxury to die in hemp. 'so true is it, what i then say, that _the fraction of life can be increased in value not so much by increasing your numerator as by lessening your denominator_. nay, unless my algebra deceive me, _unity_ itself divided by _zero_ will give _infinity_. make thy claim of wages a zero, then; thou hast the world under thy feet. well did the wisest of our time write: "it is only with renunciation (_entsagen_) that life, properly speaking, can be said to begin." 'i asked myself: what is this that, ever since earliest years, thou hast been fretting and fuming, and lamenting and self-tormenting, on account of? say it in a word: is it not because thou art not happy? because the thou (sweet gentleman) is not sufficiently honoured, nourished, soft-bedded, and lovingly cared for? foolish soul! what act of legislature was there that _thou_ shouldst be happy? a little while ago thou hadst no right to _be_ at all. what if thou wert born and predestined not to be happy, but to be unhappy! art thou nothing other than a vulture, then, that fliest through the universe seeking after somewhat to _eat_; and shrieking dolefully because carrion enough is not given thee? close thy _byron_; open thy _goethe_.' '_es leuchtet mir ein_, i see a glimpse of it!' cries he elsewhere: 'there is in man a higher than love of happiness: he can do without happiness, and instead thereof find blessedness! was it not to preach-forth this same higher that sages and martyrs, the poet and the priest, in all times, have spoken and suffered; bearing testimony, through life and through death, of the godlike that is in man, and how in the godlike only has he strength and freedom? which god-inspired doctrine art thou also honoured to be taught; o heavens! and broken with manifold merciful afflictions, even till thou become contrite, and learn it! o, thank thy destiny for these; thankfully bear what yet remain: thou hadst need of them; the self in thee needed to be annihilated. by benignant fever-paroxysms is life rooting out the deep-seated chronic disease, and triumphs over death. on the roaring billows of time, thou art not engulfed, but borne aloft into the azure of eternity. love not pleasure; love god. this is the everlasting yea, wherein all contradiction is solved: wherein whoso walks and works, it is well with him.' and again: 'small is it that thou canst trample the earth with its injuries under thy feet, as old greek zeno trained thee: thou canst love the earth while it injures thee, and even because it injures thee; for this a greater than zeno was needed, and he too was sent. knowest thou that "_worship of sorrow_"? the temple thereof, founded some eighteen centuries ago, now lies in ruins, overgrown with jungle, the habitation of doleful creatures: nevertheless, venture forward; in a low crypt, arched out of falling fragments, thou findest the altar still there, and its sacred lamp perennially burning.' without pretending to comment on which strange utterances, the editor will only remark, that there lies beside them much of a still more questionable character; unsuited to the general apprehension; nay wherein he himself does not see his way. nebulous disquisitions on religion, yet not without bursts of splendour; on the 'perennial continuance of inspiration;' on prophecy; that there are 'true priests, as well as baal-priests, in our own day:' with more of the like sort. we select some fractions, by way of finish to this farrago. 'cease, my much-respected herr von voltaire,' thus apostrophises the professor: 'shut thy sweet voice; for the task appointed thee seems finished. sufficiently hast thou demonstrated this proposition, considerable or otherwise: that the mythus of the christian religion looks not in the eighteenth century as it did in the eighth. alas, were thy six-and-thirty quartos, and the six-and-thirty thousand other quartos and folios, and flying sheets or reams, printed before and since on the same subject, all needed to convince us of so little! but what next? wilt thou help us to embody the divine spirit of that religion in a new mythus, in a new vehicle and vesture, that our souls, otherwise too like perishing, may live? what! thou hast no faculty in that kind? only a torch for burning, no hammer for building? take our thanks, then, and--thyself away. 'meanwhile what are antiquated mythuses to me? or is the god present, felt in my own heart, a thing which herr von voltaire will dispute out of me; or dispute into me? to the "_worship of sorrow_" ascribe what origin and genesis thou pleasest, _has_ not that worship originated, and been generated; is it not _here_? feel it in thy heart, and then say whether it is of god! this is belief; all else is opinion,--for which latter whoso will let him worry and be worried.' 'neither,' observes he elsewhere, 'shall ye tear-out one another's eyes, struggling over "plenary inspiration," and suchlike: try rather to get a little even partial inspiration, each of you for himself. one bible i know, of whose plenary inspiration doubt is not so much as possible; nay with my own eyes i saw the god's-hand writing it: thereof all other bibles are but leaves,--say, in picture-writing to assist the weaker faculty.' or, to give the wearied reader relief, and bring it to an end, let him take the following perhaps more intelligible passage: 'to me, in this our life,' says the professor, 'which is an internecine warfare with the time-spirit, other warfare seems questionable. hast thou in any way a contention with thy brother, i advise thee, think well what the meaning thereof is. if thou gauge it to the bottom, it is simply this: "fellow, see! thou art taking more than thy share of happiness in the world, something from _my_ share: which, by the heavens, thou shall not; nay i will fight thee rather."--alas, and the whole lot to be divided is such a beggarly matter, truly a "feast of shells," for the substance has been spilled out: not enough to quench one appetite; and the collective human species clutching at them!--can we not, in all such cases, rather say: "take it, thou too-ravenous individual; take that pitiful additional fraction of a share, which i reckoned mine, but which thou so wantest; take it with a blessing: would to heaven i had enough for thee!"--if fichte's _wissenschaftslehre_ be, "to a certain extent, applied christianity," surely to a still greater extent, so is this. we have here not a whole duty of man, yet a half duty, namely the passive half: could we but do it, as we can demonstrate it! 'but indeed conviction, were it never so excellent, is worthless till it convert itself into conduct. nay properly conviction is not possible till then; inasmuch as all speculation is by nature endless, formless, a vortex amid vortices: only by a felt indubitable certainty of experience does it find any centre to revolve round, and so fashion itself into a system. most true is it, as a wise man teaches us, that "doubt of any sort cannot be removed except by action." on which ground, too, let him who gropes painfully in darkness or uncertain light, and prays vehemently that the dawn may ripen into day, lay this other precept well to heart, which to me was of invaluable service: "_do the duty which lies nearest thee_," which thou knowest to be a duty! thy second duty will already have become clearer. 'may we not say, however, that the hour of spiritual enfranchisement is even this: when your ideal world, wherein the whole man has been dimly struggling and inexpressibly languishing to work, becomes revealed, and thrown open; and you discover, with amazement enough, like the lothario in _wilhelm meister_, that your "america is here or nowhere"? the situation that has not its duty, its ideal, was never yet occupied by man. yes here, in this poor, miserable, hampered, despicable actual, wherein thou even now standest, here or nowhere is thy ideal: work it out therefrom; and working, believe, live, be free. fool! the ideal is in thyself, the impediment too is in thyself: thy condition is but the stuff thou art to shape that same ideal out of: what matters whether such stuff be of this sort or that, so the form thou give it be heroic, be poetic? o thou that pinest in the imprisonment of the actual, and criest bitterly to the gods for a kingdom wherein to rule and create, know this of a truth: the thing thou seekest is already with thee, "here or nowhere," couldst thou only see! 'but it is with man's soul as it was with nature: the beginning of creation is--light. till the eye have vision, the whole members are in bonds. divine moment, when over the tempest-tost soul, as once over the wild-weltering chaos, it is spoken: let there be light! ever to the greatest that has felt such moment, is it not miraculous and god-announcing; even as, under simpler figures, to the simplest and least. the mad primeval discord is hushed; the rudely-jumbled conflicting elements bind themselves into separate firmaments: deep silent rock-foundations are built beneath; and the skyey vault with its everlasting luminaries above: instead of a dark wasteful chaos, we have a blooming, fertile, heaven-encompassed world. 'i too could now say to myself: be no longer a chaos, but a world, or even worldkin. produce! produce! were it but the pitifullest infinitesimal fraction of a product, produce it, in god's name! 'tis the utmost thou hast in thee: out with it, then. up, up! whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy whole might. work while it is called today; for the night cometh, wherein no man can work.' chapter x pause thus have we, as closely and perhaps satisfactorily as, in such circumstances, might be, followed teufelsdröckh through the various successive states and stages of growth, entanglement, unbelief, and almost reprobation, into a certain clearer state of what he himself seems to consider as conversion. 'blame not the word,' says he; 'rejoice rather that such a word, signifying such a thing, has come to light in our modern era, though hidden from the wisest ancients. the old world knew nothing of conversion; instead of an _ecce homo_, they had only some _choice of hercules_. it was a new-attained progress in the moral development of man: hereby has the highest come home to the bosoms of the most limited; what to plato was but a hallucination, and to socrates a chimera, is now clear and certain to your zinzendorfs, your wesleys, and the poorest of their pietists and methodists.' it is here, then, that the spiritual majority of teufelsdröckh commences: we are henceforth to see him 'work in well-doing,' with the spirit and clear aims of a man. he has discovered that the ideal workshop he so panted for is even this same actual ill-furnished workshop he has so long been stumbling in. he can say to himself: 'tools? thou hast no tools? why, there is not a man, or a thing, now alive but has tools. the basest of created animalcules, the spider itself, has a spinning-jenny, and warping-mill, and power-loom within its head: the stupidest of oysters has a papin's-digester, with stone-and-lime house to hold it in: every being that can live can do something: this let him _do_.--tools? hast thou not a brain, furnished, furnishable with some glimmerings of light; and three fingers to hold a pen withal? never since aaron's rod went out of practice, or even before it, was there such a wonder-working tool: greater than all recorded miracles have been performed by pens. for strangely in this so solid-seeming world, which nevertheless is in continual restless flux, it is appointed that _sound_, to appearance the most fleeting, should be the most continuing of all things. the word is well said to be omnipotent in this world; man, thereby divine, can create as by a _fiat_. awake, arise! speak forth what is in thee; what god has given thee, what the devil shall not take away. higher task than that of priesthood was allotted to no man: wert thou but the meanest in that sacred hierarchy, is it not honour enough therein to spend and be spent? 'by this art, which whoso will may sacrilegiously degrade into a handicraft,' adds teufelsdröckh, 'have i thenceforth abidden. writings of mine, not indeed known as mine (for what am _i_?), have fallen, perhaps not altogether void, into the mighty seed-field of opinion; fruits of my unseen sowing gratifyingly meet me here and there. i thank the heavens that i have now found my calling; wherein, with or without perceptible result, i am minded diligently to persevere. 'nay how knowest thou,' cries he, 'but this and the other pregnant device, now grown to be a world-renowned far-working institution; like a grain of right mustard-seed once cast into the right soil, and now stretching-out strong boughs to the four winds, for the birds of the air to lodge in,--may have been properly my doing? some one's doing, it without doubt was; from some idea, in some single head, it did first of all take beginning: why not from some idea in mine?' does teufelsdröckh here glance at that 'society for the conservation of property (_eigenthums-conservirende gesellschaft_),' of which so many ambiguous notices glide spectre-like through these inexpressible paper-bags? 'an institution,' hints he, 'not unsuitable to the wants of the time; as indeed such sudden extension proves: for already can the society number, among its office-bearers or corresponding members, the highest names, if not the highest persons, in germany, england, france; and contributions, both of money and of meditation, pour-in from all quarters; to, if possible, enlist the remaining integrity of the world, and, defensively and with forethought, marshal it round this palladium.' does teufelsdröckh mean, then, to give himself out as the originator of that so notable _eigenthums-conservirende_ ('owndom-conserving') _gesellschaft_; and if so, what, in the devil's name, is it? he again hints: 'at a time when the divine commandment, _thou shalt not steal_, wherein truly, if well understood, is comprised the whole hebrew decalogue, with solon's and lycurgus's constitutions, justinian's pandects, the code napoléon, and all codes, catechisms, divinities, moralities whatsoever, that man has hitherto devised (and enforced with altar-fire and gallows-ropes) for his social guidance: at a time, i say, when this divine commandment has all-but faded away from the general remembrance; and, with little disguise, a new opposite commandment, _thou shalt steal_, is everywhere promulgated,--it perhaps behooved, in this universal dotage and deliration, the sound portion of mankind to bestir themselves and rally. when the widest and wildest violations of that divine right of property, the only divine right now extant or conceivable, are sanctioned and recommended by a vicious press, and the world has lived to hear it asserted that _we have no property in our very bodies, but only an accidental possession and life-rent_, what is the issue to be looked for? hangmen and catchpoles may, by their noose-gins and baited fall-traps, keep-down the smaller sort of vermin; but what, except perhaps some such universal association, can protect us against whole meat-devouring and man-devouring hosts of boa-constrictors? if, therefore, the more sequestered thinker have wondered, in his privacy, from what hand that perhaps not ill-written _program_ in the public journals, with its high _prize-questions_ and so liberal _prizes_, could have proceeded,--let him now cease such wonder; and, with undivided faculty, betake himself to the _concurrenz_ (competition).' we ask: has this same 'perhaps not ill-written _program_,' or any other authentic transaction of that property-conserving society, fallen under the eye of the british reader, in any journal foreign or domestic? if so, what are those _prize-questions_; what are the terms of competition, and when and where? no printed newspaper-leaf, no farther light of any sort, to be met with in these paper-bags! or is the whole business one other of those whimsicalities and perverse inexplicabilities, whereby herr teufelsdröckh, meaning much or nothing, is pleased so often to play fast-and-loose with us? * * * * * here, indeed, at length, must the editor give utterance to a painful suspicion, which, through late chapters, has begun to haunt him; paralysing any little enthusiasm that might still have rendered his thorny biographical task a labour of love. it is a suspicion grounded perhaps on trifles, yet confirmed almost into certainty by the more and more discernible humoristico-satirical tendency of teufelsdröckh, in whom underground humours and intricate sardonic rogueries, wheel within wheel, defy all reckoning: a suspicion, in one word, that these autobiographical documents are partly a mystification! what if many a so-called fact were little better than a fiction; if here we had no direct camera-obscura picture of the professor's history; but only some more or less fantastic adumbration, symbolically, perhaps significantly enough, shadowing-forth the same! our theory begins to be that, in receiving as literally authentic what was but hieroglyphically so, hofrath heuschrecke, whom in that case we scruple not to name hofrath nose-of-wax, was made a fool of, and set adrift to make fools of others. could it be expected, indeed, that a man so known for impenetrable reticence as teufelsdröckh, would all at once frankly unlock his private citadel to an english editor and a german hofrath; and not rather deceptively _in_lock both editor and hofrath in the labyrinthic tortuosities and covered-ways of said citadel (having enticed them thither), to see, in his half-devilish way, how the fools would look? of one fool, however, the herr professor will perhaps find himself short. on a small slip, formerly thrown aside as blank, the ink being all-but invisible, we lately notice, and with effort decipher, the following: 'what are your historical facts; still more your biographical? wilt thou know a man, above all a mankind, by stringing-together beadrolls of what thou namest facts? the man is the spirit he worked in; not what he did, but what he became. facts are engraved hierograms, for which the fewest have the key. and then how your blockhead (_dummkopf_) studies not their meaning; but simply whether they are well or ill cut, what he calls moral or immoral! still worse is it with your bungler (_pfuscher_): such i have seen reading some rousseau, with pretences of interpretation; and mistaking the ill-cut serpent-of-eternity for a common poisonous reptile.' was the professor apprehensive lest an editor, selected as the present boasts himself, might mistake the teufelsdröckh serpent-of-eternity in like manner? for which reason it was to be altered, not without underhand satire, into a plainer symbol? or is this merely one of his half-sophisms, half-truisms, which if he can but set on the back of a figure, he cares not whither it gallop? we say not with certainty; and indeed, so strange is the professor, can never say. if our suspicion be wholly unfounded, let his own questionable ways, not our necessary circumspectness, bear the blame. but be this as it will, the somewhat exasperated and indeed exhausted editor determines here to shut these paper-bags for the present. let it suffice that we know of teufelsdröckh, so far, if 'not what he did, yet what he became:' the rather, as his character has now taken its ultimate bent, and no new revolution, of importance, is to be looked for. the imprisoned chrysalis is now a winged psyche: and such, wheresoever be its flight, it will continue. to trace by what complex gyrations (flights or involuntary waftings) through the mere external life element, teufelsdröckh reaches his university professorship, and the psyche clothes herself in civic titles, without altering her now fixed nature,--would be comparatively an unproductive task, were we even unsuspicious of its being, for us at least, a false and impossible one. his outward biography, therefore, which, at the blumine lover's-leap, we saw churned utterly into spray-vapour, may hover in that condition, for aught that concerns us here. enough that by survey of certain 'pools and plashes,' we have ascertained its general direction; do we not already know that, by one way and other, it _has_ long since rained-down again into a stream; and even now, at weissnichtwo, flows deep and still, fraught with the _philosophy of clothes_, and visible to whoso will cast eye thereon? over much invaluable matter, that lies scattered, like jewels among quarry-rubbish, in those paper-catacombs we may have occasion to glance back, and somewhat will demand insertion at the right place: meanwhile be our tiresome diggings therein suspended. if now, before reopening the great _clothes-volume_, we ask what our degree of progress, during these ten chapters, has been, towards right understanding of the _clothes-philosophy_, let not our discouragement become total. to speak in that old figure of the hell-gate bridge over chaos, a few flying pontoons have perhaps been added, though as yet they drift straggling on the flood; how far they will reach, when once the chains are straightened and fastened, can, at present, only be matter of conjecture. so much we already calculate: through many a little loop-hole, we have had glimpses into the internal world of teufelsdröckh; his strange mystic, almost magic diagram of the universe, and how it was gradually drawn, is not henceforth altogether dark to us. those mysterious ideas on time, which merit consideration, and are not wholly unintelligible with such, may by and by prove significant. still more may his somewhat peculiar view of nature, the decisive oneness he ascribes to nature. how all nature and life are but one _garment_, a 'living garment,' woven and ever a-weaving in the 'loom of time;' is not here, indeed, the outline of a whole _clothes-philosophy_; at least the arena it is to work in? remark, too, that the character of the man, nowise without meaning in such a matter, becomes less enigmatic: amid so much tumultuous obscurity, almost like diluted madness, do not a certain indomitable defiance and yet a boundless reverence seem to loom-forth, as the two mountain-summits, on whose rock-strata all the rest were based and built? nay further, may we not say that teufelsdröckh's biography, allowing it even, as suspected, only a hieroglyphical truth, exhibits a man, as it were preappointed for clothes-philosophy? to look through the shows of things into things themselves he is led and compelled. the 'passivity' given him by birth is fostered by all turns of his fortune. everywhere cast out, like oil out of water, from mingling in any employment, in any public communion, he has no portion but solitude, and a life of meditation. the whole energy of his existence is directed, through long years, on one task: that of enduring pain, if he cannot cure it. thus everywhere do the shows of things oppress him, withstand him, threaten him with fearfullest destruction: only by victoriously penetrating into things themselves can he find peace and a stronghold. but is not this same looking through the shows, or vestures, into the things, even the first preliminary to a _philosophy of clothes_? do we not, in all this, discern some beckonings towards the true higher purport of such a philosophy; and what shape it must assume with such a man, in such an era? perhaps in entering on book third, the courteous reader is not utterly without guess whither he is bound: nor, let us hope, for all the fantastic dream-grottoes through which, as is our lot with teufelsdröckh, he must wander, will there be wanting between whiles some twinkling of a steady polar star. book third chapter i incident in modern history as a wonder-loving and wonder-seeking man, teufelsdröckh, from an early part of this clothes-volume, has more and more exhibited himself. striking it was, amid all his perverse cloudiness, with what force of vision and of heart he pierced into the mystery of the world; recognising in the highest sensible phenomena, so far as sense went, only fresh or faded raiment; yet ever, under this, a celestial essence thereby rendered visible: and while, on the one hand, he trod the old rags of matter, with their tinsels, into the mire, he on the other everywhere exalted spirit above all earthly principalities and powers, and worshipped it, though under the meanest shapes, with a true platonic mysticism. what the man ultimately purposed by thus casting his greek-fire into the general wardrobe of the universe; what such, more or less complete, rending and burning of garments throughout the whole compass of civilized life and speculation, should lead to; the rather as he was no adamite, in any sense, and could not, like rousseau, recommend either bodily or intellectual nudity, and a return to the savage state: all this our readers are now bent to discover; this is, in fact, properly the gist and purport of professor teufelsdröckh's philosophy of clothes. be it remembered, however, that such purport is here not so much evolved, as detected to lie ready for evolving. we are to guide our british friends into the new gold-country, and show them the mines; nowise to dig-out and exhaust its wealth, which indeed remains for all time inexhaustible. once there, let each dig for his own behoof, and enrich himself. neither, in so capricious inexpressible a work as this of the professor's can our course now more than formerly be straightforward, step by step, but at best leap by leap. significant indications stand-out here and there; which for the critical eye, that looks both widely and narrowly, shape themselves into some ground-scheme of a whole: to select these with judgment, so that a leap from one to the other be possible, and (in our old figure) by chaining them together, a passable bridge be effected: this, as heretofore, continues our only method. among such light-spots, the following, floating in much wild matter about _perfectibility_, has seemed worth clutching at: 'perhaps the most remarkable incident in modern history,' says teufelsdröckh, 'is not the diet of worms, still less the battle of austerlitz, waterloo, peterloo, or any other battle; but an incident passed carelessly over by most historians, and treated with some degree of ridicule by others: namely, george fox's making to himself a suit of leather. this man, the first of the quakers, and by trade a shoemaker, was one of those, to whom, under ruder or purer form, the divine idea of the universe is pleased to manifest itself; and, across all the hulls of ignorance and earthly degradation, shine through, in unspeakable awfulness, unspeakable beauty, on their souls: who therefore are rightly accounted prophets, god-possessed; or even gods, as in some periods it has chanced. sitting in his stall; working on tanned hides, amid pincers, paste-horns, rosin, swine-bristles, and a nameless flood of rubbish, this youth had, nevertheless, a living spirit belonging to him; also an antique inspired volume, through which, as through a window, it could look upwards, and discern its celestial home. the task of a daily pair of shoes, coupled even with some prospect of victuals, and an honourable mastership in cordwainery, and perhaps the post of thirdborough in his hundred, as the crown of long faithful sewing,--was nowise satisfaction enough to such a mind: but ever amid the boring and hammering came tones from that far country, came splendours and terrors; for this poor cordwainer, as we said, was a man; and the temple of immensity, wherein as man he had been sent to minister, was full of holy mystery to him. 'the clergy of the neighbourhood, the ordained watchers and interpreters of that same holy mystery, listened with unaffected tedium to his consultations, and advised him, as the solution of such doubts, to "drink beer and dance with the girls." blind leaders of the blind! for what end were their tithes levied and eaten; for what were their shovel-hats scooped-out, and their surplices and cassock-aprons girt-on; and such a church-repairing, and chaffering, and organing, and other racketing, held over that spot of god's earth,--if man were but a patent digester, and the belly with its adjuncts the grand reality? fox turned from them, with tears and a sacred scorn, back to his leather-parings and his bible. mountains of encumbrance, higher than Ætna, had been heaped over that spirit: but it was a spirit, and would not lie buried there. through long days and nights of silent agony, it struggled and wrestled, with a man's force, to be free: how its prison-mountains heaved and swayed tumultuously, as the giant spirit shook them to this hand and that, and emerged into the light of heaven! that leicester shoe-shop, had men known it, was a holier place than any vatican or loretto-shrine.--"so bandaged, and hampered, and hemmed in," groaned he, "with thousand requisitions, obligations, straps, tatters, and tagrags, i can neither see nor move: not my own am i, but the world's; and time flies fast, and heaven is high, and hell is deep: man! bethink thee, if thou hast power of thought! why not; what binds me here? want, want!--ha, of what? will all the shoe-wages under the moon ferry me across into that far land of light? only meditation can, and devout prayer to god. i will to the woods: the hollow of a tree will lodge me, wild-berries feed me; and for clothes, cannot i stitch myself one perennial suit of leather!" 'historical oil-painting,' continues teufelsdröckh, 'is one of the arts i never practised; therefore shall i not decide whether this subject were easy of execution on the canvas. yet often has it seemed to me as if such first outflashing of man's freewill, to lighten, more and more into day, the chaotic night that threatened to engulf him in its hindrances and its horrors, were properly the only grandeur there is in history. let some living angelo or rosa, with seeing eye and understanding heart, picture george fox on that morning, when he spreads-out his cutting-board for the last time, and cuts cowhides by unwonted patterns, and stitches them together into one continuous all-including case, the farewell service of his awl! stitch away, thou noble fox: every prick of that little instrument is pricking into the heart of slavery, and world-worship, and the mammon-god. thy elbows jerk, and in strong swimmer-strokes, and every stroke is bearing thee across the prison-ditch, within which vanity holds her workhouse and ragfair, into lands of true liberty; were the work done, there is in broad europe one free man, and thou art he! 'thus from the lowest depth there is a path to the loftiest height; and for the poor also a gospel has been published. surely if, as d'alembert asserts, my illustrious namesake, diogenes, was the greatest man of antiquity, only that he wanted decency, then by stronger reason is george fox the greatest of the moderns; and greater than diogenes himself: for he too stands on the adamantine basis of his manhood, casting aside all props and shoars; yet not, in half-savage pride, undervaluing the earth; valuing it rather, as a place to yield him warmth and food, he looks heavenward from his earth, and dwells in an element of mercy and worship, with a still strength, such as the cynic's tub did nowise witness. great, truly, was that tub; a temple from which man's dignity and divinity was scornfully preached abroad: but greater is the leather hull, for the same sermon was preached there, and not in scorn but in love.' * * * * * george fox's 'perennial suit,' with all that it held, has been worn quite into ashes for nigh two centuries: why, in a discussion on the _perfectibility of society_, reproduce it now? not out of blind sectarian partisanship: teufelsdröckh himself is no quaker; with all his pacific tendencies, did not we see him, in that scene at the north cape, with the archangel smuggler, exhibit fire-arms? for us, aware of his deep sansculottism, there is more meant in this passage than meets the ear. at the same time, who can avoid smiling at the earnestness and boeotian simplicity (if indeed there be not an underhand satire in it), with which that 'incident' is here brought forward; and, in the professor's ambiguous way, as clearly perhaps as he durst in weissnichtwo, recommended to imitation! does teufelsdröckh anticipate that, in this age of refinement, any considerable class of the community, by way of testifying against the 'mammon-god,' and escaping from what he calls 'vanity's workhouse and ragfair,' where doubtless some of them are toiled and whipped and hoodwinked sufficiently,--will sheathe themselves in close-fitting cases of leather? the idea is ridiculous in the extreme. will majesty lay aside its robes of state, and beauty its frills and train-gowns, for a second-skin of tanned hide? by which change huddersfield and manchester, and coventry and paisley, and the fancy-bazaar, were reduced to hungry solitudes; and only day and martin could profit. for neither would teufelsdröckh's mad daydream, here as we presume covertly intended, of levelling society (_levelling_ it indeed with a vengeance, into one huge drowned marsh!), and so attaining the political effects of nudity without its frigorific or other consequences,--be thereby realised. would not the rich man purchase a waterproof suit of russia leather; and the high-born belle step-forth in red or azure morocco, lined with shamoy: the black cowhide being left to the drudges and gibeonites of the world; and so all the old distinctions be re-established? or has the professor his own deeper intention; and laughs in his sleeve at our strictures and glosses, which indeed are but a part thereof? chapter ii church-clothes not less questionable is his chapter on _church-clothes_, which has the farther distinction of being the shortest in the volume. we here translate it entire: 'by church-clothes, it need not be premised that i mean infinitely more than cassocks and surplices; and do not at all mean the mere haberdasher sunday clothes that men go to church in. far from it! church-clothes are, in our vocabulary, the forms, the _vestures_, under which men have at various periods embodied and represented for themselves the religious principle; that is to say, invested the divine idea of the world with a sensible and practically active body, so that it might dwell among them as a living and life-giving word. 'these are unspeakably the most important of all the vestures and garnitures of human existence. they are first spun and woven, i may say, by that wonder of wonders, society; for it is still only when "two or three are gathered together," that religion, spiritually existent, and indeed indestructible, however latent, in each, first outwardly manifests itself (as with "cloven tongues of fire"), and seeks to be embodied in a visible communion and church militant. mystical, more than magical, is that communing of soul with soul, both looking heavenward: here properly soul first speaks with soul; for only in looking heavenward, take it in what sense you may, not in looking earthward, does what we can call union, mutual love, society, begin to be possible. how true is that of novalis: "it is certain my belief gains quite _infinitely_ the moment i can convince another mind thereof"! gaze thou in the face of thy brother, in those eyes where plays the lambent fire of kindness, or in those where rages the lurid conflagration of anger; feel how thy own so quiet soul is straightway involuntarily kindled with the like, and ye blaze and reverberate on each other, till it is all one limitless confluent flame (of embracing love, or of deadly-grappling hate); and then say what miraculous virtue goes out of man into man. but if so, through all the thick-plied hulls of our earthly life; how much more when it is of the divine life we speak, and inmost me is, as it were, brought into contact with inmost me! 'thus was it that i said, the church-clothes are first spun and woven by society; outward religion originates by society, society becomes possible by religion. nay, perhaps, every conceivable society, past and present, may well be figured as properly and wholly a church, in one or other of these three predicaments: an audibly preaching and prophesying church, which is the best; second, a church that struggles to preach and prophesy, but cannot as yet, till its pentecost come; and third and worst, a church gone dumb with old age, or which only mumbles delirium prior to dissolution. whoso fancies that by church is here meant chapterhouses and cathedrals, or by preaching and prophesying, mere speech and chanting, let him,' says the oracular professor, 'read on, light of heart (_getrosten muthes_). 'but with regard to your church proper, and the church-clothes specially recognised as church-clothes, i remark, fearlessly enough, that without such vestures and sacred tissues society has not existed, and will not exist. for if government is, so to speak, the outward skin of the body politic, holding the whole together and protecting it; and all your craft-guilds, and associations for industry, of hand or of head, are the fleshly clothes, the muscular and osseous tissues (lying _under_ such skin), whereby society stands and works;--then is religion the inmost pericardial and nervous tissue, which ministers life and warm circulation to the whole. without which pericardial tissue the bones and muscles (of industry) were inert, or animated only by a galvanic vitality; the skin would become a shrivelled pelt, or fast-rotting raw-hide; and society itself a dead carcass,--deserving to be buried. men were no longer social, but gregarious; which latter state also could not continue, but must gradually issue in universal selfish discord, hatred, savage isolation, and dispersion;--whereby, as we might continue to say, the very dust and dead body of society would have evaporated and become abolished. such, and so all-important, all-sustaining, are the church-clothes to civilised or even to rational men. 'meanwhile, in our era of the world, those same church-clothes have gone sorrowfully out-at-elbows; nay, far worse, many of them have become mere hollow shapes, or masks, under which no living figure or spirit any longer dwells; but only spiders and unclean beetles, in horrid accumulation, drive their trade; and the mask still glares on you with its glass-eyes, in ghastly affectation of life,--some generation-and-half after religion has quite withdrawn from it, and in unnoticed nooks is weaving for herself new vestures, wherewith to reappear, and bless us, or our sons or grandsons. as a priest, or interpreter of the holy, is the noblest and highest of all men, so is a sham-priest (_schein-priester_) the falsest and basest; neither is it doubtful that his canonicals, were they popes' tiaras, will one day be torn from him, to make bandages for the wounds of mankind; or even to burn into tinder, for general scientific or culinary purposes. 'all which, as out of place here, falls to be handled in my second volume, _on the palingenesia, or newbirth of society_; which volume, as treating practically of the wear, destruction, and retexture of spiritual tissues, or garments, forms, properly speaking, the transcendental or ultimate portion of this my work _on clothes_, and is already in a state of forwardness.' and herewith, no farther exposition, note, or commentary being added, does teufelsdröckh, and must his editor now, terminate the singular chapter on church-clothes! chapter iii symbols probably it will elucidate the drift of these foregoing obscure utterances, if we here insert somewhat of our professor's speculations on _symbols_. to state his whole doctrine, indeed, were beyond our compass: nowhere is he more mysterious, impalpable, than in this of 'fantasy being the organ of the god-like;' and how 'man thereby, though based, to all seeming, on the small visible, does nevertheless extend down into the infinite deeps of the invisible, of which invisible, indeed, his life is properly the bodying forth.' let us, omitting these high transcendental aspects of the matter, study to glean (whether from the paper-bags or the printed volume) what little seems logical and practical, and cunningly arrange it into such degree of coherence as it will assume. by way of proem, take the following not injudicious remarks: 'the benignant efficacies of concealment,' cries our professor, 'who shall speak or sing? silence and secrecy! altars might still be raised to them (were this an altar-building time) for universal worship. silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves together; that at length they may emerge, full-formed and majestic, into the daylight of life, which they are thenceforth to rule. not william the silent only, but all the considerable men i have known, and the most undiplomatic and unstrategic of these, forbore to babble of what they were creating and projecting. nay, in thy own mean perplexities, do thou thyself but _hold thy tongue for one day_: on the morrow, how much clearer are thy purposes and duties; what wreck and rubbish have those mute workmen within thee swept away, when intrusive noises were shut out! speech is too often not, as the frenchman defined it, the art of concealing thought; but of quite stifling and suspending thought, so that there is none to conceal. speech too is great, but not the greatest. as the swiss inscription says: _sprechen ist silbern, schweigen ist golden_ (speech is silvern, silence is golden); or as i might rather express it: speech is of time, silence is of eternity. 'bees will not work except in darkness; thought will not work except in silence; neither will virtue work except in secrecy. let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth! neither shalt thou prate even to thy own heart of "those secrets known to all." is not shame (_schaam_) the soil of all virtue, of all good manners and good morals? like other plants, virtue will not grow unless its root be hidden, buried from the eye of the sun. let the sun shine on it, nay do but look at it privily thyself, the root withers, and no flower will glad thee. o my friends, when we view the fair clustering flowers that over-wreathe, for example, the marriage-bower, and encircle man's life with the fragrance and hues of heaven, what hand will not smite the foul plunderer that grubs them up by the roots, and with grinning, grunting satisfaction, shows us the dung they flourish in! men speak much of the printing-press with its newspapers: _du himmel!_ what are these to clothes and the tailor's goose?' 'of kin to the so incalculable influences of concealment, and connected with still greater things, is the wondrous agency of _symbols_. in a symbol there is concealment and yet revelation: here therefore, by silence and by speech acting together, comes a double significance. and if both the speech be itself high, and the silence fit and noble, how expressive will their union be! thus in many a painted device, or simple seal-emblem, the commonest truth stands-out to us proclaimed with quite new emphasis. 'for it is here that fantasy with her mystic wonderland plays into the small prose domain of sense, and becomes incorporated therewith. in the symbol proper, what we can call a symbol, there is ever, more or less distinctly and directly, some embodiment and revelation of the infinite; the infinite is made to blend itself with the finite, to stand visible, and as it were, attainable there. by symbols, accordingly, is man guided and commanded, made happy, made wretched. he everywhere finds himself encompassed with symbols, recognised as such or not recognised: the universe is but one vast symbol of god; nay if thou wilt have it, what is man himself but a symbol of god; is not all that he does symbolical; a revelation to sense of the mystic god-given force that is in him; a "gospel of freedom," which he, the "messias of nature," preaches, as he can, by act and word? not a hut he builds but is the visible embodiment of a thought; but bears visible record of invisible things; but is, in the transcendental sense, symbolical as well as real.' 'man,' says the professor elsewhere, in quite antipodal contrast with these high-soaring delineations, which we have here cut short on the verge of the inane, 'man is by birth somewhat of an owl. perhaps, too, of all the owleries that ever possessed him, the most owlish, if we consider it, is that of your actually existing motive-millwrights. fantastic tricks enough man has played, in his time; has fancied himself to be most things, down even to an animated heap of glass; but to fancy himself a dead iron-balance for weighing pains and pleasures on, was reserved for this his latter era. there stands he, his universe one huge manger, filled with hay and thistles to be weighed against each other; and looks long-eared enough. alas, poor devil! spectres are appointed to haunt him: one age he is hag-ridden, bewitched; the next, priestridden, befooled; in all ages, bedevilled. and now the genius of mechanism smothers him worse than any nightmare did; till the soul is nigh choked out of him, and only a kind of digestive, mechanic life remains. in earth and in heaven he can see nothing but mechanism; has fear for nothing else, hope in nothing else: the world would indeed grind him to pieces; but cannot he fathom the doctrine of motives, and cunningly compute these, and mechanise them to grind the other way? 'were he not, as has been said, purblinded by enchantment, you had but to bid him open his eyes and look. in which country, in which time, was it hitherto that man's history, or the history of any man, went on by calculated or calculable "motives"? what make ye of your christianities, and chivalries, and reformations, and marseillese hymns, and reigns of terror? nay, has not perhaps the motive-grinder himself been _in love_? did he never stand so much as a contested election? leave him to time, and the medicating virtue of nature.' 'yes, friends,' elsewhere observes the professor, 'not our logical, mensurative faculty, but our imaginative one is king over us; i might say, priest and prophet to lead us heavenward; our magician and wizard to lead us hellward. nay, even for the basest sensualist, what is sense but the implement of fantasy; the vessel it drinks out of? ever in the dullest existence there is a sheen either of inspiration or of madness (thou partly hast it in thy choice, which of the two), that gleams-in from the circumambient eternity, and colours with its own hues our little islet of time. the understanding is indeed thy window, too clear thou canst not make it; but fantasy is thy eye, with its colour-giving retina, healthy or diseased. have not i myself known five-hundred living soldiers sabred into crows'-meat for a piece of glazed cotton, which they called their flag; which, had you sold it at any market-cross, would not have brought above three groschen? did not the whole hungarian nation rise, like some tumultuous moon-stirred atlantic, when kaiser joseph pocketed their iron crown; an implement, as was sagaciously observed, in size and commercial value little differing from a horse-shoe? it is in and through _symbols_ that man, consciously or unconsciously, lives, works, and has his being: those ages, moreover, are accounted the noblest which can the best recognise symbolical worth, and prize it the highest. for is not a symbol ever, to him who has eyes for it, some dimmer or clearer revelation of the godlike? 'of symbols, however, i remark farther, that they have both an extrinsic and intrinsic value; oftenest the former only. what, for instance, was in that clouted shoe, which the peasants bore aloft with them as ensign in their _bauernkrieg_ (peasants' war)? or in the wallet-and-staff round which the netherland _gueux_, glorying in that nickname of beggars, heroically rallied and prevailed, though against king philip himself? intrinsic significance these had none: only extrinsic; as the accidental standards of multitudes more or less sacredly uniting together; in which union itself, as above noted, there is ever something mystical and borrowing of the godlike. under a like category, too, stand, or stood, the stupidest heraldic coats-of-arms; military banners everywhere; and generally all national or other sectarian costumes and customs: they have no intrinsic, necessary divineness, or even worth; but have acquired an extrinsic one. nevertheless through all these there glimmers something of a divine idea; as through military banners themselves, the divine idea of duty, of heroic daring; in some instances of freedom, of right. nay, the highest ensign that men ever met and embraced under, the cross itself, had no meaning save an accidental extrinsic one. 'another matter it is, however, when your symbol has intrinsic meaning, and is of itself _fit_ that men should unite round it. let but the godlike manifest itself to sense; let but eternity look, more or less visibly, through the time-figure (_zeitbild_)! then is it fit that men unite there; and worship together before such symbol; and so from day to day, and from age to age, superadd to it new divineness. 'of this latter sort are all true works of art: in them (if thou know a work of art from a daub of artifice) wilt thou discern eternity looking through time; the godlike rendered visible. here too may an extrinsic value gradually superadd itself: thus certain _iliads_, and the like, have, in three-thousand years, attained quite new significance. but nobler than all in this kind, are the lives of heroic god-inspired men; for what other work of art is so divine? in death too, in the death of the just, as the last perfection of a work of art, may we not discern symbolic meaning? in that divinely transfigured sleep, as of victory, resting over the beloved face which now knows thee no more, read (if thou canst for tears) the confluence of time with eternity, and some gleam of the latter peering through. 'highest of all symbols are those wherein the artist or poet has risen into prophet, and all men can recognise a present god, and worship the same: i mean religious symbols. various enough have been such religious symbols, what we call _religions_; as men stood in this stage of culture or the other, and could worse or better body-forth the godlike: some symbols with a transient intrinsic worth; many with only an extrinsic. if thou ask to what height man has carried it in this manner, look on our divinest symbol: on jesus of nazareth, and his life, and his biography, and what followed therefrom. higher has the human thought not yet reached: this is christianity and christendom; a symbol of quite perennial, infinite character: whose significance will ever demand to be anew inquired into, and anew made manifest. 'but, on the whole, as time adds much to the sacredness of symbols, so likewise in his progress he at length defaces or even desecrates them; and symbols, like all terrestrial garments, wax old. homer's epos has not ceased to be true; yet it is no longer _our_ epos, but shines in the distance, if clearer and clearer, yet also smaller and smaller, like a receding star. it needs a scientific telescope, it needs to be reinterpreted and artificially brought near us, before we can so much as know that it _was_ a sun. so likewise a day comes when the runic thor, with his eddas, must withdraw into dimness; and many an african mumbo-jumbo and indian pawaw be utterly abolished. for all things, even celestial luminaries, much more atmospheric meteors, have their rise, their culmination, their decline.' 'small is this which thou tellest me, that the royal sceptre is but a piece of gilt-wood; that the pyx has become a most foolish box, and truly, as ancient pistol thought, "of little price." a right conjuror might i name thee, couldst thou conjure back into these wooden tools the divine virtue they once held.' 'of this thing, however, be certain: wouldst thou plant for eternity, then plant into the deep infinite faculties of man, his fantasy and heart; wouldst thou plant for year and day, then plant into his shallow superficial faculties, his self-love and arithmetical understanding, what will grow there. a hierarch, therefore, and pontiff of the world will we call him, the poet and inspired maker; who, prometheus-like, can shape new symbols, and bring new fire from heaven to fix it there. such too will not always be wanting; neither perhaps now are. meanwhile, as the average of matters goes, we account him legislator and wise who can so much as tell when a symbol has grown old, and gently remove it. 'when, as the last english coronation[ ] was preparing,' concludes this wonderful professor, 'i read in their newspapers that the "champion of england," he who has to offer battle to the universe for his new king, had brought it so far that he could now "mount his horse with little assistance," i said to myself: here also we have a symbol well-nigh superannuated. alas, move whithersoever you may, are not the tatters and rags of superannuated worn-out symbols (in this ragfair of a world) dropping off everywhere, to hoodwink, to halter, to tether you; nay, if you shake them not aside, threatening to accumulate, and perhaps produce suffocation?' [ ] that of george iv.--ed. chapter iv helotage at this point we determine on adverting shortly, or rather reverting, to a certain tract of hofrath heuschrecke's, entitled _institute for the repression of population_; which lies, dishonourable enough (with torn leaves, and a perceptible smell of aloetic drugs), stuffed into the bag _pisces_. not indeed for the sake of the tract itself, which we admire little; but of the marginal notes, evidently in teufelsdröckh's hand, which rather copiously fringe it. a few of these may be in their right place here. into the hofrath's _institute_, with its extraordinary schemes, and machinery of corresponding boards and the like, we shall not so much as glance. enough for us to understand that heuschrecke is a disciple of malthus; and so zealous for the doctrine, that his zeal almost literally eats him up. a deadly fear of population possesses the hofrath; something like a fixed-idea; undoubtedly akin to the more diluted forms of madness. nowhere, in that quarter of his intellectual world, is there light; nothing but a grim shadow of hunger; open mouths opening wider and wider; a world to terminate by the frightfullest consummation: by its too dense inhabitants, famished into delirium, universally eating one another. to make air for himself in which strangulation, choking enough to a benevolent heart, the hofrath founds, or proposes to found, this _institute_ of his, as the best he can do. it is only with our professor's comments thereon that we concern ourselves. first, then, remark that teufelsdröckh, as a speculative radical, has his own notions about human dignity; that the zähdarm palaces and courtesies have not made him forgetful of the futteral cottages. on the blank cover of heuschrecke's tract we find the following indistinctly engrossed: 'two men i honour, and no third. first, the toil-worn craftsman that with earth-made implement laboriously conquers the earth, and makes her man's. venerable to me is the hard hand; crooked, coarse; wherein notwithstanding lies a cunning virtue, indefeasibly royal, as of the sceptre of this planet. venerable too is the rugged face, all weather-tanned, besoiled, with its rude intelligence; for it is the face of a man living manlike. o, but the more venerable for thy rudeness, and even because we must pity as well as love thee! hardly-entreated brother! for us was thy back so bent, for us were thy straight limbs and fingers so deformed: thou wert our conscript, on whom the lot fell, and fighting our battles wert so marred. for in thee too lay a god-created form, but it was not to be unfolded; encrusted must it stand with the thick adhesions and defacements of labour: and thy body, like thy soul, was not to know freedom. yet toil on, toil on: _thou_ art in thy duty, be out of it who may; thou toilest for the altogether indispensable, for daily bread. 'a second man i honour, and still more highly: him who is seen toiling for the spiritually indispensable; not daily bread, but the bread of life. is not he too in his duty; endeavouring towards inward harmony; revealing this, by act or by word, through all his outward endeavours, be they high or low? highest of all, when his outward and his inward endeavour are one: when we can name him artist; not earthly craftsman only, but inspired thinker, who with heaven-made implement conquers heaven for us! if the poor and humble toil that we have food, must not the high and glorious toil for him in return, that he have light, have guidance, freedom, immortality?--these two, in all their degrees, i honour: all else is chaff and dust, which let the wind blow whither it listeth. 'unspeakably touching is it, however, when i find both dignities united; and he that must toil outwardly for the lowest of man's wants, is also toiling inwardly for the highest. sublimer in this world know i nothing than a peasant saint, could such now anywhere be met with. such a one will take thee back to nazareth itself; thou wilt see the splendour of heaven spring forth from the humblest depths of earth, like a light shining in great darkness.' and again: 'it is not because of his toils that i lament for the poor: we must all toil, or steal (howsoever we name our stealing), which is worse; no faithful workman finds his task a pastime. the poor is hungry and a-thirst; but for him also there is food and drink: he is heavy-laden and weary; but for him also the heavens send sleep, and of the deepest; in his smoky cribs, a clear dewy heaven of rest envelops him, and fitful glitterings of cloud-skirted dreams. but what i do mourn over is, that the lamp of his soul should go out; that no ray of heavenly, or even of earthly knowledge, should visit him; but only, in the haggard darkness, like two spectres, fear and indignation bear him company. alas, while the body stands so broad and brawny, must the soul lie blinded, dwarfed, stupefied, almost annihilated! alas, was this too a breath of god; bestowed in heaven, but on earth never to be unfolded!--that there should one man die ignorant who had capacity for knowledge, this i call a tragedy, were it to happen more than twenty times in the minute, as by some computations it does. the miserable fraction of science which our united mankind, in a wide universe of nescience, has acquired, why is not this, with all diligence, imparted to all?' quite in an opposite strain is the following: 'the old spartans had a wiser method; and went out and hunted-down their helots, and speared and spitted them, when they grew too numerous. with our improved fashions of hunting, herr hofrath, now after the invention of fire-arms, and standing-armies, how much easier were such a hunt! perhaps in the most thickly-peopled country, some three days annually might suffice to shoot all the able-bodied paupers that had accumulated within the year. let governments think of this. the expense were trifling: nay the very carcasses would pay it. have them salted and barrelled; could not you victual therewith, if not army and navy, yet richly such infirm paupers, in workhouses and elsewhere, as enlightened charity, dreading no evil of them, might see good to keep alive?' 'and yet,' writes he farther on, 'there must be something wrong. a full-formed horse will, in any market, bring from twenty to as high as two-hundred friedrichs d'or: such is his worth to the world. a full-formed man is not only worth nothing to the world, but the world could afford him a round sum would he simply engage to go and hang himself. nevertheless, which of the two was the more cunningly-devised article, even as an engine? good heavens! a white european man, standing on his two legs, with his two five-fingered hands at his shackle-bones, and miraculous head on his shoulders, is worth, i should say, from fifty to a hundred horses!' 'true, thou gold-hofrath,' cries the professor elsewhere: 'too crowded indeed! meanwhile, what portion of this inconsiderable terraqueous globe have ye actually tilled and delved, till it will grow no more? how thick stands your population in the pampas and savannas of america; round ancient carthage, and in the interior of africa; on both slopes of the altaic chain, in the central platform of asia; in spain, greece, turkey, crim tartary, the curragh of kildare? one man, in one year, as i have understood it, if you lend him earth, will feed himself and nine others. alas, where now are the hengsts and alarics of our still-glowing, still-expanding europe; who, when their home is grown too narrow, will enlist, and, like fire-pillars, guide onwards those superfluous masses of indomitable living valour; equipped, not now with the battle-axe and war-chariot, but with the steam-engine and ploughshare? where are they?--preserving their game!' chapter v the phoenix putting which four singular chapters together, and alongside of them numerous hints, and even direct utterances, scattered over these writings of his, we come upon the startling yet not quite unlooked-for conclusion, that teufelsdröckh is one of those who consider society, properly so called, to be as good as extinct; and that only the gregarious feelings, and old inherited habitudes, at this juncture, hold us from dispersion, and universal national, civil, domestic and personal war! he says expressly: 'for the last three centuries, above all for the last three quarters of a century, that same pericardial nervous tissue (as we named it) of religion, where lies the life-essence of society, has been smote-at and perforated, needfully and needlessly; till now it is quite rent into shreds; and society, long pining, diabetic, consumptive, can be regarded as defunct; for those spasmodic, galvanic sprawlings are not life; neither indeed will they endure, galvanise as you may, beyond two days.' 'call ye that a society,' cries he again, 'where there is no longer any social idea extant; not so much as the idea of a common home, but only of a common over-crowded lodging-house? where each, isolated, regardless of his neighbour, turned against his neighbour, clutches what he can get, and cries "mine!" and calls it peace, because, in the cut-purse and cut-throat scramble, no steel knives, but only a far cunninger sort, can be employed? where friendship, communion, has become an incredible tradition; and your holiest sacramental supper is a smoking tavern dinner, with cook for evangelist? where your priest has no tongue but for plate-licking: and your high guides and governors cannot guide; but on all hands hear it passionately proclaimed: _laissez faire_; leave us alone of _your_ guidance, such light is darker than darkness; eat you your wages, and sleep! 'thus, too,' continues he, 'does an observant eye discern everywhere that saddest spectacle: the poor perishing, like neglected, foundered draught-cattle, of hunger and over-work; the rich, still more wretchedly, of idleness, satiety, and over-growth. the highest in rank, at length, without honour from the lowest; scarcely, with a little mouth-honour, as from tavern-waiters who expect to put it in the bill. once-sacred symbols fluttering as empty pageants, whereof men grudge even the expense; a world becoming dismantled: in one word, the church fallen speechless, from obesity and apoplexy; the state shrunken into a police-office, straitened to get its pay!' we might ask, are there many 'observant eyes,' belonging to practical men in england or elsewhere, which have descried these phenomena; or is it only from the mystic elevation of a german _wahngasse_ that such wonders are visible? teufelsdröckh contends that the aspect of a 'deceased or expiring society' fronts us everywhere, so that whoso runs may read. 'what, for example,' says he, 'is the universally-arrogated virtue, almost the sole remaining catholic virtue, of these days? for some half century, it has been the thing you name "independence." suspicion of "servility," of reverence for superiors, the very dogleech is anxious to disavow. fools! were your superiors worthy to govern, and you worthy to obey, reverence for them were even your only possible freedom. independence, in all kinds, is rebellion; if unjust rebellion, why parade it, and everywhere prescribe it?' but what then? are we returning, as rousseau prayed, to the state of nature? 'the soul politic having departed,' says teufelsdröckh, 'what can follow but that the body politic be decently interred, to avoid putrescence! liberals, economists, utilitarians enough i see marching with its bier, and chanting loud pæans, towards the funeral-pile, where, amid wailings from some, and saturnalian revelries from the most, the venerable corpse is to be burnt. or, in plain words, that these men, liberals, utilitarians, or whatsoever they are called, will ultimately carry their point, and dissever and destroy most existing institutions of society, seems a thing which has some time ago ceased to be doubtful. 'do we not see a little subdivision of the grand utilitarian armament come to light even in insulated england? a living nucleus, that will attract and grow, does at length appear there also; and under curious phasis; properly as the inconsiderable fag-end, and so far in the rear of the others as to fancy itself the van. our european mechanisers are a sect of boundless diffusion, activity, and co-operative spirit: has not utilitarianism flourished in high places of thought, here among ourselves, and in every european country, at some time or other, within the last fifty years? if now in all countries, except perhaps england, it has ceased to flourish, or indeed to exist, among thinkers, and sunk to journalists and the popular mass,--who sees not that, as hereby it no longer preaches, so the reason is, it now needs no preaching, but is in full universal action, the doctrine everywhere known, and enthusiastically laid to heart? the fit pabulum, in these times, for a certain rugged workshop intellect and heart, nowise without their corresponding workshop strength and ferocity, it requires but to be stated in such scenes to make proselytes enough.--admirably calculated for destroying, only not for rebuilding! it spreads like a sort of dog-madness; till the whole world-kennel will be rabid: then woe to the huntsmen, with or without their whips! they should have given the quadrupeds water,' adds he; 'the water, namely, of knowledge and of life, while it was yet time.' thus, if professor teufelsdröckh can be relied on, we are at this hour in a most critical condition; beleaguered by that boundless 'armament of mechanisers' and unbelievers, threatening to strip us bare! 'the world,' says he, 'as it needs must, is under a process of devastation and waste, which, whether by silent assiduous corrosion, or open quicker combustion, as the case chances, will effectually enough annihilate the past forms of society; replace them with what it may. for the present, it is contemplated that when man's whole spiritual interests are once _divested_, these innumerable stript-off garments shall mostly be burnt; but the sounder rags among them be quilted together into one huge irish watchcoat for the defence of the body only!'--this, we think, is but job's-news to the humane reader. 'nevertheless,' cries teufelsdröckh, 'who can hinder it; who is there that can clutch into the wheel-spokes of destiny, and say to the spirit of the time: turn back, i command thee?--wiser were it that we yielded to the inevitable and inexorable, and accounted even this the best.' nay, might not an attentive editor, drawing his own inferences from what stands written, conjecture that teufelsdröckh individually had yielded to this same 'inevitable and inexorable' heartily enough; and now sat waiting the issue, with his natural diabolico-angelical indifference, if not even placidity? did we not hear him complain that the world was a 'huge ragfair,' and the 'rags and tatters of old symbols' were raining-down everywhere, like to drift him in, and suffocate him? what with those 'unhunted helots' of his; and the uneven _sic-vos-non-vobis_ pressure and hard-crashing collision he is pleased to discern in existing things; what with the so hateful 'empty masks,' full of beetles and spiders, yet glaring out on him, from their glass eyes, 'with a ghastly affectation of life,'--we feel entitled to conclude him even willing that much should be thrown to the devil, so it were but done gently! safe himself in that 'pinnacle of weissnichtwo,' he would consent, with a tragic solemnity, that the monster utilitaria, held back, indeed, and moderated by nose-rings, halters, foot-shackles, and every conceivable modification of rope, should go forth to do her work;--to tread down old ruinous palaces and temples with her broad hoof, till the whole were trodden down, that new and better might be built! remarkable in this point of view are the following sentences. 'society,' says he, 'is not dead: that carcass, which you call dead society, is but her mortal coil which she has shuffled off, to assume a nobler; she herself, through perpetual metamorphoses, in fairer and fairer development, has to live till time also merge in eternity. wheresoever two or three living men are gathered together, there is society; or there it will be, with its cunning mechanisms and stupendous structures, overspreading this little globe, and reaching upwards to heaven and downwards to gehenna: for always, under one or the other figure, it has two authentic revelations, of a god and of a devil; the pulpit, namely, and the gallows.' indeed, we already heard him speak of 'religion, in unnoticed nooks, weaving for herself new vestures';--teufelsdröckh himself being one of the loom-treadles? elsewhere he quotes without censure that strange aphorism of saint-simon's, concerning which and whom so much were to be said: _l'âge d'or, qu'une aveugle tradition a placé jusqu'ici dans le passé, est devant nous_; the golden age, which a blind tradition has hitherto placed in the past, is before us.'--but listen again: 'when the phoenix is fanning her funeral pyre, will there not be sparks flying! alas, some millions of men, and among them such as a napoleon, have already been licked into that high-eddying flame, and like moths consumed there. still also have we to fear that incautious beards will get singed. 'for the rest, in what year of grace such phoenix-cremation will be completed, you need not ask. the law of perseverance is among the deepest in man: by nature he hates change; seldom will he quit his old house till it has actually fallen about his ears. thus have i seen solemnities linger as ceremonies, sacred symbols as idle-pageants, to the extent of three-hundred years and more after all life and sacredness had evaporated out of them. and then, finally, what time the phoenix death-birth itself will require, depends on unseen contingencies.--meanwhile, would destiny offer mankind, that after, say two centuries of convulsion and conflagration, more or less vivid, the fire-creation should be accomplished, and we too find ourselves again in a living society, and no longer fighting but working,--were it not perhaps prudent in mankind to strike the bargain?' thus is teufelsdröckh content that old sick society should be deliberately burnt (alas! with quite other fuel than spicewood); in the faith that she is a phoenix; and that a new heaven-born young one will rise out of her ashes! we ourselves, restricted to the duty of indicator, shall forbear commentary. meanwhile, will not the judicious reader shake his head, and reproachfully, yet more in sorrow than in anger, say or think: from a _doctor utriusque juris_, titular professor in a university, and man to whom hitherto, for his services, society, bad as she is, has given not only food and raiment (of a kind), but books, tobacco and gukguk, we expected more gratitude to his benefactress; and less of a blind trust in the future, which resembles that rather of a philosophical fatalist and enthusiast, than of a solid householder paying scot-and-lot in a christian country. chapter vi old clothes as mentioned above, teufelsdröckh, though a sansculottist, is in practice probably the politest man extant: his whole heart and life are penetrated and informed with the spirit of politeness; a noble natural courtesy shines through him, beautifying his vagaries; like sunlight, making a rosy-fingered, rainbow-dyed aurora out of mere aqueous clouds; nay brightening london-smoke itself into gold vapour, as from the crucible of an alchemist. hear in what earnest though fantastic wise he expresses himself on this head: 'shall courtesy be done only to the rich, and only by the rich? in good-breeding, which differs, if at all, from high-breeding, only as it gracefully remembers the rights of others, rather than gracefully insists on its own rights, i discern no special connexion with wealth or birth: but rather that it lies in human nature itself, and is due from all men towards all men. of a truth, were your schoolmaster at his post, and worth anything when there, this, with so much else, would be reformed. nay, each man were then also his neighbour's schoolmaster; till at length a rude-visaged, unmannered peasant could no more be met with, than a peasant unacquainted with botanical physiology, or who felt not that the clod he broke was created in heaven. 'for whether thou bear a sceptre or a sledgehammer, art thou not alive; is not this thy brother alive? "there is but one temple in the world," says novalis, "and that temple is the body of man. nothing is holier than this high form. bending before men is a reverence done to this revelation in the flesh. we touch heaven, when we lay our hands on a human body." 'on which ground, i would fain carry it farther than most do; and whereas the english johnson only bowed to every clergyman, or man with a shovel-hat, i would bow to every man with any sort of hat, or with no hat whatever. is not he a temple, then; the visible manifestation and impersonation of the divinity? and yet, alas, such indiscriminate bowing serves not. for there is a devil dwells in man, as well as a divinity; and too often the bow is but pocketed by the _former_. it would go to the pocket of vanity (which is your clearest phasis of the devil, in these times); therefore must we withhold it. 'the gladder am i, on the other hand, to do reverence to those shells and outer husks of the body, wherein no devilish passion any longer lodges, but only the pure emblem and effigies of man: i mean, to empty, or even to cast clothes. nay, is it not to clothes that most men do reverence: to the fine frogged broadcloth, nowise to the "straddling animal with bandy legs" which it holds, and makes a dignitary of? who ever saw any lord my-lorded in tattered blanket fastened with wooden skewer? nevertheless, i say, there is in such worship a shade of hypocrisy, a practical deception: for how often does the body appropriate what was meant for the cloth only! whoso would avoid falsehood, which is the essence of all sin, will perhaps see good to take a different course. that reverence which cannot act without obstruction and perversion when the clothes are full, may have free course when they are empty. even as, for hindoo worshippers, the pagoda is not less sacred than the god; so do i too worship the hollow cloth garment with equal fervour, as when it contained the man: nay, with more, for i now fear no deception, of myself or of others. 'did not king _toomtabard_, or, in other words, john baliol, reign long over scotland; the man john baliol being quite gone, and only the "toom tabard" (empty gown) remaining? what still dignity dwells in a suit of cast clothes! how meekly it bears its honours! no haughty looks, no scornful gesture: silent and serene, it fronts the world; neither demanding worship, nor afraid to miss it. the hat still carries the physiognomy of its head: but the vanity and the stupidity, and goose-speech which was the sign of these two, are gone. the coat-arm is stretched out, but not to strike; the breeches, in modest simplicity, depend at ease, and now at last have a graceful flow; the waistcoat hides no evil passion, no riotous desire; hunger or thirst now dwells not in it. thus all is purged from the grossness of sense, from the carking cares and foul vices of the world; and rides there, on its clothes-horse; as, on a pegasus, might some skyey messenger, or purified apparition, visiting our low earth. 'often, while i sojourned in that monstrous tuberosity of civilised life, the capital of england; and meditated, and questioned destiny, under that ink-sea of vapour, black, thick, and multifarious as spartan broth; and was one lone soul amid those grinding millions;--often have i turned into their old-clothes market to worship. with awe-struck heart i walk through that monmouth street, with its empty suits, as through a sanhedrim of stainless ghosts. silent are they, but expressive in their silence: the past witnesses and instruments of woe and joy, of passions, virtues, crimes, and all the fathomless tumult of good and evil in "the prison men call life." friends! trust not the heart of that man for whom old clothes are not venerable. watch, too, with reverence, that bearded jewish high-priest, who with hoarse voice, like some angel of doom, summons them from the four winds! on his head, like the pope, he has three hats,--a real triple tiara; on either hand are the similitude of wings, whereon the summoned garments come to alight; and ever, as he slowly cleaves the air, sounds forth his deep fateful note, as if through a trumpet he were proclaiming: "ghosts of life, come to judgment!" reck not, ye fluttering ghosts: he will purify you in his purgatory, with fire and with water; and, one day, new-created ye shall reappear. o, let him in whom the flame of devotion is ready to go out, who has never worshipped, and knows not what to worship, pace and repace, with austerest thought, the pavement of monmouth street, and say whether his heart and his eyes still continue dry. if field lane, with its long fluttering rows of yellow handkerchiefs, be a dionysius' ear, where, in stifled jarring hubbub, we hear the indictment which poverty and vice bring against lazy wealth, that it has left them there cast-out and trodden under foot of want, darkness and the devil,--then is monmouth street a mirza's hill, where, in motley vision, the whole pageant of existence passes awfully before us; with its wail and jubilee, mad loves and mad hatreds, church-bells and gallows-ropes, farce-tragedy, beast-godhood,--the bedlam of creation!' * * * * * to most men, as it does to ourselves, all this will seem overcharged. we too have walked through monmouth street; but with little feeling of 'devotion': probably in part because the contemplative process is so fatally broken in upon by the brood of money-changers who nestle in that church, and importune the worshipper with merely secular proposals. whereas teufelsdröckh might be in that happy middle state, which leaves to the clothes-broker no hope either of sale or of purchase, and so be allowed to linger there without molestation.--something we would have given to see the little philosophical figure, with its steeple-hat and loose flowing skirts, and eyes in a fine frenzy, 'pacing and repacing in austerest thought' that foolish street; which to him was a true delphic avenue, and supernatural whispering-gallery, where the 'ghosts of life' rounded strange secrets in his ear. o thou philosophic teufelsdröckh, that listenest while others only gabble, and with thy quick tympanum hearest the grass grow! at the same time, is it not strange that, in paper-bag documents destined for an english work, there exists nothing like an authentic diary of this his sojourn in london; and of his meditations among the clothes-shops only the obscurest emblematic shadows? neither, in conversation (for, indeed, he was not a man to pester you with his travels), have we heard him more than allude to the subject. for the rest, however, it cannot be uninteresting that we here find how early the significance of clothes had dawned on the now so distinguished clothes-professor. might we but fancy it to have been even in monmouth street, at the bottom of our own english 'ink-sea,' that this remarkable volume first took being, and shot forth its salient point in his soul,--as in chaos did the egg of eros, one day to be hatched into a universe! chapter vii organic filaments for us, who happen to live while the world-phoenix is burning herself, and burning so slowly that, as teufelsdröckh calculates, it were a handsome bargain would she engage to have done 'within two centuries,' there seems to lie but an ashy prospect. not altogether so, however, does the professor figure it. 'in the living subject,' says he, 'change is wont to be gradual: thus, while the serpent sheds its old skin, the new is already formed beneath. little knowest thou of the burning of a world-phoenix, who fanciest that she must first burn-out, and lie as a dead cinereous heap; and therefrom the young one start-up by miracle, and fly heavenward. far otherwise! in that fire-whirlwind, creation and destruction proceed together; ever as the ashes of the old are blown about, do organic filaments of the new mysteriously spin themselves: and amid the rushing and the waving of the whirlwind-element come tones of a melodious deathsong, which end not but in tones of a more melodious birthsong. nay, look into the fire-whirlwind with thy own eyes, and thou wilt see.' let us actually look, then: to poor individuals, who cannot expect to live two centuries, those same organic filaments, mysteriously spinning themselves, will be the best part of the spectacle. first, therefore, this of mankind in general: 'in vain thou deniest it,' says the professor; 'thou _art_ my brother. thy very hatred, thy very envy, those foolish lies thou tellest of me in thy splenetic humour: what is all this but an inverted sympathy? were i a steam-engine, wouldst thou take the trouble to tell lies of me? not thou! i should grind all unheeded, whether badly or well. 'wondrous truly are the bonds that unite us one and all; whether by the soft binding of love, or the iron chaining of necessity, as we like to choose it. more than once have i said to myself, of some perhaps whimsically strutting figure, such as provokes whimsical thoughts: "wert thou, my little brotherkin, suddenly covered-up within the largest imaginable glass-bell,--what a thing it were, not for thyself only, but for the world! post letters, more or fewer, from all the four winds, impinge against thy glass walls, but have to drop unread: neither from within comes there question or response into any postbag; thy thoughts fall into no friendly ear or heart, thy manufacture into no purchasing hand: thou art no longer a circulating venous-arterial heart, that, taking and giving, circulatest through all space and all time: there has a hole fallen-out in the immeasurable, universal world-tissue, which must be darned-up again!" 'such venous-arterial circulation, of letters, verbal messages, paper and other packages, going out from him and coming in, are a blood-circulation, visible to the eye: but the finer nervous circulation, by which all things, the minutest that he does, minutely influence all men, and the very look of his face blesses or curses whomso it lights on, and so generates ever new blessing or new cursing: all this you cannot see, but only imagine. i say, there is not a red indian, hunting by lake winnipic, can quarrel with his squaw, but the whole world must smart for it: will not the price of beaver rise? it is a mathematical fact that the casting of this pebble from my hand alters the centre of gravity of the universe. 'if now an existing generation of men stand so woven together, not less indissolubly does generation with generation. hast thou ever meditated on that word, tradition: how we inherit not life only, but all the garniture and form of life; and work, and speak, and even think and feel, as our fathers, and primeval grandfathers, from the beginning, have given it us?--who printed thee, for example, this unpretending volume on the philosophy of clothes? not the herren stillschweigen and company; but cadmus of thebes, faust of mentz, and innumerable others whom thou knowest not. had there been no moesogothic ulfila, there had been no english shakspeare, or a different one. simpleton! it was tubalcain that made thy very tailor's needle, and sewed that court-suit of thine. 'yes, truly; if nature is one, and a living indivisible whole, much more is mankind, the image that reflects and creates nature, without which nature were not. as palpable life-streams in that wondrous individual mankind, among so many life-streams that are not palpable, flow on those main-currents of what we call opinion; as preserved in institutions, polities, churches, above all in books. beautiful it is to understand and know that a thought did never yet die; that as thou, the originator thereof, hast gathered it and created it from the whole past, so thou wilt transmit it to the whole future. it is thus that the heroic heart, the seeing eye of the first times, still feels and sees in us of the latest; that the wise man stands ever encompassed, and spiritually embraced, by a cloud of witnesses and brothers; and there is a living, literal _communion of saints_, wide as the world itself, and as the history of the world. 'noteworthy also, and serviceable for the progress of this same individual, wilt thou find his subdivision into generations. generations are as the days of toilsome mankind: death and birth are the vesper and the matin bells, that summon mankind to sleep, and to rise refreshed for new advancement. what the father has made, the son can make and enjoy; but has also work of his own appointed him. thus all things wax, and roll onwards; arts, establishments, opinions, nothing is completed, but ever completing. newton has learned to see what kepler saw; but there is also a fresh heaven-derived force in newton; he must mount to still higher points of vision. so too the hebrew lawgiver is, in due time, followed by an apostle of the gentiles. in the business of destruction, as this also is from time to time a necessary work, thou findest a like sequence and perseverance: for luther it was as yet hot enough to stand by that burning of the pope's bull; voltaire could not warm himself at the glimmering ashes, but required quite other fuel. thus likewise, i note, the english whig has, in the second generation, become an english radical; who, in the third again, it is to be hoped, will become an english rebuilder. find mankind where thou wilt, thou findest it in living movement, in progress faster or slower: the phoenix soars aloft, hovers with outstretched wings, filling earth with her music; or, as now, she sinks, and with spheral swan-song immolates herself in flame, that she may soar the higher and sing the clearer.' let the friends of social order, in such a disastrous period, lay this to heart, and derive from it any little comfort they can. we subjoin another passage, concerning titles: 'remark, not without surprise,' says teufelsdröckh, 'how all high titles of honour come hitherto from fighting. your _herzog_ (duke, _dux_) is leader of armies; your earl (_jarl_) is strong man; your marshal cavalry horse-shoer. a millennium, or reign of peace and wisdom, having from of old been prophesied, and becoming now daily more and more indubitable, may it not be apprehended that such fighting-titles will cease to be palatable, and new and higher need to be devised? 'the only title wherein i, with confidence, trace eternity, is that of king. _könig_ (king), anciently _könning_, means ken-ning (cunning), or which is the same thing, can-ning. ever must the sovereign of mankind be fitly entitled king.' 'well, also,' says he elsewhere, 'was it written by theologians: a king rules by divine right. he carries in him an authority from god, or man will never give it him. can i choose my own king? i can choose my own king popinjay, and play what farce or tragedy i may with him: but he who is to be my ruler, whose will is to be higher than my will, was chosen for me in heaven. neither except in such obedience to the heaven-chosen is freedom so much as conceivable.' * * * * * the editor will here admit that, among all the wondrous provinces of teufelsdröckh's spiritual world, there is none he walks in with such astonishment, hesitation, and even pain, as in the political. how, with our english love of ministry and opposition, and that generous conflict of parties, mind warming itself against mind in their mutual wrestle for the public good, by which wrestle, indeed, is our invaluable constitution kept warm and alive; how shall we domesticate ourselves in this spectral necropolis, or rather city both of the dead and of the unborn, where the present seems little other than an inconsiderable film dividing the past and the future? in those dim longdrawn expanses, all is so immeasurable; much so disastrous, ghastly; your very radiances and straggling light-beams have a supernatural character. and then with such an indifference, such a prophetic peacefulness (accounting the inevitably coming as already here, to him all one whether it be distant by centuries or only by days), does he sit;--and live, you would say, rather in any other age than in his own! it is our painful duty to announce, or repeat, that, looking into this man, we discern a deep, silent, slow-burning, inextinguishable radicalism, such as fills us with shuddering admiration. thus, for example, he appears to make little even of the elective franchise; at least so we interpret the following: 'satisfy yourselves,' he says, 'by universal, indubitable experiment, even as ye are now doing or will do, whether freedom, heavenborn and leading heavenward, and so vitally essential for us all, cannot peradventure be mechanically hatched and brought to light in that same ballot-box of yours; or at worst, in some other discoverable or devisable box, edifice, or steam-mechanism. it were a mighty convenience; and beyond all feats of manufacture witnessed hitherto.' is teufelsdröckh acquainted with the british constitution, even slightly?--he says, under another figure: 'but after all, were the problem, as indeed it now everywhere is, to rebuild your old house from the top downwards (since you must live in it the while), what better, what other, than the representative machine will serve your turn? meanwhile, however, mock me not with the name of free, "when you have but knit-up my chains into ornamental festoons."'--or what will any member of the peace society make of such an assertion as this: 'the lower people everywhere desire war. not so unwisely; there is then a demand for lower people--to be shot!' gladly, therefore, do we emerge from those soul-confusing labyrinths of speculative radicalism, into somewhat clearer regions. here, looking round, as was our hest, for 'organic filaments,' we ask, may not this, touching 'hero-worship,' be of the number? it seems of a cheerful character; yet so quaint, so mystical, one knows not what, or how little, may lie under it. our readers shall look with their own eyes: 'true is it that, in these days, man can do almost all things, only not obey. true likewise that whoso cannot obey cannot be free, still less bear rule; he that is the inferior of nothing, can be the superior of nothing, the equal of nothing. nevertheless, believe not that man has lost his faculty of reverence; that if it slumber in him, it has gone dead. painful for man is that same rebellious independence, when it has become inevitable; only in loving companionship with his fellows does he feel safe; only in reverently bowing down before the higher does he feel himself exalted. 'or what if the character of our so troublous era lay even in this: that man had forever cast away fear, which is the lower; but not yet risen into perennial reverence, which is the higher and highest? 'meanwhile, observe with joy, so cunningly has nature ordered it, that whatsoever man ought to obey, he cannot but obey. before no faintest revelation of the godlike did he ever stand irreverent; least of all, when the godlike showed itself revealed in his fellow-man. thus is there a true religious loyalty forever rooted in his heart; nay in all ages, even in ours, it manifests itself as a more or less orthodox _hero-worship_. in which fact, that hero-worship exists, has existed, and will forever exist, universally among mankind, mayest thou discern the corner-stone of living-rock, whereon all polities for the remotest time may stand secure.' do our readers discern any such corner-stone, or even so much as what teufelsdröckh is looking at? he exclaims, 'or hast thou forgotten paris and voltaire? how the aged, withered man, though but a sceptic, mocker, and millinery court-poet, yet because even he seemed the wisest, best, could drag mankind at his chariot-wheels, so that princes coveted a smile from him, and the loveliest of france would have laid their hair beneath his feet! all paris was one vast temple of hero-worship; though their divinity, moreover, was of feature too apish. 'but if such things,' continues he, 'were done in the dry tree, what will be done in the green? if, in the most parched season of man's history, in the most parched spot of europe, when parisian life was at best but a scientific _hortus siccus_, bedizened with some italian gumflowers, such virtue could come out of it; what is to be looked for when life again waves leafy and bloomy, and your hero-divinity shall have nothing apelike, but be wholly human? know that there is in man a quite indestructible reverence for whatsoever holds of heaven, or even plausibly counterfeits such holding. show the dullest clodpole, show the haughtiest featherhead, that a soul higher than himself is actually here; were his knees stiffened into brass, he must down and worship.' organic filaments, of a more authentic sort, mysteriously spinning themselves, some will perhaps discover in the following passage: 'there is no church, sayest thou? the voice of prophecy has gone dumb? this is even what i dispute: but in any case, hast thou not still preaching enough? a preaching friar settles himself in every village; and builds a pulpit, which he calls newspaper. therefrom he preaches what most momentous doctrine is in him, for man's salvation; and dost not thou listen, and believe? look well, thou seest everywhere a new clergy of the mendicant orders, some bare-footed, some almost bare-backed, fashion itself into shape, and teach and preach, zealously enough, for copper alms and the love of god. these break in pieces the ancient idols; and, though themselves too often reprobate, as idol-breakers are wont to be, mark out the sites of new churches, where the true god-ordained, that are to follow, may find audience, and minister. said i not, before the old skin was shed, the new had formed itself beneath it?' perhaps also in the following; wherewith we now hasten to knit-up this ravelled sleeve: 'but there is no religion?' reiterates the professor. 'fool! i tell thee, there is. hast thou well considered all that lies in this immeasurable froth-ocean we name literature? fragments of a genuine church-_homiletic_ lie scattered there, which time will assort: nay fractions even of a _liturgy_ could i point out. and knowest thou no prophet, even in the vesture, environment, and dialect of this age? none to whom the god-like had revealed itself, through all meanest and highest forms of the common; and by him been again prophetically revealed: in whose inspired melody, even in these rag-gathering and rag-burning days, man's life again begins, were it but afar off, to be divine? knowest thou none such? i know him, and name him--goethe. 'but thou as yet standest in no temple; joinest in no psalm-worship; feelest well that, where there is no ministering priest, the people perish? be of comfort! thou art not alone, if thou have faith. spake we not of a communion of saints, unseen, yet not unreal, accompanying and brother-like embracing thee, so thou be worthy? their heroic sufferings rise up melodiously together to heaven, out of all lands, and out of all times, as a sacred _miserere_; their heroic actions also, as a boundless everlasting psalm of triumph. neither say that thou hast now no symbol of the godlike. is not god's universe a symbol of the godlike; is not immensity a temple; is not man's history, and men's history, a perpetual evangel? listen, and for organ-music thou wilt ever, as of old, hear the morning stars sing together.' chapter viii natural supernaturalism it is in his stupendous section, headed _natural supernaturalism_, that the professor first becomes a seer; and, after long effort, such as we have witnessed, finally subdues under his feet this refractory clothes-philosophy, and takes victorious possession thereof. phantasms enough he has had to struggle with; 'cloth-webs and cob-webs,' of imperial mantles, superannuated symbols, and what not: yet still did he courageously pierce through. nay, worst of all, two quite mysterious, world-embracing phantasms, time and space, have ever hovered round him, perplexing and bewildering: but with these also he now resolutely grapples, these also he victoriously rends asunder. in a word, he has looked fixedly on existence, till, one after the other, its earthly hulls and garnitures have all melted away; and now, to his rapt vision, the interior celestial holy of holies lies disclosed. here, therefore, properly it is that the philosophy of clothes attains to transcendentalism; this last leap, can we but clear it, takes us safe into the promised land, where _palingenesia_, in all senses, may be considered as beginning. 'courage, then!' may our diogenes exclaim, with better right than diogenes the first once did. this stupendous section we, after long painful meditation, have found not to be unintelligible; but, on the contrary, to grow clear, nay radiant, and all-illuminating. let the reader, turning on it what utmost force of speculative intellect is in him, do his part; as we, by judicious selection and adjustment, shall study to do ours: 'deep has been, and is, the significance of miracles,' thus quietly begins the professor; 'far deeper perhaps than we imagine. meanwhile, the question of questions were: what specially is a miracle? to that dutch king of siam, an icicle had been a miracle; whoso had carried with him an air-pump, and vial of vitriolic ether, might have worked a miracle. to my horse, again, who unhappily is still more unscientific, do not i work a miracle, and magical "_open sesame!_" every time i please to pay twopence, and open for him an impassable _schlagbaum_, or shut turnpike? '"but is not a real miracle simply a violation of the laws of nature?" ask several. whom i answer by this new question: what are the laws of nature? to me perhaps the rising of one from the dead were no violation of these laws, but a confirmation; were some far deeper law, now first penetrated into, and by spiritual force, even as the rest have all been, brought to bear on us with its material force. 'here too may some inquire, not without astonishment: on what ground shall one, that can make iron swim, come and declare that therefore he can teach religion? to us, truly, of the nineteenth century, such declaration were inept enough; which nevertheless to our fathers, of the first century, was full of meaning. '"but is it not the deepest law of nature that she be constant?" cries an illuminated class: "is not the machine of the universe fixed to move by unalterable rules?" probable enough, good friends: nay i, too, must believe that the god, whom ancient inspired men assert to be "without variableness or shadow of turning," does indeed never change; that nature, that the universe, which no one whom it so pleases can be prevented from calling a machine, does move by the most unalterable rules. and now of you, too, i make the old inquiry: what those same unalterable rules, forming the complete statute-book of nature, may possibly be? 'they stand written in our works of science, say you; in the accumulated records of man's experience?--was man with his experience present at the creation, then, to see how it all went on? have any deepest scientific individuals yet dived-down to the foundations of the universe, and gauged everything there? did the maker take them into his counsel; that they read his groundplan of the incomprehensible all; and can say, this stands marked therein, and no more than this? alas, not in anywise! these scientific individuals have been nowhere but where we also are; have seen some handbreadths deeper than we see into the deep that is infinite, without bottom as without shore. 'laplace's book on the stars, wherein he exhibits that certain planets, with their satellites, gyrate round our worthy sun, at a rate and in a course, which, by greatest good fortune, he and the like of him have succeeded in detecting,--is to me as precious as to another. but is this what thou namest "mechanism of the heavens," and "system of the world"; this, wherein sirius and the pleiades, and all herschel's fifteen-thousand suns per minute, being left out, some paltry handful of moons, and inert balls, had been--looked at, nicknamed, and marked in the zodiacal way-bill; so that we can now prate of their whereabout; their how, their why, their what, being hid from us, as in the signless inane? 'system of nature! to the wisest man, wide as is his vision, nature remains of quite _infinite_ depth, of quite infinite expansion; and all experience thereof limits itself to some few computed centuries and measured square-miles. the course of nature's phases, on this our little fraction of a planet, is partially known to us: but who knows what deeper courses these depend on; what infinitely larger cycle (of causes) our little epicycle revolves on? to the minnow every cranny and pebble, and quality and accident, of its little native creek may have become familiar: but does the minnow understand the ocean tides and periodic currents, the trade-winds, and monsoons, and moon's eclipses; by all which the condition of its little creek is regulated, and may, from time to time (_un_miraculously enough), be quite overset and reversed? such a minnow is man; his creek this planet earth; his ocean the immeasurable all; his monsoons and periodic currents the mysterious course of providence through Æons of Æons. 'we speak of the volume of nature: and truly a volume it is,--whose author and writer is god. to read it! dost thou, does man, so much as well know the alphabet thereof? with its words, sentences, and grand descriptive pages, poetical and philosophical, spread out through solar systems, and thousands of years, we shall not try thee. it is a volume written in celestial hieroglyphs, in the true sacred-writing; of which even prophets are happy that they can read here a line and there a line. as for your institutes, and academies of science, they strive bravely; and, from amid the thick-crowded, inextricably intertwisted hieroglyphic writing, pick-out, by dextrous combination, some letters in the vulgar character, and therefrom put together this and the other economic recipe, of high avail in practice. that nature is more than some boundless volume of such recipes, or huge, well-nigh inexhaustible domestic-cookery book, of which the whole secret will in this manner one day evolve itself, the fewest dream. * * * * * 'custom,' continues the professor, 'doth make dotards of us all. consider well, thou wilt find that custom is the greatest of weavers; and weaves air-raiment for all the spirits of the universe; whereby indeed these dwell with us visibly, as ministering servants, in our houses and workshops; but their spiritual nature becomes, to the most, forever hidden. philosophy complains that custom has hoodwinked us, from the first; that we do everything by custom, even believe by it; that our very axioms, let us boast of free-thinking as we may, are oftenest simply such beliefs as we have never heard questioned. nay, what is philosophy throughout but a continual battle against custom; an ever-renewed effort to _transcend_ the sphere of blind custom, and so become transcendental? 'innumerable are the illusions and legerdemain-tricks of custom: but of all these, perhaps the cleverest is her knack of persuading us that the miraculous, by simple repetition, ceases to be miraculous. true, it is by this means we live; for man must work as well as wonder: and herein is custom so far a kind nurse, guiding him to his true benefit. but she is a fond foolish nurse, or rather we are false foolish nurslings, when, in our resting and reflecting hours, we prolong the same deception. am i to view the stupendous with stupid indifference, because i have seen it twice, or two-hundred, or two-million times? there is no reason in nature or in art why i should: unless, indeed, i am a mere work-machine, for whom the divine gift of thought were no other than the terrestrial gift of steam is to the steam-engine; a power whereby cotton might be spun, and money and money's worth realised. 'notable enough too, here as elsewhere, wilt thou find the potency of names; which indeed are but one kind of such custom-woven, wonder-hiding garments. witchcraft, and all manner of spectre-work, and demonology, we have now named madness and diseases of the nerves. seldom reflecting that still the new question comes upon us: what is madness, what are nerves? ever, as before, does madness remain a mysterious-terrific, altogether _infernal_ boiling-up of the nether chaotic deep, through this fair-painted vision of creation, which swims thereon, which we name the real. was luther's picture of the devil less a reality, whether it were formed within the bodily eye, or without it? in every the wisest soul lies a whole world of internal madness, an authentic demon empire; out of which, indeed, his world of wisdom has been creatively built together, and now rests there, as on its dark foundations does a habitable flowery earth-rind. * * * * * 'but deepest of all illusory appearances, for hiding wonder, as for many other ends, are your two grand fundamental world-enveloping appearances, space and time. these, as spun and woven for us from before birth itself, to clothe our celestial me for dwelling here, and yet to blind it,--lie all embracing, as the universal canvas, or warp and woof, whereby all minor illusions, in this phantasm existence, weave and paint themselves. in vain, while here on earth, shall you endeavour to strip them off; you can, at best, but rend them asunder for moments, and look through. 'fortunatus had a wishing hat, which when he put on, and wished himself anywhere, behold he was there. by this means had fortunatus triumphed over space, he had annihilated space; for him there was no where, but all was here. were a hatter to establish himself, in the wahngasse of weissnichtwo, and make felts of this sort for all mankind, what a world we should have of it! still stranger, should, on the opposite side of the street, another hatter establish himself; and as his fellow-craftsman made space-annihilating hats, make time-annihilating! of both would i purchase, were it with my last groschen; but chiefly of this latter. to clap-on your felt, and, simply by wishing that you were any_where_, straightway to be _there_! next to clap-on your other felt, and, simply by wishing that you were any_when_, straightway to be _then_! this were indeed the grander: shooting at will from the fire-creation of the world to its fire-consummation; here historically present in the first century, conversing face to face with paul and seneca; there prophetically in the thirty-first, conversing also face to face with other pauls and senecas, who as yet stand hidden in the depth of that late time! 'or thinkest thou it were impossible, unimaginable? is the past annihilated, then, or only past; is the future non-extant, or only future? those mystic faculties of thine, memory and hope, already answer: already through those mystic avenues, thou the earth-blinded summonest both past and future, and communest with them, though as yet darkly, and with mute beckonings. the curtains of yesterday drop down, the curtains of tomorrow roll up; but yesterday and tomorrow both _are_. pierce through the time-element, glance into the eternal. believe what thou findest written in the sanctuaries of man's soul, even as all thinkers, in all ages, have devoutly read it there: that time and space are not god, but creations of god: that with god as it is a universal here, so is it an everlasting now. 'and seest thou therein any glimpse of immortality?--o heaven! is the white tomb of our loved one, who died from our arms, and had to be left behind us there, which rises in the distance, like a pale, mournfully receding milestone, to tell how many toilsome uncheered miles we have journeyed on alone,--but a pale spectral illusion! is the lost friend still mysteriously here, even as we are here mysteriously, with god!--know of a truth that only the time-shadows have perished, or are perishable; that the real being of whatever was, and whatever is, and whatever will be, _is_ even now and forever. this, should it unhappily seem new, thou mayest ponder at thy leisure; for the next twenty years, or the next twenty centuries: believe it thou must; understand it thou canst not. 'that the thought-forms, space and time, wherein, once for all, we are sent into this earth to live, should condition and determine our whole practical reasonings, conceptions, and imagines or imaginings,--seems altogether fit, just, and unavoidable. but that they should, furthermore, usurp such sway over pure spiritual meditation, and blind us to the wonder everywhere lying close on us, seems nowise so. admit space and time to their due rank as forms of thought; nay even, if thou wilt, to their quite undue rank of realities: and consider, then, with thyself how their thin disguises hide from us the brightest god-effulgences! thus, were it not miraculous, could i stretch forth my hand and clutch the sun? yet thou seest me daily stretch forth my hand and therewith clutch many a thing, and swing it hither and thither. art thou a grown baby, then, to fancy that the miracle lies in miles of distance, or in pounds avoirdupois of weight; and not to see that the true inexplicable god-revealing miracle lies in this, that i can stretch forth my hand at all; that i have free force to clutch aught therewith? innumerable other of this sort are the deceptions, and wonder-hiding stupefactions, which space practises on us. 'still worse is it with regard to time. your grand anti-magician, and universal wonder-hider, is this same lying time. had we but the time-annihilating hat, to put on for once only, we should see ourselves in a world of miracles, wherein all fabled or authentic thaumaturgy, and feats of magic, were outdone. but unhappily we have not such a hat; and man, poor fool that he is, can seldom and scantily help himself without one. 'were it not wonderful, for instance, had orpheus, or amphion, built the walls of thebes by the mere sound of his lyre? yet tell me, who built these walls of weissnichtwo; summoning-out all the sandstone rocks, to dance along from the _steinbruch_ (now a huge troglodyte chasm, with frightful green-mantled pools); and shape themselves into doric and ionic pillars, squared ashlar houses and noble streets? was it not the still higher orpheus, or orpheuses, who, in past centuries, by the divine music of wisdom, succeeded in civilising man? our highest orpheus walked in judea, eighteen hundred years ago: his sphere-melody, flowing in wild native tones, took captive the ravished souls of men; and, being of a truth sphere-melody, still flows and sounds, though now with thousandfold accompaniments, and rich symphonies, through all our hearts; and modulates, and divinely leads them. is that a wonder, which happens in two hours; and does it cease to be wonderful if happening in two million? not only was thebes built by the music of an orpheus; but without the music of some inspired orpheus was no city ever built, no work that man glories-in ever done. 'sweep away the illusion of time; glance, if thou hast eyes, from the near moving-cause to its far-distant mover: the stroke that came transmitted through a whole galaxy of elastic balls, was it less a stroke than if the last ball only had been struck, and sent flying? o, could i (with the time-annihilating hat) transport thee direct from the beginnings to the endings, how were thy eyesight unsealed, and thy heart set flaming in the light-sea of celestial wonder! then sawest thou that this fair universe, were it in the meanest province thereof, is in very deed the star-domed city of god; that through every star, through every grass-blade, and most through every living soul, the glory of a present god still beams. but nature, which is the time-vesture of god, and reveals him to the wise, hides him from the foolish. 'again, could anything be more miraculous than an actual authentic ghost? the english johnson longed, all his life, to see one; but could not, though he went to cock lane, and thence to the church-vaults, and tapped on coffins. foolish doctor! did he never, with the mind's eye as well as with the body's, look round him into that full tide of human life he so loved; did he never so much as look into himself? the good doctor was a ghost, as actual and authentic as heart could wish; well-nigh a million of ghosts were travelling the streets by his side. once more i say, sweep away the illusion of time; compress the threescore years into three minutes: what else was he, what else are we? are we not spirits, that are shaped into a body, into an appearance; and that fade-away again into air and invisibility? this is no metaphor, it is a simple scientific _fact_: we start out of nothingness, take figure, and are apparitions; round us, as round the veriest spectre, is eternity; and to eternity minutes are as years and æons. come there not tones of love and faith, as from celestial harp-strings, like the song of beautified souls? and again, do not we squeak and jibber (in our discordant, screech-owlish debatings and recriminatings); and glide bodeful, and feeble, and fearful; or uproar (_poltern_), and revel in our mad dance of the dead,--till the scent of the morning air summons us to our still home; and dreamy night becomes awake and day? where now is alexander of macedon: does the steel host, that yelled in fierce battle-shouts at issus and arbela, remain behind him; or have they all vanished utterly, even as perturbed goblins must? napoleon too, and his moscow retreats and austerlitz campaigns! was it all other than the veriest spectre-hunt; which has now, with its howling tumult that made night hideous, flitted away?--ghosts! there are nigh a thousand-million walking the earth openly at noontide; some half-hundred have vanished from it, some half-hundred have arisen in it, ere thy watch ticks once. 'o heaven, it is mysterious, it is awful to consider that we not only carry each a future ghost within him; but are, in very deed, ghosts! these limbs, whence had we them; this stormy force; this life-blood with its burning passion? they are dust and shadow; a shadow-system gathered round our me; wherein, through some moments or years, the divine essence is to be revealed in the flesh. that warrior on his strong war-horse, fire flashes through his eyes; force dwells in his arm and heart: but warrior and war-horse are a vision; a revealed force, nothing more. stately they tread the earth, as if it were a firm substance: fool! the earth is but a film; it cracks in twain, and warrior and war-horse sink beyond plummet's sounding. plummet's? fantasy herself will not follow them. a little while ago, they were not; a little while, and they are not, their very ashes are not. 'so has it been from the beginning, so will it be to the end. generation after generation takes to itself the form of a body; and forth-issuing from cimmerian night, on heaven's mission appears. what force and fire is in each he expends: one grinding in the mill of industry; one hunter-like climbing the giddy alpine heights of science; one madly dashed in pieces on the rocks of strife, in war with his fellow:--and then the heaven-sent is recalled; his earthly vesture falls away, and soon even to sense becomes a vanished shadow. thus, like some wild-flaming, wild-thundering train of heaven's artillery, does this mysterious mankind thunder and flame, in long-drawn, quick-succeeding grandeur, through the unknown deep. thus, like a god-created, fire-breathing spirit-host, we emerge from the inane; haste stormfully across the astonished earth; then plunge again into the inane. earth's mountains are levelled, and her seas filled up, in our passage: can the earth, which is but dead and a vision, resist spirits which have reality and are alive? on the hardest adamant some footprint of us is stamped-in; the last rear of the host will read traces of the earliest van. but whence?--o heaven, whither? sense knows not; faith knows not; only that it is through mystery to mystery, from god and to god. "we _are such stuff_ as dreams are made of, and our little life is rounded with a sleep!"' chapter ix circumspective here, then, arises the so momentous question: have many british readers actually arrived with us at the new promised country; is the philosophy of clothes now at last opening around them? long and adventurous has the journey been: from those outmost vulgar, palpable woollen-hulls of man; through his wondrous flesh-garments, and his wondrous social garnitures; inwards to the garments of his very soul's soul, to time and space themselves! and now does the spiritual, eternal essence of man, and of mankind, bared of such wrappages, begin in any measure to reveal itself? can many readers discern, as through a glass darkly, in huge wavering outlines, some primeval rudiments of man's being, what is changeable divided from what is unchangeable? does that earth-spirit's speech in _faust_,-- ''tis thus at the roaring loom of time i ply, and weave for god the garment thou see'st him by'; or that other thousand-times repeated speech of the magician, shakspeare,-- 'and like the baseless fabric of this vision, the cloudcapt towers, the gorgeous palaces, the solemn temples, the great globe itself, and all which it inherit, shall dissolve; and like this unsubstantial pageant faded, leave not a wrack behind'; begin to have some meaning for us? in a word, do we at length stand safe in the far region of poetic creation and palingenesia, where that phoenix death-birth of human society, and of all human things, appears possible, is seen to be inevitable? along this most insufficient, unheard-of bridge, which the editor, by heaven's blessing, has now seen himself enabled to conclude if not complete, it cannot be his sober calculation, but only his fond hope, that many have travelled without accident. no firm arch, overspanning the impassable with paved highway, could the editor construct; only, as was said, some zigzag series of rafts floating tumultuously thereon. alas, and the leaps from raft to raft were too often of a breakneck character; the darkness, the nature of the element, all was against us! nevertheless, may not here and there one of a thousand, provided with a discursiveness of intellect rare in our day, have cleared the passage, in spite of all? happy few! little band of friends! be welcome, be of courage. by degrees, the eye grows accustomed to its new whereabout; the hand can stretch itself forth to work there: it is in this grand and indeed highest work of palingenesia that ye shall labour, each according to ability. new labourers will arrive; new bridges will be built; nay, may not our own poor rope-and-raft bridge, in your passings and repassings, be mended in many a point, till it grow quite firm, passable even for the halt? meanwhile, of the innumerable multitude that started with us, joyous and full of hope, where now is the innumerable remainder, whom we see no longer by our side? the most have recoiled, and stand gazing afar off, in unsympathetic astonishment, at our career: not a few, pressing forward with more courage, have missed footing, or leaped short; and now swim weltering in the chaos-flood, some towards this shore, some towards that. to these also a helping hand should be held out; at least some word of encouragement be said. or, to speak without metaphor, with which mode of utterance teufelsdröckh unhappily has somewhat infected us,--can it be hidden from the editor that many a british reader sits reading quite bewildered in head, and afflicted rather than instructed by the present work? yes, long ago has many a british reader been, as now, demanding with something like a snarl: whereto does all this lead; or what use is in it? in the way of replenishing thy purse, or otherwise aiding thy digestive faculty, o british reader, it leads to nothing, and there is no use in it; but rather the reverse, for it costs thee somewhat. nevertheless, if through this unpromising horn-gate, teufelsdröckh, and we by means of him, have led thee into the true land of dreams; and through the clothes-screen, as through a magical _pierre-pertuis_, thou lookest, even for moments, into the region of the wonderful, and seest and feelest that thy daily life is girt with wonder, and based on wonder, and thy very blankets and breeches are miracles,--then art thou profited beyond money's worth; and hast a thankfulness towards our professor; nay, perhaps in many a literary tea-circle wilt open thy kind lips, and audibly express that same. nay farther, art not thou too perhaps by this time made aware that all symbols are properly clothes; that all forms whereby spirit manifests itself to sense, whether outwardly or in the imagination, are clothes; and thus not only the parchment magna charta, which a tailor was nigh cutting into measures, but the pomp and authority of law, the sacredness of majesty, and all inferior worships (worthships) are properly a vesture and raiment; and the thirty-nine articles themselves are articles of wearing-apparel (for the religious idea)? in which case, must it not also be admitted that this science of clothes is a high one, and may with infinitely deeper study on thy part yield richer fruit: that it takes scientific rank beside codification, and political economy, and the theory of the british constitution; nay rather, from its prophetic height looks down on all these, as on so many weaving-shops and spinning-mills, where the vestures which _it_ has to fashion, and consecrate and distribute, are, too often by haggard hungry operatives who see no farther than their nose, mechanically woven and spun? but omitting all this, much more all that concerns natural supernaturalism, and indeed whatever has reference to the ulterior or transcendental portion of the science, or bears never so remotely on that promised volume of the _palingenesie der menschlichen gesellschaft_ (newbirth of society),--we humbly suggest that no province of clothes-philosophy, even the lowest, is without its direct value, but that innumerable inferences of a practical nature may be drawn therefrom. to say nothing of those pregnant considerations, ethical, political, symbolical, which crowd on the clothes-philosopher from the very threshold of his science; nothing even of those 'architectural ideas,' which, as we have seen, lurk at the bottom of all modes, and will one day, better unfolding themselves, lead to important revolutions,--let us glance for a moment, and with the faintest light of clothes-philosophy, on what may be called the habilatory class of our fellow-men. here too overlooking, where so much were to be looked on, the million spinners, weavers, fullers, dyers, washers, and wringers, that puddle and muddle in their dark recesses, to make us clothes, and die that we may live,--let us but turn the reader's attention upon two small divisions of mankind, who, like moths, may be regarded as cloth-animals, creatures that live, move and have their being in cloth: we mean, dandies and tailors. in regard to both which small divisions it may be asserted without scruple, that the public feeling, unenlightened by philosophy, is at fault; and even that the dictates of humanity are violated. as will perhaps abundantly appear to readers of the two following chapters. chapter x the dandiacal body first, touching dandies, let us consider, with some scientific strictness, what a dandy specially is. a dandy is a clothes-wearing man, a man whose trade, office and existence consists in the wearing of clothes. every faculty of his soul, spirit, purse and person is heroically consecrated to this one object, the wearing of clothes wisely and well: so that as others dress to live, he lives to dress. the all-importance of clothes, which a german professor of unequalled learning and acumen, writes his enormous volume to demonstrate, has sprung up in the intellect of the dandy without effort, like an instinct of genius; he is inspired with cloth, a poet of cloth. what teufelsdröckh would call a 'divine idea of cloth' is born with him; and this, like other such ideas, will express itself outwardly, or wring his heart asunder with unutterable throes. but, like a generous, creative enthusiast, he fearlessly makes his idea an action; shows himself in peculiar guise to mankind; walks forth, a witness and living martyr to the eternal worth of clothes. we called him a poet: is not his body the (stuffed) parchment-skin whereon he writes, with cunning huddersfield dyes, a sonnet to his mistress' eyebrow? say, rather, an epos, and _clotha virumque cano_, to the whole world, in macaronic verses, which he that runs may read. nay, if you grant, what seems to be admissible, that the dandy has a thinking-principle in him, and some notions of time and space, is there not in this life-devotedness to cloth, in this so willing sacrifice of the immortal to the perishable, something (though in reverse order) of that blending and identification of eternity with time, which, as we have seen, constitutes the prophetic character? and now, for all this perennial martyrdom, and poesy, and even prophecy, what is it that the dandy asks in return? solely, we may say, that you would recognise his existence; would admit him to be a living object; or even failing this, a visual object, or thing that will reflect rays of light. your silver or your gold (beyond what the niggardly law has already secured him) he solicits not; simply the glance of your eyes. understand his mystic significance, or altogether miss and misinterpret it; do but look at him, and he is contented. may we not well cry shame on an ungrateful world, which refuses even this poor boon; which will waste its optic faculty on dried crocodiles, and siamese twins; and over the domestic wonderful wonder of wonders, a live dandy, glance with hasty indifference, and a scarcely concealed contempt! him no zoologist classes among the mammalia, no anatomist dissects with care: when did we see any injected preparation of the dandy in our museums; any specimen of him preserved in spirits? lord herringbone may dress himself in a snuff-brown suit, with snuff-brown shirt and shoes: it skills not; the undiscerning public, occupied with grosser wants, passes by regardless on the other side. the age of curiosity, like that of chivalry, is indeed, properly speaking, gone. yet perhaps only gone to sleep: for here arises the clothes-philosophy to resuscitate, strangely enough, both the one and the other! should sound views of this science come to prevail, the essential nature of the british dandy, and the mystic significance that lies in him, cannot always remain hidden under laughable and lamentable hallucination. the following long extract from professor teufelsdröckh may set the matter, if not in its true light, yet in the way towards such. it is to be regretted, however, that here, as so often elsewhere, the professor's keen philosophic perspicacity is somewhat marred by a certain mixture of almost owlish purblindness, or else of some perverse, ineffectual, ironic tendency; our readers shall judge which: * * * * * 'in these distracted times,' writes he, 'when the religious principle, driven-out of most churches, either lies unseen in the hearts of good men, looking and longing and silently working there towards some new revelation; or else wanders homeless over the world, like a disembodied soul seeking its terrestrial organisation,--into how many strange shapes, of superstition and fanaticism, does it not tentatively and errantly cast itself! the higher enthusiasm of man's nature is for the while without exponent; yet does it continue indestructible, unweariedly active, and work blindly in the great chaotic deep: thus sect after sect, and church after church, bodies itself forth, and melts again into new metamorphosis. 'chiefly is this observable in england, which, as the wealthiest and worst-instructed of european nations, offers precisely the elements (of heat, namely, and of darkness), in which such moon-calves and monstrosities are best generated. among the newer sects of that country, one of the most notable, and closely connected with our present subject, is that of the _dandies_; concerning which, what little information i have been able to procure may fitly stand here. 'it is true, certain of the english journalists, men generally without sense for the religious principle, or judgment for its manifestations, speak, in their brief enigmatic notices, as if this were perhaps rather a secular sect, and not a religious one; nevertheless, to the psychologic eye its devotional and even sacrificial character plainly enough reveals itself. whether it belongs to the class of fetish-worships, or of hero-worships or polytheisms, or to what other class, may in the present state of our intelligence remain undecided (_schweben_). a certain touch of manicheism, not indeed in the gnostic shape, is discernible enough: also (for human error walks in a cycle, and reappears at intervals) a not-inconsiderable resemblance to that superstition of the athos monks, who by fasting from all nourishment, and looking intensely for a length of time into their own navels, came to discern therein the true apocalypse of nature, and heaven unveiled. to my own surmise, it appears as if this dandiacal sect were but a new modification, adapted to the new time, of that primeval superstition, _self-worship_; which zerdusht, quangfoutchee, mohamed, and others, strove rather to subordinate and restrain than to eradicate; and which only in the purer forms of religion has been altogether rejected. wherefore, if any one chooses to name it revived ahrimanism, or a new figure of demon-worship, i have, so far as is yet visible, no objection. 'for the rest, these people, animated with the zeal of a new sect, display courage and perseverance, and what force there is in man's nature, though never so enslaved. they affect great purity and separatism; distinguish themselves by a particular costume (whereof some notices were given in the earlier part of this volume); likewise, so far as possible, by a particular speech (apparently some broken _lingua-franca_, or english-french); and, on the whole, strive to maintain a true nazarene deportment, and keep themselves unspotted from the world. 'they have their temples, whereof the chief, as the jewish temple did, stands in their metropolis; and is named _almack's_, a word of uncertain etymology. they worship principally by night; and have their highpriests and highpriestesses, who, however, do not continue for life. the rites, by some supposed to be of the menadic sort, or perhaps with an eleusinian or cabiric character, are held strictly secret. nor are sacred books wanting to the sect; these they call _fashionable novels_: however, the canon is not completed, and some are canonical and others not. 'of such sacred books i, not without expense, procured myself some samples; and in hope of true insight, and with the zeal which beseems an inquirer into clothes, set to interpret and study them. but wholly to no purpose: that tough faculty of reading, for which the world will not refuse me credit, was here for the first time foiled and set at naught. in vain that i summoned my whole energies (_mich weidlich anstrengte_), and did my very utmost; at the end of some short space, i was uniformly seized with not so much what i can call a drumming in my ears, as a kind of infinite, unsufferable, jews-harping and scrannel-piping there; to which the frightfullest species of magnetic sleep soon supervened. and if i strove to shake this away, and absolutely would not yield, there came a hitherto unfelt sensation, as of _delirium tremens_, and a melting into total deliquium: till at last, by order of the doctor, dreading ruin to my whole intellectual and bodily faculties, and a general breaking-up of the constitution, i reluctantly but determinedly forbore. was there some miracle at work here; like those fire-balls, and supernal and infernal prodigies, which, in the case of the jewish mysteries, have also more than once scared-back the alien? be this as it may, such failure on my part, after best efforts, must excuse the imperfection of this sketch; altogether incomplete, yet the completest i could give of a sect too singular to be omitted. 'loving my own life and senses as i do, no power shall induce me, as a private individual, to open another _fashionable novel_. but luckily, in this dilemma, comes a hand from the clouds; whereby if not victory, deliverance is held out to me. round one of those book-packages, which the _stillschweigen'sche buchhandlung_ is in the habit of importing from england, come, as is usual, various waste printed-sheets (_maculatur blätter_), by way of interior wrappage: into these the clothes-philosopher, with a certain mohamedan reverence even for waste-paper, where curious knowledge will sometimes hover, disdains not to cast his eye. readers may judge of his astonishment when on such a defaced stray-sheet, probably the outcast fraction of some english periodical, such as they name _magazine_, appears something like a dissertation on this very subject of _fashionable novels_! it sets out, indeed, chiefly from a secular point of view; directing itself, not without asperity, against some to me unknown individual named _pelham_, who seems to be a mystagogue, and leading teacher and preacher of the sect; so that, what indeed otherwise was not to be expected in such a fugitive fragmentary sheet, the true secret, the religious physiognomy and physiology of the dandiacal body, is nowise laid fully open there. nevertheless, scattered lights do from time to time sparkle out, whereby i have endeavoured to profit. nay, in one passage selected from the prophecies, or mythic theogonies, or whatever they are (for the style seems very mixed) of this mystagogue, i find what appears to be a confession of faith, or whole duty of man, according to the tenets of that sect. which confession or whole duty, therefore, as proceeding from a source so authentic, i shall here arrange under seven distinct articles, and in very abridged shape lay before the german world; therewith taking leave of this matter. observe also, that to avoid possibility of error, i, as far as may be, quote literally from the original: 'articles of faith. '" . coats should have nothing of the triangle about them; at the same time, wrinkles behind should be carefully avoided. '" . the collar is a very important point: it should be low behind, and slightly rolled. '" . no license of fashion can allow a man of delicate taste to adopt the posterial luxuriance of a hottentot. '" . there is safety in a swallow-tail. '" . the good sense of a gentleman is nowhere more finely developed than in his rings. '" . it is permitted to mankind, under certain restrictions, to wear white waistcoats. '" . the trousers must be exceedingly tight across the hips." 'all which propositions i, for the present, content myself with modestly but peremptorily and irrevocably denying. 'in strange contrast with this dandiacal body stands another british sect, originally, as i understand, of ireland, where its chief seat still is; but known also in the main island, and indeed everywhere rapidly spreading. as this sect has hitherto emitted no canonical books, it remains to me in the same state of obscurity as the dandiacal, which has published books that the unassisted human faculties are inadequate to read. the members appear to be designated by a considerable diversity of names, according to their various places of establishment: in england they are generally called the _drudge_ sect; also, unphilosophically enough, the _white negroes_; and, chiefly in scorn by those of other communions, the _ragged-beggar_ sect. in scotland, again, i find them entitled _hallanshakers_, or the _stook of duds_ sect; any individual communicant is named _stook of duds_ (that is, shock of rags), in allusion, doubtless, to their professional costume. while in ireland, which, as mentioned, is their grand parent hive, they go by a perplexing multiplicity of designations, such as _bogtrotters_, _redshanks_, _ribbonmen_, _cottiers_, _peep-of-day boys_, _babes of the wood_, _rockites_, _poor-slaves_; which last, however, seems to be the primary and generic name; whereto, probably enough, the others are only subsidiary species, or slight varieties; or, at most, propagated offsets from the parent stem, whose minute subdivisions, and shades of difference, it were here loss of time to dwell on. enough for us to understand, what seems indubitable, that the original sect is that of the _poor-slaves_; whose doctrines, practices, and fundamental characteristics pervade and animate the whole body, howsoever denominated or outwardly diversified. 'the precise speculative tenets of this brotherhood: how the universe, and man, and man's life, picture themselves to the mind of an irish poor-slave; with what feelings and opinions he looks forward on the future, round on the present, back on the past, it were extremely difficult to specify. something monastic there appears to be in their constitution: we find them bound by the two monastic vows, of poverty and obedience; which vows, especially the former, it is said, they observe with great strictness; nay, as i have understood it, they are pledged, and be it by any solemn nazarene ordination or not, irrevocably consecrated thereto, even _before_ birth. that the third monastic vow, of chastity, is rigidly enforced among them, i find no ground to conjecture. 'furthermore, they appear to imitate the dandiacal sect in their grand principle of wearing a peculiar costume. of which irish poor-slave costume no description will indeed be found in the present volume; for this reason, that by the imperfect organ of language it did not seem describable. their raiment consists of innumerable skirts, lappets and irregular wings, of all cloths and of all colours; through the labyrinthic intricacies of which their bodies are introduced by some unknown process. it is fastened together by a multiplex combination of buttons, thrums and skewers; to which frequently is added a girdle of leather, of hempen or even of straw rope, round the loins. to straw rope, indeed, they seem partial, and often wear it by way of sandals. in head-dress they affect a certain freedom: hats with partial brim, without crown, or with only a loose, hinged, or valve crown; in the former case, they sometimes invert the hat, and wear it brim uppermost, like a university-cap, with what view is unknown. 'the name poor-slaves seems to indicate a slavonic, polish, or russian origin: not so, however, the interior essence and spirit of their superstition, which rather displays a teutonic or druidical character. one might fancy them worshippers of hertha, or the earth: for they dig and affectionately work continually in her bosom; or else, shut-up in private oratories, meditate and manipulate the substances derived from her; seldom looking-up towards the heavenly luminaries, and then with comparative indifference. like the druids, on the other hand, they live in dark dwellings; often even breaking their glass-windows, where they find such, and stuffing them up with pieces of raiment, or other opaque substances, till the fit obscurity is restored. again, like all followers of nature-worship, they are liable to outbreakings of an enthusiasm rising to ferocity; and burn men, if not in wicker idols, yet in sod cottages. 'in respect of diet, they have also their observances. all poor-slaves are rhizophagous (or root-eaters); a few are ichthyophagous, and use salted herrings: other animal food they abstain from; except indeed, with perhaps some strange inverted fragment of a brahminical feeling, such animals as die a natural death. their universal sustenance is the root named potato, cooked by fire alone; and generally without condiment or relish of any kind, save an unknown condiment named _point_, into the meaning of which i have vainly inquired; the victual _potatoes-and-point_ not appearing, at least not with specific accuracy of description, in any european cookery-book whatever. for drink, they use, with an almost epigrammatic counterpoise of taste, milk, which is the mildest of liquors, and _potheen_, which is the fiercest. this latter i have tasted, as well as the english _blue-ruin_, and the scotch _whisky_, analogous fluids used by the sect in those countries: it evidently contains some form of alcohol, in the highest state of concentration, though disguised with acrid oils; and is, on the whole, the most pungent substance known to me,--indeed, a perfect liquid fire. in all their religious solemnities, potheen is said to be an indispensable requisite, and largely consumed. 'an irish traveller, of perhaps common veracity, who presents himself under the to me unmeaning title of _the late john bernard_, offers the following sketch of a domestic establishment, the inmates whereof, though such is not stated expressly, appear to have been of that faith. thereby shall my german readers now behold an irish poor-slave, as it were with their own eyes; and even see him at meat. moreover, in the so-precious waste-paper sheet above mentioned, i have found some corresponding picture of a dandiacal household, painted by that same dandiacal mystagogue, or theogonist: this also, by way of counterpart and contrast, the world shall look into. 'first, therefore, of the poor-slave, who appears likewise to have been a species of innkeeper. i quote from the original: _poor-slave household_ '"the furniture of this caravansera consisted of a large iron pot, two oaken tables, two benches, two chairs, and a potheen noggin. there was a loft above (attainable by a ladder), upon which the inmates slept; and the space below was divided by a hurdle into two apartments; the one for their cow and pig, the other for themselves and guests. on entering the house we discovered the family, eleven in number, at dinner: the father sitting at the top, the mother at the bottom, the children on each side, of a large oaken board, which was scooped-out in the middle, like a trough, to receive the contents of their pot of potatoes. little holes were cut at equal distances to contain salt; and a bowl of milk stood on the table: all the luxuries of meat and beer, bread, knives and dishes were dispensed with." the poor-slave himself our traveller found, as he says, broad-backed, black-browed, of great personal strength, and mouth from ear to ear. his wife was a sun-browned but well-featured woman; and his young ones, bare and chubby, had the appetite of ravens. of their philosophical or religious tenets or observances, no notice or hint. 'but now, secondly, of the dandiacal household; in which, truly, that often-mentioned mystagogue and inspired penman himself has his abode: _dandiacal household_ '"a dressing-room splendidly furnished; violet-coloured curtains, chairs and ottomans of the same hue. two full-length mirrors are placed, one on each side of a table, which supports the luxuries of the toilet. several bottles of perfumes, arranged in a peculiar fashion, stand upon a smaller table of mother-of-pearl: opposite to these are placed the appurtenances of lavation richly wrought in frosted silver. a wardrobe of buhl is on the left; the doors of which, being partly open, discover a profusion of clothes; shoes of a singularly small size monopolise the lower shelves. fronting the wardrobe a door ajar gives some slight glimpse of a bathroom. folding-doors in the background.--enter the author," our theogonist in person, "obsequiously preceded by a french valet, in white silk jacket and cambric apron." * * * * * 'such are the two sects which, at this moment, divide the more unsettled portion of the british people; and agitate that ever-vexed country. to the eye of the political seer, their mutual relation, pregnant with the elements of discord and hostility, is far from consoling. these two principals of dandiacal self-worship or demon-worship, and poor-slavish or drudgical earth-worship, or whatever that same drudgism may be, do as yet indeed manifest themselves under distant and nowise considerable shapes: nevertheless, in their roots and subterranean ramifications, they extend through the entire structure of society, and work unweariedly in the secret depths of english national existence; striving to separate and isolate it into two contradictory, uncommunicating masses. 'in numbers, and even individual strength, the poor-slaves or drudges, it would seem, are hourly increasing. the dandiacal, again, is by nature no proselytising sect; but it boasts of great hereditary resources, and is strong by union; whereas the drudges, split into parties, have as yet no rallying-point; or at best only co-operate by means of partial secret affiliations. if, indeed, there were to arise a _communion of drudges_, as there is already a communion of saints, what strangest effects would follow therefrom! dandyism as yet affects to look-down on drudgism: but perhaps the hour of trial, when it will be practically seen which ought to look down, and which up, is not so distant. 'to me it seems probable that the two sects will one day part england between them; each recruiting itself from the intermediate ranks, till there be none left to enlist on either side. those dandiacal manicheans, with the host of dandyising christians, will form one body: the drudges, gathering round them whosoever is drudgical, be he christian or infidel pagan; sweeping-up likewise all manner of utilitarians, radicals, refractory potwallopers, and so forth, into their general mass, will form another. i could liken dandyism and drudgism to two bottomless boiling whirlpools that had broken-out on opposite quarters of the firm land: as yet they appear only disquieted, foolishly bubbling wells, which man's art might cover-in; yet mark them, their diameter is daily widening: they are hollow cones that boil-up from the infinite deep, over which your firm land is but a thin crust or rind! thus daily is the intermediate land crumbling-in, daily the empire of the two buchan-bullers extending; till now there is but a foot-plank, a mere film of land between them; this too is washed away: and then--we have the true hell of waters, and noah's deluge is outdeluged! 'or better, i might call them two boundless, and indeed unexampled electric machines (turned by the "machinery of society"), with batteries of opposite quality; drudgism the negative, dandyism the positive: one attracts hourly towards it and appropriates all the positive electricity of the nation (namely, the money thereof); the other is equally busy with the negative (that is to say the hunger), which is equally potent. hitherto you see only partial transient sparkles and sputters: but wait a little, till the entire nation is in an electric state; till your whole vital electricity, no longer healthfully neutral, is cut into two isolated portions of positive and negative (of money and of hunger); and stands there bottled-up in two world-batteries! the stirring of a child's finger brings the two together; and then--what then? the earth is but shivered into impalpable smoke by that doom's-thunderpeal; the sun misses one of his planets in space, and thenceforth there are no eclipses of the moon.--or better still, i might liken'-- oh! enough, enough of likenings and similitudes; in excess of which, truly, it is hard to say whether teufelsdröckh or ourselves sin the more. we have often blamed him for a habit of wire-drawing and over-refining; from of old we have been familiar with his tendency to mysticism and religiosity, whereby in everything he was still scenting-out religion: but never perhaps did these amaurosis-suffusions so cloud and distort his otherwise most piercing vision, as in this of the _dandiacal body_! or was there something of intended satire; is the professor and seer not quite the blinkard he affects to be? of an ordinary mortal we should have decisively answered in the affirmative; but with a teufelsdröckh there ever hovers some shade of doubt. in the mean while, if satire were actually intended, the case is little better. there are not wanting men who will answer: does your professor take us for simpletons? his irony has overshot itself; we see through it, and perhaps through him. chapter xi tailors thus, however, has our first practical inference from the clothes-philosophy, that which respects dandies, been sufficiently drawn; and we come now to the second, concerning tailors. on this latter our opinion happily quite coincides with that of teufelsdröckh himself, as expressed in the concluding page of his volume, to whom, therefore, we willingly give place. let him speak his own last words, in his own way: * * * * * 'upwards of a century,' says he, 'must elapse, and still the bleeding fight of freedom be fought, whoso is noblest perishing in the van, and thrones be hurled on altars like pelion on ossa, and the moloch of iniquity have his victims, and the michael of justice his martyrs, before tailors can be admitted to their true prerogatives of manhood, and this last wound of suffering humanity be closed. 'if aught in the history of the world's blindness could surprise us, here might we indeed pause and wonder. an idea has gone abroad, and fixed itself down into a wide-spreading rooted error, that tailors are a distinct species in physiology, not men, but fractional parts of a man. call any one a _schneider_ (cutter, tailor), is it not, in our dislocated, hood-winked, and indeed delirious condition of society, equivalent to defying his perpetual fellest enmity? the epithet _schneider-mässig_ (tailor-like) betokens an otherwise unapproachable degree of pusillanimity: we introduce a _tailor's-melancholy_, more opprobrious than any leprosy, into our books of medicine; and fable i know not what of his generating it by living on cabbage. why should i speak of hans sachs (himself a shoemaker, or kind of leather-tailor), with his _schneider mit dem panier_? why of shakspeare, in his _taming of the shrew_, and elsewhere? does it not stand on record that the english queen elizabeth, receiving a deputation of eighteen tailors, addressed them with a "good morning, gentlemen both!" did not the same virago boast that she had a cavalry regiment, whereof neither horse nor man could be injured; her regiment, namely, of tailors on mares? thus everywhere is the falsehood taken for granted, and acted-on as an indisputable fact. 'nevertheless, need i put the question to any physiologist, whether it is disputable or not? seems it not at least presumable, that, under his clothes, the tailor has bones and viscera, and other muscles than the sartorious? which function of manhood is the tailor not conjectured to perform? can he not arrest for debt? is he not in most countries a tax-paying animal? 'to no reader of this volume can it be doubtful which conviction is mine. nay if the fruit of these long vigils, and almost preternatural inquiries, is not to perish utterly, the world will have approximated towards a higher truth; and the doctrine, which swift, with the keen forecast of genius, dimly anticipated, will stand revealed in clear light: that the tailor is not only a man, but something of a creator or divinity. of franklin it was said, that "he snatched the thunder from heaven and the sceptre from kings": but which is greater, i would ask, he that lends, or he that snatches? for, looking away from individual cases, and how a man is by the tailor new-created into a nobleman, and clothed not only with wool but with dignity and a mystic dominion,--is not the fair fabric of society itself, with all its royal mantles and pontifical stoles, whereby, from nakedness and dismemberment, we are organised into polities, into nations, and a whole co-operating mankind, the creation, as has here been often irrefragably evinced, of the tailor alone?--what too are all poets and moral teachers, but a species of metaphorical tailors? touching which high guild the greatest living guild-brother has triumphantly asked us: "nay if thou wilt have it, who but the poet first made gods for men; brought them down to us; and raised us up to them?" 'and this is he, whom sitting downcast, on the hard basis of his shopboard, the world treats with contumely, as the ninth part of a man! look up, thou much-injured one, look up with the kindling eye of hope, and prophetic bodings of a noble better time. too long hast thou sat there, on crossed legs, wearing thy ankle-joints to horn; like some sacred anchorite, or catholic fakir, doing penance, drawing down heaven's richest blessings, for a world that scoffed at thee. be of hope! already streaks of blue peer through our clouds; the thick gloom of ignorance is rolling asunder, and it will be day. mankind will repay with interest their long-accumulated debt: the anchorite that was scoffed at will be worshipped; the fraction will become not an integer only, but a square and cube. with astonishment the world will recognise that the tailor is its hierophant and hierarch, or even its god. 'as i stood in the mosque of st. sophia, and looked upon these four-and-twenty tailors, sewing and embroidering that rich cloth, which the sultan sends yearly for the caaba of mecca, i thought within myself: how many other unholies has your covering art made holy, besides this arabian whinstone! 'still more touching was it when, turning the corner of a lane, in the scottish town of edinburgh, i came upon a signpost, whereon stood written that such and such a one was "breeches-maker to his majesty"; and stood painted the effigies of a pair of leather breeches, and between the knees these memorable words, sic itur ad astra. was not this the martyr prison-speech of a tailor sighing indeed in bonds, yet sighing towards deliverance, and prophetically appealing to a better day? a day of justice, when the worth of breeches would be revealed to man, and the scissors become forever venerable. 'neither, perhaps, may i now say, has his appeal been altogether in vain. it was in this high moment, when the soul, rent, as it were, and shed asunder, is open to inspiring influence, that i first conceived this work on clothes: the greatest i can ever hope to do; which has already, after long retardations, occupied, and will yet occupy, so large a section of my life; and of which the primary and simpler portion may here find its conclusion.' chapter xii farewell so have we endeavoured, from the enormous, amorphous plum-pudding, more like a scottish haggis, which herr teufelsdröckh had kneaded for his fellow mortals, to pick-out the choicest plums, and present them separately on a cover of our own. a laborious, perhaps a thankless enterprise; in which, however, something of hope has occasionally cheered us, and of which we can now wash our hands not altogether without satisfaction. if hereby, though in barbaric wise, some morsel of spiritual nourishment have been added to the scanty ration of our beloved british world, what nobler recompense could the editor desire? if it prove otherwise, why should he murmur? was not this a task which destiny, in any case, had appointed him; which having now done with, he sees his general day's-work so much the lighter, so much the shorter? of professor teufelsdröckh it seems impossible to take leave without a mingled feeling of astonishment, gratitude and disapproval. who will not regret that talents, which might have profited in the higher walks of philosophy, or in art itself, have been so much devoted to a rummaging among lumber-rooms; nay too often to a scraping in kennels, where lost rings and diamond-necklaces are nowise the sole conquests? regret is unavoidable; yet censure were loss of time. to cure him of his mad humours british criticism would essay in vain: enough for her if she can, by vigilance, prevent the spreading of such among ourselves. what a result, should this piebald, entangled, hyper-metaphorical style of writing, not to say of thinking, become general among our literary men! as it might so easily do. thus has not the editor himself, working over teufelsdröckh's german, lost much of his own english purity? even as the smaller whirlpool is sucked into the larger, and made to whirl along with it, so has the lesser mind, in this instance, been forced to become portion of the greater, and like it, see all things figuratively: which habit time and assiduous effort will be needed to eradicate. nevertheless, wayward as our professor shows himself, is there any reader that can part with him in declared enmity? let us confess, there is that in the wild, much-suffering, much-inflicting man, which almost attaches us. his attitude, we will hope and believe, is that of a man who had said to cant, begone; and to dilettantism, here thou canst not be; and to truth, be thou in place of all to me: a man who had manfully defied the 'time-prince,' or devil, to his face; nay perhaps, hannibal-like, was mysteriously consecrated from birth to that warfare, and now stood minded to wage the same, by all weapons, in all places, at all times. in such a cause, any soldier, were he but a polack scythe-man, shall be welcome. still the question returns on us: how could a man occasionally of keen insight, not without keen sense of propriety, who had real thoughts to communicate, resolve to emit them in a shape bordering so closely on the absurd? which question he were wiser than the present editor who should satisfactorily answer. our conjecture has sometimes been, that perhaps necessity as well as choice was concerned in it. seems it not conceivable that, in a life like our professor's, where so much bountifully given by nature had in practice failed and misgone, literature also would never rightly prosper: that striving with his characteristic vehemence to paint this and the other picture, and ever without success, he at last desperately dashes his sponge, full of all colours, against the canvas, to try whether it will paint foam? with all his stillness, there were perhaps in teufelsdröckh desperation enough for this. a second conjecture we hazard with even less warranty. it is, that teufelsdröckh is not without some touch of the universal feeling, a wish to proselytise. how often already have we paused, uncertain whether the basis of this so enigmatic nature were really stoicism and despair, or love and hope only seared into the figure of these! remarkable, moreover, is this saying of his: 'how were friendship possible? in mutual devotedness to the good and true: otherwise impossible; except as armed neutrality, or hollow commercial league. a man, be the heavens ever praised, is sufficient for himself; yet were ten men, united in love, capable of being and of doing what ten thousand singly would fail in. infinite is the help man can yield to man.' and now in conjunction therewith consider this other: 'it is the night of the world, and still long till it be day: we wander amid the glimmer of smoking ruins, and the sun and the stars of heaven are as if blotted out for a season; and two immeasurable phantoms, hypocrisy and atheism, with the gowl, sensuality, stalk abroad over the earth, and call it theirs: well at ease are the sleepers for whom existence is a shallow dream.' but what of the awestruck wakeful who find it a reality? should not these unite; since even an authentic spectre is not visible to two?--in which case were this enormous clothes-volume properly an enormous pitchpan, which our teufelsdröckh in his lone watch-tower had kindled, that it might flame far and wide through the night, and many a disconsolately wandering spirit be guided thither to a brother's bosom!--we say as before, with all his malign indifference, who knows what mad hopes this man may harbour? meanwhile there is one fact to be stated here, which harmonises ill with such conjecture; and, indeed, were teufelsdröckh made like other men, might as good as altogether subvert it. namely, that while the beacon-fire blazed its brightest, the watchman had quitted it; that no pilgrim could now ask him: watchman, what of the night? professor teufelsdröckh, be it known is no longer visibly present at weissnichtwo, but again to all appearance lost in space! some time ago, the hofrath heuschrecke was pleased to favour us with another copious epistle; wherein much is said about the 'population-institute'; much repeated in praise of the paper-bag documents, the hieroglyphic nature of which our hofrath still seems not to have surmised; and, lastly, the strangest occurrence communicated, to us for the first time, in the following paragraph: '_ew. wohlgeboren_ will have seen from the public prints, with what affectionate and hitherto fruitless solicitude weissnichtwo regards the disappearance of her sage. might but the united voice of germany prevail on him to return; nay, could we but so much as elucidate for ourselves by what mystery he went away! but, alas, old lieschen experiences or affects the profoundest deafness, the profoundest ignorance: in the wahngasse all lies swept, silent, sealed up; the privy council itself can hitherto elicit no answer. 'it had been remarked that while the agitating news of those parisian three days flew from mouth to mouth, and dinned every ear in weissnichtwo, herr teufelsdröckh was not known, at the _gans_ or elsewhere, to have spoken, for a whole week, any syllable except once these three: _es geht an_ (it is beginning). shortly after, as _ew. wohlgeboren_ knows, was the public tranquillity here, as in berlin, threatened by a sedition of the tailors. nor did there want evil-wishers, or perhaps mere desperate alarmists, who asserted that the closing chapter of the clothes-volume was to blame. in this appalling crisis, the serenity of our philosopher was indescribable; nay, perhaps through one humble individual, something thereof might pass into the _rath_ (council) itself, and so contribute to the country's deliverance. the tailors are now entirely pacificated.-- 'to neither of these two incidents can i attribute our loss: yet still comes there the shadow of a suspicion out of paris and its politics. for example, when the _saint-simonian society_ transmitted its propositions hither, and the whole _gans_ was one vast cackle of laughter, lamentation and astonishment, our sage sat mute; and at the end of the third evening said merely: "here also are men who have discovered, not without amazement, that man is still man; of which high, long-forgotten truth you already see them make a false application." since then, as has been ascertained by examination of the post-director, there passed at least one letter with its answer between the messieurs bazard-enfantin and our professor himself; of what tenor can now only be conjectured. on the fifth night following, he was seen for the last time! 'has this invaluable man, so obnoxious to most of the hostile sects that convulse our era, been spirited away by certain of their emissaries; or did he go forth voluntarily to their head-quarters to confer with them and confront them? reason we have, at least of a negative sort, to believe the lost still living; our widowed heart also whispers that ere long he will himself give a sign. otherwise, indeed, his archives must, one day, be opened by authority; where much, perhaps the _palingenesie_ itself, is thought to be reposited.' * * * * * thus far the hofrath; who vanishes, as is his wont, too like an ignis fatuus, leaving the dark still darker. so that teufelsdröckh's public history were not done, then, or reduced to an even, unromantic tenor; nay, perhaps the better part thereof were only beginning? we stand in a region of conjectures, where substance has melted into shadow, and one cannot be distinguished from the other. may time, which solves or suppresses all problems, throw glad light on this also! our own private conjecture, now amounting almost to certainty, is that, safe-moored in some stillest obscurity, not to lie always still, teufelsdröckh is actually in london! here, however, can the present editor, with an ambrosial joy as of over-weariness falling into sleep, lay down his pen. well does he know, if human testimony be worth aught, that to innumerable british readers likewise, this is a satisfying consummation; that innumerable british readers consider him, during these current months, but as an uneasy interruption to their ways of thought and digestion; and indicate so much, not without a certain irritancy and even spoken invective. for which, as for other mercies, ought not he to thank the upper powers? to one and all of you, o irritated readers, he, with outstretched arms and open heart, will wave a kind farewell. thou too, miraculous entity, who namest thyself yorke and oliver, and with thy vivacities and genialities, with thy all-too irish mirth and madness, and odour of palled punch, makest such strange work, farewell; long as thou canst, fare-_well!_ have we not, in the course of eternity, travelled some months of our life-journey in partial sight of one another; have we not existed together, though in a state of quarrel? appendix testimonies of authors this questionable little book was undoubtedly written among the mountain solitudes, in ; but, owing to impediments natural and accidental, could not, for seven years more, appear as a volume in england;--and had at last to clip itself in pieces, and be content to struggle out, bit by bit, in some courageous _magazine_ that offered. whereby now, to certain idly curious readers, and even to myself till i make study, the insignificant but at last irritating question, what its real history and chronology are, is, if not insoluble, considerably involved in haze. to the first english edition, , which an american, or two american had now opened the way for, there was slightingly prefixed, under the title '_testimonies of authors_,' some straggle of real documents, which, now that i find it again, sets the matter into clear light and sequence;--and shall here, for removal of idle stumbling-blocks and nugatory guessings from the path of every reader, be reprinted as it stood. (_author's note of ._) testimonies of authors i. highest class, bookseller's taster _taster to bookseller._--"the author of _teufelsdröckh_ is a person of talent; his work displays here and there some felicity of thought and expression, considerable fancy and knowledge: but whether or not it would take with the public seems doubtful. for a _jeu d'esprit_ of that kind it is too long; it would have suited better as an essay or article than as a volume. the author has no great tact; his wit is frequently heavy; and reminds one of the german baron who took to leaping on tables, and answered that he was learning to be lively. _is_ the work a translation?" _bookseller to editor._--"allow me to say that such a writer requires only a little more tact to produce a popular as well as an able work. directly on receiving your permission, i sent your _ms._ to a gentleman in the highest class of men of letters, and an accomplished german scholar: i now inclose you his opinion, which, you may rely upon it, is a just one; and i have too high an opinion of your good sense to" &c. &c.--_ms._ (_penes nos_), _london, th september _. ii. critic of the sun "_fraser's magazine_ exhibits the usual brilliancy, and also the" &c. "_sartor resartus_ is what old dennis used to call 'a heap of clotted nonsense,' mixed however, here and there, with passages marked by thought and striking poetic vigour. but what does the writer mean by 'baphometic fire-baptism'? why cannot he lay aside his pedantry, and write so as to make himself generally intelligible? we quote by way of curiosity a sentence from the _sartor resartus_; which may be read either backwards or forwards, for it is equally intelligible either way. indeed, by beginning at the tail, and so working up to the head, we think the reader will stand the fairest chance of getting at its meaning: 'the fire-baptised soul, long so scathed and thunder-riven, here feels its own freedom; which feeling is its baphometic baptism: the citadel of its whole kingdom it has thus gained by assault, and will keep inexpugnable; outwards from which the remaining dominions, not indeed without hard battering, will doubtless by degrees be conquered and pacificated.' here is a"--....--_sun newspaper_, _ st april _. iii. north-american reviewer ... "after a careful survey of the whole ground, our belief is that no such persons as professor teufelsdröckh or counsellor heuschrecke ever existed; that the six paper-bags, with their china-ink inscriptions and multifarious contents, are a mere figment of the brain; that the 'present editor' is the only person who has ever written upon the philosophy of clothes; and that the _sartor resartus_ is the only treatise that has yet appeared upon that subject;--in short, that the whole account of the origin of the work before us, which the supposed editor relates with so much gravity, and of which we have given a brief abstract, is, in plain english, a _hum_. "without troubling our readers at any great length with our reasons for entertaining these suspicions, we may remark, that the absence of all other information on the subject, except what is contained in the work, is itself a fact of a most significant character. the whole german press, as well as the particular one where the work purports to have been printed, seems to be under the control of _stillschweigen and co._,--silence and company. if the clothes-philosophy and its author are making so great a sensation throughout germany as is pretended, how happens it that the only notice we have of the fact is contained in a few numbers of a monthly magazine published at london? how happens it that no intelligence about the matter has come out directly to this country? we pique ourselves here in new england upon knowing at least as much of what is going on in the literary way in the old dutch mother-land as our brethren of the fast-anchored isle; but thus far we have no tidings whatever of the 'extensive close-printed close-meditated volume,' which forms the subject of this pretended commentary. again, we would respectfully inquire of the 'present editor' upon what part of the map of germany we are to look for the city of _weissnichtwo_,--'know-not-where,'--at which place the work is supposed to have been printed, and the author to have resided. it has been our fortune to visit several portions of the german territory, and to examine pretty carefully, at different times and for various purposes, maps of the whole; but we have no recollection of any such place. we suspect that the city of _know-not-where_ might be called, with at least as much propriety, _nobody-knows-where_, and is to be found in the kingdom of _nowhere_. again, the village of _entepfuhl_--'duck-pond,' where the supposed author of the work is said to have passed his youth, and that of _hinterschlag_, where he had his education, are equally foreign to our geography. duck-ponds enough there undoubtedly are in almost every village in germany, as the traveller in that country knows too well to his cost, but any particular village denominated duck-pond is to us altogether _terra incognita_. the names of the personages are not less singular than those of the places. who can refrain from a smile at the yoking together of such a pair of appellatives as diogenes teufelsdröckh? the supposed bearer of this strange title is represented as admitting, in his pretended autobiography, that 'he had searched to no purpose through all the heralds' books in and without the german empire, and through all manner of subscribers'-lists, militia-rolls, and other name-catalogues,' but had nowhere been able to find the 'name teufelsdröckh, except as appended to his own person.' we can readily believe this, and we doubt very much whether any christian parent would think of condemning a son to carry through life the burden of so unpleasant a title. that of counsellor heuschrecke--'grasshopper,' though not offensive, looks much more like a piece of fancy work than a 'fair business transaction.' the same may be said of _blumine_--'flower-goddess'--the heroine of the fable; and so of the rest. "in short, our private opinion is, as we have remarked, that the whole story of a correspondence with germany, a university of nobody-knows-where, a professor of things in general, a counsellor grasshopper, a flower-goddess blumine, and so forth, has about as much foundation in truth as the late entertaining account of sir john herschel's discoveries in the moon. fictions of this kind are, however, not uncommon, and ought not, perhaps, to be condemned with too much severity; but we are not sure that we can exercise the same indulgence in regard to the attempt, which seems to be made to mislead the public as to the substance of the work before us, and its pretended german original. both purport, as we have seen, to be upon the subject of clothes, or dress. _clothes, their origin and influence_, is the title of the supposed german treatise of professor teufelsdröckh, and the rather odd name of _sartor resartus_--the tailor patched,--which the present editor has affixed to his pretended commentary, seems to look the same way. but though there is a good deal of remark throughout the work in a half-serious, half-comic style upon dress, it seems to be in reality a treatise upon the great science of things in general, which teufelsdröckh is supposed to have professed at the university of nobody-knows-where. now, without intending to adopt a too rigid standard of morals, we own that we doubt a little the propriety of offering to the public a treatise on things in general, under the name and in the form of an essay on dress. for ourselves, advanced as we unfortunately are in the journey of life, far beyond the period when dress is practically a matter of interest, we have no hesitation in saying, that the real subject of the work is to us more attractive than the ostensible one. but this is probably not the case with the mass of readers. to the younger portion of the community, which constitutes everywhere the very great majority, the subject of dress is one of intense and paramount importance. an author who treats it appeals, like the poet, to the young men and maidens--_virginibus puerisque_,--and calls upon them, by all the motives which habitually operate most strongly upon their feelings, to buy his book. when, after opening their purses for this purpose, they have carried home the work in triumph, expecting to find in it some particular instruction in regard to the tying of their neckcloths, or the cut of their corsets, and meet with nothing better than a dissertation on things in general, they will,--to use the mildest term--not be in very good humour. if the last improvements in legislation, which we have made in this country, should have found their way to england, the author, we think, would stand some chance of being _lynched_. whether his object in this piece of _supercherie_ be merely pecuniary profit, or whether he takes a malicious pleasure in quizzing the dandies, we shall not undertake to say. in the latter part of the work, he devotes a separate chapter to this class of persons, from the tenour of which we should be disposed to conclude, that he would consider any mode of divesting them of their property very much in the nature of a spoiling of the egyptians. "the only thing about the work, tending to prove that it is what it purports to be, a commentary on a real german treatise, is the style, which is a sort of babylonish dialect, not destitute, it is true, of richness, vigour, and at times a sort of singular felicity of expression, but very strongly tinged throughout with the peculiar idiom of the german language. this quality in the style, however, may be a mere result of a great familiarity with german literature, and we cannot, therefore, look upon it as in itself decisive, still less as outweighing so much evidence of an opposite character."--_north-american review_, _no. _, _october _. iv. new england editors "the editors have been induced, by the express desire of many persons, to collect the following sheets out of the ephemeral pamphlets[ ] in which they first appeared, under the conviction that they contain in themselves the assurance of a longer date. [ ] _fraser's_ (london) _magazine_, - . "the editors have no expectation that this little work will have a sudden and general popularity. they will not undertake, as there is no need, to justify the gay costume in which the author delights to dress his thoughts, or the german idioms with which he has sportively sprinkled his pages. it is his humour to advance the gravest speculations upon the gravest topics in a quaint and burlesque style. if his masquerade offend any of his audience, to that degree that they will not hear what he has to say, it may chance to draw others to listen to his wisdom; and what work of imagination can hope to please all? but we will venture to remark that the distaste excited by these peculiarities in some readers is greatest at first, and is soon forgotten; and that the foreign dress and aspect of the work are quite superficial, and cover a genuine saxon heart. we believe, no book has been published for many years, written in a more sincere style of idiomatic english, or which discovers an equal mastery over all the riches of the language. the author makes ample amends for the occasional eccentricity of his genius, not only by frequent bursts of pure splendour, but by the wit and sense which never fail him. "but what will chiefly commend the book to the discerning reader is the manifest design of the work, which is, a criticism upon the spirit of the age,--we had almost said, of the hour,--in which we live; exhibiting in the most just and novel light the present aspects of religion, politics, literature, arts, and social life. under all his gaiety the writer has an earnest meaning, and discovers an insight into the manifold wants and tendencies of human nature, which is very rare among our popular authors. the philanthropy and the purity of moral sentiment, which inspire the work, will find their way to the heart of every lover of virtue."--_preface to sartor resartus_: _boston_, , . sunt, fuerunt vel fuere. london, _ th june _. summary book i chap. i. _preliminary_ no philosophy of clothes yet, notwithstanding all our science. strangely forgotten that man is by nature a _naked_ animal. the english mind all-too practically absorbed for any such inquiry. not so, deep-thinking germany. advantage of speculation having free course. editor receives from professor teufelsdröckh his new work on clothes (p. ). chap. ii. _editorial difficulties_ how to make known teufelsdröckh and his book to english readers; especially _such_ a book? editor receives from the hofrath heuschrecke a letter promising biographic documents. negotiations with oliver yorke. _sartor resartus_ conceived. editor's assurances and advice to his british reader (p. ). chap. iii. _reminiscences_ teufelsdröckh at weissnichtwo. professor of things in general at the university there: outward aspect and character; memorable coffee-house utterances; domicile and watch-tower: sights thence of city-life by day and by night; with reflections thereon. old 'liza and her ways. character of hofrath heuschrecke, and his relation to teufelsdröckh (p. ). chap. iv. _characteristics_ teufelsdröckh and his work on clothes: strange freedom of speech: transcendentalism; force of insight and expression; multifarious learning: style poetic, uncouth: comprehensiveness of his humour and moral feeling. how the editor once saw him laugh. different kinds of laughter and their significance (p. ). chap. v. _the world in clothes_ futile cause-and-effect philosophies. teufelsdröckh's orbis vestitus. clothes first invented for the sake of ornament. picture of our progenitor, the aboriginal savage. wonders of growth and progress in mankind's history. man defined as a tool-using animal (p. ). chap. vi. _aprons_ divers aprons in the world with divers uses. the military and police establishment society's working apron. the episcopal apron with its corner tucked in. the laystall. journalists now our only kings and clergy (p. ). chap. vii. _miscellaneous-historical_ how men and fashions come and go. german costume in the fifteenth century. by what strange chances do we live in history! the costume of bolivar's cavalry (p. ). chap. viii. _the world out of clothes_ teufelsdröckh's theorem, "society founded upon cloth"; his method, intuition quickened by experience.--the mysterious question, who am i? philosophic systems, all at fault: a deeper meditation has always taught, here and there an individual, that all visible things are appearances only; but also emblems and revelations of god. teufelsdröckh first comes upon the question of clothes: baseness to which clothing may bring us (p. ). chap. ix. _adamatism_ the universal utility of clothes, and their higher mystic virtue, illustrated. conception of mankind stripped naked; and immediate consequent dissolution of civilised society (p. ). chap. x. _pure reason_ a naked world possible, nay actually exists, under the clothed one. man, in the eye of pure reason, a visible god's presence. the beginning of all wisdom, to look fixedly on clothes till they become transparent. wonder, the basis of worship: perennial in man. modern sciolists who cannot wonder: teufelsdröckh's contempt for, and advice to them (p. ). chap. xi. _prospective_ nature not an aggregate, but a whole. all visible things are emblems, clothes; and exist for a time only. the grand scope of the philosophy of clothes.--biographic documents arrive. letter from heuschrecke on the importance of biography. heterogeneous character of the documents: editor sorely perplexed; but desperately grapples with his work (p. ). book ii chap. i. _genesis_ old andreas futteral and gretchen his wife: their quiet home. advent of a mysterious stranger, who deposits with them a young infant, the future herr diogenes teufelsdröckh. after-yearnings of the youth for his unknown father. sovereign power of names and naming. diogenes a flourishing infant (p. ). chap. ii. _idyllic_ happy childhood! entepfuhl: sights, hearings and experiences of the boy teufelsdröckh; their manifold teaching. education; what it can do, what cannot. obedience our universal duty and destiny. gneschen sees the good gretchen pray (p. ). chap. iii. _pedagogy_ teufelsdröckh's school. his education. how the ever-flowing kuhbach speaks of time and eternity. the hinterschlag gymnasium; rude boys; and pedant professors. the need of true teachers, and their due recognition. father andreas dies: and teufelsdröckh learns the secret of his birth: his reflections thereon. the nameless university. statistics of imposture much wanted. bitter fruits of rationalism: teufelsdröckh's religious difficulties. the young englishman herr towgood. modern friendship (p. ). chap. iv. _getting under way_ the grand thaumaturgic art of thought. difficulty in fitting capability to opportunity, or of getting underway. the advantage of hunger and bread-studies. teufelsdröckh has to enact the stern mono-drama of _no object and no rest_. sufferings as auscultator. given up as a man of genius, zähdarm house. intolerable presumption of young men. irony and its consequences. teufelsdröckh's epitaph on count zähdarm (p. ). chap. v. _romance_ teufelsdröckh gives up his profession. the heavenly mystery of love. teufelsdröckh's feeling of worship towards women. first and only love. blumine. happy hearts and free tongues. the infinite nature of fantasy. love's joyful progress; sudden dissolution; and final catastrophe (p. ). chap. vi. _sorrows of teufelsdröckh_ teufelsdröckh's demeanour thereupon. turns pilgrim. a last wistful look on native entepfuhl: sunset amongst primitive mountains. basilisk-glance of the barouche-and-four. thoughts on view-hunting. wanderings and sorrowings (p. ). chap. vii. _the everlasting no_ loss of hope, and of belief. profit-and-loss philosophy, teufelsdröckh in his darkness and despair still clings to truth and follows duty. inexpressible pains and fears of unbelief. fever-crisis: protest against the everlasting no: baphometic fire-baptism (p. ). chap. viii. _centre of indifference_ teufelsdröckh turns now outwardly to the _not-me_; and finds wholesomer food. ancient cities: mystery of their origin and growth: invisible inheritances and possessions. power and virtue of a true book. wagram battlefield: war. great scenes beheld by the pilgrim: great events, and great men. napoleon, a divine missionary, preaching _la carrière ouverte aux talens_. teufelsdröckh at the north cape: modern means of self-defence. gunpowder and duelling. the pilgrim, despising his miseries, reaches the centre of indifference (p. ). chap. ix. _the everlasting yea_ temptations in the wilderness: victory over the tempter. annihilation of self. belief in god, and love to man. the origin of evil, a problem ever requiring to be solved anew: teufelsdröckh's solution. love of happiness a vain whim: a higher in man than love of happiness. the everlasting yea. worship of sorrow. voltaire: his task now finished. conviction worthless, impossible, without conduct. the true ideal, the actual: up and work! (p. ). chap. x. _pause_ conversion; a spiritual attainment peculiar to the modern era. teufelsdröckh accepts authorship as his divine calling. the scope of the command _thou shalt not steal_.--editor begins to suspect the authenticity of the biographical documents; and abandons them for the great clothes volume. result of the preceding ten chapters: insight into the character of teufelsdröckh: his fundamental beliefs, and how he was forced to seek and find them (p. ). book iii chap. i. _incident in modern history_ story of george fox the quaker; and his perennial suit of leather. a man god-possessed, witnessing for spiritual freedom and manhood (p. ). chap. ii. _church-clothes_ church-clothes defined; the forms under which the religious principle is temporarily embodied. outward religion originates by society: society becomes possible by religion. the condition of church-clothes in our time (p. ). chap. iii. _symbols_ the benignant efficacies of silence and secrecy. symbols; revelations of the infinite in the finite: man everywhere encompassed by them; lives and works by them. theory of motive-millwrights, a false account of human nature. symbols of an extrinsic value; as banners, standards: of intrinsic value; as works of art, lives and deaths of heroic men. religious symbols; christianity. symbols hallowed by time; but finally defaced and desecrated. many superannuated symbols in our time, needing removal (p. ). chap. iv. _helotage_ heuschrecke's malthusian tract, and teufelsdröckh's marginal notes thereon. the true workman, for daily bread, or spiritual bread, to be honoured; and no other. the real privation of the poor not poverty or toil, but ignorance. over-population: with a world like ours and wide as ours, can there be too many men? emigration (p. ). chap. v. _the phoenix_ teufelsdröckh considers society as _dead_; its soul (religion) gone, its body (existing institutions) going. utilitarianism, needing little farther preaching, is now in full activity of destruction.--teufelsdröckh would yield to the inevitable, accounting that the best: assurance of a fairer living society, arising, phoenix-like, out of the ruins of the old dead one. before that phoenix death-birth is accomplished, long time, struggle, and suffering must intervene (p. ). chap. vi. _old clothes_ courtesy due from all men to all men: the body of man a revelation in the flesh. teufelsdröckh's respect for old clothes, as the 'ghosts of life.' walk in monmouth street, and meditations there (p. ). chap. vii. _organic filaments_ destruction and creation ever proceed together; and organic filaments of the future are even now spinning. wonderful connection of each man with all men; and of each generation with all generations, before and after: mankind is one. sequence and progress of all human work, whether of creation or destruction, from age to age.--titles, hitherto derived from fighting, must give way to others. kings will remain and their title. political freedom, not to be attained by any mechanical contrivance. hero-worship, perennial amongst men; the cornerstone of polities in the future. organic filaments of the new religion: newspapers and literature. let the faithful soul take courage! (p. ). chap. viii. _natural supernaturalism_ deep significance of miracles. littleness of human science: divine incomprehensibility of nature. custom blinds us to the miraculousness of daily-recurring miracles; so do names. space and time, appearances only; forms of human thought: a glimpse of immortality. how space hides from us the wondrousness of our commonest powers; and time, the divinely miraculous course of human history (p. ). chap. ix. _circumspective_ recapitulation. editor congratulates the few british readers who have accompanied teufelsdröckh through all his speculations. the true use of the _sartor resartus_, to exhibit the wonder of daily life and common things; and to show that all forms are but clothes, and temporary. practical inferences enough will follow (p. ). chap. x. _the dandiacal body_ the dandy defined. the dandiacal sect a new modification of the primeval superstition self-worship: how to be distinguished. their sacred books (fashionable novels) unreadable. dandyism's articles of faith.--brotherhood of poor-slaves: vowed to perpetual poverty; worshippers of earth; distinguished by peculiar costume and diet. picture of a poor-slave household; and of a dandiacal. teufelsdröckh fears these two sects may spread, till they part all england between them, and then frightfully collide (p. ). chap. xi. _tailors_ injustice done to tailors, actual and metaphorical. their rights and great services will one day be duly recognised (p. ). chap. xii. _farewell_ teufelsdröckh's strange manner of speech, but resolute, truthful character: his purpose seemingly to proselytise, to unite the wakeful earnest in these dark times. letter from hofrath heuschrecke announcing that teufelsdröckh has disappeared from weissnichtwo. editor guesses he will appear again, friendly farewell (p. ). on heroes, hero-worship, and the heroic in history lecture i the hero as divinity. odin. paganism: scandinavian mythology [_tuesday, th may _] we have undertaken to discourse here for a little on great men, their manner of appearance in our world's business, how they have shaped themselves in the world's history, what ideas men formed of them, what work they did;--on heroes, namely, and on their reception and performance; what i call hero-worship and the heroic in human affairs. too evidently this is a large topic; deserving quite other treatment than we can expect to give it at present. a large topic; indeed, an illimitable one; wide as universal history itself. for, as i take it, universal history, the history of what man has accomplished in this world, is at bottom the history of the great men who have worked here. they were the leaders of men, these great ones; the modellers, patterns, and in a wide sense creators, of whatsoever the general mass of men contrived to do or to attain; all things that we see standing accomplished in the world are properly the outer material result, the practical realisation and embodiment, of thoughts that dwelt in the great men sent into the world: the soul of the whole world's history, it may justly be considered, were the history of these. too clearly it is a topic we shall do no justice to in this place! one comfort is, that great men, taken up in any way, are profitable company. we cannot look, however imperfectly, upon a great man, without gaining something by him. he is the living light-fountain, which it is good and pleasant to be near. the light which enlightens, which has enlightened the darkness of the world; and this not as a kindled lamp only, but rather as a natural luminary shining by the gift of heaven; a flowing light-fountain, as i say, of native original insight, of manhood and heroic nobleness;--in whose radiance all souls feel that it is well with them. on any terms whatsoever, you will not grudge to wander in such neighbourhood for a while. these six classes of heroes, chosen out of widely-distant countries and epochs, and in mere external figure differing altogether, ought, if we look faithfully at them, to illustrate several things for us. could we see _them_ well, we should get some glimpses into the very marrow of the world's history. how happy, could i but, in any measure, in such times as these, make manifest to you the meanings of heroism; the divine relation (for i may well call it such) which in all times unites a great man to other men; and thus, as it were, not exhaust my subject, but so much as break ground on it! at all events, i must make the attempt. it is well said, in every sense, that a man's religion is the chief fact with regard to him. a man's, or a nation of men's. by religion i do not mean here the church-creed which he professes, the articles of faith which he will sign and, in words or otherwise, assert; not this wholly, in many cases not this at all. we see men of all kinds of professed creeds attain to almost all degrees of worth or worthlessness under each or any of them. this is not what i call religion, this profession and assertion; which is often only a profession and assertion from the outworks of the man, from the mere argumentative region of him, if even so deep as that. but the thing a man does practically believe (and this is often enough _without_ asserting it even to himself, much less to others); the thing a man does practically lay to heart, and know for certain, concerning his vital relations to this mysterious universe, and his duty and destiny there, that is in all cases the primary thing for him, and creatively determines all the rest. that is his _religion_; or it may be, his mere scepticism and _no-religion_: the manner it is in which he feels himself to be spiritually related to the unseen world or no-world; and i say, if you tell me what that is, you tell me to a very great extent what the man is, what the kind of things he will do is. of a man or of a nation we inquire, therefore, first of all, what religion they had? was it heathenism,--plurality of gods, mere sensuous representation of this mystery of life, and for chief recognised element therein physical force? was it christianism; faith in an invisible, not as real only, but as the only reality; time, through every meanest moment of it, resting on eternity; pagan empire of force displaced by a nobler supremacy, that of holiness? was it scepticism, uncertainty and inquiry whether there was an unseen world, any mystery of life except a mad one;--doubt as to all this, or perhaps unbelief and flat denial? answering of this question is giving us the soul of the history of the man or nation. the thoughts they had were the parents of the actions they did; their feelings were parents of their thoughts: it was the unseen and spiritual in them that determined the outward and actual;--their religion, as i say, was the great fact about them. in these discourses, limited as we are, it will be good to direct our survey chiefly to that religious phasis of the matter. that once known well, all is known. we have chosen as the first hero in our series, odin the central figure of scandinavian paganism; an emblem to us of a most extensive province of things. let us look for a little at the hero as divinity, the oldest primary form of heroism. surely it seems a very strange-looking thing this paganism; almost inconceivable to us in these days. a bewildering, inextricable jungle of delusions, confusions, falsehoods and absurdities, covering the whole field of life! a thing that fills us with astonishment, almost, if it were possible, with incredulity,--for truly it is not easy to understand that sane men could ever calmly, with their eyes open, believe and live by such a set of doctrines. that men should have worshipped their poor fellow-man as a god, and not him only, but stocks and stones, and all manner of animate and inanimate objects; and fashioned for themselves such a distracted chaos of hallucinations by way of theory of the universe: all this looks like an incredible fable. nevertheless it is a clear fact that they did it. such hideous inextricable jungle of misworships, misbeliefs, men, made as we are, did actually hold by, and live at home in. this is strange. yes, we may pause in sorrow and silence over the depths of darkness that are in man; if we rejoice in the heights of purer vision he has attained to. such things were and are in man; in all men; in us too. some speculators have a short way of accounting for the pagan religion: mere quackery, priestcraft, and dupery, say they; no sane man ever did believe it,--merely contrived to persuade other men, not worthy of the name of sane, to believe it! it will be often our duty to protest against this sort of hypothesis about men's doings and history; and i here, on the very threshold, protest against it in reference to paganism, and to all other _isms_ by which man has ever for a length of time striven to walk in this world. they have all had a truth in them, or men would not have taken them up. quackery and dupery do abound; in religions, above all in the more advanced decaying stages of religions, they have fearfully abounded: but quackery was never the originating influence in such things; it was not the health and life of such things, but their disease, the sure precursor of their being about to die! let us never forget this. it seems to me a most mournful hypothesis, that of quackery giving birth to any faith even in savage men. quackery gives birth to nothing; gives death to all things. we shall not see into the true heart of anything, or if we look merely at the quackeries of it; if we do not reject the quackeries altogether; as mere diseases, corruptions, with which our and all men's sole duty is to have done with them, to sweep them out of our thoughts as out of our practice. man everywhere is the born enemy of lies. i find grand lamaism itself to have a kind of truth in it. read the candid, clear-sighted, rather sceptical mr turner's _account of his embassy_ to that country, and see. they have their belief, these poor thibet people, that providence sends down always an incarnation of himself into every generation. at bottom some belief in a kind of pope! at bottom still better, belief that there is a _greatest_ man; that _he_ is discoverable; that, once discovered, we ought to treat him with an obedience which knows no bounds! this is the truth of grand lamaism; the 'discoverability' is the only error here. the thibet priests have methods of their own of discovering what man is greatest, fit to be supreme over them. bad methods: but are they so much worse than our methods,--of understanding him to be always the eldest born of a certain genealogy? alas, it is a difficult thing to find good methods for!--we shall begin to have a chance of understanding paganism, when we first admit that to its followers it was, at one time, earnestly true. let us consider it very certain that men did believe in paganism; men with open eyes, sound senses, men made altogether like ourselves; that we, had we been there, should have believed in it. ask now, what paganism could have been? another theory, somewhat more respectable, attributes such things to allegory. it was a play of poetic minds, say these theorists; a shadowing-forth, in allegorical fable, in personification and visual form, of what such poetic minds had known and felt of this universe. which agrees, add they, with a primary law of human nature, still everywhere observably at work, though in less important things, that what a man feels intensely, he struggles to speak-out of him, to see represented before him in visual shape, and as if with a kind of life and historical reality in it. now doubtless there is such a law, and it is one of the deepest in human nature; neither need we doubt that it did operate fundamentally in this business. the hypothesis which ascribes paganism wholly or mostly to this agency, i call a little more respectable; but i cannot yet call it the true hypothesis. think, would _we_ believe, and take with us as our life-guidance, an allegory, a poetic sport? not sport but earnest is what we should require. it is a most earnest thing to be alive in this world; to die is not sport for a man. man's life never was a sport to him; it was a stern reality, altogether a serious matter to be alive! i find, therefore, that though these allegory theorists are on the way towards truth in this matter, they have not reached it either. pagan religion is indeed an allegory, a symbol of what men felt and knew about the universe; and all religions are symbols of that, altering always as that alters: but it seems to me a radical perversion, and even _in_version, of the business, to put that forward as the origin and moving cause, when it was rather the result and termination. to get beautiful allegories, a perfect poetic symbol, was not the want of men; but to know what they were to believe about this universe, what course they were to steer in it; what, in this mysterious life of theirs, they had to hope and to fear, to do and to forbear doing. the _pilgrim's progress_ is an allegory, and a beautiful, just and serious one: but consider whether bunyan's allegory could have _preceded_ the faith it symbolises! the faith had to be already there, standing believed by everybody;--of which the allegory could _then_ become a shadow; and, with all its seriousness, we may say a _sportful_ shadow, a mere play of the fancy, in comparison with that awful fact and scientific certainty which it poetically strives to emblem. the allegory is the product of the certainty, not the producer of it; not in bunyan's, nor in any other case. for paganism, therefore, we have still to inquire, whence came that scientific certainty, the parent of such a bewildered heap of allegories, errors and confusions? how was it, what was it? surely it were a foolish attempt to pretend 'explaining,' in this place, or in any place, such a phenomenon as that far-distant distracted cloudy imbroglio of paganism,--more like a cloudfield than a distant continent of firm land and facts! it is no longer a reality, yet it was one. we ought to understand that this seeming cloudfield was once a reality; that not poetic allegory, least of all that dupery and deception was the origin of it. men, i say, never did believe idle songs, never risked their soul's life on allegories; men in all times, especially in early earnest times, have had an instinct for detecting quacks, for detesting quacks. let us try if, leaving out both the quack theory and the allegory one, and listening with affectionate attention to that far-off confused rumour of the pagan ages, we cannot ascertain so much as this at least, that there was a kind of fact at the heart of them; that they too were not mendacious and distracted, but in their own poor way true and sane! you remember that fancy of plato's, of a man who had grown to maturity in some dark distance, and was brought on a sudden into the upper air to see the sun rise. what would his wonder be, his rapt astonishment at the sight we daily witness with indifference! with the free open sense of a child, yet with the ripe faculty of a man, his whole heart would be kindled by that sight, he would discern it well to be godlike, his soul would fall down in worship before it. now, just such a childlike greatness was in the primitive nations. the first pagan thinker among rude men, the first man that began to think, was precisely this child-man of plato's. simple, open as a child, yet with the depth and strength of a man. nature had as yet no name to him; he had not yet united under a name the infinite variety of sights, sounds, shapes and motions, which we now collectively name universe, nature, or the like,--and so with a name dismiss it from us. to the wild deep-hearted man all was yet new, not veiled under names or formulas; it stood naked, flashing-in on him there, beautiful, awful, unspeakable. nature was to this man, what to the thinker and prophet it forever is, _preter_natural. this green flowery rock-built earth, the trees, the mountains, rivers, many-sounding seas;--that great deep sea of azure that swims overhead; the winds sweeping through it; the black cloud fashioning itself together, now pouring out fire, now hail and rain; what _is_ it? ay, what? at bottom we do not yet know; we can never know at all. it is not by our superior insight that we escape the difficulty; it is by our superior levity, our inattention, our _want_ of insight. it is by _not_ thinking that we cease to wonder at it. hardened round us, encasing wholly every notion we form, is a wrappage of traditions, hearsays, mere _words_. we call that fire of the black thundercloud 'electricity,' and lecture learnedly about it, and grind the like of it out of glass and silk: but _what_ is it? what made it? whence comes it? whither goes it? science has done much for us; but it is a poor science that would hide from us the great deep sacred infinitude of nescience, whither we can never penetrate, on which all science swims as a mere superficial film. this world, after all our science and sciences, is still a miracle; wonderful, inscrutable, _magical_ and more, to whosoever will _think_ of it. that great mystery of time, were there no other: the illimitable, silent, never-resting thing called time, rolling, rushing on, swift, silent, like an all-embracing ocean-tide, on which we and all the universe swim like exhalations, like apparitions which _are_, and then _are not_: this is forever very literally a miracle; a thing to strike us dumb,--for we have no word to speak about it. this universe, ah me--what could the wild man know of it; what can we yet know? that it is a force, and thousandfold complexity of forces; a force which is _not we_. that is all; it is not we, it is altogether different from _us_. force, force, everywhere force; we ourselves a mysterious force in the centre of that. 'there is not a leaf rotting on the highway but has force in it: how else could it rot?' nay surely, to the atheistic thinker, if such a one were possible, it must be a miracle too, this huge illimitable whirlwind of force, which envelops us here; never-resting whirlwind, high as immensity, old as eternity. what is it? god's creation, the religious people answer; it is the almighty god's! atheistic science babbles poorly of it, with scientific nomenclatures, experiments and what-not, as if it were a poor dead thing, to be bottled up in leyden jars and sold over counters: but the natural sense of man, in all times, if he will honestly apply his sense, proclaims it to be a living thing,--ah, an unspeakable, godlike thing; towards which the best attitude for us, after never so much science, is awe, devout prostration and humility of soul; worship if not in words, then in silence. but now i remark farther: what in such a time as ours it requires a prophet or poet to teach us, namely, the stripping-off of those poor undevout wrappages, nomenclatures and scientific hearsays,---this, the ancient earnest soul, as yet unencumbered with these things, did for itself. the world, which is now divine only to the gifted, was then divine to whosoever would turn his eye upon it. he stood bare before it face to face. 'all was godlike or god:'--jean paul still finds it so; the giant jean paul, who has power to escape out of hearsays: but there then were no hearsays. canopus shining-down over the desert, with its blue diamond brightness (that wild blue spirit-like brightness, far brighter than we ever witness here), would pierce into the heart of the wild ishmaelitish man, whom it was guiding through the solitary waste there. to his wild heart, with all feelings in it, with no _speech_ for any feeling, it may seem a little eye, that canopus, glancing-out on him from the great deep eternity; revealing the inner splendour to him. cannot we understand how these men _worshipped_ canopus; became what we call sabeans, worshipping the stars? such is to me the secret of all forms of paganism. worship is transcendent wonder; wonder for which there is now no limit or measure; that is worship. to these primeval men, all things and everything they saw exist beside them were an emblem of the godlike, of some god. and look what perennial fibre of truth was in that. to us also, through every star, through every blade of grass, is not a god made visible, if we will open our minds and eyes? we do not worship in that way now: but is it not reckoned still a merit, proof of what we call a 'poetic nature,' that we recognise how every object has a divine beauty in it; how every object still verily is 'a window through which we may look into infinitude itself'? he that can discern the loveliness of things, we call him poet, painter, man of genius, gifted, lovable. these poor sabeans did even what he does,--in their own fashion. that they did it, in what fashion soever, was a merit: better than what the entirely stupid man did, what the horse and camel did,--namely, nothing! but now if all things whatsoever that we look upon are emblems to us of the highest god, i add that more so than any of them is man such an emblem. you have heard of st. chrysostom's celebrated saying in reference to the shekinah, or ark of testimony, visible revelation of god, among the hebrews: "the true shekinah is man!" yes, it is even so: this is no vain phrase; it is veritably so. the essence of our being, the mystery in us that calls itself "i,"--ah, what words have we for such things?--is a breath of heaven; the highest being reveals himself in _man_. this body, these faculties, this life of ours, is it not all as a vesture for that unnamed? 'there is but one temple in the universe,' says the devout novalis, 'and that is the body of man. nothing is holier than that high form. bending before men is a reverence done to this revelation in the flesh. we touch heaven when we lay our hand on a human body!' this sounds much like a mere flourish of rhetoric; but it is not so. if well meditated, it will turn out to be a scientific fact; the expression, in such words as can be had, of the actual truth of the thing. _we_ are the miracle of miracles,--the great inscrutable mystery of god. we cannot understand it, we know not how to speak of it; but we may feel and know, if we like, that it is verily so. well; these truths were once more readily felt than now. the young generations of the world, who had in them the freshness of young children, and yet the depth of earnest men, who did not think that they had finished-off all things in heaven and earth by merely giving them scientific names, but had to gaze direct at them there, with awe and wonder: they felt better what of divinity is in man and nature;--they, without being mad, could _worship_ nature, and man more than anything else in nature. worship, that is, as i said above, admire without limit: this, in the full use of their faculties, with all sincerity of heart, they could do. i consider hero-worship to be the grand modifying element in that ancient system of thought. what i called the perplexed jungle of paganism sprang, we may say, out of many roots: every admiration, adoration of a star or natural object, was a root or fibre of a root; but hero-worship is the deepest root of all; the tap-root, from which in a great degree all the rest were nourished and grown. and now if worship even of a star had some meaning in it, how much more might that of a hero! worship of a hero is transcendent admiration of a great man. i say great men are still admirable; i say there is, at bottom, nothing else admirable! no nobler feeling than this of admiration for one higher than himself dwells in the breast of man. it is to this hour, and at all hours, the vivifying influence in man's life. religion i find stand upon it; not paganism only, but far higher and truer religions,--all religion hitherto known. hero-worship, heartfelt prostrate admiration, submission, burning, boundless, for a noblest godlike form of man,--is not that the germ of christianity itself? the greatest of all heroes is one--whom we do not name here! let sacred silence meditate that sacred matter; you will find it the ultimate perfection of a principle extant throughout man's whole history on earth. or coming into lower, less _un_speakable provinces, is not all loyalty akin to religious faith also? faith is loyalty to some inspired teacher, some spiritual hero. and what therefore is loyalty proper, the life-breath of all society, but an effluence of hero-worship, submissive admiration for the truly great? society is founded on hero-worship. all dignities of rank, on which human association rests, are what we may call a _hero_archy (government of heroes),--or a hierarchy, for it is 'sacred' enough withal! the duke means _dux_, leader; king is _kön-ning_, _kan-ning_, man that _knows_ or _cans_. society everywhere is some representation, not _in_supportably inaccurate, of a graduated worship of heroes;--reverence and obedience done to men really great and wise. not _in_supportably inaccurate, i say! they are all as bank-notes, these social dignitaries, all representing gold;--and several of them, alas, always are _forged_ notes. we can do with some forged false notes; with a good many even; but not with all, or the most of them forged! no: there have to come revolutions then; cries of democracy, liberty, and equality, and i know not what:--the notes being all false, and no gold to be had for _them_, people take to crying in their despair that there is no gold, that there never was any!--'gold,' hero-worship, _is_ nevertheless, as it was always and everywhere, and cannot cease till man himself ceases. i am well aware that in these days hero-worship, the thing i call hero-worship, professes to have gone out, and finally ceased. this, for reasons which it will be worth while some time to inquire into, is an age that as it were denies the existence of great men; denies the desirableness of great men. show our critics a great man, a luther for example, they begin to what they call 'account' for him; not to worship him, but take the dimensions of him,--and bring him out to be a little kind of man! he was the 'creature of the time,' they say; the time called him forth, the time did everything, he nothing--but what we the little critic could have done too! this seems to me but melancholy work. the time call forth? alas, we have known times _call_ loudly enough for their great man; but not find him when they called! he was not there; providence had not sent him; the time, _calling_ its loudest, had to go down to confusion and wreck because he would not come when called. for if we will think of it, no time need have gone to ruin, could it have _found_ a man great enough, a man wise and good enough: wisdom to discern truly what the time wanted, valour to lead it on the right road thither; these are the salvation of any time. but i liken common languid times, with their unbelief, distress, perplexity, with their languid doubting characters and embarrassed circumstances, impotently crumbling-down into ever worse distress towards final ruin;--all this i liken to dry dead fuel, waiting for the lightning out of heaven that shall kindle it. the great man, with his free force direct out of god's own hand, is the lightning. his word is the wise healing word which all can believe in. all blazes round him now, when he has once struck on it, into fire like his own. the dry mouldering sticks are thought to have called him forth. they did want him greatly; but as to calling him forth--!--those are critics of small vision, i think, who cry: "see, is it not the sticks that made the fire?" no sadder proof can be given by a man of his own littleness than disbelief in great men. there is no sadder symptom of a generation than such general blindness to the spiritual lightning, with faith only in the heap of barren dead fuel. it is the last consummation of unbelief. in all epochs of the world's history, we shall find the great man to have been the indispensable saviour of his epoch;--the lightning, without which the fuel never would have burnt. the history of the world, i said already, was the biography of great men. such small critics do what they can to promote unbelief and universal spiritual paralysis; but happily they cannot always completely succeed. in all times it is possible for a man to arise great enough to feel that they and their doctrines are chimeras and cobwebs. and what is notable, in no time whatever can they entirely eradicate out of living men's hearts a certain altogether peculiar reverence for great men; genuine admiration, loyalty, adoration, however dim and perverted it may be. hero-worship endures for ever while man endures. boswell venerates his johnson, right truly even in the eighteenth century. the unbelieving french believe in their voltaire; and burst-out round him into very curious hero-worship, in that last act of his life when they 'stifle him under roses.' it has always seemed to me extremely curious this of voltaire. truly, if christianity be the highest instance of hero-worship, then we may find here in voltaireism one of the lowest! he whose life was that of a kind of antichrist, does again on this side exhibit a curious contrast. no people ever were so little prone to admire at all as those french of voltaire. _persiflage_ was the character of their whole mind; adoration had nowhere a place in it. yet see! the old man of ferney comes up to paris; an old, tottering, infirm man of eighty-four years. they feel that he too is a kind of hero; that he has spent his life in opposing error and injustice, delivering calases, unmasking hypocrites in high places;--in short that _he_ too, though in a strange way, has fought like a valiant man. they feel withal that, if _persiflage_ be the great thing, there never was such a _persifleur_. he is the realised ideal of every one of them; the thing they are all wanting to be; of all frenchmen the most french. _he_ is properly their god,--such god as they are fit for. accordingly all persons, from the queen antoinette to the douanier at the porte st. denis, do they not worship him? people of quality disguise themselves as tavern-waiters. the maître de poste, with a broad oath, orders his postillion, "_va bon train_; thou art driving m. de voltaire." at paris his carriage is 'the nucleus of a comet, whose train fills whole streets.' the ladies pluck a hair or two from his fur, to keep it as a sacred relic. there was nothing highest, beautifulest, noblest in all france, that did not feel this man to be higher, beautifuler, nobler. yes, from norse odin to english samuel johnson, from the divine founder of christianity to the withered pontiff of encyclopedism, in all times and places, the hero has been worshipped. it will ever be so. we all love great men; love, venerate, and bow down submissive before great men: nay can we honestly bow down to anything else? ah, does not every true man feel that he is himself made higher by doing reverence to what is really above him? no nobler or more blessed feeling dwells in man's heart. and to me it is very cheering to consider that no sceptical logic, or general triviality, insincerity and aridity of any time and its influences can destroy this noble inborn loyalty and worship that is in man. in times of unbelief, which soon have to become times of revolution, much down-rushing, sorrowful decay and ruin is visible to everybody. for myself in these days, i seem to see in this indestructibility of hero-worship the everlasting adamant lower than which the confused wreck of revolutionary things cannot fall. the confused wreck of things crumbling and even crashing and tumbling all round us in these revolutionary ages, will get down so far; _no_ farther. it is an eternal corner-stone, from which they can begin to build themselves up again. that man, in some sense or other, worships heroes; that we all of us reverence and must ever reverence great men: this is, to me, the living rock amid all rushings-down whatsoever;--the one fixed point in modern revolutionary history, otherwise as if bottomless and shoreless. * * * * * so much of truth, only under an ancient obsolete vesture, but the spirit of it still true, do i find in the paganism of old nations. nature is still divine, the revelation of the workings of god; the hero is still worshipable: this, under poor cramped incipient forms, is what all pagan religions have struggled, as they could, to set forth. i think scandinavian paganism, to us here, is more interesting than any other. it is, for one thing, the latest; it continued in these regions of europe till the eleventh century: eight-hundred years ago the norwegians were still worshippers of odin. it is interesting also as the creed of our fathers; the men whose blood still runs in our veins, whom doubtless we still resemble in so many ways. strange: they did believe that, while we believe so differently. let us look a little at this poor norse creed, for many reasons. we have tolerable means to do it; for there is another point of interest in these scandinavian mythologies: that they have been preserved so well. in that strange island iceland,--burst-up, the geologists say, by fire from the bottom of the sea; a wild land of barrenness and lava; swallowed many months of every year in black tempests, yet with a wild gleaming beauty in summer-time; towering up there, stern and grim, in the north ocean; with its snow jokuls, roaring geysers, sulphur-pools and horrid volcanic chasms, like the waste chaotic battle-field of frost and fire;--where of all places we least looked for literature or written memorials, the record of these things was written down. on the seaboard of this wild land is a rim of grassy country, where cattle can subsist, and men by means of them and of what the sea yields; and it seems they were poetic men these, men who had deep thoughts in them, and uttered musically their thoughts. much would be lost, had iceland not been burst-up from the sea, not been discovered by the northmen! the old norse poets were many of them natives of iceland. sæmund, one of the early christian priests there, who perhaps had a lingering fondness for paganism, collected certain of their old pagan songs, just about becoming obsolete then,--poems or chants of a mythic, prophetic, mostly all of a religious character: that is what norse critics call the _elder_ or poetic _edda_. _edda_, a word of uncertain etymology, is thought to signify _ancestress_. snorro sturleson, an iceland gentleman, an extremely notable personage, educated by this sæmund's grandson, took in hand next, near a century afterwards, to put together, among several other books he wrote, a kind of prose synopsis of the whole mythology; elucidated by new fragments of traditionary verse. a work constructed really with great ingenuity, native talent, what one might call unconscious art; altogether a perspicuous clear work, pleasant reading still: this is the _younger_ or prose _edda_. by these and the numerous other _sagas_, mostly icelandic, with the commentaries, icelandic or not, which go on zealously in the north to this day, it is possible to gain some direct insight even yet; and see that old norse system of belief, as it were, face to face. let us forget that it is erroneous religion; let us look at it as old thought, and try if we cannot sympathise with it somewhat. the primary characteristic of this old northland mythology i find to be impersonation of the visible workings of nature. earnest simple recognition of the workings of physical nature, as a thing wholly miraculous, stupendous and divine. what we now lecture of as science, they wondered at, and fell down in awe before, as religion. the dark hostile powers of nature they figure to themselves as '_jötuns_,' giants, huge shaggy beings of a demonic character. frost, fire, sea-tempest; these are jötuns. the friendly powers again, as summer-heat, the sun, are gods. the empire of this universe is divided between these two; they dwell apart, in perennial internecine feud. the gods dwell above in asgard, the garden of the asen, or divinities; jötunheim, a distant dark chaotic land, is the home of the jötuns. curious all this; and not idle or inane, if we will look at the foundation of it! the power of _fire_, or _flame_, for instance, which we designate by some trivial chemical name, thereby hiding from ourselves the essential character of wonder that dwells in it as in all things, is with these old northmen, loke, a most swift subtle _demon_, of the brood of the jötuns. the savages of the ladrones islands too (say some spanish voyagers) thought fire, which they never had seen before, was a devil or god, that bit you sharply when you touched it, and that lived upon dry wood. from us too no chemistry, if it had not stupidity to help it, would hide that flame is a wonder. what _is_ flame?--_frost_ the old norse seer discerns to be a monstrous hoary jötun, the giant _thrym_, _hrym_: or _rime_, the old word now nearly obsolete here, but still used in scotland to signify hoar-frost. _rime_ was not then as now a dead chemical thing, but a living jötun or devil; the monstrous jötun _rime_ drove home his horses at night, sat 'combing their manes,'--which horses were _hail-clouds_, or fleet _frost-winds_. his cows--no, not his, but a kinsman's, the giant hymir's cows are _icebergs_: this hymir 'looks at the rocks' with his devil-eye, and they _split_ in the glance of it. thunder was not then mere electricity, vitreous or resinous; it was the god donner (thunder) or thor,--god also of beneficent summer-heat. the thunder was his wrath; the gathering of the black clouds is the drawing down of thor's angry brows; the fire-bolt bursting out of heaven is the all-rending hammer flung from the hand of thor: he urges his loud chariot over the mountain-tops,--that is the peal: wrathful he 'blows in his red beard,'--that is the rustling storm-blast before the thunder begin. balder again, the white god, the beautiful, the just and benignant (whom the early christian missionaries found to resemble christ), is the sun--beautifulest of visible things; wondrous too, and divine still, after all our astronomies and almanacs! but perhaps the notablest god we hear tell-of is one of whom grimm the german etymologist finds trace: the god _wünsch_, or wish. the god _wish_; who could give us all that we _wished_! is not this the sincerest yet rudest voice of the spirit of man? the _rudest_ ideal that man ever formed; which still shows itself in the latest forms of our spiritual culture. higher considerations have to teach us that the god _wish_ is not the true god. of the other gods or jötuns i will mention only for etymology's sake, that sea-tempest is the jötun _aegir_, a very dangerous jötun;--and now to this day, on our river trent, as i learn, the nottingham bargemen, when the river is in a certain flooded state (a kind of back-water, or eddying swirl it has, very dangerous to them), call it _eager_; they cry out, "have a care, there is the _eager_ coming!" curious; that word surviving, like the peak of a submerged world! the _oldest_ nottingham bargemen had believed in the god aegir. indeed, our english blood too in good part is danish, norse; or rather, at bottom, danish and norse and saxon have no distinction, except a superficial one,--as of heathen and christian, or the like. but all over our island we are mingled largely with danes proper,--from the incessant invasions there were: and this, of course, in a greater proportion along the east coast; and greatest of all, as i find, in the north country. from the humber upwards, all over scotland, the speech of the common people is still in a singular degree icelandic; its germanism has still a peculiar norse tinge. they too are 'normans,' northmen,--if that be any great beauty!-- of the chief god, odin, we shall speak by and by. mark at present so much; what the essence of scandinavian and indeed of all paganism is: a recognition of the forces of nature as godlike, stupendous, personal agencies,--as gods and demons. not inconceivable to us. it is the infant thought of man opening itself, with awe and wonder, on this ever-stupendous universe. to me there is in the norse system something very genuine, very great and manlike. a broad simplicity, rusticity, so very different from the light gracefulness of the old greek paganism, distinguishes this scandinavian system. it is thought; the genuine thought of deep, rude, earnest minds, fairly opened to the things about them; a face-to-face and heart-to-heart inspection of the things,--the first characteristic of all good thought in all times. not graceful lightness, half-sport, as in the greek paganism; a certain homely truthfulness and rustic strength, a great rude sincerity, discloses itself here. it is strange, after our beautiful apollo statues and clear smiling mythuses, to come down upon the norse gods 'brewing ale' to hold their feast with aegir, the sea-jötun; sending out thor to get the caldron for them in the jötun country; thor, after many adventures, clapping the pot on his head, like a huge hat, and walking off with it,--quite lost in it, the ears of the pot reaching down to his heels! a kind of vacant hugeness, large awkward gianthood, characterises that norse system; enormous force, as yet altogether untutored, stalking helpless with large uncertain strides. consider only their primary mythus of the creation. the gods, having got the giant ymer slain, a giant made by 'warm wind,' and much confused work, out of the conflict of frost and fire,--determined on constructing a world with him. his blood made the sea; his flesh was the land, the rocks his bones; of his eyebrows they formed asgard their gods'-dwelling; his skull was the great blue vault of immensity, and the brains of it became the clouds. what a hyper-brobdignagian business! untamed thought, great, giantlike, enormous;--to be tamed in due time into the compact greatness, not giant-like, but godlike and stronger than gianthood, of the shakspeares, the goethes!--spiritually as well as bodily these men are our progenitors. i like, too, that representation they have of the tree igdrasil. all life is figured by them as a tree. igdrasil, the ash-tree of existence, has its roots deep-down in the kingdoms of hela or death; its trunk reaches up heaven-high, spreads its boughs over the whole universe: it is the tree of existence. at the foot of it, in the death-kingdom, sit three _nornas_, fates,--the past, present, future; watering its roots from the sacred well. its 'boughs,' with their buddings and disleafings,--events, things suffered, things done, catastrophes,--stretch through all lands and times. is not every leaf of it a biography, every fibre there an act or word? its boughs are histories of nations. the rustle of it is the noise of human existence, onwards from of old. it grows there, the breath of human passion rustling through it;--or stormtost, the stormwind howling through it like the voice of all the gods. it is igdrasil, the tree of existence. it is the past, the present, and the future; what was done, what is doing, what will be done; 'the infinite conjugation of the verb _to do_.' considering how human things circulate, each inextricably in communion with all,--how the word i speak to you to-day is borrowed, not from ulfila the moesogoth only, but from all men since the first man began to speak,--i find no similitude so true as this of a tree. beautiful; altogether beautiful and great. the '_machine_ of the universe,'--alas, do but think of that in contrast! * * * * * well, it is strange enough this old norse view of nature; different enough from what we believe of nature. whence it specially came, one would not like to be compelled to say very minutely! one thing we may say: it came from the thoughts of norse men;--from the thought, above all, of the _first_ norse man who had an original power of thinking. the first norse 'man of genius,' as we should call him! innumerable men had passed by, across this universe, with a dumb vague wonder, such as the very animals may feel; or with a painful, fruitlessly inquiring wonder, such as men only feel;--till the great thinker came, the _original_ man, the seer; whose shaped spoken thought awakes the slumbering capability of all into thought. it is ever the way with the thinker, the spiritual hero. what he says, all men were not far from saying, were longing to say. the thoughts of all start up, as from painful enchanted sleep, round his thought; answering to it, yes, even so! joyful to men as the dawning of day from night; _is_ it not, indeed, the awakening for them from no-being into being, from death into life? we still honour such a man; call him poet, genius, and so forth: but to these wild men he was a very magician, a worker of miraculous unexpected blessing for them; a prophet, a god!--thought once awakened does not again slumber; unfolds itself into a system of thought; grows, in man after man, generation after generation,--till its full stature is reached, and _such_ system of thought can grow no farther, but must give place to another. for the norse people, the man now named odin, and chief norse god, we fancy, was such a man. a teacher, and captain of soul and of body; a hero, of worth _im_measurable; admiration for whom, transcending the known bounds, became adoration. has he not the power of articulate thinking; and many other powers, as yet miraculous? so, with boundless gratitude, would the rude norse heart feel. has he not solved for them the sphinx-enigma of this universe; given assurance to them of their own destiny there? by him they know now what they have to do here, what to look for hereafter. existence has become articulate, melodious by him; he first has made life alive!--we may call this odin, the origin of norse mythology: odin, or whatever name the first norse thinker bore while he was a man among men. his view of the universe once promulgated, a like view starts into being in all minds; grows, keeps ever growing, while it continues credible there. in all minds it lay written, but invisibly, as in sympathetic ink; at his word it starts into visibility in all. nay, in every epoch of the world, the great event, parent of all others, is it not the arrival of a thinker in the world!-- one other thing we must not forget; it will explain, a little, the confusion of these norse eddas. they are not one coherent system of thought; but properly the _summation_ of several successive systems. all this of the old norse belief which is flung-out for us, in one level of distance in the edda, like a picture painted on the same canvas, does not at all stand so in the reality. it stands rather at all manner of distances and depths, of successive generations since the belief first began. all scandinavian thinkers, since the first of them, contributed to the scandinavian system of thought; in ever-new elaboration and addition, it is the combined work of them all. what history it had, how it changed from shape to shape, by one thinker's contribution after another, till it got to the full final shape we see it under in the _edda_, no man will now ever know: _its_ councils of trebisond, councils of trent, athanasiuses, dantes, luthers, are sunk without echo in the dark night! only that it had such a history we can all know. wheresoever a thinker appeared, there in the thing he thought-of was a contribution, accession, a change or revolution made. alas, the grandest 'revolution' of all, the one made by the man odin himself, is not this too sunk for us like the rest! of odin what history? strange rather to reflect that he _had_ a history! that this odin, in his wild norse vesture, with his wild beard and eyes, his rude norse speech and ways, was a man like us; with our sorrows, joys, with our limbs, features;--intrinsically all one as we: and did such a work! but the work, much of it, has perished; the worker, all to the name. "_wednes_day," men will say to-morrow; odin's day! of odin there exists no history; no document of it; no guess about it worth repeating. snorro indeed, in the quietest manner, almost in a brief business style, writes down, in his _heimskringla_, how odin was a heroic prince, in the black-sea region, with twelve peers, and a great people straitened for room. how he led these _asen_ (asiatics) of his out of asia; settled them in the north parts of europe, by warlike conquest; invented letters, poetry and so forth,--and came by and by to be worshipped as chief god by these scandinavians, his twelve peers made into twelve sons of his own, gods like himself: snorro has no doubt of this. saxo grammaticus, a very curious northman of that same century, is still more unhesitating; scruples not to find out a historical fact in every individual mythus, and writes it down as a terrestrial event in denmark or elsewhere. torfæus, learned and cautious, some centuries later, assigns by calculation a _date_ for it: odin, he says, came into europe about the year before christ. of all which, as grounded on mere uncertainties, found to be untenable now, i need say nothing. far, very far beyond the year ! odin's date, adventures, whole terrestrial history, figure and environment are sunk from us forever into unknown thousands of years. nay grimm, the german antiquary, goes so far as to deny that any man odin ever existed. he proves it by etymology. the word _wuotan_, which is the original form of _odin_, a word spread, as name of their chief divinity, over all the teutonic nations everywhere; this word, which connects itself, according to grimm, with the latin _vadere_, with the english _wade_ and suchlike,--means primarily _movement_, source of movement, power; and is the fit name of the highest god, not of any man. the word signifies divinity, he says, among the old saxon, german and all teutonic nations; the adjectives formed from it all signify _divine_, _supreme_, or something pertaining to the chief god. like enough! we must bow to grimm in matters etymological. let us consider it fixed that _wuotan_ means _wading_, force of _movement_. and now still, what hinders it from being the name of a heroic man and _mover_, as well as of a god? as for the adjectives, and words formed from it,--did not the spaniards in their universal admiration for lope, get into the habit of saying 'a lope flower,' a 'lope _dama_,' if the flower or woman were of surpassing beauty? had this lasted, _lope_ would have grown, in spain, to be an adjective signifying _godlike_ also. indeed, adam smith, in his _essay on language_, surmises that all adjectives whatsoever were formed precisely in that way: some very green thing chiefly notable for its greenness, got the appellative name _green_, and then the next thing remarkable for that quality, a tree for instance, was named the _green_ tree,--as we still say 'the _steam coach_,' 'four-horse coach,' or the like. all primary adjectives, according to smith, were formed in this way; were at first substantives and things. we cannot annihilate a man for etymologies like that! surely there was a first teacher and captain; surely there must have been an odin, palpable to the sense at one time; no adjective, but a real hero of flesh and blood! the voice of all tradition, history or echo of history, agrees with all that thought will teach one about it, to assure us of this. how the man odin came to be considered a _god_, the chief god?--that surely is a question which nobody would wish to dogmatise upon. i have said, his people knew no _limits_ to their admiration of him; they had as yet no scale to measure admiration by. fancy your own generous heart's-love of some greatest man expanding till it _transcended_ all bounds, till it filled and overflowed the whole field of your thought! or what if this man odin,--since a great deep soul, with the afflatus and mysterious tide of vision and impulse rushing on him he knows not whence, is ever an enigma, a kind of terror and wonder to himself,--should have felt that perhaps _he_ was divine; that _he_ was some effluence of the 'wuotan,' '_movement_,' supreme power and divinity, of whom to his rapt vision all nature was the awful flame-image; that some effluence of _wuotan_ dwelt here in him! he was not necessarily false; he was but mistaken, speaking the truest he knew. a great soul, any sincere soul, knows not _what_ he is,--alternates between the highest height and the lowest depth; can, of all things, the least measure--himself! what others take him for, and what he guesses that he may be; these two items strangely act on one another, help to determine one another. with all men reverently admiring him; with his own wild soul full of noble ardours and affections, of whirlwind chaotic darkness and glorious new light; a divine universe bursting all into godlike beauty round him, and no man to whom the like ever had befallen, what could he think himself to be? "wuotan?" all men answered, "wuotan!"-- and then consider what mere time will do in such cases; how if a man was great while living, he becomes tenfold greater when dead. what an enormous _camera-obscura_ magnifier is tradition! how a thing grows in the human memory, in the human imagination, when love, worship and all that lies in the human heart, is there to encourage it. and in the darkness, in the entire ignorance; without date or document, no book, no arundel-marble; only here and there some dumb monumental cairn. why, in thirty or forty years, were there no books, any great man would grow _mythic_, the contemporaries who had once seen him, being all dead. and in three-hundred years, and three-thousand years--!--to attempt _theorising_ on such matters would profit little: they are matters which refuse to be _theoremed_ and diagramed; which logic ought to know that she _cannot_ speak of. enough for us to discern, far in the uttermost distance, some gleam as of a small real light shining in the centre of that enormous camera-obscura image; to discern that the centre of it all was not a madness and nothing, but a sanity and something. this light, kindled in the great dark vortex of the norse mind, dark but living, waiting only for light; this is to me the centre of the whole. how such light will then shine out, and with wondrous thousandfold expansion spread itself, in forms and colours, depends not on _it_, so much as on the national mind recipient of it. the colours and forms of your light will be those of the _cut-glass_ it has to shine through.--curious to think how, for every man, any the truest fact is modelled by the nature of the man! i said, the earnest man, speaking to his brother men, must always have stated what seemed to him a _fact_, a real appearance of nature. but the way in which such appearance or fact shaped itself,--what sort of _fact_ it became for him,--was and is modified by his own laws of thinking; deep, subtle, but universal, ever-operating laws. the world of nature, for every man, is the phantasy of himself; this world is the multiplex 'image of his own dream.' who knows to what unnameable subtleties of spiritual law all these pagan fables owe their shape! the number _twelve_, divisiblest of all, which could be halved, quartered, parted into three, into six, the most remarkable number,--this was enough to determine the _signs of the zodiac_, the number of odin's _sons_, and innumerable other twelves. any vague rumour of number had a tendency to settle itself into twelve. so with regard to every other matter. and quite unconsciously too,--with no notion of building-up 'allegories'! but the fresh clear glance of those first ages would be prompt in discerning the secret relations of things, and wholly open to obey these. schiller finds in the _cestus of venus_ an everlasting æsthetic truth as to the nature of all beauty; curious:--but he is careful not to insinuate that the old greek mythists had any notion of lecturing about the 'philosophy of criticism'!----on the whole we must leave those boundless regions. cannot we conceive that odin was a reality? error indeed, error enough: but sheer falsehood, idle fables, allegory aforethought,--we will not believe that our fathers believed in these. * * * * * odin's _runes_ are a significant feature of him. runes, and the miracles of 'magic' he worked by them, make a great feature in tradition. runes are the scandinavian alphabet; suppose odin to have been the inventor of letters, as well as 'magic,' among that people! it is the greatest invention man has ever made, this of marking down the unseen thought that is in him by written characters. it is a kind of second speech, almost as miraculous as the first. you remember the astonishment and incredulity of atahualpa the peruvian king; how he made the spanish soldier who was guarding him scratch _dios_ on his thumb-nail, that he might try the next soldier with it, to ascertain whether such a miracle was possible. if odin brought letters among his people, he might work magic enough! writing by runes has some air of being original among the norsemen: not a phoenician alphabet, but a native scandinavian one. snorro tells us farther that odin invented poetry; the music of human speech, as well as that miraculous runic marking of it. transport yourselves into the early childhood of nations; the first beautiful morning-light of our europe, when all yet lay in fresh young radiance as of a great sunrise, and our europe was first beginning to think, to be! wonder, hope; infinite radiance of hope and wonder, as of a young child's thoughts, in the hearts of these strong men! strong sons of nature; and here was not only a wild captain and fighter; discerning with his wild flashing eyes what to do, with his wild lion-heart daring and doing it; but a poet too, all that we mean by a poet, prophet, great devout thinker and inventor,--as the truly great man ever is. a hero is a hero at all points; in the soul and thought of him first of all. this odin, in his rude semi-articulate way, had a word to speak. a great heart laid open to take in this great universe, and man's life here, and utter a great word about it. a hero, as i say, in his own rude manner; a wise, gifted, noble-hearted man. and now, if we still admire such a man beyond all others, what must these wild norse souls, first awakened into thinking, have made of him! to them, as yet without names for it, he was noble and noblest; hero, prophet, god; _wuotan_, the greatest of all. thought is thought, however it speak or spell itself. intrinsically, i conjecture, this odin must have been of the same sort of stuff as the greatest kind of men. a great thought in the wild deep heart of him! the rough words he articulated, are they not the rudimental roots of those english words we still use? he worked so, in that obscure element. but he was as a _light_ kindled in it; a light of intellect, rude nobleness of heart, the only kind of lights we have yet; a hero, as i say: and he had to shine there, and make his obscure element a little lighter,--as is still the task of us all. we will fancy him to be the type norseman; the finest teuton whom that race had yet produced. the rude norse heart burst-up into _boundless_ admiration round him; into adoration. he is as a root of so many great things; the fruit of him is found growing, from deep thousands of years, over the whole field of teutonic life. our own wednesday, as i said, is it not still odin's day? wednesbury, wansborough, wanstead, wandsworth: odin grew into england too, these are still leaves from that root! he was the chief god to all the teutonic peoples; their pattern norseman;--in such way did _they_ admire their pattern norseman; that was the fortune he had in the world. thus if the man odin himself have vanished utterly, there is this huge shadow of him which still projects itself over the whole history of his people. for this odin once admitted to be god, we can understand well that the whole scandinavian scheme of nature, or dim no-scheme, whatever it might before have been, would now begin to develop itself altogether differently, and grow thenceforth in a new manner. what this odin saw into, and taught with his runes and his rhymes, the whole teutonic people laid to heart and carried forward. his way of thought became their way of thought:--such, under new conditions, is the history of every great thinker still. in gigantic confused lineaments, like some enormous camera-obscura shadow thrown upwards from the dead deeps of the past, and covering the whole northern heaven, is not that scandinavian mythology in some sort the portraiture of this man odin? the gigantic image of _his_ natural face, legible or not legible there, expanded and confused in that manner! ah, thought, i say, is always thought. no great man lives in vain. the history of the world is but the biography of great men. to me there is something very touching in this primeval figure of heroism; in such artless, helpless, but hearty entire reception of a hero by his fellow-men. never so helpless in shape, it is the noblest of feelings, and a feeling in some shape or other perennial as man himself. if i could show in any measure, what i feel deeply for a long time now, that it is the vital element of manhood, the soul of man's history here in our world,--it would be the chief use of this discoursing at present. we do not now call our great men gods, nor admire _without_ limit; ah, no, _with_ limit enough! but if we have no great men, or do not admire at all,--that were a still worse case. this poor scandinavian hero-worship, that whole norse way of looking at the universe, and adjusting oneself there, has an indestructible merit for us. a rude childlike way of recognising the divineness of nature, the divineness of man; most rude, yet heartfelt, robust, giantlike; betokening what a giant of a man this child would grow to!--it was a truth, and is none. is it not as the half-dumb stifled voice of the long-buried generations of our own fathers, calling out of the depths of ages to us, in whose veins their blood still runs: "this then, this is what _we_ made of the world: this is all the image and notion we could form to ourselves of this great mystery of a life and universe. despise it not. you are raised high above it, to large free scope of vision; but you too are not yet at the top. no, your notion too, so much enlarged, is but a partial, imperfect one: that matter is a thing no man will ever, in time or out of time, comprehend; after thousands of years of ever-new expansion, man will find himself but struggling to comprehend again a part of it: the thing is larger than man, not to be comprehended by him; an infinite thing!" * * * * * the essence of the scandinavian, as indeed of all pagan mythologies, we found to be recognition of the divineness of nature; sincere communion of man with the mysterious invisible powers visibly seen at work in the world round him. this, i should say, is more sincerely done in the scandinavian than in any mythology i know. sincerity is the great characteristic of it. superior sincerity (far superior) consoles us for the total want of old grecian grace. sincerity, i think, is better than grace. i feel that these old northmen were looking into nature with open eye and soul: most earnest, honest; childlike, and yet manlike; with a great-hearted simplicity and depth and freshness, in a true, loving, admiring, unfearing way. a right valiant, true old race of men. such recognition of nature one finds to be the chief element of paganism: recognition of man, and his moral duty, though this too is not wanting, comes to be the chief element only in purer forms of religion. here, indeed, is a great distinction and epoch in human beliefs; a great landmark in the religious development of mankind. man first puts himself in relation with nature and her powers, wonders and worships over those; not till a later epoch does he discern that all power is moral, that the grand point is the distinction for him of good and evil, of _thou shalt_ and _thou shalt not_. with regard to all these fabulous delineations in the _edda_, i will remark, moreover, as indeed was already hinted, that most probably they must have been of much newer date; most probably, even from the first, were comparatively idle for the old norsemen, and as it were a kind of poetic sport. allegory and poetic delineation, as i said above, cannot be religious faith; the faith itself must first be there, then allegory enough will gather round it, as the fit body round its soul. the norse faith, i can well suppose, like other faiths, was most active while it lay mainly in the silent state, and had not yet much to say about itself, still less to sing. among those shadowy _edda_ matters, amid all that fantastic congeries of assertions, and traditions, in their musical mythologies, the main practical belief a man could have was probably not much more than this: of the _valkyrs_ and the _hall of odin_; of an inflexible _destiny_; and that the one thing needful for a man was _to be brave_. the _valkyrs_ are choosers of the slain: a destiny inexorable, which it is useless trying to bend or soften, has appointed who is to be slain; this was a fundamental point for the norse believer;--as indeed it is for all earnest men everywhere, for a mahomet, a luther, for a napoleon too. it lies at the basis this for every such man; it is the woof out of which his whole system of thought is woven. the _valkyrs_; and then that these _choosers_ lead the brave to a heavenly _hall of odin_; only the base and slavish being thrust elsewhither, into the realms of hela the death-goddess: i take this to have been the soul of the whole norse belief. they understood in their heart that it was indispensable to be brave; that odin would have no favour for them, but despise and thrust them out, if they were not brave. consider too whether there is not something in this! it is an everlasting duty, valid in our day as in that, the duty of being brave. _valour_ is still _value_. the first duty of a man is still that of subduing _fear_. we must get rid of fear; we cannot act at all till then. a man's acts are slavish, not true but specious: his very thoughts are false, he thinks too as a slave and coward, till he have got fear under his feet. odin's creed, if we disentangle the real kernel of it, is true to this hour. a man shall and must be valiant; he must march forward, and quit himself like a man--trusting imperturbably in the appointment and _choice_ of the upper powers; and, on the whole, not fear at all. now and always, the completeness of his victory over fear will determine how much of a man he is. it is doubtless very savage that kind of valour of the old northmen. snorro tells us they thought it a shame and misery not to die in battle; and if natural death seemed to be coming on, they would cut wounds in their flesh, that odin might receive them as warriors slain. old kings, about to die, had their body laid into a ship; the ship sent forth, with sails set and slow fire burning it; that, once out at sea, it might blaze-up in flame, and in such manner bury worthily the old hero, at once in the sky and in the ocean! wild bloody valour; yet valour of its kind; better, i say, than none. in the old sea-kings too, what an indomitable rugged energy! silent, with closed lips, as i fancy them, unconscious that they were specially brave; defying the wild ocean with its monsters, and all men and things;--progenitors of our own blakes and nelsons! no homer sang these norse sea-kings; but agamemnon's was a small audacity, and of small fruit in the world, to some of them;--to hrolf's of normandy, for instance! hrolf, or rollo duke of normandy, the wild sea-king, has a share in governing england at this hour. nor was it altogether nothing, even that wild sea-roving and battling, through so many generations. it needed to be ascertained which was the _strongest_ kind of men; who were to be ruler over whom. among the northland sovereigns, too, i find some who got the title _wood-cutter_; forest-felling kings. much lies in that. i suppose at bottom many of them were forest-fellers as well as fighters, though the skalds talk mainly of the latter,--misleading certain critics not a little; for no nation of men could ever live by fighting alone; there could not produce enough come out of that! i suppose the right good fighter was oftenest also the right good forest-feller,--the right good improver, discerner, doer and worker in every kind; for true valour, different enough from ferocity, is the basis of all. a more legitimate kind of valour that; showing itself against the untamed forests and dark brute powers of nature, to conquer nature for us. in the same direction have not we their descendants since carried it far? may such valour last forever with us! that the man odin, speaking with a hero's voice and heart, as with an impressiveness out of heaven, told his people the infinite importance of valour, how man thereby became a god; and that his people, feeling a response to it in their own hearts, believed this message of his, and thought it a message out of heaven, and him a divinity for telling it them: this seems to me the primary seed-grain of the norse religion, from which all manner of mythologies, symbolic practices, speculations, allegories, songs and sagas would naturally grow. grow,--how strangely! i called it a small light shining and shaping in the huge vortex of norse darkness. yet the darkness itself was _alive_; consider that. it was the eager inarticulate uninstructed mind of the whole norse people, longing only to become articulate, to go on articulating ever farther! the living doctrine grows, grows;--like a banyan-tree; the first _seed_ is the essential thing: any branch strikes itself down into the earth, becomes a new root; and so, in endless complexity, we have a whole wood, a whole jungle, one seed the parent of it all. was not the whole norse religion, accordingly, in some sense, what we called 'the enormous shadow of this man's likeness'? critics trace some affinity in some norse mythuses, of the creation and suchlike, with those of the hindoos. the cow adumbla, 'licking the rime from the rocks,' has a kind of hindoo look. a hindoo cow, transported into frosty countries. probably enough; indeed we may say undoubtedly, these things will have a kindred with the remotest lands, with the earliest times. thought does not die, but only is changed. the first man that began to think in this planet of ours, he was the beginner of all. and then the second man, and the third man:--nay, every true thinker to this hour is a kind of odin, teaches men _his_ way of thought, spreads a shadow of his own likeness over sections of the history of the world. * * * * * of the distinctive poetic character or merit of this norse mythology i have not room to speak; nor does it concern us much. some wild prophecies we have, as the _völuspa_ in the _elder edda_; of a rapt, earnest, sibylline sort. but they were comparatively an idle adjunct of the matter, men who as it were but toyed with the matter, these later skalds; and it is _their_ songs chiefly that survive. in later centuries, i suppose, they would go on singing, poetically symbolising, as our modern painters paint, when it was no longer from the innermost heart, or not from the heart at all. this is everywhere to be well kept in mind. gray's fragments of norse lore, at any rate, will give one no notion of it;--any more than pope will of homer. it is no square-built gloomy palace of black ashlar marble, shrouded in awe and horror, as gray gives it us: no; rough as the north rocks, as the iceland deserts, it is; with a heartiness, homeliness, even a tint of good humour and robust mirth in the middle of these fearful things. the strong old norse heart did not go upon theatrical sublimities; they had not time to tremble. i like much their robust simplicity; their veracity, directness of conception. thor 'draws down his brows' in a veritable norse rage; 'grasps his hammer till the _knuckles grow white_.' beautiful traits of pity too, an honest pity. balder 'the white god' dies; the beautiful, benignant; he is the sungod. they try all nature for a remedy; but he is dead. frigga, his mother, sends hermoder to seek or see him: nine days and nine nights he rides through gloomy deep valleys, a labyrinth of gloom; arrives at the bridge with its gold roof: the keeper says, "yes, balder did pass here; but the kingdom of the dead is down yonder, far towards the north." hermoder rides on; leaps hell-gate, hela's gate: does see balder, and speak with him: balder cannot be delivered. inexorable! hela will not, for odin or any god, give him up. the beautiful and gentle has to remain there. his wife had volunteered to go with him, to die with him. they shall forever remain there. he sends his ring to odin; nanna his wife sends her _thimble_ to frigga, as a remembrance--ah me!-- for indeed valour is the fountain of pity too;--of truth, and all that is great and good in man. the robust homely vigour of the norse heart attaches one much, in these delineations. is it not a trait of right honest strength, says uhland, who has written a fine _essay_ on thor, that the old norse heart finds its friend in the thunder-god? that it is not frightened away by his thunder; but finds that summer-heat, the beautiful noble summer, must and will have thunder withal! the norse heart _loves_ this thor and his hammer-bolt; sports with him. thor is summer-heat; the god of peaceable industry as well as thunder. he is the peasant's friend; his true henchman and attendant is thialfi, _manual labour_. thor himself engages in all manner of rough manual work, scorns no business for its plebeianism; is ever and anon travelling to the country of the jötuns, harrying those chaotic frost-monsters, subduing them, at least straitening and damaging them. there is a great broad humour in some of these things. thor, as we saw above, goes to jötun-land, to seek hymir's caldron, that the gods may brew beer. hymir the huge giant enters, his grey beard all full of hoar-frost; splits pillars with the very glance of his eye; thor, after much rough tumult, snatches the pot, claps it on his head; the 'handles of it reach down to his heels.' the norse skald has a kind of loving sport with thor. this is the hymir whose cattle, the critics have discovered, are icebergs. huge untutored brobdignag genius,--needing only to be tamed-down; into shakspeares, dantes, goethes! it is all gone now, that old norse work,--thor the thunder-god changed into jack the giant-killer: but the mind that made it is here yet. how strangely things grow, and die, and do not die! there are twigs of that great world-tree of norse belief still curiously traceable. this poor jack of the nursery, with his miraculous shoes of swiftness, coat of darkness, sword of sharpness, he is one. _hynde etin_, and still more decisively _red etin of ireland_, in the scottish ballads, these are both derived from norseland; _etin_ is evidently a _jötun_. nay, shakspeare's _hamlet_ is a twig too of this same world-tree; there seems no doubt of that. hamlet, _amleth_, i find, is really a mythic personage; and his tragedy, of the poisoned father, poisoned asleep by drops in his ear, and the rest, is a norse mythus! old saxo, as his wont was, made it a danish history; shakspeare, out of saxo, made it what we see. that is a twig of the world-tree that has _grown_, i think;--by nature or accident that one has grown! in fact, these old norse songs have a _truth_ in them, an inward perennial truth and greatness,--as, indeed, all must have that can very long preserve itself by tradition alone. it is a greatness not of mere body and gigantic bulk, but a rude greatness of soul. there is a sublime uncomplaining melancholy traceable in these old hearts. a great free glance into the very deeps of thought. they seem to have seen, these brave old northmen, what meditation has taught all men in all ages, that this world is after all but a show,--a phenomenon or appearance, no real thing. all deep souls see into that,--the hindoo mythologist, the german philosopher,--the shakspeare, the earnest thinker, wherever he may be: 'we are such stuff as dreams are made of!' one of thor's expeditions, to utgard (the _outer_ garden, central seat of jötun-land), is remarkable in this respect. thialfi was with him, and loke. after various adventures they entered upon giant-land; wandered over plains, wild uncultivated places, among stones and trees. at nightfall they noticed a house; and as the door, which indeed formed one whole side of the house, was open, they entered. it was a simple habitation; one large hall, altogether empty. they stayed there. suddenly in the dead of the night loud noises alarmed them. thor grasped his hammer; stood in the door, prepared for fight. his companions within ran hither and thither in their terror, seeking some outlet in that rude hall; they found a little closet at last, and took refuge there. neither had thor any battle: for, lo, in the morning it turned-out that the noise had been only the _snoring_ of a certain enormous but peaceable giant, the giant skrymir, who lay peaceably sleeping near by; and this that they took for a house was merely his _glove_, thrown aside there; the door was the glove-wrist; the little closet they had fled into was the thumb! such a glove;--i remark too that it had not fingers as ours have, but only a thumb, and the rest undivided: a most ancient, rustic glove! skrymir now carried their portmanteau all day; thor, however, had his own suspicions, did not like the ways of skrymir; determined at night to put an end to him as he slept. raising his hammer, he struck down into the giant's face a right thunderbolt blow, of force to rend rocks. the giant merely awoke; rubbed his cheek, and said, did a leaf fall? again thor struck, so soon as skrymir again slept; a better blow than before: but the giant only murmured, was that a grain of sand? thor's third stroke was with both his hands (the 'knuckles white' i suppose), and seemed to dint deep into skrymir's visage; but he merely checked his snore, and remarked, there must be sparrows roosting in this tree, i think; what is that they have dropt?--at the gate of utgard, a place so high that you had to 'strain your neck bending back to see the top of it,' skrymir went his ways. thor and his companions were admitted; invited to take share in the games going on. to thor, for his part, they handed a drinking-horn; it was a common feat, they told him, to drink this dry at one draught. long and fiercely, three times over, thor drank; but made hardly any impression. he was a weak child, they told him; could he lift that cat he saw there? small as the feat seemed, thor with his whole godlike strength could not; he bent-up the creature's back, could not raise its feet off the ground, could at the utmost raise one foot. why, you are no man, said the utgard people; there is an old woman that will wrestle you! thor, heartily ashamed, seized this haggard old woman; but could not throw her. and now, on their quitting utgard, the chief jötun, escorting them politely a little way, said to thor: "you are beaten then:--yet be not so much ashamed; there was deception of appearance in it. that horn you tried to drink was the _sea_: you did make it ebb; but who could drink that, the bottomless! the cat you would have lifted,--why, that is the _midgard-snake_, the great world-serpent, which, tail in mouth, girds and keeps-up the whole created world; had you torn that up, the world must have rushed to ruin! as for the old woman, she was _time_, old age, duration; with her what can wrestle? no man nor no god with her; gods or men, she prevails over all! and then those three strokes you struck,--look at these _three valleys_; your three strokes made these!" thor looked at his attendant jötun: it was skrymir;--it was, say norse critics, the old chaotic rocky _earth_ in person, and that glove-_house_ was some earth-cavern! but skrymir had vanished; utgard with its skyhigh gates, when thor grasped his hammer to smite them, had gone to air; only the giant's voice was heard mocking: "better come no more to jötunheim!"-- this is of the allegoric period, as we see, and half play, not of the prophetic and entirely devout: but as a mythus is there not real antique norse gold in it? more true metal, rough from the mimerstithy, than in many a famed greek mythus _shaped_ far better! a great broad brobdignag grin of true humour is in this skrymir; mirth resting on earnestness and sadness, as the rainbow on black tempest: only a right valiant heart is capable of that. it is the grim humour of our own ben jonson, rare old ben; runs in the blood of us, i fancy; for one catches tones of it, under a still other shape, out of the american backwoods. that is also a very striking conception, that of the _ragnarök_, consummation, or _twilight of the gods_. it is in the _völuspa_ song; seemingly a very old, prophetic idea. the gods and jötuns, the divine powers and the chaotic brute ones, after long contest and partial victory by the former, meet at last in universal world-embracing wrestle and duel; world-serpent against thor, strength against strength; mutually extinctive; and ruin, 'twilight' sinking into darkness, swallows the created universe. the old universe with its gods is sunk; but it is not final death: there is to be a new heaven and a new earth; a higher supreme god, and justice to reign among men. curious: this law of mutation, which also is a law written in man's inmost thought, had been deciphered by these old earnest thinkers in their rude style; and how, though all dies, and even gods die, yet all death is but a phoenix fire-death, and new-birth into the greater and the better! it is the fundamental law of being for a creature made of time, living in this place of hope. all earnest men have seen into it; may still see into it. and now, connected with this, let us glance at the _last_ mythus of the appearance of thor; and end there. i fancy it to be the latest in date of all these fables; a sorrowing protest against the advance of christianity,--set forth reproachfully by some conservative pagan. king olaf has been harshly blamed for his over-zeal in introducing christianity; surely i should have blamed him far more for an under-zeal in that! he paid dear enough for it; he died by the revolt of his pagan people, in battle, in the year , at stickelstad, near that drontheim, where the chief cathedral of the north has now stood for many centuries, dedicated gratefully to his memory as _saint_ olaf. the mythus about thor is to this effect. king olaf, the christian reform king, is sailing with fit escort along the shore of norway, from haven to haven; dispensing justice, or doing other royal work: on leaving a certain haven, it is found that a stranger, of grave eyes and aspect, red beard, of stately robust figure, has stept in. the courtiers address him; his answers surprise by their pertinency and depth: at length he is brought to the king. the stranger's conversation here is not less remarkable, as they sail along the beautiful shore; but after some time, he addresses king olaf thus: "yes, king olaf, it is all beautiful, with the sun shining on it there; green, fruitful, a right fair home for you, and many a sore day had thor, many a wild fight with the rock jötuns, before he could make it so. and now you seem minded to put away thor. king olaf, have a care!" said the stranger, drawing-down his brows;--and when they looked again, he was nowhere to be found.--this is the last appearance of thor on the stage of this world! do we not see well enough how the fable might arise, without unveracity on the part of any one? it is the way most gods have come to appear among men: thus, if in pindar's time 'neptune was seen once at the nemean games,' what was this neptune too but a 'stranger of noble grave aspect,' _fit_ to be 'seen'! there is something pathetic, tragic for me in this last voice of paganism. thor is vanished, the whole norse world has vanished; and will not return ever again. in like fashion to that pass away the highest things. all things that have been in this world, all things that are or will be in it, have to vanish, we have our sad farewell to give them. that norse religion, a rude but earnest, sternly impressive _consecration of valour_ (so we may define it), sufficed for these old valiant northmen. consecration of valour is not a _bad_ thing! we will take it for good, so far as it goes. neither is there no use in _knowing_ something about this old paganism of our fathers. unconsciously, and combined with higher things, it is in _us_ yet, that old faith withal! to know it consciously, brings us into closer and clearer relation with the past--with our own possessions in the past. for the whole past, as i keep repeating, is the possession of the present; the past had always something _true_, and is a precious possession. in a different time, in a different place, it is always some other _side_ of our common human nature that has been developing itself. the actual true is the _sum_ of all these; not any one of them by itself, constitutes what of human nature is hitherto developed. better to know them all than misknow them. "to which of these three religions do you specially adhere?" inquires meister of his teacher. "to all the three!" answers the other: "to all the three: for they by their union first constitute the true religion." lecture ii the hero as prophet. mahomet: islam [_friday, th may _] from the first rude times of paganism among the scandinavians in the north, we advance to a very different epoch of religion, among a very different people: mahometanism among the arabs. a great change; what a change and progress is indicated here, in the universal condition and thoughts of men! the hero is not now regarded as a god among his fellowmen; but as one god-inspired, as a prophet. it is the second phasis of hero-worship; the first or oldest, we may say, has passed away without return; in the history of the world there will not again be any man, never so great, whom his fellowmen will take for a god. nay we might rationally ask, did any set of human beings ever really think the man they _saw_ there standing beside them a god, the maker of this world? perhaps not: it was usually some man they remembered, or _had_ seen. but neither can this any more be. the great man is not recognised henceforth as a god any more. it was a rude gross error, that of counting the great man a god. yet let us say that it is at all times difficult to know _what_ he is, or how to account of him and receive him! the most significant feature in the history of an epoch is the manner it has of welcoming a great man. ever, to the true instincts of men, there is something godlike in him. whether they shall take him to be a god, to be a prophet, or what they shall take him to be? that is ever a grand question; by their way of answering that, we shall see, as through a little window, into the very heart of these men's spiritual condition. for at bottom the great man, as he comes from the hand of nature, is ever the same kind of thing: odin, luther, johnson, burns; i hope to make it appear that these are all originally of one stuff; that only by the world's reception of them, and the shapes they assume, are they so immeasurably diverse. the worship of odin astonishes us--to fall prostrate before the great man, into _deliquium_ of love and wonder over him, and feel in their hearts that he was a denizen of the skies, a god! this was imperfect enough: but to welcome, for example, a burns as we did, was that what we can call perfect? the most precious gift that heaven can give to the earth; a man of 'genius' as we call it: the soul of a man actually sent down from the skies with a god's-message to us--this we waste away as an idle artificial firework, sent to amuse us a little, and sink it into ashes, wreck and ineffectuality: _such_ reception of a great man i do not call very perfect either! looking into the heart of the thing, one may perhaps call that of burns a still uglier phenomenon, betokening still sadder imperfections in mankind's ways, than the scandinavian method itself! to fall into mere unreasoning _deliquium_ of love and admiration, was not good; but such unreasoning, nay irrational supercilious no-love at all is perhaps still worse!--it is a thing forever changing, this of hero-worship: different in each age, difficult to do well in any age. indeed, the heart of the whole business of the age, one may say, is to do it well. we have chosen mahomet not as the most eminent prophet, but as the one we are freest to speak of. he is by no means the truest of prophets; but i do esteem him a true one. farther, as there is no danger of our becoming, any of us, mahometans, i mean to say all the good of him i justly can. it is the way to get at his secret: let us try to understand what _he_ meant with the world; what the world meant and means with him, will then be a more answerable question. our current hypotheses about mahomet, that he was a scheming impostor, a falsehood incarnate, that his religion is a mere mass of quackery and fatuity, begins really to be now untenable to any one. the lies, which well-meaning zeal has heaped round this man, are disgraceful to ourselves only. when pococke inquired of grotius, where the proof was of that story of the pigeon, trained to pick peas from mahomet's ear, and pass for an angel dictating to him? grotius answered that there was no proof! it is really time to dismiss all that. the word this man spoke has been the life-guidance now of a hundred-and-eighty millions of men these twelve-hundred years. these hundred-and-eighty millions were made by god as well as we. a greater number of god's creatures believe in mahomet's word at this hour than in any other word whatever. are we to suppose that it was a miserable piece of spiritual legerdemain, this which so many creatures of the almighty have lived by and died by? i, for my part, cannot form any such supposition. i will believe most things sooner than that. one would be entirely at a loss what to think of this world at all, if quackery so grew and were sanctioned here. alas, such theories are very lamentable. if we would attain to knowledge of anything in god's true creation, let us disbelieve them wholly! they are the product of an age of scepticism; they indicate the saddest spiritual paralysis, and mere death-life of the souls of men: more godless theory, i think, was never promulgated in this earth. a false man found a religion? why, a false man cannot build a brick house! if he do not know and follow _truly_ the properties of mortar, burnt clay and what else he works in, it is no house that he makes, but a rubbish-heap. it will not stand for twelve centuries, to lodge a hundred-and-eighty millions; it will fall straightway. a man must conform himself to nature's laws, _be_ verily in communion with nature and the truth of things, or nature will answer him, no, not at all! speciosities are specious--ah, me!--a cagliostro, many cagliostros, prominent world-leaders, do prosper by their quackery, for a day. it is like a forged bank-note; they get it passed out of _their_ worthless hands: others, not they, have to smart for it. nature bursts-up in fire-flame, french revolutions and suchlike, proclaiming with terrible veracity that forged notes are forged. but of a great man especially, of him i will venture to assert that it is incredible he should have been other than true. it seems to me the primary foundation of him, and of all that can lie in him, this. no mirabeau, napoleon, burns, cromwell, no man adequate to do anything, but is first of all in right earnest about it; what i call a sincere man. i should say _sincerity_, a deep, great, genuine sincerity, is the first characteristic of all men in any way heroic. not the sincerity that calls itself sincere; ah, no, that is a very poor matter indeed;--a shallow braggart conscious sincerity; oftenest self-conceit mainly. the great man's sincerity is of the kind he cannot speak of, is not conscious of: nay, i suppose, he is conscious rather of _in_sincerity; for what man can walk accurately by the law of truth for one day? no, the great man does not boast himself sincere, far from that; perhaps does not ask himself if he is so: i would say rather, his sincerity does not depend on himself; he cannot help being sincere! the great fact of existence is great to him. fly as he will, he cannot get out of the awful presence of this reality. his mind is so made; he is great by that, first of all. fearful and wonderful, real as life, real as death, is this universe to him. though all men should forget its truth, and walk in a vain show, he cannot. at all moments the flame-image glares-in upon him; undeniable, there, there!--i wish you to take this as my primary definition of a great man. a little man may have this, it is competent to all men that god has made: but a great man cannot be without it. such a man is what we call an _original_ man: he comes to us at first-hand. a messenger he, sent from the infinite unknown with tidings to us. we may call him poet, prophet, god;--in one way or other, we all feel that the words he utters are as no other man's words. direct from the inner fact of things;--he lives, and has to live, in daily communion with that. hearsays cannot hide it from him; he is blind, homeless, miserable, following hearsays; _it_ glares-in upon him. really his utterances, are they not a kind of 'revelation;'--what we must call such for want of some other name? it is from the heart of the world that he comes; he is portion of the primal reality of things. god has made many revelations: but this man too, has not god made him, the latest and newest of all? the 'inspiration of the almighty giveth _him_ understanding:' we must listen before all to him. this mahomet, then, we will in no wise consider as an inanity and theatricality, a poor conscious ambitious schemer; we cannot conceive him so. the rude message he delivered was a real one withal; an earnest confused voice from the unknown deep. the man's words were not false, nor his workings here below; no inanity and simulacrum; a fiery mass of life cast-up from the great bosom of nature herself. to _kindle_ the world; the world's maker had ordered it so. neither can the faults, imperfections, insincerities even, of mahomet, if such were never so well proved against him, shake this primary fact about him. on the whole, we make too much of faults; the details of the business hide the real centre of it. faults? the greatest of faults, i should say, is to be conscious of none. readers of the bible above all, one would think, might know better. who is called there 'the man according to god's own heart'? david, the hebrew king, had fallen into sins enough; blackest crimes; there was no want of sins. and thereupon the unbelievers sneer and ask, is this your man according to god's own heart? the sneer, i must say, seems to me but a shallow one. what are faults, what are the outward details of a life; if the inner secret of it, the remorse, temptations, true, often-baffled, never-ended struggle of it, be forgotten? 'it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps.' of all acts, is not, for a man, _repentance_ the most divine? the deadliest sin, i say, were that same supercilious consciousness of no sin;--that is death; the heart so conscious is divorced from sincerity, humility and fact; is dead: it is 'pure' as dead dry sand is pure. david's life and history, as written for us in those psalms of his, i consider to be the truest emblem ever given of a man's moral progress and warfare here below. all earnest souls will ever discern in it the faithful struggle of an earnest human soul towards what is good and best. struggle often baffled, sore baffled, down as into entire wreck; yet a struggle never ended; ever, with tears, repentance, true unconquerable purpose, begun anew. poor human nature! is not a man's walking, in truth, always that: 'a succession of falls'? man can do no other. in this wild element of a life, he has to struggle onwards; now fallen, deep-abased; and ever, with tears, repentance, with bleeding heart, he has to rise again, struggle again still onwards. that his struggle _be_ a faithful unconquerable one: that is the question of questions. we will put-up with many sad details, if the soul of it were true. details by themselves will never teach us what it is. i believe we misestimate mahomet's faults even as faults: but the secret of him will never be got by dwelling there. we will leave all this behind us; and assuring ourselves that he did mean some true thing, ask candidly what it was or might be. * * * * * these arabs mahomet was born among are certainly a notable people. their country itself is notable; the fit habitation for such a race. savage inaccessible rock-mountains, great grim deserts, alternating with beautiful strips of verdure: wherever water is, there is greenness, beauty; odoriferous balm-shrubs, date-trees, frankincense-trees. consider that wide waste horizon of sand, empty, silent, like a sand-sea, dividing habitable place from habitable. you are all alone there, left alone with the universe; by day a fierce sun blazing down on it with intolerable radiance; by night the great deep heaven with its stars. such a country is fit for a swift-handed, deep-hearted race of men. there is something most agile, active, and yet most meditative, enthusiastic in the arab character. the persians are called the french of the east, we will call the arabs oriental italians. a gifted noble people; a people of wild strong feelings, and of iron restraint over these: the characteristic of noblemindedness, of genius. the wild bedouin welcomes the stranger to his tent, as one having right to all that is there; were it his worst enemy, he will slay his foal to treat him, will serve him with sacred hospitality for three days, will set him fairly on his way;--and then, by another law as sacred, kill him if he can. in words too, as in action. they are not a loquacious people, taciturn rather; but eloquent, gifted when they do speak. an earnest truthful kind of men. they are, as we know, of jewish kindred: but with that deadly terrible earnestness of the jews they seem to combine something graceful, brilliant, which is not jewish. they had 'poetic contests' among them before the time of mahomet. sale says, at ocadh, in the south of arabia, there were yearly fairs, and there, when the merchandising was done, poets sang for prizes:--the wild people gathered to hear that. one jewish quality these arabs manifest; the outcome of many or of all high qualities; what we may call religiosity. from of old they had been zealous workers, according to their light. they worshipped the stars, as sabeans; worshipped many natural objects,--recognised them as symbols, immediate manifestations, of the maker of nature. it was wrong; and yet not wholly wrong. all god's works are still in a sense symbols of god. do we not, as i urged, still account it a merit to recognise a certain inexhaustible significance, 'poetic beauty' as we name it, in all natural objects whatsoever? a man is a poet, and honoured, for doing that, and speaking or singing it,--a kind of diluted worship. they had many prophets, these arabs; teachers each to his tribe, each according to the light he had. but indeed, have we not from of old the noblest of proofs, still palpable to every one of us, of what devoutness and noblemindedness had dwelt in these rustic thoughtful peoples? biblical critics seem agreed that our own _book of job_ was written in that region of the world. i call that, apart from all theories about it, one of the grandest things ever written with pen. one feels, indeed, as if it were not hebrew; such a noble universality, different from noble patriotism or sectarianism, reigns in it. a noble book; all men's book! it is our first, oldest statement of the never-ending problem,--man's destiny, and god's ways with him here in this earth. and all in such free flowing outlines; grand in its sincerity, in its simplicity; in its epic melody, and repose of reconcilement. there is the seeing eye, the mildly understanding heart. so _true_ everywhere; true eyesight and vision for all things; material things no less than spiritual; the horse,--'hast thou clothed his neck with _thunder_?'--he '_laughs_ at the shaking of the spear!' such living likenesses were never since drawn. sublime sorrow, sublime reconciliation: oldest choral melody as of the heart of mankind;--so soft, and great; as the summer midnight, as the world with its seas and stars! there is nothing written, i think, in the bible or out of it, of equal literary merit.-- to the idolatrous arabs one of the most ancient universal objects of worship was that black stone, still kept in the building called caabah at mecca. diodorus siculus mentions this caabah in a way not to be mistaken, as the oldest, most honoured temple in his time; that is, some half-century before our era. silvestre de sacy says there is some likelihood that the black stone is an aerolite. in that case, some one might _see_ it fall out of heaven! it stands now beside the well zemzem; the caabah is built over both. a well is in all places a beautiful affecting object, gushing out like life from the hard earth;--still more so in these hot dry countries, where it is the first condition of being. the well zemzem has its name from the bubbling sound of the waters, _zem-zem_; they think it is the well which hagar found with her little ishmael in the wilderness: the aerolite and it have been sacred now, and had a caabah over them, for thousands of years. a curious object, that caabah! there it stands at this hour, in the black cloth-covering the sultan sends it yearly; 'twenty-seven cubits high;' with circuit, with double circuit of pillars, with festoon-rows of lamps and quaint ornaments: the lamps will be lighted again _this_ night,--to glitter again under the stars. an authentic fragment of the oldest past. it is the _keblah_ of all moslem: from delhi all onwards to morocco, the eyes of innumerable praying men are turned towards _it_, five times, this day and all days: one of the notablest centres in the habitation of men. it had been from the sacredness attached to this caabah stone and hagar's well, from the pilgrimings of all tribes of arabs thither, that mecca took its rise as a town. a great town once, though much decayed now. it has no natural advantage for a town; stands in a sandy hollow amid bare barren hills, at a distance from the sea; its provisions, its very bread, have to be imported. but so many pilgrims needed lodgings: and then all places of pilgrimage do, from the first, become places of trade. the first day pilgrims meet, merchants have also met: where men see themselves assembled for one object, they find that they can accomplish other objects which depend on meeting together. mecca became the fair of all arabia. and thereby indeed the chief staple and warehouse of whatever commerce there was between the indian and western countries, syria, egypt, even italy. it had at one time a population of , ; buyers, forwarders of those eastern and western products; importers for their own behoof of provisions and corn. the government was a kind of irregular aristocratic republic, not without a touch of theocracy. ten men of a chief tribe, chosen in some rough way, were governors of mecca, and keepers of the caabah. the koreish were the chief tribe in mahomet's time; his own family was of that tribe. the rest of the nation, fractioned and cut-asunder by deserts, lived under similar rude patriarchal governments by one or several: herdsmen, carriers, traders, generally robbers too; being oftenest at war one with another, or with all: held together by no open bond, if it were not this meeting at the caabah, where all forms of arab idolatry assembled in common adoration;--held mainly by the _inward_ indissoluble bond of a common blood and language. in this way had the arabs lived for long ages, unnoticed by the world: a people of great qualities, unconsciously waiting for the day when they should become notable to all the world. their idolatries appear to have been in a tottering state; much was getting into confusion and fermentation among them. obscure tidings of the most important event ever transacted in this world, the life and death of the divine man in judea, at once the symptom and cause of immeasurable change to all people in the world, had in the course of centuries reached into arabia too; and could not but, of itself, have produced fermentation there. * * * * * it was among this arab people, so circumstanced, in the year of our era, that the man mahomet was born. he was of the family of hashem, of the koreish tribe as we said; though poor, connected with the chief persons of his country. almost at his birth he lost his father; at the age of six years his mother too, a woman noted for her beauty, her worth and sense: he fell to the charge of his grandfather, an old man, a hundred years old. a good old man: mahomet's father, abdallah, had been his youngest favourite son. he saw in mahomet, with his old life-worn eyes, a century old, the lost abdallah come back again, all that was left of abdallah. he loved the little orphan boy greatly; used to say, they must take care of that beautiful little boy, nothing in their kindred was more precious than he. at his death, while the boy was still but two years old, he left him in charge to abu thaleb the eldest of the uncles, as to him that now was head of the house. by this uncle, a just and rational man as everything betokens, mahomet was brought-up in the best arab way. mahomet, as he grew up, accompanied his uncle on trading journeys and suchlike; in his eighteenth year one finds him a fighter following his uncle in war. but perhaps the most significant of all his journeys is one we find noted as of some years' earlier date: a journey to the fairs of syria. the young man here first came in contact with a quite foreign world,--with one foreign element of endless moment to him: the christian religion. i know not what to make of that 'sergius, the nestorian monk,' whom abu thaleb and he are said to have lodged with; or how much any monk could have taught one still so young. probably enough it is greatly exaggerated, this of the nestorian monk. mahomet was only fourteen; had no language but his own: much in syria must have been a strange unintelligible whirlpool to him. but the eyes of the lad were open; glimpses of many things would doubtless be taken-in, and lie very enigmatic as yet, which were to ripen in a strange way into views, into beliefs and insights one day. these journeys to syria were probably the beginning of much to mahomet. one other circumstance we must not forget: that he had no school-learning; of the thing we call school-learning none at all. the art of writing was but just introduced into arabia; it seems to be the true opinion that mahomet never could write! life in the desert, with its experiences, was all his education. what of this infinite universe he, from his dim place, with his own eyes and thoughts, could take in, so much and no more of it was he to know. curious, if we will reflect on it, this of having no books. except by what he could see for himself, or hear of by uncertain rumour of speech in the obscure arabian desert, he could know nothing. the wisdom that had been before him or at a distance from him in the world, was in a manner as good as not there for him. of the great brother souls, flame-beacons through so many lands and times, no one directly communicates with this great soul. he is alone there, deep down in the bosom of the wilderness; has to grow up so,--alone with nature and his own thoughts. but, from an early age, he had been remarked as a thoughtful man. his companions named him '_al amin_, the faithful.' a man of truth and fidelity; true in what he did, in what he spake and thought. they noted that _he_ always meant something. a man rather taciturn in speech; silent when there was nothing to be said; but pertinent, wise, sincere, when he did speak; always throwing light on the matter. this is the only sort of speech _worth_ speaking! through life we find him to have been regarded as an altogether solid, brotherly, genuine man. a serious, sincere character; yet amiable, cordial, companionable, jocose even;--a good laugh in him withal: there are men whose laugh is as untrue as anything about them; who cannot laugh. one hears of mahomet's beauty: his fine sagacious honest face, brown florid complexion, beaming black eyes;--i somehow like too that vein on the brow, which swelled-up black when he was in anger: like the '_horse-shoe_ vein' in scott's _redgauntlet_. it was a kind of feature in the hashem family, this black swelling vein in the brow; mahomet had it prominent, as would appear. a spontaneous, passionate, yet just, true-meaning man! full of wild faculty, fire and light: of wild worth, all uncultured; working out his life-task in the depths of the desert there. how he was placed with kadijah, a rich widow, as her steward, and travelled in her business, again to the fairs of syria; how he managed all, as one can well understand, with fidelity, adroitness; how her gratitude, her regard for him grew: the story of their marriage is altogether a graceful intelligible one, as told us by the arab authors. he was twenty-five; she forty, though still beautiful. he seems to have lived in a most affectionate, peaceable, wholesome way with this wedded benefactress; loving her truly, and her alone. it goes greatly against the impostor theory, the fact that he lived in this entirely unexceptionable, entirely quiet and commonplace way, till the heat of his years was done. he was forty before he talked of any mission from heaven. all his irregularities, real and supposed, date from after his fiftieth year, when the good kadijah died. all his 'ambition,' seemingly, had been, hitherto, to live an honest life; his 'fame,' the mere good opinion of neighbours that knew him, had been sufficient hitherto. not till he was already getting old, the prurient heat of his life all burnt out, and _peace_ growing to be the chief thing this world could give him, did he start on the 'career of ambition;' and, belying all his past character and existence, set-up as a wretched empty charlatan to acquire what he could now no longer enjoy! for my share, i have no faith whatever in that. ah no: this deep-hearted son of the wilderness, with his beaming black eyes and open social deep soul, had other thoughts in him than ambition. a silent great soul; he was one of those who cannot _but_ be in earnest; whom nature herself has appointed to be sincere. while others walk in formulas and hearsays, contented enough to dwell there, this man could not screen himself in formulas; he was alone with his own soul and the reality of things. the great mystery of existence, as i said, glared-in upon him, with its terrors, with its splendours; no hearsays could hide that unspeakable fact, "here am i!" such _sincerity_, as we named it, has in very truth something of divine. the word of such a man is a voice direct from nature's own heart. men do and must listen to that as to nothing else;--all else is wind in comparison. from of old, a thousand thoughts, in his pilgrimings and wanderings, had been in this man: what am i? what _is_ this unfathomable thing i live in, which men name universe? what is life; what is death? what am i to believe? what am i to do? the grim rocks of mount hara, of mount sinai, the stern sandy solitudes answered not. the great heaven rolling silent overhead, with its blue-glancing stars, answered not. there was no answer. the man's own soul, and what of god's inspiration dwelt there, had to answer! it is the thing which all men have to ask themselves; which we too have to ask, and answer. this wild man felt it to be of _infinite_ moment; all other things of no moment whatever in comparison. the jargon of argumentative greek sects, vague traditions of jews, the stupid routine of arab idolatry, there was no answer in these. a hero, as i repeat, has this first distinction, which indeed we may call first and last, the alpha and omega of his whole heroism, that he looks through the shows of things into _things_. use and wont, respectable hearsay, respectable formula: all these are good, or are not good. there is something behind and beyond all these, which all these must correspond with, be the image of, or they are--_idolatries_: 'bits of black wood pretending to be god;' to the earnest soul a mockery and abomination. idolatries never so gilded, waited on by heads of the koreish, will do nothing for this man. though all men walk by them, what good is it? the great reality stands glaring there upon _him_. he there has to answer it, or perish miserably. now, even now, or else through all eternity never! answer it; _thou_ must find an answer.--ambition? what could all arabia do for this man; with the crown of greek heraclius, of persian chosroes, and all crowns in the earth;--what could they all do for him? it was not of the earth he wanted to hear tell; it was of the heaven above and of the hell beneath. all crowns and sovereignties whatsoever, where would _they_ in a few brief years be? to be sheik of mecca or arabia, and have a bit of gilt wood put into your hand,--will that be one's salvation? i decidedly think, not. we will leave it altogether, this impostor hypothesis, as not credible; not very tolerable even, worthy chiefly of dismissal by us. mahomet had been wont to retire yearly, during the month ramadhan, into solitude and silence; as indeed was the arab custom; a praiseworthy custom, which such a man, above all, would find natural and useful. communing with his own heart, in the silence of the mountains; himself silent; open to the 'small still voices:' it was a right natural custom! mahomet was in his fortieth year, when having withdrawn to a cavern in mount hara, near mecca, during this ramadhan, to pass the month in prayer, and meditation on those great questions, he one day told his wife kadijah, who with his household was with him or near him this year, that by the unspeakable special favour of heaven he had now found it all out; was in doubt and darkness no longer, but saw it all. that all these idols and formulas were nothing, miserable bits of wood; that there was one god in and over all; and we must leave all idols, and look to him. that god is great; and that there is nothing else great! he is the reality. wooden idols are not real; he is real. he made us at first, sustains us yet; we and all things are but the shadow of him; a transitory garment veiling the eternal splendour. '_allah akbar_, god is great;'--and then also '_islam_,' that we must _submit_ to god. that our whole strength lies in resigned submission to him, whatsoever he do to us. for this world, and for the other! the thing he sends to us, were it death and worse than death, shall be good, shall be best; we resign ourselves to god.--'if this be _islam_,' says goethe, 'do we not all live in _islam_?' yes, all of us that have any moral life; we all live so. it has ever been held the highest wisdom for a man not merely to submit to necessity,--necessity will make him submit,--but to know and believe well that the stern thing which necessity had ordered was the wisest, the best, the thing wanted there. to cease his frantic pretension of scanning this great god's-world in his small fraction of a brain; to know that it _had_ verily, though deep beyond his soundings, a just law, that the soul of it was good;--that his part in it was to conform to the law of the whole, and in devout silence follow that; not questioning it, obeying it as unquestionable. i say, this is yet the only true morality known. a man is right and invincible, virtuous and on the road towards sure conquest, precisely while he joins himself to the great deep law of the world, in spite of all superficial laws, temporary appearances, profit-and-loss calculations; he is victorious while he coöperates with that great central law, not victorious otherwise:--and surely his first chance of coöperating with it, or getting into the course of it, is to know with his whole soul that it _is_; that it is good, and alone good! this is the soul of islam; it is properly the soul of christianity;--for islam is definable as a confused form of christianity; had christianity not been, neither had it been. christianity also commands us, before all, to be resigned to god. we are to take no counsel with flesh-and-blood; give ear to no vain cavils, vain sorrows and wishes: to know that we know nothing; that the worst and cruelest to our eyes is not what it seems; that we have to receive whatsoever befalls us as sent from god above, and say, it is good and wise, god is great! "though he slay me, yet will i trust in him." islam means in its way denial of self, annihilation of self. this is yet the highest wisdom that heaven has revealed to our earth. such light had come, as it could, to illuminate the darkness of this wild arab soul. a confused dazzling, splendour as of life and heaven, in the great darkness which threatened to be death: he called it revelation and the angel gabriel;--who of us yet can know what to call it? it is the 'inspiration of the almighty that giveth us understanding.' to _know_; to get into the truth of anything, is ever a mystic act,--of which the best logics can but babble on the surface. 'is not belief the true god-announcing miracle?' says novalis.--that mahomet's whole soul, set in flame with this grand truth vouchsafed him, should feel as if it were important and the only important thing, was very natural. that providence had unspeakably honoured _him_ by revealing it, saving him from death and darkness; that he therefore was bound to make known the same to all creatures: this is what was meant by 'mahomet is the prophet of god;' this too is not without its true meaning.-- the good kadijah, we can fancy, listened to him with wonder, with doubt: at length she answered: yes, it was _true_ this that he said. one can fancy too the boundless gratitude of mahomet; and how of all the kindnesses she had done him, this of believing the earnest struggling word he now spoke was the greatest. 'it is certain,' says novalis, 'my conviction gains infinitely, the moment another soul will believe in it.' it is a boundless favour.--he never forgot this good kadijah. long afterwards, ayesha his young favourite wife, a woman who indeed distinguished herself among the moslem, by all manner of qualities, through her whole long life; this young brilliant ayesha was, one day, questioning him: "now am not i better than kadijah? she was a widow; old, and had lost her looks: you love me better than you did her?"--"no, by allah!" answered mahomet: "no, by allah! she believed in me when none else would believe. in the whole world i had but one friend, and she was that!"--seid, his slave, also believed in him; these with his young cousin ali, abu thaleb's son, were his first converts. he spoke of his doctrine to this man and that; but the most treated it with ridicule, with indifference; in three years, i think, he had gained but thirteen followers. his progress was slow enough. his encouragement to go on, was altogether the usual encouragement that such a man in such a case meets. after some three years of small success, he invited forty of his chief kindred to an entertainment; and there stood-up and told them what his pretension was: that he had this thing to promulgate abroad to all men; that it was the highest thing, the one thing: which of them would second him in that? amid the doubt and silence of all, young ali, as yet a lad of sixteen, impatient of the silence, started-up, and exclaimed in passionate fierce language, that he would! the assembly, among whom was abu thaleb, ali's father, could not be unfriendly to mahomet; yet the sight there, of one unlettered elderly man, with a lad of sixteen, deciding on such an enterprise against all mankind, appeared ridiculous to them; the assembly broke-up in laughter. nevertheless it proved not a laughable thing; it was a very serious thing! as for this young ali, one cannot but like him. a noble-minded creature, as he shows himself, now and always afterwards; full of affection, of fiery daring. something chivalrous in him; brave as a lion; yet with a grace, a truth and affection worthy of christian knighthood. he died by assassination in the mosque at bagdad; a death occasioned by his own generous fairness, confidence in the fairness of others: he said, if the wound proved not unto death, they must pardon the assassin; but if it did, then they must slay him straightway, that so they two in the same hour might appear before god, and see which side of that quarrel was the just one! mahomet naturally gave offence to the koreish, keepers of the caabah, superintendents of the idols. one or two men of influence had joined him: the thing spread slowly, but it was spreading. naturally, he gave offence to everybody: who is this that pretends to be wiser than we all; that rebukes us all, as mere fools and worshippers of wood! abu thaleb the good uncle spoke with him: could he not be silent about all that; believe it all for himself, and not trouble others, anger the chief men, endanger himself and them all, talking of it? mahomet answered: if the sun stood on his right hand and the moon on his left, ordering him to hold his peace, he could not obey! no: there was something in this truth he had got which was of nature herself; equal in rank to sun, or moon, or whatsoever thing nature had made. it would speak itself there, so long as the almighty allowed it, in spite of sun and moon, and all koreish and all men and things. it must do that, and could do no other. mahomet answered so; and, they say, 'burst into tears.' burst into tears: he felt that abu thaleb was good to him; that the task he had got was no soft, but a stern and great one. he went on speaking to who would listen to him; publishing his doctrine among the pilgrims as they came to mecca; gaining adherents in this place and that. continual contradiction, hatred, open or secret danger attended him. his powerful relations protected mahomet himself; but by and by, on his own advice, all his adherents had to quit mecca, and seek refuge in abyssinia over the sea. the koreish grew ever angrier; laid plots, and swore oaths among them, to put mahomet to death with their own hands. abu thaleb was dead, the good kadijah was dead. mahomet is not solicitous of sympathy from us; but his outlook at this time was one of the dismalest. he had to hide in caverns, escape in disguise; fly hither and thither; homeless, in continual peril of his life. more than once it seemed all-over with him; more than once it turned on a straw, some rider's horse taking fright or the like, whether mahomet and his doctrine had not ended there, and not been heard of at all. but it was not to end so. in the thirteenth year of his mission, finding his enemies all banded against him, forty sworn men, one out of every tribe, waiting to take his life, and no continuance possible at mecca for him any longer, mahomet fled to the place then called yathreb, where he had gained some adherents; the place they now call medina, or '_medinat al nabi_, the city of the prophet,' from that circumstance. it lay some miles off, through rocks and deserts; not without great difficulty, in such mood as we may fancy, he escaped thither, and found welcome. the whole east dates its era from this flight, _hegira_ as they name it: the year of this hegira is of our era, the fifty-third of mahomet's life. he was now becoming an old man; his friends sinking round him one by one: his path desolate, encompassed with danger: unless he could find hope in his own heart, the outward face of things was but hopeless for him. it is so with all men in the like case. hitherto mahomet had professed to publish his religion by the way of preaching and persuasion alone. but now, driven foully out of his native country, since unjust men had not only given no ear to his earnest heaven's-message, the deep cry of his heart, but would not even let him live if he kept speaking it,--the wild son of the desert resolved to defend himself, like a man and arab. if the koreish will have it so, they shall have it. tidings, felt to be of infinite moment to them and all men, they would not listen to these; would trample them down by sheer violence, steel and murder: well, let steel try it then! ten years more this mahomet had: all of fighting, of breathless impetuous toil and struggle; with what result we know. much has been said of mahomet's propagating his religion by the sword. it is no doubt far nobler what we have to boast of the christian religion, that it propagated itself peaceably in the way of preaching and conviction. yet withal, if we take this for an argument of the truth or falsehood of a religion, there is a radical mistake in it. the sword indeed: but where will you get your sword! every new opinion, at its starting, is precisely in a _minority of one_. in one man's head alone, there it dwells as yet. one man alone of the whole world believes it; there is one man against all men. that _he_ take a sword, and try to propagate with that, will do little for him. you must first get your sword! on the whole, a thing will propagate itself as it can. we do not find, of the christian religion either, that it always disdained the sword, when once it had got one. charlemagne's conversion of the saxons was not by preaching. i care little about the sword: i will allow a thing to struggle for itself in this world, with any sword or tongue or implement it has, or can lay hold of. we will let it preach, and pamphleteer, and fight, and to the uttermost bestir itself, and do, beak and claws, whatsoever is in it; very sure that it will, in the long-run, conquer nothing which does not deserve to be conquered. what is better than itself, it cannot put away, but only what is worse. in this great duel, nature herself is umpire, and can do no wrong: the thing which is deepest-rooted in nature, what we call _truest_, that thing and not the other will be found growing at last. here however, in reference to much that there is in mahomet and his success, we are to remember what an umpire nature is; what a greatness, composure of depth and tolerance there is in her. you take wheat to cast into the earth's bosom: your wheat may be mixed with chaff, chopped straw, barn-sweepings, dust and all imaginable rubbish; no matter: you cast it into the kind just earth; she grows the wheat,--the whole rubbish she silently absorbs, shrouds _it_ in, says nothing of the rubbish. the yellow wheat is growing there; the good earth is silent about all the rest,--has silently turned all the rest to some benefit too, and makes no complaint about it! so everywhere in nature! she is true and not a lie; and yet so great, and just, and motherly in her truth. she requires of a thing only that it _be_ genuine of heart; she will protect it if so; will not, if not so. there is a soul of truth in all the things she ever gave harbour to. alas, is not this the history of all highest truth that comes or ever came into the world? the _body_ of them all is imperfection, an element of light _in_ darkness: to us they have to come embodied in mere logic, in some merely _scientific_ theorem of the universe; which _cannot_ be complete; which cannot but be found, one day, incomplete, erroneous, and so die and disappear. the body of all truth dies; and yet in all, i say, there is a soul which never dies; which in new and ever-nobler embodiment lives immortal as man himself! it is the way with nature. the genuine essence of truth never dies. that it be genuine, a voice from the great deep of nature, there is the point at nature's judgment-seat. what _we_ call pure or impure, is not with her the final question. not how much chaff is in you; but whether you have any wheat. pure? i might say to many a man: yes, you are pure; pure enough; but you are chaff,--insincere hypothesis, hearsay, formality; you never were in contact with the great heart of the universe at all; you are properly neither pure nor impure; you _are_ nothing, nature has no business with you. mahomet's creed we called a kind of christianity; and really, if we look at the wild rapt earnestness with which it was believed and laid to heart, i should say a better kind than that of those miserable syrian sects, with their vain janglings about _homoiousion_ and _homoousion_, the head full of worthless noise, the heart empty and dead! the truth of it is embedded in portentous error and falsehood; but the truth of it makes it be believed, not the falsehood: it succeeded by its truth. a bastard kind of christianity, but a living kind; with a heart-life in it: not dead, chopping barren logic merely! out of all that rubbish of arab idolatries, argumentative theologies, traditions, subtleties, rumours and hypotheses of greeks and jews, with their idle wire-drawings, this wild man of the desert, with his wild sincere heart, earnest as death and life, with his great flashing natural eyesight, had seen into the kernel of the matter. idolatry is nothing: these wooden idols of yours, 'ye rub them with oil and wax, and the flies stick on them,'--these are wood, i tell you! they can do nothing for you; they are an impotent blasphemous pretence; a horror and abomination, if ye knew them. god alone is; god alone has power; he made us, he can kill us and keep us alive: '_allah akbar_, god is great.' understand that his will is the best for you; that howsoever sore to flesh-and-blood, you will find it the wisest, best: you are bound to take it so; in this world and in the next, you have no other thing that you can do! and now if the wild idolatrous men did believe this, and with their fiery hearts laid hold of it to do it, in what form soever it came to them, i say it was well worthy of being believed. in one form or the other, i say it is still the one thing worthy of being believed by all men. man does hereby become the high-priest of this temple of a world. he is in harmony with the decrees of the author of this world; coöperating with them, not vainly withstanding them: i know, to this day, no better definition of duty than that same. all that is _right_ includes itself in this of coöperating with the real tendency of the world; you succeed by this (the world's tendency will succeed), you are good, and in the right course there. _homoiousion_, _homoousion_, vain logical jangle, then or before or at any time, may jangle itself out, and go whither and how it likes: this is the _thing_ it all struggles to mean, if it would mean anything. if it do not succeed in meaning this, it means nothing. not that abstractions, logical propositions, be correctly worded or incorrectly; but that living concrete sons of adam do lay this to heart: that is the important point. islam devoured all these vain jangling sects; and i think had right to do so. it was a reality, direct from the great heart of nature once more. arab idolatries, syrian formulas, whatsoever was not equally real, had to go up in flame,--mere dead _fuel_, in various senses, for this which was _fire_. * * * * * it was during these wild warfarings and strugglings, especially after the flight to mecca, that mahomet dictated at intervals his sacred book, which they name _koran_, or _reading_, 'thing to be read.' this is the work he and his disciples made so much of, asking all the world, is not that a miracle? the mahometans regard their koran with a reverence which few christians pay even to their bible. it is admitted everywhere as the standard of all law and all practice; the thing to be gone-upon in speculation and life: the message sent direct out of heaven, which this earth has to conform to, and walk by; the thing to be read. their judges decide by it; all moslem are bound to study it, seek in it for the light of their life. they have mosques where it is all read daily; thirty relays of priests take it up in succession, get through the whole each day. there, for twelve-hundred years, has the voice of this book, at all moments, kept sounding through the ears and the hearts of so many men. we hear of mahometan doctors that had read it seventy-thousand times! very curious: if one sought for 'discrepancies of national taste,' here surely were the most eminent instance of that! we also can read the koran; our translation of it, by sale, is known to be a very fair one. i must say, it is as toilsome reading as i ever undertook. a wearisome confused jumble, crude, incondite; endless iterations, long-windedness, entanglement; most crude, incondite;--insupportable stupidity, in short! nothing but a sense of duty could carry any european through the koran. we read in it, as we might in the state-paper office, unreadable masses of lumber, that perhaps we may get some glimpses of a remarkable man. it is true we have it under disadvantages: the arabs see more method in it than we. mahomet's followers found the koran lying all in fractions, as it had been written-down at first promulgation; much of it, they say, on shoulder-blades of mutton, flung pellmell into a chest: and they published it, without any discoverable order as to time or otherwise;--merely trying, as would seem, and this not very strictly, to put the longest chapters first. the real beginning of it, in that way, lies almost at the end: for the earliest portions were the shortest. read in its historical sequence it perhaps would not be so bad. much of it, too, they say, is rhythmic; a kind of wild chanting song, in the original. this may be a great point; much perhaps has been lost in the translation here. yet with every allowance, one feels it difficult to see how any mortal ever could consider this koran as a book written in heaven, too good for the earth; as a well-written book, or indeed as a _book_ at all; and not a bewildered rhapsody; _written_, so far as writing goes, as badly as almost any book ever was. so much for national discrepancies, and the standard of taste. yet i should say, it was not unintelligible how the arabs might so love it. when once you get this confused coil of a koran fairly off your hands, and have it behind you at a distance, the essential type of it begins to disclose itself; and in this there is a merit quite other than the literary one. if a book come from the heart, it will contrive to reach other hearts; all art and authorcraft are of small amount to that. one would say the primary character of the koran is that of its _genuineness_, of its being a _bonâ-fide_ book. prideaux, i know, and others have represented it as a mere bundle of juggleries; chapter after chapter got-up to excuse and varnish the author's successive sins, forward his ambitions and quackeries: but really it is time to dismiss all that. i do not assert mahomet's continual sincerity: who is continually sincere? but i confess i can make nothing of the critic, in these times, who would accuse him of deceit _prepense_; of conscious deceit generally, or perhaps at all;--still more, of living in a mere element of conscious deceit, and writing this koran as a forger and juggler would have done! every candid eye, i think, will read the koran far otherwise than so. it is the confused ferment of a great rude human soul; rude, untutored, that cannot even read; but fervent, earnest, struggling vehemently to utter itself in words. with a kind of breathless intensity he strives to utter himself; the thoughts crowd on him pellmell: for very multitude of things to say, he can get nothing said. the meaning that is in him shapes itself into no form of composition, is stated in no sequence, method, or coherence;--they are not _shaped_ at all, these thoughts of his; flung-out unshaped, as they struggle and tumble there, in their chaotic inarticulate state. we said 'stupid:' yet natural stupidity is by no means the character of mahomet's book; it is natural uncultivation rather. the man has not studied speaking; in the haste and pressure of continual fighting, has not time to mature himself into fit speech. the panting breathless haste and vehemence of a man struggling in the thick of battle for life and salvation; this is the mood he is in! a headlong haste; for very magnitude of meaning, he cannot get himself articulated into words. the successive utterances of a soul in that mood, coloured by the various vicissitudes of three-and-twenty years; now well uttered, now worse: this is the koran. for we are to consider mahomet, through these three-and-twenty years, as the centre of a world wholly in conflict. battles with the koreish and heathen, quarrels among his own people, backslidings of his own wild heart; all this kept him in a perpetual whirl, his soul knowing rest no more. in wakeful nights, as one may fancy, the wild soul of the man, tossing amid these vortices, would hail any light of a decision for them as a veritable light from heaven; _any_ making-up of his mind, so blessed, indispensable for him there, would seem the inspiration of a gabriel. forger and juggler? no, no! this great fiery heart, seething, simmering like a great furnace of thoughts, was not a juggler's. his life was a fact to him; this god's universe an awful fact and reality. he has faults enough. the man was an uncultured semi-barbarous son of nature, much of the bedouin still clinging to him: we must take him for that. but for a wretched simulacrum, a hungry impostor without eyes or heart, practising for a mess of pottage such blasphemous swindlery, forgery of celestial documents, continual high-treason against his maker and self, we will not and cannot take him. sincerity, in all senses, seems to me the merit of the koran; what had rendered it precious to the wild arab men. it is, after all, the first and last merit in a book; gives rise to merits of all kinds,--nay, at bottom, it alone can give rise to merit of any kind. curiously, through these incondite masses of tradition, vituperation, complaint, ejaculation in the koran, a vein of true direct insight, of what we might almost call poetry, is found straggling. the body of the book is made-up of mere tradition, and as it were vehement enthusiastic extempore preaching. he returns forever to the old stories of the prophets as they went current in the arab memory: how prophet after prophet, the prophet abraham, the prophet hud, the prophet moses, christian and other real and fabulous prophets, had come to this tribe and to that, warning men of their sin; and been received by them even as he mahomet was,--which is a great solace to him. these things he repeats ten, perhaps twenty times; again and ever again with wearisome iteration; has never done repeating them. a brave samuel johnson, in his forlorn garret, might con-over the biographies of authors in that way! this is the great staple of the koran. but curiously, through all this, comes ever and anon some glance as of the real thinker and seer. he has actually an eye for the world, this mahomet: with a certain directness and rugged vigour, he brings home still, to our heart, the thing his own heart has been opened to. i make but little of his praises of allah, which many praise; they are borrowed i suppose mainly from the hebrew, at least they are far surpassed there. but the eye that flashes direct into the heart of things, and _sees_ the truth of them; this is to me a highly interesting object. great nature's own gift; which she bestows on all; but which only one in the thousand does not cast sorrowfully away: it is what i call sincerity of vision; the test of a sincere heart. mahomet can work no miracles; he often answers impatiently: i can work no miracles. i? 'i am a public preacher;' appointed to preach this doctrine to all creatures. yet the world, as we can see, had really from of old been all one great miracle to him. look over the world, says he; is it not wonderful, the work of allah; wholly 'a sign to you,' if your eyes were open! this earth, god made it for you: 'appointed paths in it;' you can live in it, go to and fro on it.--the clouds in the dry country of arabia, to mahomet they are very wonderful: great clouds, he says, born in the deep bosom of the upper immensity, where do they come from! they hang there, the great black monsters; pour-down their rain deluges 'to revive a dead earth,' and grass springs, and tall leafy palm-trees with their date-clusters hanging round. is not that a sign?' your cattle too,--allah made them; serviceable dumb creatures; they change the grass into milk; you have your clothing from them, very strange creatures; they come ranking home at evening-time, 'and,' adds he, 'and are a credit to you!' ships also,--he talks often about ships: huge moving mountains, they spread-out their cloth wings, go bounding through the water there, heaven's wind driving them; anon they lie motionless, god has withdrawn the wind, they lie dead, and cannot stir! miracles? cries he; what miracle would you have? are not you yourselves there? god made _you_, 'shaped you out of a little clay.' ye were small once; a few years ago ye were not at all. ye have beauty, strength, thoughts, 'ye have compassion on one another.' old age comes-on you, and gray hairs; your strength fades into feebleness; ye sink down, and again are not. 'ye have compassion on one another:' this struck me much: allah might have made you having no compassion on one another,--how had it been then! this is a great direct thought, a glance at first-hand into the very fact of things. rude vestiges of poetic genius, of whatsoever is best and truest, are visible in this man. a strong untutored intellect: eyesight, heart; a strong wild man,--might have shaped himself into poet, king, priest, any kind of hero. to his eyes it is forever clear that this world wholly is miraculous. he sees what, as we said once before, all great thinkers, the rude scandinavians themselves, in one way or other, have contrived to see: that this so solid-looking material world is, at bottom, in very deed, nothing; is a visual and tactual manifestation of god's power and presence,--a shadow hung-out by him on the bosom of the void infinite; nothing more. the mountains, he says, these great rock-mountains, they shall dissipate themselves 'like clouds;' melt into the blue as clouds do, and not be! he figures the earth, in the arab fashion, sale tells us, as an immense plain or flat plate of ground, the mountains are set on that to _steady_ it. at the last day they shall disappear 'like clouds;' the whole earth shall go spinning, whirl itself off into wreck, and as dust and vapour vanish in the inane. allah withdraws his hand from it, and it ceases to be. the universal empire of allah, presence everywhere of an unspeakable power, a splendour, and a terror not to be named, as the true force, essence and reality, in all things whatsoever, was continually clear to this man. what a modern talks-of by the name, forces of nature, laws of nature; and does not figure as a divine thing; not even as one thing at all, but as a set of things, undivine enough,--saleable, curious, good for propelling steamships! with our sciences and cyclopædias, we are apt to forget the _divineness_, in these laboratories of ours. we ought not to forget it! that once well forgotten, i know not what else were worth remembering. most sciences, i think, were then a very dead thing; withered, contentious, empty;--a thistle in late autumn. the best science, without this, is but as the dead _timber_; it is not the growing tree and forest,--which gives ever-new timber, among other things! man cannot _know_ either, unless he can _worship_ in some way. his knowledge is a pedantry, and dead thistle, otherwise. much has been said and written about the sensuality of mahomet's religion; more than was just. the indulgences, criminal to us, which he permitted, were not of his appointment; he found them practised, unquestioned from immemorial time in arabia; what he did was to curtail them, restrict them, not on one but on many sides. his religion is not an easy one: with rigorous fasts, lavations, strict complex formulas, prayers five times a day, and abstinence from wine, it did not 'succeed by being an easy religion.' as if indeed any religion, or cause holding of religion, could succeed by that! it is a calumny on men to say that they are roused to heroic action by ease, hope of pleasure, recompense,--sugar-plums of any kind, in this world or the next! in the meanest mortal there lies something nobler. the poor swearing soldier, hired to be shot, has his 'honour of a soldier,' different from drill-regulations and the shilling a day. it is not to taste sweet things, but to do noble and true things, and vindicate himself under god's heaven as a god-made man, that the poorest son of adam dimly longs. show him the way of doing that, the dullest daydrudge kindles into a hero. they wrong man greatly who say he is to be seduced by ease. difficulty, abnegation, martyrdom, death are the _allurements_ that act on the heart of man. kindle the inner genial life of him, you have a flame that burns-up all lower considerations. not happiness, but something higher: one sees this even in the frivolous classes, with their 'point of honour' and the like. not by flattering our appetites; no, by awakening the heroic that slumbers in every heart, can any religion gain followers. mahomet himself, after all that can be said about him, was not a sensual man. we shall err widely if we consider this man as a common voluptuary, intent mainly on base enjoyments,--nay on enjoyments of any kind. his household was of the frugalest; his common diet barley-bread and water: sometimes for months there was not a fire once lighted on his hearth. they record with just pride that he would mend his own shoes, patch his own cloak. a poor, hard-toiling, ill-provided man; careless of what vulgar men toil for. not a bad man, i should say; something better in him than _hunger_ of any sort,--or these wild arab men, fighting and jostling three-and-twenty years at his hand, in close contact with him always, would not have reverenced him so! they were wild men, bursting ever and anon into quarrel, into all kinds of fierce sincerity; without right worth and manhood, no man could have commanded them. they called him prophet, you say? why, he stood there face to face with them; bare, not enshrined in any mystery; visibly clouting his own cloak, cobbling his own shoes; fighting, counselling, ordering in the midst of them: they must have seen what kind of a man he _was_, let him be _called_ what you like! no emperor with his tiaras was obeyed as this man in a cloak of his own clouting. during three-and-twenty years of rough actual trial. i find something of a veritable hero necessary for that, of itself. his last words are a prayer; broken ejaculations of a heart struggling-up, in trembling hope, towards its maker. we cannot say that his religion made him _worse_; it made him better; good, not bad. generous things are recorded of him: when he lost his daughter, the thing he answers is, in his own dialect, everyway sincere, and yet equivalent to that of christians, 'the lord giveth, and the lord taketh away; blessed be the name of the lord.' he answered in like manner of seid, his emancipated well-beloved slave, the second of the believers. seid had fallen in the war of tabûc, the first of mahomet's fightings with the greeks. mahomet said, it was well; seid had done his master's work, seid had now gone to his master: it was all well with seid. yet seid's daughter found him weeping over the body;--the old gray-haired man melting in tears! "what do i see?" said she.--"you see a friend weeping over his friend."--he went out for the last time into the mosque, two days before his death; asked, if he had injured any man? let his own back bear the stripes. if he owed any man? a voice answered, "yes, me three drachms," borrowed on such an occasion. mahomet ordered them to be paid: "better be in shame now," said he, "than at the day of judgment."--you remember kadijah, and the "no, by allah!" traits of that kind show us the genuine man, the brother of us all, brought visible through twelve centuries,--the veritable son of our common mother. withal i like mahomet for his total freedom from cant. he is a rough self-helping son of the wilderness; does not pretend to be what he is not. there is no ostentatious pride in him; but neither does he go much upon humility: he is there as he can be, in cloak and shoes of his own clouting; speaks plainly to all manner of persian kings, greek emperors, what it is they are bound to do; knows well enough, about himself, 'the respect due unto thee.' in a life-and-death war with bedouins, cruel things could not fail; but neither are acts of mercy, of noble natural pity and generosity wanting. mahomet makes no apology for the one, no boast of the other. they were each the free dictate of his heart; each called-for, there and then. not a mealy-mouthed man! a candid ferocity, if the case call for it, is in him; he does not mince matters! the war of tabûc is a thing he often speaks of: his men refused, many of them, to march on that occasion: pleaded the heat of the weather, the harvest, and so forth; he can never forget that. your harvest? it lasts for a day. what will become of your harvest through all eternity? hot weather? yes, it was hot; 'but hell will be hotter!' sometimes a rough sarcasm turns-up: he says to the unbelievers, ye shall have the just measure of your deeds at that great day. they will be weighed-out to you; ye shall not have short weight!--everywhere he fixes the matter in his eye; he _sees_ it: his heart, now and then, is as if struck dumb by the greatness of it. 'assuredly,' he says: that word, in the koran, is written-down sometimes as a sentence by itself: 'assuredly.' no _dilettantism_ in this mahomet; it is a business of reprobation and salvation with him, of time and eternity: he is in deadly earnest about it! dilettantism, hypothesis, speculation, a kind of amateur-search for truth, toying and coquetting with truth: this is the sorest sin. the root of all other imaginable sins. it consists in the heart and soul of the man never having been _open_ to truth;--'living in a vain show.' such a man not only utters and produces falsehoods, but _is_ himself a falsehood. the rational moral principle, spark of the divinity, is sunk deep in him, in quiet paralysis of life-death. the very falsehoods of mahomet are truer than the truths of such a man. he is the insincere man: smooth-polished, respectable in some times and places: inoffensive, says nothing harsh to anybody; most _cleanly_,--just as carbonic acid is, which is death and poison. we will not praise mahomet's moral precepts as always of the superfinest sort; yet it can be said that there is always a tendency to good in them; that they are the true dictates of a heart aiming towards what is just and true. the sublime forgiveness of christianity, turning of the other cheek when the one has been smitten, is not here: you _are_ to revenge yourself, but it is to be in measure, not overmuch, or beyond justice. on the other hand, islam, like any great faith, and insight into the essence of man, is a perfect equaliser of men: the soul of one believer outweighs all earthly kingships; all men, according to islam too, are equal. mahomet insists not on the propriety of giving alms, but on the necessity of it; he marks-down by law how much you are to give, and it is at your peril if you neglect. the tenth part of a man's annual income, whatever that may be, is the _property_ of the poor, of those that are afflicted and need help. good all this: the natural voice of humanity, of pity and equity dwelling in the heart of this wild son of nature speaks _so_. mahomet's paradise is sensual, his hell sensual: true; in the one and the other there is enough that shocks all spiritual feeling in us. but we are to recollect that the arabs already had it so; that mahomet, in whatever he changed of it, softened and diminished all this. the worst sensualities, too, are the work of doctors, followers of his, not his work. in the koran there is really very little said about the joys of paradise; they are intimated rather than insisted on. nor is it forgotten that the highest joys even there shall be spiritual; the pure presence of the highest, this shall infinitely transcend all other joys. he says, 'your salutation shall be, peace.' _salam_, have peace!--the thing that all rational souls long for, and seek, vainly here below, as the one blessing. 'ye shall sit on seats, facing one another: all grudges shall be taken away out of your hearts.' all grudges! ye shall love one another freely; for each of you, in the eyes of his brothers, there will be heaven enough! in reference to this of the sensual paradise and mahomet's sensuality, the sorest chapter of all for us, there were many things to be said; which it is not convenient to enter upon here. two remarks only i shall make, and therewith leave it to your candour. the first is furnished me by goethe; it is a casual hint of his which seems well worth taking note of. in one of his delineations, in _meister's travels_ it is, the hero comes-upon a society of men with very strange ways, one of which was this: "we require," says the master, "that each of our people shall restrict himself in one direction," shall go right against his desire in one matter, and _make_ himself do the thing he does not wish, "should we allow him the greater latitude on all other sides." there seems to me a great justness in this. enjoying things which are pleasant; that is not the evil: it is the reducing of our moral self to slavery by them that is. let a man assert withal that he is king over his habitudes; that he could and would shake them off, on cause shown: this is an excellent law. the month ramadhan for the moslem, much in mahomet's religion, much in his own life, bears in that direction; if not by forethought, or clear purpose of moral improvement on his part, then by a certain healthy manful instinct, which is as good. but there is another thing to be said about the mahometan heaven and hell. this namely, that, however gross and material they may be, they are an emblem of an everlasting truth, not always so well remembered elsewhere. that gross sensual paradise of his; that horrible flaming hell; the great enormous day of judgment he perpetually insists on: what is all this but a rude shadow, in the rude bedouin imagination, of that grand spiritual fact, and beginning of facts, which it is ill for us too if we do not all know and feel: the infinite nature of duty? that man's actions here are of _infinite_ moment to him, and never die or end at all; that man, with his little life, reaches upwards high as heaven, downwards low as hell, and in his threescore years of time holds an eternity fearfully and wonderfully hidden: all this had burnt itself, as in flame-characters, into the wild arab soul. as in flame and lightning, it stands written there; awful, unspeakable, ever present to him. with bursting earnestness, with a fierce savage sincerity, halt, articulating, not able to articulate, he strives to speak it, bodies it forth in that heaven and that hell. bodied forth in what way you will, it is the first of all truths. it is venerable under all embodiments. what is the chief end of man here below? mahomet has answered this question, in a way that might put some of _us_ to shame! he does not, like a bentham, a paley, take right and wrong, and calculate the profit and loss, ultimate pleasure of the one and of the other; and summing all up by addition and subtraction into a net result, ask you, whether on the whole the right does not preponderate considerably? no, it is not _better_ to do the one than the other; the one is to the other as life is to death,--as heaven is to hell. the one must in nowise be done, the other in nowise left undone. you shall not measure them; they are incommensurable: the one is death eternal to a man, the other is life eternal. benthamee utility, virtue by profit and loss; reducing this god's-world to a dead brute steam-engine, the infinite celestial soul of man to a kind of hay-balance for weighing hay and thistles on, pleasures and pains on:--if you ask me which gives, mahomet or they, the beggarlier and falser view of man and his destinies in this universe, i will answer, it is not mahomet!---- on the whole, we will repeat that this religion of mahomet's is a kind of christianity; has a genuine element of what is spiritually highest looking through it, not to be hidden by all its imperfections. the scandinavian god _wish_, the god of all rude men,--this has been enlarged into a heaven by mahomet; but a heaven symbolical of sacred duty, and to be earned by faith and welldoing, by valiant action, and a divine patience which is still more valiant. it is scandinavian paganism, and a truly celestial element superadded to that. call it not false; look not at the falsehood of it, look at the truth of it. for these twelve centuries, it has been the religion and life-guidance of the fifth part of the whole kindred of mankind. above all things, it has been a religion heartily _believed_. these arabs believe their religion, and try to live by it! no christians, since the early ages, or only perhaps the english puritans in modern times, have ever stood by their faith as the moslem do by theirs,--believing it wholly, fronting time with it, and eternity with it. this night the watchman on the streets of cairo when he cries "who goes?" will hear from the passenger, along with his answer, "there is no god but god." _allah akbar, islam_, sounds through the souls, and whole daily existence, of these dusky millions. zealous missionaries preach it abroad among malays, black papuans, brutal idolaters;--displacing what is worse, nothing that is better or good. to the arab nation it was as a birth from darkness into light; arabia first became alive by means of it. a poor shepherd people, roaming unnoticed in its deserts since the creation of the world: a hero-prophet was sent down to them with a word they could believe: see, the unnoticed becomes world-notable, the small has grown world-great; within one century afterwards, arabia is at grenada on this hand, at delhi on that;--glancing in valour and splendour and the light of genius, arabia shines through long ages over a great section of the world. belief is great, life-giving. the history of a nation becomes fruitful, soul-elevating, great, so soon as it believes. these arabs, the man mahomet, and that one century,--is it not as if a spark had fallen, one spark, on a world of what seemed black unnoticeable sand; but lo, the sand proves explosive powder, blazes heaven-high from delhi to grenada! i said, the great man was always as lightning out of heaven; the rest of men waited for him like fuel, and then they too would flame. lecture iii the hero as poet. dante; shakspeare. [_tuesday, th may _] the hero as divinity, the hero as prophet, are productions of old ages; not to be repeated in the new. they presuppose a certain rudeness of conception, which the progress of mere scientific knowledge puts an end to. there needs to be, as it were, a world vacant, or almost vacant of scientific forms, if men in their loving wonder are to fancy their fellow-man either a god or one speaking with the voice of a god. divinity and prophet are past. we are now to see our hero in the less ambitious, but also less questionable, character of poet; a character which does not pass. the poet is a heroic figure belonging to all ages; whom all ages possess, when once he is produced, whom the newest age as the oldest may produce;--and will produce, always when nature pleases. let nature send a hero-soul; in no age is it other than possible that he may be shaped into a poet. hero, prophet, poet,--many different names, in different times and places, do we give to great men; according to varieties we note in them, according to the sphere in which they have displayed themselves! we might give many more names, on this same principle. i will remark again, however, as a fact not unimportant to be understood, that the different _sphere_ constitutes the grand origin of such distinction; that the hero can be poet, prophet, king, priest or what you will, according to the kind of world he finds himself born into. i confess, i have no notion of a truly great man that could not be _all_ sorts of men. the poet who could merely sit on a chair, and compose stanzas, would never make a stanza worth much. he could not sing the heroic warrior, unless he himself were at least a heroic warrior too. i fancy there is in him the politician, the thinker, legislator, philosopher;--in one or the other degree, he could have been, he is all these. so too i cannot understand how a mirabeau, with that great glowing heart, with the fire that was in it, with the bursting tears that were in it, could not have written verses, tragedies, poems, touched all hearts in that way, had his course of life and education led him thitherward. the grand fundamental character is that of great man; that the man be great. napoleon has words in him which are like austerlitz battles. louis fourteenth's marshals are a kind of poetical men withal; the things turenne says are full of sagacity and geniality, like sayings of samuel johnson. the great heart, the clear deep-seeing eye: there it lies; no man whatever, in what province soever, can prosper at all without these. petrarch and boccaccio did diplomatic messages, it seems, quite well: one can easily believe it; they had done things a little harder than these! burns, a gifted song-writer, might have made a still better mirabeau. shakspeare,--one knows not what _he_ could not have made, in the supreme degree. true, there are aptitudes of nature too. nature does not make all great men, more than all other men, in the self-same mould. varieties of aptitude doubtless; but infinitely more of circumstance; and far oftenest it is the _latter_ only that are looked to. but it is as with common men in the learning of trades. you take any man, as yet a vague capability of a man, who could be any kind of craftsman; and make him into a smith, a carpenter, a mason: he is then and thenceforth that and nothing else. and if, as addison complains, you sometimes see a street-porter staggering under his load on spindle-shanks, and near at hand a tailor with the frame of a samson handling a bit of cloth and small whitechapel needle,--it cannot be considered that aptitude of nature alone has been consulted here either!--the great man also, to what shall he be bound apprentice? given your hero, is he to become conqueror, king, philosopher, poet? it is an inexplicably complex controversial-calculation between the world and him! he will read the world and its laws; the world with its laws will be there to be read. what the world, on _this_ matter, shall permit and bid is, as we said, the most important fact about the world.-- * * * * * poet and prophet differ greatly in our loose modern notions of them. in some old languages, again, the titles are synonymous; _vates_ means both prophet and poet: and indeed at all times, prophet and poet, well understood, have much kindred of meaning. fundamentally indeed they are still the same; in this most important respect especially, that they have penetrated both of them into the sacred mystery of the universe; what goethe calls 'the open secret.' "which is the great secret?" asks one.--"the _open_ secret,"--open to all, seen by almost none! that divine mystery, which lies everywhere in all beings, 'the divine idea of the world, that which lies at the bottom of appearance,' as fichte styles it; of which all appearance, from the starry sky to the grass of the field, but especially the appearance of man and his work, is but the _vesture_, the embodiment that renders it visible. this divine mystery _is_ in all times and in all places; veritably is. in most times and places it is greatly overlooked; and the universe, definable always in one or the other dialect, as the realised thought of god, is considered a trivial, inert, commonplace matter,--as if, says the satirist, it were a dead thing, which some upholsterer had put together! it could do no good at present, to _speak_ much about this; but it is a pity for every one of us if we do not know it, live ever in the knowledge of it. really a most mournful pity;--a failure to live at all, if we live otherwise! but now, i say, whoever may forget this divine mystery, the _vates_, whether prophet or poet, has penetrated into it; is a man sent hither to make it more impressively known to us. that always is his message; he is to reveal that to us,--that sacred mystery which he more than others lives ever present with. while others forget it, he knows it;--i might say, he has been driven to know it; without consent asked of _him_, he finds himself living in it, bound to live in it. once more, here is no hearsay, but a direct insight and belief; this man too could not help being a sincere man! whosoever may live in the shows of things, it is for him a necessity of nature to live in the very fact of things. a man once more, in earnest with the universe, though all others were but toying with it. he is a _vates_, first of all, in virtue of being sincere. so far poet and prophet, participators in the 'open secret,' are one. with respect to their distinction again: the _vates_ prophet, we might say, has seized that sacred mystery rather on the moral side, as good and evil, duty and prohibition; the _vates_ poet on what the germans call the æsthetic side, as beautiful, and the like. the one we may call a revealer of what we are to do, the other of what we are to love. but indeed these two provinces run into one another, and cannot be disjoined. the prophet too has his eye on what we are to love: how else shall he know what it is we are to do? the highest voice ever heard on this earth said withal, "consider the lilies of the field; they toil not, neither do they spin: yet solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these." a glance, that, into the deepest deep of beauty. 'the lilies of the field,'--dressed finer than earthly princes, springing-up there in the humble furrow-field; a beautiful _eye_ looking-out on you, from the great inner sea of beauty! how could the rude earth make these, if her essence, rugged as she looks and is, were not inwardly beauty? in this point of view, too, a saying of goethe's, which has staggered several, may have meaning: 'the beautiful,' he intimates, 'is higher than the good: the beautiful includes in it the good.' the _true_ beautiful; which however, i have said somewhere, 'differs from the _false_ as heaven does from vauxhall!' so much for the distinction and identity of poet and prophet.-- in ancient and also in modern periods we find a few poets who are accounted perfect; whom it were a kind of treason to find fault with. this is noteworthy; this is right: yet in strictness it is only an illusion. at bottom, clearly enough, there is no perfect poet! a vein of poetry exists in the hearts of all men; no man is made altogether of poetry. we are all poets when we _read_ a poem well. the 'imagination that shudders at the hell of dante,' is not that the same faculty, weaker in degree, as dante's own? no one but shakspeare can embody, out of _saxo grammaticus_, the story of _hamlet_ as shakspeare did: but every one models some kind of story out of it; every one embodies it better or worse. we need not spend time in defining. where there is no specific difference, as between round and square, all definition must be more or less arbitrary. a man that has _so_ much more of the poetic element developed in him as to have become noticeable, will be called poet by his neighbours. world-poets too, those whom we are to take for perfect poets, are settled by critics in the same way. one who rises _so_ far above the general level of poets will, to such and such critics, seem a universal poet; as he ought to do. and yet it is, and must be, an arbitrary distinction. all poets, all men, have some touches of the universal; no man is wholly made of that. most poets are very soon forgotten: but not the noblest shakspeare or homer of them can be remembered _forever_;--a day comes when he too is not! nevertheless, you will say, there must be a difference between true poetry and true speech not poetical: what is the difference? on this point many things have been written, especially by late german critics, some of which are not very intelligible at first. they say, for example, that the poet has an _infinitude_ in him; communicates an _unendlichkeit_, a certain character of 'infinitude,' to whatsoever he delineates. this, though not very precise, yet on so vague a matter is worth remembering: if well meditated, some meaning will gradually be found in it. for my own part, i find considerable meaning in the old vulgar distinction of poetry being _metrical_, having music in it, being a song. truly, if pressed to give a definition, one might say this as soon as anything else: if your delineation be authentically _musical_, musical, not in word only, but in heart and substance, in all the thoughts and utterances of it, in the whole conception of it, then it will be poetical; if not, not.--musical: how much lies in that! a _musical_ thought is one spoken by a mind that has penetrated into the inmost heart of the thing; detected the inmost mystery of it, namely the _melody_ that lies hidden in it; the inward harmony of coherence which is its soul, whereby it exists, and has a right to be, here in this world. all inmost things, we may say, are melodious; naturally utter themselves in song. the meaning of song goes deep. who is there that, in logical words, can express the effect music has on us? a kind of inarticulate unfathomable speech, which leads us to the edge of the infinite, and lets us for moments gaze into that! nay all speech, even the commonest speech, has something of song in it: not a parish in the world but has its parish-accent;--the rhythm or _tune_ to which the people there _sing_ what they have to say! accent is a kind of chanting; all men have accent of their own,--though they only _notice_ that of others. observe too how all passionate language does of itself become musical,--with a finer music than the mere accent; the speech of a man even in zealous anger becomes a chant, a song. all deep things are song. it seems somehow the very central essence of us, song; as if all the rest were but wrappages and hulls! the primal element of us; of us, and of all things. the greeks fabled of sphere-harmonies; it was the feeling they had of the inner structure of nature; that the soul of all her voices and utterances was perfect music. poetry, therefore, we will call _musical thought_. the poet is he who _thinks_ in that manner. at bottom, it turns still on power of intellect; it is a man's sincerity and depth of vision that makes him a poet. see deep enough, and you see musically; the heart of nature _being_ everywhere music, if you can only reach it. the _vates_ poet, with his melodious apocalypse of nature, seems to hold a poor rank among us, in comparison with the _vates_ prophet; his function, and our esteem of him for his function, alike slight. the hero taken as divinity; the hero taken as prophet; then next the hero taken only as poet: does it not look as if our estimate of the great man, epoch after epoch, were continually diminishing? we take him first for a god, then for one god-inspired; and now in the next stage of it, his most miraculous word gains from us only the recognition that he is a poet, beautiful verse-maker, man of genius, or suchlike!--it looks so; but i persuade myself that intrinsically it is not so. if we consider well, it will perhaps appear that in man still there is the _same_ altogether peculiar admiration for the heroic gift, by what name soever called, that there at any time was. i should say, if we do not now reckon a great man literally divine, it is that our notions of god, of the supreme unattainable fountain of splendour, wisdom and heroism, are ever rising _higher_; not altogether that our reverence for these qualities, as manifested in our like, is getting lower. this is worth taking thought of. sceptical dilettantism, the curse of these ages, a curse which will not last forever, does indeed in this the highest province of human things, as in all provinces, make sad work; and our reverence for great men, all crippled, blinded, paralytic as it is, comes out in poor plight, hardly recognisable. men worship the shows of great men; the most disbelieve that there is any reality of great men to worship. the dreariest, fatalest faith; believing which, one would literally despair of human things. nevertheless look, for example, at napoleon! a corsican lieutenant of artillery; that is the show of _him_: yet is he not obeyed, _worshipped_ after his sort, as all the tiaraed and diademed of the world put together could not be? high duchesses, and ostlers of inns, gather round the scottish rustic, burns;--a strange feeling dwelling in each that they had never heard a man like this; that, on the whole, this is the man! in the secret heart of these people it still dimly reveals itself, though there is no accredited way of uttering it at present, that this rustic, with his black brows and flashing sun-eyes, and strange words moving laughter and tears, is of a dignity far beyond all others, incommensurable with all others. do not we feel it so? but now, were dilettantism, scepticism, triviality, and all that sorrowful brood, cast-out of us,--as, by god's blessing, they shall one day be; were faith in the shows of things entirely swept-out, replaced by clear faith in the _things_, so that a man acted on the impulse of that only, and counted the other non-extant; what a new livelier feeling towards this burns were it! nay here in these pages, such as they are, have we not two mere poets, if not deified, yet we may say beatified? shakspeare and dante are saints of poetry; really, if we will think of it, _canonised_, so that it is impiety to meddle with them. the unguided instinct of the world, working across all these perverse impediments, has arrived at such result. dante and shakspeare are a peculiar two. they dwell apart, in a kind of royal solitude; none equal, none second to them: in the general feeling of the world, a certain transcendentalism, a glory as of complete perfection, invests these two. they _are_ canonised, though no pope or cardinals took hand in doing it! such, in spite of every perverting influence, in the most unheroic times, is still our indestructible reverence for heroism.--we will look a little at these two, the poet dante and the poet shakspeare: what little it is permitted us to say here of the hero as poet will most fitly arrange itself in that fashion. * * * * * many volumes have been written by way of commentary on dante and his book; yet, on the whole, with no great result. his biography is, as it were, irrecoverably lost for us. an unimportant, wandering, sorrowstricken man, not much note was taken of him while he lived; and the most of that has vanished, in the long space that now intervenes. it is five centuries since he ceased writing and living here. after all commentaries, the book itself is mainly what we know of him. the book;--and one might add that portrait commonly attributed to giotto, which, looking on it, you cannot help inclining to think genuine, whoever did it. to me it is a most touching face; perhaps of all faces that i know, the most so. lonely there, painted as on vacancy, with the simple laurel wound round it; the deathless sorrow and pain, the known victory which is also deathless;--significant of the whole history of dante! i think it is the mournfulest face that ever was painted from reality; an altogether tragic, heart-affecting face. there is in it, as foundation of it, the softness, tenderness, gentle affection as of a child; but all this is as if congealed into sharp contradiction, into abnegation, isolation, proud hopeless pain. a soft ethereal soul looking-out so stern, implacable, grim-trenchant, as from imprisonment of thick-ribbed ice! withal it is a silent pain too, a silent scornful one: the lip is curled in a kind of godlike disdain of the thing that is eating-out his heart,--as if it were withal a mean insignificant thing, as if he whom it had power to torture and strangle were greater than it. the face of one wholly in protest, and life-long unsurrendering battle, against the world. affection all converted into indignation: an implacable indignation; slow, equable, silent, like that of a god! the eye too, it looks-out as in a kind of _surprise_, a kind of inquiry, why the world was of such a sort? this is dante: so he looks, this 'voice of ten silent centuries,' and sings us 'his mystic unfathomable song.' the little that we know of dante's life corresponds well enough with this portrait and this book. he was born at florence, in the upper class of society, in the year . his education was the best then going; much school-divinity, aristotelean logic, some latin classics,--no inconsiderable insight into certain provinces of things: and dante, with his earnest intelligent nature, we need not doubt, learned better than most all that was learnable. he has a clear cultivated understanding, and of great subtlety; the best fruit of education he had contrived to realise from these scholastics. he knows accurately and well what lies close to him; but, in such a time, without printed books or free intercourse, he could not know well what was distant: the small clear light, most luminous for what is near, breaks itself into singular _chiaroscuro_ striking on what is far off. this was dante's learning from the schools. in life, he had gone through the usual destinies; been twice out campaigning as a soldier for the florentine state, been on embassy; had in his thirty-fifth year, by natural gradation of talent and service, become one of the chief magistrates of florence. he had met in boyhood a certain beatrice portinari, a beautiful little girl of his own age and rank, and grown-up thenceforth in partial sight of her, in some distant intercourse with her. all readers know his graceful affecting account of this; and then of their being parted; of her being wedded to another, and of her death soon after. she makes a great figure in dante's poem; seems to have made a great figure in his life. of all beings it might seem as if she, held apart from him, far apart at last in the dim eternity, were the only one he had ever with his whole strength of affection loved. she died: dante himself was wedded; but it seems not happily, far from happily. i fancy, the rigorous earnest man, with his keen excitabilities, was not altogether easy to make happy. we will not complain of dante's miseries: had all gone right with him as he wished it, he might have been prior, podestà, or whatsoever they call it, of florence, well accepted among neighbours,--and the world had wanted one of the most notable words ever spoken or sung. florence would have had another prosperous lord mayor; and the ten dumb centuries continued voiceless, and the ten other listening centuries (for there will be ten of them and more) had no _divina commedia_ to hear! we will complain of nothing. a nobler destiny was appointed for this dante; and he, struggling like a man led towards death and crucifixion, could not help fulfilling it. give _him_ the choice of his happiness! he knew not, more than we do, what was really happy, what was really miserable. in dante's priorship, the guelf-ghibelline, bianchi-neri, or some other confused disturbance rose to such a height, that dante, whose party had seemed the stronger, was with his friends cast unexpectedly forth into banishment; doomed thenceforth to a life of woe and wandering. his property was all confiscated and more; he had the fiercest feeling that it was entirely unjust, nefarious in the sight of god and man. he tried what was in him to get reinstated; tried even by warlike surprisal, with arms in his hand: but it would not do; bad only had become worse. there is a record, i believe, still extant in the florence archives, dooming this dante, wheresoever caught, to be burnt alive. burnt alive; so it stands, they say: a very curious civic document. another curious document, some considerable number of years later, is a letter of dante's to the florentine magistrates, written in answer to a milder proposal of theirs, that he should return on condition of apologising and paying a fine. he answers, with fixed stern pride: "if i cannot return without calling myself guilty, i will never return, _nunquam revertar_." for dante there was now no home in this world. he wandered from patron to patron, from place to place; proving in his own bitter words, 'how hard is the path, _come è duro calle_.' the wretched are not cheerful company. dante, poor and banished, with his proud earnest nature, with his moody humours, was not a man to conciliate men. petrarch reports of him that being at can della scala's court, and blamed one day for his gloom and taciturnity, he answered in no courtier-like way. della scala stood among his courtiers, with mimes and buffoons (_nebulones ac histriones_) making him heartily merry; when turning to dante, he said: "is it not strange, now, that this poor fool should make himself so entertaining; while you, a wise man, sit there day after day, and have nothing to amuse us with at all?" dante answered bitterly: "no, not strange; your highness is to recollect the proverb, _like to like_;"--given the amuser, the amusee must also be given! such a man, with his proud silent ways, with his sarcasms and sorrows, was not made to succeed at court. by degrees, it came to be evident to him that he had no longer any resting-place, or hope of benefit, in this earth. the earthly world had cast him forth, to wander, wander; no living heart to love him now; for his sore miseries there was no solace here. the deeper naturally would the eternal world impress itself on him; that awful reality over which, after all, this time-world, with its florences and banishments, only flutters as an unreal shadow. florence thou shalt never see: but hell and purgatory and heaven thou shalt surely see! what is florence, can della scala, and the world and life altogether? eternity: thither, of a truth, not elsewhither, art thou and all things bound! the great soul of dante, homeless on earth, made its home more and more in that awful other world. naturally his thoughts brooded on that, as on the one fact important for him. bodied or bodiless, it is the one fact important for all men:--but to dante, in that age, it was bodied in fixed certainty of scientific shape; he no more doubted of that _malebolge_ pool, that it all lay there with its gloomy circles, with its _alti guai_, and that he himself should see it, than we doubt that we should see constantinople if we went thither. dante's heart, long filled with this, brooding over it in speechless thought and awe, bursts forth at length into 'mystic unfathomable song;' and this his _divine comedy_, the most remarkable of all modern books, is the result. it must have been a great solacement to dante, and was, as we can see, a proud thought for him at times, that he, here in exile, could do this work; that no florence, nor no man or men, could hinder him from doing it, or even much help him in doing it. he knew too, partly, that it was great; the greatest a man could do. 'if thou follow thy star, _se tu segui tua stella_,'--so could the hero, in his forsakenness, in his extreme need, still say to himself: "follow thou thy star, thou shalt not fail of a glorious haven!" the labour of writing, we find, and indeed could know otherwise, was great and painful for him; he says, this book, 'which has made me lean for many years.' ah yes, it was won, all of it, with pain and sore toil,--not in sport, but in grim earnest. his book, as indeed most good books are, has been written, in many senses, with his heart's blood. it is his whole history, this book. he died after finishing it; not yet very old, at the age of fifty-six;--broken-hearted rather, as is said. he lies buried in his death-city ravenna: _hic claudor dantes patriis extorris ab oris._ the florentines begged back his body, in a century after; the ravenna people would not give it. "here am i dante laid, shut-out from my native shores." i said, dante's poem was a song: it is tieck who calls it 'a mystic unfathomable song;' and such is literally the character of it. coleridge remarks very pertinently somewhere, that wherever you find a sentence musically worded, of true rhythm and melody in the words, there is something deep and good in the meaning too. for body and soul, word and idea, go strangely together here as everywhere. song: we said before, it was the heroic of speech! all _old_ poems, homer's and the rest, are authentically songs. i would say, in strictness, that all right poems are; that whatsoever is not _sung_ is properly no poem, but a piece of prose cramped into jingling lines,--to the great injury of the grammar, to the great grief of the reader, for most part! what we want to get at is the _thought_ the man had, if he had any: why should he twist it into jingle, if he _could_ speak it out plainly? it is only when the heart of him is rapt into true passion of melody, and the very tones of him, according to coleridge's remark, become musical by the greatness, depth and music of his thoughts, that we can give him right to rhyme and sing; that we call him a poet, and listen to him as the heroic of speakers,--whose speech _is_ song. pretenders to this are many; and to an earnest reader, i doubt, it is for most part a very melancholy, not to say an insupportable business, that of reading rhyme! rhyme that had no inward necessity to be rhymed;--it ought to have told us plainly, without any jingle, what it was aiming at. i would advise all men who _can_ speak their thought, not to sing it; to understand that, in a serious time, among serious men, there is no vocation in them for singing it. precisely as we love the true song, and are charmed by it as by something divine, so shall we hate the false song, and account it a mere wooden noise, a thing hollow, superfluous, altogether an insincere and offensive thing. i give dante my highest praise when i say of his _divine comedy_ that it is, in all senses, genuinely a song. in the very sound of it there is a _canto fermo_; it proceeds as by a chant. the language, his simple _terza rima_, doubtless helped him in this. one reads along naturally with a sort of _lilt_. but i add, that it could not be otherwise; for the essence and material of the work are themselves rhythmic. its depth, and rapt passion and sincerity, makes its musical;--go _deep_ enough, there is music everywhere. a true inward symmetry, what one calls an architectural harmony, reigns in it, proportionates it all: architectural; which also partakes of the character of music. the three kingdoms, _inferno_, _purgatorio_, _paradiso_, look-out on one another like compartments of a great edifice; a great supernatural world-cathedral, piled-up there, stern, solemn, awful; dante's world of souls! it is, at bottom, the _sincerest_ of all poems; sincerity, here too, we find to be the measure of worth. it came deep out of the author's heart of hearts; and it goes deep, and through long generations, into ours. the people of verona, when they saw him on the streets, used to say, "_eccovi l' uom ch' è stato all' inferno_, see, there is the man that was in hell!" ah, yes, he had been in hell;--in hell enough, in long severe sorrow and struggle; as the like of him is pretty sure to have been. commedias that come-out _divine_ are not accomplished otherwise. thought, true labour of any kind, highest virtue itself, is it not the daughter of pain? born as out of the black whirlwind;--true _effort_, in fact, as of a captive struggling to free himself: that is thought. in all ways we are 'to become perfect through _suffering_.'--but, as i say, no work known to me is so elaborated as this of dante's. it has all been as if molten, in the hottest furnace of his soul. it had made him 'lean' for many years. not the general whole only; every compartment of it is worked-out, with intense earnestness, into truth, into clear visuality. each answers to the other; each fits in its place, like a marble stone accurately hewn and polished. it is the soul of dante, and in this the soul of the middle ages, rendered forever rhythmically visible there. no light task; a right intense one: but a task which is _done_. perhaps one would say, _intensity_, with the much that depends on it, is the prevailing character of dante's genius. dante does not come before us as a large catholic mind; rather as a narrow and even sectarian mind: it is partly the fruit of his age and position, but partly too of his own nature. his greatness has, in all senses, concentered itself into fiery emphasis and depth. he is world-great not because he is world-wide, but because he is world-deep. through all objects he pierces as it were down into the heart of being. i know nothing so intense as dante. consider, for example, to begin with the outermost development of his intensity, consider how he paints. he has a great power of vision; seizes the very type of a thing; presents that and nothing more. you remember that first view he gets of the hall of dite: _red_ pinnacle, redhot cone of iron glowing through the dim immensity of gloom;--so vivid, so distinct, visible at once and forever! it is as an emblem of the whole genius of dante. there is a brevity, an abrupt precision in him: tacitus is not briefer, more condensed; and then in dante it seems a natural condensation, spontaneous to the man. one smiting word; and then there is silence, nothing more said. his silence is more eloquent than words. it is strange with what a sharp decisive grace he snatches the true likeness of a matter: cuts into the matter as with a pen of fire. plutus, the blustering giant, collapses at virgil's rebuke; it is 'as the sails sink, the mast being suddenly broken.' or that poor brunetto latini, with the _cotto aspetto_, 'face _baked_,' parched brown and lean; and the 'fiery snow,' that falls on them there, a 'fiery snow without wind,' slow, deliberate, never-ending! or the lids of those tombs; square sarcophaguses, in that silent dim-burning hall, each with its soul in torment; the lids laid open there; they are to be shut at the day of judgment, through eternity. and how farinata rises; and how cavalcante falls--at hearing of his son, and the past tense '_fue_'! the very movements in dante have something brief; swift, decisive, almost military. it is of the inmost essence of his genius this sort of painting. the fiery, swift italian nature of the man, so silent, passionate, with its quick abrupt movements, its silent 'pale rages,' speaks itself in these things. for though this of painting is one of the outermost developments of a man, it comes like all else from the essential faculty of him; it is physiognomical of the whole man. find a man whose words paint you a likeness, you have found a man worth something; mark his manner of doing it, as very characteristic of him. in the first place, he could not have discerned the object at all, or seen the vital type of it, unless he had, what we may call, _sympathised_ with it,--had sympathy in him to bestow on objects. he must have been _sincere_ about it too; sincere and sympathetic: a man without worth cannot give you the likeness of any object; he dwells in vague outwardness, fallacy and trivial hearsay, about all objects. and indeed may we not say that intellect altogether expresses itself in this power of discerning what an object is? whatsoever of faculty a man's mind may have will come out here. is it even of business, a matter to be done? the gifted man is he who _sees_ the essential point, and leaves all the rest aside as surplusage: it is his faculty too, the man of business's faculty, that he discern the true _likeness_, not the false superficial one, of the thing he has got to work in. and how much of _morality_ is in the kind of insight we get of anything; 'the eye seeing in all things what it brought with it the faculty of seeing'! to the mean eye all things are trivial, as certainly as to the jaundiced they are yellow. raphael, the painters tell us, is the best of all portrait-painters withal. no most gifted eye can exhaust the significance of any object. in the commonest human face there lies more than raphael will take-away with him. dante's painting is not graphic only, brief, true, and of a vividness as of fire in dark night; taken on the wider scale, it is everyway noble, and the outcome of a great soul. francesca and her lover, what qualities in that! a thing woven as out of rainbows, on a ground of eternal black. a small flute-voice of infinite wail speaks there, into our very heart of hearts. a touch of womanhood in it too; _della bella persona, che mi fu tolta_; and how, even in the pit of woe, it is a solace that _he_ will never part from her! saddest tragedy in these _alti guai_. and the racking winds, in that _aer bruno_, whirl them away again, to wail forever!--strange to think: dante was the friend of this poor francesca's father; francesca herself may have sat upon the poet's knee, as a bright innocent little child. infinite pity, yet also infinite rigour of law: it is so nature is made; it is so dante discerned that she was made. what a paltry notion is that of his _divine comedy's_ being a poor splenetic impotent terrestrial libel; putting those into hell whom he could not be avenged-upon on earth! i suppose if ever pity, tender as a mother's, was in the heart of any man, it was in dante's. but a man who does not know rigour cannot pity either. his very pity will be cowardly, egoistic,--sentimentality, or little better. i know not in the world an affection equal to that of dante. it is a tenderness, a trembling, longing, pitying love: like the wail of Æolean harps, soft, soft; like a child's young heart;--and then that stern, sore-saddened heart! these longings of his towards his beatrice; their meeting together in the _paradiso_; his gazing in her pure transfigured eyes, her that had been purified by death so long, separated from him so far:--one likens it to the song of angels; it is among the purest utterances of affection, perhaps the very purest, that ever came out of a human soul. for the _intense_ dante is intense in all things; he has got into the essence of all. his intellectual insight as painter, on occasion too as reasoner, is but the result of all other sorts of intensity. morally great, above all, we must call him; it is the beginning of all. his scorn, his grief are as transcendent as his love;--as indeed, what are they but the _inverse_ or _converse_ of his love? '_a dio spiacenti ed a' nemici sui_, hateful to god and to the enemies of god:' lofty scorn, unappeasable silent reprobation and aversion; '_non ragionam di lor_, we will not speak of _them_, look only and pass.' or think of this; 'they have not the _hope_ to die, _non han speranza di morte_.' one day, it had risen sternly benign on the scathed heart of dante, that he, wretched, never-resting, worn as he was, would full surely _die_; 'that destiny itself could not doom him not to die.' such words are in this man. for rigour, earnestness and depth, he is not to be paralleled in the modern world; to seek his parallel we must go into the hebrew bible, and live with the antique prophets there. i do not agree with much modern criticism, in greatly preferring the _inferno_ to the two other parts of the divine _commedia_. such preference belongs, i imagine, to our general byronism of taste, and is like to be a transient feeling. the _purgatorio_ and _paradiso_, especially the former, one would almost say, is even more excellent than it. it is a noble thing that _purgatorio_, 'mountain of purification'; an emblem of the noblest conception of that age. if sin is so fatal, and hell is and must be so rigorous, awful, yet in repentance too is man purified; repentance is the grand christian act. it is beautiful how dante works it out. the _tremolar dell' onde_ that 'trembling' of the ocean-waves, under the first pure gleam of morning, dawning afar on the wandering two, is as the type of an altered mood. hope has now dawned; never-dying hope, if in company still with heavy sorrow. the obscure sojourn of dæmons and reprobate is underfoot; a soft breathing of penitence mounts higher and higher, to the throne of mercy itself. "pray for me," the denizens of that mount of pain all say to him. "tell my giovanna to pray for me," my daughter giovanna; "i think her mother loves me no more!" they toil painfully up by that winding steep, 'bent-down like corbels of a building,' some of them,--crushed-together so 'for the sin of pride'; yet nevertheless in years, in ages and æons, they shall have reached the top, which is heaven's gate, and by mercy shall have been admitted in. the joy too of all, when one has prevailed; the whole mountain shakes with joy, and a psalm of praise rises, when one soul has perfected repentance and got its sin and misery left behind! i call all this a noble embodiment of a true noble thought. but indeed the three compartments mutually support one another, are indispensable to one another. the _paradiso_, a kind of inarticulate music to me, is the redeeming side of the _inferno_; the _inferno_ without it were untrue. all three make-up the true unseen world, as figured in the christianity of the middle ages; a thing forever memorable, forever true in the essence of it, to all men. it was perhaps delineated in no human soul with such depth of veracity as in this of dante's; a man _sent_ to sing it, to keep it long memorable. very notable with what brief simplicity he passes out of the every-day reality, into the invisible one; and in the second or third stanza, we find ourselves in the world of spirits; and dwell there, as among things palpable, indubitable! to dante they _were_ so; the real world, as it is called, and its facts, was but the threshold to an infinitely higher fact of a world. at bottom, the one was as _preter_-natural as the other. has not each man a soul? he will not only be a spirit, but is one. to the earnest dante it is all one visible fact; he believes it, sees it; is the poet of it in virtue of that. sincerity, i say again, is the saving merit, now as always. dante's hell, purgatory, paradise, are a symbol withal, an emblematic representation of his belief about this universe:--some critic in a future age, like those scandinavian ones the other day, who has ceased altogether to think as dante did, may find this too all an 'allegory,' perhaps an idle allegory! it is a sublime embodiment, or sublimest, of the soul of christianity. it expresses, as in huge worldwide architectural emblems, how the christian dante felt good and evil to be the two polar elements of this creation, on which it all turns; that these two differ not by _preferability_ of one to the other, but by incompatibility absolute and infinite; that the one is excellent and high as light and heaven, the other hideous, black as gehenna and the pit of hell! everlasting justice, yet with penitence, with everlasting pity,--all christianism, as dante and the middle ages had it, is emblemed here. emblemed: and yet, as i urged the other day, with what entire truth of purpose; how unconscious of any embleming! hell, purgatory, paradise: these things were not fashioned as emblems; was there, in our modern european mind, any thought at all of their being emblems? were they not indubitable awful facts; the whole heart of man taking them for practically true, all nature everywhere confirming them? so is it always in these things. men do not believe an allegory. the future critic, whatever his new thought may be, who considers this of dante to have been all got-up as an allegory, will commit one sore mistake!--paganism we recognised as a veracious expression of the earnest awe-struck feeling of man towards the universe; veracious, true once, and still not without worth for us. but mark here the difference of paganism and christianism; one great difference. paganism emblemed chiefly the operations of nature; the destinies, efforts, combinations, vicissitudes of things and men in this world; christianism emblemed the law of human duty, the moral law of man. one was for the sensuous nature: a rude helpless utterance of the _first_ thought of men,--the chief recognised virtue, courage, superiority to fear. the other was not for the sensuous nature, but for the moral. what a progress is here, if in that one respect only!-- * * * * * and so in this dante, as we said, had ten silent centuries, in a very strange way, found a voice. the _divina commedia_ is of dante's writing; yet in truth _it_ belongs to ten christian centuries, only the finishing of it is dante's. so always. the craftsman there, the smith with that metal of his, with these tools, with these cunning methods,--how little of all he does is properly _his_ work! all past inventive men work there with him;--as indeed with all of us, in all things. dante is the spokesman of the middle ages; the thought they lived by stands here in everlasting music. these sublime ideas of his, terrible and beautiful, are the fruit of the christian meditation of all the good men who had gone before him. precious they; but also is not he precious? much, had not he spoken, would have been dumb; not dead, yet living voiceless. on the whole, is it not an utterance, this mystic song, at once of one of the greatest human souls, and of the highest thing that europe had hitherto realised for itself? christianism, as dante sings it, is another than paganism in the rude norse mind; another than 'bastard christianism' half-articulately spoken in the arab desert seven-hundred years before!--the noblest _idea_ made _real_ hitherto among men, is sung, and emblemed-forth abidingly, by one of the noblest men. in the one sense and in the other, are we not right glad to possess it? as i calculate, it may last yet for long thousands of years. for the thing that is uttered from the inmost parts of a man's soul, differs altogether from what is uttered by the outer part. the outer is of the day, under the empire of mode; the outer passes away, in swift endless changes; the inmost is the same yesterday, today and forever. true souls, in all generations of the world, who look on this dante, will find a brotherhood in him; the deep sincerity of his thoughts, his woes and hopes, will speak likewise to their sincerity; they will feel that this dante too was a brother. napoleon in saint-helena is charmed with the genial veracity of old homer. the oldest hebrew prophet, under a vesture the most diverse from ours, does yet, because he speaks from the heart of man, speak to all men's hearts. it is the one sole secret of continuing long memorable. dante, for depth of sincerity, is like an antique prophet too; his words, like theirs, come from his very heart. one need not wonder if it were predicted that his poem might be the most enduring thing our europe has yet made; for nothing so endures as a truly spoken word. all cathedrals, pontificalities, brass and stone, and outer arrangement never so lasting, are brief in comparison to an unfathomable heart-song like this: one feels as if it might survive, still of importance to men, when these had all sunk into new irrecognisable combinations, and had ceased individually to be. europe has made much; great cities, great empires, encyclopædias, creeds, bodies of opinion and practice: but it has made little of the class of dante's thought. homer yet _is_, veritably present face to face with every open soul of us; and greece, where is _it_? desolate for thousands of years; away, vanished; a bewildered heap of stones and rubbish, the life and existence of it all gone. like a dream; like the dust of king agamemnon! greece was; greece, except in the _words_ it spoke, is not. the uses of this dante? we will not say much about his 'uses.' a human soul who has once got into that primal element of _song_, and sung-forth fitly somewhat therefrom, has worked in the _depths_ of our existence; feeding through long times the life-_roots_ of all excellent human things whatsoever,--in a way that 'utilities' will not succeed well in calculating! we will not estimate the sun by the quantity of gas-light it saves us; dante shall be invaluable, or of no value. one remark i may make: the contrast in this respect between the hero-poet and the hero-prophet. in a hundred years, mahomet, as we saw, had his arabians at grenada and at delhi; dante's italians seem to be yet very much where they were. shall we say, then, dante's effect on the world was small in comparison? not so: his arena is far more restricted: but also it is far nobler, clearer;--perhaps not less but more important. mahomet speaks to great masses of men, in the coarse dialect adapted to such; a dialect filled with inconsistencies, crudities, follies: on the great masses alone can he act, and there with good and with evil strangely blended. dante speaks to the noble, the pure and great, in all times and places. neither does he grow obsolete, as the other does. dante burns as a pure star, fixed there in the firmament, at which the great and the high of all ages kindle themselves: he is the possession of all the chosen of the world for uncounted time. dante, one calculates, may long survive mahomet. in this way the balance may be made straight again. but, at any rate, it is not by what is called their effect on the world by what _we_ can judge of their effect there, that a man and his work are measured. effect? influence? utility? let a man _do_ his work; the fruit of it is the care of another than he. it will grow its own fruit; and whether embodied in caliph thrones and arabian conquests, so that it 'fills all morning and evening newspapers,' and all histories, which are a kind of distilled newspapers; or not embodied so at all;--what matters that? that is not the real fruit of it! the arabian caliph, in so far only as he did something, was something. if the great cause of man, and man's work in god's earth, got no furtherance from the arabian caliph, then no matter how many scimetars he drew, how many gold piasters pocketed, and what uproar and blaring he made in this world--he was but a loud-sounding inanity and futility; at bottom, he _was_ not at all. let us honour the great empire of _silence_, once more! the boundless treasury which we do _not_ jingle in our pockets, or count up and present before men! it is perhaps, of all things, the usefulest for each of us to do, in these loud times.---- * * * * * as dante, the italian man, was sent into our world to embody musically the religion of the middle ages, the religion of our modern europe, its inner life; so shakspeare, we may say, embodies for us the outer life of our europe as developed then, its chivalries, courtesies, humours, ambitions, what practical way of thinking, acting, looking at the world, men then had. as in homer we may still construe old greece; so in shakspeare and dante, after thousands of years, what our modern europe was, in faith and in practice, will still be legible. dante has given us the faith or soul; shakspeare, in a not less noble way, has given us the practice or body. this latter also we were to have: a man was sent for it, the man shakspeare. just when that chivalry way of life had reached its last finish, and was on the point of breaking down into slow or swift dissolution, as we now see it everywhere, this other sovereign poet, with his seeing eye, with his perennial singing voice, was sent to take note of it, to give long-enduring record of it. two fit men: dante, deep, fierce as the central fire of the world; shakspeare, wide, placid, far-seeing, as the sun, the upper light of the world. italy produced the one world-voice; we english had the honour of producing the other. curious enough how, as it were by mere accident, this man came to us. i think always, so great, quiet, complete and self-sufficing is this shakspeare, had the warwickshire squire not prosecuted him for deer-stealing, we had perhaps never heard of him as a poet! the woods and skies, the rustic life of man in stratford there, had been enough for this man! but indeed that strange outbudding of our whole english existence, which we call the elizabethan era, did not it too come as of its own accord? the 'tree igdrasil' buds and withers by its own laws,--too deep for our scanning. yet it does bud and wither, and every bough and leaf of it is there, by fixed eternal laws; not a sir thomas lucy but comes at the hour fit for him. curious, i say, and not sufficiently considered: how everything does coöperate with all; not a leaf rotting on the highway but is indissoluble portion of solar and stellar systems; no thought, word or act of man but has sprung withal out of all men, and works sooner or later, recognisably or irrecognisably, on all men! it is all a tree: circulation of sap and influences, mutual communication of every minutest leaf with the lowest talon of a root, with every other greatest and minutest portion of the whole. the tree igdrasil, that has its roots down in the kingdoms of hela and death, and whose boughs overspread the highest heaven!-- in some sense it may be said that this glorious elizabethan era with its shakspeare, as the outcome and flowerage of all which had preceded it, is itself attributable to the catholicism of the middle ages. the christian faith, which was the theme of dante's song, had produced this practical life which shakspeare was to sing. for religion then, as it now and always is, was the soul of practice; the primary vital fact in men's life. and remark here, as rather curious, that middle-age catholicism was abolished, so far as acts of parliament could abolish it, before shakspeare, the noblest product of it, made his appearance. he did make his appearance nevertheless. nature at her own time, with catholicism or what else might be necessary, sent him forth; taking small thought of acts of parliament. king-henrys, queen-elizabeths go their way; and nature too goes hers. acts of parliament, on the whole, are small, notwithstanding the noise they make. what act of parliament, debate at st. stephen's, on the hustings or elsewhere, was it that brought this shakspeare into being? no dining at freemasons' tavern, opening subscription-lists, selling of shares, and infinite other jangling and true or false endeavouring! this elizabethan era, and all its nobleness and blessedness, came without proclamation, preparation of ours. priceless shakspeare was the free gift of nature; given altogether silently;--received altogether silently, as if it had been a thing of little account. and yet, very literally, it is a priceless thing. one should look at that side of matters too. of this shakspeare of ours, perhaps the opinion one sometimes hears a little idolatrously expressed is, in fact, the right one; i think the best judgment not of this country only, but of europe at large, is slowly pointing to the conclusion, that shakspeare is the chief of all poets hitherto; the greatest intellect who, in our recorded world, has left record of himself in the way of literature. on the whole, i know not such a power of vision, such a faculty of thought, if we take all the characters of it, in any other man. such a calmness of depth; placid joyous strength; all things imaged in that great soul of his so true and clear, as in a tranquil unfathomable sea! it has been said, that in the constructing of shakspeare's dramas there is, apart from all other 'faculties' as they are called, an understanding manifested, equal to that in bacon's _novum organum_. that is true; and it is not a truth that strikes every one. it would become more apparent if we tried, any of us for himself, how, out of shakspeare's dramatic materials, _we_ could fashion such a result! the built house seems all so fit,--everyway as it should be, as if it came there by its own law and the nature of things,--we forget the rude disorderly quarry it was shaped from. the very perfection of the house, as if nature herself had made it, hides the builder's merit. perfect, more perfect than any other man, we may call shakspeare in this: he discerns, knows as by instinct, what condition he works under, what his materials are, what his own force and its relation to them is. it is not a transitory glance of insight that will suffice; it is deliberate illumination of the whole matter; it is a calmly _seeing_ eye; a great intellect, in short. how a man, of some wide thing that he has witnessed, will construct a narrative, what kind of picture and delineation he will give of it,--is the best measure you could get of what intellect is in the man. which circumstance is vital and shall stand prominent; which unessential, fit to be suppressed; where is the true _beginning_, the true sequence and ending? to find out this, you task the whole force of insight that is in the man. he must _understand_ the thing; according to the depth of his understanding, will the fitness of his answer be. you will try him so. does like join itself to like; does the spirit of method stir in that confusion, so that its embroilment becomes order? can the man say, _fiat lux_, let there be light; and out of chaos make a world? precisely as there is _light_ in himself, will he accomplish this. or indeed we may say again, it is in what i called portrait-painting, delineating of men and things, especially of men, that shakspeare is great. all the greatness of the man comes out decisively here. it is unexampled, i think, that calm creative perspicacity of shakspeare. the thing he looks at reveals not this or that face of it, but its inmost heart, and generic secret: it dissolves itself as in light before him, so that he discerns the perfect structure of it. creative, we said: poetic creation, what is this too but _seeing_ the thing sufficiently? the _word_ that will describe the thing, follows of itself from such clear intense sight of the thing. and is not shakspeare's _morality_, his valour, candour, tolerance, truthfulness; his whole victorious strength and greatness, which can triumph over such obstructions, visible there too? great as the world! no _twisted_, poor convex-concave mirror, reflecting all objects with its own convexities and concavities; a perfectly _level_ mirror;--that is to say withal, if we will understand it, a man justly related to all things and men, a good man. it is truly a lordly spectacle how this great soul takes-in all kinds of men and objects, a falstaff, an othello, a juliet, a coriolanus; sets them all forth to us in their round completeness; loving, just, the equal brother of all. _novum organum_, and all the intellect you will find in bacon, is of a quite secondary order; earthly, material, poor in comparison with this. among modern men, one finds, in strictness, almost nothing of the same rank. goethe alone, since the days of shakspeare, reminds me of it. of him too you say that he _saw_ the object; you may say what he himself says of shakspeare: 'his characters are like watches with dial-plates of transparent crystal; they show you the hour like others, and the inward mechanism also is all visible.' the seeing eye! it is this that discloses the inner harmony of things; what nature meant, what musical idea nature has wrapped-up in these often rough embodiments. something she did mean. to the seeing eye that something were discernible. are they base, miserable things? you can laugh over them, you can weep over them; you can in some way or other genially relate yourself to them;--you can, at lowest, hold your peace about them, turn away your own and others' face from them, till the hour come for practically exterminating and extinguishing them! at bottom, it is the poet's first gift, as it is all men's, that he have intellect enough. he will be a poet if he have: a poet in word; or failing that, perhaps still better, a poet in act. whether he write at all; and if so, whether in prose or in verse, will depend on accidents: who knows on what extremely trivial accidents,--perhaps on his having had a singing-master, on his being taught to sing in his boyhood! but the faculty which enables him to discern the inner heart of things, and the harmony that dwells there (for whatsoever exists has a harmony in the heart of it, or it would not hold together and exist), is not the result of habits or accidents, but the gift of nature herself; the primary outfit for a heroic man in what sort soever. to the poet, as to every other, we say first of all, _see_. if you cannot do that, it is of no use to keep stringing rhymes together, jingling sensibilities against each other, and _name_ yourself a poet; there is no hope for you. if you can, there is, in prose or verse, in action or speculation, all manner of hope. the crabbed old schoolmaster used to ask, when they brought him a new pupil, "but are ye sure he's _not a dunce_?" why, really one might ask the same thing in regard to every man proposed for whatsoever function; and consider it as the one inquiry needful: are ye sure he's not a dunce? there is, in this world, no other entirely fatal person. for, in fact, i say the degree of vision that dwells in a man is a correct measure of the man. if called to define shakspeare's faculty, i should say superiority of intellect, and think i had included all under that. what indeed are faculties? we talk of faculties as if they were distinct, things separable; as if a man had intellect, imagination, fancy, &c, as he has hands, feet and arms. that is a capital error. then again, we hear of a man's 'intellectual nature,' and of his 'moral nature,' as if these again were divisible, and existed apart. necessities of language do perhaps prescribe such forms of utterance; we must speak, i am aware, in that way, if we are to speak at all. but words ought not to harden into things for us. it seems to me, our apprehension of this matter is, for the most part, radically falsified thereby. we ought to know withal, and to keep for ever in mind, that these divisions are at bottom but _names_; that man's spiritual nature, the vital force which dwells in him, is essentially one and indivisible; that what we call imagination, fancy, understanding, and so forth, are but different figures of the same power of insight, all indissolubly connected with each other, physiognomically related; that if we knew one of them, we might know all of them. morality itself, what we call the moral quality of a man, what is this but another _side_ of the one vital force whereby he is and works? all that a man does is physiognomical of him. you may see how a man would fight, by the way in which he sings; his courage, or want of courage, is visible in the word he utters, in the opinion he has formed, no less than in the stroke he strikes. he is _one_; and preaches the same self abroad in all these ways. without hands a man might have feet, and could still walk: but, consider it,--without morality, intellect were impossible for him; a thoroughly immoral _man_ could not know anything at all! to know a thing, what we can call knowing, a man must first _love_ the thing, sympathise with it: that is, be _virtuously_ related to it. if he have not the justice to put down his own selfishness at every turn, the courage to stand by the dangerous-true at every turn, how shall he know? his virtues, all of them, will lie recorded in his knowledge. nature, with her truth, remains to the bad, to the selfish and the pusillanimous forever a sealed book: what such can know of nature is mean, superficial, small; for the uses of the day merely.--but does not the very fox know something of nature? exactly so: it knows where the geese lodge! the human reynard, very frequent everywhere in the world, what more does he know but this and the like of this? nay, it should be considered, too, that if the fox had not a certain vulpine _morality_, he could not even know where the geese were, or get at the geese! if he spent his time in splenetic atrabiliar reflections on his own misery, his ill usage by nature, fortune and other foxes, and so forth; and had not courage, promptitude, practicality, and other suitable vulpine gifts and graces, he would catch no geese. we may say of the fox too, that his morality and insight are of the same dimensions; different faces of the same internal unity of vulpine life!--these things are worth stating; for the contrary of them acts with manifold very baleful perversion, in this time: what limitations, modifications they require, your own candour will supply. if i say, therefore, that shakspeare is the greatest of intellects, i have said all concerning him. but there is more in shakspeare's intellect than we have yet seen. it is what i call an unconscious intellect; there is more virtue in it than he himself is aware of. novalis beautifully remarks of him, that those dramas of his are products of nature too, deep as nature herself. i find a great truth in this saying. shakspeare's art is not artifice; the noblest worth of it is not there by plan or precontrivance. it grows-up from the deeps of nature, through this noble sincere soul, who is a voice of nature. the latest generations of men will find new meanings in shakspeare, new elucidations of their own human being; 'new harmonies with the infinite structure of the universe; concurrences with later ideas, affinities with the higher powers and senses of man.' this well deserves meditating. it is nature's highest reward to a true simple great soul, that he get thus to be a _part of herself_. such a man's works, whatsoever he with utmost conscious exertion and forethought shall accomplish, grow up withal unconsciously, from the unknown deeps in him;--as the oak-tree grows from the earth's bosom, as the mountains and waters shape themselves; with a symmetry grounded on nature's own laws, conformable to all truth whatsoever. how much in shakspeare lies hid; his sorrows, his silent struggles known to himself; much that was not known at all, not speakable at all; like _roots_, like sap and forces working underground! speech is great; but silence is greater. withal the joyful tranquillity of this man is notable. i will not blame dante for his misery: it is as battle without victory; but true battle,--the first, indispensable thing. yet i call shakspeare greater than dante, in that he fought truly, and did conquer. doubt it not, he had his own sorrows: those _sonnets_ of his will even testify expressly in what deep waters he had waded, and swum struggling for his life;--as what man like him ever failed to have to do? it seems to me a heedless notion, our common one, that he sat like a bird on the bough; and sang forth, free and offhand, never knowing the troubles of other men. not so; with no man is it so. how could a man travel forward from rustic deer-poaching to such tragedy-writing, and not fall-in with sorrows by the way? or, still better, how could a man delineate a hamlet, a coriolanus, a macbeth, so many suffering heroic hearts, if his own heroic heart had never suffered?--and now, in contrast with all this, observe his mirthfulness, his genuine overflowing love of laughter! you would say, in no point does he _exaggerate_ but only in laughter. fiery objurgations, words that pierce and burn, are to be found in shakspeare; yet he is always in measure here; never what johnson would remark as a specially 'good hater.' but his laughter seems to pour from him in floods; he heaps all manner of ridiculous nicknames on the butt he is bantering, tumbles and tosses him in all sorts of horse-play; you would say, with his whole heart laughs. and then, if not always the finest, it is always a genial laughter. not at mere weakness, at misery or poverty; never. no man who _can_ laugh, what we call laughing, will laugh at these things. it is some poor character only _desiring_ to laugh, and have the credit of wit, that does so. laughter means sympathy; good laughter is not 'the crackling of thorns under the pot.' even at stupidity and pretension this shakspeare does not laugh otherwise than genially. dogberry and verges tickle our very hearts; and we dismiss them covered with explosions of laughter: but we like the poor fellows only the better for our laughing; and hope they will get on well there, and continue presidents of the city-watch. such laughter, like sunshine on the deep sea, is very beautiful to me. * * * * * we have no room to speak of shakspeare's individual works; though perhaps there is much still waiting to be said on that head. had we, for instance, all his plays reviewed as _hamlet_, in _wilhelm meister_, is! a thing which might, one day, be done. august wilhelm schlegel has a remark on his historical plays, _henry fifth_ and the others, which is worth remembering. he calls them a kind of national epic. marlborough, you recollect, said, he knew no english history but what he had learned from shakspeare. there are really, if we look to it, few as memorable histories. the great salient points are admirably seized; all rounds itself off, into a kind of rhythmic coherence; it is, as schlegel says, _epic_;--as indeed all delineation by a great thinker will be. there are right beautiful things in those pieces, which indeed together form one beautiful thing. that battle of agincourt strikes me as one of the most perfect things, in its sort, we anywhere have of shakspeare's. the description of the two hosts: the worn-out, jaded english; the dread hour, big with destiny, when the battle shall begin; and then that deathless valour: "ye good yeomen, whose limbs were made in england!" there is a noble patriotism in it,--far other than the 'indifference' you sometimes hear ascribed to shakspeare. a true english heart breathes, calm and strong, through the whole business; not boisterous, protrusive; all the better for that. there is a sound in it like the ring of steel. this man too had a right stroke in him, had it come to that! but i will say, of shakspeare's works generally, that we have no full impress of him there; even as full as we have of many men. his works are so many windows, through which we see a glimpse of the world that was in him. all his works seem, comparatively speaking, cursory, imperfect, written under cramping circumstances; giving only here and there a note of the full utterance of the man. passages there are that come upon you like splendour out of heaven; bursts of radiance, illuminating the very heart of the thing: you say, "that is _true_, spoken once and forever; wheresoever and whensoever there is an open human soul, that will be recognised as true!" such bursts, however, make us feel that the surrounding matter is not radiant; that it is, in part, temporary, conventional. alas, shakspeare had to write for the globe play-house: his great soul had to crush itself, as it could, into that and no other mould. it was with him, then, as it is with us all. no man works save under conditions. the sculptor cannot set his own free thought before us; but his thought as he could translate it into the stone that was given, with the tools that were given. _disjecta membra_ are all that we find of any poet, or of any man. * * * * * whoever looks intelligently at this shakspeare may recognise that he too was a _prophet_, in his way; of an insight analogous to the prophetic, though he took it up in another strain. nature seemed to this man also divine; unspeakable, deep as tophet, high as heaven: 'we are such stuff as dreams are made of!' that scroll in westminster abbey, which few read with understanding, is of the depth of any seer. but the man sang; did not preach, except musically. we called dante the melodious priest of middle-age catholicism. may we not call shakspeare the still more melodious priest of a _true_ catholicism, the 'universal church' of the future and of all times? no narrow superstition, harsh asceticism, intolerance, fanatical fierceness or perversion: a revelation, so far as it goes, that such a thousandfold hidden beauty and divineness dwells in all nature; which let all men worship as they can! we may say without offence, that there rises a kind of universal psalm out of this shakspeare too; not unfit to make itself heard among the still more sacred psalms. not in disharmony with these, if we understood them, but in harmony!--i cannot call this shakspeare a 'sceptic,' as some do; his indifference to the creeds and theological quarrels of his time misleading them. no: neither unpatriotic, though he says little about his patriotism; nor sceptic, though he says little about his faith. such 'indifference' was the fruit of his greatness withal: his whole heart was in his own grand sphere of worship (we may call it such): these other controversies, vitally important to other men, were not vital to him. but call it worship, call it what you will, is it not a right glorious thing, and set of things, this that shakspeare has brought us? for myself, i feel that there is actually a kind of sacredness in the fact of such a man being sent into this earth. is he not an eye to us all; a blessed heaven-sent bringer of light?--and, at bottom, was it not perhaps far better that this shakspeare, everyway an unconscious man, was _conscious_ of no heavenly message? he did not feel, like mahomet, because he saw into those internal splendours, that he specially was the 'prophet of god:' and was he not greater than mahomet in that? greater; and also, if we compute strictly, as we did in dante's case, more successful. it was intrinsically an error that notion of mahomet's, of his supreme prophethood: and has come down to us inextricably involved in error to this day; dragging along with it such a coil of fables, impurities, intolerances, as makes it a questionable step for me here and now to say, as i have done, that mahomet was a true speaker at all, and not rather an ambitious charlatan, perversity and simulacrum; no speaker, but a babbler! even in arabia, as i compute, mahomet will have exhausted himself and become obsolete, while this shakspeare, this dante may still be young;--while this shakspeare may still pretend to be a priest of mankind, of arabia as of other places, for unlimited periods to come! compared with any speaker or singer one knows, even with Æschylus or homer, why should he not, for veracity and universality, last like them? he is _sincere_ as they; reaches deep down like them, to the universal and perennial. but as for mahomet, i think it had been better for him _not_ to be so conscious! alas, poor mahomet; all that he was _conscious_ of was a mere error; a futility and triviality,--as indeed such ever is. the truly great in him too was the unconscious: that he was a wild arab lion of the desert, and did speak-out with that great thunder-voice of his, not by words which he _thought_ to be great, but by actions, by feelings, by a history which _were_ great! his koran has become a stupid piece of prolix absurdity; we do not believe, like him, that god wrote that! the great man here too, as always, is a force of nature: whatsoever is truly great in him springs-up from the inarticulate deeps. * * * * * well: this is our poor warwickshire peasant, who rose to be manager of a playhouse, so that he could live without begging; whom the earl of southampton cast some kind glances on; whom sir thomas lucy, many thanks to him, was for sending to the treadmill! we did not account him a god, like odin, while he dwelt with us;--on which point there were much to be said. but i will say rather, or repeat: in spite of the sad state hero-worship now lies in, consider what this shakspeare has actually become among us. which englishman we ever made, in this land of ours, which million of englishmen, would we not give-up rather than the stratford peasant? there is no regiment of highest dignitaries that we would sell him for. he is the grandest thing we have yet done. for our honour among foreign nations, as an ornament to our english household, what item is there that we would not surrender rather than him? consider now, if they asked us, will you give-up your indian empire or your shakspeare, you english; never have had any indian empire, or never have had any shakspeare? really it were a grave question. official persons would answer doubtless in official language; but we, for our part too, should not we be forced to answer: indian empire, or no indian empire; we cannot do without shakspeare! indian empire will go, at any rate, some day; but this shakspeare does not go, he lasts forever with us; we cannot give-up our shakspeare! nay, apart from spiritualities; and considering him merely as a real, marketable, tangibly-useful possession. england, before long, this island of ours, will hold but a small fraction of the english: in america, in new holland, east and west to the very antipodes, there will be a saxondom covering great spaces of the globe. and now, what is it that can keep all these together into virtually one nation, so that they do not fall-out and fight, but live at peace, in brotherlike intercourse, helping one another? this is justly regarded as the greatest practical problem, the thing all manner of sovereignties and governments are here to accomplish: what is it that will accomplish this? acts of parliament, administrative prime-ministers cannot. america is parted from us, so far as parliament could part it. call it not fantastic, for there is much reality in it: here, i say, is an english king, whom no time or chance, parliament or combination of parliaments, can dethrone! this king shakspeare, does not he shine, in crowned sovereignty, over us all, as the noblest, gentlest, yet strongest of rallying-signs; indestructible; really more valuable in that point of view than any other means or appliance whatsoever? we can fancy him as radiant aloft over all the nations of englishmen, a thousand years hence. from paramatta, from new york, wheresoever, under what sort of parish-constable soever, english men and women are, they will say to one another: "yes, this shakspeare is ours; we produced him, we speak and think by him; we are of one blood and kind with him." the most common-sense politician too, if he pleases, may think of that. yes, truly, it is a great thing for a nation that it get an articulate voice; that it produce a man who will speak-forth melodiously what the heart of it means! italy, for example, poor italy lies dismembered, scattered asunder, not appearing in any protocol or treaty as a unity at all; yet the noble italy is actually _one_: italy produced its dante; italy can speak! the czar of all the russias, he is strong, with so many bayonets, cossacks and cannons; and does a great feat in keeping such a tract of earth politically together; but he cannot yet speak. something great in him, but it is a dumb greatness. he has had no voice of genius, to be heard of all men and times. he must learn to speak. he is a great dumb monster hitherto. his cannons and cossacks will all have rusted into nonentity, while that dante's voice is still audible. the nation that has a dante is bound together as no dumb russia can be.--we must here end what we had to say of the _hero-poet_. lecture iv the hero as priest. luther; reformation: knox; puritanism. [_friday, th may _] our present discourse is to be of the great man as priest. we have repeatedly endeavoured to explain that all sorts of heroes are intrinsically of the same material; that given a great soul, open to the divine significance of life, then there is given a man fit to speak of this, to sing of this, to fight and work for this, in a great, victorious, enduring manner; there is given a hero,--the outward shape of whom will depend on the time and the environment he finds himself in. the priest too, as i understand it, is a kind of prophet; in him too there is required to be a light of inspiration, as we must name it. he presides over the worship of the people; is the uniter of them with the unseen holy. he is the spiritual captain of the people; as the prophet is their spiritual king with many captains: he guides them heavenward, by wise guidance through this earth and its work. the ideal of him is, that he too be what we can call a voice from the unseen heaven; interpreting, even as the prophet did, and in a more familiar manner unfolding the same to men. the unseen heaven,--the 'open secret of the universe,'--which so few have an eye for! he is the prophet shorn of his more awful splendour; burning with mild equable radiance, as the enlightener of daily life. this, i say, is the ideal of a priest. so in old times; so in these, and in all times. one knows very well that, in reducing ideals to practice, great latitude of tolerance is needful; very great. but a priest who is not this at all, who does not any longer aim or try to be this, is a character--of whom we had rather not speak in this place. luther and knox were by express vocation priests, and did faithfully perform that function in its common sense. yet it will suit us better here to consider them chiefly in their historical character, rather as reformers than priests. there have been other priests perhaps equally notable, in calmer times, for doing faithfully the office of a leader of worship; bringing down, by faithful heroism in that kind, a light from heaven into the daily life of their people; leading them forward, as under god's guidance, in the way wherein they were to go. but when this same _way_ was a rough one, of battle, confusion and danger, the spiritual captain, who led through that, becomes, especially to us who live under the fruit of his leading, more notable than any other. he is the warfaring and battling priest; who led his people, not to quiet faithful labour as in smooth times, but to faithful valorous conflict, in times all violent, dismembered: a more perilous service, and a more memorable one, be it higher or not. these two men we will account our best priests, inasmuch as they were our best reformers. nay i may ask, is not every true reformer, by the nature of him, a _priest_ first of all? he appeals to heaven's invisible justice against earth's visible force; knows that it, the invisible, is strong and alone strong. he is a believer in the divine truth of things; a _seer_, seeing through the shows of things; a worshipper, in one way or the other, of the divine truth of things; a priest, that is. if he be not first a priest, he will never be good for much as a reformer. thus, then, as we have seen great men, in various situations, building up religions, heroic forms of human existence in this world, theories of life worthy to be sung by a dante, practices of life by a shakspeare,--we are now to see the reverse process; which also is necessary, which also may be carried on in the heroic manner. curious how this should be necessary; yet necessary it is. the mild shining of the poet's light has to give place to the fierce lightning of the reformer: unfortunately the reformer too is a personage that cannot fail in history! the poet indeed, with his mildness, what is he but the product and ultimate adjustment of reform, or prophecy with its fierceness? no wild saint dominics and thebaïd eremites, there had been no melodious dante; rough practical endeavour, scandinavian and other, from odin to walter raleigh, from ulfila to cranmer, enabled shakspeare to speak. nay the finished poet, i remark sometimes, is a symptom that his epoch itself has reached perfection and is finished; that before long there will be a new epoch, new reformers needed. doubtless it were finer, could we go along always in the way of _music_; be tamed and taught by our poets, as the rude creatures were by their orpheus of old. or failing this rhythmic _musical_ way, how good were it could we get so much as into the _equable_ way; i mean, if _peaceable_ priests, reforming from day to day, would always suffice us! but it is not so; even this latter has not yet been realised. alas, the battling reformer too is, from time to time, a needful and inevitable phenomenon. obstructions are never wanting: the very things that were once indispensable furtherances become obstructions; and need to be shaken off, and left behind us,--a business often of enormous difficulty. it is notable enough, surely, how a theorem or spiritual representation, so we may call it, which once took in the whole universe, and was completely satisfactory in all parts of it to the highly-discursive acute intellect of dante, one of the greatest in the world,--had in the course of another century become dubitable to common intellects; become deniable; and is now, to every one of us, flatly incredible, obsolete as odin's theorem! to dante, human existence, and god's ways with men, were all well represented by those _malebolges_, _purgatorios_; to luther not well. how was this? why could not dante's catholicism continue; but luther's protestantism must needs follow? alas, nothing will _continue_. i do not make much of 'progress of the species,' as handled in these times of ours; nor do i think you would care to hear much about it. the talk on that subject is too often of the most extravagant, confused sort. yet i may say, the fact itself seems certain enough; nay we can trace out the inevitable necessity of it in the nature of things. every man, as i have stated somewhere, is not only a learner but a doer: he learns with the mind given him what has been; but with the same mind he discovers farther, he invents and devises somewhat of his own. absolutely without originality there is no man. no man whatever believes, or can believe, exactly what his grandfather believed: he enlarges somewhat, by fresh discovery, his view of the universe, and consequently his theorem of the universe,--which is an _infinite_ universe, and can never be embraced wholly or finally by any view or theorem, in any conceivable enlargement: he enlarges somewhat, i say; finds somewhat that was credible to his grandfather incredible to him, false to him, inconsistent with some new thing he has discovered or observed. it is the history of every man; and in the history of mankind we see it summed-up into great historical amounts,--revolutions, new epochs. dante's mountain of purgatory does _not_ stand 'in the ocean of the other hemisphere,' when columbus has once sailed thither! men find no such thing extant in the other hemisphere. it is not there. it must cease to be believed to be there. so with all beliefs whatsoever in this world,--all systems of belief, and systems of practice that spring from these. if we add now the melancholy fact, that when belief waxes uncertain, practice too becomes unsound, and errors, injustices and miseries everywhere more and more prevail, we shall see material enough for revolution. at all turns, a man who will _do_ faithfully, needs to believe firmly. if he have to ask at every turn the world's suffrage; if he cannot dispense with the world's suffrage, and make his own suffrage serve, he is a poor eye-servant; the work committed to him will be _mis_done. every such man is a daily contributor to the inevitable downfall. whatsoever work he does, dishonestly, with an eye to the outward look of it, is a new offence, parent of new misery to somebody or other. offences accumulate till they become insupportable; and are then violently burst through, cleared off as by explosion. dante's sublime catholicism, incredible now in theory, and defaced still worse by faithless, doubting and dishonest practice, has to be torn asunder by a luther; shakspeare's noble feudalism, as beautiful as it once looked and was, has to end in a french revolution. the accumulation of offences is, as we say, too literally _exploded_, blasted asunder volcanically; and there are long troublous periods before matters come to a settlement again. surely it were mournful enough to look only at this face of the matter, and find in all human opinions and arrangements merely the fact that they were uncertain, temporary, subject to the law of death! at bottom, it is not so: all death, here too we find, is but of the body, not of the essence or soul; all destruction, by violent revolution or howsoever it be, is but new creation on a wider scale. odinism was _valour_; christianism was _humility_, a nobler kind of valour. no thought that ever dwelt honestly as true in the heart of man but _was_ an honest insight into god's truth on man's part, and _has_ an essential truth in it which endures through all changes, an everlasting possession for us all. and, on the other hand, what a melancholy notion is that, which has to represent all men, in all countries and times except our own, as having spent their life in blind condemnable error, mere lost pagans, scandinavians, mahometans, only that we might have the true ultimate knowledge! all generations of men were lost and wrong, only that this present little section of a generation might be saved and right. they all marched forward there, all generations since the beginning of the world, like the russian soldiers into the ditch of schweidnitz fort, only to fill-up the ditch with their dead bodies, that we might march-over and take the place! it is an incredible hypothesis. such incredible hypothesis we have seen maintained with fierce emphasis; and this or the other poor individual man, with his sect of individual men, marching as over the dead bodies of all men, towards sure victory: but when he too, with his hypothesis and ultimate infallible credo, sank into the ditch, and became a dead body, what was to be said?--withal, it is an important fact in the nature of man, that he tends to reckon his own insight as final, and goes upon it as such. he will always do it, i suppose, in one or the other way; but it must be in some wider, wiser way than this. are not all true men that live, or that ever lived, soldiers of the same army, enlisted, under heaven's captaincy, to do battle against the same enemy, the empire of darkness and wrong? why should we misknow one another, fight not against the enemy but against ourselves, from mere difference of uniform? all uniforms shall be good, so they hold in them true valiant men. all fashions of arms, the arab turban and swift scimetar, thor's strong hammer smiting down _jötuns_, shall be welcome. luther's battle-voice, dante's march-melody, all genuine things are with us, not against us. we are all under one captain, soldiers of the same host.--let us now look a little at this luther's fighting; what kind of battle it was, and how he comported himself in it. luther too was of our spiritual heroes; a prophet to his country and time. as introductory to the whole, a remark about idolatry will perhaps be in place here. one of mahomet's characteristics, which indeed belongs to all prophets, is unlimited implacable zeal against idolatry. it is the grand theme of prophets: idolatry, the worshipping of dead idols as the divinity, is a thing they cannot away-with, but have to denounce continually, and brand with inexpiable reprobation; it is the chief of all the sins they see done under the sun. this is worth noting. we will not enter here into the theological question about idolatry. idol is _eidolon_, a thing seen, a symbol. it is not god, but a symbol of god; and perhaps one may question whether any the most benighted mortal ever took it for more than a symbol. i fancy, he did not think that the poor image his own hands had made _was_ god; but that god was emblemed by it, that god was in it some way or another. and now in this sense, one may ask, is not all worship whatsoever a worship by symbols, by _eidola_, or things seen? whether _seen_, rendered visible as an image or picture to the bodily eye; or visible only to the inward eye, to the imagination, to the intellect: this makes a superficial, but no substantial difference. it is still a thing seen, significant of godhead; an idol. the most rigorous puritan has his confession of faith, and intellectual representation of divine things, and worships thereby; thereby is worship first made possible for him. all creeds, liturgies, religious forms, conceptions that fitly invest religious feelings, are in this sense _eidola_, things seen. all worship whatsoever must proceed by symbols, by idols:--we may say, all idolatry is comparative, and the worst idolatry is only _more_ idolatrous. where, then, lies the evil of it? some fatal evil must lie in it, or earnest prophetic men would not on all hands so reprobate it. why is idolatry so hateful to prophets? it seems to me as if, in the worship of those poor wooden symbols, the thing that had chiefly provoked the prophet, and filled his inmost soul with indignation and aversion, was not exactly what suggested itself to his own thought, and came out of him in words to others, as the thing. the rudest heathen that worshipped canopus, or the caabah black-stone, he, as we saw, was superior to the horse that worshipped nothing at all! nay there was a kind of lasting merit in that poor act of his; analogous to what is still meritorious in poets: recognition of a certain endless _divine_ beauty and significance in stars and all natural objects whatsoever. why should the prophet so mercilessly condemn him? the poorest mortal worshipping his fetish, while his heart is full of it, may be an object of pity, of contempt and avoidance, if you will; but cannot surely be an object of hatred. let his heart _be_ honestly full of it, the whole space of his dark narrow mind illuminated thereby; in one word, let him entirely _believe_ in his fetish,--it will then be, i should say, if not well with him, yet as well as it can readily be made to be, and you will leave him alone, unmolested there. but here enters the fatal circumstance of idolatry, that, in the era of the prophets, no man's mind _is_ any longer honestly filled with his idol or symbol. before the prophet can arise who, seeing through it, knows it to be mere wood, many men must have begun dimly to doubt that it was little more. condemnable idolatry is _insincere_ idolatry. doubt has eaten-out the heart of it: a human soul is seen clinging spasmodically to an ark of the covenant, which it half-feels now to have become a phantasm. this is one of the balefulest sights. souls are no longer _filled_ with their fetish; but only pretend to be filled, and would fain make themselves feel that they are filled. "you do not believe," said coleridge; "you only believe that you believe." it is the final scene in all kinds of worship and symbolism; the sure symptom that death is now nigh. it is equivalent to what we call formulism, and worship of formulas, in these days of ours. no more immoral act can be done by a human creature; for it is the beginning of all immorality, or rather it is the impossibility henceforth of any morality whatsoever: the innermost moral soul is paralysed thereby, cast into fatal magnetic sleep! men are no longer _sincere_ men. i do not wonder that the earnest man denounces this, brands it, prosecutes it with unextinguishable aversion. he and it, all good and it, are at death-feud. blamable idolatry is _cant_, and even what one may call sincere-cant. sincere-cant: that is worth thinking of! every sort of worship ends with this phasis. i find luther to have been a breaker of idols, no less than any other prophet. the wooden gods of the koreish, made of timber and bees-wax, were not more hateful to mahomet than tetzel's pardons of sin, made of sheepskin and ink, were to luther. it is the property of every hero, in every time, in every place and situation, that he come back to reality; that he stand upon things, and not shows of things. according as he loves, and venerates, articulately or with deep speechless thought, the awful realities of things, so will the hollow shows of things, however regular, decorous, accredited by koreishes or conclaves, be intolerable and detestable to him. protestantism too is the work of a prophet: the prophet-work of that sixteenth century. the first stroke of honest demolition to an ancient thing grown false and idolatrous; preparatory afar off to a new thing, which shall be true, and authentically divine!-- at first view it might seem as if protestantism were entirely destructive to this that we call hero-worship, and represent as the basis of all possible good, religious or social, for mankind. one often hears it said that protestantism introduced a new era, radically different from any the world had ever seen before: the era of 'private judgment,' as they call it. by this revolt against the pope, every man became his own pope; and learnt, among other things, that he must never trust any pope, or spiritual hero-captain, any more! whereby, is not spiritual union, all hierarchy and subordination among men, henceforth an impossibility? so we hear it said.--now i need not deny that protestantism was a revolt against spiritual sovereignties, popes and much else. nay i will grant that english puritanism, revolt against earthly sovereignties, was the second act of it; that the enormous french revolution itself was the third act, whereby all sovereignties earthly and spiritual were, as might seem, abolished or made sure of abolition. protestantism is the grand root from which our whole subsequent european history branches out. for the spiritual will always body itself forth in the temporal history of men; the spiritual is the beginning of the temporal. and now, sure enough, the cry is everywhere for liberty and equality, independence and so forth: instead of _kings_, ballot-boxes and electoral suffrages; it seems made out that any hero-sovereign, or loyal obedience of men to a man, in things temporal or things spiritual, has passed away forever from the world. i should despair of the world altogether, if so. one of my deepest convictions is, that it is not so. without sovereigns, true sovereigns, temporal and spiritual, i see nothing possible but an anarchy: the hatefulest of things. but i find protestantism, whatever anarchic democracy it have produced, to be the beginning of new genuine sovereignty and order. i find it to be a revolt against _false_ sovereigns; the painful but indispensable first preparative for _true_ sovereigns getting place among us! this is worth explaining a little. let us remark, therefore, in the first place, that this of 'private judgment' is, at bottom, not a new thing in the world, but only new at that epoch of the world. there is nothing generically new or peculiar in the reformation; it was a return to truth and reality in opposition to falsehood and semblance, as all kinds of improvement and genuine teaching are and have been. liberty of private judgment, if we will consider it, must at all times have existed in the world. dante had not put-out his eyes, or tied shackles on himself; he was at home in that catholicism of his, a free-seeing soul in it, if many a poor hogstraten, tetzel and dr. eck had now become slaves in it. liberty of judgment? no iron chain, or outward force of any kind, could ever compel the soul of a man to believe or to disbelieve: it is his own indefeasible light, that judgment of his; he will reign, and believe there, by the grace of god alone! the sorriest sophistical bellarmine, preaching sightless faith and passive obedience, must first, by some kind of _conviction_, have abdicated his right to be convinced. his 'private judgment' indicated that, as the advisablest step _he_ could take. the right of private judgment will subsist, in full force, wherever true men subsist. a true man _believes_ with his whole judgment, with all the illumination and discernment that is in him, and has always so believed. a false man, only struggling to 'believe that he believes,' will naturally manage it in some other way. protestantism said to this latter, woe! and to the former, well done! at bottom, it was no new saying; it was a return to all old sayings that ever had been said. be genuine, be sincere: that was, once more, the meaning of it. mahomet believed with his whole mind; odin with his whole mind,--he, and all _true_ followers of odinism. they, by their private judgment, had 'judged'--_so_. and now, i venture to assert, that the exercise of private judgment, faithfully gone about, does by no means necessarily end in selfish independence, isolation; but rather ends necessarily in the opposite of that. it is not honest inquiry that makes anarchy; but it is error, insincerity, half-belief and untruth that make it. a man protesting against error is on the way towards uniting himself with all men that believe in truth. there is no communion possible among men who believe only in hearsays. the heart of each is lying dead; has no power of sympathy even with _things_,--or he would believe _them_ and not hearsays. no sympathy even with things; how much less with his fellow-men! he cannot unite with men; he is an anarchic man. only in a world of sincere men is unity possible;--and there, in the longrun, it is as good as _certain_. for observe one thing, a thing too often left out of view, or rather altogether lost sight of, in this controversy: that it is not necessary a man should himself have _discovered_ the truth he is to believe in, and never so _sincerely_ to believe in. a great man, we said, was always sincere, as the first condition of him. but a man need not be great in order to be sincere; that is not the necessity of nature and all time, but only of certain corrupt unfortunate epochs of time. a man can believe, and make his own, in the most genuine way, what he has received from another;--and with boundless gratitude to that other! the merit of _originality_ is not novelty; it is sincerity. the believing man is the original man; whatsoever he believes, he believes it for himself, not for another. every son of adam can become a sincere man, an original man, in this sense; no mortal is doomed to be an insincere man. whole ages, what we call ages of faith, are original; all men in them, or the most of men in them, sincere. these are the great and fruitful ages: every worker, in all spheres, is a worker not on semblance but on substance; every work issues in a result: the general sum of such work is great; for all of it, as genuine, tends towards one goal; all of it is _additive_, none of it subtractive. there is true union, true kingship, loyalty, all true and blessed things, so far as the poor earth can produce blessedness for men. hero-worship? ah me, that a man be self-subsistent, original, true, or what we call it, is surely the farthest in the world from indisposing him to reverence and believe other men's truth! it only disposes, necessitates and invincibly compels him to disbelieve other men's dead formulas, hearsays and untruths. a man embraces truth with his eyes open, and because his eyes are open: does he need to shut them before he can love his teacher of truth? he alone can love, with a right gratitude and genuine loyalty of soul, the hero-teacher who has delivered him out of darkness into light. is not such a one a true hero and serpent-queller; worthy of all reverence! the black monster, falsehood, our one enemy in this world, lies prostrate by his valour; it was he that conquered the world for us!--see, accordingly, was not luther himself reverenced as a true pope, or spiritual father, _being_ verily such? napoleon, from amid boundless revolt of sansculottism, became a king. hero-worship never dies, nor can die. loyalty and sovereignty are everlasting in the world:--and there is this in them, that they are grounded not on garnitures and semblances, but on realities and sincerities. not by shutting your eyes, your 'private judgment;' no, but by opening them, and by having something to see! luther's message was deposition and abolition to all false popes and potentates, but life and strength, though afar off, to new genuine ones. all this of liberty and equality, electoral suffrages, independence and so forth, we will take, therefore, to be a temporary phenomenon, by no means a final one. though likely to last a long time, with sad enough embroilments for us all, we must welcome it, as the penalty of sins that are past, the pledge of inestimable benefits that are coming. in all ways, it behoved men to quit simulacra and return to fact; cost what it might, that did behove to be done. with spurious popes, and believers having no private judgment,--quacks pretending to command over dupes,--what can you do? misery and mischief only. you cannot make an association out of insincere men; you cannot build an edifice except by plummet and level,--at _right_-angles to one another! in all this wild revolutionary work, from protestantism downwards, i see the blessedest result preparing itself: not abolition of hero-worship, but rather what i would call a whole world of heroes. if hero mean _sincere man_, why may not every one of us be a hero? a world all sincere, a believing world: the like has been; the like will again be,--cannot help being. that were the right sort of worshippers for heroes: never could the truly better be so reverenced as where all were true and good!--but we must hasten to luther and his life. * * * * * luther's birthplace was eisleben in saxony; he came into the world there on the th of november . it was an accident that gave this honour to eisleben. his parents, poor mine-labourers in a village of that region, named mohra, had gone to the eisleben winter-fair: in the tumult of this scene the frau luther was taken with travail, found refuge in some poor house there, and the boy she bore was named martin luther. strange enough to reflect upon it. this poor frau luther, she had gone with her husband to make her small merchandisings; perhaps to sell the lock of yarn she had been spinning, to buy the small winter-necessaries for her narrow hut or household; in the whole world, that day, there was not a more entirely unimportant-looking pair of people than this miner and his wife. and yet what were all emperors, popes and potentates, in comparison? there was born here, once more, a mighty man; whose light was to flame as the beacon over long centuries and epochs of the world; the whole world and its history was waiting for this man. it is strange, it is great. it leads us back to another birth-hour, in a still meaner environment, eighteen hundred years ago,--of which it is fit that we _say_ nothing, that we think only in silence; for what words are there! the age of miracles past? the age of miracles is forever here!-- i find it altogether suitable to luther's function in this earth, and doubtless wisely ordered to that end by the providence presiding over him and us and all things, that he was born poor, and brought-up poor, one of the poorest of men. he had to beg, as the schoolchildren in those times did; singing for alms and bread, from door to door. hardship, rigorous necessity was the poor boy's companion; no man nor no thing would put-on a false face to flatter martin luther. among things, not among the shows of things, had he to grow. a boy of rude figure, yet with weak health, with his large greedy soul, full of all faculty and sensibility, he suffered greatly. but it was his task to get acquainted with _realities_, and keep acquainted with them, at whatever cost: his task was to bring the whole world back to reality, for it had dwelt too long with semblance! a youth nursed-up in wintry whirlwinds, in desolate darkness and difficulty, that he may step-forth at last from his stormy scandinavia, strong as a true man, as a god: a christian odin,--a right thor once more, with his thunder-hammer, to smite asunder ugly enough _jötuns_ and giant-monsters! perhaps the turning incident of his life, we may fancy, was that death of his friend alexis, by lightning, at the gate of erfurt. luther had struggled-up through boyhood, better and worse; displaying, in spite of all hindrances, the largest intellect, eager to learn: his father judging doubtless that he might promote himself in the world, set him upon the study of law. this was the path to rise; luther, with little will in it either way, had consented: he was now nineteen years of age. alexis and he had been to see the old luther people at mansfeldt; were got back again near erfurt, when a thunderstorm came on; the bolt struck alexis, he fell dead at luther's feet. what is this life of ours?--gone in a moment, burnt-up like a scroll, into the blank eternity! what are all earthly preferments, chancellorships, kingships? they lie shrunk together--there! the earth has opened on them; in a moment they are not, and eternity is. luther, struck to the heart, determined to devote himself to god and god's service alone. in spite of all dissuasions from his father and others, he became a monk in the augustine convent at erfurt. this was probably the first light-point in the history of luther, his purer will now first decisively uttering itself; but, for the present, it was still as one light-point in an element all of darkness. he says he was a pious monk, _ich bin ein frommer mönch gewesen_; faithfully, painfully struggling to work-out the truth of this high act of his; but it was to little purpose. his misery had not lessened; had rather, as it were, increased into infinitude. the drudgeries he had to do, as novice in his convent, all sorts of slave-work, were not his grievance: the deep earnest soul of the man had fallen into all manner of black scruples, dubitations; he believed himself likely to die soon, and far worse than die. one hears with a new interest for poor luther that, at this time, he lived in terror of the unspeakable misery; fancied that he was doomed to eternal reprobation. was it not the humble sincere nature of the man? what was he, that he should be raised to heaven! he that had known only misery, and mean slavery: the news was too blessed to be credible. it could not become clear to him how, by fasts, vigils, formalities and mass-work, a man's soul could be saved. he fell into the blackest wretchedness; had to wander staggering as on the verge of bottomless despair. it must have been a most blessed discovery, that of an old latin bible which he found in the erfurt library about this time. he had never seen the book before. it taught him another lesson than that of fasts and vigils. a brother monk too, of pious experience, was helpful. luther learned now that a man was saved not by singing masses, but by the infinite grace of god: a more credible hypothesis. he gradually got himself founded, as on the rock. no wonder he should venerate the bible, which had brought this blessed help to him. he prized it as the word of the highest must be prized by such a man. he determined to hold by that; as through life and to death he firmly did. this, then, is his deliverance from darkness, his final triumph over darkness, what we call his conversion; for himself the most important of all epochs. that he should now grow daily in peace and clearness; that, unfolding now the great talents and virtues implanted in him, he should rise to importance in his convent, in his country, and be found more and more useful in all honest business of life, is a natural result. he was sent on missions by his augustine order, as a man of talent and fidelity fit to do their business well: the elector of saxony, friedrich, named the wise, a truly wise and just prince, had cast his eye on him as a valuable person; made him professor in his new university of wittenberg, preacher too at wittenberg; in both which capacities, as in all duties he did, this luther, in the peaceable sphere of common life, was gaining more and more esteem with all good men. it was in his twenty-seventh year that he first saw rome; being sent thither, as i said, on mission from his convent. pope julius the second, and what was going-on at rome, must have filled the mind of luther with amazement. he had come as to the sacred city, throne of god's highpriest on earth; and he found it--what we know! many thoughts it must have given the man; many which we have no record of, which perhaps he did not himself know how to utter. this rome, this scene of false priests, clothed not in the beauty of holiness, but in far other vesture, is _false_: but what is it to luther? a mean man he, how shall he reform a world? that was far from his thoughts. a humble, solitary man, why should he at all meddle with the world? it was the task of quite higher men than he. his business was to guide his own footsteps wisely through the world. let him do his own obscure duty in it well; the rest, horrible and dismal as it looks, is in god's hand, not in his. it is curious to reflect what might have been the issue, had roman popery happened to pass this luther by; to go on in its great wasteful orbit, and not come athwart his little path, and force him to assault it! conceivable enough that, in this case, he might have held his peace about the abuses of rome; left providence, and god on high, to deal with them! a modest quiet man; not prompt he to attack irreverently persons in authority. his clear task, as i say, was to do his own duty; to walk wisely in this world of confused wickedness, and save his own soul alive. but the roman highpriesthood did come athwart him: afar off at wittenberg he, luther, could not get lived in honesty for it; he remonstrated, resisted, came to extremity; was struck-at, struck again, and so it came to wager of battle between them! this is worth attending to in luther's history. perhaps no man of so humble, peaceable a disposition ever filled the world with contention. we cannot but see that he would have loved privacy, quiet diligence in the shade; that it was against his will he ever became a notoriety. notoriety: what would that do for him? the goal of his march through this world was the infinite heaven; an indubitable goal for him: in a few years, he should either have attained that, or lost it forever! we will say nothing at all, i think, of that sorrowfulest of theories, of its being some mean shopkeeper grudge, of the augustine monk against the dominican, that first kindled the wrath of luther, and produced the protestant reformation. we will say to the people who maintain it, if indeed any such exist now: get first into the sphere of thought by which it is so much as possible to judge of luther, or of any man like luther, otherwise than distractedly; we may then begin arguing with you. the monk tetzel, sent out carelessly in the way of trade, by leo tenth,--who merely wanted to raise a little money, and for the rest seems to have been a pagan rather than a christian, so far as he was anything,--arrived at wittenberg, and drove his scandalous trade there. luther's flock bought indulgences: in the confessional of his church, people pleaded to him that they had already got their sins pardoned. luther, if he would not be found wanting at his own post, a false sluggard and coward at the very centre of the little space of ground that was his own and no other man's, had to step-forth against indulgences, and declare aloud that _they_ were a futility and sorrowful mockery, that no man's sins could be pardoned by _them_. it was the beginning of the whole reformation. we know how it went; forward from this first public challenge of tetzel, on the last day of october , through remonstrance and argument;--spreading ever wider, rising ever higher; till it became unquenchable, and enveloped all the world. luther's heart's-desire was to have this grief and other griefs amended; his thought was still far other than that of introducing separation in the church, or revolting against the pope, father of christendom.--the elegant pagan pope cared little about this monk and his doctrines; wished, however, to have done with the noise of him: in a space of some three years, having tried various softer methods, he thought good to end it by _fire_. he dooms the monk's writings to be burnt by the hangman, and his body to be sent bound to rome,--probably for a similar purpose. it was the way they had ended with huss, with jerome, the century before. a short argument, fire. poor huss: he came to that constance council, with all imaginable promises and safe-conducts; an earnest, not rebellious kind of man: they laid him instantly in a stone dungeon 'three-feet wide, six-feet high, seven-feet long;' _burnt_ the true voice of him out of this world; choked it in smoke and fire. that was _not_ well done! i, for one, pardon luther for now altogether revolting against the pope. the elegant pagan, by this fire-decree of his, had kindled into noble just wrath the bravest heart then living in this world. the bravest, if also one of the humblest, peaceablest; it was now kindled. these words of mine, words of truth and soberness, aiming faithfully, as human inability would allow, to promote god's truth on earth, and save men's souls, you, god's vicegerent on earth, answer them by the hangman and fire? you will burn me and them, for answer to the god's-message they strove to bring you? _you_ are not god's vicegerent; you are another's than his, i think i take your bull, as an emparchmented lie, and burn _it_. you will do what you see good next: this is what i do.--it was on the th of december , three years after the beginning of the business, that luther, 'with a great concourse of people,' took this indignant step of burning the pope's fire-decree 'at the elster-gate of wittenberg.' wittenberg looked on 'with shoutings;' the whole world was looking on. the pope should not have provoked that 'shout'! it was the shout of the awakening of nations. the quiet german heart, modest, patient of much, had at length got more than it could bear. formulism, pagan popeism, and other falsehood and corrupt semblance had ruled long enough: and here once more was a man found who durst tell all men that god's world stood not on semblances but on realities; that life was a truth, and not a lie! at bottom, as was said above, we are to consider luther as a prophet idol-breaker; a bringer-back of men to reality. it is the function of great men and teachers. mahomet said, these idols of yours are wood; you put wax and oil on them, the flies stick on them: they are not god, i tell you, they are black wood! luther said to the pope, this thing of yours that you call a pardon of sins, it is a bit of rag-paper with ink. it _is_ nothing else; it, and so much like it, is nothing else. god alone can pardon sins. popeship, spiritual fatherhood of god's church, is that a vain semblance, of cloth and parchment? it is an awful fact. god's church is not a semblance, heaven and hell are not semblances. i stand on this, since you drive me to it. standing on this, i a poor german monk am stronger than you all. i stand solitary, friendless, but on god's truth; you with your tiaras, triple-hats, with your treasuries and armories, thunders spiritual and temporal, stand on the devil's lie, and are not so strong!-- the diet of worms, luther's appearance there on the th of april , may be considered as the greatest scene in modern european history; the point, indeed, from which the whole subsequent history of civilisation takes its rise. after multiplied negotiations, disputations, it had come to this. the young emperor charles fifth, with all the princes of germany, papal nuncios, dignitaries spiritual and temporal, are assembled there: luther is to appear and answer for himself, whether he will recant or not. the world's pomp and power sits there on this hand: on that, stands-up for god's truth, one man, the poor miner hans luther's son. friends had reminded him of huss, advised him not to go; he would not be advised. a large company of friends rode-out to meet him, with still more earnest warnings; he answered, "were there as many devils in worms as there are roof-tiles, i would on." the people, on the morrow, as he went to the hall of the diet, crowded the windows and housetops, some of them calling out to him, in solemn words, not to recant: "whosoever denieth me before men!" they cried to him,--as in a kind of solemn petition and adjuration. was it not in reality our petition too, the petition of the whole world, lying in dark bondage of soul, paralysed under a black spectral nightmare and triple-hatted chimera, calling itself father in god, and what not: "free us; it rests with thee; desert us not!" luther did not desert us. his speech, of two hours, distinguished itself by its respectful, wise and honest tone; submissive to whatsoever could lawfully claim submission, not submissive to any more than that. his writings, he said, were partly his own, partly derived from the word of god. as to what was his own, human infirmity entered into it; unguarded anger, blindness, many things doubtless which it were a blessing for him could he abolish altogether. but as to what stood on sound truth and the word of god, he could not recant it. how could he? "confute me," he concluded, "by proofs of scripture, or else by plain just arguments: i cannot recant otherwise. for it is neither safe nor prudent to do ought against conscience. here stand i; i can do no other: god assist me!"--it is, as we say, the greatest moment in the modern history of men. english puritanism, england and its parliaments, americas, and vast work these two centuries; french revolution, europe and its work everywhere at present: the germ of it all lay there: had luther in that moment done other, it had all been otherwise! the european world was asking him: am i to sink ever lower into falsehood, stagnant putrescence, loathsome accursed death; or, with whatever paroxysm, to cast the falsehoods out of me, and be cured and live?-- * * * * * great wars, contentions and disunion followed out of this reformation; which last down to our day, and are yet far from ended. great talk and crimination has been made about these. they are lamentable, undeniable; but after all what has luther or his cause to do with them? it seems strange reasoning to charge the reformation with all this. when hercules turned the purifying river into king augeas's stables, i have no doubt the confusion that resulted was considerable all around: but i think it was not hercules's blame; it was some other's blame! the reformation might bring what results it liked when it came, but the reformation simply could not help coming. to all popes and popes' advocates, expostulating, lamenting and accusing, the answer of the world is: once for all, your popehood has become untrue. no matter how good it was, how good you say it is, we cannot believe it; the light of our whole mind, given us to walk-by from heaven above, finds it henceforth a thing unbelievable. we will not believe it, we will not try to believe it,--we dare not! the thing is _untrue_; we were traitors against the giver of all truth, if we durst pretend to think it true. away with it; let whatsoever likes come in the place of it: with _it_ we can have no farther trade!--luther and his protestantism is not responsible for wars; the false simulacra that forced him to protest, they are responsible. luther did what every man that god has made has not only the right, but lies under the sacred duty, to do: answered a falsehood when it questioned him, dost thou believe me?--no!--at what cost soever, without counting of costs, this thing behoved to be done. union, organisation spiritual and material, a far nobler than, any popedom or feudalism in their truest days, i never doubt, is coming for the world; sure to come. but on fact alone, not on semblance and simulacrum, will it be able either to come, or to stand when come. with union grounded on falsehood, and ordering us to speak and act lies, we will not have anything to do. peace? a brutal lethargy is peaceable, the noisome grave is peaceable. we hope for a living peace, not a dead one! and yet, in prizing justly the indispensable blessings of the new, let us not be unjust to the old. the old _was_ true, if it no longer is. in dante's days it needed no sophistry, self-blinding, or other dishonesty, to get itself reckoned true. it was good then; nay there is in the soul of it a deathless good. the cry of 'no popery' is foolish enough in these days. the speculation that popery is on the increase, building new chapels and so forth, may pass for one of the idlest ever started. very curious: to count-up a few popish chapels, listen to a few protestant logic-choppings,--to much dull-droning, drowsy inanity that still calls itself protestant, and say: see, protestantism is _dead_; popeism is more alive than it, will be alive after it!--drowsy inanities, not a few, that call themselves protestant are dead; but _protestantism_ has not died yet, that i hear of! protestantism, if we will look, has in these days produced its goethe, its napoleon; german literature and the french revolution; rather considerable signs of life! nay, at bottom, what else is alive _but_ protestantism? the life of most else that one meets is a galvanic one merely,--not a pleasant, not a lasting sort of life! popery can build new chapels; welcome to do so, to all lengths. popery cannot come back, any more than paganism can,--_which_ also still lingers in some countries. but, indeed, it is with these things, as with the ebbing of the sea: you look at the waves oscillating hither, thither on the beach; for _minutes_ you cannot tell how it is going; look in half an hour where it is,--look in half a century where your popehood is! alas, would there were no greater danger to our europe than the poor old pope's revival! thor may as soon try to revive.--and withal this oscillation has a meaning. the poor old popehood will not die away entirely, as thor has done, for some time yet; nor ought it. we may say, the old never dies till this happen, till all the soul of good that was in it have got itself transfused into the practical new. while a good work remains capable of being done by the romish form; or, what is inclusive of all, while a _pious life_ remains capable of being led by it, just so long, if we consider, will this or the other human soul adopt it, go about as a living witness of it. so long it will obtrude itself on the eye of us who reject it, till we in our practice too have appropriated whatsoever of truth was in it. then, but also not till then, it will have no charm more for any man. it lasts here for a purpose. let it last as long as it can.-- * * * * * of luther i will add now, in reference to all these wars and bloodshed, the noticeable fact that none of them began so long as he continued living. the controversy did not get to fighting so long as he was there. to me it is proof of his greatness in all senses, this fact. how seldom do we find a man that has stirred-up some vast commotion, who does not himself perish, swept-away in it! such is the usual course of revolutionists. luther continued, in a good degree, sovereign of this greatest revolution; all protestants, of what rank or function soever, looking much to him for guidance: and he held it peaceable, continued firm at the centre of it. a man to do this must have a kingly faculty: he must have the gift to discern at all turns where the true heart of the matter lies, and to plant himself courageously on that, as a strong true man, that other true men may rally round him there. he will not continue leader of men otherwise. luther's clear deep force of judgment, his force of all sorts, of _silence_, of tolerance and moderation, among others, are very notable in these circumstances. tolerance, i say; a very genuine kind of tolerance: he distinguishes what is essential, and what is not; the unessential may go very much as it will. a complaint comes to him that such and such a reformed preacher, 'will not preach without a cassock.' well, answers luther, what harm will a cassock do the man? 'let him have a cassock to preach in; let him have three cassocks if he find benefit in them!' his conduct in the matter of karlstadt's wild image-breaking; of the anabaptists; of the peasants' war, shows a noble strength, very different from spasmodic violence. with sure prompt insight he discriminates what is what: a strong just man, he speaks-forth what is the wise course, and all men follow him in that. luther's written works give similar testimony of him. the dialect of these speculations is now grown obsolete for us; but one still reads them with a singular attraction. and indeed the mere grammatical diction is still legible enough; luther's merit in literary history is of the greatest; his dialect became the language of all writing. they are not well written, these four-and-twenty quartos of his; written hastily, with quite other than literary objects. but in no books have i found a more robust, genuine, i will say noble faculty of a man than in these. a rugged honesty, homeliness, simplicity; a rugged sterling sense and strength. he flashes-out illumination from him; his smiting idiomatic phrases seem to cleave into the very secret of the matter. good humour too, nay tender affection, nobleness, and depth: this man could have been a poet too! he had to _work_ an epic poem, not write one. i call him a great thinker; as indeed his greatness of heart already betokens that. richter says of luther's words, 'his words are half-battles.' they may be called so. the essential quality of him was, that he could fight and conquer; that he was a right piece of human valour. no more valiant man, no mortal heart to be called _braver_, that one has record of, ever lived in that teutonic kindred, whose character is valour. his defiance of the 'devils' in worms was not a mere boast, as the like might be if now spoken. it was a faith of luther's that there were devils, spiritual denizens of the pit, continually besetting men. many times, in his writings, this turns-up; and a most small sneer has been grounded on it by some. in the room of the wartburg where he sat translating the bible, they still show you a black spot on the wall; the strange memorial of one of these conflicts. luther sat translating one of the psalms; he was worn-down with long labour, with sickness, abstinence from food: there rose before him some hideous indefinable image, which he took for the evil one, to forbid his work: luther started-up, with fiend-defiance; flung his inkstand at the spectre, and it disappeared! the spot still remains there; a curious monument of several things. any apothecary's apprentice can now tell us what we are to think of this apparition, in a scientific sense: but the man's heart that dare rise defiant, face to face, against hell itself, can give no higher proof of fearlessness. the thing he will quail before exists not on this earth or under it.--fearless enough! 'the devil is aware,' writes he on one occasion, 'that this does not proceed out of fear in me. i have seen and defied innumerable devils. duke george,' of leipzig, a great enemy of his, 'duke george is not equal to one devil,'--far short of a devil! 'if i had business at leipzig, i would ride into leipzig, though it rained duke-georges for nine days running.' what a reservoir of dukes to ride into!-- at the same time, they err greatly who imagine that this man's courage was ferocity, mere coarse disobedient obstinacy and savagery, as many do. far from that. there may be an absence of fear which arises from the absence of thought or affection, from the presence of hatred and stupid fury. we do not value the courage of the tiger highly! with luther it was far otherwise; no accusation could be more unjust than this of mere ferocious violence brought against him. a most gentle heart withal, full of pity and love, as indeed the truly valiant heart ever is. the tiger before a _stronger_ foe--flies: the tiger is not what we call valiant, only fierce and cruel. i know few things more touching than those soft breathings of affection, soft as a child's or a mother's, in this great wild heart of luther. so honest, unadulterated with any cant; homely, rude in their utterance; pure as water welling from the rock. what, in fact, was all that downpressed mood of despair and reprobation, which we saw in his youth, but the outcome of pre-eminent thoughtful gentleness, affections too keen and fine? it is the course such men as the poor poet cowper fall into. luther to a slight observer might have seemed a timid, weak man; modesty, affectionate shrinking tenderness the chief distinction of him. it is a noble valour which is roused in a heart like this, once stirred-up into defiance, all kindled into a heavenly blaze. in luther's _table-talk_, a posthumous book of anecdotes and sayings collected by his friends, the most interesting now of all the books proceeding from him, we have many beautiful unconscious displays of the man, and what sort of nature he had. his behaviour at the deathbed of his little daughter, so still, so great and loving, is among the most affecting things. he is resigned that his little magdalene should die, yet longs inexpressibly that she might live;--follows, in awe-struck thought, the flight of her little soul through those unknown realms. awe-struck; most heartfelt, we can see; and sincere,--for after all dogmatic creeds and articles, he feels what nothing it is that we know, or can know: his little magdalene shall be with god, as god wills; for luther too that is all; _islam_ is all. once, he looks-out from his solitary patmos, the castle of coburg, in the middle of the night: the great vault of immensity, long flights of clouds sailing through it,--dumb, gaunt, huge:--who supports all that? "none ever saw the pillars of it; yet it is supported." god supports it. we must know that god is great, that god is good; and trust, where we cannot see.--returning home from leipzig once, he is struck by the beauty of the harvest-fields: how it stands, that golden yellow corn, on its fair taper stem, its golden head bent, all rich and waving there,--the meek earth, at god's kind bidding, has produced it once again; the bread of man!--in the garden at wittenburg one evening at sunset, a little bird was perched for the night: that little bird, says luther, above it are the stars and deep heaven of worlds; yet it has folded its little wings; gone trustfully to rest there as in its home: the maker of it has given it too a home!--neither are mirthful turns wanting: there is a great free human heart in this man. the common speech of him has a rugged nobleness, idiomatic, expressive, genuine; gleams here and there with beautiful poetic tints. one feels him to be a great brother man. his love of music, indeed, is not this, as it were, the summary of all these affections in him? many a wild unutterability he spoke-forth from him in the tones of his flute. the devils fled from his flute, he says. death-defiance on the one hand, and such love of music on the other; i could call these the two opposite poles of a great soul; between these two all great things had room. luther's face is to me expressive of him; in kranach's best portraits i find the true luther. a rude plebeian face; with its huge crag-like brows and bones, the emblem of rugged energy; at first, almost a repulsive face. yet in the eyes especially there is a wild silent sorrow; an unnamable melancholy, the element of all gentle and fine affections; giving to the rest the true stamp of nobleness. laughter was in this luther, as we said; but tears also were there. tears also were appointed him; tears and hard toil. the basis of his life was sadness, earnestness. in his latter days, after all triumphs and victories, he expresses himself heartily weary of living; he considers that god alone can and will regulate the course things are taking, and that perhaps the day of judgment is not far. as for him, he longs for one thing: that god would release him from his labour, and let him depart and be at rest. they understand little of the man who cite this in _dis_credit of him!--i will call this luther a true great man; great in intellect, in courage, affection and integrity; one of our most lovable and precious men. great, not as a hewn obelisk; but as an alpine mountain,--so simple, honest, spontaneous, not setting-up to be great at all; there for quite another purpose than being great! ah yes, unsubduable granite, piercing far and wide into the heavens; yet in the clefts of it fountains, green beautiful valleys with flowers! a right spiritual hero and prophet; once more, a true son of nature and fact, for whom these centuries, and many that are to come yet, will be thankful to heaven. the most interesting phasis which the reformation anywhere assumes, especially for us english, is that of puritanism. in luther's own country protestantism soon dwindled into a rather barren affair: not a religion or faith, but rather now a theological jangling of argument, the proper seat of it not the heart; the essence of it sceptical contention: which indeed has jangled more and more, down to voltaireism itself,--through gustavus-adolphus contentions onward to french-revolution ones! but in our island there arose a puritanism, which even got itself established as a presbyterianism and national church among the scotch; which came forth as a real business of the heart; and has produced in the world very notable fruit. in some senses, one may say it is the only phasis of protestantism that ever got to the rank of being a faith, a true heart-communication with heaven, and of exhibiting itself in history as such. we must spare a few words for knox; himself a brave and remarkable man; but still more important as chief priest and founder, which one may consider him to be, of the faith that became scotland's, new england's, oliver cromwell's. history will have something to say about this, for some time to come! we may censure puritanism as we please; and no one of us, i suppose, but would find it a very rough defective thing. but we, and all men, may understand that it was a genuine thing; for nature has adopted it, and it has grown, and grows. i say sometimes, that all goes by wager-of-battle in this world; that _strength_, well understood, is the measure of all worth. give a thing time; if it can succeed, it is a right thing. look now at american saxondom; and at that little fact of the sailing of the mayflower, two hundred years ago, from delft haven in holland! were we of open sense as the greeks were, we had found a poem here; one of nature's own poems; such as she writes in broad facts over great continents. for it was properly the beginning of america: there were straggling settlers in america before, some material as of a body was there; but the soul of it was first this. these poor men, driven-out of their country, not able well to live in holland, determine on settling in the new world. black untamed forests are there, and wild savage creatures; but not so cruel as starchamber hangmen. they thought the earth would yield them food, if they tilled honestly; the everlasting heaven would stretch there too, overhead; they should be left in peace, to prepare for eternity by living well in this world of time; worshipping in what they thought the true, not the idolatrous way. they clubbed their small means together; hired a ship, the little ship mayflower, and made ready to set sail. in neal's _history of the puritans_[ ] is an account of the ceremony of their departure: solemnity, we might call it rather, for it was a real act of worship. their minister went down with them to the beach, and their brethren whom they were to leave behind; all joined in solemn prayer, that god would have pity on his poor children, and _go_ with them into that waste wilderness, for he also had made that, he was there also as well as here.--hah! these men, i think, had a work! the weak thing, weaker than a child, becomes strong one day, if it be a true thing. puritanism was only despicable, laughable then; but nobody can manage to laugh at it now. puritanism has got weapons and sinews; it has fire-arms, war-navies; it has cunning in its ten fingers, strength in its right arm; it can steer ships, fell forests, remove mountains;--it is one of the strongest things under the sun at present! [ ] neal (london, ), i. . in the history of scotland, too, i can find properly but one epoch: we may say it contains nothing of world-interest at all but this reformation by knox. a poor barren country, full of continual broils, dissensions, massacrings; a people in the last state of rudeness and destitution, little better perhaps than ireland at this day. hungry fierce barons, not so much as able to form any arrangement with each other _how to divide_ what they fleeced from these poor drudges; but obliged, as the columbian republics are at this day, to make of every alteration a revolution; no way of changing a ministry but by hanging the old ministers on gibbets: this is a historical spectacle of no very singular significance! 'bravery' enough, i doubt not; fierce fighting in abundance: but not braver or fiercer than that of their old scandinavian sea-king ancestors; _whose_ exploits we have not found worth dwelling on! it is a country as yet without a soul: nothing developed in it but what is rude, external, semi-animal. and now at the reformation, the internal life is kindled, as it were, under the ribs of this outward material death. a cause, the noblest of causes kindles itself, like a beacon set on high; high as heaven, yet attainable from earth;--whereby the meanest man becomes not a citizen only, but a member of christ's visible church; a veritable hero, if he prove a true man! well; this is what i mean by a whole 'nation of heroes;' a _believing_ nation. there needs not a great soul to make a hero; there needs a god-created soul which will be true to its origin; that will be a great soul! the like has been seen, we find. the like will be again seen, under wider forms than the presbyterian: there can be no lasting good done till then.--impossible! say some. possible? has it not _been_, in this world, as a practised fact? did hero-worship fail in knox's case? or are we made of other clay now? did the westminster confession of faith add some new property to the soul of man? god made the soul of man. he did not doom any soul of man to live as a hypothesis and hearsay, in a world filled with such, and with the fatal work and fruit of such!---- but to return: this that knox did for his nation, i say, we may really call a resurrection as from death. it was not a smooth business; but it was welcome surely, and cheap at that price, had it been far rougher. on the whole, cheap at any price;--as life is. the people began to _live_: they needed first of all to do that, at what cost and costs soever. scotch literature and thought, scotch industry; james watt, david hume, walter scott, robert burns: i find knox and the reformation acting in the heart's core of every one of these persons and phenomena; i find that without the reformation they would not have been. or what of scotland? the puritanism of scotland became that of england, of new england. a tumult in the high church of edinburgh spread into a universal battle and struggle over all these realms;--there came out, after fifty years' struggling, what we call the '_glorious_ revolution,' a _habeas-corpus_ act, free parliaments, and much else!--alas, is it not too true what we said, that many men in the van do always, like russian soldiers, march into the ditch of schweidnitz, and fill it up with their dead bodies, that the rear may pass over them dry-shod and gain the honour? how many earnest rugged cromwells, knoxes, poor peasant covenants, wrestling, battling for very life, in rough miry places, have to struggle, and suffer, and fall, greatly censured, _bemired_,--before a beautiful revolution of eighty-eight can step-over them in official pumps and silk-stockings, with universal three-times-three! it seems to me hard measure that this scottish man, now after three-hundred years, should have to plead like a culprit before the world; intrinsically for having been, in such way as it was then possible to be, the bravest of all scotchmen! had he been a poor half-and-half, he could have crouched into the corner, like so many others; scotland had not been delivered; and knox had been without blame. he is the one scotchman to whom, of all others, his country and the world owe a debt. he has to plead that scotland would forgive him for having been worth to it any million 'unblamable' scotchmen that need no forgiveness! he bared his breast to the battle; had to row in french galleys, wander forlorn in exile, in clouds and storms; was censured, shot-at through his windows; had a right sore fighting life: if this world were his place of recompense, he had made but a bad venture of it. i cannot apologise for knox. to him it is very indifferent, these two-hundred-and-fifty years or more, what men say of him. but we, having got above all those details of his battle, and living now in clearness on the fruits of his victory, we, for our own sake, ought to look through the rumours and controversies enveloping the man, into the man himself. for one thing, i will remark that this post of prophet to his nation was not of his seeking; knox had lived forty years quietly obscure, before he became conspicuous. he was the son of poor parents; had got a college education; become a priest; adopted the reformation, and seemed well content to guide his own steps by the light of it, nowise unduly intruding it on others. he had lived as tutor in gentlemen's families; preaching when any body of persons wished to hear his doctrine: resolute he to walk by the truth, and speak the truth when called to do it; not ambitious of more; not fancying himself capable of more. in this entirely obscure way he had reached the age of forty; was with the small body of reformers who were standing siege in st andrew's castle,--when one day in their chapel, the preacher after finishing his exhortation to these fighters in the forlorn hope, said suddenly, that there ought to be other speakers, that all men who had a priest's heart and gift in them ought now to speak;--which gifts and heart one of their own number, john knox the name of him, had: had he not? said the preacher, appealing to all the audience: what then is _his_ duty? the people answered affirmatively; it was a criminal forsaking of his post, if such a man held the word that was in him silent. poor knox was obliged to stand-up; he attempted to reply; he could say no word;--burst into a flood of tears, and ran out. it is worth remembering, that scene. he was in grievous trouble for some days. he felt what a small faculty was his for this great work. he felt what a baptism he was called to be baptised withal. he 'burst into tears.' our primary characteristic of a hero, that he is sincere, applies emphatically to knox. it is not denied anywhere that this, whatever might be his other qualities or faults, is among the truest of men. with a singular instinct he holds to the truth and fact; the truth alone is there for him, the rest a mere shadow and deceptive nonentity. however feeble, forlorn the reality may seem, on that and that only _can_ he take his stand. in the galleys of the river loire, whither knox and the others, after their castle of st andrew's was taken, had been sent as galley-slaves,--some officer or priest, one day, presented them an image of the virgin mother, requiring that they, the blasphemous heretics, should do it reverence. mother? mother of god? said knox, when the turn came to him: this is no mother of god: this is 'a _pented bredd_,'--a piece of wood, i tell you, with paint on it! she is fitter for swimming, i think, than for being worshipped, added knox, and flung the thing into the river. it was not very cheap jesting there: but come of it what might, this thing to knox was and must continue nothing other than the real truth; it was a _pented bredd_; worship it he would not. he told his fellow-prisoners, in this darkest time, to be of courage; the cause they had was the true one, and must and would prosper; the whole world could not put it down. reality is of god's making; it is alone strong. how many _pented bredds_, pretending to be real, are fitter to swim than to be worshipped!--this knox cannot live but by fact: he clings to reality as the shipwrecked sailor to the cliff. he is an instance to us how a man, by sincerity itself, becomes heroic: it is the grand gift he has. we find in knox a good honest intellectual talent, no transcendent one;--a narrow, inconsiderable man, as compared with luther: but in heartfelt instinctive adherence to truth, in _sincerity_, as we say, he has no superior; nay, one might ask, what equal he has? the heart of him is of the true prophet cast. "he lies there," said the earl of morton at his grave, "who never feared the face of man." he resembles, more than any of the moderns, an old-hebrew prophet. the same inflexibility, intolerance, rigid narrow-looking adherence to god's truth, stern rebuke in the name of god to all that forsake truth: an old-hebrew prophet in the guise of an edinburgh minister of the sixteenth century. we are to take him for that; not require him to be other. knox's conduct to queen mary, the harsh visits he used to make in her own palace, to reprove her there, have been much commented upon. such cruelty, such coarseness fills us with indignation. on reading the actual narrative of the business, what knox said, and what knox meant, i must say one's tragic feeling is rather disappointed. they are not so coarse, these speeches; they seem to me about as fine as the circumstances would permit! knox was not there to do the courtier; he came on another errand. whoever, reading these colloquies of his with the queen, thinks they are vulgar insolences of a plebeian priest to a delicate high lady, mistakes the purport and essence of them altogether. it was unfortunately not possible to be polite with the queen of scotland, unless one proved untrue to the nation and cause of scotland. a man who did not wish to see the land of his birth made a hunting-field for intriguing ambitious guises, and the cause of god trampled underfoot of falsehoods, formulas and the devil's cause, had no method of making himself agreeable! "better that women weep," said morton, "than that bearded men be forced to weep." knox was the constitutional opposition-party in scotland: the nobles of the country, called by their station to take that post, were not found in it; knox had to go or no one. the hapless queen;--but the still more hapless country, if _she_ were made happy! mary herself was not without sharpness enough, among her other qualities: "who are you," said she once, "that presume to school the nobles and sovereign of this realm?"--"madam, a subject born within the same," answered he. reasonably answered! if the 'subject' have truth to speak, it is not the 'subject's' footing that will fail him here.-- we blame knox for his intolerance. well, surely it is good that each of us be as tolerant as possible. yet, at bottom, after all the talk there is and has been about it, what is tolerance? tolerance has to tolerate the _un_essential; and to see well what that is. tolerance has to be noble, measured, just in its very wrath, when it can tolerate no longer. but, on the whole, we are not altogether here to tolerate! we are here to resist, to control and vanquish withal. we do not 'tolerate' falsehoods, thieveries, iniquities, when they fasten on us; we say to them, thou art false, thou art not tolerable! we are here to extinguish falsehoods, and put an end to them, in some wise way! i will not quarrel so much with the way; the doing of the thing is our great concern. in this sense knox was, full surely, intolerant. a man sent to row in french galleys, and suchlike, for teaching the truth in his own land, cannot always be in the mildest humour! i am not prepared to say that knox had a soft temper; nor do i know that he had what we call an ill-temper. an ill nature he decidedly had not. kind honest affections dwell in the much-enduring, hard-worn, ever-battling man. that he _could_ rebuke queens, and had such weight among those proud turbulent nobles, proud enough whatever else they were; and could maintain to the end a kind of virtual presidency and sovereignty in that wild realm, he who was only 'a subject born within the same:' this of itself will prove to us that he was found, close at hand, to be no mean acrid man; but at heart a healthful, strong, sagacious man. such alone can bear rule in that kind. they blame him for pulling-down cathedrals, and so forth, as if he were a seditious rioting demagogue: precisely the reverse is seen to be the fact, in regard to cathedrals and the rest of it, if we examine! knox wanted no pulling-down of stone edifices; he wanted leprosy and darkness to be thrown out of the lives of men. tumult was not his element; it was the tragic feature of his life that he was forced to dwell so much in that. every such man is the born enemy of disorder; hates to be in it: but what then? smooth falsehood is not order; it is the general sum-total of _dis_order. order is _truth_,--each thing standing on the basis that belongs to it: order and falsehood cannot subsist together. withal, unexpectedly enough, this knox has a vein of drollery in him; which i like much, in combination with his other qualities. he has a true eye for the ridiculous. his _history_, with its rough earnestness, is curiously enlivened with this. when the two prelates, entering glasgow cathedral, quarrel about precedence; march rapidly up, take to hustling one another, twitching one another's rochets, and at last flourishing their crosiers like quarter-staves, it is a great sight for him everyway! not mockery, scorn, bitterness alone; though there is enough of that too. but a true, loving, illuminating laugh mounts-up over the earnest visage; not a loud laugh; you would say, a laugh in the _eyes_ most of all. an honest-hearted, brotherly man; brother to the high, brother also to the low; sincere in his sympathy with both. he has his pipe of bourdeaux too, we find, in that old edinburgh house of his; a cheery social man, with faces that loved him! they go far wrong who think this knox was a gloomy, spasmodic, shrieking fanatic. not at all: he is one of the solidest of men. practical, cautious-hopeful, patient; a most shrewd, observing, quietly discerning man. in fact, he has very much the type of character we assign to the scotch at present: a certain sardonic taciturnity is in him; insight enough; and a stouter heart than he himself knows of. he has the power of holding his peace over many things which do not vitally concern him,--"they? what are they?" but the thing which does vitally concern him, that thing he will speak of; and in a tone the whole world shall be made to hear: all the more emphatic for his long silence. this prophet of the scotch is to me no hateful man!--he had a sore fight of an existence: wrestling with popes and principalities; in defeat, contention, life-long struggle; rowing as a galley-slave, wandering as an exile. a sore fight: but he won it. "have you hope?" they asked him in his last moment, when he could no longer speak. he lifted his finger, 'pointed upwards with his finger,' and so died. honour to him! his works have not died. the letter of his work dies, as of all men's; but the spirit of it never. one word more as to the letter of knox's work. the unforgivable offence in him is, that he wished to set-up priests over the head of kings. in other words he strove to make the government of scotland a _theocracy_. this indeed is properly the sum of his offences, the essential sin; for which what pardon can there be? it is most true, he did, at bottom, consciously or unconsciously, mean a theocracy, or government of god. he did mean that kings and prime ministers, and all manner of persons, in public or private, diplomatising or whatever else they might be doing, should walk according to the gospel of christ, and understand that this was their law, supreme over all laws. he hoped once to see such a thing realised; and the petition, _thy kingdom come_, no longer an empty word. he was sore grieved when he saw greedy worldly barons clutch hold of the church's property; when he expostulated that it was not secular property, that it was spiritual property, and should be turned to _true_ churchly uses, education, schools, worship;--and the regent murray had to answer, with a shrug of the shoulders, "it is a devout imagination!" this was knox's scheme of right and truth; this he zealously endeavoured after, to realise it. if we think this scheme of truth was too narrow, was not true, we may rejoice that he could not realise it; that it remained after two centuries of effort, unrealisable, and is a 'devout imagination' still. but how shall we blame _him_ for struggling to realise it? theocracy, government of god, is precisely the thing to be struggled for! all prophets, zealous priests, are there for that purpose. hildebrand wished a theocracy; cromwell wished it, fought for it; mahomet attained it. nay, is it not what all zealous men, whether called priests, prophets, or whatsoever else called, do essentially wish, and must wish? that right and truth, or god's law, reign supreme among men, this is the heavenly ideal (well named in knox's time, and namable in all times, a revealed 'will of god') towards which the reformer will insist that all be more and more approximated. all true reformers, as i said, are by the nature of them priests, and strive for a theocracy. how far such ideals can ever be introduced into practice, and at what point our impatience with their non-introduction ought to begin, is always a question. i think we may say safely, let them introduce themselves as far as they can contrive to do it! if they are the true faith of men, all men ought to be more or less impatient always where they are not found introduced. there will never be wanting regent murrays enough to shrug their shoulders, and say, "a devout imagination!" we will praise the hero-priest, rather, who does what is in _him_ to bring them in; and wears out, in toil, calumny, contradiction, a noble life, to make a god's kingdom of this earth. the earth will not become too godlike! lecture v the hero as a man of letters. johnson, rousseau, burns. [_tuesday, th may _] hero-gods, prophets, poets, priests are forms of heroism that belong to the old ages, make their appearance in the remotest times; some of them have ceased to be possible long since, and cannot any more show themselves in this world. the hero as _man of letters_, again, of which class we are to speak today, is altogether a product of these new ages; and so long as the wondrous art of _writing_, or of ready-writing which we call _printing_, subsists, he may be expected to continue, as one of the main forms of heroism for all future ages. he is, in various respects, a very singular phenomenon. he is new, i say; he has hardly lasted above a century in the world yet. never, till about a hundred years ago, was there seen any figure of a great soul living apart in that anomalous manner; endeavouring to speak-forth the inspiration that was in him by printed books, and find place and subsistence by what the world would please to give him for doing that. much had been sold and bought, and left to make its own bargain in the marketplace; but the inspired wisdom of a heroic soul never till then, in that naked manner. he, with his copy-rights and copy-wrongs, in his squalid garret, in his rusty coat; ruling (for this is what he does), from his grave, after death, whole nations and generations who would, or would not, give him bread while living,--is a rather curious spectacle! few shapes of heroism can be more unexpected. alas, the hero from of old has had to cramp himself into strange shapes: the world knows not well at any time what to do with him, so foreign is his aspect in the world! it seemed absurd to us, that men, in their rude admiration, should take some wise great odin for a god, and worship him as such, some wise great mahomet for one god-inspired, and religiously follow his law for twelve centuries: but that a wise great johnson, a burns, a rousseau, should be taken for some idle non-descript, extant in the world to amuse idleness, and have a few coins and applauses thrown in, that he might live thereby; _this_ perhaps, as before hinted, will one day seem a still absurder phasis of things!--meanwhile, since it is the spiritual always that determines the material, this same man-of-letters hero must be regarded as our most important modern person. he, such as he may be, is the soul of all. what he teachers, the whole world will do and make. the world's manner of dealing with him is the most significant feature of the world's general position. looking well at his life, we may get a glance, as deep as is readily possible for us, into the life of those singular centuries which have produced him, in which we ourselves live and work. there are genuine men of letters, and not genuine; as in every kind there is a genuine and a spurious. if _hero_ be taken to mean genuine, then i say the hero as man of letters will be found discharging a function for us which is ever honourable, ever the highest; and was once well known to be the highest. he is uttering-forth, in such a way as he has, the inspired soul of him; all that a man, in any case, can do. i say _inspired_; for what we call 'originality,' 'sincerity,' 'genius,' the heroic quality we have no good name for, signifies that. the hero is he who lives in the inward sphere of things, in the true, divine and eternal, which exists always, unseen to most, under the temporary, trivial: his being is in that; he declares that abroad, by act or speech as it may be, in declaring himself abroad. his life, as we said before, is a piece of the everlasting heart of nature herself: all men's life is,--but the weak many know not the fact, and are untrue to it, in most times; the strong few are strong, heroic, perennial, because it cannot be hidden from them. the man of letters, like every hero, is there to proclaim this in such sort as he can. intrinsically it is the same function which the old generations named a man prophet, priest, divinity for doing; which all manner of heroes, by speech or by act, are sent into the world to do. fichte the german philosopher delivered, some forty years ago at erlangen, a highly remarkable course of lectures on this subject: '_ueber das wesen des gelehrten_, on the nature of the literary man.' fichte, in conformity with the transcendental philosophy, of which he was a distinguished teacher, declares first: that all things which we see or work with in this earth, especially we ourselves and all persons, are as a kind of vesture or sensuous appearance: that under all there lies, as the essence of them, what he calls the 'divine idea of the world;' this is the reality which 'lies at the bottom of all appearance.' to the mass of men no such divine idea is recognisable in the world; they live merely, says fichte, among the superficialities, practicalities and shows of the world, not dreaming that there is anything divine under them. but the man of letters is sent hither specially that he may discern for himself, and make manifest to us, this same divine idea: in every new generation it will manifest itself in a new dialect; and he is there for the purpose of doing that. such is fichte's phraseology; with which we need not quarrel. it is his way of naming what i here, by other words, am striving imperfectly to name; what there is at present no name for: the unspeakable divine significance, full of splendour, of wonder and terror, that lies in the being of every man, of every thing,--the presence of the god who made every man and thing. mahomet taught this in his dialect; odin in his: it is the thing which all thinking hearts, in one dialect or another, are here to teach. fichte calls the man of letters, therefore, a prophet, or as he prefers to phrase it, a priest, continually unfolding the godlike to men: men of letters are a perpetual priesthood, from age to age, teaching all men that a god is still present in their life; that all 'appearance,' whatsoever we see in the world, is but as a vesture for the 'divine idea of the world,' for 'that which lies at the bottom of appearance.' in the true literary man there is thus ever, acknowledged or not by the world, a sacredness: he is the light of the world; the world's priest:--guiding it, like a sacred pillar of fire, in its dark pilgrimage through the waste of time. fichte discriminates with sharp zeal the _true_ literary man, what we here call the _hero_ as man of letters, from multitudes of false unheroic. whoever lives not wholly in this divine idea, or living partially in it, struggles not, as for the one good, to live wholly in it,--he is, let him live where else he like, in what pomps and prosperities he like, no literary man; he is, says fichte, a 'bungler, _stümper_.' or at best, if he belong to the prosaic provinces, he may be a 'hodman;' fichte even calls him elsewhere a 'nonentity,' and has in short no mercy for him, no wish that _he_ should continue happy among us! this is fichte's notion of the man of letters. it means, in its own form, precisely what we here mean. in this point of view, i consider that, for the last hundred years, by far the notablest of all literary men is fichte's countryman, goethe. to that man too, in a strange way, there was given what we may call a life in the divine idea of the world; vision of the inward divine mystery: and strangely, out of his books, the world rises imaged once more as godlike, the workmanship and temple of a god. illuminated all, not in fierce impure fire-splendour as of mahomet, but in mild celestial radiance;--really a prophecy in these most unprophetic times; to my mind, by far the greatest, though one of the quietest, among all the great things that have come to pass in them. our chosen specimen of the hero as literary man would be this goethe. and it were a very pleasant plan for me here to discourse of his heroism: for i consider him to be a true hero; heroic in what he said and did, and perhaps still more in what he did not say and did not do; to me a noble spectacle: a great heroic ancient man, speaking and keeping silence as an ancient hero, in the guise of a most modern, high-bred, high-cultivated man of letters! we have had no such spectacle; no man capable of affording such, for the last hundred-and-fifty years. but at present, such is the general state of knowledge about goethe, it were worse than useless to attempt speaking of him in this case. speak as i might, goethe, to the great majority of you would remain problematic, vague; no impression but a false one could be realised. him we must leave to future times. johnson, burns, rousseau, three great figures from a prior time, from a far inferior state of circumstances, will suit us better here. three men of the eighteenth century; the conditions of their life far more resemble what those of ours still are in england, than what goethe's in germany were. alas, these men did not conquer like him; they fought bravely, and fell. they were not heroic bringers of the light, but heroic seekers of it. they lived under galling conditions; struggling as under mountains of impediment, and could not unfold themselves into clearness, or victorious interpretation of that 'divine idea.' it is rather the _tombs_ of three literary heroes that i have to show you. there are the monumental heaps, under which three spiritual giants lie buried. very mournful, but also great and full of interest for us. we will linger by them for a while. complaint is often made, in these times, of what we call the disorganised condition of society: how ill many arranged forces of society fulfil their work; how many powerful forces are seen working in a wasteful, chaotic, altogether unarranged manner. it is too just a complaint, as we all know. but perhaps if we look at this of books and the writers of books, we shall find here, as it were, the summary of all other disorganisation;--a sort of _heart_, from which, and to which, all other confusion circulates in the world! considering what book-writers do in the world, and what the world does with book-writers, i should say, it is the most anomalous thing the world at present has to show.--we should get into a sea far beyond sounding, did we attempt to give account of this: but we must glance at it for the sake of our subject. the worst element in the life of these three literary heroes was, that they found their business and position such a chaos. on the beaten road there is tolerable travelling; but it is sore work, and many have to perish, fashioning a path through the impassable! our pious fathers, feeling well what importance lay in the speaking of man to men, founded churches, made endowments, regulations; everywhere in the civilised world there is a pulpit, environed with all manner of complex dignified appurtenances and furtherances, that therefrom a man with the tongue may, to best advantage, address his fellow-men. they felt that this was the most important thing; that without this there was no good thing. it is a right pious work, that of theirs; beautiful to behold! but now with the art of writing, with the art of printing, a total change has come over that business. the writer of a book, is not he a preacher preaching not to this parish or that, on this day or that, but to all men in all times and places? surely it is of the last importance that _he_ do his work right, whoever do it wrong;--that the _eye_ report not falsely, for then all the other members are astray! well; how he may do his work, whether he do it right or wrong, or do it at all, is a point which no man in the world has taken the pains to think of. to a certain shopkeeper, trying to get some money for his books, if lucky, he is of some importance; to no other man of any. whence he came, whither he is bound, by what ways he arrived, by what he might be furthered on his course, no one asks. he is an accident in society. he wanders like a wild ishmaelite, in a world of which he is as the spiritual light, either the guidance or the misguidance! certainly the art of writing is the most miraculous of all things man has devised. odin's _runes_ were the first form of the work of a hero; _books_, written words, are still miraculous _runes_, of the latest form! in books lies the _soul_ of the whole past time; the articulate audible voice of the past, when the body and material substance of it has altogether vanished like a dream. mighty fleets and armies, harbours and arsenals, vast cities, high-domed, many-engined,--they are precious, great: but what do they become? agamemnon, the many agamemnons, pericleses, and their greece; all is gone now to some ruined fragments, dumb mournful wrecks and blocks: but the books of greece! there greece, to every thinker, still very literally lives; can be called-up again into life. no magic _rune_ is stranger than a book. all that mankind has done, thought, gained or been: it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of books. they are the chosen possession of men. do not books still accomplish _miracles_ as _runes_ were fabled to do? they persuade men. not the wretchedest circulating-library novel, which foolish girls thumb and con in remote villages but will help to regulate the actual practical weddings and households of those foolish girls. so 'celia' felt, so 'clifford' acted: the foolish theorem of life, stamped into those young brains, comes out as a solid practice one day. consider whether any _rune_ in the wildest imagination of mythologist ever did such wonders as, on the actual firm earth, some books have done! what built st paul's cathedral? look at the heart of the matter, it was that divine hebrew book,--the word partly of the man moses, an outlaw tending his midianitish herds, four thousand years ago, in the wildernesses of sinai! it is the strangest of things, yet nothing is truer. with the art of writing, of which printing is a simple, an inevitable and comparatively insignificant corollary, the true reign of miracles for mankind commenced. it related, with a wondrous new contiguity and perpetual closeness, the past and distant with the present in time and place; all times and all places with this our actual here and now. all things were altered for men; all modes of important work of men: teaching, preaching, governing, and all else. to look at teaching, for instance. universities are a notable, respectable product of the modern ages. their existence too is modified, to the very basis of it, by the existence of books. universities arose while there were yet no books procurable; while a man, for a single book, had to give an estate of land. that, in those circumstances, when a man had some knowledge to communicate, he should do it by gathering the learners round him, face to face, was a necessity for him. if you wanted to know what abelard knew, you must go and listen to abelard. thousands, as many as thirty-thousand, went to hear abelard and that metaphysical theology of his. and now for any other teacher who had something of his own to teach, there was a great convenience opened: so many thousands eager to learn were already assembled yonder; of all places the best place for him was that. for any third teacher it was better still; and grew ever the better, the more teachers there came. it only needed now that the king took notice of this new phenomenon; combined or agglomerated the various schools into one school; gave it edifices, privileges, encouragements, and named it _universitas_, or school of all sciences: the university of paris, in its essential characters, was there. the model of all subsequent universities; which down even to these days, for six centuries now, have gone on to found themselves. such, i conceive, was the origin of universities. it is clear, however, that with this simple circumstance, facility of getting books, the whole conditions of the business from top to bottom were changed. once invent printing, you metamorphosed all universities, or superseded them! the teacher needed not now to gather men personally round him, that he might _speak_ to them what he knew: print it in a book, and all learners far and wide, for a trifle, had it each at his own fireside, much more effectually to learn it!--doubtless there is still peculiar virtue in speech; even writers of books may still, in some circumstances, find it convenient to speak also,--witness our present meeting here! there _is_, one would say, and must ever remain while man has a tongue, a distinct province for speech as well as for writing and printing. in regard to all things this must remain; to universities among others. but the limits of the two have nowhere yet been pointed out, ascertained; much less put in practice: the university which would completely take-in that great new fact, of the existence of printed books, and stand on a clear footing for the nineteenth century as the paris one did for the thirteenth, has not yet come into existence. if we think of it, all that a university, or final highest school can do for us, is still but what the first school began doing,--teach us to _read_. we learn to _read_, in various languages, in various sciences; we learn the alphabet and letters of all manner of books. but the place where we go to get knowledge, even theoretic knowledge, is the books themselves! it depends on what we read, after all manner of professors have done their best for us. the true university of these days is a collection of books. but to the church itself, as i hinted already, all is changed, in its preaching, in its working, by the introduction of books. the church is the working recognised union of our priests or prophets, of those who by wise teaching guide the souls of men. while there was no writing, even while there was no easy-writing or _printing_, the preaching of the voice was the natural sole method of performing this. but now with books!--he that can write a true book, to persuade england, is not he the bishop and archbishop, the primate of england and of all england? i many a time say, the writers of newspapers, pamphlets, poems, books, these _are_ the real working effective church of a modern country. nay not only our preaching, but even our worship, is not it too accomplished by means of printed books? the noble sentiment which a gifted soul has clothed for us in melodious words, which brings melody into our hearts,--is not this essentially, if we will understand it, of the nature of worship? there are many, in all countries, who, in this confused time, have no other method of worship. he who, in any way, shows us better than we knew before that a lily of the fields is beautiful, does he not show it us as an effluence of the fountain of all beauty; as the _handwriting_, made visible there, of the great maker of the universe? he has sung for us, made us sing with him, a little verse of a sacred psalm. essentially so. how much more he who sings, who says, or in any way brings home to our heart the noble doings, feelings, darings and endurances of a brother man! he has verily touched our hearts as with a live coal _from the altar_. perhaps there is no worship more authentic. literature, so far as it is literature, is an 'apocalypse of nature,' a revealing of the 'open secret.' it may well enough be named, in fichte's style; a 'continuous revelation' of the godlike in the terrestrial and common. the godlike does ever, in very truth, endure there; is brought out, now in this dialect, now in that, with various degrees of clearness: all true gifted singers and speakers are, consciously or unconsciously, doing so. the dark stormful indignation of a byron, so wayward and perverse, may have touches of it; nay the withered mockery of a french sceptic,--his mockery of the false, a love and worship of the true. how much more the sphere-harmony of a shakspeare, of a goethe; the cathedral-music of a milton! they are something too, those humble genuine lark-notes of a burns,--skylark, starting from the humble furrow, far overhead into the blue depths, and singing to us so genuinely there! for all true singing is of the nature of worship; as indeed all true _working_ may be said to be,--whereof such _singing_ is but the record, and fit melodious representation, to us. fragments of a real 'church liturgy' and 'body of homilies,' strangely disguised from the common eye, are to be found weltering in that huge froth-ocean of printed speech we loosely call literature! books are our church too. or turning now to the government of men. witenagemote, old parliament, was a great thing. the affairs of the nation were there deliberated and decided; what we were to _do_ as a nation. but does not, though the name parliament subsists, the parliamentary debate go on now, everywhere and at all times, in a far more comprehensive way, _out_ of parliament altogether? burke said there were three estates in parliament; but, in the reporters' gallery yonder, there sat a _fourth estate_ more important far than they all. it is not a figure of speech, or a witty saying; it is a literal fact,--very momentous to us in these times. literature is our parliament too. printing, which comes necessarily out of writing, i say often, is equivalent to democracy: invent writing, democracy is inevitable. writing brings printing; brings universal every-day extempore printing, as we see at present. whoever can speak, speaking now to the whole nation, becomes a power, a branch of government, with inalienable weight in law-making, in all acts of authority. it matters not what rank he has, what revenues or garnitures: the requisite thing is, that he have a tongue which others will listen to; this and nothing more is requisite. the nation is governed by all that has tongue in the nation: democracy is virtually _there_. add only, that whatsoever power exists will have itself, by and by, organised; working secretly under bandages, obscurations, obstructions, it will never rest till it get to work free, unencumbered, visible to all. democracy virtually extant will insist on becoming palpably extant.-- on all sides, are we not driven to the conclusion that, of the things which man can do or make here below, by far the most momentous, wonderful and worthy are the things we call books! those poor bits of rag-paper with black ink on them;--from the daily newspaper to the sacred hebrew book, what have they not done, what are they not doing!--for indeed, whatever be the outward form of the thing (bits of paper, as we say, and black ink), is it not verily, at bottom, the highest act of man's faculty that produces a book? it is the _thought_ of man; the true thaumaturgic virtue; by which man works all things whatsoever. all that he does, and brings to pass, is the vesture of a thought. this london city, with all its houses, palaces, steam-engines, cathedrals, and huge immeasurable traffic and tumult, what is it but a thought, but millions of thoughts made into one;--a huge immeasurable spirit of a thought, embodied in brick, in iron, smoke, dust, palaces, parliaments, hackney coaches, katherine docks, and the rest of it! not a brick was made but some man had to _think_ of the making of that brick.--the thing we called 'bits of paper with traces of black ink,' is the _purest_ embodiment a thought of man can have. no wonder it is, in all ways, the activest and noblest. all this, of the importance and supreme importance of the man of letters in modern society, and how the press is to such a degree superseding the pulpit, the senate, the _senatus academicus_ and much else, has been admitted for a good while; and recognised often enough, in late times, with a sort of sentimental triumph and wonderment. it seems to me, the sentimental by and by will have to give place to the practical. if men of letters _are_ so incalculably influential, actually performing such work for us from age to age, and even from day to day, then i think we may conclude that men of letters will not always wander like unrecognised unregulated ishmaelites among us! whatsoever thing, as i said above, has virtual unnoticed power will castoff its wrappages, bandages, and step-forth one day with palpably articulated, universally visible power. that one man wear the clothes, and take the wages, of a function which is done by quite another: there can be no profit in this; this is not right, it is wrong. and yet, alas, the _making_ of it right,--what a business, for long times to come! sure enough, this that we call organisation of the literary guild is still a great way off, encumbered with all manner of complexities. if you asked me what were the best possible organisation for the men of letters in modern society; the arrangement of furtherance and regulation, grounded the most accurately on the actual facts of their position and of the world's position,--i should beg to say that the problem far exceeded my faculty! it is not one man's faculty; it is that of many successive men turned earnestly upon it, that will bring-out even an approximate solution. what the best arrangement were, none of us could say. but if you ask, which is the worst? i answer: this which we now have, that chaos should sit umpire in it; this is the worst. to the best, or any good one, there is yet a long way. one remark i must not omit, that royal or parliamentary grants of money are by no means the chief thing wanted! to give our men of letters stipends, endowments and all furtherance of cash, will do little towards the business. on the whole, one is weary of hearing about the omnipotence of money. i will say rather that, for a genuine man, it is no evil to be poor; that there ought to be literary men poor,--to show whether they are genuine or not! mendicant orders, bodies of good men doomed to _beg_, were instituted in the christian church; a most natural and even necessary development of the spirit of christianity. it was itself founded on poverty, on sorrow, contradiction, crucifixion, every species of worldly distress and degradation. we may say, that he who has not known those things, and learned from them the priceless lessons they have to teach, has missed a good opportunity of schooling. to beg, and go barefoot, in coarse woollen cloak with a rope round your loins, and be despised of all the world, was no beautiful business;--nor an honourable one in any eye, till the nobleness of those who did so had made it honoured of some! begging is not in our course at the present time: but for the rest of it, who will say that a johnson is not perhaps the better for being poor? it is needful for him, at all rates, to know that outward profit, that success of any kind is _not_ the goal he has to aim at. pride, vanity, ill-conditioned egoism of all sorts, are bred in his heart, as in every heart; need, above all, to be cast-out of his heart,--to be, with whatever pangs, torn-out of it, cast-forth from it, as a thing worthless. byron, born rich and noble, made-out even less than burns, poor and plebeian. who knows but, in that same 'best possible organisation' as yet far off, poverty may still enter as an important element? what if our men of letters, men setting-up to be spiritual heroes, were still _then_, as they now are, a kind of 'involuntary monastic order;' bound still to this same ugly poverty,--till they had tried what was in it too, till they had learned to make it too do for them! money, in truth, can do much, but it cannot do all. we must know the province of it, and confine it; and even spurn it back, when it wishes to get farther. besides, were the money-furtherances, the proper season for them, the fit assigner of them, all settled,--how is the burns to be recognised that merits these? he must pass through the ordeal, and prove himself. _this_ ordeal; this wild welter of a chaos which is called literary life; this too is a kind of ordeal! there is clear truth in the idea that a struggle from the lower classes of society, towards the upper regions and rewards of society, must ever continue. strong men are born there, who ought to stand elsewhere than there. the manifold, inextricably complex, universal struggle of these constitutes, and must constitute, what is called the progress of society. for men of letters, as for all other sorts of men. how to regulate that struggle? there is the whole question. to leave it as it is, at the mercy of blind chance; a whirl of distracted atoms, one cancelling the other; one of the thousand arriving saved, nine-hundred-and-ninety-nine lost by the way; your royal johnson languishing inactive in garrets, or harnessed to the yoke of printer cave; your burns dying broken-hearted as a gauger; your rousseau driven into mad exasperation, kindling french revolutions by his paradoxes: this, as we said, is clearly enough the _worst_ regulation. the _best_, alas, is far from us! and yet there can be no doubt but it is coming; advancing on us, as yet hidden in the bosom of centuries: this is a prophecy one can risk. for so soon as men get to discern the importance of a thing, they do infallibly set about arranging it, facilitating, forwarding it; and rest not till, in some approximate degree, they have accomplished that. i say, of all priesthoods, aristocracies, governing classes at present extant in the world, there is no class comparable for importance to that priesthood of the writers of books. this is a fact which he who runs may read,--and draw inferences from. "literature will take care of itself," answered mr pitt, when applied-to for some help for burns. "yes," adds mr southey, "it will take care of itself; _and of you too_, if you do not look to it!" the result to individual men of letters is not the momentous one; they are but individuals, an infinitesimal fraction of the great body; they can struggle on, and live or else die, as they have been wont. but it deeply concerns the whole society, whether it will set its _light_ on high places, to walk thereby; or trample it under foot, and scatter it in all ways of wild waste (not without conflagration), as heretofore! light is the one thing wanted for the world. put wisdom in the head of the world, the world will fight its battle victoriously, and be the best world man can make it. i call this anomaly of a disorganic literary class the heart of all other anomalies, at once product and parent; some good arrangement for that would be as the _punctum saliens_ of a new vitality and just arrangement for all. already, in some european countries, in france, in prussia, one traces some beginnings of an arrangement for the literary class; indicating the gradual possibility of such. i believe that it is possible; that it will have to be possible. by far the most interesting fact i hear about the chinese is one on which we cannot arrive at clearness, but which excites endless curiosity even in the dim state: this namely, that they do attempt to make their men of letters their governors! it would be rash to say, one understood how this was done, or with what degree of success it was done. all such things must be very unsuccessful; yet a small degree of success is precious; the very attempt how precious! there does seem to be, all over china, a more or less active search everywhere to discover the men of talent that grow up in the young generation. schools there are for every one: a foolish sort of training, yet still a sort. the youths who distinguish themselves in the lower school are promoted into favourable stations in the higher, that they may still more distinguish themselves,--forward and forward: it appears to be out of these that the official persons, and incipient governors, are taken. these are they whom they _try_ first, whether they can govern or not. and surely with the best hope: for they are the men that have already shown intellect. try them: they have not governed or administered as yet; perhaps they cannot; but there is no doubt they _have_ some understanding, without which no man can! neither is understanding a _tool_, as we are too apt to figure; 'it is a _hand_ which can handle any tool.' try these men: they are of all others the best worth trying.--surely there is no kind of government, constitution, revolution, social apparatus or arrangement, that i know of in this world, so promising to one's scientific curiosity as this. the man of intellect at the top of affairs: this is the aim of all constitutions and revolutions, if they have any aim. for the man of true intellect, as i assert and believe always, is the noblehearted man withal, the true, just, humane and valiant man. get _him_ for governor, all is got; fail to get him, though you had constitutions plentiful as blackberries, and a parliament in every village, there is nothing yet got!-- these things look strange, truly; and are not such as we commonly speculate upon. but we are fallen into strange times; these things will require to be speculated upon; to be rendered practicable, to be in some way put in practice. these and many others. on all hands of us, there is the announcement, audible enough, that the old empire of routine has ended; that to say a thing has long been, is no reason for its continuing to be. the things which have been are fallen into decay, are fallen into incompetence; large masses of mankind, in every society of our europe, are no longer capable of living at all by the things which have been. when millions of men can no longer by their utmost exertion gain food for themselves, and 'the third man for thirty-six weeks each year is short of third-rate potatoes,' the things which have been must decidedly prepare to alter themselves!--i will now quit this of the organisation of men of letters. * * * * * alas, the evil that pressed heaviest on those literary heroes of ours was not the want of organisation for men of letters, but a far deeper one; out of which, indeed, this and so many other evils for the literary man, and for all men, had, as from their fountain, taken rise. that our hero as man of letters had to travel without highway, companionless, through an inorganic chaos,--and to leave his own life and faculty lying there, as a partial contribution towards _pushing_ some highway through it: this, had not his faculty itself been so perverted and paralysed, he might have put up with, might have considered to be but the common lot of heroes. his fatal misery was the _spiritual paralysis_, so we may name it, of the age in which his life lay; whereby his life too, do what he might, was half-paralysed! the eighteenth was a _sceptical_ century; in which little word there is a whole pandora's box of miseries. scepticism means not intellectual doubt alone, but moral doubt; all sorts of _in_fidelity, insincerity, spiritual paralysis. perhaps, in few centuries that one could specify since the world began, was a life of heroism more difficult for a man. that was not an age of faith,--an age of heroes! the very possibility of heroism had been, as it were, formally abnegated in the minds of all. heroism was gone forever; triviality, formulism and commonplace were come forever. the 'age of miracles' had been, or perhaps had not been; but it was not any longer. an effete world; wherein wonder, greatness, godhood could not now dwell;--in one word, a godless world! how mean, dwarfish are their ways of thinking, in this time,--compared not with the christian shakspeares and miltons, but with the old pagan skalds, with any species of believing men! the living tree igdrasil, with the melodious prophetic waving of its world-wide boughs, deep-rooted as hela, has died-out into the clanking of a world-machine. 'tree' and 'machine': contrast these two things. i, for my share, declare the world to be no machine! i say that it does not go by wheel-and-pinion 'motives,' self-interests, checks, balances; that there is something far other in it than the clank of spinning-jennies, and parliamentary majorities; and, on the whole, that it is not a machine at all!--the old norse heathen had a truer notion of god's-world than these poor machine-sceptics: the old heathen norse were _sincere_ men. but for these poor sceptics there was no sincerity, no truth. half-truth and hearsay was called truth. truth, for most men, meant plausibility; to be measured by the number of votes you could get. they had lost any notion that sincerity was possible, or of what sincerity was. how many plausibilities asking, with unaffected surprise and the air of offended virtue, what! am not i sincere? spiritual paralysis, i say, nothing left but a mechanical life, was the characteristic of that century. for the common man, unless happily he stood _below_ his century and belonged to another prior one, it was impossible to be a believer, a hero; he lay buried, unconscious, under these baleful influences. to the strongest man, only with infinite struggle and confusion was it possible to work himself half-loose; and lead as it were, in an enchanted, most tragical way, a spiritual death-in-life, and be a half-hero! scepticism is the name we give to all this; as the chief symptom, as the chief origin of all this. concerning which so much were to be said! it would take many discourses, not a small fraction of one discourse, to state what one feels about that eighteenth century and its ways. as indeed this, and the like of this, which we now call scepticism, is precisely the black malady and life-foe, against which all teaching and discoursing since man's life began has directed itself: the battle of belief against unbelief is the never-ending battle! neither is it in the way of crimination that one would wish to speak. scepticism, for that century, we must consider as the decay of old ways of believing, the preparation afar off for new better and wider ways,--an inevitable thing. we will not blame men for it; we will lament their hard fate. we will understand that destruction of old _forms_ is not destruction of everlasting _substances_; that scepticism, as sorrowful and hateful as we see it, is not an end but a beginning. the other day speaking, without prior purpose that way, of bentham's theory of man and man's life, i chanced to call it a more beggarly one than mahomet's. i am bound to say, now when it is once uttered, that such is my deliberate opinion. not that one would mean offence against the man jeremy bentham, or those who respect and believe him. bentham himself, and even the creed of bentham, seems to me comparatively worthy of praise. it is a determinate _being_ what all the world, in a cowardly, half-and-half manner, was tending to be. let us have the crisis; we shall either have death or the cure. i call this gross, steam-engine utilitarianism an approach towards new faith. it was a laying down of cant; a saying to oneself: "well then, this world is a dead iron machine, the god of it gravitation and selfish hunger; let us see what, by checking and balancing, and good adjustment of tooth and pinion, can be made of it!" benthamism has something complete, manful, in such fearless committal of itself to what it finds true; you may call it heroic, though a heroism with its _eyes_ put out! it is the culminating point, and fearless ultimatum, of what lay in the half-and-half state, pervading man's whole existence in that eighteenth century. it seems to me, all deniers of godhood, and all lip-believers of it, are bound to be benthamites, if they have courage and honesty. benthamism is an _eyeless_ heroism: the human species, like a hapless blinded samson grinding in the philistine mill, clasps convulsively the pillars of its mill; brings huge ruin down, but ultimately deliverance withal. of bentham i meant to say no harm. but this i do say, and would wish all men to know and lay to heart, that he who discerns nothing but mechanism in the universe has in the fatalest way missed the secret of the universe altogether. that all godhood should vanish out of men's conception of this universe seems to me precisely the most brutal error,--i will not disparage heathenism by calling it a heathen error,--that men could fall into. it is not true; it is false at the very heart of it. a man who thinks so will think _wrong_ about all things in the world; this original sin will vitiate all other conclusions he can form. one might call it the most lamentable of delusions,--not forgetting witchcraft itself! witchcraft worshipped at least a living devil: but this worships a dead iron devil; no god, not even a devil!--whatsoever is noble, divine, inspired, drops thereby out of life. there remains everywhere in life a despicable _caput-mortuum_; the mechanical hull, all soul fled out of it. how can a man act heroically? the 'doctrine of motives' will teach him that it is, under more or less disguise, nothing but a wretched love of pleasure, fear of pain; that hunger, of applause, of cash, of whatsoever victual it may be, is the ultimate fact of man's life. atheism, in brief;--which does indeed frightfully punish itself. the man, i say, is become spiritually a paralytic man; this god-like universe a dead mechanical steam-engine, all working by motives, checks, balances, and i know not what; wherein, as in the detestable belly of some phalaris'-bull of his own contriving, he the poor phalaris sits miserably dying! belief i define to be the healthy act of a man's mind. it is a mysterious indescribable process, that of getting to believe;--indescribable, as all vital acts are. we have our mind given us, not that it may cavil and argue, but that it may see into something, give us clear belief and understanding about something, whereon we are then to proceed to act. doubt, truly, is not itself a crime. certainly we do not rush out, clutch-up the first thing we find, and straightway believe that! all manner of doubt, inquiry, [greek: skepsis] as it is named, about all manner of objects, dwells in every reasonable mind. it is the mystic working of the mind, on the object it is _getting_ to know and believe. belief comes out of all this, above ground, like the tree from its hidden _roots_. but now if, even on common things, we require that a man keep his doubts _silent_, and not babble of them till they in some measure become affirmations or denials; how much more in regard to the highest things, impossible to speak of in words at all! that a man parade his doubt, and get to imagine that debating and logic (which means at best only the manner of _telling_ us your thought, your belief or disbelief, about a thing) is the triumph and true work of what intellect he has: alas, this is as if you should _overturn_ the tree, and instead of green boughs, leaves, and fruits, show us ugly taloned roots turned-up into the air,--and no growth, only death and misery going on! for the scepticism, as i said, is not intellectual only; it is moral also; a chronic atrophy and disease of the whole soul. a man lives by believing something; not by debating and arguing about many things. a sad case for him when all that he can manage to believe is something he can button in his pocket, and with one or the other organ eat and digest! lower than that he will not get. we call those ages in which he gets so low the mournfulest, sickest, and meanest of all ages. the world's heart is palsied, sick: how can any limb of it be whole? genuine acting ceases in all departments of the world's work; dextrous similitude of acting begins. the world's wages are pocketed, the world's work is not done. heroes have gone out; quacks have come in. accordingly, what century, since the end of the roman world, which also was a time of scepticism, simulacra and universal decadence, so abounds with quacks as that eighteenth! consider them, with their tumid sentimental vapouring about virtue, benevolence,--the wretched quack-squadron, cagliostro at the head of them! few men were without quackery; they had got to consider it a necessary ingredient and amalgam for truth. chatham, our brave chatham himself, comes down to the house, all wrapt and bandaged; he 'has crawled out in great bodily suffering,' and so on;--_forgets_, says walpole, that he is acting the sick man; in the fire of debate, snatches his arm from the sling, and oratorically swings and brandishes it! chatham himself lives the strangest mimetic life, half hero, half quack, all along. for indeed the world is full of dupes; and you have to gain the _world's_ suffrage! how the duties of the world will be done in that case, what quantities of error, which means failure, which means sorrow and misery, to some and to many, will gradually accumulate in all provinces of the world's business, we need not compute. it seems to me, you lay your finger here on the heart of the world's maladies, when you call it a sceptical world. an insincere world; a godless untruth of a world! it is out of this, as i consider, that the whole tribe of social pestilences, french revolutions, chartisms, and what not, have derived their being, their chief necessity to be. this must alter. till this alter, nothing can beneficially alter. my one hope of the world, my inexpugnable consolation in looking at the miseries of the world, is that this is altering. here and there one does now find a man who knows, as of old, that this world is a truth, and no plausibility and falsity; that he himself is alive, not dead or paralytic; and that the world is alive, instinct with godhood, beautiful and awful, even as in the beginning of days! one man once knowing this, many men, all men, must by and by come to know it. it lies there clear, for whosoever will take the _spectacles_ off his eyes and honestly look, to know! for such a man, the unbelieving century, with its unblessed products, is already past: a new century is already come. the old unblessed products and performances, as solid as they look, are phantasms, preparing speedily to vanish. to this and the other noisy, very great-looking simulacrum with the whole world huzzahing at its heels, he can say, composedly stepping aside: thou art not _true_; thou art not extant, only semblant; go thy way!--yes, hollow formulism, gross benthamism, and other unheroic atheistic insincerity is visibly and even rapidly declining. an unbelieving eighteenth century is but an exception,--such as now and then occurs. i prophesy that the world will once more become _sincere_; a believing world: with _many_ heroes in it, a heroic world! it will then be a victorious world; never till then! or indeed what of the world and its victories? men speak too much about the world. each one of us here, let the world go how it will, and be victorious or not victorious, has he not a life of his own to lead? one life; a little gleam of time between two eternities; no second chance to us forevermore! it were well for _us_ to live not as fools and simulacra, but as wise and realities. the world's being saved will not save us; nor the world's being lost destroy us. we should look to ourselves: there is great merit here in the 'duty of staying at home'! and, on the whole, to say truth, i never heard of 'worlds' being 'saved' in any other way. that mania of saving worlds is itself a piece of the eighteenth century with its windy sentimentalism. let us not follow it too far. for the saving of the _world_ i will trust confidently to the maker of the world; and look a little to my own saving, which i am more competent to!--in brief, for the world's sake, and for our own, we will rejoice greatly that scepticism, insincerity, mechanical atheism, with all their poison-dews, are going, and as good as gone.-- now it was under such conditions, in those times of johnson, that our men of letters had to live. times in which there was properly no truth in life. old truths had fallen nigh dumb; the new lay yet hidden, not trying to speak. that man's life here below was a sincerity and fact, and would forever continue such, no new intimation, in that dusk of the world, had yet dawned. no intimation; not even any french revolution,--which we define to be a truth once more, though a truth clad in hellfire! how different was the luther's pilgrimage, with its assured goal, from the johnson's, girt with mere traditions, suppositions, grown now incredible, unintelligible! mahomet's formulas were of 'wood waxed and oiled,' and could be _burnt_ out of one's way: poor johnson's were far more difficult to burn.--the strong man will ever find _work_, which means difficulty, pain, to the full measure of his strength. but to make-out a victory, in those circumstances of our poor hero as man of letters, was perhaps more difficult than in any. not obstruction, disorganisation, bookseller osborne and fourpence-halfpenny a day; not this alone; but the light of his own soul was taken from him. no landmark on the earth; and, alas, what is that to having no loadstar in the heaven! we need not wonder that none of those three men rose to victory. that they fought truly is the highest praise. with a mournful sympathy we will contemplate, if not three living victorious heroes, as i said, the tombs of three fallen heroes! they fell for us too; making a way for us. there are the mountains which they hurled abroad in their confused war of the giants; under which, their strength and life spent, they now lie buried. * * * * * i have already written of these three literary heroes, expressly or incidentally; what i suppose is known to most of you; what need not be spoken or written a second time. they concern us here as the singular _prophets_ of that singular age; for such they virtually were; and the aspect they and their world exhibit, under this point of view, might lead us into reflections enough! i call them, all three, genuine men more or less; faithfully, for most part unconsciously, struggling to be genuine, and plant themselves on the everlasting truth of things. this to a degree that eminently distinguishes them from the poor artificial mass of their contemporaries; and renders them worthy to be considered as speakers, in some measure, of the everlasting truth, as prophets in that age of theirs. by nature herself, a noble necessity was laid on them to be so. they were men of such magnitude that they could not live on unrealities,--clouds, froth and all inanity gave-way under them: there was no footing for them but on firm earth; no rest or regular motion for them, if they got not footing there. to a certain extent, they were sons of nature once more in an age of artifice; once more, original men. as for johnson, i have always considered him to be, by nature, one of our great english souls. a strong and noble man; so much left undeveloped in him to the last: in a kindlier element what might he not have been,--poet, priest, sovereign ruler! on the whole, a man must not complain of his 'element,' of his 'time,' or the like; it is thriftless work doing so. his time is bad: well then, he is there to make it better!--johnson's youth was poor, isolated, hopeless, very miserable. indeed, it does not seem possible that, in any the favourablest outward circumstances, johnson's life could have been other than a painful one. the world might have had more of profitable _work_ out of him, or less; but his _effort_ against the world's work could never have been a light one. nature, in return for his nobleness, had said to him, live in an element of diseased sorrow. nay, perhaps the sorrow and the nobleness were intimately and even inseparably connected with each other. at all events, poor johnson had to go about girt with continual hypochondria, physical and spiritual pain. like a hercules with the burning nessus'-shirt on him, which shoots-in on him dull incurable misery: the nessus'-shirt not to be stript-off, which is his own natural skin! in this manner _he_ had to live. figure him there, with his scrofulous diseases, with his great greedy heart, and unspeakable chaos of thoughts; stalking mournful as a stranger in this earth; eagerly devouring what spiritual thing he could come at: school-languages and other merely grammatical stuff, if there were nothing better! the largest soul that was in all england; and provision made for it of 'fourpence-halfpenny a day.' yet a giant invincible soul; a true man's. one remembers always that story of the shoes at oxford: the rough, seamy-faced, rawboned college servitor stalking about, in winter-season, with his shoes worn-out; how the charitable gentleman commoner secretly places a new pair at his door; and the rawboned servitor, lifting them, looking at them near, with his dim eyes, with what thoughts,--pitches them out of window! wet feet, mud, frost, hunger or what you will; but not beggary: we cannot stand beggary! rude stubborn self-help here; a whole world of squalor, rudeness, confused misery and want, yet of nobleness and manfulness withal. it is a type of the man's life, this pitching-away of the shoes. an original man;--not a secondhand, borrowing or begging man. let us stand on our own basis, at any rate! on such shoes as we ourselves can get. on frost and mud, if you will, but honestly on that;--on the reality and substance which nature gives _us_, not on the semblance, on the thing she has given another than us!-- and yet with all this rugged pride of manhood and self-help was there ever soul more tenderly affectionate, loyally submissive to what was really higher than he? great souls are always loyally submissive, reverent to what is over them; only small mean souls are otherwise. i could not find a better proof of what i said the other day, that the sincere man was by nature the obedient man; that only in a world of heroes was there loyal obedience to the heroic. the essence of _originality_ is not that it be _new_: johnson believed altogether in the old; he found the old opinions credible for him, fit for him; and in a right heroic manner lived under them. he is well worth study in regard to that. for we are to say that johnson was far other than a mere man of words and formulas; he was a man of truths and facts. he stood by the old formulas; the happier was it for him that he could so stand: but in all formulas that _he_ could stand by, there needed to be a most genuine substance. very curious how, in that poor paper-age, so barren, artificial, thick-quilted with pedantries, hearsays, the great fact of this universe glared in, forever wonderful, indubitable, unspeakable, divine-infernal, upon this man too! how he harmonised his formulas with it, how he managed at all under such circumstances: that is a thing worth seeing. a thing 'to be looked at with reverence, with pity, with awe.' that church of st. clement danes, where johnson still _worshipped_ in the era of voltaire, is to me a venerable place. it was in virtue of his _sincerity_, of his speaking still in some sort from the heart of nature, though in the current artificial dialect, that johnson was a prophet. are not all dialects 'artificial'? artificial things are not all false;--nay every true product of nature will infallibly _shape_ itself; we may say all artificial things are, at the starting of them, _true_. what we call 'formulas' are not in their origin bad; they are indispensably good. formula is _method_, habitude; found wherever man is found. formulas fashion themselves as paths do, as beaten highways, leading towards some sacred or high object, whither many men are bent. consider it. one man, full of heartfelt earnest impulse, finds-out a way of doing somewhat,--were it of uttering his soul's reverence for the highest, were it but of fitly saluting his fellow-man. an inventor was needed to do that, a _poet_; he has articulated the dim-struggling thought that dwelt in his own and many hearts. this is his way of doing that; these are his footsteps, the beginning of a 'path.' and now see: the second man travels naturally in the footsteps of his foregoer, it is the _easiest_ method. in the footsteps of his foregoer; yet with improvements, with changes where such seem good; at all events with enlargements, the path ever _widening_ itself as more travel it;--till at last there is a broad highway whereon the whole world may travel and drive. while there remains a city or shrine, or any reality to drive to, at the farther end, the highway shall be right welcome! when the city is gone, we will forsake the highway. in this manner all institutions, practices, regulated things in the world have come into existence, and gone out of existence. formulas all begin by being _full_ of substance; you may call them the _skin_, the articulation into shape, into limbs and skin, of a substance that is already there: _they_ had not been there otherwise. idols, as we said, are not idolatrous till they become doubtful, empty for the worshipper's heart. much as we talk against formulas, i hope no one of us is ignorant withal of the high significance of _true_ formulas; that they were, and will ever be, the indispensablest furniture of our habitation in this world.---- mark, too, how little johnson boasts of his 'sincerity.' he has no suspicion of his being particularly sincere,--of his being particularly anything! a hard-struggling, weary-hearted man, or 'scholar' as he calls himself, trying hard to get some honest livelihood in the world, not to starve, but to live--without stealing! a noble unconsciousness is in him. he does not 'engrave _truth_ on his watch-seal;' no, but he stands by truth, speaks by it, works and lives by it. thus it ever is. think of it once more. the man whom nature has appointed to do great things is, first of all, furnished with that openness to nature which renders him incapable of being _in_sincere! to his large, open, deep-feeling heart nature is a fact: all hearsay is hearsay; the unspeakable greatness of this mystery of life, let him acknowledge it or not, nay even though he seem to forget it or deny it, is ever present to _him_,--fearful and wonderful, on this hand and on that. he has a basis of sincerity; unrecognised, because never questioned or capable of question. mirabeau, mahomet, cromwell, napoleon: all the great men i ever heard-of have this as the primary material of them. innumerable commonplace men are debating, are talking everywhere their commonplace doctrines, which they have learned by logic, by rote, at secondhand: to that kind of man all this is still nothing. he must have truth; truth which _he_ feels to be true. how shall he stand otherwise? his whole soul, at all moments, in all ways, tells him that there is no standing. he is under the noble necessity of being true. johnson's way of thinking about this world is not mine, any more than mahomet's was: but i recognise the everlasting element of heart-_sincerity_ in both; and see with pleasure how neither of them remains ineffectual. neither of them is as _chaff_ sown; in both of them is something which the seed-field will _grow_. johnson was a prophet to his people; preached a gospel to them,--as all like him always do. the highest gospel he preached we may describe as a kind of moral prudence: 'in a world where much is to be done, and little is to be known,' see how you will _do_ it! a thing well worth preaching. 'a world where much is to be done, and little is to be known:' do not sink yourselves in boundless bottomless abysses of doubt, of wretched god-forgetting unbelief;--you were miserable then, powerless, mad: how could you _do_ or work at all? such gospel johnson preached and taught;--coupled, theoretically and practically, with this other great gospel, 'clear your mind of cant!' have no trade with cant: stand on the cold mud in the frosty weather, but let it be in your own _real_ torn shoes: 'that will be better for you,' as mahomet says! i call this, i call these two things _joined together_, a great gospel, the greatest perhaps that was possible at that time. johnson's writings, which once had such currency and celebrity, are now, as it were, disowned by the young generation. it is not wonderful; johnson's opinions are fast becoming obsolete: but his style of thinking and of living, we may hope, will never become obsolete. i find in johnson's books the indisputablest traces of a great intellect and great heart:--ever welcome, under what obstructions and perversions soever. they are _sincere_ words, those of his; he means things by them. a wondrous buckram style,--the best he could get to then; a measured grandiloquence, stepping or rather stalking along in a very solemn way, grown obsolete now; sometimes a tumid _size_ of phraseology not in proportion to the contents of it: all this you will put-up with. for the phraseology, tumid or not, has always _something within it_. so many beautiful styles and books, with _nothing_ in them;--a man is a _male_factor to the world who writes such! _they_ are the avoidable kind!--had johnson left nothing but his _dictionary_, one might have traced there a great intellect, a genuine man. looking to its clearness of definition, its general solidity, honesty, insight, and successful method, it may be called the best of all dictionaries. there is in it a kind of architectural nobleness; it stands there like a great solid square-built edifice, finished, symmetrically complete: you judge that a true builder did it. one word, in spite of our haste, must be granted to poor bozzy. he passes for a mean, inflated, gluttonous creature; and was so in many senses. yet the fact of his reverence for johnson will ever remain noteworthy. the foolish conceited scotch laird, the most conceited man of his time, approaching in such awestruck attitude the great dusty irascible pedagogue in his mean garret there: it is a genuine reverence for excellence; a _worship_ for heroes, at a time when neither heroes nor worship were surmised to exist. heroes, it would seem exist always, and a certain worship of them! we will also take the liberty to deny altogether that of the witty frenchman, that no man is a hero to his valet-de-chambre. or if so, it is not the hero's blame, but the valet's: that his soul, namely, is a mean _valet_-soul! he expects his hero to advance in royal stage-trappings, with measured step, trains borne behind him, trumpets sounding before him. it should stand rather, no man can be a _grand-monarque_ to his valet-de-chambre. strip your louis quatorze of his king-gear, and there _is_ left nothing but a poor forked radish with a head fantastically carved;--admirable to no valet. the valet does not know a hero when he sees him! alas, no: it requires a kind of _hero_ to do that;--and one of the world's wants, in _this_ as in other senses, is for the most part want of such. on the whole, shall we not say, that boswell's admiration was well bestowed; that he could have found no soul in all england so worthy of bending down before? shall we not say, of this great mournful johnson too, that he guided his difficult confused existence wisely; led it _well_, like a right-valiant man? that waste chaos of authorship by trade; that waste chaos of scepticism in religion and politics, in life-theory and life-practice; in his poverty, in his dust and dimness, with the sick body and the rusty coat: he made it do for him, like a brave man. not wholly without a loadstar in the eternal; he had still a loadstar, as the brave all need to have: with his eye set on that, he would change his course for nothing in these confused vortices of the lower sea of time. 'to the spirit of lies, bearing death and hunger, he would in no wise strike his flag.' brave old samuel: _ultimus romanorum_! * * * * * of rousseau and his heroism i cannot say so much. he is not what i call a strong man. a morbid, excitable, spasmodic man; at best, intense rather than strong. he had not 'the talent of silence,' an invaluable talent; which few frenchmen, or indeed men of any sort in these times, excel in! the suffering man ought really 'to consume his own smoke;' there is no good in emitting _smoke_ till you have made it into _fire_,--which, in the metaphorical sense too, all smoke is capable of becoming! rousseau has not depth or width, not calm force for difficulty; the first characteristic of true greatness. a fundamental mistake to call vehemence and rigidity strength! a man is not strong who takes convulsion-fits; though six men cannot hold him then. he that can walk under the heaviest weight without staggering, he is the strong man. we need forever, especially in these loud-shrieking days, to remind ourselves of that. a man who cannot _hold his peace_, till the time come for speaking and acting, is no right man. poor rousseau's face is to me expressive of him. a high but narrow contracted intensity in it: bony brows; deep, straight-set eyes, in which there is something bewildered-looking,--bewildered, peering with lynx-eagerness. a face full of misery, even ignoble misery, and also of the antagonism against that; something mean, plebeian there, redeemed only by _intensity_: the face of what is called a fanatic,--a sadly _contracted_ hero! we name him here because, with all his drawbacks, and they are many, he has the first and chief characteristic of a hero: he is heartily _in earnest_. in earnest, if ever man was; as none of these french philosophes were. nay, one would say, of an earnestness too great for his otherwise sensitive, rather feeble nature; and which indeed in the end drove him into the strangest incoherences, almost delirations. there had come, at last, to be a kind of madness in him: his ideas _possessed_ him like demons; hurried him so about, drove him over steep places!-- the fault and misery of rousseau was what we easily name by a single word _egoism_; which is indeed the source and summary of all faults and miseries whatsoever. he had not perfected himself into victory over mere desire; a mean hunger, in many sorts, was still the motive principle of him. i am afraid he was a very vain man; hungry for the praises of men. you remember genlis's experience of him. she took jean jacques to the theatre; he bargaining for a strict incognito,--"_he_ would not be seen there for the world!" the curtain did happen nevertheless to be drawn aside: the pit recognised jean jacques, but took no great notice of him! he expressed the bitterest indignation; gloomed all evening, spake no other than surly words. the glib countess remained entirely convinced that his anger was not at being seen, but at not being applauded when seen. how the whole nature of the man is poisoned; nothing but suspicion, self-isolation, fierce moody ways! he could not live with anybody. a man of some rank from the country, who visited him often, and used to sit with him, expressing all reverence and affection for him, comes one day, finds jean jacques full of the sourest unintelligible humour. "monsieur," said jean jacques, with flaming eyes, "i know why you come here. you come to see what a poor life i lead; how little is in my poor pot that is boiling there. well, look into the pot! there is half a pound of meat, one carrot and three onions; that is all: go and tell the whole world that, if you like, monsieur!"--a man of this sort was far gone. the whole world got itself supplied with anecdotes for light laughter, for a certain theatrical interest, from these perversions and contortions of poor jean jacques. alas, to him they were not laughing or theatrical; too real to him! the contortions of a dying gladiator: the crowded amphitheatre looks-on with entertainment; but the gladiator is in agonies and dying. and yet this rousseau, as we say, with his passionate appeals to mothers, with his _contrat-social_, with his celebrations of nature, even of savage life in nature, did once more touch upon reality, struggle towards reality; was doing the function of a prophet to his time. as _he_ could, and as the time could! strangely through all that defacement, degradation and almost madness, there is in the inmost heart of poor rousseau a spark of real heavenly fire. once more, out of the element of that withered mocking philosophism, scepticism and persiflage, there has arisen in that man the ineradicable feeling and knowledge that this life of ours is _true_; not a scepticism, theorem, or persiflage, but a fact, an awful reality. nature had made that revelation to him; had ordered him to speak it out. he got it spoken out; if not well and clearly, then ill and dimly,--as clearly as he could. nay what are all errors and perversities of his, even those stealings of ribbons aimless confused miseries and vagabondisms, if we will interpret them kindly, but the blinkard dazzlements and staggerings to and fro of a man sent on an errand he is too weak for, by a path he cannot yet find? men are led by strange ways. one should have tolerance for a man, hope of him; leave him to try yet what he will do. while life lasts, hope lasts for every man. of rousseau's literary talents, greatly celebrated still among his countrymen, i do not say much. his books, like himself, are what i call unhealthy; not the good sort of books. there is a sensuality in rousseau. combined with such an intellectual gift as his, it makes pictures of a certain gorgeous attractiveness: but they are not genuinely poetical. not white sunlight: something _operatic_; a kind of rosepink, artificial bedizenment. it is frequent, or rather it is universal, among the french since his time. madame de staël has something of it; st. pierre; and down onwards to the present astonishing convulsionary 'literature of desperation,' it is everywhere abundant. that same _rosepink_ is not the right hue. look at a shakspeare, at a goethe, even at a walter scott! he who has once seen into this, has seen the difference of the true from the sham-true, and will discriminate them ever afterwards. we had to observe in johnson how much good a prophet, under all disadvantages and disorganisations, can accomplish for the world. in rousseau we are called to look rather at the fearful amount of evil which, under such disorganisation, may accompany the good. historically it is a most pregnant spectacle, that of rousseau. banished into paris garrets, in the gloomy company of his own thoughts and necessities there; driven from post to pillar; fretted, exasperated till the heart of him went mad, he had grown to feel deeply that the world was not his friend nor the world's law. it was expedient, if anyway possible, that such a man should _not_ have been set in flat hostility with the world. he could be cooped into garrets, laughed at as a maniac, left to starve like a wild beast in his cage;--but he could not be hindered from setting the world on fire. the french revolution found its evangelist in rousseau. his semi-delirious speculations on the miseries of civilised life, the preferability of the savage to the civilised, and suchlike, helped well to produce a whole delirium in france generally. true, you may well ask, what could the world, the governors of the world, do with such a man? difficult to say what the governors of the world could do with him! what he could do with them is unhappily clear enough,--_guillotine_ a great many of them! enough now of rousseau. * * * * * it was a curious phenomenon, in the withered, unbelieving, secondhand eighteenth century, that of a hero starting up, among the artificial pasteboard figures and productions, in the guise of a robert burns. like a little well in the rocky desert places,--like a sudden splendour of heaven in the artificial vauxhall! people knew not what to make of it. they took it for a piece of the vauxhall fire-work; alas, it _let_ itself be so taken, though struggling half-blindly, as in bitterness of death, against that! perhaps no man had such a false reception from his fellow-men. once more a very wasteful life-drama was enacted under the sun. the tragedy of burns's life is known to all of you. surely we may say, if discrepancy between place held and place merited constitute perverseness of lot for a man, no lot could be more perverse than burns's. among those secondhand acting-figures, _mimes_ for most part, of the eighteenth century, once more a giant original man; one of those men who reach down to the perennial deeps, who take rank with the heroic among men: and he was born in a poor ayrshire hut. the largest soul of all the british lands came among us in the shape of a hard-handed scottish peasant. his father, a poor toiling man, tried various things; did not succeed in any; was involved in continual difficulties. the steward, factor as the scotch call him, used to send letters and threatenings, burns says, 'which threw us all into tears.' the brave, hard-toiling, hard-suffering father, his brave heroine of a wife; and those children, of whom robert was one! in this earth, so wide otherwise, no shelter for _them_. the letters 'threw us all into tears:' figure it. the brave father, i say always;--a _silent_ hero and poet; without whom the son had never been a speaking one! burns's schoolmaster came afterwards to london, learnt what good society was; but declares that in no meeting of men did he ever enjoy better discourse than at the hearth of this peasant. and his poor 'seven acres of nursery-ground,'--not that, nor the miserable patch of clay-farm, nor anything he tried to get a living by, would prosper with him; he had a sore unequal battle all his days. but he stood to it valiantly; a wise, faithful, unconquerable man;--swallowing-down how many sore sufferings daily into silence; fighting like an unseen hero,--nobody publishing newspaper paragraphs about his nobleness; voting pieces of plate to him! however, he was not lost: nothing is lost. robert is there; the outcome of him,--and indeed of many generations of such as him. this burns appears under every disadvantage: uninstructed, poor, born only to hard manual toil; and writing, when it came to that, in a rustic special dialect, known only to a small province of the country he lived in. had he written, even what he did write, in the general language of england, i doubt not he had already become universally recognised as being, or capable to be, one of our greatest men. that he should have tempted so many to penetrate through the rough husk of that dialect of his, is proof that there lay something far from common within it. he has gained a certain recognition, and is continuing to do so over all quarters of our wide saxon world: wheresoever a saxon dialect is spoken, it begins to be understood, by personal inspection of this and the other, that one of the most considerable saxon men of the eighteenth century was an ayrshire peasant named robert burns. yes, i will say, here too was a piece of the right saxon stuff: strong as the harz-rock, rooted in the depths of the world;--rock, yet with wells of living softness in it! a wild impetuous whirlwind of passion and faculty slumbered quiet there; such heavenly _melody_ dwelling in the heart of it. a noble rough genuineness; homely, rustic, honest; true simplicity of strength: with its lightning-fire, with its soft dewy pity;--like the old norse thor, the peasant-god!-- burns's brother gilbert, a man of much sense and worth, has told me that robert, in his young days, in spite of their hardship, was usually the gayest of speech; a fellow of infinite frolic, laughter, sense and heart; far pleasanter to hear there, stript cutting peats in the bog, or suchlike, than he ever afterwards knew him. i can well believe it. this basis of mirth ('_fond gaillard_,' as old marquis mirabeau calls it), a primal-element of sunshine and joyfulness, coupled with his other deep and earnest qualities, is one of the most attractive characteristics of burns. a large fund of hope dwells in him; spite of his tragical history, he is not a mourning man. he shakes his sorrows gallantly aside; bounds forth victorious over them. it is as the lion shaking 'dew-drops from his mane;' as the swift-bounding horse, that _laughs_ at the shaking of the spear.--but indeed, hope, mirth, of the sort like burns's, are they not the outcome properly of warm generous affection,--such as is the beginning of all to every man? you would think it strange if i called burns the most gifted british soul we had in all that century of his: and yet i believe the day is coming when there will be little danger in saying so. his writings, all that he _did_ under such obstructions, are only a poor fragment of him. professor stewart remarked very justly, what indeed is true of all poets good for much, that his poetry was not any particular faculty; but the general result of a naturally vigorous original mind expressing itself in that way. burns's gifts, expressed in conversation, are the theme of all that ever heard him. all kinds of gifts: from the gracefulest utterances of courtesy, to the highest fire of passionate speech; loud floods of mirth, soft wailings of affection, laconic emphasis, clear piercing insight; all was in him. witty duchesses celebrate him as a man whose speech 'led them off their feet.' this is beautiful: but still more beautiful that which mr. lockhart has recorded, which i have more than once alluded to, how the waiters and ostlers at inns would get out of bed, and come crowding to hear this man speak! waiters and ostlers:--they too were men, and here was a man! i have heard much about his speech; but one of the best things i ever heard of it was, last year, from a venerable gentleman long familiar with him. that it was speech distinguished by always _having something in it_. "he spoke rather little than much," this old man told me; "sat rather silent in those early days, as in the company of persons above him; and always when he did speak, it was to throw new light on the matter." i know not why any one should ever speak otherwise!--but if we look at his general force of soul, his healthy _robustness_ everyway, the rugged down-rightness, penetration, generous valour and manfulness that was in him,--where shall we readily find a better-gifted man? among the great men of the eighteenth century, i sometimes feel as if burns might be found to resemble mirabeau more than any other. they differ widely in vesture; yet look at them intrinsically. there is the same burly thick-necked strength of body as of soul;--built, in both cases, on what the old marquis calls a _fond gaillard_. by nature, by course of breeding, indeed by nation, mirabeau has much more of bluster; a noisy, forward, unresting man. but the characteristic of mirabeau too is veracity and sense, power of true _insight_, superiority of vision. the thing that he says is worth remembering. it is a flash of insight into some object or other: so do both these men speak. the same raging passions; capable too in both of manifesting themselves as the tenderest noble affections. wit, wild laughter, energy, directness, sincerity: these were in both. the types of the two men are not dissimilar. burns too could have governed, debated in national assemblies; politicised, as few could. alas, the courage which had to exhibit itself in capture of smuggling schooners in the solway frith; in keeping _silence_ over so much, where no good speech, but only inarticulate rage was possible: this might have bellowed forth ushers de brézé and the like; and made itself visible to all men, in managing of kingdoms, in ruling of great ever-memorable epochs! but they said to him reprovingly, his official superiors said, and wrote: 'you are to work, not think.' of your _thinking_-faculty, the greatest in this land, we have no need; you are to gauge beer there; for that only are _you_ wanted. very notable;--and worth mentioning, though we know what is to be said and answered! as if thought, power of thinking, were not, at all times, in all places and situations of the world, precisely the thing that _was_ wanted. the fatal man, is he not always the _un_thinking man, the man who cannot think and _see_; but only grope, and hallucinate, and _mis_see the nature of the thing he works with? he missees it, mis_takes_ it as we say; takes it for one thing, and it _is_ another thing,--and leaves him standing like a futility there! he is the fatal man; unutterably fatal, put in the high places of men.--"why complain of this?" say some: "strength is mournfully denied its arena; that was true from of old." doubtless; and the worse for the _arena_, answer i! _complaining_ profits little; stating of the truth may profit. that a europe, with its french revolution just breaking out, finds no need of a burns except for gauging beer,--is a thing i, for one, cannot _rejoice_ at!-- once more we have to say here, that the chief quality of burns is the _sincerity_ of him. so in his poetry, so in his life. the song he sings is not of fantasticalities; it is of a thing felt, really there; the prime merit of this, as of all in him, and of his life generally, is truth. the life of burns is what we may call a great tragic sincerity. a sort of savage sincerity,--not cruel, far from that; but wild, wrestling naked with the truth of things. in that sense, there is something of the savage in all great men. hero-worship,--odin, burns? well; these men of letters too were not without a kind of hero-worship: but what a strange condition has that got into now! the waiters and ostlers of scotch inns, prying about the door, eager to catch any word that fell from burns, were doing unconscious reverence to the heroic. johnson had his boswell for worshipper. rousseau had worshippers enough; princes calling on him in his mean garret; the great, the beautiful doing reverence to the poor moonstruck man. for himself a most portentous contradiction; the two ends of his life not to be brought into harmony. he sits at the tables of grandees; and has to copy music for his own living. he cannot even get his music copied. "by dint of dining out," says he, "i run the risk of dying by starvation at home." for his worshippers too a most questionable thing! if doing hero-worship well or badly be the test of vital wellbeing or illbeing to a generation, can we say that _these_ generations are very first-rate?--and yet our heroic men of letters do teach, govern, are kings, priests, or what you like to call them; intrinsically there is no preventing it by any means whatever. the world _has_ to obey him who thinks and sees in the world. the world can alter the manner of that; can either have it as blessed continuous summer sunshine, or as unblessed black thunder and tornado,--with unspeakable difference of profit for the world! the manner of it is very alterable; the matter and fact of it is not alterable by any power under the sky. light; or, failing that, lightning: the world can take its choice. not whether we call an odin god, prophet, priest, or what we call him; but whether we believe the word he tells us: there it all lies. if it be a true word, we shall have to believe it; believing it, we shall have to do it. what _name_ or welcome we give him or it, is a point that concerns ourselves mainly. _it_, the new truth, new deeper revealing of the secret of this universe, is verily of the nature of a message from on high; and must and will have itself obeyed.-- my last remark is on that notablest phasis of burns's history,--his visit to edinburgh. often it seems to me as if his demeanour there were the highest proof he gave of what a fund of worth and genuine manhood was in him. if we think of it, few heavier burdens could be laid on the strength of a man. so sudden; all common _lionism_, which ruins innumerable men, was as nothing to this. it is as if napoleon had been made a king of, not gradually, but at once from the artillery lieutenancy in the regiment la fère. burns, still only in his twenty-seventh year, is no longer even a ploughman; he is flying to the west indies to escape disgrace and a jail. this month he is a ruined peasant, his wages seven pounds a year, and these gone from him: next month he is in the blaze of rank and beauty, handing down jewelled duchesses to dinner; the cynosure of all eyes! adversity is sometimes hard upon a man; but for one man who can stand prosperity, there are a hundred that will stand adversity. i admire much the way in which burns met all this. perhaps no man one could point out, was ever so sorely tried, and so little forgot himself. tranquil, unastonished; not abashed, not inflated, neither awkwardness nor affectation: he feels that _he_ there is the man robert burns; that the 'rank is but the guinea-stamp;' that the celebrity is but the candle-light, which will show _what_ man, not in the least make him a better or other man! alas, it may readily, unless he look to it, make him a _worse_ man; a wretched inflated wind-bag,--inflated till he _burst_ and become a _dead_ lion; for whom, as some one has said, 'there is no resurrection of the body;' worse than a living dog!--burns is admirable here. and yet, alas, as i have observed elsewhere, these lion-hunters were the ruin and death of burns. it was they that rendered it impossible for him to live! they gathered round him in his farm; hindered his industry; no place was remote enough from them. he could not get his lionism forgotten, honestly as he was disposed to do so. he falls into discontents, into miseries, faults; the world getting ever more desolate for him; health, character, peace of mind all gone;--solitary enough now. it is tragical to think of! these men came but to _see_ him; it was out of no sympathy with him, nor no hatred to him. they came to get a little amusement: they got their amusement;--and the hero's life went for it! richter says, in the island of sumatra, there is a kind of 'light-chafers,' large fire-flies, which people stick upon spits, and illuminate the ways with at night. persons of condition can thus travel with a pleasant radiance, which they much admire. great honour to the fire-flies! but--!-- lecture vi the hero as king. cromwell, napoleon: modern revolutionism. [_friday, nd may _] we come now to the last form of heroism; that which we call kingship. the commander over men; he to whose will our wills are to be subordinated, and loyally surrender themselves, and find their welfare in doing so, may be reckoned the most important of great men. he is practically the summary for us of _all_ the various figures of heroism; priest, teacher, whatsoever of earthly or of spiritual dignity we can fancy to reside in a man, embodies itself here, to _command_ over us, to furnish us with constant practical teaching, to tell us for the day and hour what we are to _do_. he is called _rex_, regulator, _roi_: our own name is still better; king, _könning_, which means _can_-ning, ableman. numerous considerations, pointing towards deep, questionable, and indeed unfathomable regions, present themselves here: on the most of which we must resolutely for the present forbear to speak at all. as burke said that perhaps fair _trial by jury_ was the soul of government, and that all legislation, administration, parliamentary debating, and the rest of it, went on, in 'order to bring twelve impartial men into a jury-box;'--so, by much stronger reason, may i say here, that the finding of your _ableman_ and getting him invested with the _symbols of ability_, with dignity, worship (_worth_-ship), royalty, kinghood, or whatever we call it, so that _he_ may actually have room to guide according to his faculty of doing it,--is the business, well or ill accomplished, of all social procedure whatsoever in this world! hustings-speeches, parliamentary motions, reform bills, french revolutions, all mean at heart this; or else nothing. find in any country the ablest man that exists there; raise _him_ to the supreme place, and loyally reverence him: you have a perfect government for that country; no ballot-box, parliamentary eloquence, voting, constitution-building, or other machinery whatsoever can improve it a whit. it is in the perfect state: an ideal country. the ablest man; he means also the truest-hearted, justest, the noblest man: what he _tells us to do_ must be precisely the wisest, fittest, that we could anywhere or anyhow learn;--the thing which it will in all ways behove us, with right loyal thankfulness, and nothing doubting, to do! our _doing_ and life were then, so far as government could regulate it, well regulated; that were the ideal of constitutions. alas, we know very well that ideals can never be completely embodied in practice. ideals must ever lie a very great way off; and we will right thankfully content ourselves with any not intolerable approximation thereto! let no man, as schiller says, too querulously 'measure by a scale of perfection the meagre product of reality' in this poor world of ours. we will esteem him no wise man; we will esteem him a sickly, discontented, foolish man. and yet, on the other hand, it is never to be forgotten that ideals do exist; that if they be not approximated to at all, the whole matter goes to wreck! infallibly. no bricklayer builds a wall _perfectly_ perpendicular, mathematically this is not possible; a certain degree of perpendicularity suffices him; and he, like a good bricklayer, who must have done with his job, leaves it so. and yet if he sway _too much_ from the perpendicular; above all, if he throw plummet and level quite away from him, and pile brick on brick heedless, just as it comes to hand--! such bricklayer, i think, is in a bad way. _he_ has forgotten himself: but the law of gravitation does not forget to act on him; he and his wall rush-down into confused welter of ruin!-- this is the history of all rebellions, french revolutions, social explosions in ancient or modern times. you have put the too _un_able man at the head of affairs! the too ignoble, unvaliant, fatuous man. you have forgotten that there is any rule, or natural necessity whatever, of putting the able man there. brick must lie on brick as it may and can. unable simulacrum of ability, _quack_, in a word, must adjust himself with quack, in all manner of administration of human things;--which accordingly lie unadministered, fermenting into unmeasured masses of failure, of indigent misery: in the outward, and in the inward or spiritual, miserable millions stretch-out the hand for their due supply, and it is not there. the 'law of gravitation' acts; nature's laws do none of them forget to act. the miserable millions burst-forth into sansculottism, or some other sort of madness; bricks and bricklayers lie as a fatal chaos!-- much sorry stuff, written some hundred years ago or more, about the 'divine right of kings,' moulders unread now in the public libraries of this country. far be it from us to disturb the calm process by which it is disappearing harmlessly from the earth, in those repositories! at the same time, not to let the immense rubbish go without leaving us, as it ought, some soul of it behind--i will say that it did mean something; something true, which it is important for us and all men to keep in mind. to assert that in whatever man you chose to lay hold of (by this or the other plan of clutching at him); and clapt a round piece of metal on the head of, and called king,--there straightway came to reside a divine virtue, so that _he_ became a kind of god, and a divinity inspired him with faculty and right to rule over you to all lengths: this,--what can we do with this but leave it to rot silently in the public libraries? but i will say withal, and that is what these divine-right men meant, that in kings, and in all human authorities, and relations that men god-created can form among each other, there is verily either a divine right or else a diabolic wrong; one or the other of these two! for it is false altogether, what the last sceptical century taught us, that this world is a steam-engine. there is a god in this world; and a god's-sanction, or else the violation of such, does look-out from all ruling and obedience, from all moral acts of men. there is no act more moral between men than that of rule and obedience. woe to him that claims obedience when it is not due; woe to him that refuses it when it is! god's law is in that, i say, however the parchment-laws may run: there is a divine right or else a diabolic wrong at the heart of every claim that one man makes upon another. it can do none of us harm to reflect on this: in all the relations of life it will concern us; in loyalty and royalty, the highest of these. i esteem the modern error, that all goes by self-interest and the checking and balancing of greedy knaveries, and that, in short, there is nothing divine whatever in the association of men, a still more despicable error, natural as it is to an unbelieving century, than that of a 'divine right' in people _called_ kings. i say, find me the true _könning_, king, or able-man, and he _has_ a divine right over me. that we knew in some tolerable measure how to find him, and that all men were ready to acknowledge his divine right when found: this is precisely the healing which a sick world is everywhere, in these ages, seeking after! the true king, as guide of the practical, has ever something of the pontiff in him,--guide of the spiritual, from which all practice has its rise. this too is a true saying, that the _king_ is head of the _church_.--but we will leave the polemic stuff of a dead century to lie quiet on its bookshelves. * * * * * certainly it is a fearful business, that of having your ableman to _seek_, and not knowing in what manner to proceed about it! that is the world's sad predicament in these times of ours. they are times of revolution, and have long been. the bricklayer with his bricks, no longer heedful of plummet or the law of gravitation, have toppled, tumbled, and it all welters as we see! but the beginning of it was not the french revolution; that is rather the _end_, we can hope. it were truer to say, the _beginning_ was three centuries farther back: in the reformation of luther. that the thing which still called itself christian church had become a falsehood, and brazenly went about pretending to pardon men's sins for metallic coined money, and to do much else which in the everlasting truth of nature it did _not_ now do: here lay the vital malady. the inward being wrong, all outward went ever more and more wrong. belief died away; all was doubt, disbelief. the builder _cast away_ his plummet; said to himself, "what is gravitation? brick lies on brick there!" alas, does it not still sound strange to many of us, the assertion that there is a god's truth in the business of god-created men; that all is not a kind of grimace, an 'expediency,' diplomacy, one knows not what!-- from that first necessary assertion of luther's, "you, self-styled _papa_, you are no father in god at all; you are--a chimera, whom i know not how to name in polite language!"--from that onwards to the shout which rose round camille desmoulins in the palais-royal, "_aux armes!_" when the people had burst-up against _all_ manner of chimeras,--i find a natural historical sequence. that shout too, so frightful, half-infernal, was a great matter. once more the voice of awakened nations; starting confusedly, as out of nightmare, as out of death-sleep, into some dim feeling that life was real; that god's-world was not an expediency and diplomacy! infernal;--yes, since they would not have it otherwise. infernal, since not celestial or terrestrial!--hollowness, insincerity _has_ to cease;--sincerity of some sort has to begin. cost what it may, reigns of terror, horrors of french revolution or what else, we have to return to truth. here is a truth, as i said: a truth clad in hell-fire, since they would not but have it so!-- a common theory among considerable parties of men in england and elsewhere used to be, that the french nation had, in those days, as it were gone _mad_; that the french revolution was a general act of insanity, a temporary conversion of france and large sections of the world into a kind of bedlam. the event had risen and raged; but was a madness and nonentity,--gone now happily into the region of dreams and the picturesque!--to such comfortable philosophers, the three days of july must have been a surprising phenomenon. here is the french nation risen again, in musketry and death-struggle, out shooting and being shot, to make that same mad french revolution good! the sons and grandsons of those men, it would seem, persist in the enterprise: they do not disown it; they will have it made good; will have themselves shot, if it be not made good! to philosophers who had made-up their life-system on that 'madness' quietus, no phenomenon could be more alarming. poor niebuhr, they say, the prussian professor and historian, fell broken-hearted in consequence; sickened, if we can believe it, and died of the three days! it was surely not a very heroic death;--little better than racine's, dying because louis fourteenth looked sternly on him once. the world had stood some considerable shocks, in its time; might have been expected to survive the three days too, and be found turning on its axis after even them! the three days told all mortals that the old french revolution, mad as it might look, was not a transitory ebullition of bedlam, but a genuine product of this earth where we all live; that it was verily a fact, and that the world in general would do well everywhere to regard it as such. truly, without the french revolution, one would not know what to make of an age like this at all. we will hail the french revolution, as shipwrecked mariners might the sternest rock, in a world otherwise all of baseless sea and waves. a true apocalypse, though a terrible one, to this false withered artificial time; testifying once more that nature is _preter_natural; if not divine, then diabolic; that semblance is not reality; that it has to become reality, or the world will take-fire under it,--burn _it_ into what it is, namely nothing! plausibility has ended; empty routine has ended; much has ended. this, as with a trump of doom, has been proclaimed to all men. they are the wisest who will learn it soonest. long confused generations before it be learned; peace impossible till it be! the earnest man, surrounded, as ever, with a world of inconsistencies, can await patiently, patiently strive to do _his_ work, in the midst of that. sentence of death is written down in heaven against all that; sentence of death is now proclaimed on the earth against it: this he with his eyes may see. and surely, i should say, considering the other side of the matter, what enormous difficulties lie there, and how fast, fearfully fast, in all countries, the inexorable demand for solution of them is pressing on,--he may easily find other work to do than labouring in the sansculottic province at this time of day! to me, in these circumstances, that of 'hero-worship' becomes a fact inexpressibly precious; the most solacing fact one sees in the world at present. there is an everlasting hope in it for the management of the world. had all traditions, arrangements, creeds, societies that men ever instituted, sunk away, this would remain. the certainty of heroes being sent us; our faculty, our necessity, to reverence heroes when sent: it shines like a polestar through smoke-clouds, dust-clouds, and all manner of down-rushing and conflagration. hero-worship would have sounded very strange to those workers and fighters in the french revolution. not reverence for great men; not any hope or belief, or even wish, that great men could again appear in the world! nature, turned into a 'machine,' was as if effete now; could not any longer produce great men:--i can tell her, she may give-up the trade altogether, then; we cannot do without great men!--but neither have i any quarrel with that of 'liberty and equality;' with the faith that, wise great men being impossible, a level immensity of foolish small men would suffice. it was a natural faith then and there. "liberty and equality; no authority needed any longer. hero-worship, reverence for _such_ authorities, has proved false, is itself a falsehood; no more of it! we have had such _forgeries_, we will now trust nothing. so many base plated coins passing in the market, the belief has now become common that no gold any longer exists,--and even that we can do very well without gold!" i find this, among other things, in that universal cry of liberty and equality; and find it very natural, as matters then stood. and yet surely it is but the _transition_ from false to true. considered as the whole truth, it is false altogether;--the product of entire sceptical blindness, as yet only _struggling_ to see. hero-worship exists forever, and everywhere: not loyalty alone; it extends from divine adoration down to the lowest practical regions of life. 'bending before men,' if it is not to be a mere empty grimace, better dispensed with than practised, is hero-worship,--a recognition that there does dwell in that presence of our brother something divine; that every created man, as novalis said, is a 'revelation in the flesh.' they were poets too, that devised all those graceful courtesies which make life noble! courtesy is not a falsehood or grimace; it need not be such. and loyalty, religious worship itself, are still possible; nay still inevitable. may we not say, moreover, while so many of our late heroes have worked rather as revolutionary men, that nevertheless every great man, every genuine man, is by the nature of him a son of order, not of disorder? it is a tragical position for a true man to work in revolutions. he seems an anarchist; and indeed a painful element of anarchy does encumber him at every step,--him to whose whole soul anarchy is hostile, hateful. his mission is order; every man's is. he is here to make what was disorderly, chaotic, into a thing ruled, regular. he is the missionary of order. is not all work of man in this world a _making of order_? the carpenter finds rough trees: shapes them, constrains them into square fitness, into purpose and use. we are all born enemies of disorder: it is tragical for us all to be concerned in image-breaking and down-pulling; for the great man, _more_ a man than we, it is doubly tragical. thus too all human things, maddest french sansculottisms, do and must work towards order. i say, there is not a _man_ in them, raging in the thickest of the madness, but is impelled withal, at all moments, towards order. his very life means that; disorder is dissolution, death. no chaos but it seeks a _centre_ to revolve round. while man is man, some cromwell or napoleon is the necessary finish of a sansculottism.--curious: in those days when hero-worship was the most incredible thing to every one, how it does come-out nevertheless, and assert itself practically, in a way which all have to credit. divine _right_, take it on the great scale, is found to mean divine _might_ withal! while old false formulas are getting trampled everywhere into destruction, new genuine substances unexpectedly unfold themselves indestructible. in rebellious ages, when kingship itself seems dead and abolished, cromwell, napoleon step-forth again as kings. the history of these men is what we have now to look at, as our last phasis of heroism. the old ages are brought back to us; the manner in which kings were made, and kingship itself first took rise, is again exhibited in the history of these two. * * * * * we have had many civil-wars in england; wars of red and white roses, wars of simon de montfort; wars enough, which are not very memorable. but that war of the puritans has a significance which belongs to no one of the others. trusting to your candour, which will suggest on the other side what i have not room to say, i will call it a section once more of that great universal war which alone makes-up the true history of the world,--the war of belief against unbelief! the struggle of men intent on the real essence of things, against men intent on the semblances and forms of things. the puritans, to many, seem mere savage iconoclasts, fierce destroyers of forms; but it were more just to call them haters of _untrue_ forms. i hope we know how to respect laud and his king as well as them. poor laud seems to me to have been weak and ill-starred, not dishonest; an unfortunate pedant rather than anything worse. his 'dreams' and superstitions, at which they laugh so, have an affectionate, lovable kind of character. he is like a college-tutor, whose whole world is forms, college-rules; whose notion is that these are the life and safety of the world. he is placed suddenly, with that unalterable luckless notion of his, at the head not of a college but of a nation, to regulate the most complex deep-reaching interests of men. he thinks they ought to go by the old decent regulations; nay that their salvation will lie in extending and improving these. like a weak man, he drives with spasmodic vehemence towards his purpose; cramps himself to it, heeding no voice of prudence, no cry of pity: he will have his college-rules obeyed by his collegians; that first; and till that, nothing. he is an ill-starred pedant, as i said. he would have it the world was a college of that kind, and the world _was not_ that. alas, was not his doom stern enough? whatever wrongs he did, were they not all frightfully avenged on him? it is meritorious to insist on forms; religion and all else naturally clothes itself in forms. everywhere the _formed_ world is the only habitable one. the naked formlessness of puritanism is not the thing i praise in the puritans; it is the thing i pity,--praising only the spirit which had rendered that inevitable! all substances clothe themselves in forms: but there are suitable true forms, and then there are untrue unsuitable. as the briefest definition, one might say, forms which _grow_ round a substance, if we rightly understand that, will correspond to the real nature and purport of it, will be true, good; forms which are consciously _put_ round a substance, bad. i invite you to reflect on this. it distinguishes true from false in ceremonial form, earnest solemnity from empty pageant, in all human things. there must be a veracity, a natural spontaneity in forms. in the commonest meeting of men, a person making, what we call, 'set speeches,' is not he an offence? in the mere drawing-room, whatsoever courtesies you see to be grimaces, prompted by no spontaneous reality within, are a thing you wish to get away from. but suppose now it were some matter of vital concernment, some transcendent matter (as divine worship is), about which your whole soul, struck dumb with its excess of feeling, knew not how to _form_ itself into utterance at all, and preferred formless silence to any utterance there possible,--what should we say of a man coming forward to represent or utter it for you in the way of upholsterer-mummery? such a man,--let him depart swiftly, if he love himself! you have lost your only son; are mute, struck down, without even tears: an importunate man importunately offers to celebrate funeral games for him in the manner of the greeks! such mummery is not only not to be accepted,--it is hateful, unendurable. it is what the old prophets called 'idolatry,' worshipping of hollow _shows_; what all earnest men do and will reject. we can partly understand what those poor puritans meant. laud dedicating that st. catherine creed's church, in the manner we have it described; with his multiplied ceremonial bowings, gesticulations, exclamations: surely it is rather the rigorous formal _pedant_, intent on his 'college-rules,' than the earnest prophet, intent on the essence of the matter! puritanism found _such_ forms insupportable; trampled on such forms;--we have to excuse it for saying, no form at all rather than such! it stood preaching in its bare pulpit, with nothing but the bible in its hand. nay, a man preaching from his earnest _soul_ into the earnest _souls_ of men: is not this virtually the essence of all churches whatsoever? the nakedest, savagest reality, i say, is preferable to any semblance, however dignified. besides, it will clothe itself with _due_ semblance by and by, if it be real. no fear of that; actually no fear at all. given the living _man_, there will be found _clothes_ for him; he will find himself clothes. but the suit-of-clothes pretending that _it_ is both clothes and man--!--we cannot 'fight the french' by three-hundred-thousand red uniforms; there must be _men_ in the inside of them! semblance, i assert, must actually _not_ divorce itself from reality. if semblance do,--why then there must be men found to rebel against semblance, for it has become a lie! these two antagonisms at war here, in the case of laud and the puritans, are as old nearly as the world. they went to fierce battle over england in that age; and fought-out their confused controversy to a certain length, with many results for all of us. * * * * * in the age which directly followed that of the puritans, their cause or themselves were little likely to have justice done them. charles second and his rochesters were not the kind of men you would set to judge what the worth or meaning of such men might have been. that there could be any faith or truth in the life of a man, was what these poor rochesters, and the age they ushered-in, had forgotten. puritanism was hung on gibbets,--like the bones of the leading puritans. its work nevertheless went on accomplishing itself. all true work of a man, hang the author of it on what gibbet you like, must and will accomplish itself. we have our _habeas-corpus_, our free representation of the people; acknowledgment, wide as the world, that all men are, or else must, shall, and will become, what we call _free_ men;--men with their life grounded on reality and justice, not on tradition, which has become unjust and a chimera! this in part and much besides this, was the work of the puritans. and indeed, as these things became gradually manifest, the character of the puritans began to clear itself. their memories were, one after another, taken _down_ from the gibbet; nay a certain portion of them are now, in these days, as good as canonised. eliot, hampden, pym, nay ludlow, hutchinson, vane himself, are admitted to be a kind of heroes; political conscript fathers, to whom in no small degree we owe what makes us a free england: it would not be safe for anybody to designate these men as wicked now. few puritans of note but find their apologists somewhere, and have a certain reverence paid them by earnest men. one puritan, i think, and almost he alone, our poor cromwell, seems to hang yet on the gibbet, and find no hearty apologist anywhere. him neither saint nor sinner will acquit of great wickedness. a man of ability, infinite talent, courage, and so forth: but he betrayed the cause. selfish ambition, dishonesty, duplicity; a fierce, coarse, hypocritical _tartufe_; turning all that noble struggle for constitutional liberty into a sorry farce played for his own benefit: this and worse is the character they give of cromwell. and then there come contrasts with washington and others; above all, with these noble pyms and hampdens, whose noble work he stole for himself, and ruined into a futility and deformity. this view of cromwell seems to me the not unnatural product of a century like the eighteenth. as we said of the valet, so of the sceptic: he does not know a hero when he sees him! the valet expected purple mantles, gilt sceptres, body-guards and flourishes of trumpets: the sceptic of the eighteenth century looks for regulated respectable formulas, 'principles,' or what else he may call them; a style of speech and conduct which has got to seem 'respectable,' which can plead for itself in a handsome articulate manner, and gain the suffrages of an enlightened sceptical eighteenth century! it is, at bottom, the same thing that both the valet and he expect: the garnitures of some _acknowledged_ royalty, which _then_ they will acknowledge! the king coming to them in the rugged _un_formulistic state shall be no king. for my own share, far be it from me to say or insinuate a word of disparagement against such characters as hampden, eliot, pym; whom i believe to have been right worthy and useful men. i have read diligently what books and documents about them i could come at;--with the honestest wish to admire, to love and worship them like heroes; but i am sorry to say, if the real truth must be told, with very indifferent success! at bottom, i found that it would not do. they are very noble men, these; step along in their stately way, with their measured euphemisms, philosophies, parliamentary eloquences, ship-moneys, _monarchies of man_; a most constitutional, unblamable, dignified set of men. but the heart remains cold before them; the fancy alone endeavours to get-up some worship of them. what man's heart does, in reality, break-forth into any fire of brotherly love for these men? they are become dreadfully dull men! one breaks-down often enough in the constitutional eloquence of the admirable pym, with his 'seventhly and lastly.' you find that it may be the admirablest thing in the world, but that it is heavy,--heavy as lead, barren as brick-clay; that, in a word, for you there is little or nothing now surviving there! one leaves all these nobilities standing in their niches of honour: the rugged out-cast cromwell, he is the man of them all in whom one still finds human stuff. the great savage _baresark_: he could write no euphemistic _monarchy of man_; did not speak, did not work with glib regularity; had no straight story to tell for himself anywhere. but he stood bare, not cased in euphemistic coat-of-mail; he grappled like a giant, face to face, heart to heart, with the naked truth of things! that, after all, is the sort of man for one. i plead guilty to valuing such a man beyond all other sorts of men. smooth-shaven respectabilities not a few one finds, that are not good for much. small thanks to a man for keeping his hands clean, who would not touch the work but with gloves on! neither, on the whole, does this constitutional tolerance of the eighteenth century for the other happier puritans seem to be a very great matter. one might say, it is but a piece of formulism and scepticism, like the rest. they tell us, it was a sorrowful thing to consider that the foundation of our english liberties should have been laid by 'superstition.' these puritans came forward with calvinistic incredible creeds, anti-laudisms, westminster confessions; demanding, chiefly of all, that they should have liberty to _worship_ in their own way. liberty to _tax_ themselves: that was the thing they should have demanded! it was superstition, fanaticism, disgraceful ignorance of constitutional philosophy to insist on the other thing!--liberty to _tax_ oneself? not to pay-out money from your pocket except on reason shown? no century, i think, but a rather barren one would have fixed on that as the first right of man! i should say, on the contrary, a just man will generally have better cause than _money_ in what shape soever, before deciding to revolt against his government. ours is a most confused world; in which a good man will be thankful to see any kind of government maintain itself in a not insupportable manner; and here in england, to this hour, if he is not ready to pay a great many taxes which _he_ can see very small reason in, it will not go well with him, i think! he must try some other climate than this. taxgatherer? money? he will say: "take my money, since you _can_, and it is so desirable to you; take it,--and take yourself away with it; and leave me alone to my work here. _i_ am still here; can still work, after all the money you have taken from me!" but if they come to him, and say, "acknowledge a lie; pretend to say you are worshipping god, when you are not doing it: believe not the thing that _you_ find true, but the thing that i find, or pretend to find true!" he will answer: "no; by god's help, no! you may take my purse; but i cannot have my moral self annihilated. the purse is any highwayman's who might meet me with a loaded pistol: but the self is mine and god my maker's; it is not yours; and i will resist you to the death, and revolt against you, and, on the whole, front all manner of extremities, accusations and confusions, in defence of that!"-- really, it seems to me the one reason which could justify revolting, this of the puritans. it has been the soul of all just revolts among men. not _hunger_ alone produced even the french revolution: no, but the feeling of the insupportable all-pervading _falsehood_ which had now embodied itself in hunger, in universal material scarcity and nonentity, and thereby become _indisputably_ false in the eyes of all! we will leave the eighteenth century with its 'liberty to tax itself.' we will not astonish ourselves that the meaning of such men as the puritans remained dim to it. to men who believe in no reality at all, how shall a _real_ human soul, the intensest of all realities, as it were the voice of this world's maker still speaking to _us_,--be intelligible? what it cannot reduce into constitutional doctrines relative to 'taxing,' or other the like material interest, gross, palpable to the sense, such a century will needs reject as an amorphous heap of rubbish. hampdens, pyms, and ship-money will be the theme of much constitutional eloquence, striving to be fervid;--which will glitter, if not as fire does, then as _ice_ does: and the irreducible cromwell will remain a chaotic mass of 'madness,' 'hypocrisy,' and much else. * * * * * from of old, i will confess, this theory of cromwell's falsity has been incredible to me. nay i cannot believe the like, of any great man whatever. multitudes of great men figure in history as false selfish men; but if we will consider it, they are but _figures_ for us, unintelligible shadows; we do not see into them as men that could have existed at all. a superficial unbelieving generation only, with no eye but for the surfaces and semblances of things, could form such notions of great men. can a great soul be possible without a _conscience_ in it, the essence of all _real_ souls, great or small?--no, we cannot figure cromwell as a falsity and fatuity; the longer i study him and his career, i believe this the less. why should we? there is no evidence of it. is it not strange that, after all the mountains of calumny this man has been subject to, after being represented as the very prince of liars, who never, or hardly ever, spoke truth, but always some cunning counterfeit of truth, there should not yet have been one falsehood brought clearly home to him? a prince of liars, and no lie spoken by him. not one that i could yet get sight of. it is like pococke asking grotius, where is your _proof_ of mahomet's pigeon? no proof!--let us leave all these calumnious chimeras, as chimeras ought to be left. they are not portraits of the man; they are distracted phantasms of him, the joint product of hatred and darkness. looking at the man's life with our own eyes, it seems to me, a very different hypothesis suggests itself. what little we know of his earlier obscure years, distorted as it has come down to us, does it not all betoken an earnest, affectionate, sincere kind of man? his nervous melancholic temperament indicates rather a seriousness too deep for him. of those stories of 'spectres;' of the white spectre in broad daylight, predicting that he should be king of england, we are not bound to believe much;--probably no more than of the other black spectre, or devil in person, to whom the officer _saw_ him sell himself before worcester fight! but the mournful, over-sensitive, hypochondriac humour of oliver, in his young years, is otherwise indisputably known. the huntingdon physician told sir philip warwick himself, he had often been sent for at midnight; mr. cromwell was full of hypochondria, thought himself near dying, and "had fancies about the town-cross." these things are significant. such an excitable deep-feeling nature, in that rugged stubborn strength of his, is not the symptom of falsehood; it is the symptom and promise of quite other than falsehood! the young oliver is sent to study law; falls, or is said to have fallen, for a little period, into some of the dissipations of youth; but if so, speedily repents, abandons all this: not much above twenty, he is married, settled as an altogether grave and quiet man. 'he pays-back what money he had won at gambling,' says the story;--he does not think any gain of that kind could be really _his_. it is very interesting, very natural, this 'conversion,' as they well name it; this awakening of a great true soul from the worldly slough, to see into the awful _truth_ of things;--to see that time and its shows all rested on eternity, and this poor earth of ours was the threshold either of heaven or of hell! oliver's life at st ives or ely, as a sober industrious farmer, is it not altogether as that of a true and devout man? he has renounced the world and its ways; _its_ prizes are not the thing that can enrich him. he tills the earth; he reads his bible; daily assembles his servants round him to worship god. he comforts persecuted ministers, is fond of preachers; nay can himself preach,--exhorts his neighbours to be wise, to redeem the time. in all this what 'hypocrisy,' 'ambition,' 'cant,' or other falsity? the man's hopes, i do believe, were fixed on the other higher world; his aim to get well _thither_, by walking well through his humble course in _this_ world. he courts no notice: what could notice here do for him? 'ever in his great taskmaster's eye.' it is striking, too, how he comes-out once into public view; he, since no other is willing to come: in resistance to a public grievance. i mean, in that matter of the bedford fens. no one else will go to law with authority; therefore he will. that matter once settled, he returns back into obscurity, to his bible and his plough. 'gain influence'? his influence is the most legitimate; derived from personal knowledge of him, as a just, religious, reasonable and determined man. in this way he has lived till past forty; old age is now in view of him, and the earnest portal of death and eternity; it was at this point that he suddenly became 'ambitious'! i do not interpret his parliamentary mission in that way! his successes in parliament, his successes through the war, are honest successes of a brave man; who has more resolution in the heart of him, more light in the head of him than other men. his prayers to god; his spoken thanks to the god of victory, who had preserved him safe, and carried him forward so far, through the furious clash of a world all set in conflict, through desperate-looking envelopments at dunbar; through the death-hail of so many battles; mercy after mercy; to the 'crowning mercy' of worcester fight: all this is good and genuine for a deep-hearted calvinistic cromwell. only to vain unbelieving cavaliers, worshipping not god but their own 'lovelocks,' frivolities and formalities, living quite apart from contemplations of god, living _without_ god in the world, need it seem hypocritical. nor will his participation in the king's death involve him in condemnation with us. it is a stern business killing of a king! but if you once go to war with him, it lies _there_; this and all else lies there. once at war, you have made wager of battle with him: it is he to die, or else you. reconciliation is problematic; may be possible, or, far more likely, is impossible. it is now pretty generally admitted that the parliament, having vanquished charles first, had no way of making any tenable arrangement with him. the large presbyterian party, apprehensive now of the independents, were most anxious to do so; anxious indeed as for their own existence; but it could not be. the unhappy charles, in those final hampton-court negotiations, shows himself as a man fatally incapable of being dealt with. a man who, once for all, could not and would not _understand_:--whose thought did not in any measure represent to him the real fact of the matter; nay worse, whose _word_ did not at all represent his thought. we may say this of him without cruelty, with deep pity rather: but it is true and undeniable. forsaken there of all but the _name_ of kingship, he still, finding himself treated with outward respect as a king, fancied that he might play-off party against party, and smuggle himself into his old power by deceiving both. alas, they both _discovered_ that he was deceiving them. a man whose _word_ will not inform you at all what he means or will do, is not a man you can bargain with. you must get out of that man's way, or put him out of yours! the presbyterians, in their despair, were still for believing charles, though found false, unbelievable again and again. not so cromwell: "for all our fighting," says he, "we are to have a little bit of paper?" no!-- in fact, everywhere we have to note the decisive practical _eye_ of this man; how he drives towards the practical and practicable; has a genuine insight into what _is_ fact. such an intellect, i maintain, does not belong to a false man: the false man sees false shows, plausibilities, expediences: the true man is needed to discern even practical truth. cromwell's advice about the parliament's army, early in the contest, how they were to dismiss their city-tapsters, flimsy riotous persons, and choose substantial yeomen, whose heart was in the work, to be soldiers for them: this is advice by a man who _saw_. fact answers, if you see into fact. cromwell's _ironsides_ were the embodiment of this insight of his; men fearing god; and without any other fear. no more conclusively genuine set of fighters ever trod the soil of england, or of any other land. neither will we blame greatly that word of cromwell's to them; which was so blamed: "if the king should meet me in battle, i would kill the king." why not? these words were spoken to men who stood as before a higher than kings. they had set more than their own lives on the cast. the parliament may call it, in official language, a fighting '_for_ the king;' but we, for our share, cannot understand that. to us it is no dilettante work, no sleek officiality; it is sheer rough death and earnest. they have brought it to the calling-forth of _war_; horrid internecine fight, man grappling with man in fire-eyed rage,--the _infernal_ element in man called forth, to try it by that! _do_ that therefore; since that is the thing to be done.--the successes of cromwell seem to me a very natural thing! since he was not shot in battle, they were an inevitable thing. that such a man, with the eye to see, with the heart to dare, should advance, from post to post, from victory to victory, till the huntingdon farmer became, by whatever name you might call him, the acknowledged strongest man in england, virtually the king of england, requires no magic to explain it!-- truly it is a sad thing for a people, as for a man, to fall into scepticism, into dilettantism, insincerity; not to know a sincerity when they see it. for this world, and for all worlds, what curse is so fatal? the heart lying dead, the eye cannot see. what intellect remains is merely the _vulpine_ intellect. that a true _king_ be sent them is of small use; they do not know him when sent. they say scornfully, is this your king? the hero wastes his heroic faculty in bootless contradiction from the unworthy; and can accomplish little. for himself he does accomplish a heroic life, which is much, which is all; but for the world he accomplishes comparatively nothing. the wild rude sincerity, direct from nature, is not glib in answering from the witness-box; in your small-debt _pie-powder_ court, he is scouted as a counterfeit. the vulpine intellect 'detects' him. for being a man worth any thousand men, the response, your knox, your cromwell gets, is an argument for two centuries, whether he was a man at all. god's greatest gift to this earth is sneeringly flung away. the miraculous talisman is a paltry plated coin, not fit to pass in the shops as a common guinea. lamentable this! i say, this must be remedied. till this be remedied in some measure, there is nothing remedied. 'detect quacks'? yes do, for heaven's sake; but know withal the men that are to be trusted! till we know that, what is all our knowledge; how shall we even so much as 'detect'? for the vulpine sharpness, which considers itself to be knowledge, and 'detects' in that fashion, is far mistaken. dupes indeed are many: but, of all _dupes_, there is none so fatally situated as he who lives in undue terror of being duped. the world does exist; the world has truth in it or it would not exist! first recognise what is true, we shall _then_ discern what is false; and properly never till then. 'know the men that are to be trusted:' alas, this is yet, in these days, very far from us. the sincere alone can recognise sincerity. not a hero only is needed, but a world fit for him; a world not of _valets_;--the hero comes almost in vain to it otherwise! yes, it is far from us: but it must come; thank god, it is visibly coming. till it do come, what have we? ballot-boxes, suffrages, french revolutions:--if we are as valets, and do not know the hero when we see him, what good are all these? a heroic cromwell comes; and for a hundred-and-fifty years he cannot have a vote from us. why, the insincere, unbelieving world is the _natural property_ of the quack, and of the father of quacks and quackeries! misery, confusion, unveracity are alone possible there. by ballot-boxes we alter the _figure_ of our quack; but the substance of him continues. the valet-world _has_ to be governed by the sham-hero, by the king merely _dressed_ in king-gear. it is his; he is its! in brief, one of two things: we shall either learn to know a hero, a true governor and captain, somewhat better, when we see him; or else go on to be forever governed by the unheroic;--had we ballot-boxes clattering at every street-corner, there were no remedy in these. poor cromwell,--great cromwell! the inarticulate prophet; prophet who could not _speak_. rude, confused, struggling to utter himself, with his savage depth, with his wild sincerity; and he looked so strange, among the elegant euphemisms, dainty little falklands, didactic chillingworths, diplomatic clarendons! consider him. an outer hull of chaotic confusion, visions of the devil, nervous dreams, almost semi-madness; and yet such a clear determinate man's-energy working in the heart of that. a kind of chaotic man. the ray as of pure starlight and fire, working in such an element of boundless hypochondria, _un_formed black of darkness! and yet withal this hypochondria, what was it but the very greatness of the man? the depth and tenderness of his wild affections: the quantity of _sympathy_ he had with things,--the quantity of insight he would yet get into the heart of things, the mastery he would yet get over things: this was his hypochondria. the man's misery, as man's misery always does, came of his greatness. samuel johnson too is that kind of man. sorrow-stricken, half-distracted; the wide element of mournful _black_ enveloping him,--wide as the world. it is the character of a prophetic man; a man with his whole soul _seeing_, and struggling to see. on this ground, too, i explain to myself cromwell's reputed confusion of speech. to himself the internal meaning was sun-clear; but the material with which he was to clothe it in utterance was not there. he had _lived_ silent; a great unnamed sea of thought round him all his days; and in his way of life little call to attempt _naming_ or uttering that. with his sharp power of vision, resolute power of action, i doubt not he could have learned to write books withal, and speak fluently enough:--he did harder things than writing of books. this kind of man is precisely he who is fit for doing manfully all things you will set him on doing. intellect is not speaking and logicising; it is seeing and ascertaining. virtue, _vir-tus_, manhood, _hero_-hood, is not fair-spoken immaculate regularity; it is first of all, what the germans well name it, _tugend_ (_taugend_, _dow_-ing or _dough_-tiness), courage and the faculty to _do_. this basis of the matter cromwell had in him. one understands moreover how, though he could not speak in parliament, he might _preach_, rhapsodic preaching; above all, how he might be great in extempore prayer. these are the free outpouring utterances of what is in the heart: method is not required in them; warmth, depth, sincerity are all that is required. cromwell's habit of prayer is a notable feature of him. all his great enterprises were commenced with prayer. in dark inextricable-looking difficulties, his officers and he used to assemble, and pray alternately, for hours, for days, till some definite resolution rose among them, some 'door of hope,' as they would name it, disclosed itself. consider that. in tears, in fervent prayers, and cries to the great god, to have pity on them, to make his light shine before them. they, armed soldiers of christ, as they felt themselves to be; a little band of christian brothers, who had drawn the sword against a great black devouring world not christian, but mammonish, devilish,--they cried to god in their straits, in their extreme need, not to forsake the cause that was his. the light which now rose upon them,--how could a human soul, by any means at all, get better light? was not the purpose so formed like to be precisely the best, wisest, the one to be followed without hesitation any more? to them it was as the shining of heaven's own splendour in the waste-howling darkness; the pillar of fire by night, that was to guide them on their desolate perilous way. _was_ it not such? can a man's soul, to this hour, get guidance by any other method than intrinsically by that same,--devout prostration of the earnest struggling soul before the highest, the giver of all light; be such _prayer_ a spoken, articulate, or be it a voiceless, inarticulate one? there is no other method. 'hypocrisy'? one begins to be weary of all that. they who call it so, have no right to speak on such matters. they never formed a purpose, what one can call a purpose. they went about balancing expediences, plausibilities; gathering votes, advices; they never were alone with the _truth_ of a thing at all.--cromwell's prayers were likely to be 'eloquent,' and much more than that. his was the heart of a man who _could_ pray. but indeed his actual speeches, i apprehend, were not nearly so ineloquent, incondite, as they look. we find he was, what all speakers aim to be, an impressive speaker, even in parliament; one who, from the first, had weight. with that rude passionate voice of his, he was always understood to _mean_ something, and men wished to know what. he disregarded eloquence, nay despised and disliked it; spoke always without premeditation of the words he was to use. the reporters, too, in those days seem to have been singularly candid; and to have given the printer precisely what they found on their own notepaper. and withal, what a strange proof is it of cromwell's being the premeditative ever-calculating hypocrite, acting a play before the world, that to the last he took no more charge of his speeches! how came he not to study his words a little, before flinging them out to the public? if the words were true words, they could be left to shift for themselves. but with regard to cromwell's 'lying,' we will make one remark. this, i suppose, or something like this, to have been the nature of it. all parties found themselves deceived in him; each party understood him to be meaning _this_, heard him even say so, and behold he turns-out to have been meaning _that_! he was, cry they, the chief of liars. but now, intrinsically, is not all this the inevitable fortune, not of a false man in such times, but simply of a superior man? such a man must have _reticences_ in him. if he walk wearing his heart upon his sleeve for daws to peck at, his journey will not extend far! there is no use for any man's taking-up his abode in a house built of glass. a man always is to be himself the judge how much of his mind he will show to other men; even to those he would have work along with him. there are impertinent inquiries made: your rule is, to leave the inquirer _un_informed on that matter; not, if you can help it, _mis_informed; but precisely as dark as he was! this, could one hit the right phrase of response, is what the wise and faithful man would aim to answer in such a case. cromwell, no doubt of it, spoke often in the dialect of small subaltern parties; uttered to them a _part_ of his mind. each little party thought him all its own. hence their rage, one and all, to find him not of their party, but of his own party! was it his blame? at all seasons of his history he must have felt, among such people, how, if he explained to them the deeper insight he had, they must either have shuddered aghast at it, or believing it, their own little compact hypothesis must have gone wholly to wreck. they could not have worked in his province any more; nay perhaps they could not now have worked in their own province. it is the inevitable position of a great man among small men. small men, most active, useful, are to be seen everywhere, whose whole activity depends on some conviction which to you is palpably a limited one; imperfect, what we call an _error_. but would it be a kindness always, is it a duty always or often, to disturb them in that? many a man, doing loud work in the world, stands only on some thin traditionality, conventionality; to him indubitable, to you incredible: break that beneath him, he sinks to endless depths! "i might have my hand full of truth," said fontenelle, "and open only my little finger." and if this be the fact even in matters of doctrine, how much more in all departments of practice! he that cannot withal _keep his mind to himself_ cannot practise any considerable thing whatever. and we call it 'dissimulation,' all this? what would you think of calling the general of an army a dissembler because he did not tell every corporal and private soldier, who pleased to put the question, what his thoughts were about everything?--cromwell, i should rather say, managed all this in a manner we must admire for its perfection. an endless vortex of such questioning 'corporals' rolled confusedly round him through his whole course; whom he did answer. it must have been as a great true-seeing man that he managed this too. not one proved falsehood, as i said; not one! of what man that ever wound himself through such a coil of things will you say so much?-- * * * * * but in fact there are two errors, widely prevalent, which pervert to the very basis our judgments formed about such men as cromwell; about their 'ambition,' 'falsity,' and such-like. the first is what i might call substituting the _goal_ of their career for the course and starting point of it. the vulgar historian of a cromwell fancies that he had determined on being protector of england, at the time when he was ploughing the marsh lands of cambridgeshire. his career lay all mapped-out: a program of the whole drama; which he then step by step dramatically unfolded, with all manner of cunning, deceptive dramaturgy, as he went on,--the hollow, scheming [greek: hypokritês], or play-actor that he was! this is a radical perversion; all but universal in such cases. and think for an instant how different the fact is! how much does one of us foresee of his own life? short way ahead of us it is all dim; an _un_wound skein of possibilities, of apprehensions, attemptabilities, vague-looming hopes. this cromwell had _not_ his life lying all in that fashion of program, which he needed then, with that unfathomable cunning of his, only to enact dramatically, scene after scene! not so. we see it so; but to him it was in no measure so. what absurdities would fall-away of themselves, were this one undeniable fact kept honestly in view by history! historians indeed will tell you that they do keep it in view;--but look whether such is practically the fact! vulgar history, as in this cromwell's case, omits it altogether; even the best kinds of history only remember it now and then. to remember it duly with rigorous perfection, as in the fact it _stood_, requires indeed a rare faculty; rare, nay impossible. a very shakspeare for faculty; or more than shakspeare; who could _enact_ a brother-man's biography, see with the brother-man's eyes at all points of his course what things _he_ saw; in short, _know_ his course and him, as few 'historians' are like to do. half or more of all the thick-plied perversions which distort our image of cromwell, will disappear, if we honestly so much as try to represent them so; in sequence, as they _were_; not in the lump, as they are thrown-down before us. but a second error, which i think the generality commit, refers to this same 'ambition' itself. we exaggerate the ambition of great men; we mistake what the nature of it is. great men are not ambitious in that sense; he is a small poor man that is ambitious so. examine the man who lives in misery because he does not shine above other men; who goes about producing himself, pruriently anxious about his gifts and claims; struggling to force everybody, as it were begging everybody for god's sake, to acknowledge him a great man, and set him over the heads of men! such a creature is among the wretchedest sights seen under this sun. a _great_ man? a poor morbid prurient empty man; fitter for the ward of a hospital, than for a throne among men. i advise you to keep-out of his way. he cannot walk on quiet paths; unless you will look at him, wonder at him, write paragraphs about him, he cannot live. it is the _emptiness_ of the man, not his greatness. because there is nothing in himself, he hungers and thirsts that you would find something in him. in good truth, i believe no great man, not so much as a genuine man who had health and real substance in him of whatever magnitude, was ever much tormented in this way. your cromwell, what good could it do him to be 'noticed' by noisy crowds of people? god his maker already noticed him. he, cromwell, was already there; no notice would make _him_ other than he already was. till his hair was grown gray; and life from the downhill slope was all seen to be limited, not infinite but finite, and all a measurable matter _how_ it went,--he had been content to plough the ground, and read his bible. he in his old days could not support it any longer, without selling himself to falsehood, that he might ride in gilt carriages to whitehall, and have clerks with bundles of papers haunting him, "decide this, decide that," which in utmost sorrow of heart no man can perfectly decide! what could gilt carriages do for this man? from of old, was there not in his life a weight of meaning, a terror and a splendour as of heaven itself? his existence there as man set him beyond the need of gilding. death, judgment and eternity: these already lay as the background of whatsoever he thought or did. all his life lay begirt as in a sea of nameless thoughts, which no speech of a mortal could name. god's word, as the puritan prophets of that time had read it: this was great, and all else was little to him. to call such a man 'ambitious,' to figure him as the prurient windbag described above, seems to me the poorest solecism. such a man will say: "keep your gilt carriages and huzzaing mobs, keep your red-tape clerks, your influentialities, your important businesses. leave me alone, leave me alone; there is _too much of life_ in me already!" old samuel johnson, the greatest soul in england in his day, was not ambitious. 'corsica boswell' flaunted at public shows with printed ribbons round his hat; but the great old samuel stayed at home. the world-wide soul wrapt-up in its thoughts, in its sorrows;--what could paradings, and ribbons in the hat, do for it? ah yes, i will say again: the great _silent_ men! looking round on the noisy inanity of the world, words with little meaning, actions with little worth, one loves to reflect on the great empire of _silence_. the noble silent men, scattered here and there, each in his department; silently thinking, silently working; whom no morning newspaper makes mention of! they are the salt of the earth. a country that has none or few of these is in a bad way. like a forest which had no _roots_; which had all turned into leaves and boughs;--which must soon wither and be no forest. woe for us if we had nothing but what we can _show_, or speak. silence, the great empire of silence: higher than the stars; deeper than the kingdoms of death! it alone is great; all else is small.--i hope we english will long maintain our _grand talent pour le silence_. let others that cannot do without standing on barrel-heads, to spout, and be seen of all the market-place, cultivate speech exclusively,--become a most green forest without roots! solomon says, there is a time to speak; but also a time to keep silence. of some great silent samuel, not urged to writing, as old samuel johnson says he was, by _want of money_, and nothing other, one might ask, "why do not you too get up and speak; promulgate your system, found your sect?" "truly," he will answer, "i am _continent_ of my thought hitherto; happily i have yet had the ability to keep it in me, no compulsion strong enough to speak it. my 'system' is not for promulgation first of all; it is for serving myself to live by. that is the great purpose of it to me. and then the 'honour'? alas, yes;--but as cato said of the statue: so many statues in that forum of yours, may it not be better if they ask, where is cato's statue?"-- but, now, by way of counterpoise to this of silence, let me say that there are two kinds of ambition; one wholly blamable, the other laudable and inevitable. nature has provided that the great silent samuel shall not be silent too long. the selfish wish to shine over others, let it be accounted altogether poor and miserable. 'seekest thou great things, seek them not:' this is most true. and yet, i say, there is an irrepressible tendency in every man to develop himself according to the magnitude which nature has made him of; to speak-out, to act-out, what nature has laid in him. this is proper, fit, inevitable; nay it is a duty, and even the summary of duties for a man. the meaning of life here on earth might be defined as consisting in this: to unfold your _self_, to work what thing you have the faculty for. it is a necessity for the human being, the first law of our existence. coleridge beautifully remarks that the infant learns to _speak_ by this necessity it feels.--we will say therefore: to decide about ambition, whether it is bad or not, you have two things to take into view. not the coveting of the place alone, but the fitness of the man for the place withal: that is the question. perhaps the place was _his_; perhaps he had a natural right, and even obligation, to seek the place! mirabeau's ambition to be prime minister, how shall we blame it, if he were 'the only man in france that could have done any good there'? hopefuler perhaps had he not so clearly _felt_ how much good he could do! but a poor necker, who could do no good, and had even felt that he could do none, yet sitting broken-hearted because they had flung him out, and he was now quit of it, well might gibbon mourn over him.--nature, i say, has provided amply that the silent great man shall strive to speak withal; _too_ amply, rather! fancy, for example, you had revealed to the brave old samuel johnson, in his shrouded-up existence, that it was possible for him to do priceless divine work for his country and the whole world. that the perfect heavenly law might be made law on this earth; that the prayer he prayed daily, 'thy kingdom come,' was at length to be fulfilled! if you had convinced his judgment of this; that it was possible, practicable; that he the mournful silent samuel was called to take a part in it! would not the whole soul of the man have flamed up into a divine clearness, into noble utterance and determination to act; casting all sorrows and misgivings under his feet, counting all affliction and contradiction small,--the whole dark element of his existence blazing into articulate radiance of light and lightning? it were a true ambition this! and think now how it actually was with cromwell. from of old, the sufferings of god's church, true zealous preachers of the truth flung into dungeons, whipt, set on pillories, their ears cropt off, god's gospel-cause trodden under foot of the unworthy: all this had lain heavy on his soul. long years he had looked upon it, in silence, in prayer; seeing no remedy on earth; trusting well that a remedy in heaven's goodness would come,--that such a course was false, unjust, and could not last forever. and now behold the dawn of it; after twelve years silent waiting, all england stirs itself; there is to be once more a parliament, the right will get a voice for itself: inexpressible well-grounded hope has come again into the earth. was not such a parliament worth being a member of? cromwell threw down his ploughs and hastened thither. he spoke there,--rugged bursts of earnestness, of a self-seen truth, where we get a glimpse of them. he worked there; he fought and strove, like a strong true giant of a man, through cannon-tumult and all else,--on and on, till the cause _triumphed_, its once so formidable enemies all swept from before it, and the dawn of hope had become clear light of victory and certainty. that _he_ stood there as the strongest soul of england, the undisputed hero of all england,--what of this? it was possible that the law of christ's gospel could now establish itself in the world! the theocracy which john knox in his pulpit might dream of as a 'devout imagination,' this practical man, experienced in the whole chaos of most rough practice, dared to consider as capable of being _realised_. those that were highest in christ's church, the devoutest wisest men, were to rule the land: in some considerable degree, it might be so and should be so. was it not _true_, god's truth? and if _true_, was it not then the very thing to do? the strongest practical intellect in england dared to answer, yes! this i call a noble true purpose; is it not, in its own dialect, the noblest that could enter into the heart of statesman or man? for a knox to take it up was something; but for a cromwell, with his great sound sense and experience of what our world _was_,--history, i think, shows it only this once in such a degree. i account it the culminating point of protestantism; the most heroic phasis that 'faith in the bible' was appointed to exhibit here below. fancy it: that it were made manifest to one of us, how we could make the right supremely victorious over wrong, and all that we had longed and prayed for, as the highest good to england and all lands, an attainable fact! well, i must say, the _vulpine_ intellect, with its knowingness, its alertness and expertness in 'detecting hypocrites,' seems to me a rather sorry business. we have had one such statesman in england; one man, that i can get sight of, who ever had in the heart of him any such purpose at all. one man, in the course of fifteen hundred years; and this was his welcome. he had adherents by the hundred or the ten; opponents by the million. had england rallied all round him,--why, then, england might have been a _christian_ land! as it is, vulpine knowingness sits yet at its hopeless problem, 'given a world of knaves, to educe an honesty from their united action;'--how cumbrous a problem, you may see in chancery law-courts, and some other places! till at length, by heaven's just anger, but also by heaven's great grace, the matter begins to stagnate; and this problem is becoming to all men a _palpably_ hopeless one.-- * * * * * but with regard to cromwell and his purposes: hume and a multitude following him, come upon me here with an admission that cromwell _was_ sincere at first; a sincere 'fanatic' at first, but gradually became a 'hypocrite' as things opened round him. this of the fanatic-hypocrite is hume's theory of it; extensively applied since,--to mahomet and many others. think of it seriously, you will find something in it; not much, not all, very far from all. sincere hero hearts do not sink in this miserable manner. the sun flings forth impurities, gets balefully incrusted with spots; but it does not quench itself, and become no sun at all, but a mass of darkness! i will venture to say that such never befell a great, deep cromwell; i think, never. nature's own lion-hearted son! antæus-like, his strength is got by _touching the earth_, his mother; lift him up from the earth, lift him up into hypocrisy, inanity, his strength is gone. we will not assert that cromwell was an immaculate man; that he fell into no faults, no insincerities among the rest. he was no dilettante professor of 'perfections,' 'immaculate conducts.' he was a rugged orson, rending his rough way through actual true _work_,--doubtless with many a _fall_ therein. insincerities, faults, very many faults daily and hourly: it was too well known to him; known to god and him! the sun was dimmed many a time; but the sun had not himself grown a dimness. cromwell's last words, as he lay waiting for death, are those of a christian heroic man. broken prayers to god, that he would judge him and this cause, he since man could not, in justice yet in pity. they are most touching words. he breathed out his wild great soul, its toils and sins all ended now, into the presence of his maker, in this manner. i, for one, will not call the man a hypocrite! hypocrite, mummer, the life of him a mere theatricality; empty barren quack, hungry for the shouts of mobs? the man had made obscurity do very well for him till his head was gray; and now he _was_, there as he stood recognised unblamed, the virtual king of england. cannot a man do without king's coaches and cloaks? is it such a blessedness to have clerks forever pestering you with bundles of papers in red tape? a simple diocletian prefers planting of cabbages; a george washington, no very immeasurable man, does the like. one would say, it is what any genuine man could do; and would do. the instant his real work were out in the matter of kingship,--away with it! let us remark, meanwhile, how indispensable everywhere a _king_ is, in all movements of men. it is strikingly shown, in this very war, what becomes of men when they cannot find a chief man, and their enemies can. the scotch nation was all but unanimous in puritanism; zealous and of one mind about it, as in this english end of the island was far from being the case. but there was no great cromwell among them; poor tremulous, hesitating, diplomatic argyles and suchlike; none of them had a heart true enough for the truth, or durst commit himself to the truth. they had no leader; and the scattered cavalier party in that country had one: montrose, the noblest of all the cavaliers; an accomplished, gallant-hearted, splendid man; what one may call the hero-cavalier. well, look at it; on the one hand subjects without a king; on the other a king without subjects! the subjects without king can do nothing; the subjectless king can do something. this montrose, with a handful of irish or highland savages, few of them so much as guns in their hands, dashes at the drilled puritan armies like a wild whirlwind; sweeps them, time after time, some five times over, from the field before him. he was at one period, for a short while, master of all scotland. one man; but he was a man: a million zealous men, but _without_ the one; they against him were powerless! perhaps of all the persons in that puritan struggle, from first to last, the single indispensable one was verily cromwell. to see and dare, and decide; to be a fixed pillar in the welter of uncertainty;--a king among them, whether they called him so or not. * * * * * precisely here, however, lies the rub for cromwell. his other proceedings have all found advocates, and stand generally justified; but this dismissal of the rump parliament and assumption of the protectorship, is what no one can pardon him. he had fairly grown to be king in england; chief man of the victorious party in england: but it seems he could not do without the king's cloak, and sold himself to perdition in order to get it. let us see a little how this was. england, scotland, ireland, all lying now subdued at the feet of the puritan parliament, the practical question arose, what was to be done with it? how will you govern these nations, which providence in a wondrous way has given-up to your disposal? clearly those hundred surviving members of the long parliament, who sit there as supreme authority, cannot continue for ever to sit. what _is_ to be done?--it was a question which theoretical constitution-builders may find easy to answer; but to cromwell, looking there into the real practical facts of it, there could be none more complicated. he asked of the parliament, what it was they would decide upon? it was for the parliament to say. yet the soldiers too, however contrary to formula, they who had purchased this victory with their blood, it seemed to them that they also should have something to say in it! we will not "for all our fighting have nothing but a little piece of paper." we understand that the law of god's gospel, to which he through us has given the victory, shall establish itself, or try to establish itself, in this land! for three years, cromwell says, this question had been sounded in the ears of the parliament. they could make no answer; nothing but talk, talk. perhaps it lies in the nature of parliamentary bodies; perhaps no parliament could in such case make any answer but even that of talk, talk! nevertheless the question must and shall be answered. you sixty men there, becoming fast odious, even despicable, to the whole nation, whom the nation already calls rump parliament, _you_ cannot continue to sit there: who or what then is to follow? 'free parliament,' right of election, constitutional formulas of one sort or the other,--the thing is a hungry fact coming on us, which we must answer or be devoured by it! and who are you that prate of constitutional formulas, rights of parliament? you have had to kill your king, to make pride's purges, to expel and banish by the law of the stronger whosoever would not let your cause prosper: there are but fifty or three-score of you left there, debating in these days. tell us what we shall do; not in the way of formula, but of practicable fact! how they did finally answer, remains obscure to this day. the diligent godwin himself admits that he cannot make it out. the likeliest is, that this poor parliament still would not, and indeed could not dissolve and disperse; that when it came to the point of actually dispersing, they again, for the tenth or twentieth time, adjourned it,--and cromwell's patience failed him. but we will take the favourablest hypothesis ever started for the parliament; the favourablest, though i believe it is not the true one, but too favourable. according to this version: at the uttermost crisis, when cromwell and his officers were met on the one hand, and the fifty or sixty rump members on the other, it was suddenly told cromwell that the rump in its despair _was_ answering in a very singular way; that in their splenetic envious despair, to keep-out the army at least, these men were hurrying through the house a kind of reform bill,--parliament to be chosen by the whole of england; equable electoral division into districts; free suffrage, and the rest of it! a very questionable, or indeed for _them_ an unquestionable thing. reform bill, free suffrage of englishmen? why, the royalists themselves, silenced indeed but not exterminated, perhaps out_number_ us; the great numerical majority of england was always indifferent to our cause, merely looked at it and submitted to it. it is in weight and force, not by counting of heads, that we are the majority! and now with your formulas and reform bills, the whole matter, sorely won by our swords, shall again launch itself to sea; become a mere hope, and likelihood, _small_ even as a likelihood? and it is not a likelihood; it is a certainty, which we have won, by god's strength and our own right hands, and do now hold _here_. cromwell walked down to these refractory members; interrupted them in that rapid speed of their reform bill;--ordered them to begone, and talk there no more.--can we not forgive him? can we not understand him? john milton, who looked on it all near at hand, could applaud him. the reality had swept the formulas away before it. i fancy, most men who were realities in england might see into the necessity of that. the strong daring man, therefore, has set all manner of formulas and logical superficialities against him; has dared appeal to the genuine fact of this england, whether it will support him or not? it is curious to see how he struggles to govern in some constitutional way; find some parliament to support him; but cannot. his first parliament, the one they call barebones's parliament, is, so to speak, a _convocation of the notables_. from all quarters of england the leading ministers and chief puritan officials nominate the men most distinguished by religious reputation, influence and attachment to the true cause: these are assembled to shape-out a plan. they sanctioned what was past; shaped as they could what was to come. they were scornfully called _barebones's parliament_, the man's name, it seems, was not _barebones_, but barbone,--a good enough man. nor was it a jest, their work; it was a most serious reality,--a trial on the part of these puritan notables how far the law of christ could become the law of this england. there were men of sense among them, men of some quality; men of deep piety i suppose the most of them were. they failed, it seems, and broke down, endeavouring to reform the court of chancery! they dissolved themselves, as incompetent; delivered-up their power again into the hands of the lord-general cromwell, to do with it what he liked and could. what _will_ he do with it? the lord-general cromwell, 'commander-in chief of all the forces raised and to be raised;' he hereby sees himself, at this unexampled juncture, as it were the one available authority left in england, nothing between england and utter anarchy but him alone. such is the undeniable fact of his position and england's, there and then. what will he do with it? after deliberation, he decides that he will _accept_ it; will formally, with public solemnity, say and vow before god and men, "yes, the fact is so, and i will do the best i can with it!" protectorship, instrument of government,--these are the external forms of the thing; worked-out and sanctioned as they could in the circumstances be, by the judges, by the leading official people, 'council of officers and persons of interest in the nation:' and as for the thing itself, undeniably enough, at the pass matters had now come to, there _was_ no alternative but anarchy or that. puritan england might accept it or not; but puritan england was, in real truth, saved from suicide thereby!--i believe the puritan people did, in an inarticulate, grumbling, yet on the whole grateful and real way, accept this anomalous act of oliver's; at least, he and they together made it good, and always better to the last. but in their parliamentary _articulate_ way, they had their difficulties, and never knew fully what to say to it!-- oliver's second parliament, properly his _first_ regular parliament, chosen by the rule laid-down in the instrument of government, did assemble, and worked;--but got, before long, into bottomless questions as to the protector's _right_, as to 'usurpation,' and so forth; and had at the earliest legal day to be dismissed. cromwell's concluding speech to these men is a remarkable one. so likewise to his third parliament, in similar rebuke for their pedantries and obstinacies. most rude, chaotic, all these speeches are; but most earnest-looking. you would say, it was a sincere helpless man; not used to _speak_ the great inorganic thought of him, but to act it rather! a helplessness of utterance, in such bursting fulness of meaning. he talks much about 'births of providence:' all these changes, so many victories and events, were not forethoughts, and theatrical contrivances of men, of _me_ or of men; it is blind blasphemers that will persist in calling them so! he insists with a heavy sulphurous wrathful emphasis on this. as he well might. as if a cromwell in that dark huge game he had been playing, the world wholly thrown into chaos round him, had _foreseen_ it all, and played it all off like a precontrived puppetshow by wood and wire! these things were foreseen by no man, he says; no man could tell what a day would bring forth: they were 'births of providence,' god's finger guided us on, and we came at last to clear height of victory, god's cause triumphant in these nations; and you as a parliament could assemble together, and say in what manner all this could be _organised_, reduced into rational feasibility among the affairs of men. you were to help with your wise counsel in doing that. "you have had such an opportunity as no parliament in england ever had." christ's law, the right and true, was to be in some measure made the law of this land. in place of that, you have got into your idle pedantries, constitutionalities, bottomless cavillings and questionings about written laws for _my_ coming here;--and would send the whole matter into chaos again, because i have no notary's parchment, but only god's voice from the battle-whirlwind, for being president among you! that opportunity is gone; and we know not when it will return. you have had your constitutional logic; and mammon's law, not christ's law, rules yet in this land. "god be judge between you and me!" these are his final words to them: take you your constitution-formulas in your hand; and i my _in_formal struggles, purposes, realities and acts; and "god be judge between you and me!"-- we said above what shapeless, involved chaotic things the printed speeches of cromwell are. _wilfully_ ambiguous, unintelligible, say the most: a hypocrite shrouding himself in confused jesuitic jargon! to me they do not seem so. i will say rather, they afforded the first glimpses i could ever get into the reality of this cromwell, nay into the possibility of him. try to believe that he means something, search lovingly what that may be: you will find a real _speech_ lying imprisoned in these broken rude tortuous utterances; a meaning in the great heart of this inarticulate man! you will, for the first time, begin to see that he was a man; not an enigmatic chimera, unintelligible to you, incredible to you. the histories and biographies written of this cromwell, written in shallow sceptical generations that could not know or conceive of a deep believing man, are far more _obscure_ than cromwell's speeches. you look through them only into the infinite vague of black and the inane. 'heats and jealousies,' says lord clarendon himself: 'heats and jealousies,' mere crabbed whims, theories and crochets; these induced slow sober quiet englishmen to lay down their ploughs and work; and fly into red fury of confused war against the best-conditioned of kings! _try_ if you can find that true. scepticism writing about belief may have great gifts; but it is really _ultra vires_ there. it is blindness laying-down the laws of optics.-- cromwell's third parliament split on the same rock as his second. ever the constitutional formula: how came _you_ there? show us some notary parchment! blind pedants:--"why, surely the same power which makes you a parliament, that, and something more, made me a protector!" if my protectorship is nothing, what in the name of wonder is your parliamenteership, a reflex and creation of that?-- parliaments having failed, there remained nothing but the way of despotism. military dictators, each with his district, to _coerce_ the royalists and other gainsayers, to govern them, if not by act of parliament, then by the sword. formula shall _not_ carry it, while the reality is here! i will go on, protecting oppressed protestants abroad, appointing just judges, wise managers, at home, cherishing true gospel ministers; doing the best i can to make england a christian england, greater than old rome, the queen of protestant christianity; i, since you will not help me; i while god leaves me life!--why did he not give it up; retire into obscurity again, since the law would not acknowledge him? cry several. that is where they mistake. for him there was no giving of it up! prime ministers have governed countries, pitt, pombal, choiseul; and their word was a law while it held: but this prime minister was one that _could not get resigned_. let him once resign, charles stuart and the cavaliers waited to kill him; to kill the cause _and_ him. once embarked, there is no retreat, no return. this prime minister could _retire_ nowhither except into his tomb. one is sorry for cromwell in his old days. his complaint is incessant of the heavy burden providence has laid on him. heavy; which he must bear till death. old colonel hutchinson, as his wife relates it, hutchinson, his old battle-mate, coming to see him on some indispensable business, much against his will,--cromwell 'follows him to the door,' in a most fraternal, domestic, conciliatory style; begs that he would be reconciled to him, his old brother in arms; says how much it grieves him to be misunderstood, deserted by true fellow-soldiers, dear to him from of old: the rigorous hutchinson, cased in his republican formula, sullenly goes his way.--and the man's head now white; his strong arm growing weary with its long work! i think always too of his poor mother, now very old, living in that palace of his; a right brave woman: as indeed they lived all an honest god-fearing household there: if she heard a shot go off, she thought it was her son killed. he had to come to her at least once a day, that she might see with her own eyes that he was yet living. the poor old mother!----what had this man gained; what had he gained? he had a life of sore strife and toil, to his last day. fame, ambition, place in history? his dead body was hung in chains; his 'place in history,'--place in history forsooth!--has been a place of ignominy, accusation, blackness and disgrace; and here, this day, who knows if it is not rash in me to be among the first that ever ventured to pronounce him not a knave and a liar, but a genuinely honest man! peace to him. did he not, in spite of all, accomplish much for us? _we_ walk smoothly over his great rough heroic life; step-over his body sunk in the ditch there. we need not _spurn_ it, as we step on it!--let the hero rest. it was not to _men's_ judgment that he appealed; nor have men judged him very well. * * * * * precisely a century and a year after this of puritanism had got itself hushed-up into decent composure, and its results made smooth in , there broke-out a far deeper explosion, much more difficult to hush-up, known to all mortals, and like to be long known, by the name of french revolution. it is properly the third and final act of protestantism; the explosive confused return of mankind to reality and fact, now that they were perishing of semblance and sham. we call our english puritanism the second act: "well then, the bible is true; let us go by the bible!" "in church," said luther; "in church and state," said cromwell, "let us go by what actually is god's truth." men have to return to reality; they cannot live on semblance. the french revolution, or third act, we may well call the final one; for lower than that savage _sansculottism_ men cannot go. they stand there on the nakedest haggard fact, undeniable in all seasons and circumstances; and may and must begin again confidently to build-up from that. the french explosion, like the english one, got its king,--who had no notary parchment to show for himself. we have still to glance for a moment at napoleon, our second modern king. napoleon does by no means seem to me so great a man as cromwell. his enormous victories which reached over all europe, while cromwell abode mainly in our little england, are but as the high _stilts_ on which the man is seen standing; the stature of the man is not altered thereby. i find in him no such _sincerity_ as in cromwell; only a far inferior sort. no silent walking, through long years, with the awful unnamable of this universe; 'walking with god,' as he called it; and faith and strength in that alone: _latent_ thought and valour, content to lie latent, then burst out as in blaze of heaven's lightning! napoleon lived in an age when god was no longer believed; the meaning of all silence, latency, was thought to be nonentity: he had to begin not out of the puritan bible, but out of poor sceptical _encyclopédies_. this was the length the man carried it. meritorious to get so far. his compact, prompt, everyway articulate character is in itself perhaps small, compared with our great chaotic inarticulate cromwell's. instead of '_dumb_ prophet struggling to speak,' we have a portentous mixture of the quack withal! hume's notion of the fanatic-hypocrite, with such truth as it has, will apply much better to napoleon than it did to cromwell, to mahomet or the like,--where indeed taken strictly it has hardly any truth at all. an element of blamable ambition shows itself, from the first, in this man; gets the victory over him at last, and involves him and his work in ruin. 'false as a bulletin' became a proverb in napoleon's time. he makes what excuse he could for it: that it was necessary to mislead the enemy, to keep up his own men's courage, and so forth. on the whole, there are no excuses. a man in no case has liberty to tell lies. it had been, in the long-run, _better_ for napoleon too if he had not told any. in fact, if a man have any purpose reaching beyond the hour and day, meant to be found extant _next_ day, what good can it ever be to promulgate lies? the lies are found-out; ruinous penalty is exacted for them. no man will believe the liar next time even when he speaks truth, when it is of the last importance that he be believed. the old cry of wolf!--a lie is _no_-thing; you cannot of nothing make something; you make _nothing_ at last, and lose your labour into the bargain. yet napoleon _had_ a sincerity; we are to distinguish between what is superficial and what is fundamental in insincerity. across these outer manoeuvrings and quackeries of his, which were many and most blamable, let us discern withal that the man had a certain instinctive ineradicable feeling for reality; and did base himself upon fact, so long as he had any basis. he has an instinct of nature better than his culture was. his _savans_, bourrienne tells us, in that voyage to egypt were one evening busily occupied arguing that there could be no god. they had proved it, to their satisfaction, by all manner of logic. napoleon looking up into the stars, answers, "very ingenious, messieurs: but _who made_ all that?" the atheistic logic runs-off from him like water; the great fact stares him in the face: "who made all that?" so too in practice: he, as every man that can be great, or have victory in this world, sees, through all entanglements, the practical heart of the matter; drives straight towards that. when the steward of his tuileries palace was exhibiting the new upholstery, with praises, and demonstration how glorious it was, and how cheap withal, napoleon, making little answer, asked for a pair of scissors, clipt one of the gold tassels from a window-curtain, put it in his pocket, and walked on. some days afterwards, he produced it at the right moment, to the horror of his upholstery functionary; it was not gold but tinsel! in saint helena, it is notable how he still, to his last days, insists on the practical, the real. "why talk and complain; above all, why quarrel with one another? there is no _result_ in it; it comes to nothing that one can _do_. say nothing, if one can do nothing!" he speaks often so, to his poor discontented followers; he is like a piece of silent strength in the middle of their morbid querulousness there. and accordingly was there not what we can call a _faith_ in him, genuine so far as it went? that this new enormous democracy asserting itself here in the french revolution is an insuppressible fact, which the whole world, with its old forces and institutions cannot put down; this was a true insight of his, and took his conscience and enthusiasm along with it,--a _faith_. and did he not interpret the dim purport of it well? '_la carrière ouverte aux talens_, the implements to him who can handle them:' this actually is the truth, and even the whole truth; it includes whatever the french revolution, or any revolution, could mean. napoleon, in his first period, was a true democrat. and yet by the nature of him, fostered too by his military trade, he knew that democracy, if it were a true thing at all could not be an anarchy: the man had a heart-hatred for anarchy. on that twentieth of june ( ), bourrienne and he sat in a coffee-house, as the mob rolled by: napoleon expresses the deepest contempt for persons in authority that they do not restrain this rabble. on the tenth of august he wonders why there is no man to command these poor swiss; they would conquer if there were. such a faith in democracy, yet hatred of anarchy, it is that carries napoleon through all his great work. through his brilliant italian campaigns, onwards to the peace of leoben, one would say, his inspiration is: 'triumph to the french revolution; assertion of it against these austrian simulacra that pretend to call it a simulacrum!' withal, however, he feels, and has a right to feel, how necessary a strong authority is; how the revolution cannot prosper or last without such. to bridle-in that great devouring, self-devouring french revolution; to _tame_ it, so that its intrinsic purpose can be made good, that it may become _organic_, and be able to live among other organisms and _formed_ things, not as a wasting destruction alone: is not this still what he partly aimed at, as the true purport of his life; nay what he actually managed to do? through wagrams, austerlitzes; triumph after triumph,--he triumphed so far. there was an eye to see in this man, a soul to dare and do. he rose naturally to be the king. all men saw that he _was_ such. the common soldiers used to say on the march: "these babbling _avocats_, up at paris; all talk and no work! what wonder it runs all wrong? we shall have to go and put our _petit caporal_ there!" they went, and put him there; they and france at large. chief-consulship, emperorship, victory over europe;--till the poor lieutenant of _la fère_, not unnaturally, might seem to himself the greatest of all men that had been in the world for some ages. but at this point, i think, the fatal charlatan-element got the upper hand. he apostatised from his old faith in facts: took to believing in semblances; strove to connect himself with austrian dynasties, popedoms, with the old false feudalities which he once saw clearly to be false;--considered that _he_ would found "his dynasty" and so forth; that the enormous french revolution meant only that! the man was 'given-up to strong delusion, that he should believe a lie;' a fearful but most sure thing. he did not know true from false now when he looked at them,--the fearfulest penalty a man pays for yielding to untruth of heart. _self_ and false ambition had now become his god: _self_-deception once yielded to, _all_ other deceptions follow naturally more and more. what a paltry patch-work of theatrical paper-mantles, tinsel and mummery, had this man wrapt his own great reality in, thinking to make it more real thereby! his hollow pope's-_concordat_, pretending to be a re-establishment of catholicism, felt by himself to be the method of extirpating it, "_la vaccine de la religion_:" his ceremonial coronations, consecrations by the old italian chimera in notre-dame,--"wanting nothing to complete the pomp of it," as augereau said, "nothing but the half-million of men who had died to put an end to all that"! cromwell's inauguration was by the sword and bible; what we must call a genuinely _true_ one. sword and bible were borne before him, without any chimera: were not these the _real_ emblems of puritanism; its true decoration and insignia? it had used them both in a very real manner, and pretended to stand by them now! but this poor napoleon mistook: he believed too much in the _dupeability_ of men; saw no fact deeper in men than hunger and this! he was mistaken. like a man that should build upon cloud; his house and he fall down in confused wreck, and depart out of the world. alas, in all of us this charlatan-element exists; and _might_ be developed, were the temptation strong enough. 'lead us not into temptation'! but it is fatal, i say, that it _be_ developed. the thing into which it enters as a cognisable ingredient is doomed to be altogether transitory; and, however huge it may _look_, is in itself small. napoleon's working, accordingly, what was it with all the noise it made? a flash as of gunpowder wide-spread; a blazing-up as of dry heath. for an hour the whole universe seems wrapt in smoke and flame; but only for an hour. it goes out: the universe with its old mountains and streams, its stars above and kind soil beneath, is still there. the duke of weimar told his friends always, to be of courage; this napoleonism was _unjust_, a falsehood, and could not last. it is true doctrine. the heavier this napoleon trampled on the world, holding it tyrannously down, the fiercer would the world's recoil against him be, one day. injustice pays itself with frightful compound-interest. i am not sure but he had better have lost his best park of artillery, or had his best regiment drowned in the sea, than shot that poor german bookseller, palm! it was a palpable tyrannous murderous injustice, which no man, let him paint an inch thick, could make-out to be other. it burnt deep into the hearts of men, it and the like of it; suppressed fire flashed in the eyes of men, as they thought of it,--waiting their day! which day _came_: germany rose round him.--what napoleon _did_ will in the long-run amount to what he did _justly_; what nature with her laws will sanction. to what of reality was in him; to that and nothing more. the rest was all smoke and waste. _la carrière ouverte aux talens_: that great true message, which has yet to articulate and fulfil itself everywhere, he left in a most inarticulate state. he was a great _ébauche_, a rude-draught never completed; as indeed what great man is other? left in _too_ rude a state, alas! his notions of the world, as he expresses them there at st. helena, are almost tragical to consider. he seems to feel the most unaffected surprise that it has all gone so; that he is flung-out on the rock here, and the world is still moving on its axis. france is great, and all-great; and at bottom, he is france. england itself, he says, is by nature only an appendage of france; "another isle of oleron to france." so it was _by nature_, by napoleon-nature; and yet look how in fact,--here am i! he cannot understand it: inconceivable that the reality has not corresponded to his program of it; that france was not all-great, that he was not france. 'strong delusion,' that he should believe the thing to be which _is_ not! the compact, clear-seeing, decisive italian nature of him, strong, genuine, which he once had, has enveloped itself, half-dissolved itself, in a turbid atmosphere of french fanfaronade. the world was not disposed to be trodden-down underfoot; to be bound into masses, and built together, as _he_ liked, for a pedestal to france and him: the world had quite other purposes in view! napoleon's astonishment is extreme. but alas, what help now? he had gone that way of his; and nature also had gone her way. having once parted with reality, he tumbles helpless in vacuity; no rescue for him. he had to sink there, mournfully as man seldom did; and break his great heart, and die,--this poor napoleon: a great implement too soon wasted, till it was useless: our last great man! * * * * * _our_ last, in a double sense. for here finally these wide roamings of ours through so many times and places, in search and study of heroes, are to terminate. i am sorry for it: there was pleasure for me in this business, if also much pain. it is a great subject, and a most grave and wide one, this which, not to be too grave about it, i have named _hero-worship_. it enters deeply, as i think, into the secret of mankind's ways and vitalest interests in this world, and is well worth explaining at present. with six months, instead of six days, we might have done better. i promised to break-ground on it; i know not whether i have even managed to do that. i have had to tear it up in the rudest manner in order to get into it at all. often enough, with these abrupt utterances thrown-out isolated, unexplained, has your tolerance been put to the trial. tolerance, patient candour, all-hoping favour and kindness, which i will not speak of at present. the accomplished and distinguished, the beautiful, the wise, something of what is best in england, have listened patiently to my rude words. with many feelings, i heartily thank you all; and say, good be with you all! index abdallah, father of mahomet, abelard, theology of, abu thaleb, uncle of mahomet, , , action the true end of man, , actual, the, the true ideal, , adamitism, afflictions, merciful, agincourt, shakspeare's battle of, alexis, luther's friend, his sudden death, ali, young, mahomet's kinsman and convert, allegory, the sportful shadow of earnest faith, , ambition, fate's appendage of, ; foolish charge of, ; laudable ambition, apprenticeships, aprons, use and significance of, arabia and the arabs, , art, all true works of, symbolic, balder, the white sungod, , baphometic fire-baptism, barebone's parliament, battle-field, a, battle, life-, our, ; with folly and sin, , being, the boundless phantasmagoria of, belief and opinion, , belief, the true god-announcing miracle, , , , ; war of, . _see_ religion, scepticism. benthamism, , bible of universal history, , biography, meaning and uses of, ; significance of biographic facts, blumine, ; her environment, ; character and relation to teufelsdröckh, ; blissful bonds rent asunder, ; on her way to england, bolivar's cavalry-uniform, books, miraculous influence of, , , , ; our modern university, church and parliament, boswell, his reverence for johnson, banyan's _pilgrim's progress_, burns, gilbert, burns, robert, his birth, and humble heroic parents, ; rustic dialect of, ; the most gifted british soul of his century, ; his resemblance to mirabeau, ; his sincerity, ; his visit to edinburgh, ; lion-hunters the ruin and death of, caabah, the, with its black stone and sacred well, , canopus, the worship of, charles i. fatally incapable of being dealt with, childhood, happy season of, ; early influences and sports, china, literary governors of, christian faith, a good mother's simple version of the, ; temple of the, now in ruins, ; passive-half of, christian love, , church. _see_ books. church-clothes, ; living and dead churches, ; the modern church, and its newspaper-pulpits, circumstances, influence of, clergy, the, with their surplices and cassock-aprons girt-on, , clothes, not a spontaneous growth of the human animal, but an artificial device, ; analogy between the costumes of the body and the customs of the spirit, ; decoration the first purpose of clothes, ; what clothes have done for us, and what they threaten to do, , ; fantastic garbs of the middle ages, ; a simple costume, ; tangible and mystic influences of clothes, , ; animal and human clothing contrasted, ; a court-ceremonial _minus_ clothes, ; necessity for clothes, ; transparent clothes, ; all emblematic things are clothes, , ; genesis of the modern clothes-philosopher, ; character and conditions needed, , ; george fox's suit of leather, ; church-clothes, ; old-clothes, ; practical inferences, codification, combination, value of, , commons, british house of, concealment. _see_ secrecy. constitution, our invaluable british, conversion, courtesy, due to all men, courtier, a luckless, cromwell, ; his hypochondria, , ; early marriage and conversion, ; an industrious farmer, ; his victories and participation in the king's death, ; practicalness of, ; his ironsides, ; his speeches, , ; his 'ambition' and such-like, ; a 'fanatic,' but gradually became a 'hypocrite,' ; his dismissal of the rump parliament, ; protectorship and parliamentary futilities, ; his last days, and closing sorrows, custom the greatest of weavers, dandy, mystic significance of the, ; dandy worship, ; sacred books, ; articles of faith, ; a dandy household, ; tragically undermined by growing drudgery, dante and his book, ; biography in his book, and portrait, ; his birth, education and early career, , ; his love for beatrice portinari, ; unhappy marriage, ; banishment, ; uncourtier-like ways of, ; his _divina commedia_ genuinely a song, ; the unseen world, as figured in the christianity of the middle ages, ; the 'uses' of dante, david, the hebrew king, death, nourishment even in, , della scala, the court of, devil, internecine war with the, , , , ; cannot now so much as believe in him, dilettantes and pedants, ; patrons of literature, diodorus siculus, diogenes, divine right of kings, doubt can only be removed by action, . _see_ unbelief. drudgery contrasted with dandyism, ; 'communion of drudges,' and what may come of it, duelling, a picture of, duty, no longer a divine messenger and guide, but a false earthly fantasm, , ; infinite nature of, , ; definition of, , ; sceptical spiritual paralysis, edda, the scandinavian, editor's first acquaintance with teufelsdröckh and his philosophy of clothes, ; efforts to make known his discovery to british readers, ; admitted into the teufelsdröckh watch-tower, , ; first feels the pressure of his task, ; his bulky weissnichtwo packet, ; strenuous efforts to evolve some historic order out of such interminable documentary confusion, ; partial success, , , ; mysterious hints, , ; astonishment and hesitation, ; congratulations, ; farewell, education, influence of early, ; insignificant portion depending on schools, ; educational architects, ; the inspired thinker, eighteenth century, the sceptical, , , eisleben, the birthplace of luther, eliot, , elizabethan era, the, emblems, all visible things, emigration, eternity, looking through time, , , evil, origin of, eyes and spectacles, facts, engraved hierograms, for which the fewest have the key, faith, the one thing needful, fantasy, the true heaven-gate or hell-gate of man, , fashionable novels, fatherhood, faults, his, not the criterion of any man feebleness, the true misery, fichte's theory of literary men, fire, and vital fire, , ; miraculous nature of, force, universal presence of, forms, necessity for, fortunatus' wishing-hat, , fox's, george, heavenward aspirations and earthly independence, _fraser's magazine_, , frederick the great, symbolic glimpse of, friendship, now obsolete, ; an incredible tradition, , ; how it were possible, , frost. _see_ fire. futteral and his wife, future, organic filaments of the, genius, the world's treatment of, german speculative thought, , , , , ; historical researches, , gerund-grinding, ghost, an authentic, giotto, his portrait of dante, god, the unslumbering, omnipresent, eternal, ; god's presence manifested to our eyes and hearts, ; an absentee god, goethe's inspired melody, ; 'characters,' ; notablest of literary men, good, growth and propagation of, graphic, secret of being, gray's misconception of norse lore, great men, . _see_ man. grimm the german antiquary, and odin, gullibility, blessings of, gunpowder, use of, , habit, how, makes dullards of us all, hagar, the well of, , half-men, hampden, , happiness, the whim of, hegira, the, heroes, universal history of the united biographies of, , ; how 'little critics' account for great men, ; all heroes fundamentally of the same stuff, , , , , , ; intellect the primary outfit, ; heroism possible to all, , ; no man a hero to a valet-soul, , , hero-worship, the corner-stone of all society, ; the tap-root of all religion, - , ; perennial in man, , , , heuschrecke and his biographic documents, ; his loose, zigzag, thin-visaged character, ; unaccustomed eloquence, and interminable documentary superfluities, ; bewildered darkness, history, all-inweaving tissue of, ; by what strange chances do we live in, ; a perpetual revelation, , , homer's iliad, hope, this world emphatically the place of, ; false shadows of, horse, his own tailor, hutchinson and cromwell, , iceland, the home of norse poets, ideal, the, exists only in the actual, , idolatry, ; criminal only when insincere, igdrasil, the life-tree, , imagination. _see_ fantasy. immortality, a glimpse of, imposture, statistics of, independence, foolish parade of, , indifference, centre of, infant intuitions and acquirements, ; genius and dulness, inspiration, perennial, , , intellect, the summary of man's gifts, , invention, , invisible, the, nature the visible garment of, ; invisible bonds, binding all men together, ; the visible and invisible, , irish, the, poor-slave, islam, isolation, jesus of nazareth, our divinest symbol, , job, the book of, johnson's difficulties, poverty, hypochondria, , ; rude self-help; stands genuinely by the old formulas, ; his noble unconscious sincerity, ; twofold gospel, of prudence and hatred of cant, ; his _dictionary_, ; the brave old samuel, , jötuns, , julius the second, pope, kadijah, the good, mahomet's first wife, , king, our true, chosen for us in heaven, ; the, a summary of all the various figures of heroism, ; indispensable in all movements of men, kingdom, a man's, know thyself, and what thou canst work at, knox's influence on scotland, ; the bravest of all scotchmen, ; his unassuming career, ; is sent to the french galleys, ; his colloquies with queen mary, ; vein of drollery, ; a brother to high and to low, ; his death, koran, the, koreish, the, keepers of the caabah, , , kranach's portrait of luther, labour, sacredness of, ladrones islands, what the natives of, thought regarding fire, lamaism, grand, land-owning, trade of, language, the garment of thought, ; dead vocables, laughter, significance of, leo x., the elegant pagan pope, liberty and equality, , lieschen, life, human, picture of, , , , ; life-purpose, ; speculative mystery of, , , ; the most important transaction in, ; nothingness of; , light the beginning of all creation, literary men, ; in china, literature, chaotic condition of, ; not our heaviest evil, logic-mortar and wordy air-castles, ; underground workshop of logic, , louis xv., ungodly age of, love, what we emphatically name, ; pyrotechnic phenomena of, , ; not altogether a delirium, ; how possible, in its highest form, , , ludicrous, feeling and instances of the, , luther's birth and parentage, ; hardship and rigorous necessity; death of his friend alexis, ; becomes a monk; his religious despair; finds a bible, ; his deliverance from darkness; at rome, ; tetzel, ; burns the pope's bull, , ; at the diet of worms, ; king of the reformation, ; 'duke georges for nine days running,' ; his little daughter's deathbed; his solitary patmos, ; his portrait, magna charta, mahomet's birth, boyhood, and youth, ; marries kadijah, ; quiet, unambitious life, ; divine commission, ; the good kadijah believes him, ; seid, his slave, ; his cousin ali, ; his offences and sore struggles, ; flight from mecca; being driven to take the sword, he uses it, ; the koran, ; a veritable hero, ; seid's death, ; freedom from cant, ; the infinite nature of duty, malthus's over-population panic, man, by nature _naked_, , , ; essentially a tool-using animal, ; the true shekinah, ; a divine emblem, , , , , ; two men alone honourable, . _see_ thinking man. mary, queen, and knox, mayflower, sailing of the, mecca, its rise, ; mahomet's flight from, , metaphors, the stuff of language, metaphysics inexpressibly unproductive, , middle ages, represented by dante and shakspeare, , milton, mirabeau, his ambition, miracles, significance of, , monmouth street, and its 'ou' clo'' angels of doom, montrose, the hero-cavalier, , mother's, a, religious influence, motive-millwrights, mountain scenery, musical, all deep things, mystery, all-pervading domain of, nakedness and hypocritical clothing, , ; a naked court-ceremonial, ; a naked duke addressing a naked house of lords, names, significance and influence of, , napoleon and his political evangel, ; compared with cromwell, ; a portentous mixture of quack and hero, ; his instinct for the practical, ; his democratic _faith_ ; his hatred of anarchy, ; apostatised from his old faith in facts, and took to believing in semblances, , ; this napoleonism was _unjust_, and could not last, nature, the god-written apocalypse of, , ; not an aggregate but a whole, , , , ; nature alone antique, ; sympathy with, , ; the 'living garment of god,' ; laws of nature, ; all one great miracle, , , ; a righteous umpire, necessity, brightened into duty, newspaper editors, ; our mendicant friars, , nothingness of life, , nottingham bargemen, , novalis, on man, ; on belief, ; on shakspeare, obedience, the lesson of, , odin, the first norse 'man of genius,' ; historic rumours and guesses, ; how he came to be deified, ; invented 'runes,' ; hero, prophet, god, olaf, king, and thor, original man the _sincere_ man, , orpheus, over-population, own, conservation of a man's, paganism, scandinavian, ; not mere allegory, ; nature-worship, , ; hero-worship, ; creed of our fathers, , , ; impersonation of the visible workings of nature, ; contrasted with greek paganism, ; the first norse thinker, ; main practical belief; indispensable to be brave, ; hearty, homely, rugged mythology, ; balder and thor, ; consecration of valour, paradise and fig-leaves, ; prospective paradises, , parliaments superseded by books, ; cromwell's parliaments, passivity and activity, , past, the, inextricably linked with the present, ; forever extant, ; the whole, the possession of the present, paupers, what to do with, peace-era, the much-predicted, peasant saint, the, _pelham_, and the whole duty of dandies, perseverance, law of, person, mystery of a, , , , philosophies, cause-and-effect, phoenix death-birth, , , pitt, mr., his reply when asked for help to burns, plato, the child-man of, poet, the, and prophet, , , poetry and prose, distinction of, , popery, poverty, advantages of, priest, the true, a kind of prophet, printing, consequences of, private judgment, progress of the species, property, prose. _see_ poetry. proselytising, , protestantism, the root of modern european history, ; not dead yet, ; its living fruit, , purgatory, noble catholic conception of, puritanism, founded by knox, ; true beginning of america, ; the one epoch of scotland, ; theocracy, ; puritanism in england, , , pym, , quackery originates nothing, , ; age of, ; quacks and dupes, radicalism, speculative, , , , ragnarök, raleigh's, sir walter, fine mantle, ramadhan, the month of, raphael, the best of portrait-painters, reformer, the true, religion, dead letter and living spirit of, ; weaving new vestures, , ; a man's, the chief fact with regard to him, ; based on hero-worship, ; propagating by the sword, ; cannot succeed by being 'easy,' reverence, early growth of, ; indispensability of, revolution, ; the french, , richter, , right and wrong, , rousseau, not a strong man, ; his portrait; egoism, ; his passionate appeals, ; his books, like himself, unhealthy; the evangelist of the french revolution, runes, , , sabeans, the worship of, , sæmund, an early christian priest, , st. clement danes, church of, saints, living communion of, , sarcasm, the panoply of, _sartor resartus_, genesis of, ; its purpose, saturn or chronos, savage, the aboriginal, scarecrow, significance of the, sceptical goose-cackle, scepticism, a spiritual paralysis, - , schlegel, august wilhelm, school education, insignificance of, , ; tin-kettle terrors and incitements, ; need of soul-architects, science, the torch of, ; the scientific head, scotland awakened into life by knox, secrecy, benignant efficacies of, secret, the open, seid, mahomet's slave and friend, , self-activity, self-annihilation, shakspeare and the elizabethan era, ; his all-sufficing intellect, , ; his characters, ; his dramas, a part of nature herself, ; his joyful tranquillity, and overflowing love of laughter, ; his hearty patriotism, ; glimpses of the world that was in him, ; a heaven-sent light-bringer, ; a king of saxondom, shame, divine, mysterious growth of, ; the soil of all virtue, shekinah, man the true, silence, ; the element in which all great things fashion themselves, ; the great empires of, , simon's, saint-, aphorism of the golden age, ; a false application, sincerity, better than gracefulness, ; the first characteristic of heroism and originality, , , , , smoke, advantage of consuming one's, snorro, his description of odin, , , society founded upon cloth, , , ; how society becomes possible, ; social death and new-birth, , , , ; as good as extinct, solitude. _see_ silence. sorrow-pangs of self-deliverance, , , ; divine depths of sorrow, ; worship of sorrow, southey, and literature, space and time, the dream-canvas upon which life is imaged, , , , spartan wisdom, speculative intuition, . _see_ german. speech, great, but not greatest, sphinx-riddle, the universe a, star worship, , stealing, , stupidity, blessings of, style, varieties of, suicide, summary, sunset, , swallows, migrations and co-operative instincts of, swineherd, the, symbols, ; wondrous agency of, ; extrinsic and intrinsic, ; superannuated, , tabÛc, the war of, tailors, symbolic significance of, temptations in the wilderness, testimonies of authors, tetzel, the monk, , teufelsdröckh's philosophy of clothes, ; he proposes a toast, ; his personal aspect, and silent deep-seated sansculottism, ; thawed into speech, ; memorable watch-tower utterances, ; alone with the stars, ; extremely miscellaneous environment, ; plainness of speech, ; universal learning, and multiplex literary style, ; ambiguous-looking morality, ; one instance of laughter, ; almost total want of arrangement, ; feeling of the ludicrous, ; speculative radicalism, ; a singular character, ; genesis properly an exodus, ; unprecedented name, ; infantine experience, ; pedagogy, ; an almost hindoo passivity, ; schoolboy jostling, ; heterogeneous university life, ; fever-paroxysms of doubt, ; first practical knowledge of the english, ; getting under way, ; ill success, ; glimpse of high life, ; casts himself on the universe, ; reverent feeling towards women, ; frantically in love, ; first interview with blumine, ; inspired moments, ; short of practical kitchen-stuff, ; ideal bliss and actual catastrophe, ; sorrows and peripatetic stoicism, ; a parting glimpse of his beloved on her way to england, ; how he overran the whole earth, ; doubt darkened unto unbelief, ; love of truth, ; a feeble unit, amidst a threatening infinitude, ; baphometic fire-baptism, ; placid indifference, ; a hyperborean intruder, ; nothingness of life, ; temptations in the wilderness, ; dawning of a better day, ; the ideal in the actual, ; finds his true calling, ; his biography a symbolic adumbration, significant to those who can decipher it, ; a wonder-lover, seeker and worker, ; in monmouth street among the hebrews, ; concluding hints, ; his public history not yet done, perhaps the better part only beginning, theocracy, a, striven for by all true reformers, , thinking man, a, the worst enemy of the prince of darkness, , ; true thought can never die, thor, and his adventures, , - ; his last appearance, thought, miraculous influence of, , , ; _musical_ thought, thunder. _see_ thor. time, the great mystery of, time-spirit, life-battle with the, , ; time, the universal wonder-hider, titles of honour, tolerance, true and false, , tools, influence of, ; the pen, most miraculous of tools, trial by jury, burke's opinion of, turenne, unbelief, era of, , ; doubt darkening into, ; escape from, universities, , utgard, thor's expedition to, , utilitarianism, , valkyrs, the, , valour, the basis of all virtue, , ; norse consecration of, ; christian valour, _vates_, the, , , view-hunting and diseased self-consciousness, voltaire, ; the parisian divinity, ; voltaire-worship, , war, wisdom, wish, the norse god, ; enlarged into a heaven by mahomet, woman's influence, wonder the basis of worship, ; region of, words, slavery to, ; word-mongering and motive-grinding, workshop of life, . _see_ labour. worms, luther at, worship, transcendent wonder, . _see_ hero-worship. young men and maidens, zemzem, the sacred well, the end critical miscellanies by john morley vol. ii. essay : vauvenargues london macmillan and co., limited new york: the macmillan company contents of vol. ii. page the influence of pascal vauvenargues holds the balance between him and the votaries of perfectibility birth, education, and hard life of vauvenargues life in paris, and friendship with voltaire his religious sentiment his delicacy, reserve, and psychagogic quality certain inability to appreciate marked originality criticisms on molière, racine, and corneille comparison with english aphoristic writers and moralists character the key to his theory of greatness his exaltation of spontaneous feeling, a protest against rochefoucauld and pascal his plea for a normal sense of human relation, the same his doctrine of the will connected with his doctrine of character antipathy to ascetic restrictions two ways of examining character: that followed by vauvenargues examples of his style the beauty of his nature to be read in his face [transcriber's note: footnotes have been moved to end of book.] vauvenargues. one of the most important phases of french thought in the great century of its illumination is only thoroughly intelligible, on condition that in studying it we keep constantly in mind the eloquence, force, and genius of pascal. he was the greatest and most influential representative of that way of viewing human nature and its circumstances, which it was one of the characteristic glories of the eighteenth century to have rebelled against and rejected. more than a hundred years after the publication of the _pensées_, condorcet thought it worth while to prepare a new edition of them, with annotations, protesting, not without a certain unwonted deference of tone, against pascal's doctrine of the base and desperate estate of man. voltaire also had them reprinted with notes of his own, written in the same spirit of vivacious deprecation, which we may be sure would have been even more vivacious, if voltaire had not remembered that he was speaking of the mightiest of all the enemies of the jesuits. apart from formal and specific dissents like these, all the writers who had drunk most deeply of the spirit of the eighteenth century, lived in a constant ferment of revolt against the clear-witted and vigorous thinker of the century before, who had clothed mere theological mysteries with the force and importance of strongly entrenched propositions in a consistent philosophy. the resplendent fervour of bossuet's declamations upon the nothingness of kings, the pitifulness of mortal aims, the crushing ever-ready grip of the hand of god upon the purpose and faculty of man, rather filled the mind with exaltation than really depressed or humiliated it. from bossuet to pascal is to pass from the solemn splendour of the church to the chill of the crypt. besides, bossuet's attitude was professional, in the first place, and it was purely theological, in the second; so the main stream of thought flowed away and aside from him. to pascal it was felt necessary that there should be reply and vindication, whether in the shape of deliberate and published formulas, or in the reasoned convictions of the individual intelligence working privately. a syllabus of the radical articles of the french creed of the eighteenth century would consist largely of the contradictions of the main propositions of pascal. the old theological idea of the fall was hard to endure, but the idea of the fall was clenched by such general laws of human nature as this,--that 'men are so necessarily mad, that it would be to be mad by a new form of madness not to be mad;'--that man is nothing but masquerading, lying, and hypocrisy, both in what concerns himself and in respect of others, wishing not to have the truth told to himself, and shrinking from telling it to anybody else;[ ] that the will, the imagination, the disorders of the body, the thousand concealed infirmities of the intelligence, conspire to reduce our discovery of justice and truth to a process of haphazard, in which we more often miss the mark than hit.[ ] pleasure, ambition, industry, are only means of distracting men from the otherwise unavoidable contemplation of their own misery. how speak of the dignity of the race and its history, when we know that a grain of sand in cromwell's bladder altered the destinies of a kingdom, and that if cleopatra's nose had been shorter the whole surface of the earth would be different? imagine, in a word, 'a number of men in chains, and all condemned to death; some of them each day butchered in the sight of the others, while those who remain watch their own condition in that of their fellows, and eyeing one another in anguish and hopelessness, wait their turn; such is the situation of man.'[ ] it was hardly possible to push the tragical side of the verities of life beyond this, and there was soon an instinctive reaction towards realities. the sensations with their conditions of pleasure no less than of pain; the intelligence with its energetic aptitudes for the discovery of protective and fruitful knowledge; the affections with their large capacities for giving and receiving delight; the spontaneous inner impulse towards action and endurance in the face of outward circumstances--all these things reassured men, and restored in theory to them with ample interest what in practice they had never lost--a rational faith and exultation in their own faculties, both of finding out truth and of feeling a very substantial degree of happiness. on this side too, as on the other, speculation went to its extreme limit. the hapless and despairing wretches of pascal were transformed by the votaries of perfectibility into bright beings not any lower than the angels. between the two extremes there was one fine moralist who knew how to hold a just balance, perceiving that language is the expression of relations and proportions, that when we speak of virtue and genius we mean qualities that compared with those of mediocre souls deserve these high names, that greatness and happiness are comparative terms, and that there is nothing to be said of the estate of man except relatively. this moralist was vauvenargues. vauvenargues was born of a good provençal stock at aix, in the year . he had scarcely any of that kind of education which is usually performed in school-classes, and he was never able to read either latin or greek. such slight knowledge as he ever got of the famous writers among the ancients was in translations. of english literature, though its influence and that of our institutions were then becoming paramount in france, and though he had a particular esteem for the english character, he knew only the writings of locke and pope, and the paradise lost.[ ] vauvenargues must be added to the list of thinkers and writers whose personal history shows, what men of letters sometimes appear to be in a conspiracy to make us forget, that for sober, healthy, and robust judgment on human nature and life, active and sympathetic contact with men in the transaction of the many affairs of their daily life is a better preparation than any amount of wholly meditative seclusion. he is also one of the many who show that a weakly constitution of body is not incompatible with fine and energetic qualities of mind, even if it be not actually friendly to them. nor was feeble health any disqualification for the profession of arms. as arms and the church were the only alternatives for persons of noble birth, vauvenargues, choosing the former, became a subaltern in the king's own regiment at the age of twenty ( ). here in time he saw active service; for in the death of charles vi. threw all europe into confusion, and the french government, falling in with the prodigious designs of the marshal belle-isle and his brother, took sides against maria theresa, and supported the claims of the unhappy elector of bavaria who afterwards became the emperor charles vii. the disasters which fell upon france in consequence are well known. the forces despatched to bavaria and bohemia, after the brief triumph of the capture of prague, were gradually overwhelmed without a single great battle, and it was considered a signal piece of good fortune when in the winter of - belle-isle succeeded, with a loss of half his force, in leading by a long circuit, in the view of the enemy, and amid the horrors of famine and intense frost, some thirteen thousand men away from prague. the king's regiment took part in the bohemian campaign, and in this frightful march which closed it; vauvenargues with the rest. to physical sufferings during two winters was added the distress of losing a comrade to whom he was deeply attached; he perished in the spring of ' under the hardships of the war. the _Éloge_ in which vauvenargues commemorates the virtues and the pitiful fate of his friend, is too deeply marked with the florid and declamatory style of youth to be pleasing to a more ripened taste.[ ] he complained that nobody who had read it observed that it was touching, not remembering that even the most tender feeling fails to touch us, when it has found stilted and turgid expression. delicacy and warmth of affection were prominent characteristics in vauvenargues. perhaps if his life had been passed in less severe circumstances, this fine susceptibility might have become fanciful and morbid. as it was, he loved his friends with a certain patient sweetness and equanimity, in which there was never the faintest tinge of fretfulness, caprice, exacting vanity, or any of those other vices which betray in men that excessive consciousness of their own personality, which lies at the root of most of the obstacles in the way of an even and humane life. his nature had such depth and quality that the perpetual untowardness of circumstances left no evil print upon him; hardship made him not sour, but patient and wise, and there is no surer sign of noble temper. the sufferings and bereavements of war were not his only trials. vauvenargues was beset throughout the whole of his short life with the sordid and humiliating embarrassments of narrow means. his letters to saint-vincens, the most intimate of his friends, disclose the straits to which he was driven. the nature of these straits is an old story all over the world, and vauvenargues did the same things that young men in want of money have generally done. it cannot be said, i fear, that he passed along those miry ways without some defilement. he bethinks him on one occasion that a rich neighbour has daughters. 'why should i not undertake to marry one of them within two years, with a reasonable dowry, if he would lend me the money i want and provided i should not have repaid it by the time fixed?'[ ] we must make allowance for the youth of the writer, and for a different view of marriage and its significance from our own. even then there remains something to regret. poverty, wrote vauvenargues, in a maxim smacking unwontedly of commonplace, cannot debase strong souls, any more than riches can elevate low souls.[ ] that depends. if poverty means pinching and fretting need of money, it may not debase the soul in any vital sense, but it is extremely likely to wear away a very priceless kind of delicacy in a man's estimate of human relations and their import. vauvenargues has told us what he found the life of the camp. luxurious and indolent living, neglected duties, discontented sighing after the delights of paris, the exaltation of rank and mediocrity, an insolent contempt for merit; these were the characteristics of the men in high military place. the lower officers meantime were overwhelmed by an expenditure that the luxury of their superiors introduced and encouraged; and they were speedily driven to retire by the disorder of their affairs, or by the impossibility of promotion, because men of spirit could not long endure the sight of flagrant injustice, and because those who labour for fame cannot tie themselves to a condition where there is nothing to be gathered but shame and humiliation.[ ] to these considerations of an extravagant expenditure and the absence of every chance of promotion, there was added in the case of vauvenargues the still more powerful drawback of irretrievably broken health. the winter-march from prague to egra had sown fatal seed. his legs had been frost-bitten, and before they could be cured he was stricken by small-pox, which left him disfigured and almost blind. so after a service of nine years, he quitted military life ( ). he vainly solicited employment as a diplomatist. the career was not yet open to the talents, and in the memorial which vauvenargues drew up he dwelt less on his conduct than on his birth, being careful to show that he had an authentic ancestor who was governor of hyères in the early part of the fourteenth century.[ ] but the only road to employment lay through the court. the claims even of birth counted for nothing, unless they were backed by favour among the ignoble creatures who haunted versailles. for success it was essential to be not only high-born, but a parasite as well. 'permit me to assure you, sir,' vauvenargues wrote courageously to amelot, then the minister, 'that it is this moral impossibility for a gentleman, with only zeal to commend him, of ever reaching the king his master, which causes the discouragement that is observed among the nobility of the provinces, and which extinguishes all ambition.'[ ] amelot, to oblige voltaire, eager as usual in good offices for his friend, answered the letters which vauvenargues wrote, and promised to lay his name before the king as soon as a favourable opportunity should present itself.[ ] vauvenargues was probably enough of a man of the world to take fair words of this sort at their value, and he had enough of qualities that do not belong to the man of the world to enable him to confront the disappointment with cheerful fortitude 'misfortune itself,' he had once written, 'has its charms in great extremities; for this opposition of fortune raises a courageous mind, and makes it collect all the forces that before were unemployed: it is in indolence and littleness that virtue suffers, when a timid prudence prevents it from rising in flight and forces it to creep along in bonds.'[ ] he was true to the counsel which he had thus given years before, and with the consciousness that death was rapidly approaching, and that all hope of advancement in the ordinary way was at an end, even if there were any chance of his life, he persevered in his project of going to paris, there to earn the fame which he instinctively felt that he had it in him to achieve. neither scantiness of means nor the vehement protests of friends and relations--always the worst foes to superior character on critical occasions--could detain him in the obscurity of provence. in he took up his quarters in paris in a humble house near the school of medicine. literature had not yet acquired that importance in france which it was so soon to obtain. the encyclopædia was still unconceived, and the momentous work which that famous design was to accomplish, of organising the philosophers and men of letters into an army with banners, was still unexecuted. voltaire, indeed, had risen, if not to the full height of his reputation, yet high enough both to command the admiration of people of quality, and to be the recognised chief of the new school of literature and thought. voltaire had been struck by a letter in which vauvenargues, then unknown to him, had sent a criticism comparing corneille disadvantageously with racine. coming from a young officer, the member of a profession which voltaire frankly described as 'very noble, in truth, but slightly barbarous,' this criticism was peculiarly striking. a great many years afterwards voltaire was surprised in the same way, to find that an officer could write such a book as the _félicité publique_ of the marquis de chastellux. to vauvenargues he replied with many compliments, and pointed out with a good deal of pains the injustice which the young critic had done to the great author of _cinna_. '_it is the part of a man like you,_' he said admirably, '_to have preferences, but no exclusions._'[ ] the correspondence thus begun was kept up with ever-growing warmth and mutual respect. 'if you had been born a few years earlier,' voltaire wrote to him, 'my works would be worth all the more for it; but at any rate, even at the close of my career, you confirm me in the path that you pursue.'[ ] the personal impression was as fascinating as that which had been conveyed by vauvenargues' letters. voltaire took every opportunity of visiting his unfortunate friend, then each day drawing nearer to the grave. men of humbler stature were equally attracted. 'it was at this time,' says the light-hearted marmontel, 'that i first saw at home the man who had a charm for me beyond all the rest of the world, the good, the virtuous, the wise vauvenargues. cruelly used by nature in his body, he was in soul one of her rarest masterpieces. i seemed to see in him fénelon weak and suffering. i could make a good book of his conversations, if i had had a chance of collecting them. you see some traces of it in the selection that he has left of his thoughts and meditations. but all eloquent and full of feeling as he is in his writings, he was even more so still in his conversation.'[ ] marmontel felt sincere grief when vauvenargues died, and in the _epistle to voltaire_ expressed his sorrow in some fair lines. they contain the happy phrase applied to vauvenargues, '_ce coeur stoïque et tendre_.'[ ] in religious sentiment vauvenargues was out of the groove of his time. that is to say, he was not unsusceptible of religion. accepting no dogma, so far as we can judge, and complying with no observances, very faint and doubtful as to even the fundamentals--god, immortality, and the like--he never partook of the furious and bitter antipathy of the best men of that century against the church, its creeds, and its book. at one time, as will be seen from a passage which will be quoted by and by, his leanings were towards that vague and indefinable doctrine which identifies god with all the forces and their manifestations in the universe. afterwards even this adumbration of a theistic explanation of the world seems to have passed from him, and he lived, as many other not bad men have lived, with that fair working substitute for a religious doctrine which is provided in the tranquil search, or the acceptance in a devotional spirit, of all larger mortal experiences and higher human impressions. there is a _meditation on the faith_, including a _prayer_, among his writings; and there can be little doubt, in spite of condorcet's incredible account of the circumstances of its composition, that it is the expression of what was at the time a sincere feeling.[ ] it is, however, rather the straining and ecstatic rhapsody of one who ardently seeks faith, than the calm and devout assurance of him who already possesses it. vauvenargues was religious by temperament, but he could not entirely resist the intellectual influences of the period. the one fact delivered him from dogma and superstition, and the other from scoffing and harsh unspirituality. he saw that apart from the question of the truth or falsehood of its historic basis, there was a balance to be struck between the consolations and the afflictions of the faith.[ ] practically he was content to leave this balance unstruck, and to pass by on the other side. scarcely any of his maxims concern religion. one of these few is worth quoting, where he says: 'the strength or weakness of our belief depends more on our courage than our light; not all those who mock at auguries have more intellect than those who believe in them.'[ ] the end came in the spring of , when vauvenargues was no more than thirty-two. perhaps, in spite of his physical miseries, these two years in paris were the least unhappy time in his life. he was in the great centre where the fame which he longed for was earned and liberally awarded. a year of intercourse with so full and alert and brilliant a mind as voltaire's, must have been more to one so appreciative of mental greatness as vauvenargues, than many years of intercourse with subalterns in the regiment of the king. with death, now known to be very near at hand, he had made his account before. 'to execute great things,' he had written in a maxim which gained the lively praise of voltaire, 'a man must live as though he had never to die.'[ ] this mood was common among the greeks and romans; but the religion which europe accepted in the time of its deepest corruption and depravation, retained the mark of its dismal origin nowhere so strongly as in the distorted prominence which it gave in the minds of its votaries to the dissolution of the body. it was one of the first conditions of the revival of reason that the dreary _memento mori_ and its hateful emblems should be deliberately effaced. 'the thought of death,' said vauvenargues, 'leads us astray, because it makes us forget to live.' he did not understand living in the sense which the dissolute attach to it. the libertinism of his regiment called no severe rebuke from him, but his meditative temper drew him away from it even in his youth. it is not impossible that if his days had not been cut short, he might have impressed parisian society with ideas and a sentiment, that would have left to it all its cheerfulness, and yet prevented that laxity which so fatally weakened it. turgot, the only other conspicuous man who could have withstood the license of the time, had probably too much of that austerity which is in the fibre of so many great characters, to make any moral counsels that he might have given widely effective. vauvenargues was sufficiently free from all taint of the pedagogue or the preacher to have dispelled the sophisms of licence, less by argument than by the gracious attraction of virtue in his own character. the stock moralist, like the commonplace orator of the pulpit, fails to touch the hearts of men or to affect their lives, for lack of delicacy, of sympathy, and of freshness; he attempts to compensate for this by excess of emphasis, and that more often disgusts us than persuades. vauvenargues, on the other hand, is remarkable for delicacy and half-reserved tenderness. everything that he has said is coloured and warmed with feeling for the infirmities of men. he writes not merely as an analytical outsider. hence, unlike most moralists, he is no satirist. he had borne the burdens. 'the looker-on,' runs one of his maxims, 'softly lying in a carpeted chamber, inveighs against the soldier, who passes winter nights on the river's edge, and keeps watch in silence over the safety of the land.'[ ] vauvenargues had been something very different from the safe and sheltered critic of other men's battles, and this is the secret of the hold which his words have upon us. they are real, with the reality that can only come from two sources; from high poetic imagination, which vauvenargues did not possess, or else from experience of life acting on and strengthening a generous nature. 'the cause of most books of morality being so insipid,' he says, 'is that their authors are not sincere; is that, being feeble echoes of one another, they could not venture to publish their own real maxims and private sentiments.'[ ] one of the secrets of his own freedom from this ordinary insipidity of moralists was his freedom also from their pretentiousness and insincerity. besides these positive merits, he had, as we have said, the negative distinction of never being emphatic. his sayings are nearly always moderate and persuasive, alike in sentiment and in phrase. sometimes they are almost tentative in the diffidence of their turn. compared with him la rochefoucauld's manner is hard, and that of la bruyère sententious. in the moralist who aspires to move and win men by their best side instead of their worst, the absence of this hardness and the presence of a certain lambency and play even in the exposition of truths of perfect assurance, are essential conditions of psychagogic quality. in religion such law does not hold, and the contagion of fanaticism is usually most rapidly spread by a rigorous and cheerless example. we may notice in passing that vauvenargues has the defects of his qualities, and that with his aversion to emphasis was bound up a certain inability to appreciate even grandeur and originality, if they were too strongly and boldly marked. 'it is easy to criticise an author,' he has said, 'but hard to estimate him.'[ ] this was never more unfortunately proved than in the remarks of vauvenargues himself upon the great molière. there is almost a difficulty in forgiving a writer who can say that 'la bruyère, animated with nearly the same genius, painted the crookedness of men with as much truth and as much force as molière; but i believe that there is more eloquence and more elevation to be found in la bruyère's images.'[ ] without at all undervaluing la bruyère, one of the acutest and finest of writers, we may say that this is a truly disastrous piece of criticism. quite as unhappy is the preference given to racine over molière, not merely for the conclusion arrived at, but for the reasons on which it is founded. molière's subjects, we read, are low, his language negligent and incorrect, his characters bizarre and eccentric. racine, on the other hand, takes sublime themes, presents us with noble types, and writes with simplicity and elegance. it is not enough to concede to racine the glory of art, while giving to molière or corneille the glory of genius. 'when people speak of the art of racine--the art which puts things in their place; which characterises men, their passions, manners, genius; which banishes obscurities, superfluities, false brilliancies; which paints nature with fire, sublimity, and grace--what can we think of such art as this, except that it is the genius of extraordinary men, and the origin of those rules that writers without genius embrace with so much zeal and so little success?'[ ] and it is certainly true that the art of racine implied genius. the defect of the criticism lies, as usual, in a failure to see that there is glory enough in both; in the art of highly-finished composition and presentation, and in the art of bold and striking creation. yet vauvenargues was able to discern the secret of the popularity of molière, and the foundation of the common opinion that no other dramatist had carried his own kind of art so far as molière had carried his; 'the reason is, i fancy, that he is more natural than any of the others, and this is an important lesson for everybody who wishes to write.'[ ] he did not see how nearly everything went in this concession, that molière was, above all, natural. with equal truth of perception he condemned the affectation of grandeur lent by the french tragedians to classical personages who were in truth simple and natural, as the principal defect of the national drama, and the common rock on which their poets made shipwreck.[ ] let us, however, rejoice for the sake of the critical reputation of vauvenargues that he was unable to read shakespeare. one for whom molière is too eccentric, grotesque, inelegant, was not likely to do much justice to the mightiest but most irregular of all dramatists. a man's prepossessions in dramatic poetry, supposing him to be cultivated enough to have any prepossessions, furnish the most certain clue that we can get to the spirit in which he inwardly regards character and conduct. the uniform and reasoned preference which vauvenargues had for racine over molière and corneille, was only the transfer to art of that balanced, moderate, normal, and emphatically harmonious temper, which he brought to the survey of human nature. excess was a condition of thought, feeling, and speech, that in every form was disagreeable to him; alike in the gloom of pascal's reveries, and in the inflation of speech of some of the heroes of corneille. he failed to relish even montaigne as he ought to have done, because montaigne's method was too prolix, his scepticism too universal, his egoism too manifest, and because he did not produce complete and artistic wholes.[ ] reasonableness is the strongest mark in vauvenargues' thinking; balance, evenness, purity of vision, penetration finely toned with indulgence. he is never betrayed into criticism of men from the point of view of immutable first principles. perhaps this was what the elder mirabeau meant when he wrote to vauvenargues, who was his cousin: 'you have the english genius to perfection,' and what vauvenargues meant when he wrote of himself to mirabeau: 'nobody in the world has a mind less french than i.'[ ] these international comparisons are among the least fruitful of literary amusements, even when they happen not to be extremely misleading; as when, for example, voltaire called locke the english pascal, a description which can only be true on condition that the qualifying adjective is meant to strip either locke or pascal of most of his characteristic traits. and if we compare vauvenargues with any of our english aphoristic writers, there is not resemblance enough to make the contrast instructive. the obvious truth is that in this department our literature is particularly weak, while french literature is particularly strong in it. with the exception of bacon, we have no writer of apophthegms of the first order; and the difference between bacon as a moralist and pascal or vauvenargues, is the difference between polonius's famous discourse to laertes and the soliloquy of hamlet. bacon's precepts refer rather to external conduct and worldly fortune than to the inner composition of character, or to the 'wide, gray, lampless' depths of human destiny. we find the same national characteristic, though on an infinitely lower level, in franklin's oracular saws. among the french sages a psychological element is predominant, as well as an occasional transcendent loftiness of feeling, not to be found in bacon's wisest maxims, and from his point of view in their composition we could not expect to find them there. we seek in vain amid the positivity of bacon, or the quaint and timorous paradox of browne, or the acute sobriety of shaftesbury, for any of that poetic pensiveness which is strong in vauvenargues, and reaches tragic heights in pascal.[ ] addison may have the delicacy of vauvenargues, but it is a delicacy that wants the stir and warmth of feeling. it seems as if with english writers poetic sentiment naturally sought expression in poetic forms, while the frenchmen of nearly corresponding temperament were restrained within the limits of prose by reason of the vigorously prescribed stateliness and stiffness of their verse at that time. a man in this country with the quality of vauvenargues, with his delicacy, tenderness, elevation, would have composed lyrics. we have undoubtedly lost much by the laxity and irregularity of our verse, but as undoubtedly we owe to its freedom some of the most perfect and delightful of the minor figures that adorn the noble gallery of english poets. it would be an error to explain the superiority of the great french moralists by supposing in them a fancy and imagination too defective for poetic art. it was the circumstances of the national literature during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries which made vauvenargues for instance a composer of aphorisms, rather than a moral poet like pope. let us remember some of his own most discriminating words. 'who has more imagination,' he asks, 'than bossuet, montaigne, descartes, pascal, all of them great philosophers? who more judgment and wisdom than racine, boileau, la fontaine, molière, all of them poets full of genius? _it is not true, then, that the ruling qualities exclude the others; on the contrary, they suppose them._ i should be much surprised if a great poet were without vivid lights on philosophy, at any rate moral philosophy, and it will very seldom happen for a true philosopher to be totally devoid of imagination.'[ ] with imagination in the highest sense vauvenargues was not largely endowed, but he had as much as is essential to reveal to one that the hard and sober-judging faculty is not the single, nor even the main element, in a wise and full intelligence. 'all my philosophy,' he wrote to mirabeau, when only four or five and twenty years old, an age when the intellect is usually most exigent of supremacy, 'all my philosophy has its source in my heart.'[ ] in the same spirit he had well said that there is more cleverness in the world than greatness of soul, more people with talent than with lofty character.[ ] hence some of the most peculiarly characteristic and impressive of his aphorisms; that famous one, for instance, '_great thoughts come from the heart,_' and the rest which hang upon the same idea. 'virtuous instinct has no need of reason, but supplies it.' 'reason misleads us more often than nature.' 'reason does not know the interests of the heart.' 'perhaps we owe to the passions the greatest advantages of the intellect.' such sayings are only true on condition that instinct and nature and passion have been already moulded under the influence of reason; just as this other saying, which won the warm admiration of voltaire, '_magnanimity owes no account of its motives to prudence_,' is only true on condition that by magnanimity we understand a mood not out of accord with the loftiest kind of prudence.[ ] but in the eighteenth century reason and prudence were words current in their lower and narrower sense, and thus one coming like vauvenargues to see this lowness and narrowness, sought to invest ideas and terms that in fact only involved modifications of these, with a significance of direct antagonism. magnanimity was contrasted inimically with prudence, and instinct and nature were made to thrust from their throne reason and reflection. carried to its limit, this tendency developed the speculative and social excesses of the great sentimental school. in vauvenargues it was only the moderate, just, and most seasonable protest of a fine observer, against the supremacy among ideals of a narrow, deliberative, and calculating spirit. his exaltation of virtuous instinct over reason is in a curious way parallel to burke's memorable exaltation over reason of prejudice. 'prejudice,' said burke, 'previously engages the mind in a steady course of wisdom and virtue, and does not leave the man hesitating in the moment of decision, sceptical, puzzled, and unresolved. prejudice renders a man's virtue his habit, and not a series of unconnected acts; through just prejudice his duty becomes a part of his nature.'[ ] what burke designated as prejudice, vauvenargues less philosophically styled virtuous instinct; each meant precisely the same thing, though the difference of phrase implied a different view of its origin and growth: and the side opposite to each of them was the same--namely, a sophisticated and over-refining intelligence, narrowed to the consideration of particular circumstances as they presented themselves. translated into the modern equivalent, the heart, nature, instinct of vauvenargues all mean _character_. he insisted upon spontaneous impulse as a condition of all greatest thought and action. men think and work on the highest level when they move without conscious and deliberate strain after virtue: when, in other words, their habitual motives, aims, methods, their character, in short, naturally draw them into the region of what is virtuous. '_it is by our ideas that we ennoble our passions or we debase them; they rise high or sink low according to the man's soul_.'[ ] all this has ceased to be new to our generation, but a hundred and thirty years ago, and indeed much nearer to us than that, the key to all nobleness was thought to be found only by cool balancing and prudential calculation. a book like _clarissa harlowe_ shows us this prudential and calculating temper underneath a varnish of sentimentalism and fine feelings, an incongruous and extremely displeasing combination, particularly characteristic of certain sets and circles in that century. one of the distinctions of vauvenargues is that exaltation of sentiment did not with him cloak a substantial adherence to a low prudence, nor to that fragment of reason which has so constantly usurped the name and place of the whole. he eschewed the too common compromise which the sentimentalist makes with reflection and calculation, and it was this which saved him from being a sentimentalist. that doctrine of the predominance of the heart over the head, which has brought forth so many pernicious and destructive fantasies in the history of social thought, represented in his case no more than a reaction against the great detractors of humanity. rochefoucauld had surveyed mankind exclusively from the point of their vain and egoistic propensities, and his aphorisms are profoundly true of all persons in whom these propensities are habitually supreme, and of all the world in so far as these propensities happen to influence them. pascal, on the one hand, leaving the affections and inclinations of a man very much on one side, had directed all his efforts to showing the pitiful feebleness and incurable helplessness of man in the sphere of the understanding. vauvenargues is thus confronted by two sinister pictures of humanity--the one of its moral meanness and littleness, the other of its intellectual poverty and impotency. he turned away from both of them, and found in magnanimous and unsophisticated feeling, of which he was conscious in himself and observant in others, a compensation alike for the selfishness of some men and the intellectual limitations of all men. this compensation was ample enough to restore the human self-respect that pascal and rochefoucauld had done their best to weaken. the truth in that disparagement was indisputable so far as it went. it was not a kind of truth, however, on which it is good for the world much to dwell, and it is the thinkers like vauvenargues who build up and inspire high resolve. 'scarcely any maxim,' runs one of his own, 'is true in all respects.'[ ] we must take them in pairs to find out the mean truth; and to understand the ways of men, so far as words about men can help us, we must read with appreciation not only vauvenargues, who said that great thoughts come from the heart, but la rochefoucauld, who called the intelligence the dupe of the heart, and pascal, who saw only desperate creatures, miserably perishing before one another's eyes in the grim dungeon of the universe. yet it is the observer in the spirit of vauvenargues, of whom we must always say that he has chosen the better part. vauvenargues' own estimate was sound. 'the duke of la rochefoucauld seized to perfection the weak side of human nature; maybe he knew its strength too; and only contested the merit of so many splendid actions in order to unmask false wisdom. whatever his design, the effect seems to me mischievous; his book, filled with delicate invective against hypocrisy, even to this day turns men away from virtue, by persuading them that it is never genuine.'[ ] or, as he put it elsewhere, without express personal reference: 'you must arouse in men the feeling of their prudence and strength, if you would raise their character; those who only apply themselves to bring out the absurdities and weaknesses of mankind, enlighten the judgment of the public far less than they deprave its inclination.'[ ] this principle was implied in goethe's excellent saying, that if you would improve a man, it is best to begin by persuading him that he is already that which you would have him to be. to talk in this way was to bring men out from the pits which cynicism on the one side, and asceticism on the other, had dug so deep for them, back to the warm precincts of the cheerful day. the cynic and the ascetic had each looked at life through a microscope, exaggerating blemishes, distorting proportions, filling the eye with ugly and disgusting illusions.[ ] humanity, as was said, was in disgrace with the thinkers. the maxims of vauvenargues were a plea for a return to a healthy and normal sense of relations. 'these philosophers,' he cried, 'are men, yet they do not speak in human language; they change all the ideas of things, and misuse all their terms.'[ ] these are some of the most direct of his retorts upon pascal and la rochefoucauld: 'i have always felt it to be absurd for philosophers to fabricate a virtue that is incompatible with the nature of humanity, and then after having pretended this, to declare coldly that there is no virtue. if they are speaking of the phantom of their imagination, they may of course abandon or destroy it as they please, for they invented it; but true virtue--which they cannot be brought to call by this name, because it is not in conformity with their definitions; which is the work of nature and not their own; and which consists mainly in goodness and vigour of soul--that does not depend on their fancies, and will last for ever with characters that cannot possibly be effaced.' 'the body has its graces, the intellect its talents; is the heart then to have nothing but vices? and must man, who is capable of reason, be incapable of virtue?' 'we are susceptible of friendship, justice, humanity, compassion, and reason. o my friends, what then is virtue?' 'disgust is no mark of health, nor is appetite a disorder; quite the reverse. thus we think of the body, but we judge the soul on other principles. we suppose that a strong soul is one that is exempt from passions, and as youth is more active and ardent than later age, we look on it as a time of fever, and place the strength of man in his decay.'[ ] * * * * * the theological speculator insists that virtue lies in a constant and fierce struggle between the will and the passions, between man and human nature. vauvenargues founded his whole theory of life on the doctrine that the will is not something independent of passions, inclinations, and ideas, but on the contrary is a mere index moved and fixed by them, as the hand of a clock follows the operation of the mechanical forces within. character is an integral unit. 'whether it is reason or passion that moves us, it is we who determine ourselves; it would be madness to distinguish one's thoughts and sentiments from one's self.... no will in men, which does not owe its direction to their temperament, their reasoning, and their actual feelings.'[ ] virtue, then, is not necessarily a condition of strife between the will and the rest of our faculties and passions; no such strife is possible, for the will obeys the preponderant passion or idea, or group of passions and ideas; and the contest lies between one passion or group and another. hence, in right character there is no struggle at all, for the virtuous inclinations naturally and easily direct our will and actions; virtue is then independent of struggle; and the circumstance of our finding pleasure in this or that practice, is no reason why both the practice and the pleasure should not be unimpeachably virtuous. it is easy to see the connection between this theory of the dependence of the will, and the prominence which vauvenargues is ever giving to the passions. these are the key to the movements of the will. to direct and shape the latter, you must educate the former. it was for his perception of this truth, we may notice in passing, that comte awarded to vauvenargues a place in the positivist calendar; 'for his direct effort, in spite of the universal desuetude into which it had fallen, to reorganise the culture of the heart according to a better knowledge of human nature, of which this noble thinker discerned the centre to be affective.'[ ] this theory of the will, however, was not allowed to rest here; the activity of man was connected with the universal order. 'what prevents the mind from perceiving the motive of its actions, is only their infinite quickness. our thoughts perish at the moment in which their effects make themselves known; when the action commences, the principle has vanished; the will appears, the feeling is gone; we cannot find it ourselves, and so doubt if we ever had it. but it would be an enormous defect to have a will without a principle; our actions would be all haphazard; the world would be nothing but caprice; all order would be overturned. it is not enough, then, to admit it to be true that it is reflection or sentiment that leads us: we must add further that it would be monstrous for this to be otherwise.[ ] ... 'the will recalls or suspends our ideas; our ideas shape or vary the laws of the will; the laws of the will are thus dependent on the laws of creation; but the laws of creation are not foreign to ourselves, they constitute our being, and form our essence, and are entirely our own, and we can say boldly that we act by ourselves, when we only act by them.[ ] ... 'let us recognise here, then, our profound subjection.... let us rend the melancholy veil which hides from our eyes the eternal chain of the world and the glory of the creator.... external objects form ideas in the mind, these ideas form sentiments, these sentiments volitions, these volitions actions in ourselves and outside of ourselves. so noble a dependence in all the parts of this vast universe must conduct our reflections to the unity of its principle; this subordination makes the true greatness of the beings subordinated. the excellence of man is in his dependence; his subjection displays two marvellous images--the infinite power of god, and the dignity of our own soul.... man independent would be an object of contempt; the feeling of his own imperfection would be his eternal torture. but the same feeling, when we admit his dependence, is the foundation of his sweetest hope; it reveals to him the nothingness of finite good, and leads him back to his principle, which insists on joining itself to him, and which alone can satisfy his desires in the possession of himself.'[ ] vauvenargues showed his genuine healthiness not more by a plenary rejection of the doctrine of the incurable vileness and frenzy of man, than by his freedom from the boisterous and stupid transcendental optimism which has too many votaries in our time. he would not have men told that they are miserable earth-gnomes, the slaves of a black destiny, but he still placed them a good deal lower than the angels. for instance: 'we are too inattentive or too much occupied with ourselves, to get to the bottom of one another's characters; _whoever has watched masks at a ball dancing together in a friendly manner, and joining hands without knowing who the others are, and then parting the moment afterwards never to meet again nor ever to regret, or be regretted, can form some idea of the world_.'[ ] but then, as he said elsewhere: 'we can be perfectly aware of our imperfection, without being humiliated by the sight. _one of the noblest qualities of our nature is that we are able so easily to dispense with greater perfection._'[ ] in all this we mark the large and rational humaneness of the new time, a tolerant and kindly and elevating estimate of men. the faith in the natural and simple operation of virtue, without the aid of all sorts of valetudinarian restrictions, comes out on every occasion. the trappist theory of the conditions of virtue found no quarter with him. mirabeau for instance complained of the atmosphere of the court, as fatal to the practice of virtue. vauvenargues replied that the people there were doubtless no better than they should be, and that vice was dominant. 'so much the worse for those who have vices. but when you are fortunate enough to possess virtue, it is, to my thinking, a very noble ambition to lift up this same virtue in the bosom of corruption, to make it succeed, to place it above all, to indulge and control the passions without reproach, to overthrow the obstacles to them, and to surrender yourself to the inclinations of an upright and magnanimous heart, instead of combating or concealing them in retreat, without either satisfying or vanquishing them. i know nothing so weak and so vain as to flee before vices, or to hate them without measure; for people only hate them by way of reprisal because they are afraid of them, or else out of vengeance because these vices have played them some sorry turn; but a little loftiness of soul, some knowledge of the heart, a gentle and tranquil humour, will protect you against the risk of being either surprised, or keenly wounded by them.'[ ] there is a tolerably obvious distinction between two principal ways of examining character. one is a musing, subjective method of delineation, in which the various shades and windings seem to reveal themselves with a certain spontaneity, and we follow many recesses and depths in the heart of another, such as only music stirs into consciousness in ourselves. besides this rarer poetic method, there is what may be styled the diplomatist's method; it classifies characters objectively, according to the kinds of outer conduct in which they manifest themselves, and according to the best ways of approaching and dealing with them. the second of these describes the spirit in which vauvenargues observed men. he is french, and not german, and belongs to the eighteenth century, and not to the seventeenth or the nineteenth. his _characters_, very little known in this country, are as excellent as any work in this kind that we are acquainted with, or probably as excellent as such work can be. they are real and natural, yet while abstaining as rigorously as vauvenargues everywhere does from grotesque and extravagant traits, they avoid equally the vice of presenting the mere bald and sterile flats of character, which he that runs may read. as we have said, he had the quality possessed by so few of those who write about men; he watched men, and drew from the life. in a word, he studied concrete examples and interrogated his own experience--the only sure guarantee that one writing on his themes has anything which it is worth our while to listen to. among other consequences of this reality of their source is the agreeable fact that these pictures are free from that clever bitterness and easy sarcasm, by which crude and jejune observers, thinking more of their own wit than of what they observe, sometimes gain a little reputation. even the coxcombs, self-duping knaves, simpletons, braggarts, and other evil or pitiful types whom he selects, are drawn with unstrained and simple conformity to reality. the pictures have no moral label pinned on to them. yet vauvenargues took life seriously enough, and it was just because he took it seriously, that he had no inclination to air his wit or practise a verbal humour upon the stuff out of which happiness and misery are made. one or two fragments will suffice. take the man of the world, for instance: 'a man of the world is not he who knows other men best, who has most foresight or dexterity in affairs, who is most instructed by experience and study; he is neither a good manager, nor a man of science, nor a politician, nor a skilful officer, nor a painstaking magistrate. he is a man who is ignorant of nothing but who knows nothing; who, doing his own business ill, fancies himself very capable of doing that of other people; a man who has much useless wit, who has the art of saying flattering things which do not flatter, and judicious things which give no information; who can persuade nobody, though he speaks well; endowed with that sort of eloquence which can bring out trifles, and which annihilates great subjects; as penetrating in what is ridiculous and external in men, as he is blind to the depths of their minds. one who, afraid of being wearisome by reason, is wearisome by his extravagances; is jocose without gaiety, and lively without passion.'[ ] or the two following, the inconstant man, and lycas or the firm man: 'such a man seems really to possess more than one character. a powerful imagination makes his soul take the shape of all the objects that affect it; he suddenly astonishes the world by acts of generosity and courage which were never expected of him; the image of virtue inflames, elevates, softens, masters his heart; he receives the impression from the loftiest, and he surpasses them. but when his imagination has grown cold, his courage droops, his generosity sinks; the vices opposed to these virtues take possession of his soul, and after having reigned awhile supreme, they make way for other objects.... we cannot say that they have a great nature, or strong, or weak, or light; it is a swift and imperious imagination which reigns with sovereign power over all their being, which subjugates their genius, and which prescribes for them in turn those fine actions and those faults, those heights and those littlenesses, those flights of enthusiasm and those fits of disgust, which we are wrong in charging either with hypocrisy or madness.'[ ] 'lycas unites with a self-reliant, bold, and impetuous nature, a spirit of reflection and profundity which moderates the counsels of his passions, which leads him by inpenetrable motives, and makes him advance to his ends by many paths. he is one of those long-sighted men, who consider the succession of events from afar off, who always finish a design begun; who are capable, i do not say of dissembling either a misfortune or an offence, but of rising above either, instead of letting it depress them; deep natures, independent by their firmness in daring all and suffering all; who, whether they resist their inclinations out of foresight, or whether, out of pride and a secret consciousness of their resources, they defy what is called prudence, always, in good as in evil, cheat the acutest conjectures.'[ ] let us note that vauvenargues is almost entirely free from that favourite trick of the aphoristic person, which consists in forming a series of sentences, the predicates being various qualifications of extravagance, vanity, and folly, and the subject being women. he resists this besetting temptation of the modern speaker of apophthegms to identify woman and fool. on the one or two occasions in which he begins the maxim with the fatal words, _les femmes_, he is as little profound as other people who persist in thinking of man and woman as two different species. 'women,' for example, 'have ordinarily more vanity than temperament, and more temperament than virtue'--which is fairly true of all human beings, and in so far as it is true, describes men just as exactly--and no more so--as it describes women. in truth, vauvenargues felt too seriously about conduct and character to go far in this direction. now and again he is content with a mere smartness, as when he says: 'there are some thoroughly excellent people who cannot get rid of their _ennui_ except at the expense of society.' but such a mood is not common. he is usually grave, and not seldom profoundly weighty, delicate without being weak, and subtle without obscurity; as for example: 'people teach children to fear and obey; the avarice, pride, or timidity of the fathers, instructs the children in economy, arrogance, or submission. we stir them up to be yet more and more copyists, which they are only too disposed to be, as it is; nobody thinks of making them original, hardy, independent.' 'if instead of dulling the vivacity of children, people did their best to raise the impulsiveness and movement of their characters, what might we not expect from a fine natural temper?' again: 'the moderation of the weak is mediocrity.' 'what is arrogance in the weak is elevation in the strong; as the strength of a sick man is frenzy, and that of a whole man is vigour.' 'to speak imprudently and to speak boldly are nearly always the same thing. but we may speak without prudence, and still speak what is right; and it is a mistake to fancy that a man has a shallow intelligence, because the boldness of his character or the liveliness of his temper may have drawn from him, in spite of himself, some dangerous truth.' 'it is a great sign of mediocrity always to praise moderately.' * * * * * vauvenargues has a saying to the effect that men very often, without thinking of it, form an idea of their face and expression from the ruling sentiment of which they are conscious in themselves at the time. he hints that this is perhaps the reason why a coxcomb always believes himself to be handsome.[ ] and in a letter to mirabeau, he describes pleasantly how sometimes in moments of distraction he pictures himself with an air of loftiness, of majesty, of penetration, according to the idea that is occupying his mind, and how if by chance he sees his face in the mirror, he is nearly as much amazed as if he saw a cyclops or a tartar.[ ] yet his nature, if we may trust the portrait, revealed itself in his face; it is one of the most delightful to look upon, even in the cold inarticulateness of an engraving, that the gallery of fair souls contains for us. we may read the beauty of his character in the soft strength of the brow, the meditative lines of mouth and chin, above all, the striking clearness, the self-collection, the feminine solicitude, that mingle freely and without eagerness or expectancy in his gaze, as though he were hearkening to some ever-flowing inward stream of divine melody. we think of that gracious touch in bacon's picture of the father of solomon's house, that 'he had an aspect as though he pitied men.' if we reproach france in the eighteenth century with its coarseness, artificiality, shallowness, because it produced such men as the rather brutish duclos, we ought to remember that this was also the century of vauvenargues, one of the most tender, lofty, cheerful, and delicately sober of all moralists. [footnote : _pensées_, i. v. .] [footnote : _ib._ i. vi. .] [footnote : _ib._ i. vii. .] [footnote : m. gilbert's edition of the _works and correspondence of vauvenargues_ ( vols. paris: furne, ), ii. .] [footnote : _Éloge de p.h. de seytres_. _oeuv._ i. - .] [footnote : _oeuv._ ii. . see too p. .] [footnote : no. , i. .] [footnote : _réflexions sur divers sujets_, i. .] [footnote : _oeuv._ ii. .] [footnote : _ib._ ii. .] [footnote : _ib._ ii. .] [footnote : _conseils à un jeune homme_, i. .] [footnote : _oeuv._ ii. .] [footnote : _ib._ ii. .] [footnote : _mémoires de marmontel_, vol. i. .] [footnote : the reader of marmontel's _mémoires_ will remember the extraordinary and grotesque circumstances under which a younger brother of mirabeau, (of _l'ami des hommes_, that is) appealed to the memory of vauvenargues. see vol. i. - .] [footnote : _oeuv._ i. - .] [footnote : _letter to saint-vincens_, ii. .] [footnote : no. .] [footnote : napoleon said on some occasion, '_il faut vouloir vivre et savoir mourir_.' m. littré prefaces the third volume of that heroic monument of learning and industry, his _dictionary of the french language_, by the words: 'he who wishes to employ his life seriously ought always to act as if he had long to live, and to govern himself as if he would have soon to die.'] [footnote : no. .] [footnote : no. .] [footnote : no. .] [footnote : _réflexions critiques sur quelques poètes_, i. .] [footnote : _oeuv_. i. .] [footnote : _réflexions critiques sur quelques poètes_, i. .] [footnote : _oeuv._ i. .] [footnote : _oeuv._ i. .] [footnote : _correspondance_. _oeuv._ ii. , .] [footnote : long-winded and tortuous and difficult to seize as shaftesbury is as a whole, in detached sentences he shows marked aphoristic quality; _e.g._ 'the most ingenious way of becoming foolish is by a system;' 'the liker anything is to wisdom, if it be not plainly the thing itself, the more directly it becomes its opposite.'] [footnote : no. (i. ).] [footnote : _oeuv._ ii. .] [footnote : _ib._ i. .] [footnote : doch zuweilen ist des sinns in einer sache auch mehr, als wir vermuthen; und es wäre so unerhört doch nicht, dass uns der heiland auf wegen zu sich zöge, die der kluge von selbst nicht leicht betreten würde. _nathan der weise_, iii. .] [footnote : _reflections on the french revolution_, works (ed. ), i. .] [footnote : _oeuv._ ii. .] [footnote : no. .] [footnote : _oeuv._ ii. .] [footnote : no. .] [footnote : 'a man may as well pretend to cure himself of love by viewing his mistress through the artificial medium of a microscope or prospect, and beholding there the coarseness of her skin and monstrous disproportion of her features, as hope to excite or moderate any passion by the artificial arguments of a seneca or an epictetus.'--hume's _essays_ (xviii. _the sceptic_).] [footnote : _oeuv._ i. .] [footnote : nos. - , .] [footnote : _sur le libre arbitre_. _oeuv._ i. .] [footnote : _politique positive_, iii. .] [footnote : _ib._ i. .] [footnote : _politique positive_, .] [footnote : _ib._ , .] [footnote : no. .] [footnote : nos. , .] [footnote : _correspondance_. _oeuv._ ii. .] [footnote : _oeuv._ i. .] [footnote : _oeuv._ i. .] [footnote : _oeuv._ i. .] [footnote : no. .] [footnote : _oeuv_. ii. .] the english utilitarians _by_ leslie stephen [illustration] london _duckworth and co._ henrietta street, w.c. preface this book is a sequel to my _history of english thought in the eighteenth century_. the title which i then ventured to use was more comprehensive than the work itself deserved: i felt my inability to write a continuation which should at all correspond to a similar title for the nineteenth century. i thought, however, that by writing an account of the compact and energetic school of english utilitarians i could throw some light both upon them and their contemporaries. i had the advantage for this purpose of having been myself a disciple of the school during its last period. many accidents have delayed my completion of the task; and delayed also its publication after it was written. two books have been published since that time, which partly cover the same ground; and i must be content with referring my readers to them for further information. they are _the english radicals_, by mr. c. b. roylance kent; and _english political philosophy from hobbes to maine_, by professor graham. contents page introductory chapter i political conditions i. the british constitution ii. the ruling class iii. legislation and administration iv. the army and navy v. the church vi. the universities vii. theory chapter ii the industrial spirit i. the manufacturers ii. the agriculturists chapter iii social problems i. pauperism ii. the police iii. education iv. the slave-trade v. the french revolution vi. individualism chapter iv philosophy i. john horne tooke ii. dugald stewart chapter v bentham's life i. early life ii. first writings iii. the panopticon iv. utilitarian propaganda v. codification chapter vi bentham's doctrine i. first principles ii. springs of action iii. the sanctions iv. criminal law v. english law vi. radicalism vii. individualism note on bentham's writings introductory the english utilitarians of whom i am about to give some account were a group of men who for three generations had a conspicuous influence upon english thought and political action. jeremy bentham, james mill, and john stuart mill were successively their leaders; and i shall speak of each in turn. it may be well to premise a brief indication of the method which i have adopted. i have devoted a much greater proportion of my work to biography and to consideration of political and social conditions than would be appropriate to the history of a philosophy. the reasons for such a course are very obvious in this case, inasmuch as the utilitarian doctrines were worked out with a constant reference to practical applications. i think, indeed, that such a reference is often equally present, though not equally conspicuous, in other philosophical schools. but in any case i wish to show how i conceive the relation of my scheme to the scheme more generally adopted by historians of abstract speculation. i am primarily concerned with the history of a school or sect, not with the history of the arguments by which it justifies itself in the court of pure reason. i must therefore consider the creed as it was actually embodied in the dominant beliefs of the adherents of the school, not as it was expounded in lecture-rooms or treatises on first principles. i deal not with philosophers meditating upon being and not-being, but with men actively engaged in framing political platforms and carrying on popular agitations. the great majority even of intelligent partisans are either indifferent to the philosophic creed of their leaders or take it for granted. its postulates are more or less implied in the doctrines which guide them in practice, but are not explicitly stated or deliberately reasoned out. not the less the doctrines of a sect, political or religious, may be dependent upon theories which for the greater number remain latent or are recognised only in their concrete application. contemporary members of any society, however widely they differ as to results, are employed upon the same problems and, to some extent, use the same methods and make the same assumptions in attempting solutions. there is a certain unity even in the general thought of any given period. contradictory views imply some common ground. but within this wider unity we find a variety of sects, each of which may be considered as more or less representing a particular method of treating the general problem: and therefore principles which, whether clearly recognised or not, are virtually implied in their party creed and give a certain unity to their teaching. one obvious principle of unity, or tacit bond of sympathy which holds a sect together depends upon the intellectual idiosyncrasy of the individuals. coleridge was aiming at an important truth when he said that every man was born an aristotelian or a platonist.[ ] nominalists and realists, intuitionists and empiricists, idealists and materialists, represent different forms of a fundamental antithesis which appears to run through all philosophy. each thinker is apt to take the postulates congenial to his own mind as the plain dictates of reason. controversies between such opposites appear to be hopeless. they have been aptly compared by dr. venn to the erection of a snow-bank to dam a river. the snow melts and swells the torrent which it was intended to arrest. each side reads admitted truths into its own dialect, and infers that its own dialect affords the only valid expression. to regard such antitheses as final and insoluble would be to admit complete scepticism. what is true for one man would not therefore be true--or at least its truth would not be demonstrable--to another. we must trust that reconciliation is achievable by showing that the difference is really less vital and corresponds to a difference of methods or of the spheres within which each mode of thought may be valid. to obtain the point of view from which such a conciliation is possible should be, i hold, one main end of modern philosophising. the effect of this profound intellectual difference is complicated by other obvious influences. there is, in the first place, the difference of intellectual horizon. each man has a world of his own and sees a different set of facts. whether his horizon is that which is visible from his parish steeple or from st. peter's at rome, it is still strictly limited: and the outside universe, known vaguely and indirectly, does not affect him like the facts actually present to his perception. the most candid thinkers will come to different conclusions when they are really provided with different sets of fact. in political and social problems every man's opinions are moulded by his social station. the artisan's view of the capitalist, and the capitalist's view of the artisan, are both imperfect, because each has a first-hand knowledge of his own class alone: and, however anxious to be fair, each will take a very different view of the working of political institutions. an apparent concord often covers the widest divergence under the veil of a common formula, because each man has his private mode of interpreting general phrases in terms of concrete fact. this, of course, implies the further difference arising from the passions which, however illogically, go so far to determine opinions. here we have the most general source of difficulty in considering the actual history of a creed. we cannot limit ourselves to the purely logical factor. all thought has to start from postulates. men have to act before they think: before, at any rate, reasoning becomes distinct from imagining or guessing. to explain in early periods is to fancy and to take a fancy for a perception. the world of the primitive man is constructed not only from vague conjectures and hasty analogies but from his hopes and fears, and bears the impress of his emotional nature. when progress takes place some of his beliefs are confirmed, some disappear, and others are transformed: and the whole history of thought is a history of this gradual process of verification. we begin, it is said, by assuming: we proceed by verifying, and we only end by demonstrating. the process is comparatively simple in that part of knowledge which ultimately corresponds to the physical sciences. there must be a certain harmony between beliefs and realities in regard to knowledge of ordinary matters of fact, if only because such harmony is essential to the life of the race. even an ape must distinguish poisonous from wholesome food. beliefs as to physical facts require to be made articulate and distinct; but we have only to recognise as logical principles the laws of nature which we have unconsciously obeyed and illustrated--to formulate dynamics long after we have applied the science in throwing stones or using bows and arrows. but what corresponds to this in the case of the moral and religious beliefs? what is the process of verification? men practically are satisfied with their creed so long as they are satisfied with the corresponding social order. the test of truth so suggested is obviously inadequate: for all great religions, however contradictory to each other, have been able to satisfy it for long periods. particular doctrines might be tested by experiment. the efficacy of witchcraft might be investigated like the efficacy of vaccination. but faith can always make as many miracles as it wants: and errors which originate in the fancy cannot be at once extirpated by the reason. their form may be changed but not their substance. to remove them requires not disproof of this or that fact, but an intellectual discipline which is rare even among the educated classes. a religious creed survives, as poetry or art survives,--not so long as it contains apparently true statements of fact but--so long as it is congenial to the whole social state. a philosophy indeed is a poetry stated in terms of logic. considering the natural conservatism of mankind, the difficulty is to account for progress, not for the persistence of error. when the existing order ceases to be satisfactory; when conquest or commerce has welded nations together and brought conflicting creeds into cohesion; when industrial development has modified the old class relations; or when the governing classes have ceased to discharge their functions, new principles are demanded and new prophets arise. the philosopher may then become the mouthpiece of the new order, and innocently take himself to be its originator. his doctrines were fruitless so long as the soil was not prepared for the seed. a premature discovery if not stamped out by fire and sword is stifled by indifference. if francis bacon succeeded where roger bacon failed, the difference was due to the social conditions, not to the men. the cause of the great religious as well as of the great political revolutions must be sought mainly in the social history. new creeds spread when they satisfy the instincts or the passions roused to activity by other causes. the system has to be so far true as to be credible at the time; but its vitality depends upon its congeniality as a whole to the aspirations of the mass of mankind. the purely intellectual movement no doubt represents the decisive factor. the love of truth in the abstract is probably the weakest of human passions; but truth when attained ultimately gives the fulcrum for a reconstruction of the world. when a solid core of ascertained and verifiable truth has once been formed and applied to practical results it becomes the fixed pivot upon which all beliefs must ultimately turn. the influence, however, is often obscure and still indirect. the more cultivated recognise the necessity of bringing their whole doctrine into conformity with the definitely organised and established system; and, at the present day, even the uneducated begin to have an inkling of possible results. yet the desire for logical consistency is not one which presses forcibly upon the less cultivated intellects. they do not feel the necessity of unifying knowledge or bringing their various opinions into consistency and into harmony with facts. there are easy methods of avoiding any troublesome conflict of belief. the philosopher is ready to show them the way. he, like other people, has to start from postulates, and to see how they will work. when he meets with a difficulty it is perfectly legitimate that he should try how far the old formula can be applied to cover the new applications. he may be led to a process of 'rationalising' or 'spiritualising' which is dangerous to intellectual honesty. the vagueness of the general conceptions with which he is concerned facilitates the adaptation; and his words slide into new meanings by imperceptible gradations. his error is in taking a legitimate tentative process for a conclusive test; and inferring that opinions are confirmed because a non-natural interpretation can be forced upon them. this, however, is only the vicious application of the normal process through which new ideas are diffused or slowly infiltrate the old systems till the necessity of a thoroughgoing reconstruction forces itself upon our attention. nor can it be denied that an opposite fallacy is equally possible, especially in times of revolutionary passion. the apparent irreconcilability of some new doctrine with the old may lead to the summary rejection of the implicit truth, together with the error involved in its imperfect recognition. hence arises the necessity for faking into account not only a man's intellectual idiosyncrasies and the special intellectual horizon, but all the prepossessions due to his personal character, his social environment, and his consequent sympathies and antipathies. the philosopher has his passions like other men. he does not really live in the thin air of abstract speculation. on the contrary, he starts generally, and surely is right in starting, with keen interest in the great religious, ethical, and social problems of the time. he wishes--honestly and eagerly--to try them by the severest tests, and to hold fast only what is clearly valid. the desire to apply his principles in fact justifies his pursuit, and redeems him from the charge that he is delighting in barren intellectual subtleties. but to an outsider his procedure may appear in a different light. his real problem comes to be: how the conclusions which are agreeable to his emotions can be connected with the postulates which are congenial to his intellect? he may be absolutely honest and quite unconscious that his conclusions were prearranged by his sympathies. no philosophic creed of any importance has ever been constructed, we may well believe, without such sincerity and without such plausibility as results from its correspondence to at least some aspects of the truth. but the result is sufficiently shown by the perplexed controversies which arise. men agree in their conclusions, though starting from opposite premises; or from the same premises reach the most diverging conclusions. the same code of practical morality, it is often said, is accepted by thinkers who deny each other's first principles; dogmatism often appears to its opponents to be thoroughgoing scepticism in disguise, and men establish victoriously results which turn out in the end to be really a stronghold for their antagonists. hence there is a distinction between such a history of a sect as i contemplate and a history of scientific inquiry or of pure philosophy. a history of mathematical or physical science would differ from a direct exposition of the science, but only in so far as it would state truths in the order of discovery, not in the order most convenient for displaying them as a system. it would show what were the processes by which they were originally found out, and how they have been afterwards annexed or absorbed in some wider generalisation. these facts might be stated without any reference to the history of the discoverers or of the society to which they belonged. they would indeed suggest very interesting topics to the general historian or 'sociologist.' he might be led to inquire under what conditions men came to inquire scientifically at all; why they ceased for centuries to care for science; why they took up special departments of investigation; and what was the effect of scientific discoveries upon social relations in general. but the two inquiries would be distinct for obvious reasons. if men study mathematics they can only come to one conclusion. they will find out the same propositions of geometry if they only think clearly enough and long enough, as certainly as columbus would discover america if he only sailed far enough. america was there, and so in a sense are the propositions. we may therefore in this case entirely separate the two questions: what leads men to think? and what conclusions will they reach? the reasons which guided the first discoverers are just as valid now, though they can be more systematically stated. but in the 'moral sciences' this distinction is not equally possible. the intellectual and the social evolution are closely and intricately connected, and each reacts upon the other. in the last resort no doubt a definitive system of belief once elaborated would repose upon universally valid truths and determine, instead of being determined by, the corresponding social order. but in the concrete evolution which, we may hope, is approximating towards this result, the creeds current among mankind have been determined by the social conditions as well as helped to determine them. to give an account of that process it is necessary to specify the various circumstances which may lead to the survival of error, and to the partial views of truth taken by men of different idiosyncrasies working upon different data and moved by different passions and prepossessions. a history written upon these terms would show primarily what, as a fact, were the dominant beliefs during a given period, and state which survived, which disappeared, and which were transformed or engrafted upon other systems of thought. this would of course raise the question of the truth or falsehood of the doctrines as well as of their vitality: for the truth is at least one essential condition of permanent vitality. the difference would be that the problem would be approached from a different side. we should ask first what beliefs have flourished, and afterwards ask why they flourished, and how far their vitality was due to their partial or complete truth. to write such a history would perhaps require an impartiality which few people possess and which i do not venture to claim. i have my own opinions for which other people may account by prejudice, assumption, or downright incapacity. i am quite aware that i shall be implicitly criticising myself in criticising others. all that i can profess is that by taking the questions in this order, i shall hope to fix attention upon one set of considerations which are apt, as i fancy, to be unduly neglected. the result of reading some histories is to raise the question: how people on the other side came to be such unmitigated fools? why were they imposed upon by such obvious fallacies? that may be answered by considering more fully the conditions under which the opinions were actually adopted, and one result may be to show that those opinions had a considerable element of truth, and were held by men who were the very opposite of fools. at any rate i shall do what i can to write an account of this phase of thought, so as to bring out what were its real tenets; to what intellectual type they were naturally congenial; what were the limitations of view which affected the utilitarians' conception of the problems to be solved; and what were the passions and prepossessions due to the contemporary state of society and to their own class position, which to some degree unconsciously dictated their conclusions. so far as i can do this satisfactorily, i hope that i may throw some light upon the intrinsic value of the creed, and the place which it should occupy in a definitive system. notes: [ ] _table-talk_, july . chapter i political conditions i. the british constitution the english utilitarians represent one outcome of the speculations current in england during the later part of the eighteenth century. for the reasons just assigned i shall begin by briefly recalling some of the social conditions which set the problems for the coming generation and determined the mode of answering them. i must put the main facts in evidence, though they are even painfully familiar. the most obvious starting-point is given by the political situation. the supremacy of parliament had been definitively established by the revolution of , and had been followed by the elaboration of the system of party government. the centre of gravity of the political world lay in the house of commons. no minister could hold power unless he could command a majority in this house. jealousy of the royal power, however, was still a ruling passion. the party line between whig and tory turned ostensibly upon this issue. the essential whig doctrine is indicated by dunning's famous resolution ( april ) that 'the power of the crown had increased, was increasing, and ought to be diminished.' the resolution was in one sense an anachronism. as in many other cases, politicians seem to be elaborately slaying the slain and guarding against the attacks of extinct monsters. there was scarcely more probability under george iii. than there is under victoria that the king would try to raise taxes without consent of parliament. george iii., however, desired to be more than a contrivance for fixing the great seal to official documents. he had good reason for thinking that the weakness of the executive was an evil. the king could gain power not by attacking the authority of parliament but by gaining influence within its walls. he might form a party of 'king's friends' able to hold the balance between the connections formed by the great families and so break up the system of party government. burke's great speech ( feb. ) upon introducing his plan 'for the better security of the independence of parliament and the economical reformation of the civil and other establishments' explains the secret and reveals the state of things which for the next half century was to supply one main theme for the eloquence of reformers. the king had at his disposal a vast amount of patronage. there were relics of ancient institutions: the principality of wales, the duchies of lancaster and cornwall, and the earldom of chester; each with its revenue and establishment of superfluous officials. the royal household was a complex 'body corporate' founded in the old days of 'purveyance.' there was the mysterious 'board of green cloth' formed by the great officers and supposed to have judicial as well as administrative functions. cumbrous mediæval machinery thus remained which had been formed in the time when the distinction between a public trust and private property was not definitely drawn or which had been allowed to remain for the sake of patronage, when its functions had been transferred to officials of more modern type. reform was foiled, as burke put it, because the turnspit in the king's kitchen was a member of parliament. such sinecures and the pensions on the civil list or the irish establishment provided the funds by which the king could build up a personal influence, which was yet occult, irresponsible, and corrupt. the measure passed by burke in [ ] made a beginning in the removal of such abuses. meanwhile the whigs were conveniently blind to another side of the question. if the king could buy, it was because there were plenty of people both able and willing to sell. bubb dodington, a typical example of the old system, had five or six seats at his disposal: subject only to the necessity of throwing a few pounds to the 'venal wretches' who went through the form of voting, and by dealing in what he calls this 'merchantable ware' he managed by lifelong efforts to wriggle into a peerage. the dodingtons, that is, sold because they bought. the 'venal wretches' were the lucky franchise-holders in rotten boroughs. the 'friends of the people'[ ] in made the often-repeated statement that individuals returned members, that is, a majority of the house. in cornwall, again, boroughs with electors controlled by about individuals returned members,[ ] or, with the two county members, only one member less than scotland; and the scottish members were elected by close corporations in boroughs and by the great families in counties. no wonder if the house of commons seemed at times to be little more than an exchange for the traffic between the proprietors of votes and the proprietors of offices and pensions. the demand for the reforms advocated by burke and dunning was due to the catastrophe of the american war. the scandal caused by the famous coalition of showed that a diminution of the royal influence might only make room for selfish bargains among the proprietors of parliamentary influence. the demand for reform was taken up by pitt. his plan was significant. he proposed to disfranchise a few rotten boroughs; but to soften this measure he afterwards suggested that a million should be set aside to buy such boroughs as should voluntarily apply for disfranchisement. the seats obtained were to be mainly added to county representation; but the franchise was to be extended so as to add about , voters in boroughs, and additional seats were to be given to london and westminster and to manchester, leeds, birmingham, and sheffield. the yorkshire reformers, who led the movement, were satisfied with this modest scheme. the borough proprietors were obviously too strong to be directly attacked, though they might be induced to sell some of their power. here was a mass of anomalies, sufficient to supply topics of denunciation for two generations of reformers, and, in time, to excite fears of violent revolution. without undertaking the easy task of denouncing exploded systems, we may ask what state of mind they implied. our ancestors were perfectly convinced that their political system was of almost unrivalled excellence: they held that they were freemen entitled to look down upon foreigners as the slaves of despots. nor can we say that their satisfaction was without solid grounds. the boasting about english freedom implied some misunderstanding. but it was at least the boast of a vigorous race. not only were there individuals capable of patriotism and public spirit, but the body politic was capable of continuous energy. during the eighteenth century the british empire spread round the world. under chatham it had been finally decided that the english race should be the dominant element in the new world; if the political connection had been severed by the bungling of his successors, the unbroken spirit of the nation had still been shown in the struggle against france, spain, and the revolted colonies; and whatever may be thought of the motives which produced the great revolutionary wars, no one can deny the qualities of indomitable self-reliance and high courage to the men who led the country through the twenty years of struggle against france, and for a time against france with the continent at its feet. if moralists or political theorists find much to condemn in the ends to which british policy was directed, they must admit that the qualities displayed were not such as can belong to a simply corrupt and mean-spirited government. one obvious remark is that, on the whole, the system was a very good one--as systems go. it allowed free play to the effective political forces. down to the revolutionary period, the nation as a whole was contented with its institutions. the political machinery provided a sufficient channel for the really efficient force of public opinion. there was as yet no large class which at once had political aspirations and was unable to gain a hearing. england was still in the main an agricultural country: and the agricultural labourer was fairly prosperous till the end of the century, while his ignorance and isolation made him indifferent to politics. there might be a bad squire or parson, as there might be a bad season; but squire and parson were as much parts of the natural order of things as the weather. the farmer or yeoman was not much less stolid; and his politics meant at most a choice between allegiance to one or other of the county families. if in the towns which were rapidly developing there was growing up a discontented population, its discontent was not yet directed into political channels. an extended franchise meant a larger expenditure on beer, not the readier acceptance of popular aspirations. to possess a vote was to have a claim to an occasional bonus rather than a right to influence legislation. practically, therefore, parliament might be taken to represent what might be called 'public opinion,' for anything that deserved to be called public opinion was limited to the opinions of the gentry and the more intelligent part of the middle classes. there was no want of complaints of corruption, proposals to exclude placemen from parliament and the like; and in the days of wilkes, chatham, and junius, when the first symptoms of democratic activity began to affect the political movement, the discontent made itself audible and alarming. but a main characteristic of the english reformers was the constant appeal to precedent, even in their most excited moods. they do not mention the rights of man; they invoke the 'revolution principles' of ; they insist upon the 'bill of rights' or magna charta. when keenly roused they recall the fate of charles i.; and their favourite toast is the cause for which hampden died on the field and sidney on the scaffold. they believe in the jury as the 'palladium of our liberties'; and are convinced that the british constitution represents an unsurpassable though unfortunately an ideal order of things, which must have existed at some indefinite period. chatham in one of his most famous speeches, appeals, for example, to the 'iron barons' who resisted king john, and contrasts them with the silken courtiers which now compete for place and pensions. the political reformers of the time, like religious reformers in most times, conceive of themselves only as demanding the restoration of the system to its original purity, not as demanding its abrogation. in other words, they propose to remedy abuses but do not as yet even contemplate a really revolutionary change. wilkes was not a 'wilkite,' nor was any of his party, if wilkite meant anything like jacobin. notes: [ ] george iii. c. . [ ] _parl. hist._ xxx. . [ ] _state trials_, xxiv. . ii. the ruling class thus, however anomalous the constitution of parliament, there was no thought of any far-reaching revolution. the great mass of the population was too ignorant, too scattered and too poor to have any real political opinions. so long as certain prejudices were not aroused, it was content to leave the management of the state to the dominant class, which alone was intelligent enough to take an interest in public affairs and strong enough to make its interest felt. this class consisted in the first place of the great landed interest. when lord north opposed pitt's reform in he said[ ] that the constitution was 'the work of infinite wisdom ... the most beautiful fabric that had ever existed since the beginning of time.' he added that 'the bulk and weight' of the house ought to be in 'the hands of the country-gentlemen, the best and most respectable objects of the confidence of the people,' the speech, though intended to please an audience of country-gentlemen, represented a genuine belief.[ ] the country-gentlemen formed the class to which not only the constitutional laws but the prevailing sentiment of the country gave the lead in politics as in the whole social system. even reformers proposed to improve the house of commons chiefly by increasing the number of county-members, and a county-member was almost necessarily a country-gentleman of an exalted kind. although the country-gentleman was very far from having all things his own way, his ideals and prejudices were in a great degree the mould to which the other politically important class conformed. there was indeed a growing jealousy between the landholders and the 'monied-men.' bolingbroke had expressed this distrust at an earlier part of the century. but the true representative of the period was his successful rival, walpole, a thorough country-gentleman who had learned to understand the mysteries of finance and acquired the confidence of the city. the great merchants of london and the rising manufacturers in the country were rapidly growing in wealth and influence. the monied-men represented the most active, energetic, and growing part of the body politic. their interests determined the direction of the national policy. the great wars of the century were undertaken in the interests of british trade. the extension of the empire in india was carried on through a great commercial company. the growth of commerce supported the sea-power which was the main factor in the development of the empire. the new industrial organisation which was arising was in later years to represent a class distinctly opposed to the old aristocratic order. at present it was in a comparatively subordinate position. the squire was interested in the land and the church; the merchant thought more of commerce and was apt to be a dissenter. but the merchant, in spite of some little jealousies, admitted the claims of the country-gentleman to be his social superior and political leader. his highest ambition was to be himself admitted to the class or to secure the admission of his family. as he became rich he bought a solid mansion at clapham or wimbledon, and, if he made a fortune, might become lord of manors in the country. he could not as yet aspire to become himself a peer, but he might be the ancestor of peers. the son of josiah child, the great merchant of the seventeenth century, became earl tylney, and built at wanstead one of the noblest mansions in england. his contemporary sir francis child, lord mayor, and a founder of the bank of england, built osterley house, and was ancestor of the earls of jersey and westmoreland. the daughter of sir john barnard, the typical merchant of walpole's time, married the second lord palmerston. beckford, the famous lord mayor of chatham's day, was father of the author of _vathek_, who married an earl's daughter and became the father of a duchess. the barings, descendants of a german pastor, settled in england early in the century and became country-gentlemen, baronets, and peers. cobbett, who saw them rise, reviled the stockjobbers who were buying out the old families. but the process had begun long before his days, and meant that the heads of the new industrial system were being absorbed into the class of territorial magnates. that class represented the framework upon which both political and social power was moulded. this implies an essential characteristic of the time. a familiar topic of the admirers of the british constitution was the absence of the sharp lines of demarcation between classes and of the exclusive aristocratic privileges which, in france, provoked the revolution. in england the ruling class was not a 'survival': it had not retained privileges without discharging corresponding functions. the essence of 'self-government,' says its most learned commentator,[ ] is the organic connection 'between state and society.' on the continent, that is, powers were intrusted to a centralised administrative and judicial hierarchy, which in england were left to the class independently strong by its social position. the landholder was powerful as a product of the whole system of industrial and agricultural development; and he was bound in return to perform arduous and complicated duties. how far he performed them well is another question. at least, he did whatever was done in the way of governing, and therefore did not sink into a mere excrescence or superfluity. i must try to point out certain results which had a material effect upon english opinion in general and, in particular, upon the utilitarians. notes: [ ] _parl. hist._ xxv. . [ ] the country-gentlemen, said wilberforce in , are the 'very nerves and ligatures of the body politic.'--_correspondence_, i. . [ ] gneist's _self-government_ ( rd edition, ), p. . iii. legislation and administration the country-gentlemen formed the bulk of the law-making body, and the laws gave the first point of assault of the utilitarian movement. one explanation is suggested by a phrase attributed to sir josiah child.[ ] the laws, he said, were a heap of nonsense, compiled by a few ignorant country-gentlemen, who hardly knew how to make good laws for the government of their own families, much less for the regulation of companies and foreign commerce. he meant that the parliamentary legislation of the century was the work of amateurs, not of specialists; of an assembly of men more interested in immediate questions of policy or personal intrigue than in general principles, and not of such a centralised body as would set a value upon symmetry and scientific precision. the country-gentleman had strong prejudices and enough common sense to recognise his own ignorance. the product of a traditional order, he clung to traditions, and regarded the old maxims as sacred because no obvious reason could be assigned for them. he was suspicious of abstract theories, and it did not even occur to him that any such process as codification or radical alteration of the laws was conceivable. for the law itself he had the profound veneration which is expressed by blackstone. it represented the 'wisdom of our ancestors'; the system of first principles, on which the whole order of things reposed, and which must be regarded as an embodiment of right reason. the common law was a tradition, not made by express legislation, but somehow existing apart from any definite embodiment, and revealed to certain learned hierophants. any changes, required by the growth of new social conditions, had to be made under pretence of applying the old rules supposed to be already in existence. thus grew up the system of 'judge-made law,' which was to become a special object of the denunciations of bentham. child had noticed the incompetence of the country-gentlemen to understand the regulation of commercial affairs. the gap was being filled up, without express legislation, by judicial interpretations of mansfield and his fellows. this, indeed, marks a characteristic of the whole system. 'our constitution,' says professor dicey,[ ] 'is a judge-made constitution, and it bears on its face all the features, good and bad, of judge-made law.' the law of landed property, meanwhile, was of vital and immediate interest to the country-gentleman. but, feeling his own incompetence, he had called in the aid of the expert. the law had been developed in mediæval times, and bore in all its details the marks of the long series of struggles between king and nobles and parliaments. one result had been the elaborate series of legal fictions worked out in the conflict between private interests and public policy, by which lawyers had been able to adapt the rules fitted for an ancient state of society to another in which the very fundamental conceptions were altered. a mysterious system had thus grown up, which deterred any but the most resolute students. of fearne's essay upon 'contingent remainders'(published in ) it was said that no work 'in any branch of science could afford a more beautiful instance of analysis.' fearne had shown the acuteness of 'a newton or a pascal.' other critics dispute this proposition; but in any case the law was so perplexing that it could only be fully understood by one who united antiquarian knowledge to the subtlety of a great logician. the 'vast and intricate machine,' as blackstone calls it, 'of a voluminous family settlement' required for its explanation the dialectical skill of an accomplished schoolman. the poor country-gentleman could not understand the terms on which he held his own estate without calling in an expert equal to such a task. the man who has acquired skill so essential to his employer's interests is not likely to undervalue it or to be over anxious to simplify the labyrinth in which he shone as a competent guide. the lawyers who played so important a part by their familiarity with the mysteries of commercial law and landed property, naturally enjoyed the respect of their clients, and were rewarded by adoption into the class. the english barrister aspired to success by himself taking part in politics and legislation. the only path to the highest positions really open to a man of ability, not connected by blood with the great families, was the path which led to the woolsack or to the judge's bench. a great merchant might be the father or father-in-law of peers; a successful soldier or sailor might himself become a peer, but generally he began life as a member of the ruling classes, and his promotion was affected by parliamentary influence. but a successful lawyer might fight his way from a humble position to the house of lords. thurlow, son of a country-gentleman; dunning, son of a country attorney; ellenborough, son of a bishop and descendant of a long line of north-country 'statesmen'; kenyon, son of a farmer; eldon, son of a newcastle coal merchant, represent the average career of a successful barrister. some of them rose to be men of political importance, and thurlow and eldon had the advantage of keeping george iii's conscience--an unruly faculty which had an unfortunately strong influence upon affairs. the leaders of the legal profession, therefore, and those who hoped to be leaders, shared the prejudices, took a part in the struggles, and were rewarded by the honours of the dominant class. the criminal law became a main topic of reformers. there, as elsewhere, we have a striking example of traditional modes of thought surviving with singular persistence. the rough classification of crimes into felony and misdemeanour, and the strange technical rules about 'benefit of clergy' dating back to the struggles of henry ii. and becket, remained like ultimate categories of thought. when the growth of social conditions led to new temptations or the appearance of a new criminal class, and particular varieties of crime became conspicuous, the only remedy was to declare that some offence should be 'felony without benefit of clergy,' and therefore punishable by death. by unsystematic and spasmodic legislation the criminal law became so savage as to shock every man of common humanity. it was tempered by the growth of technical rules, which gave many chances of escape to the criminal; and by practical revolt against its excesses, which led to the remission of the great majority of capital sentences.[ ] the legislators were clumsy, not intentionally cruel; and the laws, though sanguinary in reality, were more sanguinary in theory than in practice. nothing, on the other hand, is more conspicuous than the spirit of fair play to the criminal, which struck foreign observers.[ ] it was deeply rooted in the whole system. the english judge was not an official agent of an inquisitorial system, but an impartial arbitrator between the prisoner and the prosecutor. in political cases especially a marked change was brought about by the revolution of . if our ancestors talked some nonsense about trial by jury, the system certainly insured that the persons accused of libel or sedition should have a fair trial, and very often something more. judges of the jeffreys type had become inconceivable, though impartiality might disappear in cases where the prejudices of juries were actively aroused. englishmen might fairly boast of their immunity from the arbitrary methods of continental rulers; and their unhesitating confidence in the fairness of the system became so ingrained as to be taken as a matter of course, and scarcely received due credit from later critics of the system. the country-gentleman, again, was not only the legislator but a most important figure in the judicial and administrative system. as justice of the peace, he was the representative of law and order to his country neighbours. the preface of to the fifteenth edition of burn's _justice of the peace_, published originally in , mentions that in the interval between these dates, some three hundred statutes had been passed affecting the duties of justices, while half as many had been repealed or modified. the justice was of course, as a rule, a superficial lawyer, and had to be prompted by his clerk, the two representing on a small scale the general relation between the lawyers and the ruling class. burn tells the justice for his comfort that the judges will take a lenient view of any errors into which his ignorance may have led him. the discharge of such duties by an independent gentleman was thought to be so desirable and so creditable to him that his want of efficiency must be regarded with consideration. nor, though the justices have been a favourite butt for satirists, does it appear that the system worked badly. when it became necessary to appoint paid magistrates in london, and the pay, according to the prevalent system, was provided by fees, the new officials became known as 'trading justices,' and their salaries, as fielding tells us, were some of the 'dirtiest money upon earth.' the justices might perhaps be hard upon a poacher (as, indeed, the game laws became one of the great scandals of the system), or liable to be misled by a shrewd attorney; but they were on the whole regarded as the natural and creditable representatives of legal authority in the country. the justices, again, discharged functions which would elsewhere belong to an administrative hierarchy, gneist observes that the power of the justices of the peace represents the centre of gravity of the whole administrative system.[ ] their duties had become so multifarious and perplexed that burn could only arrange them under alphabetical heads. gneist works out a systematic account, filling many pages of elaborate detail, and showing how large a part they played in the whole social structure. an intense jealousy of central power was one correlative characteristic. blackstone remarks in his more liberal humour that the number of new offices held at pleasure had greatly extended the influence of the crown. this refers to the custom-house officers, excise officers, stamp distributors and postmasters. but if the tax-gatherer represented the state, he represented also part of the patronage at the disposal of politicians. a voter was often in search of the place of a 'tidewaiter'; and, as we know, the greatest poet of the day could only be rewarded by making him an exciseman. any extension of a system which multiplied public offices was regarded with suspicion. walpole, the strongest minister of the century, had been forced to an ignominious retreat when he proposed to extend the excise. the cry arose that he meant to enslave the country and extend the influence of the crown over all the corporations in england. the country-gentleman had little reason to fear that government would diminish his importance by tampering with his functions. the justices of the peace were called upon to take a great and increasing share in the administration of the poor-law. they were concerned in all manner of financial details; they regulated such police as existed; they looked after the old laws by which the trades were still restricted; and, in theory at least, could fix the rate of wages. parliament did not override, but only gave the necessary sanction to their activity. if we looked through the journals of the house of commons during the american war, for example, we should get the impression that the whole business of the legislature was to arrange administrative details. if a waste was to be enclosed, a canal or a highroad to be constructed, there was no public department to be consulted. the gentry of the neighbourhood joined to obtain a private act of parliament which gave the necessary powers to the persons interested. no general enclosure act could be passed, though often suggested. it would imply a central commission, which would only, as was suggested, give rise to jobbery and take power out of the natural hands. parliament was omnipotent; it could regulate the affairs of the empire or of a parish; alter the most essential laws or act as a court of justice; settle the crown or arrange for a divorce or for the alteration of a private estate. but it objected to delegate authority even to a subordinate body, which might tend to become independent. thus, if it was the central power and source of all legal authority, it might also be regarded as a kind of federal league, representing the wills of a number of partially independent persons. the gentry could meet there and obtain the sanction of their allies for any measure required in their own little sphere of influence. but they had an instinctive aversion to the formation of any organised body representing the state. the neighbourhood which wanted a road got powers to make it, and would concur in giving powers to others. but if the state were to be intrusted to make roads, ministers would have more places to give, and roads might be made which they did not want. the english roads had long been infamous, but neither was money wasted, as in france, on roads where there was no traffic.[ ] thus we have the combination of an absolute centralisation of legislative power with an utter absence of administrative centralisation. the units meeting in parliament formed a supreme assembly; but they did not sink their own individuality. they only met to distribute the various functions among themselves. the english parish with its squire, its parson, its lawyer and its labouring population was a miniature of the british constitution in general. the squire's eldest son could succeed to his position; a second son might become a general or an admiral; a third would take the family living; a fourth, perhaps, seek his fortune at the bar. this implies a conception of other political conditions which curiously illustrate some contemporary conceptions. notes: [ ] see _dictionary of national biography_. [ ] _the law of the constitution_, p. . [ ] see sir j. f. stephen's _history of the criminal law_ ( ), i. . he quotes blackstone's famous statement that there were felonies without benefit of clergy, and shows that this gives a very uncertain measure of the severity of the law. a single act making larceny in general punishable by death would be more severe than fifty separate acts, making fifty different varieties of larceny punishable by death. he adds, however, that the scheme of punishment was 'severe to the highest degree, and destitute of every sort of principle or system.' the number of executions in the early part of this century varied apparently from a fifth to a ninth of the capital sentences passed. see table in porter's _progress of the nation_ ( ), p. . [ ] see the references to cottu's report of in stephen's _history_, i. , , . cottu's book was translated by blanco white. [ ] gneist's _self-government_ ( ), p. . it is characteristic that j. s. mill, in his _representative government_, remarks that the 'quarter sessions' are formed in the 'most anomalous' way; that they represent the old feudal principle, and are at variance with the fundamental principles of representative government (_rep. gov._ ( ), p. ). the mainspring of the old system had become a simple anomaly to the new radicalism. [ ] see arthur young, _passim_. there was, however, an improvement even in the first half of the century. see cunningham's _growth of english industry, etc. (modern times)_, p. . iv. the army and navy we are often amused by the persistency of the cry against a 'standing army' in england. it did not fairly die out until the revolutionary wars. blackstone regards it as a singularly fortunate circumstance 'that any branch of the legislature might annually put an end to the legal existence of the army by refusing to concur in the continuance' of the mutiny act. a standing army was obviously necessary; but by making believe very hard, we could shut our eyes to the facts, and pretend that it was a merely temporary arrangement.[ ] the doctrine had once had a very intelligible meaning. if james ii. had possessed a disciplined army of the continental pattern, with marlborough at its head, marlborough would hardly have been converted by the prince of orange. but loyal as the gentry had been at the restoration, they had taken very good care that the stuarts should not have in their hand such a weapon as had been possessed by cromwell. when the puritan army was disbanded, they had proceeded to regulate the militia. the officers were appointed by the lords-lieutenants of counties, and had to possess a property qualification; the men raised by ballot in their own districts; and their numbers and length of training regulated by act of parliament. the old 'train-bands' were suppressed, except in the city of london, and thus the recognised military force of the country was a body essentially dependent upon the country gentry. the militia was regarded with favour as the 'old constitutional force' which could not be used to threaten our liberties. it was remodelled during the seven years' war and embodied during that and all our later wars. it was, however, ineffective by its very nature. an aristocracy which chose to carry on wars must have a professional army in fact, however careful it might be to pretend that it was a provision for a passing necessity. the pretence had serious consequences. since the army was not to have interests separate from the people, there was no reason for building barracks. the men might be billeted on publicans, or placed under canvas, while they were wanted. when the great war came upon us, large sums had to be spent to make up for the previous neglect. fox, on nd february , protested during a lively debate upon this subject that sound constitutional principles condemned barracks, because to mix the army with the people was the 'best security against the danger of a standing army.'[ ] in fact a large part of the army was a mere temporary force. in , towards the end of the seven years' war, we had about , men in pay; and after the peace, the force was reduced to under , . similar changes took place in every war. the ruling class took advantage of the position. an army might be hired from germany for the occasion. new regiments were generally raised by some great man who gave commissions to his own relations and dependants. when the pretender was in scotland, for example, fifteen regiments were raised by patriotic nobles, who gave the commissions, and stipulated that although they were to be employed only in suppressing the rising, the officers should have permanent rank.[ ] so, as was shown in mrs. clarke's case, a patent for raising a regiment might be a source of profit to the undertaker, who again might get it by bribing the mistress of a royal duke. the officers had, according to the generally prevalent system, a modified property in their commissions; and the system of sale was not abolished till our own days. we may therefore say that the ruling class, on the one hand, objected to a standing army, and, on the other, since such an army was a necessity, farmed it from the country and were admitted to have a certain degree of private property in the concern. the prejudice against any permanent establishment made it necessary to fill the ranks on occasion by all manner of questionable expedients. bounties were offered to attract the vagrants who hung loose upon society. smugglers, poachers, and the like were allowed to choose between military service and transportation. the general effect was to provide an army of blackguards commanded by gentlemen. the army no doubt had its merits as well as its defects. the continental armies which it met were collected by equally demoralising methods until the french revolution led to a systematic conscription. the bad side is suggested by napier's famous phrase, the 'cold shade of our aristocracy'; while napier gives facts enough to prove both the brutality too often shown by the private soldier and the dogged courage which is taken to be characteristic even of the english blackguard. by others,--by such men as the duke of wellington and lord palmerston, for example, types of the true aristocrat--the system was defended[ ] as bringing men of good family into the army and so providing it, as the duke thought, with the best set of officers in europe. no doubt they and the royal dukes who commanded them were apt to be grossly ignorant of their business; but it may be admitted by a historian that they often showed the qualities of which wellington was himself a type. the english officer was a gentleman before he was a soldier, and considered the military virtues to be a part of his natural endowment. but it was undoubtedly a part of his traditional code of honour to do his duty manfully and to do it rather as a manifestation of his own spirit than from any desire for rewards or decorations. the same quality is represented more strikingly by the navy. the english admiral represents the most attractive and stirring type of heroism in our history. nelson and the 'band of brothers' who served with him, the simple and high-minded sailors who summed up the whole duty of man in doing their best to crush the enemies of their country, are among the finest examples of single-souled devotion to the calls of patriotism. the navy, indeed, had its ugly side no less than the army. there was corruption at greenwich[ ] and in the dockyards, and parliamentary intrigue was a road to professional success. voltaire notes the queer contrast between the english boast of personal liberty and the practice of filling up the crews by pressgangs. the discipline was often barbarous, and the wrongs of the common sailor found sufficient expression in the mutiny at the nore. a grievance, however, which pressed upon a single class was maintained from the necessity of the case and the inertness of the administrative system. the navy did not excite the same jealousy as the army; and the officers were more professionally skilful than their brethren. the national qualities come out, often in their highest form, in the race of great seamen upon whom the security of the island power essentially depended. notes: [ ] see _military forces of the crown_, by charles m. clode ( ), for a full account of the facts. [ ] _parl. hist._ xxx. . clode states (i. ) that £ , , was spent upon barracks by , and, it seems, without proper authority. [ ] debate in _parl. hist._ xiii. , etc., and see walpole's _correspondence_, i. , for some characteristic comments. [ ] clode, ii. . [ ] see the famous case in in which erskine made his first appearance, in _state trials_, xxi. lord st. vincent's struggle against the corruption of his time is described by prof. laughton in the _dictionary of national biography_, (_s.v._ sir john jervis). in half a million a year was stolen, besides all the waste due to corruption and general muddling. v. the church i turn, however, to the profession which was more directly connected with the intellectual development of the country. the nature of the church establishment gives the most obvious illustration of the connection between the intellectual position on the one hand and the social and political order on the other, though i do not presume to decide how far either should be regarded as effect and the other as cause. what is the church of england? some people apparently believe that it is a body possessing and transmitting certain supernatural powers. this view was in abeyance for the time for excellent reasons, and, true or false, is no answer to the constitutional question. it does not enable us to define what was the actual body with which lawyers and politicians have to deal. the best answer to such questions in ordinary case would be given by describing the organisation of the body concerned. we could then say what is the authority which speaks in its name; and what is the legislature which makes its laws, alters its arrangements, and defines the terms of membership. the supreme legislature of the church of england might appear to be parliament. it is the act of uniformity which defines the profession of belief exacted from the clergy; and no alteration could be made in regard to the rights and duties of the clergy except by parliamentary authority. the church might therefore be regarded as simply the religious department of the state. since , however, the theory and the practice of toleration had introduced difficulties. nonconformity was not by itself punishable though it exposed a man to certain disqualifications. the state, therefore, recognised that many of its members might legally belong to other churches, although it had, as warburton argued, formed an 'alliance' with the dominant church. the spirit of toleration was spreading throughout the century. the old penal laws, due to the struggles of the seventeenth century, were becoming obsolete in practice and were gradually being repealed. the gordon riots of showed that a fanatical spirit might still be aroused in a mob which wanted an excuse for plunder; but the laws were not explicitly defended by reasonable persons and were being gradually removed by legislation towards the end of the century. although, therefore, parliament was kept free from papists, it could hardly regard church and state as identical, or consider itself as entitled to act as the representative body of the church. no other body, indeed, could change the laws of the church; but parliament recognised its own incompetence to deal with them. towards the end of the century, various attempts were made to relax the terms of subscription. it was proposed, for example, to substitute a profession of belief in the bible for a subscription to the thirty-nine articles. but the house of commons sensibly refused to expose itself by venturing upon any theological innovations. a body more ludicrously incompetent could hardly have been invented. hence we must say that the church had either no supreme body which could speak in its name and modify its creed, its ritual, its discipline, or the details of its organisation; or else, that the only body which had in theory a right to interfere was doomed, by sufficient considerations, to absolute inaction. the church, from a secular point of view, was not so much a department of the state as an aggregate of offices, the functions of which were prescribed by unalterable tradition. it consisted of a number of bishops, deans and chapters, rectors, vicars, curates, and so forth, many of whom had certain proprietary rights in their position, and who were bound by law to discharge certain functions. but the church, considered as a whole, could hardly be called an organism at all, or, if an organism, it was an organism with its central organ in a permanent state of paralysis. the church, again, in this state was essentially dependent upon the ruling classes. a glance at the position of the clergy shows their professional position. at their head were the bishops, some of them enjoying princely revenues, while others were so poor as to require that their incomes should be eked out by deaneries or livings held _in commendam_. the great sees, such as canterbury, durham, ely, and winchester, were valued at between, £ , and £ , a year; while the smaller, llandaff, bangor, bristol, and gloucester, were worth less than £ . the bishops had patronage which enabled them to provide for relatives or for deserving clergymen. the average incomes of the parochial clergy, meanwhile, were small. in they were calculated to be worth £ , while nearly four thousand livings were worth under £ ; and there were four or five thousand curates with very small pay. the profession, therefore, offered a great many blanks with a few enormous prizes. how were those prizes generally obtained? when the reformers published the _black book_ in , they gave a list of the bishops holding sees in the last year of george iii.; and, as most of these gentlemen were on their promotion at the end of the previous century. i give the list in a note.[ ] there were twenty-seven bishoprics including sodor and man. of these eleven were held by members of noble families; fourteen were held by men who had been tutors in, or in other ways personally connected with the royal family or the families of ministers and great men; and of the remaining two, one rested his claim upon political writing in defence of pitt, while the other seems to have had the support of a great city company. the system of translation enabled the government to keep a hand upon the bishops. their elevation to the more valuable places or leave to hold subsidiary preferments depended upon their votes in the house of lords. so far, then, as secular motives operated, the tendency of the system was clear. if providence had assigned to you a duke for a father or an uncle, preferment would fall to you as of right. a man of rank who takes orders should be rewarded for his condescension. if that qualification be not secured, you should aim at being tutor in a great family, accompany a lad on the grand tour, or write some pamphlet on a great man's behalf. paley gained credit for independence at cambridge, and spoke with contempt of the practice of 'rooting,' the cant phrase for patronage hunting. the text which he facetiously suggested for a sermon when pitt visited cambridge, 'there is a young man here who has six loaves and two fishes, but what are they among so many?' hit off the spirit in which a minister was regarded at the universities. the memoirs of bishop watson illustrate the same sentiment. he lived in his pleasant country house at windermere, never visiting his diocese, and according to de quincey, talking socinianism at his table. he felt himself to be a deeply injured man, because ministers had never found an opportunity for translating him to a richer diocese, although he had written against paine and gibbon. if they would not reward their friends, he argued, why should he take up their cause by defending christianity? the bishops were eminently respectable. they did not lead immoral lives, and if they gave a large share of preferment to their families, that at least was a domestic virtue. some of them, bishop barrington of durham, for example, took a lead in philanthropic movements; and, if considered simply as prosperous country-gentlemen, little fault could be found with them. while, however, every commonplace motive pointed so directly towards a career of subserviency to the ruling class among the laity, it could not be expected that they should take a lofty view of their profession. the anglican clergy were not like the irish priesthood, in close sympathy with the peasantry, or like the scottish ministers, the organs of strong convictions spreading through the great mass of the middle and lower classes. a man of energy, who took his faith seriously, was, like the evangelical clergy, out of the road to preferment, or, like wesley, might find no room within the church at all. his colleagues called him an 'enthusiast,' and disliked him as a busybody if not a fanatic. they were by birth and adoption themselves members of the ruling class; many of them were the younger sons of squires, and held their livings in virtue of their birth. advowsons are the last offices to retain a proprietary character. the church of that day owed such a representative as horne tooke to the system which enabled his father to provide for him by buying a living. from the highest to the lowest ranks of clergy, the church was as matthew arnold could still call it, an 'appendage of the barbarians.' the clergy, that is, as a whole, were an integral but a subsidiary part of the aristocracy or the great landed interest. their admirers urged that the system planted a cultivated gentleman in every parish in the country. their opponents replied, like john sterling, that he was a 'black dragoon with horse meat and man's meat'--part of the garrison distributed through the country to support the cause of property and order. in any case the instinctive prepossessions, the tastes and favourite pursuits of the profession were essentially those of the class with which it was so intimately connected. arthur young,[ ] speaking of the french clergy, observes that at least they are not poachers and foxhunters, who divide their time between hunting, drinking, and preaching. you do not in france find such advertisements as he had heard of in england, 'wanted a curacy in a good sporting country, where the duty is light and the neighbourhood convivial.' the proper exercise for a country clergyman, he rather quaintly observes, is agriculture. the ideal parson, that is, should be a squire in canonical dress. the clergy of the eighteenth century probably varied between the extremes represented by trulliber and the vicar of wakefield. many of them were excellent people, with a mild taste for literature, contributing to the _gentleman's magazine_, investigating the antiquities of their county, occasionally confuting a deist, exerting a sound judgment in cultivating their glebes or improving the breed of cattle, and respected both by squire and farmers. the 'squarson,' in sydney smith's facetious phrase, was the ideal clergyman. the purely sacerdotal qualities, good or bad, were at a minimum. crabbe, himself a type of the class, has left admirable portraits of his fellows. profound veneration for his noble patrons and hearty dislike for intrusive dissenters were combined in his own case with a pure domestic life, a keen insight into the uglier realities of country life and a good sound working morality. miss austen, who said that she could have been crabbe's wife, has given more delicate pictures of the clergyman as he appeared at the tea-tables of the time. he varies according to her from the squire's excellent younger brother, who is simply a squire in a white neck-cloth, to the silly but still respectable sycophant, who firmly believes his lady patroness to be a kind of local deity. many of the real memoirs of the day give pleasant examples of the quiet and amiable lives of the less ambitious clergy. there is the charming gilbert white ( - ) placidly studying the ways of tortoises, and unconsciously composing a book which breathes an undying charm from its atmosphere of peaceful repose; william gilpin ( - ) founding and endowing parish schools, teaching the catechism, and describing his vacation tours in narratives which helped to spread a love of natural scenery; and thomas gisborne ( - ), squire and clergyman, a famous preacher among the evangelicals and a poet after the fashion of cowper, who loved his native needwood forest as white loved selborne and gilpin loved the woods of boldre; and cowper himself ( - ) who, though not a clergyman, lived in a clerical atmosphere, and whose gentle and playful enjoyment of quiet country life relieves the painfully deep pathos of his disordered imagination; and the excellent w. l. bowles ( - ), whose sonnets first woke coleridge's imagination, who spent eighty-eight years in an amiable and blameless life, and was country-gentleman, magistrate, antiquary, clergyman, and poet.[ ] such names are enough to recall a type which has not quite vanished, and which has gathered a new charm in more stirring and fretful times. these most excellent people, however, were not likely to be prominent in movements destined to break up the placid environment of their lives nor, in truth, to be sources of any great intellectual stir. notes: [ ] the list, checked from other sources of information, is as follows:--manners sutton, archbishop of canterbury, was grandson of the third duke of rutland; edward vernon, archbishop of york, was son of the first lord vernon and cousin of the third lord harcourt, whose estates he inherited; shute barrington, bishop of durham, was son of the first and brother of the second viscount barrington; brownlow north, bishop of winchester, was uncle to the earl of guildford; james cornwallis, bishop of lichfield, was uncle to the second marquis, whose peerage he inherited; george pelham, bishop of exeter, was brother of the earl of chichester; henry bathurst, bishop of norwich, was nephew of the first earl; george henry law, bishop of chester, was brother of the first lord ellenborough; edward legge, bishop of oxford, was son of the second earl of dartmouth; henry ryder, bishop of gloucester, was brother to the earl of harrowby; george murray, bishop of sodor and man, was nephew-in-law to the duke of athol and brother-in-law to the earl of kinnoul. of the fourteen tutors, etc., mentioned above, william howley, bishop of london, had been tutor to the prince of orange at oxford; george pretyman tomline, bishop of lincoln, had been pitt's tutor at cambridge; richard beadon, bishop of bath and wells, had been tutor to the duke of gloucester at cambridge; folliott cornewall, bishop of worcester, had been made chaplain to the house of commons by the influence of his cousin, the speaker; john buckner, bishop of chichester, had been tutor to the duke of richmond; henry william majendie, bishop of bangor, was the son of queen charlotte's english master, and had been tutor to william iv.; george isaac huntingford, bishop of hereford, had been tutor to addington, prime minister; thomas burgess, bishop of st. david's, was a personal friend of addington; john fisher, bishop of salisbury, had been tutor to the duke of kent; john luxmoore, bishop of st. asaph, had been tutor to the duke of buccleugh; samuel goodenough, bishop of carlisle, had been tutor to the sons of the third duke of portland and was connected with addington; william lort mansel, bishop of bristol, had been tutor to perceval at cambridge, and owed to perceval the mastership of trinity; walter king, bishop of rochester, had been secretary to the duke of portland; and bowyer edward sparke, bishop of ely, had been tutor to the duke of rutland. the two remaining bishops were herbert marsh, bishop of peterborough, who had established a claim by defending pitt's financial measures in an important pamphlet; and william van mildert, bishop of llandaff, who had been chaplain to the grocers' company and became known as a preacher in london. [ ] _travels in france_ ( ), p. . [ ] see _a country clergyman of the eighteenth century_ (thomas twining), , for a pleasant picture of the class. vi. the universities the effect of these conditions is perhaps best marked in the state of the universities. universities have at different periods been great centres of intellectual life. the english universities of the eighteenth century are generally noted only as embodiments of sloth and prejudice. the judgments of wesley and gibbon and adam smith and bentham coincide in regard to oxford; and johnson's love of his university is an equivocal testimony to its intellectual merits. we generally think of it as of a sleepy hollow, in which portly fellows of colleges, like the convivial warton, imbibed port wine and sneered at methodists, though few indeed rivalled warton's services to literature. the universities in fact had become, as they long continued to be, high schools chiefly for the use of the clergy, and if they still aimed at some wider intellectual training, were sinking to be institutions where the pupils of the public schools might, if they pleased, put a little extra polish upon their classical and mathematical knowledge. the colleges preserved their mediæval constitution; and no serious changes of their statutes were made until the middle of the present century. the clergy had an almost exclusive part in the management, and dissenters were excluded even from entering oxford as students.[ ] but the clergyman did not as a rule devote himself to a life of study. he could not marry as a fellow, but he made no vows of celibacy. the college, therefore, was merely a stepping-stone on the way to the usual course of preferment. a fellow looked forwards to settling in a college living, or if he had the luck to act as tutor to a nobleman, he might soar to a deanery or a bishopric. the fellows who stayed in their colleges were probably those who had least ambition, or who had a taste for an easy bachelor's life. the universities, therefore, did not form bodies of learned men interested in intellectual pursuits; but at most, helped such men in their start upon a more prosperous career. the studies flagged in sympathy. gray's letters sufficiently reveal the dulness which was felt by a man of cultivation confined within the narrow society of college dons of the day. the scholastic philosophy which had once found enthusiastic cultivators in the great universities had more or less held its own through the seventeenth century, though repudiated by all the rising thinkers. since the days of locke and berkeley, it had fallen utterly out of credit. the bright common sense of the polished society of the day looked upon the old doctrine with a contempt, which, if not justified by familiarity, was an implicit judgment of the tree by its fruits. nobody could suppose the divines of the day to be the depositaries of an esoteric wisdom which the vulgar were not worthy to criticise. they were themselves chiefly anxious to prove that their sacred mysteries were really not at all mysterious, but merely one way of expressing plain common sense. at oxford, indeed, the lads were still crammed with aldrich, and learned the technical terms of a philosophy which had ceased to have any real life in it. at cambridge, ardent young radicals spoke with contempt of this 'horrid jargon--fit only to be chattered by monkies in a wilderness.'[ ] even at cambridge, they still had disputations on the old form, but they argued theses from locke's essay, and thought that their mathematical studies were a check upon metaphysical 'jargon.' it is indeed characteristic of the respect for tradition that at cambridge even mathematics long suffered from a mistaken patriotism which resented any improvement upon the methods of newton. there were some signs of reviving activity. the fellowships were being distributed with less regard to private interest. the mathematical tripos founded at cambridge in the middle of the century became the prototype of all competitive examinations; and half a century later oxford followed the precedent by the examination statute of . a certain number of professorships of such modern studies as anatomy, history, botany, and geology were founded during the eighteenth century, and show a certain sense of a need of broader views. the lectures upon which blackstone founded his commentaries were the product of the foundation of the vinerian professorship in ; and the most recent of the cambridge colleges, downing college, shows by its constitution that a professoriate was now considered to be desirable. cambridge in the last years of the century might have had a body of very eminent professors. watson, second wrangler of , had delivered lectures upon chemistry, of which it was said by davy that hardly any conceivable change in the science could make them obsolete.[ ] paley, senior wrangler in , was an almost unrivalled master of lucid exposition, and one of his works is still a textbook at cambridge. isaac milner, senior wrangler in , afterwards held the professorships of mathematics and natural philosophy, and was famous as a sort of ecclesiastical dr. johnson. gilbert wakefield, second wrangler in , published an edition of lucretius, and was a man of great ability and energy. herbert marsh, second wrangler in , was divinity professor from , and was the first english writer to introduce some knowledge of the early stages of german criticism. porson, the greatest greek scholar of his time, became professor in ; malthus, ninth wrangler in , who was to make a permanent mark upon political economy, became fellow of jesus college in . waring, senior wrangler in , vince, senior wrangler in , and wollaston, senior wrangler in , were also professors and mathematicians of reputation. towards the end of the century ten professors were lecturing.[ ] a large number were not lecturing, though milner was good enough to be 'accessible to students.' paley and watson had been led off into the path of ecclesiastical preferment. marsh too became a bishop in . there was no place for such talents as those of malthus, who ultimately became professor at haileybury. wakefield had the misfortune of not being able to cover his heterodoxy with the conventional formula. porson suffered from the same cause, and from less respectable weaknesses; but it seems that the university had no demand for services of the great scholar, and he did nothing for his £ a year. milner was occupied in managing the university in the interests of pitt and protestantism, and in waging war against jacobins and intruders. there was no lack of ability; but there was no inducement to any intellectual activity for its own sake; and there were abundant temptations for any man of energy to diverge to the career which offered more intelligible rewards. the universities in fact supplied the demand which was actually operative. they provided the average clergyman with a degree; they expected the son of the country-gentleman or successful lawyer to acquire the traditional culture of his class, and to spend three or four years pleasantly, or even, if he chose, industriously. but there was no such thing as a learned society, interested in the cultivation of knowledge for its own sake, and applauding the devotion of life to its extension or discussion. the men of the time who contributed to the progress of science owed little or nothing to the universities, and were rather volunteers from without, impelled by their own idiosyncrasies. among the scientific leaders, for example, joseph black ( - ) was a scottish professor; priestley ( - ) a dissenting minister; cavendish ( - ) an aristocratic recluse, who, though he studied at cambridge, never graduated; watt ( - ) a practical mechanician; and dalton ( - ) a quaker schoolmaster. john hunter ( - ) was one of the energetic scots who forced their way to fame without help from english universities. the cultivation of the natural sciences was only beginning to take root; and the soil, which it found congenial, was not that of the great learned institutions, which held to their old traditional studies. i may, then, sum up the result in a few words. the church had once claimed to be an entirely independent body, possessing a supernatural authority, with an organisation sanctioned by supernatural powers, and entitled to lay down the doctrines which gave the final theory of life. theology was the queen of the sciences and theologians the interpreters of the first principles of all knowledge and conduct. the church of england, on the other hand, at our period had entirely ceased to be independent: it was bound hand and foot by acts of parliament: there was no ecclesiastical organ capable of speaking in its name, altering its laws or defining its tenets: it was an aggregate of offices the appointment to which was in the hands either of the political ministers or of the lay members of the ruling class. it was in reality simply a part of the ruling class told off to perform divine services: to maintain order and respectability and the traditional morality. it had no distinctive philosophy or theology, for the articles of belief represented simply a compromise; an attempt to retain as much of the old as was practicable and yet to admit as much of the new as was made desirable by political considerations. it was the boast of its more liberal members that they were not tied down to any definite dogmatic system; but could have a free hand so long as they did not wantonly come into conflict with some of the legal formulæ laid down in a previous generation. the actual teaching showed the effects of the system. it had been easy to introduce a considerable leaven of the rationalism which suited the lay mind; to explain away the mysterious doctrines upon which an independent church had insisted as manifestations of its spiritual privileges, but which were regarded with indifference or contempt by the educated laity now become independent. the priest had been disarmed and had to suit his teaching to the taste of his patrons and congregations. the divines of the eighteenth century had, as they boasted, confuted the deists; but it was mainly by showing that they could be deists in all but the name. the dissenters, less hampered by legal formulæ, had drifted towards unitarianism. the position of such divines as paley, watson, and hey was not so much that the unitarians were wrong, as that the mysterious doctrines were mere sets of words, over which it was superfluous to quarrel. the doctrine was essentially traditional; for it was impossible to represent the doctrines of the church of england as deductions from any abstract philosophy. but the traditions were not regarded as having any mysterious authority. abstract philosophy might lead to deism or infidelity. paley and his like rejected such philosophy in the spirit of locke or even hume. but it was always possible to treat a tradition like any other statement of fact. it could be proved by appropriate evidence. the truth of christianity was therefore merely a question of facts like the truth of any other passages of history. it was easy enough to make out a case for the christian miracles, and then the mysteries, after it had been sufficiently explained that they really meant next to nothing, could be rested upon the authority of the miracles. in other words, the accepted doctrines, like the whole constitution of the church, could be so modified as to suit the prejudices and modes of thought of the laity. the church, it may be said, was thoroughly secularised. the priest was no longer a wielder of threats and an interpreter of oracles, but an entirely respectable gentleman, who fully sympathised with the prejudices of his patron and practically admitted that he had very little to reveal, beyond explaining that his dogmas were perfectly harmless and eminently convenient. he preached, however, a sound common sense morality, and was not divided from his neighbours by setting up the claims characteristic of a sacerdotal caste. whether he has become on the whole better or worse by subsequent changes is a question not to be asked here; but perhaps not quite so easily answered as is sometimes supposed. the condition of the english church and universities may be contrasted with that of their scottish rivals. the scottish church and universities had no great prizes to offer and no elaborate hierarchy. but the church was a national institution in a sense different from the english. the general assembly was a powerful body, not overshadowed by a great political rival. to rise to be a minister was the great ambition of poor sons of farmers and tradesmen. they had to study at the universities in the intervals, perhaps, of agricultural labour; and if the learning was slight and the scholarship below the english standard, the young aspirant had at least to learn to preach and to acquire such philosophy as would enable him to argue upon grace and freewill with some hard-headed davie deans. it was doubtless owing in part to these conditions that the scottish universities produced many distinguished teachers throughout the century. professors had to teach something which might at least pass for philosophy, though they were more or less restrained by the necessity of respecting orthodox prejudices. at the end of the century, the only schools of philosophy in the island were to be found in scotland, where reid ( - ) and adam smith ( - ) had found intelligent disciples, and where dugald stewart, of whom i shall speak presently, had become the recognised philosophical authority. notes: [ ] at cambridge subscription was abolished for undergraduates in ; and bachelors of arts had only to declare themselves '_bona-fide_ members of the church of england.' [ ] gilbert wakefield's _memoirs_, ii. . [ ] de quincey, _works_ ( ), ii. . [ ] wordsworth's _university life, etc._ ( ), - . vii. theory what theory corresponds to this practical order? it implies, in the first place, a constant reference to tradition. the system has grown up without any reference to abstract principles or symmetrical plan. the legal order supposes a traditional common law, as the ecclesiastical order a traditional creed, and the organisation is explicable only by historical causes. the system represents a series of compromises, not the elaboration of a theory. if the squire undertook by way of supererogation to justify his position he appealed to tradition and experience. he invoked the 'wisdom of our ancestors,' the system of 'checks and balances' which made our constitution an unrivalled mixture of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy deserving the 'dread and envy of the world.' the prescription for compounding that mixture could obviously be learned by nothing but experiment. traditional means empirical. by instinct, rather than conscious reasoning, englishmen had felt their way to establishing the 'palladia of our liberties': trial by jury, the 'habeas corpus' act, and the substitution of a militia for a standing army. the institutions were cherished because they had been developed by long struggles and were often cherished when their real justification had disappeared. the constitution had not been 'made' but had 'grown'; or, in other words, the one rule had been the rule of thumb. that is an excellent rule in its way, and very superior to an abstract rule which neglects or overrides experience. the 'logic of facts,' moreover, may be trusted to produce a certain harmony: and general principles, though not consciously invoked, tacitly govern the development of institutions worked out under uniform conditions. the simple reluctance to pay money without getting money's worth might generate the important principle that representation should go with taxation, without embodying any theory of a 'social contract' such as was offered by an afterthought to give a philosophical sanction. englishmen, it is said, had bought their liberties step by step, because at each step they were in a position to bargain with their rulers. what they had bought they were determined to keep and considered to be their inalienable property. one result is conspicuous. in england the ruling classes did not so much consider their privileges to be something granted by the state, as the power of the state to be something derived from their concessions. though the lord-lieutenant and the justices of the peace were nominated by the crown, their authority came in fact as an almost spontaneous consequence of their birthright or their acquired position in the country. they shone by their own light and were really the ultimate sources of authority. seats in parliament, preferments in the church, commissions in the army belonged to them like their estates; and they seemed to be qualified by nature, rather than by appointment, to act in judicial and administrative capacities. the system of 'self-government' embodies this view. the functions of government were assigned to men already powerful by their social position. the absence of the centralised hierarchy of officials gave to englishmen the sense of personal liberty which compelled the admiration of voltaire and his countrymen in the eighteenth century. in england were no _lettres de cachet_, and no bastille. a man could say what he thought and act without fear of arbitrary rule. there was no such system as that which, in france, puts the agents of the central power above the ordinary law of the land. this implies what has been called the 'rule of the law' in england. 'with us every official from the prime minister down to a constable or a collector of taxes' (as professor dicey explains the principle) 'is under the same responsibility for every act done without legal justification as any other citizen.'[ ] the early centralisation of the english monarchy had made the law supreme, and instead of generating a new structure had combined and regulated the existing social forces. the sovereign power was thus farmed to the aristocracy instead of forming an organ of its own. instead of resigning power they were forced to exercise it on condition of thorough responsibility to the central judiciary. their privileges were not destroyed but were combined with the discharge of corresponding duties. whatever their shortcomings, they were preserved from the decay which is the inevitable consequence of a divorce of duties from privileges. another aspect of the case is equally clear. if the privilege is associated with a duty, the duty may also be regarded as a privilege. the doctrine seems to mark a natural stage in the evolution of the conception of duty to the state. the power which is left to a member of the ruling class is also part of his dignity. thus we have an amalgamation between the conceptions of private property and public trust. 'in so far as the ideal of feudalism is perfectly realised,' it has been said,[ ] 'all that we can call public law is merged in private law; jurisdiction is property; office is property; the kingship itself is property.' this feudal ideal was still preserved with many of the institutions descended from feudalism. the king's right to his throne was regarded as of the same kind as the right to a private estate. his rights as king were also his rights as the owner of the land.[ ] subordinate landowners had similar rights, and as the royal power diminished greater powers fell to the aggregate of constitutional kinglets who governed the country. each of them was from one point of view an official, but each also regarded his office as part of his property. the country belonged to him and his class rather than he to the country. we occasionally find the quaint theory which deduced political rights from property in land. the freeholders were the owners of the soil and might give notice to quit to the rest of the population.[ ] they had therefore a natural right to carry on government in their own interests. the ruling classes, however, were not marked off from others by any deep line of demarcation; they could sell their own share in the government to anybody who was rich enough to buy it, and there was a constant influx of new blood. moreover, they did in fact improve their estate with very great energy, and discharged roughly, but in many ways efficiently, the duties which were also part of their property. the nobleman or even the squire was more than an individual; as head of a family he was a life tenant of estates which he desired to transmit to his descendants. he was a 'corporation sole' and had some of the spirit of a corporation. a college or a hospital is founded to discharge a particular function; its members continue perhaps to recognise their duty; but they resent any interference from outside as sacrilege or confiscation. it is for them alone to judge how they can best carry out, and whether they are actually carrying out, the aims of the corporate life. in the same way the great noble took his part in legislation, church preferment, the command of the army, and so forth, and fully admitted that he was bound in honour to play his part effectively; but he was equally convinced that he was subject to nothing outside of his sense of honour. his duties were also his rights. the naïf expression of this doctrine by a great borough proprietor, 'may i not do what i like with my own?' was to become proverbial.[ ] this, finally, suggests that a doctrine of 'individualism' is implied throughout. the individual rights are the antecedent and the rights of the state a consequent or corollary. every man has certain sacred rights accruing to him in virtue of 'prescription' or tradition, through his inherited position in the social organism. the 'rule of law' secures that he shall exercise them without infringing the privileges of his neighbour. he may moreover be compelled by the law to discharge them on due occasion. but, as there is no supreme body which can sufficiently superintend, stimulate, promote, or dismiss, the active impulse must come chiefly from his own sense of the fitness of things. the efficiency therefore depends upon his being in such a position that his duty may coincide with his personal interest. the political machinery can only work efficiently on the assumption of a spontaneous activity of the ruling classes, prompted by public spirit or a sense of personal dignity. meanwhile, 'individualism' in a different sense was represented by the forces which made for progress rather than order, and to them i must now turn. notes: [ ] professor dicey's _lectures on the law of the constitution_ ( ), p. . professor dicey gives an admirable exposition of the 'rule of law.' [ ] pollock and maitland's _history of english law_, i. . [ ] a characteristic consequence is that hale and blackstone make no distinction between public and private law. austin (_jurisprudence_ ( ), - ) applauds them for this peculiarity, which he regards as a proof of originality, though it would rather seem to be an acceptance of the traditional view. austin, however, retorts the charge of _verwirrung_ upon german critics. [ ] this is the theory of defoe in his _original power of the people of england_ (works by hazlitt, vol iii. see especially p. ). [ ] the fourth duke of newcastle in the house of lords, dec. . chapter ii the industrial spirit i. the manufacturers the history of england during the eighteenth century shows a curious contrast between the political stagnancy and the great industrial activity. the great constitutional questions seemed to be settled; and the statesmen, occupied mainly in sharing power and place, took a very shortsighted view (not for the first time in history) of the great problems that were beginning to present themselves. the british empire in the east was not won by a towering ambition so much as forced upon a reluctant commercial company by the necessities of its position. the english race became dominant in america; but the political connection was broken off mainly because english statesmen could only regard it from the shopkeeping point of view. when a new world began to arise at the antipodes, our rulers saw an opportunity not for planting new offshoots of european civilisation, but for ridding themselves of the social rubbish no longer accepted in america. with purblind energy, and eyes doggedly fixed upon the ground at their feet, the race had somehow pressed forwards to illustrate the old doctrine that a man never goes so far as when he does not know whither he is going. while thinking of earning an honest penny by extending the trade, our 'monied-men' were laying the foundation of vast structures to be developed by their descendants. politicians, again, had little to do with the great 'industrial revolution' which marked the last half of the century. the main facts are now a familiar topic of economic historians; nor need i speak of them in detail. though agriculture was still the main industry, and the landowners almost monopolised political power, an ever growing proportion of the people was being collected in towns; the artisans were congregating in large factories; and the great cloud of coal-smoke, which has never dwindled, was already beginning to darken our skies. the change corresponds to the difference between a fully developed organism possessed of a central brain, with an elaborate nervous system, and some lower form in which the vital processes are still carried on by a number of separate ganglia. the concentration of the population in the great industrial centres implied the improvement of the means of commerce; new organisation of industry provided with a corresponding apparatus of machinery; and the systematic exploitation of the stored-up forces of nature. each set of changes was at once cause and effect, and each was carried on separately, although in relation to the other. brindley, arkwright, and watt may be taken as typical representatives of the three operations. canals, spinning-jennies, and steam-engines were changing the whole social order. the development of means of communication had been slow till the last half of the century. the roads had been little changed since they had been first laid down as part of the great network which bound the roman empire together. turnpike acts, sanctioning the construction of new roads, became numerous. palmer's application of the stage-coaches to the carriage of the mails marked an epoch in ; and de quincey's prose poem, 'the mail-coach,' shows how the unprecedented speed of palmer's coaches, then spreading the news of the first battles in the peninsula, had caused them to tyrannise over the opium-eater's dreams. they were discharging at once a political and an industrial function. meanwhile the bridgewater canal, constructed between and , was the first link in a great network which, by the time of the french revolution, connected the seaports and the great centres of industry. the great inventions of machinery were simultaneously enabling manufacturers to take advantage of the new means of communication. the cotton manufacture sprang up soon after with enormous rapidity. aided by the application of steam (first applied to a cotton mill in ) it passed the woollen trade, the traditional favourite of legislators, and became the most important branch of british trade. the iron trade had made a corresponding start. while the steam-engine, on which watt had made the first great improvement in , was transforming the manufacturing system, and preparing the advent of the steamship and railroad, great britain had become the leading manufacturing and commercial country in the world. the agricultural interest was losing its pre-eminence; and huge towns with vast aggregations of artisan population were beginning to spring up with unprecedented rapidity. the change was an illustration upon a gigantic scale of the doctrines expounded in the _wealth of nations_. division of labour was being applied to things more important than pin-making, involving a redistribution of functions not as between men covered by the same roof, but between whole classes of society; between the makers of new means of communication and the manufacturers of every kind of material. the whole industrial community might be regarded as one great organism. yet the organisation was formed by a multitude of independent agencies without any concerted plan. it was thus a vast illustration of the doctrine that each man by pursuing his own interests promoted the interests of the whole, and that government interference was simply a hindrance. the progress of improvement, says adam smith, depends upon 'the uniform, constant, and uninterrupted effort of every man to better his condition,' which often succeeds in spite of the errors of government, as nature often overcomes the blunders of doctors. it is, as he infers, 'the highest impertinence and presumption for kings and ministers to pretend to watch over the economy of private people' by sumptuary laws and taxes upon imports.[ ] to the english manufacturer or engineer government appeared as a necessary evil. it allowed the engineer to make roads and canals, after a troublesome and expensive process of application. it granted patents to the manufacturer, but the patents were a source of perpetual worry and litigation. the chancellor of the exchequer might look with complacency upon the development of a new branch of trade; but it was because he was lying in wait to come down upon it with a new tax or system of duties. the men who were the chief instruments of the process were 'self-made'; they were the typical examples of mr. smiles's virtue of self-help; they owed nothing to government or to the universities which passed for the organs of national culture. the leading engineers began as ordinary mechanics. john metcalf ( - ), otherwise 'blind jack of knaresborough,' was a son of poor parents. he had lost his sight by smallpox at the age of six, and, in spite of his misfortune, became a daring rider, wrestler, soldier, and carrier, and made many roads in the north of england, executing surveys and constructing the works himself. james brindley ( - ), son of a midland collier, barely able to read or write, working out plans by processes which he could not explain, and lying in bed till they took shape in his brain, a rough mechanic, labouring for trifling weekly wages, created the canals which mainly enabled manchester and liverpool to make an unprecedented leap in prosperity. the two great engineers, thomas telford ( - ), famous for the caledonian canal and the menai bridge; and john rennie ( - ), drainer of lincolnshire fens, and builder of waterloo bridge and the plymouth breakwater, rose from the ranks. telford inherited and displayed in a different direction the energies of eskdale borderers, whose achievements in the days of cattle-stealing were to be made famous by scott: rennie was the son of an east lothian farmer. both of them learned their trade by actual employment as mechanics. the inventors of machinery belonged mainly to the lower middle classes. kay was a small manufacturer; hargreaves a hand-loom weaver; crompton the son of a small farmer; and arkwright a country barber. watt, son of a greenock carpenter, came from the sturdy scottish stock, ultimately of covenanting ancestry, from which so many eminent men have sprung. the new social class, in which such men were the leaders, held corresponding principles. they owed whatever success they won to their own right hands. they were sturdy workers, with eyes fixed upon success in life, and success generally of course measured by a money criterion. many of them showed intellectual tastes, and took an honourable view of their social functions. watt showed his ability in scientific inquiries outside of the purely industrial application; josiah wedgwood, in whose early days the staffordshire potters had led a kind of gipsy life, settling down here and there to carry on their trade, had not only founded a great industry, but was a man of artistic taste, a patron of art, and a lover of science. telford, the eskdale shepherd, was a man of literary taste, and was especially friendly with the typical man of letters, southey. others, of course, were of a lower type. arkwright combined the talents of an inventor with those of a man of business. he was a man, says baines (the historian of the cotton trade), who was sure to come out of an enterprise with profit, whatever the result to his partners. he made a great fortune, and founded a county family. others rose in the same direction. the peels, for example, represented a line of yeomen. one peel founded a cotton business; his son became a baronet and an influential member of parliament; and his grandson went to oxford, and became the great leader of the conservative party, although like walpole, he owed his power to a kind of knowledge in which his adopted class were generally deficient. the class which owed its growing importance to the achievements of such men was naturally imbued with their spirit. its growth meant the development of a class which under the old order had been strictly subordinate to the ruling class, and naturally regarded it with a mingled feeling of respect and jealousy. the british merchant felt his superiority in business to the average country-gentleman; he got no direct share of the pensions and sinecures which so profoundly affected the working of the political machinery, and yet his highest ambition was to rise to be himself a member of the class, and to found a family which might flourish in the upper atmosphere. the industrial classes were inclined to favour political progress within limits. they were dissenters because the church was essentially part of the aristocracy; and they were readiest to denounce the abuses from which they did not profit. the agitators who supported wilkes, solid aldermen and rich merchants, represented the view which was popular in london and other great cities. they were the backbone of the whig party when it began to demand a serious reform. their radicalism, however, was not thoroughly democratic. many of them aspired to become members of the ruling class, and a shopkeeper does not quarrel too thoroughly with his customers. the politics of individuals were of course determined by accidents. some of them might retain the sympathy of the class from which they sprang, and others might adopt an even extreme version of the opinions of the class to which they desired to rise. but, in any case, the divergence of interest between the capitalists and the labourers was already making itself felt. the self-made man, it is said, is generally the hardest master. he approves of the stringent system of competition, of which he is himself a product. it clearly enables the best man to win, for is he not himself the best man? the class which was the great seat of movement had naturally to meet all the prejudices which are roused by change. the farmers near london, as adam smith tells us,[ ] petitioned against an extension of turnpike roads, which would enable more distant farmers to compete in their market. but the farmers were not the only prejudiced persons. all the great inventors of machinery, kay and arkwright and watt, had constantly to struggle against the old workmen who were displaced by their inventions. although, therefore, the class might be whiggish, it did not share the strongest revolutionary passions. the genuine revolutionists were rather the men who destroyed the manufacturer's machines, and were learning to regard him as a natural enemy. the manufacturer had his own reasons for supporting government. our foreign policy during the century was in the long run chiefly determined by the interests of our trade, however much the trade might at times be hampered by ill-conceived regulations. it is remarkable that adam smith[ ] argues that, although the capitalist is acuter that the country-gentleman, his acuteness is chiefly displayed by knowing his own interests better. those interests, he thinks, do not coincide so much as the interests of the country-gentleman with the general interests of the country. consequently the country-gentleman, though less intelligent, is more likely to favour a national and liberal policy. the merchant, in fact, was not a free-trader because he had read adam smith or consciously adopted smith's principles, but because or in so far as particular restrictions interfered with him. arthur young complains bitterly of the manufacturers who supported the prohibition to export english wool, and so protected their own class at the expense of agriculturists. wedgwood, though a good liberal and a supporter of pitt's french treaty in , joined in protesting against the proposal for free-trade with ireland. the irish, he thought, might rival his potteries. thus, though as a matter of fact the growing class of manufacturers and merchants were inclined in the main to liberal principles, it was less from adhesion to any general doctrine than from the fact that the existing restrictions and prejudices generally conflicted with their plain interests. another characteristic is remarkable. though the growth of manufactures and commerce meant the growth of great towns, it did not mean the growth of municipal institutions. on the contrary, as i shall presently have to notice, the municipalities were sinking to their lowest ebb. manufactures, in the first instance, spread along the streams into country districts: and to the great manufacturer, working for his own hand, his neighbours were competitors as much as allies. the great towns, however, which were growing up, showed the general tendencies of the class. they were centres not only of manufacturing but of intellectual progress. the population of birmingham, containing the famous soho works of boulton and watt, had increased between and from , to , inhabitants. watt's partner boulton started the 'lunar society' at birmingham.[ ] its most prominent member was erasmus darwin, famous then for poetry which is chiefly remembered by the parody in the _anti-jacobin_; and now more famous as the advocate of a theory of evolution eclipsed by the teaching of his more famous grandson, and, in any case, a man of remarkable intellectual power. among those who joined in the proceedings was edgeworth, who in was speculating upon moving carriages by steam, and thomas day, whose _sandford and merton_ helped to spread in england the educational theories of rousseau. priestley, who settled at birmingham in , became a member, and was helped in his investigations by watt's counsels and wedgwood's pecuniary help. among occasional visitors were smeaton, sir joseph banks, solander, and herschel of scientific celebrity; while the literary magnate, dr. parr, who lived between warwick and birmingham, occasionally joined the circle. wedgwood, though too far off to be a member, was intimate with darwin and associated in various enterprises with boulton. wedgwood's congenial partner, thomas bentley ( - ), had been in business at manchester and at liverpool. he had taken part in founding the warrington 'academy,' the dissenting seminary (afterwards moved to manchester) of which priestley was tutor ( - ), and had lectured upon art at the academy founded at liverpool in . another member of the academy was william roscoe ( - ), whose literary taste was shown by his lives of lorenzo de medici and leo x., and who distinguished himself by opposing the slave-trade, then the infamy of his native town. allied with him in this movement were william rathbone and james currie ( - ) the biographer of burns, a friend of darwin and an intelligent physician. at manchester thomas perceval ( - ) founded the 'literary and philosophical society' in . he was a pupil of the warrington academy, which he afterwards joined on removing to manchester, and he formed the scheme afterwards realised by owens college. he was an early advocate of sanitary measures and factory legislation, and a man of scientific reputation. other members of the society were: john ferriar ( - ), best known by his _illustrations of sterne_, but also a man of literary and scientific reputation; the great chemist, john dalton ( - ), who contributed many papers to its transactions; and, for a short time, the socialist robert owen, then a rising manufacturer. at norwich, then important as a manufacturing centre, was a similar circle. william taylor, an eminent unitarian divine, who died at the warrington academy in , had lived at norwich. one of his daughters married david martineau and became the mother of harriet martineau, who has described the norwich of her early years. john taylor, grandson of william, was father of mrs. austin, wife of the jurist. he was a man of literary tastes, and his wife was known as the madame roland of norwich. mrs. opie ( - ) was daughter of james alderson, a physician of norwich, and passed most of her life there. william taylor ( - ), another norwich manufacturer, was among the earliest english students of german literature. norwich had afterwards the unique distinction of being the home of a provincial school of artists. john crome ( - ), son of a poor weaver, and john sell cotman ( - ) were its leaders; they formed a kind of provincial academy, and exhibited pictures which have been more appreciated since their death. at bristol, towards the end of the century, were similar indications of intellectual activity. coleridge and southey found there a society ready to listen to their early lectures, and both admired thomas beddoes ( - ), a physician, a chemist, a student of german, an imitator of darwin in poetry, and an assailant of pitt in pamphlets. he had married one of edgeworth's daughters. with the help and advice of wedgwood and watt, he founded the 'pneumatic institute' at clifton in , and obtained the help of humphry davy, who there made some of his first discoveries. davy was soon transported to the royal institution, founded at the suggestion of count rumford in , which represented the growth of a popular interest in the scientific discoveries. the general tone of these little societies represents, of course, the tendency of the upper stratum of the industrial classes. in their own eyes they naturally represented the progressive element of society. they were whigs--for 'radicalism' was not yet invented--but whigs of the left wing; accepting the aristocratic precedency, but looking askance at the aristocratic prejudices. they were rationalists, too, in principle, but again within limits: openly avowing the doctrines which in the established church had still to be sheltered by ostensible conformity to the traditional dogmas. many of them professed the unitarianism to which the old dissenting bodies inclined. 'unitarianism,' said shrewd old erasmus darwin, 'is a feather-bed for a dying christian.' but at present such men as priestley and price were only so far on the road to a thorough rationalism as to denounce the corruptions of christianity, as they denounced abuses in politics, without anticipating a revolutionary change in church and state. priestley, for example, combined 'materialism' and 'determinism' with christianity and a belief in miracles, and controverted horsley upon one side and paine on the other. notes: [ ] _wealth of nations_, bk. ii. ch. iii. [ ] _wealth of nations_, bk. i. ch. xi. § . [ ] _ibid._ bk. i. ch. xi. conclusion. [ ] smiles's _watt and boulton_, p. . ii. the agriculturists the general spirit represented by such movements was by no means confined to the commercial or manufacturing classes; and its most characteristic embodiment is to be found in the writings of a leading agriculturist. arthur young,[ ] born in , was the son of a clergyman, who had also a small ancestral property at bradfield, near bury st. edmunds. accidents led to his becoming a farmer at an early age. he showed more zeal than discretion, and after trying three thousand experiments on his farm, he was glad to pay £ to another tenant to take his farm off his hands. this experience as a practical agriculturist, far from discouraging him, qualified him in his own opinion to speak with authority, and he became a devoted missionary of the gospel of agricultural improvement. the enthusiasm with which he admired more successful labourers in the cause, and the indignation with which he regards the sluggish and retrograde, are charming. his kindliness, his keen interest in the prosperity of all men, rich or poor, his ardent belief in progress, combined with his quickness of observation, give a charm to the writings which embody his experience. tours in england and a temporary land-agency in ireland supplied him with materials for books which made him known both in england and on the continent. in he returned to bradfield, where he soon afterwards came into possession of his paternal estate, which became his permanent home. in he tried to extend his propaganda by bringing out the _annals of agriculture_--a monthly publication, of which forty-five half-yearly volumes appeared. he had many able contributors and himself wrote many interesting articles, but the pecuniary results were mainly negative. in his circulation was only copies.[ ] meanwhile his acquaintance with the duc de liancourt led to tours in france from to . his _travels in france_, first published in , has become a classic. in young was made secretary to the board of agriculture, of which i shall speak presently. he became known in london society as well as in agricultural circles. he was a handsome and attractive man, a charming companion, and widely recognised as an agricultural authority. the empress of russia sent him a snuff-box; 'farmer george' presented a merino ram; he was elected member of learned societies; he visited burke at beaconsfield, pitt at holmwood, and was a friend of wilberforce and of jeremy bentham. young had many domestic troubles. his marriage was not congenial; the loss of a tenderly loved daughter in permanently saddened him; he became blind, and in his later years sought comfort in religious meditation and in preaching to his poorer neighbours. he died th april . he left behind him a gigantic history of agriculture, filling ten folio volumes of manuscript, which, though reduced to six by an enthusiastic disciple after his death, have never found their way to publication. the _travels in france_, young's best book, owes one merit to the advice of a judicious friend, who remarked that the previous tours had suffered from the absence of the personal details which interest the common reader. the insertion of these makes young's account of his french tours one of the most charming as well as most instructive books of the kind. it gives the vivid impression made upon a keen and kindly observer in all their freshness. he sensibly retained the expressions of opinion made at the time. 'i may remark at present,' he says,[ ] 'that although i was totally mistaken in my prediction, yet, on a revision, i think i was right in it.' it was right, he means, upon the data then known to him, and he leaves the unfulfilled prediction as it was. the book is frequently cited in justification of the revolution, and it may be fairly urged that his authority is of the more weight, because he does not start from any sympathy with revolutionary principles. young was in paris when the oath was taken at the tennis-court; and makes his reflections upon the beauty of the british constitution, and the folly of visionary reforms, in a spirit which might have satisfied burke. he was therefore not altogether inconsistent when, after the outrages, he condemned the revolution, however much the facts which he describes may tend to explain the inevitableness of the catastrophe. at any rate, his views are worth notice by the indications which they give of the mental attitude of a typical english observer. young in his vivacious way struck out some of the phrases which became proverbial with later economists. 'give a man the secure possession of a bleak rock and he will turn it into a garden. give him a nine years' lease of a garden, and he will convert it into a desert.'[ ] 'the magic of property turns sand to gold.'[ ] he is delighted with the comfort of the small proprietors near pau, which reminds him of english districts still inhabited by small yeomen.[ ] passing to a less fortunate region, he explains that the prince de soubise has a vast property there. the property of a grand 'seigneur' is sure to be a desert.[ ] the signs which indicate such properties are 'wastes, _landes_, deserts, fern, ling.' the neighbourhood of the great residences is well peopled--'with deer, wild boars, and wolves,' 'oh,' he exclaims, 'if i was the legislator of france for a day, i would make such great lords skip again!' 'why,' he asked, 'were the people miserable in lower savoy?' '_because_', was the reply, '_there are seigneurs everywhere_'.[ ] misery in brittany was due 'to the execrable maxims of despotism or the equally detestable prejudices of a feudal nobility.'[ ] there was nothing, he said, in the province but 'privileges and poverty,'[ ] privileges of the nobles and poverty of the peasants. young was profoundly convinced, moreover, that, as he says more than once[ ] 'everything in this world depends on government.' he is astonished at the stupidity and ignorance of the provincial population, and ascribes it to the lethargy produced by despotism.[ ] he contrasts it with 'the energetic and rapid circulation of wealth, animation, and intelligence of england,' where 'blacksmiths and carpenters' would discuss every political event. and yet he heartily admires some of the results of a centralised monarchy. he compares the miserable roads in catalonia on the spanish side of the frontier with the magnificent causeways and bridges on the french side. the difference is due to the 'one all-powerful cause that instigates mankind ... government.'[ ] he admires the noble public works, the canal of languedoc, the harbours at cherbourg and havre, and the _école vétérinaire_ where agriculture is taught upon scientific principles. he is struck by the curious contrast between france and england. in france the splendid roads are used by few travellers, and the inns are filthy pothouses; in england there are detestable roads, but a comparatively enormous traffic. when he wished to make the great nobles 'skip' he does not generally mean confiscation. he sees indeed one place where in the poor had seized a piece of waste land, declaring that the poor were the nation, and that the waste belonged to the nation. he declares[ ] that he considers their action 'wise, rational, and philosophical,' and wishes that there were a law to make such conduct legal in england. but his more general desire is that the landowners should be compelled to do their duty. he complains that the nobles live in 'wretched holes' in the country in order to save the means of expenditure upon theatres, entertainments, and gambling in the towns.[ ] 'banishment alone will force the french nobility to do what the english do for pleasure--to reside upon and adorn their estates.'[ ] he explains to a french friend that english agriculture has flourished 'in spite of the teeth of our ministers'; we have had many colberts, but not one sully[ ]; and we should have done much better, he thinks, had agriculture received the same attention as commerce. this is the reverse of adam smith's remark upon the superior liberality of the english country-gentleman, who did not, like the manufacturers, invoke protection and interference. in truth, young desired both advantages, the vigour of a centralised government and the energy of an independent aristocracy. his absence of any general theory enables him to do justice in detail at the cost of consistency in general theory. in france, as he saw, the nobility had become in the main an encumbrance, a mere dead weight upon the energies of the agriculturist. but he did not infer that large properties in land were bad in themselves; for in england he saw that the landowners were the really energetic and improving class. he naturally looked at the problem from the point of view of an intelligent land-agent. he is full of benevolent wishes for the labourer, and sympathises with the attempt to stimulate their industry and improve their dwellings, and denounces oppression whether in france or ireland with the heartiest goodwill. but it is characteristic of the position that such a man--an enthusiastic advocate of industrial progress--was a hearty admirer of the english landowner. he sets out upon his first tour, announcing that he does not write for farmers, of whom not one in five thousand reads anything, but for the country-gentlemen, who are the great improvers. tull, who introduced turnips; weston, who introduced clover; lord townshend and allen, who introduced 'marling' in norfolk, were all country-gentlemen, and it is from them that he expects improvement. he travels everywhere, delighting in their new houses and parks, their picture galleries, and their gardens laid out by kent or 'capability brown'; he admires scenery, climbs skiddaw, and is rapturous over views of the alps and pyrenees; but he is thrown into a rage by the sight of wastes, wherever improvement is possible. what delights him is an estate with a fine country-house of palladian architecture ('gothic' is with him still a term of abuse),[ ] with grounds well laid out and a good home-farm, where experiments are being tried, and surrounded by an estate in which the farm-buildings show the effects of the landlord's good example and judicious treatment of his tenantry. there was no want of such examples. he admires the marquis of rockingham, at once the most honourable of statesmen and most judicious of improvers. he sings the praises of the duke of portland, the earl of darlington, and the duke of northumberland. an incautious announcement of the death of the duke of grafton, remembered chiefly as one of the victims of junius, but known to young for his careful experiments in sheep-breeding, produced a burst of tears, which, as he believed, cost him his eyesight. his friend, the fifth duke of bedford (died ), was one of the greatest improvers for the south, and was succeeded by another friend, the famous coke of holkham, afterwards earl of leicester, who is said to have spent half a million upon the improvement of his property. young appeals to the class in which such men were leaders, and urges them, not against their wishes, we may suppose, and, no doubt, with much good sense, to take to their task in the true spirit of business. nothing, he declares, is more out of place than the boast of some great landowners that they never raise their rents.[ ] high rents produce industry. the man who doubles his rents benefits the country more than he benefits himself. even in ireland,[ ] a rise of rents is one great cause of improvement, though the rent should not be excessive, and the system of middlemen is altogether detestable. one odd suggestion is characteristic.[ ] he hears that wages are higher in london than elsewhere. now, he says, in a trading country low wages are essential. he wonders, therefore, that the legislature does not limit the growth of london. this, we may guess, is one of the petulant utterances of early years which he would have disavowed or qualified upon maturer reflection. but young is essentially an apostle of the 'glorious spirit of improvement,'[ ] which has converted norfolk sheep-walks into arable fields, and was spreading throughout the country and even into ireland. his hero is the energetic landowner, who makes two blades of grass grow where one grew before; who introduces new breeds of cattle and new courses of husbandry. he is so far in sympathy with the _wealth of nations_, although he says of that book that, while he knows of 'no abler work,' he knows of none 'fuller of poisonous errors.'[ ] young, that is, sympathised with the doctrine of the physiocrats that agriculture was the one source of real wealth, and took smith to be too much on the side of commerce. young, however, was as enthusiastic a free-trader as smith. he naturally denounces the selfishness of the manufacturers who, in , objected to the free export of english wool,[ ] but he also assails monopoly in general. the whole system, he says (on occasion of pitt's french treaty), is rotten to the core. the 'vital spring and animating soul of commerce is liberty.'[ ] though he talks of the balance of trade, he argues in the spirit of smith or cobden that we are benefited by the wealth of our customers. if we have to import more silk, we shall export more cloth. young, indeed, was everything but a believer in any dogmatic or consistent system of political economy, or, as he still calls it, political arithmetic. his opinions were not of the kind which can be bound to any rigid formulæ. after investigating the restrictions of rent and wages in different districts, he quietly accepts the conclusion that the difference is due to accident.[ ] he has as yet no fear of malthus before his eyes. he is roused to indignation by the pessimist theory then common, that population was decaying.[ ] everywhere he sees signs of progress; buildings, plantations, woods, and canals. employment, he says, creates population, stimulates industry, and attracts labour from backward districts. the increase of numbers is an unqualified benefit. he has no dread of excess. in ireland, he observes, no one is fool enough to deny that population is increasing, though people deny it in england, 'even in the most productive period of her industry and wealth.'[ ] one cause of this blessing is the absence or the poor-law. the english poor-law is detestable to him for a reason which contrasts significantly with the later opinion. the laws were made 'in the very spirit of depopulation'; they are 'monuments of barbarity and mischief'; for they give to every parish an interest in keeping down the population. this tendency was in the eyes of the later economist a redeeming feature in the old system; though it had been then so modified as to stimulate what they took to be the curse, as young held it to be the blessing, of a rapid increase of population. with such views young was a keen advocate of the process of enclosure which was going on with increasing rapidity. he found a colleague, who may be briefly noticed as a remarkable representative of the same movement. sir john sinclair ( - )[ ] was heir to an estate of sixty thousand acres in caithness which produced only £ a year, subject to many encumbrances. the region was still in a primitive state. there were no roads: agriculture was of the crudest kind; part of the rent was still paid in feudal services; the natives were too ignorant or lazy to fish, and there were no harbours. trees were scarce enough to justify johnson, and a list of all the trees in the country included currant-bushes.[ ] sinclair was a pupil of the poet logan: studied under blair at edinburgh and millar at glasgow; became known to adam smith, and, after a short time at oxford, was called to the english bar. sinclair was a man of enormous energy, though not of vivacious intellect. he belonged to the prosaic breed, which created the 'dismal science,' and seems to have been regarded as a stupendous bore. bores, however, represent a social force not to be despised, and sinclair was no exception. his father died when he was sixteen. when twenty years old he collected his tenants, and in one night made a road across a hill which had been pronounced impracticable. he was an enthusiastic admirer of gaelic traditions; defended the authenticity of ossian; supported highland games, and brought italian travellers to listen to the music of the bagpipes. when he presented himself to his tenants in the highland costume, on the withdrawal of its prohibition, they expected him to lead them in a foray upon the lowlands in the name of charles edward. he afterwards raised a regiment of 'fencibles' which served in ireland in , and, when disbanded, sent a large contingent to the egyptian expedition. but he rendered more peaceful services to his country. he formed new farms; he enclosed several thousand acres; as head of the 'british wool society,' he introduced the cheviots or 'long sheep' to the north--an improvement which is said to have doubled the rents of many estates; he introduced agricultural shows; he persuaded government in to devote the proceeds of the confiscated estates of jacobites to the improvement of scottish communications; he helped to introduce fisheries and even manufactures; and was a main agent in the change which made caithness one of the most rapidly improving parts of the country. his son assures us that he took every means to obviate the incidental evils which have been the pretexts of denunciators of similar improvements. sinclair gained a certain reputation by a _history of the revenue_ ( - ), and, like malthus, travelled on the continent to improve his knowledge. his first book finished, he began the great statistical work by which he is best remembered. he is said to have introduced into english the name of 'statistics,' for the researches of which all economical writers were beginning to feel the necessity. he certainly did much to introduce the reality. sinclair circulated a number of queries (upon 'natural history,' 'population,' 'productions,' and 'miscellaneous' informations) to every parish minister in scotland. he surmounted various jealousies naturally excited, and the ultimate result was the _statistical account of scotland_, which appeared in twenty-one volumes between and .[ ] it gives an account of every parish in scotland, and was of great value as supplying a basis for all social investigations. sinclair bore the expense, and gave the profits to the 'sons of the clergy.' in sinclair, who had been in parliament since , made himself useful to pitt in connection with the issue of exchequer bills to meet the commercial crisis. he begged in return for the foundation of a board of agriculture. he became the president and arthur young the secretary;[ ] and the board represented their common aspirations. it was a rather anomalous body, something between a government office and such an institution as the royal society; and was supported by an annual grant of £ . the first aim of the board was to produce a statistical account of england on the plan of the scottish account. the english clergy, however, were suspicious; they thought, it seems, that the collection of statistics meant an attack upon tithes; and young's frequent denunciation of tithes as discouraging agricultural improvement suggests some excuse for the belief. the plan had to be dropped; a less thoroughgoing description of the counties was substituted; and a good many 'views' of the agriculture of different counties were published in and succeeding years. the board did its best to be active with narrow means. it circulated information, distributed medals, and brought agricultural improvers together. it encouraged the publication of erasmus darwin's _phytologia_ ( ), and procured a series of lectures from humphry davy, afterwards published as _elements of agricultural chemistry_ ( ). sinclair also claims to have encouraged macadam ( - ), the road-maker, and meikle, the inventor of the thrashing-machine. one great aim of the board was to promote enclosures. young observes in the introductory paper to the _annals_ that within forty years nine hundred bills had been passed affecting about a million acres. this included wastes, but the greater part was already cultivated under the 'constraint and imperfection of the open field system,' a relic of the 'barbarity of our ancestors.' enclosures involved procuring acts of parliament--a consequent expenditure, as young estimates, of some £ in each case;[ ] and as they were generally obtained by the great landowners, there was a frequent neglect of the rights of the poor and of the smaller holders. the remedy proposed was a general enclosure act; and such an act passed the house of commons in , but was thrown out by the lords. an act was not obtained till after the reform bill. sinclair, however, obtained some modification of the procedure; which, it is said, facilitated the passage of private bills. they became more numerous in later years, though other causes obviously co-operated. meanwhile, it is characteristic that sinclair and young regarded wastes as a backwoodsman regarded a forest. the incidental injury to poor commoners was not unnoticed, and became one of the topics of cobbett's eloquence. but to the ardent agriculturist the existence of a bit of waste land was a simple proof of barbarism. sinclair's favourite toast, we are told, was 'may commons become uncommon'--his one attempt at a joke. he prayed that epping forest and finchley common might pass under the yoke as well as our foreign enemies. young is driven out of all patience by the sight of 'fern, ling, and other trumpery' usurping the place of possible arable fields.[ ] he groans in spirit upon salisbury plain, which might be made to produce all the corn we import.[ ] enfield chase, he declares, is a 'real nuisance to the public.'[ ] we may be glad that the zeal for enclosure was not successful in all its aims; but this view of philanthropic and energetic improvers is characteristic. it is said[ ] that young and sinclair ruined the board of agriculture by making it a kind of political debating club. it died in . sinclair obtained an appointment in scotland, and continued to labour unremittingly. he carried on a correspondence with all manner of people, including washington, eldon, catholic bishops in ireland, financiers and agriculturists on the continent, and the most active economists in england. he suggested a subject for a poem to scott.[ ] he wrote pamphlets about cash-payments, catholic emancipation, and the reform bill, always disagreeing with all parties. he projected four codes which were to summarise all human knowledge upon health, agriculture, political economy, and religion. _the code of health_ ( vols., ) went through six editions; _the code of agriculture_ appeared in ; but the world has not been enriched by the others. he died at edinburgh on the st september . i have dwelt so far upon young because he is the best representative of that 'glorious spirit of improvement' which was transforming the whole social structure. young's view of the french revolution indicates one marked characteristic of that spirit. he denounces the french seigneur because he is lethargic. he admires the english nobleman because he is energetic. the french noble may even deserve confiscation; but he has not the slightest intention of applying the same remedy in england, where squires and noblemen are the very source of all improvement. he holds that government is everything, and admires the great works of the french despotism: and yet he is a thorough admirer of the liberties enjoyed under the british constitution, the essential nature of which makes similar works impossible. i need not ask whether young's logic could be justified; though it would obviously require for justification a thoroughly 'empirical' view, or, in other words, the admission that different circumstances may require totally different institutions. the view, however, which was congenial to the prevalent spirit of improvement must be noted. it might be stated as a paradox that, whereas in france the most palpable evils arose from the excessive power of the central government, and in england the most palpable evils arose from the feebleness of the central government, the french reformers demanded more government and the english reformers demanded less government. 'everything for the people, nothing by the people,' was, as mr. morley remarks,[ ] the maxim of the french economists. the solution seems to be easy. in france, reformers such as turgot and the economists were in favour of an enlightened despotism, because the state meant a centralised power which might be turned against the aristocracy. once 'enlightened' it would suppress the exclusive privileges of a class which, doing nothing in return, had become a mere burthen or dead weight encumbering all social development. but in england the privileged class was identical with the governing class. the political liberty of which englishmen were rightfully proud, the 'rule of law' which made every official responsible to the ordinary course of justice, and the actual discharge of their duties by the governing order, saved it from being the objects of a jealous class hatred. while in france government was staggering under an ever-accumulating resentment against the aristocracy, the contemporary position in england was, on the whole, one of political apathy. the country, though it had lost its colonies, was making unprecedented progress in wealth; commerce, manufactures, and agriculture were being developed by the energy of individuals; and pitt was beginning to apply adam smith's principles to finance. the cry for parliamentary reform died out: neither whigs nor tories really cared for it; and the 'glorious spirit of improvement' showed itself in an energy which had little political application. the nobility was not an incubus suppressing individual energy and confronted by the state, but was itself the state; and its individual members were often leaders in industrial improvement. discontent, therefore, took in the main a different form. some government was, of course, necessary, and the existing system was too much in harmony, even in its defects, with the social order to provoke any distinct revolutionary sentiment. englishmen were not only satisfied with their main institutions, but regarded them with exaggerated complacency. but, though there was no organic disorder, there were plenty of abuses to be remedied. the ruling class, it seemed, did its duties in the main, but took unconscionable perquisites in return. if it 'farmed' them, it was right that it should have a beneficial interest in the concern; but that interest might be excessive. in many directions abuses were growing up which required remedy, though not a subversion of the system under which they had been generated. it was not desired--unless by a very few theorists--to make any sweeping redistribution of power; but it was eminently desirable to find some means of better regulating many evil practices. the attack upon such practices might ultimately suggest--as, in fact, it did suggest--the necessity of far more thoroughgoing reforms. for the present, however, the characteristic mark of english reformers was this limitation of their schemes, and a mark which is especially evident in bentham and his followers. i will speak, therefore, of the many questions which were arising, partly for these reasons and partly because the utilitarian theory was in great part moulded by the particular problems which they had to argue. notes: [ ] young's _travels in france_ was republished in , with a preface and short life by miss betham edwards. she has since ( ) published his autobiography. see also the autobiographical sketch in the _annals of agriculture_, xv. - . young's _farmer's letters_ first appeared in ; his _tours_ in the southern, northern, and eastern counties in , , and ; his _tour in ireland_ in ; and his _travels in france_ in . a useful bibliography, containing a list of his many publications, is appended to the edition of the _tour in ireland_ edited by mr. a. w. hutton in . [ ] _annals_, xv. . [ ] _travels in france_ ( ), p. _n._ [ ] _travels in france_, p. . [ ] _ibid._ p. . [ ] _ibid._ p. . [ ] _ibid._ p. . [ ] _ibid._ p. . [ ] _travels in france_, p. . [ ] _ibid._ p. . [ ] _ibid._ pp. , . [ ] _ibid._ pp. , , , . [ ] _ibid._ p. . [ ] _travels in france_, pp. - . [ ] _ibid._ p. . [ ] _ibid._ p. . [ ] _ibid._ p. . [ ] e.g. _southern tour_, p. ; _northern tour_, p. (york cathedral). [ ] _northern tour_, iv. , . [ ] _irish tour_, ii. . [ ] _southern tour_, p. . [ ] _southern tour_, p. . [ ] _annals_, i. . [ ] _ibid._ vol, x. [ ] _ibid._ iv. . [ ] _southern tour_, p. ; _northern tour_, ii. . [ ] _northern tour_, iv. , etc. [ ] _irish tour_, ii. - . [ ] _memoirs of sir john sinclair_, by his son. vols., . [ ] _memoirs_, i. . [ ] _a new statistical account_, replacing this, appeared in twenty-four volumes from to . [ ] he was president for the first five years, and again, from till . for an account of this, see sir ernest clarke's _history of the board of agriculture_, . [ ] _northern tour_, i. - . [ ] _northern tour_, ii. . [ ] _southern tour_, p. . [ ] _northern tour_, iii. . [ ] arthur young had a low opinion of sinclair, whom he took to be a pushing and consequential busybody, more anxious to make a noise than to be useful. see young's _autobiography_ ( ), pp. , , . sir ernest clarke points out the injury done by sinclair's hasty and blundering extravagance; but also shows that the board did great service in stimulating agricultural improvement. [ ] scott's _letters_, i. . [ ] essay on 'turgot.' see, in daire's collection of the _Ã�conomistes_, the arguments of quesnay (p. ), dupont de nemours (p. ), and mercier de la rivière in favour of a legal (as distinguished from an 'arbitrary') despotism. chapter iii social problems i. pauperism perhaps the gravest of all the problems which were to occupy the coming generation was the problem of pauperism. the view taken by the utilitarians was highly characteristic and important. i will try to indicate the general position of intelligent observers at the end of the century by referring to the remarkable book of sir frederick morton eden. its purport is explained by the title: 'the state of the poor; or, an history of the labouring classes of england from the norman conquest to the present period; in which are particularly considered their domestic economy, with respect to diet, dress, fuel, and habitation; and the various plans which have from time to time been proposed and adopted for the relief of the poor' ( vols. to, ). eden[ ] ( - ) was a man of good family and nephew of the first lord auckland, who negotiated pitt's commercial treaty. he graduated as b.a. from christ church, oxford, in ; married in , and at his death ( th nov. ) was chairman of the globe insurance company. he wrote various pamphlets upon economical topics; contributed letters signed 'philanglus' to cobbett's _porcupine_, the anti-jacobin paper of the day; and is described by bentham[ ] as a 'declared disciple' and a 'highly valued friend.' he may be reckoned, therefore, as a utilitarian, though politically he was a conservative. he seems to have been a man of literary tastes as well as a man of business, and his book is a clear and able statement of the points at issue. eden's attention had been drawn to the subject by the distress which followed the outbreak of the revolutionary war. he employed an agent who travelled through the country for a year with a set of queries drawn up after the model of those prepared by sinclair for his _statistical account of scotland_. he thus anticipated the remarkable investigation made in our own time by mr. charles booth. eden made personal inquiries and studied the literature of the subject. he had a precursor in richard burn ( - ), whose _history of the poor-laws_ appeared in , and a competitor in john ruggles, whose _history of the poor_ first appeared in arthur young's _annals_, and was published as a book in (second edition, ). eden's work eclipsed ruggles's. it has a permanent value as a collection of facts; and was a sign of the growing sense of the importance of accurate statistical research. the historian of the social condition of the people should be grateful to one who broke ground at a time when the difficulty of obtaining a sound base for social inquiries began to make itself generally felt. the value of the book for historical purposes lies beyond my sphere. his first volume, i may say, gives a history of legislation from the earliest period; and contains also a valuable account of the voluminous literature which had grown up during the two preceding centuries. the other two summarise the reports which he had received. i will only say enough to indicate certain critical points. eden's book unfortunately was to mark, not a solution of the difficulty but, the emergence of a series of problems which were to increase in complexity and ominous significance through the next generation. the general history of the poor-law is sufficiently familiar.[ ] the mediæval statutes take us to a period at which the labourer was still regarded as a serf; and a man who had left his village was treated like a fugitive slave. a long series of statutes regulated the treatment of the 'vagabond.' the vagabond, however, had become differentiated from the pauper. the decay of the ancient order of society and its corresponding institutions had led to a new set of problems; and the famous statute of elizabeth ( ) had laid down the main lines of the system which is still in operation. when the labourer was regarded as in a servile condition, he might be supported from the motives which lead an owner to support his slaves, or by the charitable energies organised by ecclesiastical institutions. he had now ceased to be a serf, and the institutions which helped the poor man or maintained the beggar were wrecked. the elizabethan statute gave him, therefore, a legal claim to be supported, and, on the other hand, directed that he should be made to work for his living. the assumption is still that every man is a member of a little social circle. he belongs to his parish, and it is his fellow-parishioners who are bound to support him. so long as this corresponded to facts, the system could work satisfactorily. with the spread of commerce, and the growth of a less settled population, difficulties necessarily arose. the pauper and the vagabond represent a kind of social extravasation; the 'masterless man' who has strayed from his legitimate place or has become a superfluity in his own circle. the vagabond could be flogged, sent to prison, or if necessary hanged, but it was more difficult to settle what to do with a man who was not a criminal, but simply a product in excess of demand. all manner of solutions had been suggested by philanthropists and partly adopted by the legislature. one point which especially concerns us is the awkwardness or absence of an appropriate administrative machinery. the parish, the unit on which the pauper had claims, meant the persons upon whom the poor-rate was assessed. these were mainly farmers and small tradesmen who formed the rather vague body called the vestry. 'overseers' were appointed by the ratepayers themselves; they were not paid, and the disagreeable office was taken in turn for short periods. the most obvious motive with the average ratepayer was of course to keep down the rates and to get the burthen of the poor as much as possible out of his own parish. each parish had at least an interest in economy. but the economical interest also produced flagrant evils. in the first place, there was the war between parishes. the law of settlement--which was to decide to what parish a pauper belonged--originated in an act of . eden observes that the short clause in this short act had brought more profit to the lawyers than 'any other point in the english jurisprudence.'[ ] it is said that the expense of such a litigation before the act of averaged from £ , to £ , a year.[ ] each parish naturally endeavoured to shift the burthen upon its neighbours; and was protected by laws which enabled it to resist the immigration of labourers or actually to expel them when likely to become chargeable. this law is denounced by adam smith[ ] as a 'violation of natural liberty and justice.' it was often harder, he declared, for a poor man to cross the artificial boundaries of his parish than to cross a mountain ridge or an arm of the sea. there was, he declared, hardly a poor man in england over forty who had not been at some time 'cruelly oppressed' by the working of this law. eden thinks that smith had exaggerated the evil: but a law which operated by preventing a free circulation of labour, and made it hard for a poor man to seek the best price for his only saleable commodity, was, so far, opposed to the fundamental principles common to smith and eden. the law, too, might be used oppressively by the niggardly and narrow-minded. the overseer, as burn complained,[ ] was often a petty tyrant: his aim was to depopulate his parish; to prevent the poor from obtaining a settlement; to make the workhouse a terror by placing it under the management of a bully; and by all kinds of chicanery to keep down the rates at whatever cost to the comfort and morality of the poor. this explains the view taken by arthur young, and generally accepted at the period, that the poor-law meant depopulation. workhouses had been started in the seventeenth century[ ] with the amiable intention of providing the industrious poor with work. children might be trained to industry and the pauper might be made self-supporting. workhouses were expected that is, to provide not only work but wages. defoe, in his _giving alms no charity_, pointed out the obvious objections to the workhouse considered as an institution capable of competing with the ordinary industries. workhouses, in fact, soon ceased to be profitable. their value, however, in supplying a test for destitution was recognised; and by an act of , parishes were allowed to set up workhouses, separately or in combination, and to strike off the lists of the poor those who refused to enter them. this was the germ of the later 'workhouse test.'[ ] when grievances arose, the invariable plan, as nicholls observes,[ ] was to increase the power of the justices. their discretion was regarded 'as a certain cure for every shortcoming of the law and every evil arising out of it.' the great report of traces this tendency[ ] to a clause in an act passed in the reign of william iii., which was intended to allow the justices to check the extravagance of parish officers. they were empowered to strike off persons improperly relieved. this incidental regulation, widened by subsequent interpretations, allowed the magistrates to order relief, and thereby introduced an incredible amount of demoralisation. the course was natural enough, and indeed apparently inevitable. the justices of the peace represented the only authority which could be called in to regulate abuses arising from the incapacity and narrow local interests of the multitudinous vestries. the schemes of improvement generally involved some plan for a larger area. if a hundred or a county were taken for the unit, the devices which depopulated a parish would no longer be applicable.[ ] the only scheme actually carried was embodied in 'gilbert's act' ( ), obtained by thomas gilbert ( - ), an agent of the duke of bridgewater, and an active advocate of poor-law reform in the house of commons. this scheme was intended as a temporary expedient during the distress caused by the american war; and a larger and more permanent scheme which it was to introduce failed to become law. it enabled parishes to combine if they chose to provide common workhouses, and to appoint 'guardians.' the justices, as usual, received more powers in order to suppress the harsh dealing of the old parochial authorities. the guardians, it was assumed, could always find 'work,' and they were to relieve the able-bodied without applying the workhouse test. the act, readily adopted, thus became a landmark in the growth of laxity.[ ] at the end of the century a rapid development of pauperism had taken place. the expense, as eden had to complain, had doubled in twenty years. this took place simultaneously with the great development of manufactures. it is not perhaps surprising, though it may be melancholy, that increase of wealth shall be accompanied by increase of pauperism. where there are many rich men, there will be a better field for thieves and beggars. a life of dependence becomes easier though it need not necessarily be adopted. whatever may have been the relation of the two phenomena, the social revolution made the old social arrangements more inadequate. great aggregations of workmen were formed in towns, which were still only villages in a legal sense. fluctuations of trade, due to war or speculation, brought distress to the improvident; and the old assumption that every man had a proper place in a small circle, where his neighbours knew all about him, was further than ever from being verified. one painful result was already beginning to show itself. neglected children in great towns had already excited compassion. thomas coram ( ?- ) had been shocked by the sight of dying children exposed in the streets of london, and succeeded in establishing the foundling hospital (founded in ). in , jonas hanway ( - ) obtained a law for boarding out children born within the bills of mortality. the demand for children's labour, produced by the factories, seemed naturally enough to offer a better chance for extending such charities. unfortunately among the people who took advantage of it were parish officials, eager to get children off their hands, and manufacturers concerned only to make money out of childish labour. hence arose the shameful system for which remedies (as i shall have to notice) had to be sought in a later generation. meanwhile the outbreak of the revolutionary war had made the question urgent. when manchester trade suffered, as eden tells us in his reports, many workmen enlisted in the army, and left their children to be supported by the parish. bad seasons followed in and , and there was great distress in the agricultural districts. the governing classes became alarmed. in december whitbread introduced a bill providing that the justices of the peace should fix a minimum rate of wages. upon a motion for the second reading, pitt made the famous speech ( th december) including the often-quoted statement that when a man had a family, relief should be 'a matter of right and honour, instead of a ground of opprobrium and contempt.'[ ] pitt had in the same speech shown his reading of adam smith by dwelling upon the general objections to state interference with wages, and had argued that more was to be gained by removing the restrictions upon the free movement of labour. he undertook to produce a comprehensive measure; and an elaborate bill of clauses was prepared in .[ ] the rates were to be used to supplement inadequate wages; 'schools of industry' were to be formed for the support of superabundant children; loans might be made to the poor for the purchase of a cow;[ ] and the possession of property was not to disqualify for the receiving relief. in short, the bill seems to have been a model of misapplied benevolence. the details were keenly criticised by bentham, and the bill never came to the birth. other topics were pressing enough at this time to account for the failure of a measure so vast in its scope. meanwhile something had to be done. on th may the berkshire magistrates had passed certain resolutions called from their place of meeting, the 'speenhamland act of parliament.' they provided that the rate of wages of a labourer should be increased in proportion to the price of corn and to the number of his family--a rule which, as eden observes, tended to discourage economy of food in times of scarcity. they also sanctioned the disastrous principle of paying part of the wages out of rates. an act passed in repealed the old restrictions upon out-door relief; and thus, during the hard times that were to follow, the poor-laws were adapted to produce the state of things in which, as cobbett says (in ) 'every labourer who has children is now regularly and constantly a pauper.'[ ] the result represents a curious compromise. the landowners, whether from benevolence or fear of revolution, desired to meet the terrible distress of the times. unfortunately their spasmodic interference was guided by no fixed principles, and acted upon a class of institutions not organised upon any definite system. the general effect seems to have been that the ratepayers, no longer allowed to 'depopulate,' sought to turn the compulsory stream of charity partly into their own pockets. if they were forced to support paupers, they could contrive to save the payment of wages. they could use the labour of the rate-supported pauper instead of employing independent workmen. the evils thus produced led before long to most important discussions.[ ] the ordinary view of the poor-law was inverted. the prominent evil was the reckless increase of a degraded population instead of the restriction of population. eden's own view is sufficiently indicative of the light in which the facts showed themselves to intelligent economists. as a disciple of adam smith, he accepts the rather vague doctrine of his master about the 'balance' between labour and capital. if labour exceeds capital, he says, the labourer must starve 'in spite of all political regulations.'[ ] he therefore looks with disfavour upon the whole poor-law system. it is too deeply rooted to be abolished, but he thinks that the amount to be raised should not be permitted to exceed the sum levied on an average of previous years. the only certain result of pitt's measure would be a vast expenditure upon a doubtful experiment: and one main purpose of his publication was to point out the objections to the plan. he desires what seemed at that time to be almost hopeless, a national system of education; but his main doctrine is the wisdom of reliance upon individual effort. the truth of the maxim '_pas trop gouverner_,' he says,[ ] has never been better illustrated than by the contrast between friendly societies and the poor-laws. friendly societies had been known, though they were still on a humble scale, from the beginning of the century, and had tended to diminish pauperism in spite of the poor-laws. eden gives many accounts of them. they seem to have suggested a scheme proposed by the worthy francis maseres[ ] ( - ) in for the establishment of life annuities. a bill to give effect to this scheme passed the house of commons in with the support of burke and savile, but was thrown out in the house of lords. in john acland (died ), a devonshire clergyman and justice of the peace, proposed a scheme for uniting the whole nation into a kind of friendly society for the support of the poor when out of work and in old age. it was criticised by john howlett ( - ), a clergyman who wrote much upon the poor-laws. he attributes the growth of pauperism to the rise of prices, and calculates that out of an increased expenditure of £ , , £ , had been raised by the rich, and the remainder 'squeezed out of the flesh, blood, and bones of the poor,' an act for establishing acland's crude scheme failed next year in parliament.[ ] the merit of the societies, according to eden, was their tendency to stimulate self-help; and how to preserve that merit, while making them compulsory, was a difficult problem. i have said enough to mark a critical and characteristic change of opinion. one source of evil pointed out by contemporaries had been the absence of any central power which could regulate and systematise the action of the petty local bodies. the very possibility of such organisation, however, seems to have been simply inconceivable. when the local bodies became lavish instead of over-frugal, the one remedy suggested was to abolish the system altogether. notes: [ ] see _dictionary of national biography_. [ ] _works_, i. . [ ] see sir g. nicholls's _history of the poor-law_, . a new edition, with life by h. g. willink, appeared in . [ ] _history_, i. . [ ] m'culloch's note to _wealth of nations_, p. . m'culloch in his appendix makes some sensible remarks upon the absence of any properly constituted parochial 'tribunal.' [ ] _wealth of nations_, bk. i. ch. x. [ ] see passage quoted in eden's _history_, i. . [ ] thomas firmin ( - ), a philanthropist, whose socinianism did not exclude him from the friendship of such liberal bishops as tillotson and fowler, started a workhouse in . [ ] nicholls ( ), ii. . [ ] _ibid._ ( ), ii. . [ ] _report_, p. . [ ] william hay, for example, carried resolutions in the house of commons in , but failed to carry a bill which had this object. see eden's _history_, i. . cooper in proposed to make the hundred the unit.--nicholls's _history_, i. . fielding proposes a similar change in london. dean tucker speaks of the evil of the limited area in his _manifold causes of the increase of the poor_ ( ). [ ] nicholls, ii. . [ ] _parl. hist._ xxxii. . [ ] a full abstract is given in edens _history_, iii. ccclxiii. etc. [ ] bentham observes (_works_, viii. ) that the cow will require the three acres to keep it. [ ] cobbett's _political works_, vi. [ ] i need only note here that the first edition of malthus's _essay_ appeared in , the year after eden's publication. [ ] eden's _history_, i. . [ ] _ibid._ i. . [ ] maseres, an excellent whig, a good mathematician, and a respected lawyer, is perhaps best known at present from his portrait in charles lamb's _old benchers_. [ ] it maybe noticed as an anticipation of modern schemes that in paine proposed a system of 'old age pensions,' for which the necessary funds were to be easily obtained when universal peace had abolished all military charges. see _state trials_, xxv. . ii. the police the system of 'self-government' showed its weak side in this direction. it meant that an important function was intrusted to small bodies, quite incompetent of acting upon general principles, and perfectly capable of petty jobbing, when unrestrained by any effective supervision. in another direction the same tendency was even more strikingly illustrated. municipal institutions were almost at their lowest point of decay. manchester and birmingham were two of the largest and most rapidly growing towns. by the end of the century manchester had a population of , and birmingham of , . both were ruled, as far as they were ruled, by the remnants of old manorial institutions. aikin[ ] observes that 'manchester (in ) remains an open town; destitute (probably to its advantage) of a corporation, and unrepresented in parliament.' it was governed by a 'boroughreeve' and two constables elected annually at the court-leet. william hutton, the quaint historian of birmingham, tells us in that the town was still legally a village, with a high and low bailiff, a 'high and low taster,' two 'affeerers,' and two 'leather-sealers,' in it had been provided with a 'court of requests' for the recovery of small debts, and in with a body of commissioners to provide for lighting the town. this was the system by which, with some modifications, birmingham was governed till after the reform bill.[ ] hutton boasts[ ] that no town was better governed or had fewer officers. 'a town without a charter,' he says, 'is a town without a shackle.' perhaps he changed his opinions when his warehouses were burnt in , and the town was at the mercy of the mob till a regiment of 'light horse' could be called in. aikin and hutton, however, reflect the general opinion at a time when the town corporations had become close and corrupt bodies, and were chiefly 'shackles' upon the energy of active members of the community. i must leave the explanation of this decay to historians. i will only observe that what would need explanation would seem to be rather the absence than the presence of corruption. the english borough was not stimulated by any pressure from a central government; nor was it a semi-independent body in which every citizen had the strongest motives for combining to support its independence against neighbouring towns or invading nobles. the lower classes were ignorant, and probably would be rather hostile than favourable to any such modest interference with dirt and disorder as would commend themselves to the officials. naturally, power was left to the little cliques of prosperous tradesmen, who formed close corporations, and spent the revenues upon feasts or squandered them by corrupt practices. here, as in the poor-law, the insufficiency of the administrative body suggests to contemporaries, not its reform, but its superfluity. the most striking account of some of the natural results is in colquhoun's[ ] _treatise on the police of the metropolis_. patrick colquhoun ( - ), an energetic scot, was born at dumbarton in , had been in business at glasgow, where he was provost in and , and in settled in london. in he obtained through dundas an appointment to one of the new police magistracies created by an act of that year. he took an active part in many schemes of social reform; and his book gives an account of the investigations by which his schemes were suggested and justified. it must be said, however, parenthetically, that his statistics scarcely challenge implicit confidence. like sinclair and eden, he saw the importance of obtaining facts and figures, but his statements are suspiciously precise and elaborate.[ ] the broad facts are clear enough. london was, he says, three miles broad and twenty-five in circumference. the population in was , . it was the largest town, and apparently the most chaotic collection of dwellings in the civilised world. there were, as colquhoun asserts[ ] in an often-quoted passage, , people in it, who got up every morning without knowing how they would get through the day. there were public-houses, and , women supported, wholly or partly, by prostitution. the revenues raised by crime amounted, as he calculates, to an annual sum of, £ , , . there were whole classes of professional thieves, more or less organised in gangs, which acted in support of each other. there were gangs on the river, who boarded ships at night, or lay in wait round the warehouses. the government dockyards were systematically plundered, and the same article often sold four times over to the officials. the absence of patrols gave ample chance to the highwaymen then peculiar to england. their careers, commemorated in the _newgate calendar_, had a certain flavour of robin hood romance, and their ranks were recruited from dissipated apprentices and tradesmen in difficulty. the fields round london were so constantly plundered that the rent was materially lowered. half the hackney coachmen, he says,[ ] were in league with thieves. the number of receiving houses for stolen goods had increased in twenty years from to .[ ] coining was a flourishing trade, and according to colquhoun employed several thousand persons.[ ] gambling had taken a fresh start about and [ ]; and the keepers of tables had always money enough at command to make convictions almost impossible. french refugees at the revolution had introduced _rouge et noir_; and colquhoun estimates the sums yearly lost in gambling-houses at over £ , , . the gamblers might perhaps appeal not only to the practices of their betters in the days of fox, but to the public lotteries. colquhoun had various correspondents, who do not venture to propose the abolition of a system which sanctioned the practice, but who hope to diminish the facility for supplementary betting on the results of the official drawing. the war had tended to increase the number of loose and desperate marauders who swarmed in the vast labyrinth of london streets. when we consider the nature of the police by which these evils were to be checked, and the criminal law which they administered, the wonder is less that there were sometimes desperate riots (as in ) than that london should have been ever able to resist a mob. colquhoun, though a patriotic briton, has to admit that the french despots had at last created an efficient police. the emperor, joseph ii., he says, inquired for an austrian criminal supposed to have escaped to paris. you will find him, replied the head of the french police, at no. of such a street in vienna on the second-floor room looking upon such a church; and there he was. in england a criminal could hide himself in a herd of his like, occasionally disturbed by the inroad of a 'bow street runner,' the emissary of the 'trading justices,' formerly represented by the two fieldings. an act of created seven new offices, to one of which colquhoun had been appointed. they had one hundred and eighty-nine paid officers under them. there were also about one thousand constables. these were small tradesmen or artisans upon whom the duty was imposed without remuneration for a year by their parish, that is, by one of seventy independent bodies. a 'tyburn ticket,' given in reward for obtaining the conviction of a criminal exempted a man from the discharge of such offices, and could be bought for from £ to £ . there were also two thousand watchmen receiving from - / d. up to s. a night. these were the true successors of dogberry; often infirm or aged persons appointed to keep them out of the workhouse. the management of this distracted force thus depended upon a miscellaneous set of bodies; the paid magistrates, the officials of the city, the justices of the peace for middlesex, and the seventy independent parishes. the law was as defective as the administration. colquhoun represents the philanthropic impulse of the day, and notices[ ] that in joseph ii. had abolished capital punishment. his chief authority for more merciful methods is beccaria; and it is worth remarking, for reasons which will appear hereafter, that he does not in this connection refer to bentham, although he speaks enthusiastically[ ] of bentham's model prison, the panopticon. colquhoun shows how strangely the severity of the law was combined with its extreme capaciousness. he quotes bacon[ ] for the statement that the law was a 'heterogeneous mass concocted too often on the spur of the moment,' and gives sufficient proofs of its truth. he desires, for example, a law to punish receivers of stolen goods, and says that there were excellent laws in existence. unfortunately one law applied exclusively to the case of pewter-pots, and another exclusively to the precious metals; neither could be used as against receivers of horses or bank notes.[ ] so a man indicted under an act against stealing from ships on navigable rivers escaped, because the barge from which he stole happened to be aground. gangs could afford to corrupt witnesses or to pay knavish lawyers skilled in applying these vagaries of legislation. juries also disliked convicting when the penalty for coining sixpence was the same as the penalty for killing a mother. it followed, as he shows by statistics, that half the persons committed for trial escaped by petty chicanery or corruption, or the reluctance of juries to convict for capital offences. only about one-fifth of the capital sentences were executed; and many were pardoned on condition of enlisting to improve the morals of the army. the criminals, who were neither hanged nor allowed to escape, were sent to prisons, which were schools of vice. after the independence of the american colonies, the system of transportation to australia had begun (in ); but the expense was enormous, and prisoners were huddled together in the hulks at woolwich and portsmouth, which had been used as a temporary expedient. thence they were constantly discharged, to return to their old practices. a man, says colquhoun,[ ] would deserve a statue who should carry out a plan for helping discharged prisoners. to meet these evils, colquhoun proposes various remedies, such as a metropolitan police, a public prosecutor, or even a codification or revision of the criminal code, which he sees is likely to be delayed. he also suggested, in a pamphlet of , a kind of charity organisation society to prevent the waste of funds. many other pamphlets of similar tendencies show his active zeal in promoting various reforms. colquhoun was in close correspondence with bentham from the year ,[ ] and bentham helped him by drawing the thames police act, passed in , to give effect to some of the suggestions in the _treatise_.[ ] another set of abuses has a special connection with bentham's activity. bentham had been led in to attend to the prison question by reading howard's book on _prisons_; and he refers to the 'venerable friend who had lived an apostle and died a martyr.'[ ] the career of john howard ( - ) is familiar. the son of a london tradesman, he had inherited an estate in bedfordshire. there he erected model cottages and village schools; and, on becoming sheriff of the county in , was led to attend to abuses in the prisons. two acts of parliament were passed in to remedy some of the evils exposed, and he pursued the inquiry at home and abroad. his results are given in his _state of the prisons in england and wales_ ( , fourth edition, ), and his _account of the principal lazarettos in europe_ ( ). the prisoners, he says, had little food, sometimes a penny loaf a day, and sometimes nothing; no water, no fresh air, no sewers, and no bedding. the stench was appalling, and gaol fever killed more than died on the gallows. debtors and felons, men, women and children, were huddled together; often with lunatics, who were shown by the gaolers for money. 'garnish' was extorted; the gaolers kept drinking-taps; gambling flourished: and prisoners were often cruelly ironed, and kept for long periods before trial. at hull the assizes had only been held once in seven years, and afterwards once in three. it is a comfort to find that the whole number of prisoners in england and wales amounted, in , to about , of whom were debtors, felons, and petty offenders. an act passed in provided for the erection of two penitentiaries. howard was to be a supervisor. the failure to carry out this act led, as we shall see, to one of bentham's most characteristic undertakings. one peculiarity must be noted. howard found prisons on the continent where the treatment was bad and torture still occasionally practised; but he nowhere found things so bad as in england. in holland the prisons were so neat and clean as to make it difficult to believe that they were prisons: and they were used as models for the legislation of . one cause of this unenviable distinction of english prisons had been indicated by an earlier investigation. general oglethorpe ( - ) had been started in his philanthropic career by obtaining a committee of the house of commons in to inquire into the state of the gaols. the foundation of the colony of georgia as an outlet for the population was one result of the inquiry. it led, in the first place, however, to a trial of persons accused of atrocious cruelties at the fleet prison.[ ] the trial was abortive. it appeared in the course of the proceedings that the fleet prison was a 'freehold,' a patent for rebuilding it had been granted to sir jeremy whichcot under charles ii., and had been sold to one higgins, who resold it to other persons for £ . the proprietors made their investment pay by cruel ill-treatment of the prisoners, oppressing the poor and letting off parts of the prison to dealers in drink. this was the general plan in the prisons examined by howard, and helps to account for the gross abuses. it is one more application of the general system. as the patron was owner of a living, and the officer of his commission, the keeper of a prison was owner of his establishment. the paralysis of administration which prevailed throughout the country made it natural to farm out paupers to the master of a workhouse, and prisoners to the proprietor of a gaol. the state of prisoners may be inferred not only from howard's authentic record but from the fictions of fielding, smollett and goldsmith; and the last echoes of the same complaints may be found in _pickwick_ and _little dorrit_. the marshalsea described in the last was also a proprietary concern. we shall hereafter see how bentham proposed to treat the evils revealed by oglethorpe and howard. notes: [ ] aikin's _country round manchester_. [ ] bunce's _history of the corporation of birmingham_ ( ). [ ] _history of birmingham_ ( nd edition), p. . [ ] the first edition, , the sixth, from which i quote, in . in benthams _works_, x. , it is said that in , copies of this book had been sold. [ ] in colquhoun published an elaborate account of the _resources of the british empire_, showing similar qualities. [ ] _police_, p. . [ ] _police_, p. . [ ] _ibid._ p. . [ ] _ibid._ p. . [ ] _ibid._ p. . [ ] _police_, p. . [ ] _ibid._ p. . [ ] _ibid._ p. . [ ] _ibid._ p. . [ ] _police_, p. . [ ] bentham's _works_, x. _seq._ [ ] _ibid._ v. . [ ] bentham's _works_, iv. , . [ ] cobbett's _state trials_, xvii. - . iii. education another topic treated by colquhoun marks the initial stage of controversies which were soon to grow warm. colquhoun boasts of the number of charities for which london was already conspicuous. a growing facility for forming associations of all kinds, political, religious, scientific, and charitable, is an obvious characteristic of modern progress. where in earlier times a college or a hospital had to be endowed by a founder and invested by charter with corporate personality, it is now necessary only to call a meeting, form a committee, and appeal for subscriptions. societies of various kinds had sprung up during the century. artists, men of science, agriculturists, and men of literary tastes, had founded innumerable academies and 'philosophical institutes.' the great london hospitals, dependent upon voluntary subscriptions, had been founded during the first half of the century. colquhoun counts the annual revenue of various charitable institutions at £ , , besides which the endowments produced £ , , and the poor-rates £ , .[ ] among these a considerable number were intended to promote education. here, as in some other cases, it seems that people at the end of the century were often taking up an impulse given a century before. so the society for promoting christian knowledge, founded in , and the society for the propagation of the gospel, founded in , were supplemented by the church missionary society and the religious tract society, both founded in . the societies for the reformation of manners, prevalent at the end of the seventeenth century, were taken as a model by wilberforce and his friends at the end of the eighteenth.[ ] in the same way, the first attempts at providing a general education for the poor had been made by archbishop tenison, who founded a parochial school about in order 'to check the growth of popery.' charity schools became common during the early part of the eighteenth century and received various endowments. they were attacked as tending to teach the poor too much--a very needless alarm--and also by free thinkers, such as mandeville, as intended outworks of the established church. this last objection was a foretaste of the bitter religious controversies which were to accompany the growth of an educational system. colquhoun says that there were endowed schools in london, from christ's hospital downwards, educating about children; parish schools with about children, and 'private schools.' the teaching was, of course, very imperfect, and in a report of a committee of the house of commons in , it is calculated that about half the children in a large district were entirely uneducated. there was, of course, nothing in england deserving the name of a system in educational more than in any other matters. the grammar schools throughout the country provided more or less for the classes which could not aspire to the public schools and universities. about a third of the boys at christ's hospital were, as coleridge tells us, sons of clergymen.[ ] the children of the poor were either not educated, or picked up their letters at some charity school or such a country dame's school as is described by shenstone. a curious proof, however, of rising interest in the question is given by the sunday schools movement at the end of the century. robert raikes ( - ), a printer in gloucester and proprietor of a newspaper, joined with a clergyman to set up a school in at a total cost of s. d. a week. within three or four years the plan was taken up everywhere, and the worthy raikes, whose newspaper had spread the news, found himself revered as a great pioneer of philanthropy. wesley took up the scheme warmly; bishops condescended to approve; the king and queen were interested, and within three or four years the number of learners was reckoned at two or three hundred thousand. a sunday school association was formed in with well known men of business at its head. queen charlotte's friend, mrs. trimmer ( - ), took up the work near london, and hannah more ( - ) in somersetshire. hannah more gives a strange account of the utter absence of any civilising agencies in the district around cheddar where she and her sisters laboured. she was accused of 'methodism' and a leaning to jacobinism, although her views were of the most moderate kind. she wished the poor to be able to read their bibles and to be qualified for domestic duties, but not to write or to be enabled to read tom paine or be encouraged to rise above their position. the literary light of the whigs, dr. parr ( - ), showed his liberality by arguing that the poor ought to be taught, but admitted that the enterprise had its limits. the 'deity himself had fixed a great gulph between them and the poor.' a scanty instruction given on sundays alone was not calculated to facilitate the passage of that gulf. by the end of the century, however, signs of a more systematic movement were showing themselves. bell and lancaster, of whom i shall have to speak, were rival claimants for the honour of initiating a new departure in education. the controversy which afterwards raged between the supporters of the two systems marked a complete revolution of opinion. meanwhile, although the need of schools was beginning to be felt, the appliances for education in england were a striking instance of the general inefficiency in every department which needed combined action. in scotland the system of parish schools was one obvious cause of the success of so many of the scotsmen which excited the jealousy of southern competitors. even in ireland there appears to have been a more efficient set of schools. and yet, one remark must be suggested. there is probably no period in english history at which a greater number of poor men have risen to distinction. the greatest beyond comparison of self-taught poets was burns ( - ). the political writer who was at the time producing the most marked effect was thomas paine ( - ), son of a small tradesman. his successor in influence was william cobbett ( - ), son of an agricultural labourer, and one of the pithiest of all english writers. william gifford ( - ), son of a small tradesman in devonshire, was already known as a satirist and was to lead conservatives as editor of the _the quarterly review_. john dalton ( - ), son of a poor weaver, was one of the most distinguished men of science. porson ( - ), the greatest greek scholar of his time, was son of a norfolk parish clerk, though sagacious patrons had sent him to eton in his fifteenth year. the oxford professor of arabic, joseph white ( - ), was son of a poor weaver in the country and a man of reputation for learning, although now remembered only for a rather disreputable literary squabble. robert owen and joseph lancaster, both sprung from the ranks, were leaders in social movements. i have already spoken of such men as watt, telford, and rennie; and smaller names might be added in literature, science, and art. the individualist virtue of 'self-help' was not confined to successful money-making or to the wealthier classes. one cause of the literary excellence of burns, paine, and cobbett may be that, when literature was less centralised, a writer was less tempted to desert his natural dialect. i mention the fact, however, merely to suggest that, whatever were then the difficulties of getting such schooling as is now common, an energetic lad even in the most neglected regions might force his way to the front. notes: [ ] _police_, p. . [ ] wilberforce started on this plan a 'society for enforcing the king's proclamation' in , which was supplemented by the society for 'the suppression of vice' in . i don't suppose that vice was much suppressed. sydney smith ridiculed its performances in the _edinburgh_ for . the article is in his works. a more interesting society was that for 'bettering the condition of the poor,' started by sir thomas bernard and wilberforce in . [ ] _biographia literaria_ ( ), ii. . iv. the slave-trade i have thus noticed the most conspicuous of the contemporary problems which, as we shall see, provided the main tasks of bentham and his followers. one other topic must be mentioned as in more ways than one characteristic of the spirit of the time. the parliamentary attack upon the slave-trade began just before the outbreak of the revolution. it is generally described as an almost sudden awakening of the national conscience. that it appealed to that faculty is undeniable, and, moreover, it is at least a remarkable instance of legislative action upon purely moral grounds. it is true that in this case the conscience was the less impeded because it was roused chiefly by the sins of men's neighbours. the slave-trading class was a comparative excrescence. their trade could be attacked without such widespread interference with the social order as was implied, for example, in remedying the grievances of paupers or of children in factories. the conflict with morality, again, was so plain as to need no demonstration. it seems to be a questionable logic which assumes the merit of a reformer to be in proportion to the flagrancy of the evil assailed. the more obvious the case, surely the less the virtue needed in the assailant. however this may be, no one can deny the moral excellence of such men as wilberforce and clarkson, nor the real change in the moral standard implied by the success of their agitation. but another question remains, which is indicated by a later controversy. the followers of wilberforce and of clarkson were jealous of each other. each party tried to claim the chief merit for its hero. each was, i think, unjust to the other. the underlying motive was the desire to obtain credit for the 'evangelicals' or their rivals as the originators of a great movement. without touching the personal details it is necessary to say something of the general sentiments implied. in his history of the agitation,[ ] clarkson gives a quaint chart, showing how the impulse spread from various centres till it converged upon a single area, and his facts are significant. that a great change had taken place is undeniable. protestant england had bargained with catholic spain in the middle of the century for the right of supplying slaves to america, while at the peace of english statesmen were endeavouring to secure a combination of all civilised powers against the trade. smollett, in , makes the fortune of his hero, roderick random, by placing him as mate of a slave-ship under the ideal sailor, bowling. about the same time john newton ( - ), afterwards the venerated teacher of cowper and the evangelicals, was in command of a slaver, and enjoying 'sweeter and more frequent hours of divine communion' than he had elsewhere known. he had no scruples, though he had the grace to pray 'to be fixed in a more humane calling.' in later years he gave the benefit of his experience to the abolitionists.[ ] a new sentiment, however, was already showing itself. clarkson collects various instances. southern's oroonoco, founded on a story by mrs. behn, and steele's story of inkle and yarico in an early _spectator_, pope's poor indian in the _essay on man_, and allusions by thomson, shenstone, and savage, show that poets and novelists could occasionally turn the theme to account. hutcheson, the moralist, incidentally condemns slavery; and divines such as bishops hayter and warburton took the same view in sermons before the society for the propagation of christian knowledge. johnson, 'last of the tories' though he was, had a righteous hatred for the system.[ ] he toasted the next insurrection of negroes in the west indies, and asked why we always heard the 'loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes'? thomas day ( - ), as an ardent follower of rousseau, wrote the _dying negro_ in , and, in the same spirit, denounced the inconsistencies of slave-holding champions of american liberty. such isolated utterances showed a spreading sentiment. the honour of the first victory in the practical application must be given to granville sharp[ ] ( - ), one of the most charming and, in the best sense, 'quixotic' of men. in his exertions had led to the famous decision by lord mansfield in the case of the negro somerset.[ ] sharp in became chairman of the committee formed to attack the slave-trade by collecting the evidence of which wilberforce made use in parliament. the committee was chiefly composed of quakers; as indeed, quakers are pretty sure to be found in every philanthropic movement of the period. i must leave the explanation to the historian of religious movements; but the fact is characteristic. the quakers had taken the lead in america. the quaker was both practical and a mystic. his principles put him outside of the ordinary political interests, and of the military world. he directed his activities to helping the poor, the prisoner, and the oppressed. among the quakers of the eighteenth century were john woolman ( - ), a writer beloved by the congenial charles lamb and antoine benezet ( - ), born in france, and son of a french refugee who settled in philadelphia. when clarkson wrote the prize essay upon the slave-trade ( ), which started his career, it was from benezet's writings that he obtained his information. by their influence the pennsylvanian quakers were gradually led to pronounce against slavery[ ]; and the first anti-slavery society was founded in philadelphia in , the year in which the skirmish at lexington began the war of independence. that suggests another influence. the rationalists of the eighteenth century were never tired of praising the quakers. the quakers were, by their essential principles, in favour of absolute toleration, and their attitude towards dogma was not dissimilar. 'rationalisation' and 'spiritualisation' are in some directions similar. the general spread of philanthropic sentiment, which found its formula in the _rights of man_, fell in with the quaker hatred of war and slavery. voltaire heartily admires barclay, the quaker apologist. it is, therefore, not surprising to find the names of the deists, franklin and paine, associated with quakers in this movement. franklin was an early president of the new association, and paine wrote an article to support the early agitation.[ ] paine himself was a quaker by birth, who had dropped his early creed while retaining a respect for its adherents. when the agitation began it was in fact generally approved by all except the slave-traders. sound whig divines, watson and paley and parr; unitarians such as priestley and gilbert wakefield and william smith; and the great methodist, john wesley, were united on this point. fox and burke and pitt rivalled each other in condemning the system. the actual delay was caused partly by the strength of the commercial interests in parliament, and partly by the growth of the anti-jacobin sentiment. the attempt to monopolise the credit of the movement by any particular sect is absurd. wilberforce and his friends might fairly claim the glory of having been worthy representatives of a new spirit of philanthropy; but most certainly they did not create or originate it. the general growth of that spirit throughout the century must be explained, so far as 'explanation' is possible, by wider causes. it was, as i must venture to assume, a product of complex social changes which were bringing classes and nations into closer contact, binding them together by new ties, and breaking up the old institutions which had been formed under obsolete conditions. the true moving forces were the same whether these representatives announced the new gospel of the 'rights of man'; or appealed to the traditional rights of englishmen; or rallied supporters of the old order so far as it still provided the most efficient machinery for the purpose. the revival of religion under wesley and the evangelicals meant the direction of the stream into one channel. the paralytic condition of the church of england disqualified it for appropriating the new energy. the men who directed the movements were mainly stimulated by moral indignation at the gross abuses, and the indolence of the established priesthood naturally gave them an anti-sacerdotal turn. they simply accepted the old protestant tradition. they took no interest in the intellectual questions involved. rationalism, according to them, meant simply an attack upon the traditional sanctions of morality; and it scarcely occurred to them to ask for any philosophical foundation of their creed. wilberforce's book, _a practical view_, attained an immense popularity, and is characteristic of the position. wilberforce turns over the infidel to be confuted by paley, whom he takes to be a conclusive reasoner. for himself he is content to show what needed little proof, that the so-called christians of the day could act as if they had never heard of the new testament. the evangelical movement had in short no distinct relation to speculative movements. it took the old tradition for granted, and it need not here be further considered. one other remark is suggested by the agitation against the slave-trade. it set a precedent for agitation of a kind afterwards familiar. the committee appealed to the country, and got up petitions. sound tories complained of them in the early slave-trade debates, as attempts to dictate to parliament by democratic methods. political agitators had formed associations, and found a convenient instrument in the 'county meetings,' which seems to have possessed a kind of indefinite legal character.[ ] such associations of course depend for the great part of their influence upon the press. the circulation of literature was one great object. paine's _rights of man_ was distributed by the revolutionary party, and hannah more wrote popular tracts to persuade the poor that they had no grievances. it is said that two millions of her little tracts, 'village politics by will chip,' the 'shepherd of salisbury plain,' and so forth were circulated. the demand, indeed, showed rather the eagerness of the rich to get them read than the eagerness of the poor to read them. they failed to destroy paine's influence, but they were successful enough to lead to the foundation of the religious tract society. the attempt to influence the poor by cheap literature shows that these opinions were beginning to demand consideration. cobbett and many others were soon to use the new weapon. meanwhile the newspapers circulated among the higher ranks were passing through a new phase, which must be noted. the great newspapers were gaining power. the _morning chronicle_ was started by woodfall in , the _morning post_ and _morning herald_ by dudley bate in and , and the _times_ by walter in . the modern editor was to appear during the war. stoddart and barnes of the _times_, perry and black of the _morning chronicle_, were to become important politically. the revolutionary period marks the transition from the old-fashioned newspaper, carried on by a publisher and an author, to the modern newspaper, which represents a kind of separate organism, elaborately 'differentiated' and worked by a whole army of co-operating editors, correspondents, reporters, and contributors. finally, one remark may be made. the literary class in england was not generally opposed to the governing classes. the tone of johnson's whole circle was conservative. in fact, since harley's time, government had felt the need of support in the press, and politicians on both sides had their regular organs. the opposition might at any time become the government; and their supporters in the press, poor men who were only too dependent, had no motive for going beyond the doctrines of their principals. they might be bought by opponents, or they might be faithful to a patron. they did not form a band of outcasts, whose hand would be against every one. the libel law was severe enough, but there had been no licensing system since the early days of william and mary. a man could publish what he chose at his own peril. when the current of popular feeling was anti-revolutionary, government might obtain a conviction, but even in the worst times there was a chance that juries might be restive. editors had at times to go to prison, but even then the paper was not suppressed. cobbett, for example, continued to publish his _registrar_ during an imprisonment of two years ( - ). editors had very serious anxieties, but they could express with freedom any opinion which had the support of a party. english liberty was so far a reality that a very free discussion of the political problems of the day was permitted and practised. the english author, therefore, as such, had not the bitterness of a french man of letters, unless, indeed, he had the misfortune to be an uncompromising revolutionist. notes: [ ] _history of the rise, progress, and accomplishment of the abolition of the slave-trade by the british parliament_ ( ). second enlarged edition . the chart was one cause of the offence taken by wilberforce's sons. [ ] cf. sir j. stephen's _ecclesiastical biography_ (the evangelical succession). [ ] see passages collected in birkbeck hill's _boswell_, ii. - , and cf. iii. - . boswell was attracted by clarkson, but finally made up his mind that the abolition of the slave-trade would 'shut the gates of mercy on mankind.' [ ] see the account of g. sharp in sir j. stephen's _ecclesiastical biography_ (clapham sect). [ ] cobbett's _state trials_, xx. - . [ ] the society determined in 'to disown' any friend concerned in the slave-trade. [ ] mr. conway, in his _life of paine_, attributes, i think, a little more to his hero than is consistent with due regard to his predecessors; but, in any case, he took an early part in the movement. [ ] see upon this subject mr. jephson's interesting book on _the platform_. v. the french revolution the english society which i have endeavoured to characterise was now to be thrown into the vortex of the revolutionary wars. the surpassing dramatic interest of the french revolution has tended to obscure our perception of the continuity of even english history. it has been easy to ascribe to the contagion of french example political movements which were already beginning in england and which were modified rather than materially altered by our share in the great european convulsion. the impression made upon englishmen by the french revolution is, however, in the highest degree characteristic. the most vehement sympathies and antipathies were aroused, and showed at least what principles were congenial to the various english parties. to praise or blame the revolution, as if it could be called simply good or bad, is for the historian as absurd as to praise or blame an earthquake. it was simply inevitable under the conditions. we may, of course, take it as an essential stage in a social evolution, which if described as progress is therefore to be blessed, or if as degeneration may provoke lamentation. we may, if we please, ask whether superior statesmanship might have attained the good results without the violent catastrophes, or whether a wise and good man who could appreciate the real position would have approved or condemned the actual policy. but to answer such problems with any confidence would imply a claim to a quasi-omniscience. partisans at the time, however, answered them without hesitation, and saw in the revolution the dawn of a new era of reason and justice, or the outburst of the fires of hell. their view is at any rate indicative of their own position. the extreme opinions need no exposition. they are represented by the controversy between burke and paine. the general doctrine of the 'rights of men'--that all men are by nature free and equal--covered at least the doctrine that the inequality and despotism of the existing order was hateful, and people with a taste for abstract principles accepted this short cut to political wisdom. the 'minor' premise being obviously true, they took the major for granted. to burke, who idealised the traditional element in the british constitution, and so attached an excessive importance to historical continuity, the new doctrine seemed to imply the breaking up of the very foundations of order and the pulverisation of society. burke and paine both assumed too easily that the dogmas which they defended expressed the real and ultimate beliefs, and that the belief was the cause, not the consequence, of the political condition. without touching upon the logic of either position, i may notice how the problem presented itself to the average english politician whose position implied acceptance of traditional compromises and who yet prided himself on possessing the liberties which were now being claimed by frenchmen. the whig could heartily sympathise with the french revolution so long as it appeared to be an attempt to assimilate british principles. when fox hailed the fall of the bastille as the greatest and best event that had ever happened, he was expressing a generous enthusiasm shared by all the ardent and enlightened youth of the time. the french, it seemed, were abolishing an arbitrary despotism and adopting the principles of magna charta and the 'habeas corpus' act. difficulties, however, already suggested themselves to the true whig. would the french, as young asked just after the same event, 'copy the constitution of england, freed from its faults, or attempt, from theory, to frame something absolutely speculative'?[ ] on that issue depended the future of the country. it was soon decided in the sense opposed to young's wishes. the reign of terror alienated the average whig. but though the argument from atrocities is the popular one, the opposition was really more fundamental. burke put the case, savagely and coarsely enough, in his 'letter to a noble lord.' how would the duke of bedford like to be treated as the revolutionists were treating the nobility in france? the duke might be a sincere lover of political liberty, but he certainly would not be prepared to approve the confiscation of his estates. the aristocratic whigs, dependent for their whole property and for every privilege which they prized upon ancient tradition and prescription, could not really be in favour of sweeping away the whole complex social structure, levelling windsor castle as burke put it in his famous metaphor, and making a 'bedford level' of the whole country. the whigs had to disavow any approval of the jacobins; mackintosh, who had given his answer to burke's diatribes, met burke himself on friendly terms ( th july ), and in took an opportunity of public recantation. he only expressed the natural awakening of the genuine whig to the aspects of the case which he had hitherto ignored. the effect upon the middle-class whigs is, however, more to my purpose. it may be illustrated by the history of john horne tooke[ ] ( - ), who at this time represented what may be called the home-bred british radicalism. he was the son of a london tradesman, who had distinguished himself by establishing, and afterwards declining to enforce, certain legal rights against frederick prince of wales. the prince recognised the tradesman's generosity by making his antagonist purveyor to his household. a debt of some thousand pounds was thus run up before the prince's death which was never discharged. possibly the son's hostility to the royal family was edged by this circumstance. john horne, forced to take orders in order to hold a living, soon showed himself to have been intended by nature for the law. he took up the cause of wilkes in the early part of the reign; defended him energetically in later years; and in helped to start the 'society for supporting the bill of rights.' he then attacked wilkes, who, as he maintained, misapplied for his own private use the funds subscribed for public purposes to this society; and set up a rival 'constitutional society.' in , as spokesman of this body, he denounced the 'king's troops' for 'inhumanly murdering' their fellow-subjects at lexington for the sole crime of 'preferring death to slavery.' he was imprisoned for the libel, and thus became a martyr to the cause. when the country associations were formed in to protest against the abuses revealed by the war, horne became a member of the 'society for constitutional information,' of which major cartwright--afterwards the revered, but rather tiresome, patriarch of the radicals--was called the 'father.' horne tooke (as he was now named), by these and other exhibitions of boundless pugnacity, became a leader among the middle-class whigs, who found their main support among london citizens, such as beckford, troutbeck and oliver; supported them in his later days; and after the american war, preferred pitt, as an advocate of parliamentary reform, to fox, the favourite of the aristocratic whigs. he denounced the fox coalition ministry, and in later years opposed fox at westminster. the 'society for constitutional information' was still extant in the revolutionary period, and tooke, a bluff, jovial companion, who had by this time got rid of his clerical character, often took the chair at the taverns where they met to talk sound politics over their port. the revolution infused new spirit into politics. in march [ ] tooke's society passed a vote of thanks to paine for the first part of his _rights of man_. next year thomas hardy, a radical shoemaker, started a 'corresponding society.' others sprang up throughout the country, especially in the manufacturing towns.[ ] these societies took paine for their oracle, and circulated his writings as their manifesto. they communicated occasionally with horne tooke's society, which more or less sympathised with them. the whigs of the upper sphere started the 'friends of the people' in april , in order to direct the discontent into safer channels. grey, sheridan and erskine were members; fox sympathised but declined to join; mackintosh was secretary; and sir philip francis drew up the opening address, citing the authority of pitt and blackstone, and declaring that the society wished 'not to change but to restore.'[ ] it remonstrated cautiously with the other societies, and only excited their distrust. grey, as its representative, made a motion for parliamentary reform which was rejected (may ) by two hundred and eighty-two to forty-one. later motions in may and april showed that, for the present, parliamentary reform was out of the question. meanwhile the english jacobins got up a 'convention' which met at edinburgh at the end of . the very name was alarming: the leaders were tried and transported; the cruelty of the sentences and the severity of the judges, especially braxfield, shocked such men as parr and jeffrey, and unsuccessful appeals for mercy were made in parliament. the habeas corpus act was suspended in : horne tooke and hardy were both arrested and tried for high treason in november. an english jury fortunately showed itself less subservient than the scottish; the judge was scrupulously fair: and both hardy and horne tooke were acquitted. the societies, however, though they were encouraged for a time, were attacked by severe measures passed by pitt in . the 'friends of the people' ceased to exist the seizure of the committee of the corresponding societies in put an end to their activity. a report presented to parliament in [ ] declares that the societies had gone to dangerous lengths: they had communicated with the french revolutionists and with the 'united irishmen' (founded ); and societies of 'united englishmen' and 'united scotsmen' had had some concern in the mutinies of the fleet in and in the irish rebellion of . place says, probably with truth, that the danger was much exaggerated: but in any case, an act for the suppression of the corresponding societies was passed in , and put an end to the movement. this summary is significant of the state of opinion. the genuine old-fashioned whig dreaded revolution, and guarded himself carefully against any appearance of complicity. jacobinism, on the other hand, was always an exotic. such men as the leading nonconformists priestley and price were familiar with the speculative movement on the continent, and sympathised with the enlightenment. young men of genius, like wordsworth and coleridge, imbibed the same doctrines more or less thoroughly, and took godwin for their english representative. the same creed was accepted by the artisans in the growing towns, from whom the corresponding societies drew their recruits. but the revolutionary sentiment was not so widely spread as its adherents hoped or its enemies feared. the birmingham mob of acted, with a certain unconscious humour, on the side of church and king. they had perhaps an instinctive perception that it was an advantage to plunder on the side of the constable. in fact, however, the general feeling in all classes was anti-jacobin. place, an excellent witness, himself a member of the corresponding societies, declares that the repressive measures were generally popular even among the workmen.[ ] they were certainly not penetrated with revolutionary fervour. had it been otherwise, the repressive measures, severe as they were, would have stimulated rather than suppressed the societies, and, instead of silencing the revolutionists, have provoked a rising. at the early period the jacobin and the home-bred radical might combine against government. a manifesto of the corresponding societies begins by declaring that 'all men are by nature free and equal and independent of each other,' and argues also that these are the 'original principles of english government.'[ ] magna charta is an early expression of the declaration of rights, and thus pure reason confirms british tradition. the adoption of a common platform, however, covered a profound difference of sentiment. horne tooke represents the old type of reformer. he was fully resolved not to be carried away by the enthusiasm of his allies. 'my companions in a stage,' he said to cartwright, 'may be going to windsor: i will go with them to hounslow. but there i will get out: no further will i go, by god!'[ ] when sheridan supported a vote of sympathy for the french revolutionists, tooke insisted upon adding a rider declaring the content of englishmen with their own constitution.[ ] he offended some of his allies by asserting that the 'main timbers' of the constitution were sound though the dry-rot had got into the superstructure. he maintained, according to godwin,[ ] that the best of all governments had been that of england under george i. though cartwright said at the trial that horne tooke was taken to 'have no religion whatever,' he was, according to stephens, 'a great stickler for the church of england': and stood up for the house of lords as well as the church on grounds of utility.[ ] he always ridiculed paine and the doctrine of abstract rights,[ ] and told cartwright that though all men had an equal right to a share of property, they had not a right to an equal share. horne tooke's radicalism (i use the word by anticipation) was that of the sturdy tradesman. he opposed the government because he hated war, taxation and sinecures. he argued against universal suffrage with equal pertinacity. a comfortable old gentleman, with a good cellar of madeira, and proud of his wall-fruit in a well-tilled garden, had no desire to see george iii. at the guillotine, and still less to see a mob supreme in lombard street or banknotes superseded by assignats. he might be jealous of the great nobles, but he dreaded mob-rule. he could denounce abuses, but he could not desire anarchy. he is said to have retorted upon some one who had boasted that english courts of justice were open to all classes: 'so is the london tavern--to all who can pay.'[ ] that is in the spirit of bentham; and yet bentham complains that horne tooke's disciple, burdett, believed in the common law, and revered the authority of coke.[ ] in brief, the creed of horne tooke meant 'liberty' founded upon tradition. i shall presently notice the consistency of this with what may be called his philosophy. meanwhile it was only natural that radicals of this variety should retire from active politics, having sufficiently burnt their fingers by flirtation with the more thoroughgoing party. how they came to life again will appear hereafter. horne tooke himself took warning from his narrow escape. he stayed quietly in his house at wimbledon.[ ] there he divided his time between his books and his garden, and received his friends to sunday dinners. bentham, mackintosh, coleridge, and godwin were among his visitors. coleridge calls him a 'keen iron man,' and reports that he made a butt of godwin as he had done of paine.[ ] porson and boswell encountered him in drinking matches and were both left under the table.[ ] the house was thus a small centre of intellectual life, though the symposia were not altogether such as became philosophers. horne tooke was a keen and shrewd disputant, well able to impress weaker natures. his neighbour, sir francis burdett, became his political disciple, and in later years was accepted as the radical leader. tooke died at wimbledon th march . notes: [ ] _france_, p. ( th july ). [ ] see the _life of horne tooke_, by alexander stephens ( vols. vo, ). john horne added the name tooke in . [ ] _parl. hist._ xxxi. . [ ] the history of these societies may be found in the trials reported in the twenty-third, twenty-fourth, and twenty-fifth volumes of cobbett's _state trials_, and in the reports of the secret committees in the thirty-first and thirty-fourth volumes of the _parl. history_. there are materials in place's papers in the british museum which have been used in e. smith's _english jacobins_. [ ] _parl. hist._ xxix. - . [ ] _parl. hist._ xxxiv. - . [ ] mr. wallas's _life of place_, p. _n._ [ ] _state trials_, xxiv. . [ ] _ibid._ xxv. . [ ] _ibid._ xxv. . [ ] paul's _godwin_, i. . [ ] stephens, ii. , . [ ] _ibid._ ii. - , , - . [ ] _ibid._ ii. . [ ] bentham's _works_, x. . [ ] he was member for old sarum - ; but his career ended by a declaratory act disqualifying for a seat men who had received holy orders. [ ] bentham's _works_, x. ; _life of mackintosh_, i. ; paul's _godwin_, i. ; coleridge's _table-talk_, th may and th august . [ ] stephens, ii. , , . vi. individualism the general tendencies which i have so far tried to indicate will have to be frequently noticed in the course of the following pages. one point may be emphasised before proceeding: a main characteristic of the whole social and political order is what is now called its 'individualism.' that phrase is generally supposed to convey some censure. it may connote, however, some of the most essential virtues that a race can possess. energy, self-reliance, and independence, a strong conviction that a man's fate should depend upon his own character and conduct, are qualities without which no nation can be great. they are the conditions of its vital power. they were manifested in a high degree by the englishmen of the eighteenth century. how far they were due to the inherited qualities of the race, to the political or social history, or to external circumstances, i need not ask. they were the qualities which had especially impressed foreign observers. the fierce, proud, intractable briton was elbowing his way to a high place in the world, and showing a vigour not always amiable, but destined to bring him successfully through tremendous struggles. in the earlier part of the century, voltaire and french philosophers admired english freedom of thought and free speech, even when it led to eccentricity and brutality of manners, and to barbarism in matters of taste. englishmen, conscious and proud of their 'liberty,' were the models of all who desired liberty for themselves. liberty, as they understood it, involved, among other things, an assault upon the old restrictive system, which at every turn hampered the rising industrial energy. this is the sense in which 'individualism,' or the gospel according to adam smith--_laissez faire_, and so forth--has been specially denounced in recent times. without asking at present how far such attacks are justifiable, i must be content to assume that the old restrictive system was in its actual form mischievous, guided by entirely false theories, and the great barrier to the development of industry. the same spirit appeared in purely political questions. 'liberty,' as is often remarked, may be interpreted in two ways; not necessarily consistent with each other. it means sometimes simply the diminution of the sphere of law and the power of legislators, or, again, the transference to subjects of the power of legislating, and, therefore, not less control, but control by self-made laws alone. the englishman, who was in presence of no centralised administrative power, who regarded the government rather as receiving power from individuals than as delegating the power of a central body, took liberty mainly in the sense of restricting law. government in general was a nuisance, though a necessity; and properly employed only in mediating between conflicting interests, and restraining the violence of individuals forced into contact by outward circumstances. when he demanded that a greater share of influence should be given to the people, he always took for granted that their power would be used to diminish the activity of the sovereign power; that there would be less government and therefore less jobbery, less interference with free speech and free action, and smaller perquisites to be bestowed in return for the necessary services. the people would use their authority to tie the hands of the rulers, and limit them strictly to their proper and narrow functions. the absence, again, of the idea of a state in any other sense implies another tendency. the 'idea' was not required. englishmen were concerned rather with details than with first principles. satisfied, in a general way, with their constitution, they did not want to be bothered with theories. abstract and absolute doctrines of right, when imported from france, fell flat upon the average englishman. he was eager enough to discuss the utility of this or that part of the machinery, but without inquiring into first principles of mechanism. the argument from 'utility' deals with concrete facts, and presupposes an acceptance of some common criterion of the useful. the constant discussion of political matters in parliament and the press implied a tacit acceptance on all hands of constitutional methods. practical men, asking whether this or that policy shall be adopted in view of actual events, no more want to go back to right reason and 'laws of nature' than a surveyor to investigate the nature of geometrical demonstration. very important questions were raised as to the rights of the press, for example, or the system of representation. but everybody agreed that the representative system and freedom of speech were good things; and argued the immediate questions of fact. the order, only established by experience and tradition, was accepted, subject to criticism of detail, and men turned impatiently from abstract argument, and left the inquiry into 'social contracts' to philosophers, that is, to silly people in libraries. politics were properly a matter of business, to be discussed in a business-like spirit. in this sense, 'individualism' is congenial to 'empiricism,' because it starts from facts and particular interests, and resents the intrusion of first principles. the characteristic individualism, again, suggests one other remark. individual energy and sense of responsibility are good--as even extreme socialists may admit--if they do not exclude a sense of duties to others. it may be a question how far the stimulation of individual enterprise and the vigorous spirit of industrial competition really led to a disregard of the interests of the weaker. but it would be a complete misunderstanding of the time if we inferred that it meant a decline of humane feeling. undoubtedly great evils had grown up, and some continued to grow which were tolerated by the indifference, or even stimulated by the selfish aims, of the dominant classes. but, in the first place, many of the most active prophets of the individualist spirit were acting, and acting sincerely, in the name of humanity. they were attacking a system which they held, and to a great extent, i believe, held rightly, to be especially injurious to the weakest classes. possibly they expected too much from the simple removal of restrictions; but certainly they denounced the restrictions as unjust to all, not simply as hindrances to the wealth of the rich. adam smith's position is intelligible: it was, he thought, a proof of a providential order that each man, by helping himself, unintentionally helped his neighbours. the moral sense based upon sympathy was therefore not opposed to, but justified, the economic principles that each man should first attend to his own interest. the unintentional co-operation would thus become conscious and compatible with the established order. and, in the next place, so far from there being a want of humane feeling, the most marked characteristic of the eighteenth century was precisely the growth of humanity. in the next generation, the eighteenth century came to be denounced as cold, heartless, faithless, and so forth. the established mode of writing history is partly responsible for this perversion. men speak as though some great man, who first called attention to an evil, was a supernatural being who had suddenly dropped into the world from another sphere. his condemnation of evil is therefore taken to be a proof that the time must be evil. any century is bad if we assume all the good men to be exceptions. but the great man is really also the product of his time. he is the mouthpiece of its prevailing sentiments, and only the first to see clearly what many are beginning to perceive obscurely. the emergence of the prophet is a proof of the growing demand of his hearers for sound teaching. because he is in advance of men generally, he sees existing abuses more clearly, and we take his evidence against his contemporaries as conclusive. but the fact that they listened shows how widely the same sensibility to evil was already diffused. in fact, as i think, the humane spirit of the eighteenth century, due to the vast variety of causes which we call social progress or evolution--not to the teaching of any individual--was permeating the whole civilised world, and showed itself in the philosophic movement as well as in the teaching of the religious leaders, who took the philosophers to be their enemies. i have briefly noticed the various philanthropic movements which were characteristic of the period. some of them may indicate the growth of new evils; others, that evils which had once been regarded with indifference were now attracting attention and exciting indignation. but even the growth of new evils does not show general indifference so much as the incapacity of the existing system to deal with new conditions. it may, i think, be safely said that a growing philanthropy was characteristic of the whole period, and in particular animated the utilitarian movement, as i shall have to show in detail. modern writers have often spoken of the wesleyan propaganda and the contemporary 'evangelical revival' as the most important movements of the time. they are apt to speak, in conformity with the view just described, as though wesley or some of his contemporaries had originated or created the better spirit. without asking what was good or bad in some aspects of these movements, i fully believe that wesley was essentially a moral reformer, and that he deserves corresponding respect. but instead of holding that his contemporaries were bad people, awakened by a stimulus from without, i hold that the movement, so far as really indicating moral improvement, must be set down to the credit of the century itself. it was one manifestation of a general progress, of which bentham was another outcome. though bentham might have thought wesley a fanatic or perhaps a hypocrite, and wesley would certainly have considered that bentham's heart was much in need of a change, they were really allies as much as antagonists, and both mark a great and beneficial change. chapter iv philosophy i. john horne tooke i have so far dwelt upon the social and political environment of the early utilitarian movement; and have tried also to point out some of the speculative tendencies fostered by the position. if it be asked what philosophical doctrines were explicitly taught, the answer must be a very short one. english philosophy barely existed. parr was supposed to know something about metaphysics--apparently because he could write good latin. but the inference was hasty. of one book, however, which had a real influence, i must say something, for though it contained little definite philosophy, it showed what kind of philosophy was congenial to the common sense of the time. the sturdy radical, horne tooke, had been led to the study of philology by a characteristic incident. the legal question had arisen whether the words, '_she, knowing that crooke had been indicted for forgery_,' did so and so, contained an averment that crooke had been indicted. tooke argued in a letter to dunning[ ] that they did; because they were equivalent to the phrase, 'crooke had been indicted for forgery: she, _knowing that_,' did so and so. this raises the question: what is the meaning of 'that'? tooke took up the study, thinking, as he says, that it would throw light upon some philosophical questions. he learned some anglo-saxon and gothic to test his theory and, of course, confirmed it.[ ] the book shows ingenuity, shrewdness, and industry, and tooke deserves credit for seeing the necessity of applying a really historical method to his problem, though his results were necessarily crude in the pre-scientific stage of philology. the book is mainly a long string of etymologies, which readers of different tastes have found intolerably dull or an amusing collection of curiosities. tooke held, and surely with reason, that an investigation of language, the great instrument of thought, may help to throw light upon the process of thinking. he professes to be a disciple of locke in philosophy as in politics. locke, he said,[ ] made a lucky mistake in calling his book an essay upon human understanding; for he thus attracted many who would have been repelled had he called it what it really was, 'a treatise upon words and language.' according to tooke, in fact,[ ] what we call 'operations of mind' are only 'operations of language.' the mind contemplates nothing but 'impressions,' that is, 'sensations or feelings,' which locke called 'ideas,' locke mistook composition of terms for composition of ideas. to compound ideas is impossible. we can only use one term as a sign of many ideas. locke, again, supposed that affirming and denying were operations of the mind, whereas they are only artifices of language.[ ] the mind, then, can only contemplate, separately or together, aggregates of 'ideas,' ultimate atoms, incapable of being parted or dissolved. there are, therefore, only two classes of words, nouns and verbs; all others, prepositions, conjunctions, and so forth, being abbreviations, a kind of mental shorthand to save the trouble of enumerating the separate items. tooke, in short, is a thoroughgoing nominalist. the realities, according to him, are sticks, stones, and material objects, or the 'ideas' which 'represent' them. they can be stuck together or taken apart, but all the words which express relations, categories, and the like, are in themselves meaningless. the special objects of his scorn are 'hermes' harris, and monboddo, who had tried to defend aristotle against locke. monboddo had asserted that 'every kind of relation' is a pure 'idea of the intellect' not to be apprehended by sense.[ ] if so, according to tooke, it would be a nonentity. this doctrine gives a short cut to the abolition of metaphysics. the word 'metaphysics,' says tooke,[ ] is nonsense. all metaphysical controversies are 'founded on the grossest ignorance of words and the nature of speech.' the greatest part of his second volume is concerned with etymologies intended to prove that an 'abstract idea' is a mere word. abstract words, he says,[ ] are generally 'participles without a substantive and therefore in construction used as substantives.' from a misunderstanding of this has arisen 'metaphysical jargon' and 'false morality.' in illustration he gives a singular list of words, including 'fate, chance, heaven, hell, providence, prudence, innocence, substance, fiend, angel, apostle, spirit, true, false, desert, merit, faith, etc., all of which are mere participles poetically embodied and substantiated by those who use them.' a couple of specific applications, often quoted by later writers, will sufficiently indicate his drift. such words, he remarks,[ ] as 'right' and 'just' mean simply that which is ordered or commanded. the chapter is headed 'rights of man,' and tooke's interlocutor naturally observes that this is a singular result for a democrat. man, it would seem, has no rights except the rights created by the law. tooke admits the inference to be correct, but replies that the democrat in disobeying human law may be obeying the law of god, and is obeying the law of god when he obeys the law of nature. the interlocutor does not inquire what tooke could mean by the 'law of nature.' we can guess what tooke would have said to paine in the wimbledon garden. in fact, however, tooke is here, as elsewhere, following hobbes, though, it seems, unconsciously. another famous etymology is that of 'truth' from 'troweth.'[ ] truth is what each man thinks. there is no such thing, therefore, as 'eternal, immutable, everlasting truth, unless mankind, _such as they are at present_, be eternal, immutable, everlasting.' two persons may contradict each other and yet each may be speaking what is true for him. truth may be a vice as well as a virtue; for on many occasions it is wrong to speak the truth. these phrases may possibly be interpreted in a sense less paradoxical than the obvious one. tooke's philosophy, if so it is to be called, was never fully expounded. he burned his papers before his death, and we do not know what he would have said about 'verbs,' which must have led, one would suppose, to some further treatment of relations, nor upon the subject, which as stephens tells us, was most fully treated in his continuation, the value of human testimony. if tooke was not a philosopher he was a man of remarkably shrewd cynical common sense, who thought philosophy idle foppery. his book made a great success. stephens tells us[ ] that it brought him £ or £ . hazlitt in published a grammar professing to incorporate for the first time horne tooke's 'discoveries.' the book was admired by mackintosh,[ ] who, of course, did not accept the principles, and had a warm disciple in charles richardson ( - ), who wrote in its defence against dugald stewart and accepted its authority in his elaborate dictionary of the english language.[ ] but its chief interest for us is that it was a great authority with james mill. mill accepts the etymologies, and there is much in common between the two writers, though mill had learned his main doctrines elsewhere, especially from hobbes. what the agreement really shows is how the intellectual idiosyncrasy which is congenial to 'nominalism' in philosophy was also congenial to tooke's matter of fact radicalism and to the utilitarian position of bentham and his followers. notes: [ ] published originally in ; reprinted in edition of epea pteroenta or _diversions of purley_, by richard taylor ( ), to which i refer. the first part of the _diversions of purley_ appeared in ; and the second part (with a new edition of the first) in . [ ] _diversions of purley_ ( ), i. , . [ ] _ibid._ ii. . locke's work, says prof. max müller in his _science of thought_, p. , 'is, as lange in his _history of materialism_ rightly perceived, a critique of language which, together with kant's _critique of the pure reason_, forms the starting-point of modern philosophy.' _see_ lange's _materialism_, ( ), i. . [ ] _ibid._ i. . [ ] _diversions of purley_, i. , . [ ] _ibid._ i. . [ ] _ibid._ i. . [ ] _diversions of purley_, ii. . cf. mill's statement in _analysis_, i. , that 'abstract terms are concrete terms with the connotation dropped.' [ ] _ibid._ ii. , etc. [ ] _ibid._ ii. . [ ] stephens, ii. . [ ] _life of mackintosh_, ii. - . [ ] begun for the _encyclopædia metropolitana_ in ; and published in - . dugald stewart's chief criticism is in his essays (_works_, v. - ). john fearn published his _anti-tooke_ in . ii. dugald stewart if english philosophy was a blank, there was still a leader of high reputation in scotland. dugald stewart ( - ) had a considerable influence upon the utilitarians. he represented, on the one hand, the doctrines which they thought themselves specially bound to attack, and it may perhaps be held that in some ways he betrayed to them the key of the position. stewart[ ] was son of a professor of mathematics at edinburgh. he studied at glasgow ( - ) where he became reid's favourite pupil and devoted friend. in he became the assistant, and in the colleague, of his father, and he appears to have had a considerable knowledge of mathematics. in he succeeded adam ferguson as professor of moral philosophy and lectured continuously until . he then gave up his active duties to thomas brown, devoting himself to the completion and publication of the substance of his lectures. upon brown's death in , he resigned a post to which he was no longer equal. a paralytic stroke in weakened him, though he was still able to write. he died in . if stewart now makes no great mark in histories of philosophy, his personal influence was conspicuous. cockburn describes him as of delicate appearance, with a massive head, bushy eyebrows, gray intelligent eyes, flexible mouth and expressive countenance. his voice was sweet and his ear exquisite. cockburn never heard a better reader, and his manners, though rather formal, were graceful and dignified. james mill, after hearing pitt and fox, declared that stewart was their superior in eloquence. at edinburgh, then at the height of its intellectual activity, he held his own among the ablest men and attracted the loyalty of the younger. students came not only from scotland but from england, the united states, france and germany.[ ] scott won the professor's approval by an essay on the 'customs of the northern nations.' jeffrey, horner, cockburn and mackintosh were among his disciples. his lectures upon political economy were attended by sydney smith, jeffrey and brougham, and one of his last hearers was lord palmerston. parr looked up to him as a great philosopher, and contributed to his works an essay upon the etymology of the word 'sublime,' too vast to be printed whole. stewart was an upholder of whig principles, when the scottish government was in the hands of the staunchest tories. the irreverent young edinburgh reviewers treated him with respect, and to some extent applied his theory to politics. stewart was the philosophical heir of reid; and, one may say, was a whig both in philosophy and in politics. he was a rationalist, but within the limits fixed by respectability; and he dreaded the revolution in politics, and believed in the surpassing merits of the british constitution as interpreted by the respectable whigs. stewart represents the 'common sense' doctrine. that name, as he observes, lends itself to an equivocation. common sense is generally used as nearly synonymous with 'mother wit,' the average opinion of fairly intelligent men; and he would prefer to speak of the 'fundamental laws of belief.'[ ] there can, however, be no doubt that the doctrine derived much of its strength from the apparent confirmation of the 'average opinion' by the 'fundamental laws.' on one side, said reid, are all the vulgar; on the other all the philosophers. 'in this division, to my great humiliation, i find myself classed with the vulgar.'[ ] reid, in fact, had opposed the theories of hume and berkeley because they led to a paradoxical scepticism. if it be, as reid held, a legitimate inference from berkeley that a man may as well run his head against a post, there can be no doubt that it is shocking to common sense in every acceptation of the word. the reasons, however, which reid and stewart alleged for not performing that feat took a special form, which i am compelled to notice briefly because they set up the mark for the whole intellectual artillery of the utilitarians. reid, in fact, invented what j. s. mill called 'intuitions.' to confute intuitionists and get rid of intuitions was one main purpose of all mill's speculations. what, then, is an 'intuition'? to explain that fully it would be necessary to write once more that history of the philosophical movement from descartes to hume, which has been summarised and elucidated by so many writers that it should be as plain as the road from st. paul's to temple bar. i am forced to glance at the position taken by reid and stewart because it has a most important bearing upon the whole utilitarian scheme. reid's main service to philosophy was, in his own opinion,[ ] that he refuted the 'ideal system' of descartes and his followers. that system, he says, carried in its womb the monster, scepticism, which came to the birth in ,[ ] the date of hume's early _treatise_. to confute hume, therefore, which was reid's primary object, it was necessary to go back to descartes, and to show where he deviated from the right track. in other words, we must trace the genealogy of 'ideas.' descartes, as reid admitted, had rendered immense services to philosophy. he had exploded the scholastic system, which had become a mere mass of logomachies and an incubus upon scientific progress. he had again been the first to 'draw a distinct line between the material and the intellectual world'[ ]; and reid apparently assumes that he had drawn it correctly. one characteristic of the cartesian school is obvious. descartes, a great mathematician at the period when mathematical investigations were showing their enormous power, invented a mathematical universe. mathematics presented the true type of scientific reasoning and determined his canons of inquiry. the 'essence' of matter, he said, was space. the objective world, as we have learned to call it, is simply space solidified or incarnate geometry. its properties therefore could be given as a system of deductions from first principles, and it forms a coherent and self-subsistent whole. meanwhile the essence of the soul is thought. thought and matter are absolutely opposed. they are contraries, having nothing in common. reality, however, seems to belong to the world of space. the brain, too, belongs to that world, and motions in the brain must be determined as a part of the material mechanism. in some way or other 'ideas' correspond to these motions; though to define the way tried all the ingenuity of descartes' successors. in any case an idea is 'subjective': it is a thought, not a thing. it is a shifting, ephemeral entity not to be fixed or grasped. yet, somehow or other, it exists, and it 'represents' realities; though the divine power has to be called in to guarantee the accuracy of the representation. the objective world, again, does not reveal itself to us as simply made up of 'primary qualities'; we know of it only as somehow endowed with 'secondary' or sense-given qualities: as visible, tangible, audible, and so forth. these qualities are plainly 'subjective'; they vary from man to man, and from moment to moment: they cannot be measured or fixed; and must be regarded as a product in some inexplicable way of the action of matter upon mind; unreal or, at any rate, not independent entities. in locke's philosophy, the 'ideas,' legitimate or illegitimate descendants of the cartesian theories, play a most prominent part. locke's admirable common sense made him the leader who embodied a growing tendency. the empirical sciences were growing; and locke, a student of medicine, could note the fallacies which arise from neglecting observation and experiment, and attempting to penetrate to the absolute essences and entities. newton's great success was due to neglecting impossible problems about the nature of force in itself--'action at a distance' and so forth--and attention to the sphere of visible phenomena. the excessive pretensions of the framers of metaphysical systems had led to hopeless puzzles and merely verbal solutions. locke, therefore, insisted upon the necessity of ascertaining the necessary limits of human knowledge. all our knowledge of material facts is obviously dependent in some way upon our sensations--however fleeting or unreal they may be. therefore, the material sciences must depend upon sense-given data or upon observation and experiment. hume gives the ultimate purpose, already implied in locke's essay, when he describes his first treatise (on the title page) as an 'attempt to introduce the experimental mode of reasoning into moral subjects.' now, as reid thinks, the effect of this was to construct our whole knowledge out of the representative ideas. the empirical factor is so emphasised that we lose all grasp of the real world. locke, indeed, though he insists upon the derivation of our whole knowledge from 'ideas,' leaves reality to the 'primary qualities' without clearly expounding their relation to the secondary. but berkeley, alarmed by the tendency of the cartesian doctrines to materialism and mechanical necessity, reduces the 'primary' to the level of the 'secondary,' and proceeds to abolish the whole world of matter. we are thus left with nothing but 'ideas,' and the ideas are naturally 'subjective' and therefore in some sense unreal. finally hume gets rid of the soul as well as the outside world; and then, by his theory of 'causation,' shows that the ideas themselves are independent atoms, cohering but not rationally connected, and capable of being arbitrarily joined or separated in any way whatever. thus the ideas have ousted the facts. we cannot get beyond ideas, and yet ideas are still purely subjective. the 'real' is separated from the phenomenal, and truth divorced from fact. the sense-given world is the whole world, and yet is a world of mere accidental conjunctions and separation. that is hume's scepticism, and yet according to reid is the legitimate development of descartes' 'ideal system.' reid, i take it, was right in seeing that there was a great dilemma. what was required to escape from it? according to kant, nothing less than a revision of descartes' mode of demarcation between object and subject. the 'primary qualities' do not correspond in this way to an objective world radically opposed to the subjective. space is not a form of things, but a form imposed upon the data of experience by the mind itself. this, as kant says, supposes a revolution in philosophy comparable to the revolution made by copernicus in astronomy. we have completely to invert our whole system of conceiving the world. whatever the value of kant's doctrine, of which i need here say nothing, it was undoubtedly more prolific than reid's. reid's was far less thoroughgoing. he does not draw a new line between object and subject, but simply endeavours to show that the dilemma was due to certain assumptions about the nature of 'ideas.' the real had been altogether separated from the phenomenal, or truth divorced from fact. you can only have demonstrations by getting into a region beyond the sensible world; while within that world--that is, the region of ordinary knowledge and conduct--you are doomed to hopeless uncertainty. an escape, therefore, must be sought by some thorough revision of the assumed relation, but not by falling back upon the exploded philosophy of the schools. reid and his successors were quite as much alive as locke to the danger of falling into mere scholastic logomachy. they, too, will in some sense base all knowledge upon experience. reid constantly appeals to the authority of bacon, whom he regards as the true founder of inductive science. the great success of bacon's method in the physical sciences, encouraged the hope, already expressed by newton, that a similar result might be achieved in 'moral philosophy.'[ ] hume had done something to clear the way, but reid was, as stewart thinks, the first to perceive clearly and justly the 'analogy between these two different branches of human knowledge.' the mind and matter are two co-ordinate things, whose properties are to be investigated by similar methods. philosophy thus means essentially psychology. the two inquiries are two 'branches' of inductive science, and the problem is to discover by a perfectly impartial examination what are the 'fundamental laws of mind' revealed by an accurate analysis of the various processes of thought. the main result of reid's investigations is given most pointedly in his early _inquiry_, and was fully accepted by stewart. briefly it comes to this. no one can doubt that we believe, as a fact, in an external world. we believe that there are sun and moon, stones, sticks, and human bodies. this belief is accepted by the sceptic as well as by the dogmatist, although the sceptic reduces it to a mere blind custom or 'association of ideas.' now reid argues that the belief, whatever its nature, is not and cannot be derived from the sensations. we do not construct the visible and tangible world, for example, simply out of impressions made upon the senses of sight and touch. to prove this, he examines what are the actual data provided by these senses, and shows, or tries to show, that we cannot from them alone construct the world of space and geometry. hence, if we consider experience impartially and without preconception, we find that it tells us something which is not given by the senses. the senses are not the material of our perceptions, but simply give the occasions upon which our belief is called into activity. the sensation is no more like the reality in which we believe than the pain of a wound is like the edge of the knife. perception tells us directly and immediately, without the intervention of ideas, that there is, as we all believe, a real external world. reid was a vigorous reasoner, and credit has been given to him by some disciples of kant's doctrine of time and space. schopenhauer[ ] says that reid's 'excellent work' gives a complete 'negative proof of the kantian truths'; that is to say, that reid proves satisfactorily that we cannot construct the world out of the sense-given data alone. but, whereas kant regards the senses as supplying the materials moulded by the perceiving mind, reid regards them as mere stimuli exciting certain inevitable beliefs. as a result of reid's method, then, we have 'intuitions.' reid's essential contention is that a fair examination of experience will reveal certain fundamental beliefs, which cannot be explained as mere manifestations of the sensations, and which, by the very fact that they are inexplicable, must be accepted as an 'inspiration.'[ ] reid professes to discover these beliefs by accurately describing facts. he finds them there as a chemist finds an element. the 'intuition' is made by substituting for 'ideas' a mysterious and inexplicable connection between the mind and matter.[ ] the chasm exists still, but it is somehow bridged by a quasi-miracle. admitting, therefore, that reid shows a gap to exist in the theory, his result remains 'negative.' the philosopher will say that it is not enough to assert a principle dogmatically without showing its place in a reasoned system of thought. the psychologist, on the other hand, who takes reid's own ground, may regard the statement only as a useful challenge to further inquiry. the analysis hitherto given may be insufficient, but where reid has failed, other inquirers may be more successful. as soon, in fact, as we apply the psychological method, and regard the 'philosophy of mind' as an 'inductive science,' it is perilous, if not absolutely inconsistent, to discover 'intuitions' which will take us beyond experience. the line of defence against empiricism can only be provisional and temporary. in his main results, indeed, reid had the advantage of being on the side of 'common sense.' everybody was already convinced that there were sticks and stones, and everybody is prepared to hear that their belief is approved by philosophy. but a difficulty arises when a similar method is applied to a doctrine sincerely disputed. to the statement, 'this is a necessary belief,' it is a sufficient answer to reply, 'i don't believe it,' in that case, an intuition merely amounts to a dogmatic assumption that i am infallible, and must be supported by showing its connection with beliefs really universal and admittedly necessary. dugald stewart followed reid upon this main question, and with less force and originality represents the same point of view. he accepts reid's view of the two co-ordinate departments of knowledge; the science of which mind, and the science of which body, is the object. philosophy is not a 'theory of knowledge' or of the universe; but, as it was then called, 'a philosophy of the human mind.' 'philosophy' is founded upon inductive psychology; and it only becomes philosophy in a wider sense in so far as we discover that as a fact we have certain fundamental beliefs, which are thus given by experience, though they take us in a sense beyond experience. jeffrey, reviewing stewart's life of reid, in the _edinburgh review_ of , makes a significant inference from this. bacon's method, he said, had succeeded in the physical sciences, because there we could apply experiment. but experiment is impossible in the science of mind; and therefore philosophy will never be anything but a plaything or a useful variety of gymnastic. stewart replied at some length in his _essays_,[ ] fully accepting the general conception, but arguing that the experimental method was applicable to the science of mind. jeffrey observes that it was now admitted that the 'profoundest reasonings' had brought us back to the view of the vulgar, and this, too, is admitted by stewart so far as the cardinal doctrine of 'the common sense' philosophy, the theory of perception, is admitted. from this, again, it follows that the 'notions we annex to the words matter and mind are merely relative.'[ ] we know that mind exists as we know that matter exists; or, if anything, we know the existence of mind more certainly because more directly. the mind is suggested by 'the subjects of our consciousness'; the body by the objects 'of our perception.' but, on the other hand, we are totally 'ignorant of the essence of either.'[ ] we can discover the laws either of mental or moral phenomena; but a law, as he explains, means in strictness nothing but a 'general fact.'[ ] it is idle, therefore, to explain the nature of the union between the two unknowable substances; we can only discover that they are united and observe the laws according to which one set of phenomena corresponds to the other. from a misunderstanding of this arise all the fallacies of scholastic ontology, 'the most idle and absurd speculation that ever employed the human faculties.'[ ] the destruction of that pseudo-science was the great glory of bacon and locke; and reid has now discovered the method by which we may advance to the establishment of a truly inductive 'philosophy of mind.' it is not surprising that stewart approximates in various directions to the doctrines of the empirical school. he leans towards them whenever he does not see the results to which he is tending. thus, for example, he is a thoroughgoing nominalist;[ ] and on this point he deserts the teaching of reid. he defends against reid the attack made by berkeley and hume upon 'abstract ideas.' rosmini,[ ] in an elaborate criticism, complains that stewart did not perceive the inevitable tendency of nominalism to materialism.[ ] stewart, in fact, accepts a good deal of horne tooke's doctrine,[ ] though calling tooke an 'ingenious grammarian, not a very profound philosopher,' but holds, as we shall see, that the materialistic tendency can be avoided. as becomes a nominalist, he attacks the syllogism upon grounds more fully brought out by j. s. mill. upon another essential point, he agrees with the pure empiricists. he accepts hume's view of causation in all questions of physical science. in natural philosophy, he declares causation means only conjunction. the senses can never give us the 'efficient' cause of any phenomenon. in other words, we can never see a 'necessary connection' between any two events. he collects passages from earlier writers to show how hume had been anticipated; and holds that bacon's inadequate view of this truth was a main defect in his theories.[ ] hence we have a characteristic conclusion. he says, when discussing the proofs of the existence of god,[ ] that we have an 'irresistible conviction of the _necessity_ of a cause' for every change. hume, however, has shown that this can never be a logical necessity. it must then, argues stewart, be either a 'prejudice' or an 'intuitive judgment.' since it is shown by 'universal consent' not to be a prejudice, it must be an intuitive judgment. thus hume's facts are accepted; but his inference denied. the actual causal nexus is inscrutable. the conviction that there must be a connection between events attributed by hume to 'custom' is attributed by stewart to intuitive belief. stewart infers that hume's doctrine is really favourable to theology. it implies that god gives us the conviction, and perhaps, as malebranche held, that god is 'the constantly operating efficient cause in the material world.'[ ] stewart's successor, thomas brown, took up this argument on occasion of the once famous 'leslie controversy'; and brown's teaching was endorsed by james mill and by john stuart mill. according to j. s. mill, james mill and stewart represented opposite poles of philosophic thought. i shall have to consider this dictum hereafter. on the points already noticed stewart must be regarded as an ally rather than an opponent of the locke and hume tradition. like them he appeals unhesitatingly to experience, and cannot find words strong enough to express his contempt for 'ontological' and scholastic methods. his 'intuitions' are so far very harmless things, which fall in with common sense, and enable him to hold without further trouble the beliefs which, as a matter of fact, are held by everybody. they are an excuse for not seeking any ultimate explanation in reason. he is, indeed, opposed to the school which claimed to be the legitimate successor to locke, but which evaded hume's scepticism by diverging towards materialism. the great representative of this doctrine in england had been hartley, and in stewart's day hartley's lead had been followed by priestley, who attacked reid from a materialist point of view, by priestley's successor, thomas belsham, and by erasmus darwin. we find stewart, in language which reminds us of later controversy, denouncing the 'darwinian school'[ ] for theories about instinct incompatible with the doctrine of final causes. it might appear that a philosopher who has re-established the objective existence of space in opposition to berkeley, was in danger of that materialism which had been berkeley's bugbear. but stewart escapes the danger by his assertion that our knowledge of matter is 'relative' or confined to phenomena. materialism is for him a variety of ontology, involving the assumption that we know the essence of matter. to speak with hartley of 'vibrations,' animal spirits, and so forth, is to be led astray by a false analogy. we can discover the laws of correspondence of mind and body, but not the ultimate nature of either.[ ] thus he regards the 'physiological metaphysics of the present day' as an 'idle waste of labour and ingenuity on questions to which the human mind is altogether incompetent.'[ ] the principles found by inductive observation are as independent of these speculations as newton's theory of gravitation of an ultimate mechanical cause of gravitation. hartley's followers, however, could drop the 'vibration' theory; and their doctrine then became one of 'association of ideas.' to this famous theory, which became the sheet-anchor of the empirical school, stewart is not altogether opposed. we find him speaking of 'indissoluble association' in language which reminds us of the mills.[ ] hume had spoken of association as comparable to gravitation--the sole principle by which our 'ideas' and 'impressions' are combined into a whole; a theory, of course, corresponding to his doctrine of 'belief' as a mere custom of associating. stewart uses the principle rather as locke had done, as explaining fallacies due to 'casual associations.' it supposes, as he says, the previous existence of certain principles, and cannot be an ultimate explanation. the only question can be at what point we have reached an 'original principle,' and are therefore bound to stop our analysis.[ ] over this question he glides rather too lightly, as is his custom; but from his point of view the belief, for example, in an external world, cannot be explained by association, inasmuch as it reveals itself as an ultimate datum. in regard to the physical sciences, then, stewart's position approximates very closely to the purely 'empirical' view. when we come to a different application of his principles, we find him taking a curiously balanced position between different schools. 'common sense' naturally wishes to adapt itself to generally accepted beliefs; and with so flexible a doctrine as that of 'intuitions' it is not difficult to discover methods of proving the ordinary dogmas. stewart's theology is characteristic of this tendency. he describes the so-called _a priori_ proof, as formulated by clarke. but without denying its force, he does not like to lay stress upon it. he dreads 'ontology' too much. he therefore considers that the argument at once most satisfactory to the philosopher and most convincing to ordinary men is the argument from design. the belief in god is not 'intuitive,' but follows immediately from two first principles: the principle that whatever exists has a cause, and the principle that a 'combination of means implies a designer.'[ ] the belief in a cause arises on our perception of change as our belief in the external world arises upon our sensations. the belief in design must be a 'first principle' because it includes a belief in 'necessity' which cannot arise from mere observation of 'contingent truths.'[ ] hence stewart accepts the theory of final causes as stated by paley. though paley's ethics offended him, he has nothing but praise for the work upon _natural theology_.[ ] thus, although 'common sense' does not enable us to lay down the central doctrine of theology as a primary truth, it does enable us to interpret experience in theological terms. in other words, his theology is of the purely empirical kind, which was, as we shall see, the general characteristic of the time. in stewart's discussion of ethical problems the same doctrine of 'final causes' assumes a special importance. stewart, as elsewhere, tries to hold an intermediate position; to maintain the independence of morality without committing himself to the 'ontological' or purely logical view; and to show that virtue conduces to happiness without allowing that its dictates are to be deduced from its tendency to produce happiness. his doctrine is to a great extent derived from the teaching of hutcheson and bishop butler. he really approximates most closely to hutcheson, who takes a similar view of utilitarianism, but he professes the warmest admiration of butler. he explicitly accepts butler's doctrine of the 'supremacy of the conscience'--a doctrine which as he says, the bishop, 'has placed in the strongest and happiest light.'[ ] he endeavours, again, to approximate to the 'intellectual school,' of which richard price ( - ) was the chief english representative at the time. like kant, price deduces the moral law from principles of pure reason. the truth of the moral law, 'thou shalt do to others as you wish that they should do to you,' is as evident as the truth of the law in geometry, 'things which are equal to the same thing are equal to each other.' stewart so far approves that he wishes to give to the moral law what is now called all possible 'objectivity,' while the 'moral sense' of hutcheson apparently introduced a 'subjective' element. he holds, however, that our moral perceptions 'involve a feeling of the heart,' as well as a 'judgment of the understanding,'[ ] and ascribes the same view to butler. but then, by using the word 'reason' so as to include the whole nature of a rational being, we may ascribe to it the 'origin of those simple ideas which are not excited in the mind by the operation of the senses, but which arise in consequence of the operation of the intellectual powers among the various objects.'[ ] hutcheson, he says, made his 'moral sense' unsatisfactory by taking his illustrations from the 'secondary' instead of the 'primary qualities,'[ ] and thus with the help of intuitive first principles, stewart succeeds in believing that it would be as hard for a man to believe that he ought to sacrifice another man's happiness to his own as to believe that three angles of a triangle are equal to one right angle.[ ] it is true that a feeling and a judgment are both involved; but the 'intellectual judgment' is the groundwork of the feeling, not the feeling of the judgment.[ ] in spite, however, of this attempt to assimilate his principles to those of the intellectual school, the substance of stewart's ethics is essentially psychological. it rests, in fact, upon his view that philosophy depends upon inductive psychology, and, therefore, essentially upon experience subject to the cropping up of convenient 'intuitions.' this appears from the nature of his argument against the utilitarians. in his time, this doctrine was associated with the names of hartley, tucker, godwin, and especially paley. he scarcely refers to bentham.[ ] paley is the recognised anvil for the opposite school. now he agrees, as i have said, with paley's view of natural theology and entirely accepts therefore the theory of 'final causes.' the same theory becomes prominent in his ethical teaching. we may perhaps say that stewart's view is in substance an inverted utilitarianism. it may be best illustrated by an argument familiar in another application. paley and his opponents might agree that the various instincts of an animal are so constituted that in point of fact they contribute to his preservation and his happiness. but from one point of view this appears to be simply to say that the conditions of existence necessitate a certain harmony, and that the harmony is therefore to be a consequence of his self-preservation. from the opposite point of view, which stewart accepts, it appears that the self-preservation is the consequence of a pre-established harmony, which has been divinely appointed in order that he may live. stewart, in short, is a 'teleologist' of the paley variety. psychology proves the existence of design in the moral world, as anatomy or physiology proves it in the physical. stewart therefore fully agrees that virtue generally produces happiness. if it be true (a doctrine, he thinks, beyond our competence to decide) that 'the sole principle of action in the deity' is benevolence, it may be that he has commanded us to be virtuous because he sees virtue to be useful. in this case utility may be the final cause of morality; and the fact that virtue has this tendency gives the plausibility to utilitarian systems.[ ] but the key to the difficulty is the distinction between 'final' and 'efficient' causes; for the efficient cause of morality is not the desire for happiness, but a primitive and simple instinct, namely, the moral faculty. thus he rejects paley's notorious doctrine that virtue differs from prudence only in regarding the consequences in another world instead of consequences in this.[ ] reward and punishment 'presuppose the notions of right and wrong' and cannot be the source of those notions. the favourite doctrine of association, by which the utilitarians explained unselfishness, is only admissible as accounting for modifications, such as are due to education and example, but 'presupposes the existence of certain principles which are common to all mankind.' the evidence of such principles is established by a long and discursive psychological discussion. it is enough to say that he admits two rational principles, 'self-love' and the 'moral faculty,' the coincidence of which is learned only by experience. the moral faculty reveals simple 'ideas' of right and wrong, which are incapable of any further analysis. but besides these, there is a hierarchy of other instincts or desires, which he calls 'implanted' because 'for aught we know' they may be of 'arbitrary appointment.'[ ] resentment, for example, is an implanted instinct, of which the 'final cause' is to defend us against 'sudden violence.'[ ] stewart's analysis is easygoing and suggests more problems than it solves. the general position, however, is clear enough, and not, i think, without much real force as against the paley form of utilitarianism. the acceptance of the doctrine of 'final causes' was the inevitable course for a philosopher who wishes to retain the old creeds and yet to appeal unequivocally to experience. it suits the amiable optimism for which stewart is noticeable. to prove the existence of a perfect deity from the evidence afforded by the world, you must of course take a favourable view of the observable order. stewart shows the same tendency in his political economy, where he is adam smith's disciple, and fully shares smith's beliefs that the harmony between the interests of the individual and the interests of the society is an evidence of design in the creator of mankind. in this respect stewart differs notably from butler, to whose reasonings he otherwise owed a good deal. with butler the conscience implies a dread of divine wrath and justifies the conception of a world alienated from its maker. stewart's 'moral faculty' simply recognises or reveals the moral law; but carries no suggestion of supernatural penalties. the doctrines by which butler attracted some readers and revolted others throw no shadow over his writings. he is a placid enlightened professor, whose real good feeling and frequent shrewdness should not be overlooked in consequence of the rather desultory and often superficial mode of reasoning. this, however, suggests a final remark upon stewart's position. in the preface[ ] to his _active and moral powers_ ( ) stewart apologises for the large space given to the treatment of natural religion. the lectures, he says, which form the substance of the book, were given at a time when 'enlightened zeal for liberty' was associated with the 'reckless boldness of the uncompromising freethinker.' he wished, therefore, to show that a man could be a liberal without being an atheist. this gives the position characteristic of stewart and his friends. the group of eminent men who made edinburgh a philosophical centre was thoroughly in sympathy with the rationalist movement of the eighteenth century. the old dogmatic system of belief could be held very lightly even by the more educated clergy. hume's position is significant. he could lay down the most unqualified scepticism in his writings; but he always regarded his theories as intended for the enlightened; he had no wish to disturb popular beliefs in theology, and was a strong tory in politics. his friends were quite ready to take him upon that footing. the politeness with which 'mr. hume's' speculations are noticed by men like stewart and reid is in characteristic contrast to the reception generally accorded to more popular sceptics. they were intellectual curiosities not meant for immediate application. the real opinion of such men as adam smith and stewart was probably a rather vague and optimistic theism. in the professor's chair they could talk to lads intended for the ministry without insulting such old scottish prejudice (there was a good deal of it) as survived: and could cover rationalising opinions under language which perhaps might have a different meaning for their hearers. the position was necessarily one of tacit compromise. stewart considers himself to be an inductive philosopher appealing frankly to experience and reason; and was in practice a man of thoroughly liberal and generous feelings. he was heartily in favour of progress as he understood it. only he will not sacrifice common sense; that is to say, the beliefs which are in fact prevalent and congenial to existing institutions. common sense, of course, condemns extremes: and if logic seems to be pushing a man towards scepticism in philosophy or revolution in practice, he can always protest by the convenient device of intuitions. i have gone so far in order to illustrate the nature of the system which the utilitarians took to be the antithesis of their own. it may be finally remarked that at present both sides were equally ignorant of contemporary developments of german thought. when stewart became aware that there was such a thing as kant's philosophy, he tried to read it in a latin version. parr, i may observe, apparently did not know of this version, and gave up the task of reading german. stewart's example was not encouraging. he had abandoned the 'undertaking in despair' partly from the scholastic barbarism of the style, partly 'my utter inability to comprehend the author's meaning.' he recognises similarity between kant and reid, but thinks reid's simple statement of the fact that space cannot be derived from the senses more philosophical than kant's 'superstructure of technical mystery.'[ ] i have dwelt upon the side in which stewart's philosophy approximates to the empirical school, because the utilitarians were apt to misconceive the position. they took stewart to be the adequate representative of all who accepted one branch of an inevitable dilemma. the acceptance of 'intuitions,' that is, was the only alternative to thoroughgoing acceptance of 'experience.' they supposed, too, that persons vaguely described as 'kant and the germans' taught simply a modification of the 'intuitionist' view. i have noticed how emphatically stewart claimed to rely upon experience and to base his philosophy upon inductive psychology, and was so far admitting the first principles and the general methods of his opponents. the scottish philosophy, however, naturally presented itself as an antagonistic force to the utilitarians. the 'intuitions' represented the ultimate ground taken, especially in religious and ethical questions, by men who wished to be at once liberal philosophers and yet to avoid revolutionary extremes. 'intuitions' had in any case a negative value, as protests against the sufficiency of the empirical analysis. it might be quite true, for example, that hume's analysis of certain primary mental phenomena--of our belief in the external world or of the relation of cause and effect--was radically insufficient. he had not given an adequate explanation of the facts. the recognition of the insufficiency of his reasoning was highly important if only as a stimulus to inquiry. it was a warning to his and to hartley's followers that they had not thoroughly unravelled the perplexity but only cut the knot. but when the insufficiency of the explanation was interpreted as a demonstration that all explanation was impossible, and the 'intuition' an ultimate 'self-evident' truth, it became a refusal to inquire just where inquiry was wanted; a positive command to stop analysis at an arbitrary point; and a round assertion that the adversary could not help believing precisely the doctrine which he altogether declined to believe. naturally the empiricists refused to bow to an authority which was simply saying, 'don't inquire further,' without any ground for the prohibition except the '_ipse dixitism_' which declared that inquiry must be fruitless. stewart, in fact, really illustrated the equivocation between the two meanings of 'common sense.' if by that name he understood, as he professed to understand, ultimate 'laws of thought,' his position was justifiable as soon as he could specify the laws and prove that they were ultimate. but so far as he virtually took for granted that the average beliefs of intelligent people were such laws, and on that ground refused to examine the evidence of their validity, he was inconsistent, and his position only invited assault. as a fact, i believe that his 'intuitions' covered many most disputable propositions; and that the more clearly they were stated, the more they failed to justify his interpretations. he was not really answering the most vital and critical questions, but implicitly reserving them, and putting an arbitrary stop to investigations desirable on his own principles. the scottish philosophy was, however, accepted in england, and made a considerable impression in france, as affording a tenable barrier against scepticism. it was, as i have said, in philosophy what whiggism was in politics. like political whiggism it included a large element of enlightened and liberal rationalism; but like whiggism it covered an aversion to thoroughgoing logic. the english politician was suspicious of abstract principles, but could cover his acceptance of tradition and rule of thumb by general phrases about liberty and toleration. the whig in philosophy equally accepted the traditional creed, sufficiently purified from cruder elements, and sheltered his doctrine by speaking of 'intuitions and laws of thought.' in both positions there was really, i take it, a great deal of sound practical wisdom; but they also implied a marked reluctance to push inquiry too far, and a tacit agreement to be content with what the utilitarians denounced as 'vague generalities'--phrases, that is, which might be used either to conceal an underlying scepticism, or really to stop short in the path which led to scepticism. in philosophy as in politics, the utilitarians boasted of being thoroughgoing radicals, and hated compromises which to them appeared to be simply obstructive. i need not elaborate a point which will meet us again. if i were writing a history of thought in general i should have to notice other writers, though there were none of much distinction, who followed the teaching of stewart or of his opponents of the hartley and darwin school. it would be necessary also to insist upon the growing interest in the physical sciences, which were beginning not only to make enormous advances, but to attract popular attention. for my purpose, however, it is i think sufficient to mention these writers, each of whom had a very special relation to the utilitarians. i turn, therefore, to bentham. notes: [ ] nine volumes of dugald stewart's works, edited by sir w. hamilton, appeared from to ; a tenth, including a life of stewart by j. veitch, appeared in , and an eleventh, with an index to the whole, in . the chief books are the _elements of the philosophy of the human mind_ (in vols. ii., iii. and iv., originally in , , ); _philosophical essays_ (in vol. v., originally ); _philosophy of the active and moral powers of man_ (vols. vi. and vii., originally in ); _dissertation on the progress of philosophy_ (in vol. i.; originally in _encyclopædia britannica_, in and ). the lectures on political economy first appeared in the _works_, vols. viii. and ix. [ ] _works_, vi. ('preface'). [ ] _works_ (life of reid), x. - . [ ] reid's _works_ (hamilton), p. . [ ] reid's _works_ (hamilton), p. . [ ] _ibid._ . [ ] _ibid._ . [ ] stewart's remarks on his life of reid: reid's _works_, p. , etc. [ ] _the world as will and idea_ (haldane & kemp), ii. . reid's '_inquiry_,' he adds, is ten times better worth reading than all the philosophy together which has been written since kant. [ ] 'we are inspired with the sensation, as we are inspired with the corresponding perception, by means unknown.'--reid's _works_, . 'this,' says stewart, 'is a plain statement of fact.'--stewart's _works_, ii. - . [ ] see rosmini's _origin of ideas_ (english translation), i. p. , where, though sympathising with reid's aim, he admits a 'great blunder.' [ ] stewart's _works_, v. - . hamilton says in a note (p. ) that jeffrey candidly confessed stewart's reply to be satisfactory. [ ] _ibid._ ii. . [ ] _ibid._ ii. - . [ ] _ibid._ ii. . [ ] _ibid._ v. . [ ] stewart's _works_, ii. - ; iii. - . schopenhauer (_the world as will and idea_, ii. ) admires reid's teaching upon this point, and recommends us not 'to waste an hour over the scribblings of this shallow writer' (stewart). [ ] rosmini's _origin of ideas_ (english translation), i. - . [ ] _ibid._ i. _n._ [ ] stewart's _works_, iv. , , , and v. - . [ ] _ibid._ ii. , etc., and iii. , , . [ ] _works_, vii. - . [ ] _ibid._ vii. , etc. [ ] _works_, iv. . [ ] _ibid._ ii. . [ ] _ibid._ v. . [ ] _works_, ii. . [ ] _ibid._ ii. . [ ] _works_, vi. ; vii. . [ ] _ibid._ vii. . [ ] _ibid._ i. . [ ] _works_, vi. . [ ] _ibid._ vi. . [ ] _ibid._ vi. . [ ] _works_, vi. . cf. v. . [ ] _ibid._ vi. - . [ ] _ibid._ v. . [ ] in _works_, vi. - , he quotes dumont's _bentham_; but his general silence is the more significant, as in the lectures on political economy he makes frequent and approving reference to bentham's tract upon usury. [ ] _works_, vii. - . [ ] _ibid._ vi. . [ ] _works_, vi. . [ ] _ibid._ vi. . [ ] _works_, vi. . [ ] _works_, v. . i have given some details as to stewart's suffering under an english proselyte of kant in my _studies of a biographer_. chapter v bentham's life i. early life jeremy bentham,[ ] the patriarch of the english utilitarians, sprang from the class imbued most thoroughly with the typical english prejudices. his first recorded ancestor, brian bentham, was a pawnbroker, who lost money by the stop of the exchequer in , but was neither ruined, nor, it would seem, alienated by the king's dishonesty. he left some thousands to his son, jeremiah, an attorney and a strong jacobite. a second jeremiah, born nd december , carried on his father's business, and though his clients were not numerous, increased his fortune by judicious investments in houses and lands. although brought up in jacobite principles, he transferred his attachment to the hanoverian dynasty when a relation of his wife married a valet of george ii. the wife, alicia grove, was daughter of a tradesman who had made a small competence at andover. jeremiah bentham had fallen in love with her at first sight, and wisely gave up for her sake a match with a fortune of £ , . the couple were fondly attached to each other and to their children. the marriage took place towards the end of , and the eldest son, jeremy, was born in red lion street, houndsditch, th february - (o.s.) the only other child who grew up was samuel, afterwards sir samuel bentham, born th january . when eighty years old, jeremy gave anecdotes of his infancy to his biographer, bowring, who says that their accuracy was confirmed by contemporary documents, and proved his memory to be as wonderful as his precocity. although the child was physically puny, his intellectual development was amazing. before he was two he burst into tears at the sight of his mother's chagrin upon his refusal of some offered dainty. before he was 'breeched,' an event which happened when he was three and a quarter, he ran home from a dull walk, ordered a footman to bring lights and place a folio _rapin_ upon the table, and was found plunged in historical studies when his parents returned to the house. in his fourth year he was imbibing the latin grammar, and at the age of five years nine months and nineteen days, as his father notes, he wrote a scrap of latin, carefully pasted among the parental memoranda. the child was not always immured in london. his parents spent their sundays with the grandfather bentham at barking, and made occasional excursions to the house of mrs. bentham's mother at browning hill, near reading. bentham remembered the last as a 'paradise,' and a love of flowers and gardens became one of his permanent passions. jeremy cherished the memory of his mother's tenderness. the father, though less sympathetic, was proud of his son's precocity, and apparently injudicious in stimulating the unformed intellect. the boy was almost a dwarf in size. when sixteen he grew ahead,[ ] and was so feeble that he could scarcely drag himself upstairs. attempts to teach him dancing failed from the extreme weakness of his knees.[ ] he showed a taste for music, and could scrape a minuet on the fiddle at six years of age. he read all such books as came in his way. his parents objected to light literature, and he was crammed with such solid works as _rapin_, burnet's _theory of the earth_, and cave's _lives of the apostles_. various accidents, however, furnished him with better food for the imagination. he wept for hours over _clarissa harlowe_, studied _gulliver's travels_ as an authentic document, and dipped into a variety of such books as then drifted into middle-class libraries. a french teacher introduced him to some remarkable books. he read _télémaque_, which deeply impressed him, and, as he thought, implanted in his mind the seeds of later moralising. he attacked unsuccessfully some of voltaire's historical works, and even read _candide_, with what emotions we are not told. the servants meanwhile filled his fancy with ghosts and hobgoblins. to the end of his days he was still haunted by the imaginary horrors in the dark,[ ] and he says[ ] that they had been among the torments of his life. he had few companions of his own age, and though he was 'not unhappy' and was never subjected to corporal punishment, he felt more awe than affection for his father. his mother, to whom he was strongly attached, died on th january . bentham was thus a strangely precocious, and a morbidly sensitive child, when it was decided in to send him to westminster. the headmaster, dr. markham, was a friend of his father's. westminster, he says, represented 'hell' for him when browning hill stood for paradise. the instruction 'was wretched,' the fagging system was a 'horrid despotism.' the games were too much for his strength. his industry, however, enabled him to escape the birch, no small achievement in those days,[ ] and he became distinguished in the studies such as they were. he learned the catechism by heart, and was good at greek and latin verses, which he manufactured for his companions as well as himself. he had also the rarer accomplishment, acquired from his early tutor, of writing more easily in french than english. some of his writings were originally composed in french. he was, according to bowring, elected to one of the king's scholarships when between nine and ten, but as 'ill-usage was apprehended' the appointment was declined.[ ] he was at a boarding-house, and the life of the boys on the foundation was probably rougher. in june his father took him to oxford, and entered him as a commoner at queen's college. he came into residence in the following october, when only twelve years old. oxford was not more congenial than westminster. he had to sign the thirty-nine articles in spite of scruples suppressed by authority. the impression made upon him by this childish compliance never left him to the end of his life.[ ] his experience resembled that of adam smith and gibbon. laziness and vice were prevalent. a gentleman commoner of queen's was president of a 'hellfire club,' and brutal horseplay was still practised upon the weaker lads. bentham, still a schoolboy in age, continued his schoolboy course. he wrote latin verses, and one of his experiments, an ode upon the death of george ii., was sent to johnson, who called it 'a very pretty performance for a young man.' he also had to go through the form of disputation in the schools. queen's college had some reputation at this time for teaching logic.[ ] bentham was set to read watt's _logic_ ( ), sanderson's _compendium artis logicae_ ( ), and rowning's _compendious system of natural philosophy_ ( - ). some traces of these studies remained in his mind. in bentham took his b.a. degree, and returned to his home. it is significant that when robbed of all his money at oxford he did not confide in his father. he was paying by a morbid reserve for the attempts made to force him into premature activity. he accepted the career imposed by his father's wishes, and in november began to eat his dinners in lincoln's inn. he returned, however, to oxford in december to hear blackstone's lectures. these lectures were then a novelty at an english university. the vinerian professorship had been founded in in consequence of the success of a course voluntarily given by blackstone; and his lectures contained the substance of the famous commentaries, first published - . they had a great effect upon bentham. he says that he 'immediately detected blackstone's fallacy respecting natural rights,' thought other doctrines illogical, and was so much occupied by these reflections as to be unable to take notes. bentham's dissatisfaction with blackstone had not yet made him an opponent of the constituted order. he was present at some of the proceedings against wilkes, and was perfectly bewitched by lord mansfield's '_grim-gibber_,' that is, taken in by his pompous verbiage.[ ] in his father married mrs. abbot, the mother of charles abbot, afterwards lord colchester. bentham's dislike of his step-mother increased the distance between him and his father. he took his m.a. degree in and in finally left oxford for london to begin, as his father fondly hoped, a flight towards the woolsack. the lad's diffidence and extreme youth had indeed prevented him from forming the usual connections which his father anticipated as the result of a college life. his career as a barrister was short and grievously disappointing to the parental hopes. his father, like the elder fairford in _redgauntlet_, had 'a cause or two at nurse' for the son. the son's first thought was to 'put them to death,' a brief was given to him in a suit, upon which £ depended. he advised that the suit should be dropped and the money saved. other experiences only increased his repugnance to his profession.[ ] a singularly strong impression had been made upon him by the _memoirs_ of teresa constantia phipps, in which there is an account of vexatious legal proceedings as to the heroine's marriage. he appears to have first read this book in . then, he says, the 'demon of chicane appeared to me in all his hideousness. i vowed war against him. my vow has been accomplished!'[ ] bentham thus went to the bar as a 'bear to the stake.' he diverged in more than one direction. he studied chemistry under fordyce ( - ), and hankered after physical science. he was long afterwards ( ) member of a club to which sir joseph banks, john hunter, r. l. edgeworth, and other men of scientific reputation belonged.[ ] but he had drifted into a course of speculation, which, though more germane to legal studies, was equally fatal to professional success. the father despaired, and he was considered to be a 'lost child.' notes: [ ] the main authority for bentham's life is bowring's account in the two last volumes of the _works_. bain's _life of james mill_ gives some useful facts as to the later period. there is comparatively little mention of bentham in contemporary memoirs. little is said of him in romilly's _life_. parr's _works_, i. and viii., contains some letters. see also r. dale owen's _threading my way_ pp. - . a little book called _utilitarianism unmasked_, by the rev. j. f. colls, d.d. ( ), gives some reminiscences by colls, who had been bentham's amanuensis for fourteen years. colls, who took orders, disliked bentham's religious levity, and denounces his vanity, but admits his early kindness. voluminous collections of the papers used by bowring are at university college, and at the british museum. [ ] _works_, x. . [ ] _ibid._ x. . [ ] _ibid._ ix. . [ ] _ibid._ x. . [ ] southey was expelled from westminster in for attacking the birch in a schoolboy paper. [ ] _works_, x. . bowring's confused statement, i take it, means this. bentham, in any case, was not on the foundation. see welsh's _alumni west_. [ ] _works_, x. . [ ] _ibid._ viii. , . [ ] _works_, x. . [ ] _ibid._ x. , , . [ ] _works_, x. , . references are given to this book in _works_, vii. - ('rationale of evidence'). several editions appeared from to . see _works_, vi. , for a recollection of similar experiences. [ ] _ibid._ viii. _n._; x. . ii. first writings though lost to the bar, he had really found himself. he had taken the line prescribed by his idiosyncrasy. his father's injudicious forcing had increased his shyness at the bar, and he was like an owl in daylight. but no one, as we shall see, was less diffident in speculation. self-confidence in a philosopher is often the private credit which he opens with his imagination to compensate for his incapacity in the rough struggles of active life. bentham shrank from the world in which he was easily browbeaten to the study in which he could reign supreme. he had not the strong passions which prompt commonplace ambition, and cared little for the prizes for which most men will sacrifice their lives. nor, on the other hand, can he be credited with that ardent philanthropy or vehement indignation which prompts to an internecine struggle with actual wrongdoers. he had not the ardour which led howard to devote a life to destroy abuses, or that which turned swift's blood to gall in the struggle against triumphant corruption. he was thoroughly amiable, but of kindly rather than energetic affections. he, therefore, desired reform, but so far from regarding the ruling classes with rancour, took their part against the democrats. 'i was a great reformist,' he says, 'but never suspected that the "people in power" were against reform. i supposed they only wanted to know what was good in order to embrace it.'[ ] the most real of pleasures for him lay in speculating upon the general principles by which the 'people in power' should be guided. to construct a general chart for legislation, to hunt down sophistries, to explode mere noisy rhetoric, to classify and arrange and re-classify until his whole intellectual wealth was neatly arranged in proper pigeon-holes, was a delight for its own sake. he wished well to mankind; he detested abuses, but he hated neither the corrupted nor the corruptors; and it might almost seem that he rather valued the benevolent end, because it gave employment to his faculties, than valued the employment because it led to the end. this is implied in his remark made at the end of his life. he was, he said, as selfish as a man could be; but 'somehow or other' selfishness had in him taken the form of benevolence.[ ] he was at any rate in the position of a man with the agreeable conviction that he has only to prove the wisdom of a given course in order to secure its adoption. like many mechanical inventors, he took for granted that a process which was shown to be useful would therefore be at once adopted, and failed to anticipate the determined opposition of the great mass of 'vested interests' already in possession. at this period he made the discovery, or what he held to be the discovery, which governed his whole future career. he laid down the principle which was to give the clue to all his investigations; and, as he thought, required only to be announced to secure universal acceptance. when bentham revolted against the intellectual food provided at school and college, he naturally took up the philosophy which at that period represented the really living stream of thought. to be a man of enlightenment in those days was to belong to the school of locke. locke represented reason, free thought, and the abandonment of prejudice. besides locke, he mentions hume, montesquieu, helvétius, beccaria, and barrington. helvétius especially did much to suggest to him his leading principle, and upon country trips which he took with his father and step-mother, he used to lag behind studying helvétius' _de l'esprit_.[ ] locke, he says in an early note ( - ), should give the principles, helvétius the matter, of a complete digest of the law. he mentions with especial interest the third volume of hume's _treatise on human nature_ for its ethical views: 'he felt as if scales fell from his eyes' when he read it.[ ] daines barrington's _observations on the statutes_ ( ) interested him by miscellaneous suggestions. the book, he says,[ ] was a 'great treasure.' 'it is everything, _à propos_ of everything; i wrote volumes upon this volume.' beccaria's treatise upon crimes and punishments had appeared in , and had excited the applause of europe. the world was clearly ready for a fundamental reconstruction of legislative theories. under the influence of such studies bentham formulated his famous principle--a principle which to some seemed a barren truism, to others a mere epigram, and to some a dangerous falsehood. bentham accepted it not only as true, but as expressing a truth of extraordinary fecundity, capable of guiding him through the whole labyrinth of political and legislative speculation. his 'fundamental axiom' is that 'the greatest happiness of the greatest number is the measure of right and wrong.'[ ] bentham himself[ ] attributes the authorship of the phrase to beccaria or priestley. the general order of thought to which this theory belongs was of course not the property of any special writer or any particular period. here i need only observe that this embodiment of the general doctrine of utility or morality had been struck out by hutcheson in the attempt (as his title says) 'to introduce a mathematical calculation on subjects of morality.' this defines the exact reason which made it acceptable to bentham. for the vague reference to utility which appears in hume and other writers of his school, he substituted a formula, the terms of which suggest the possibility of an accurate quantitative comparison of different sums of happiness. in bentham's mind the difference between this and the more general formula was like the difference between the statement that the planets gravitate towards the sun, and the more precise statement that the law of gravitation varies inversely as the square of the distance. bentham hoped for no less an achievement than to become the newton of the moral world. bentham, after leaving oxford, took chambers in lincoln's inn. his father on his second marriage had settled some property upon him, which brought in some £ a year. he had to live like a gentleman upon this, and to give four guineas a year to the laundress, four to his barber, and two to his shoeblack. in spite of jeremy's deviation from the path of preferment, the two were on friendly terms, and when the hopes of the son's professional success grew faint, the father showed sympathy with his literary undertakings. jeremy visited paris in , but made few acquaintances, though he was already regarded as a 'philosopher.' in he was in correspondence with d'alembert, the abbé morellet, and other philanthropic philosophers, but it does not appear at what time this connection began.[ ] he translated voltaire's _taureau blanc_[ ]--a story which used to 'convulse him with laughter.' a reference to it will show that bentham by this time took the voltairean view of the old testament. bentham, however, was still on the side of the tories. his first publication was a defence of lord mansfield in against attacks arising out of the prosecution of woodfall for publishing junius's letter to the king. this defence, contained in two letters, signed irenæus, was published in the _gazetteer_. bentham's next performance was remarkable in the same sense. among the few friends who drifted to his chambers was john lind ( - ), who had been a clergyman, and after acting as tutor to a prince in poland, had returned to london and become a writer for the press. he had business relations with the elder bentham, and the younger bentham was to some extent his collaborator in a pamphlet[ ] which defended the conduct of ministers to the american colonies. bentham observes that he was prejudiced against the americans by the badness of their arguments, and thought from the first, as he continued to think, that the declaration of independence was a hodge-podge of confusion and absurdity, in which the thing to be proved is all along taken for granted.[ ] two other friendships were formed by bentham about this time: one with james trail, an unsuccessful barrister, who owed a seat in parliament and some minor offices to lord hertford, and is said by romilly to have been a man of great talent; and one with george wilson, afterwards a leader of the norfolk circuit, who had become known to him through a common interest in dr. fordyce's lectures upon chemistry. wilson became a bosom friend, and was one of bentham's first disciples, though they were ultimately alienated.[ ] at this time, bentham says, that his was 'truly a miserable life.'[ ] yet he was getting to work upon his grand project. he tells his father on st october that he is writing his _critical elements of jurisprudence_, the book of which a part was afterwards published as the _introduction to the principles of morals and legislation_.[ ] in the same year he published his first important work, the _fragment on government_. the year was in many ways memorable. the declaration of independence marked the opening of a new political era. adam smith's _wealth of nations_ and gibbon's _decline and fall_ formed landmarks in speculation and in history; and bentham's volume, though it made no such impression, announced a serious attempt to apply scientific methods to problems of legislation. the preface contained the first declaration of his famous formula which was applied to the confutation of blackstone. bentham was apparently roused to this effort by recollections of the oxford lectures. the _commentaries_ contained a certain quantity of philosophical rhetoric; and as blackstone was much greater in a literary than in a philosophical sense, the result was naturally unsatisfactory from a scientific point of view. he had vaguely appealed to the sound whig doctrine of social compact, and while disavowing any strict historical basis had not inquired too curiously what was left of his supposed foundation. bentham pounced upon the unfortunate bit of verbiage; insisted upon asking for a meaning when there was nothing but a rhetorical flourish, and tore the whole flimsy fabric to rags and tatters. a more bitter attack upon blackstone, chiefly, as bowring says, upon his defence of the jewish law, was suppressed for fear of the law of libel.[ ] the _fragment_ was published anonymously, but bentham had confided the secret to his father by way of suggesting some slight set-off against his apparent unwillingness to emerge from obscurity. the book was at first attributed to lord mansfield, lord camden, and to dunning. it was pirated in dublin; and most of the five hundred copies printed appear to have been sold, though without profit to the author. the father's indiscretion let out the secret; and the sale, when the book was known to be written by a nobody, fell off at once, or so bentham believed. the anonymous writer, however, was denounced and accused of being the author of much ribaldry, and among other accusations was said to be not only the translator but the writer of the _white bull_.[ ] bentham had fancied that all manner of 'torches from the highest regions' would come to light themselves at his 'farthing candle.' none of them came, and he was left for some years in obscurity, though still labouring at the great work which was one day to enlighten the world. at last, however, partial recognition came to him in a shape which greatly influenced his career. lord shelburne, afterwards marquis of lansdowne, had been impressed by the _fragment_, and in sought out bentham at his chambers. shelburne's career was to culminate in the following year with his brief tenure of the premiership ( rd july to th february ). rightly or wrongly his contemporaries felt the distrust indicated by his nickname 'malagrida,' which appears to have been partly suggested by a habit of overstrained compliment. he incurred the dislike not unfrequently excited by men who claim superiority of intellect without possessing the force of character which gives a corresponding weight in political affairs. although his education had been bad, he had something of that cosmopolitan training which enabled many members of the aristocracy to look beyond the narrow middle-class prejudices and share in some degree the wider philosophical movements of the day. he had enjoyed the friendship of franklin, and had been the patron of priestley, who made some of his chemical discoveries at bowood, and to whom he allowed an annuity. he belonged to that section of the whigs which had most sympathy with the revolutionary movement. his chief political lieutenants were dunning and barré, who at the time sat for his borough calne. he now rapidly formed an intimacy with bentham, who went to stay at bowood in the autumn of . bentham now and then in later years made some rather disparaging remarks upon shelburne, whom he apparently considered to be rather an amateur than a serious philosopher, and who in the house of lords talked 'vague generalities'--the sacred phrase by which the utilitarians denounced all preaching but their own--in a way to impose upon the thoughtless. he respected shelburne, however, as one who trusted the people, and was distrusted by the whig aristocracy. he felt, too, a real affection and gratitude for the patron to whom he owed so much. shelburne had done him a great service.[ ] 'he raised me from the bottomless pit of humiliation. he made me feel i was something.' the elder bentham was impressed by his son's acquaintance with a man in so eminent a position, and hoped that it might lead by a different path to the success which had been missed at the bar. at bowood bentham stayed over a month upon his first visit, and was treated in the manner appropriate to a philosopher. the men showed him friendliness, dashed with occasional contempt, and the ladies petted him. he met lord camden and dunning and young william pitt, and some minor adherents of the great man. pitt was 'very good-natured and a little raw.' i was monstrously 'frightened at him,' but, when i came to talk with him, he seemed 'frightened at me.'[ ] bentham, however, did not see what ideas they were likely to have in common. in fact there was the usual gulf between the speculative thinker and the practical man. 'all the statesmen,' so thought the philosopher, 'were wanting in the great elements of statesmanship': they were always talking about 'what was' and seldom or never about 'what ought to be.'[ ] occasionally, it would seem, they descended lower, and made a little fun of the shy and over-sensitive intruder.[ ] the ladies, however, made it up to him. shelburne made him read his 'dry metaphysics' to them,[ ] and they received it with feminine docility. lord shelburne had lately ( ) married his second wife, louisa, daughter of the first earl of upper ossory. her sister, lady mary fitz-patrick, married in to stephen fox, afterwards lord holland, was the mother of the lord holland of later days and of miss caroline fox, who survived till , and was at this time a pleasant girl of thirteen or fourteen. lady shelburne had also two half-sisters, daughters of her mother's second marriage to richard vernon. lady shelburne took a fancy to bentham, and gave him the 'prodigious privilege' of admission to her dressing-room. though haughty in manner, she was mild in reality, and after a time she and her sister indulged in 'innocent gambols.' in her last illness, bentham was one of the only two men whom she would see, and upon her death in , he was the only male friend to whom her husband turned for consolation. miss fox seems to have been the only woman who inspired bentham with a sentiment approaching to passion. he wrote occasional letters to the ladies in the tone of elephantine pleasantry natural to one who was all his life both a philosopher and a child.[ ] he made an offer of marriage to miss fox in , when he was nearer sixty than fifty, and when they had not met for sixteen years. the immediate occasion was presumably the death of lord lansdowne. she replied in a friendly letter, regretting the pain which her refusal would inflict. in bentham, then in his eightieth year, wrote once more, speaking of the flower she had given him 'in the green lane,' and asking for a kind answer. he was 'indescribably hurt and disappointed' by a cold and distant reply. the tears would come into the old man's eyes as he dealt upon the cherished memories of bowood.[ ] it is pleasant to know that bentham was once in love; though his love seems to have been chiefly for a memory associated with what he called the happiest time of his life. shelburne had a project for a marriage between bentham and the widow of lord ashburton (dunning), who died in .[ ] he also made some overtures of patronage. 'he asked me,' says bentham,[ ] 'what he could do for me? i told him, nothing,' and this conduct--so different from that of others, 'endeared me to him.' bentham declined one offer in ; but in he suddenly took it into his head that lansdowne had promised him a seat in parliament; and immediately set forth his claims in a vast argumentative letter of sixty-one pages.[ ] lansdowne replied conclusively that he had not made the supposed promise, and had had every reason to suppose that bentham preferred retirement to politics. bentham accepted the statement frankly, though a short coolness apparently followed. the claim, in fact, only represented one of those passing moods to which bentham was always giving way at odd moments. bentham's intimacy at bowood led to more important results. in he met romilly and dumont at lord lansdowne's table.[ ] he had already met romilly in through wilson, but after this the intimacy became close. romilly had fallen in love with the _fragment_, and in later life he became bentham's adviser in practical matters, and the chief if not the sole expounder of bentham's theories in parliament.[ ] the alliance with dumont was of even greater importance. dumont, born at geneva in , had become a protestant minister; he was afterwards tutor to shelburne's son, and in visited paris with romilly and made acquaintance with mirabeau. romilly showed dumont some of bentham's papers written in french. dumont offered to rewrite and to superintend their publication. he afterwards received other papers from bentham himself, with whom he became personally acquainted after his return from paris.[ ] dumont became bentham's most devoted disciple, and laboured unweariedly upon the translation and condensation of his master's treatise. one result is odd enough. dumont, it is said, provided materials for some of mirabeau's 'most splendid' speeches; and some of these materials came from bentham.[ ] one would like to see how bentham's prose was transmuted into an oratory by mirabeau. in any case, dumont's services to bentham were invaluable. it is painful to add that according to bowring the two became so much alienated in the end, that in bentham refused to see dumont, and declared that his chief interpreter did 'not understand a word of his meaning.' bowring attributes this separation to a remark made by dumont about the shabbiness of bentham's dinners as compared with those at lansdowne house--a comparison which he calls 'offensive, uncalled-for, and groundless.'[ ] bentham apparently argued that a man who did not like his dinners could not appreciate his theories: a fallacy excusable only by the pettishness of old age. bowring, however, had a natural dulness which distorted many anecdotes transmitted through him; and we may hope that in this case there was some exaggeration. bentham's emergence was, meanwhile, very slow. the great men whom he met at lord lansdowne's were not specially impressed by the shy philosopher. wedderburn, so he heard, pronounced the fatal word 'dangerous' in regard to the _fragment_.[ ] how, thought bentham, can utility be dangerous? is this not self-contradictory? later reflection explained the puzzle. what is useful to the governed need not be therefore useful to the governors. mansfield, who was known to lind, said that in some parts the author of the _fragment_ was awake and in others was asleep. in what parts? bentham wondered. awake, he afterwards considered, in the parts where blackstone, the object of mansfield's personal 'heart-burning,' was attacked; asleep where mansfield's own despotism was threatened. camden was contemptuous; dunning only 'scowled' at him; and barré, after taking in his book, gave it back with the mysterious information that he had 'got into a scrape.'[ ] the great book, therefore, though printed in ,[ ] 'stuck for eight years,'[ ] and the writer continued his obscure existence in lincoln's inn.[ ] an opinion which he gave in some question as to the evidence in warren hastings's trial made, he says, an impression in his favour. before publication was achieved, however, a curious episode altered bentham's whole outlook. his brother samuel ( - ), whose education he had partly superintended,[ ] had been apprenticed to a shipwright at woolwich, and in had gone to russia in search of employment. three years later he was sent by prince potemkin to superintend a great industrial establishment at kritchev on a tributary of the dnieper. there he was to be 'jack-of-all-trades--building ships, like harlequin, of odds and ends--a rope-maker, a sail-maker, a distiller, brewer, malster, tanner, glass-man, glass-grinder, potter, hemp-spinner, smith, and coppersmith.'[ ] he was, that is, to transplant a fragment of ready-made western civilisation into russia. bentham resolved to pay a visit to his brother, to whom he was strongly attached. he left england in august , and stayed some time at constantinople, where he met maria james ( - ), the wife successively of w. reveley and of john gisborne, and the friend of shelley. thence he travelled by land to kritchev, and settled with his brother at the neighbouring estate of zadobras. bentham here passed a secluded life, interested in his brother's occupations and mechanical inventions, and at the same time keeping up his own intellectual labours. the most remarkable result was the _defence of usury_, written in the beginning of . bentham appends to it a respectful letter to adam smith, who had supported the laws against usury inconsistently with his own general principles. the disciple was simply carrying out those principles to the logical application from which the master had shrunk. the manuscript was sent to wilson, who wished to suppress it.[ ] the elder bentham obtained it, and sent it to the press. the book met bentham as he was returning. it was highly praised by thomas reid,[ ] and by the _monthly review_; it was translated into various languages, and became one of the sacred books of the economists. wilson is described as 'cold and cautious,' and he suppressed another pamphlet upon prison discipline.[ ] in a letter to bentham, dated th february , however, wilson disavows any responsibility for the delay in the publication of the great book. 'the cause,' he says, 'lies in your constitution. with one-tenth part of your genius, and a common degree of steadiness, both sam and you would long since have risen to great eminence. but your history, since i have known you, has been to be always running from a good scheme to a better. in the meantime life passes away and nothing is completed.' he entreated bentham to return, and his entreaties were seconded by trail, who pointed out various schemes of reform, especially of the poor-laws, in which bentham might be useful. wilson had mentioned already another inducement to publication. 'there is,' he says, on th september , 'a mr. paley, a parson and archdeacon of carlisle, who has written a book called _principles of moral and political philosophy_, in quarto, and it has gone through two editions with prodigious applause.' he fears that bentham will be charged with stealing from paley, and exhorts him to come home and 'establish a great literary reputation in your own language, and in this country which you despise.'[ ] bentham at last started homewards. he travelled through poland, germany, and holland, and reached london at the beginning of february . he settled at a little farmhouse at hendon, bought a 'superb harpsichord,' resumed his occupations, and saw a small circle of friends. wilson urged him to publish his _introduction_ without waiting to complete the vast scheme to which it was to be a prologue. copies of the printed book were already abroad, and there was a danger of plagiarism. thus urged, bentham at last yielded, and the _introduction to the principles of morals and legislation_ appeared in . the preface apologised for imperfections due to the plan of his work. the book, he explained, laid down the principles of all his future labours, and was to stand to him in the relation of a treatise upon pure mathematics to a treatise upon the applied sciences. he indicated ten separate departments of legislation, each of which would require a treatise in order to the complete execution of his scheme. the book gives the essence of bentham's theories, and is the one large treatise published by himself. the other works were only brought to birth by the help of disciples. dumont, in the discourse prefixed to the _traités_, explains the reason. bentham, he says, would suspend a whole work and begin a new one because a single proposition struck him as doubtful. a problem of finance would send him to a study of political economy in general. a question of procedure would make him pause until he had investigated the whole subject of judicial organisation. while at work, he felt only the pleasure of composition. when his materials required form and finish, he felt only the fatigue. disgust succeeded to charm; and he could scarcely be induced to interrupt his labours upon fresh matter in order to give to his interpreter the explanations necessary for the elucidation of his previous writings. he was without the literary vanity or the desire for completion which may prompt to premature publication, but may at least prevent the absolute waste of what has been already achieved. his method of writing was characteristic. he began by forming a complete logical scheme for the treatment of any subject, dividing and subdividing so as to secure an exhaustive classification of the whole matter of discussion. then taking up any subdivision, he wrote his remarks upon sheets, which were put aside after being marked with references indicating their place in the final treatise. he never turned to these again. in time he would exhaust the whole subject, and it would then be the duty of his disciples simply to put together the bricks according to the indications placed upon each in order to construct the whole edifice.[ ] as, however, the plan would frequently undergo a change, and as each fragment had been written without reference to the others, the task of ultimate combination and adaptation of the ultimate atoms was often very perplexing. bentham, as we shall see, formed disciples ardent enough to put together these scattered documents as the disciples of mahomet put together the koran. bentham's revelation was possibly less influential than mahomet's; but the logical framework was far more coherent. bentham's mind was for the present distracted. he had naturally returned full of information about russia. the english ministry were involved in various negotiations with russia, sweden, and denmark, the purpose of which was to thwart the designs of russia in the east. bentham wrote three letters to the _public advertiser_, signed anti-machiavel,[ ] protesting against the warlike policy. bentham himself believed that the effect was decisive, and that the 'war was given up' in consequence of his arguments. historians[ ] scarcely sanction this belief, which is only worth notice because it led to another belief, oddly characteristic of bentham. a letter signed 'partizan' in the _public advertiser_ replied to his first two letters. who was 'partizan'? lord lansdowne amused himself by informing bentham that he was no less a personage than george iii. bentham, with even more than his usual simplicity, accepted this hoax as a serious statement. he derived no little comfort from the thought; for to the antipathy thus engendered in the 'best of kings' he attributed the subsequent failure of his panopticon scheme.[ ] notes: [ ] _works_, x. . [ ] _ibid._ xi. . [ ] _works_, x. . [ ] _ibid._ i. _n._ [ ] _works_, x. . [ ] _ibid._ i. . [ ] _ibid._ x. , . see also _deontology_, i. - , where bentham speaks of discovering the phrase in priestley's _essay on government_ in . priestley says (p. ) that 'the good and happiness of the members, that is of the majority of the members, of any state is the great standard by which everything relating to that state must be finally determined.' so le mercier de la rivière says, in , that the ultimate end of society is _assurer le plus grand bonheur possible à la plus grande population possible_ (daire's _Ã�conomistes_, p. ). hutcheson's _enquiry concerning moral good and evil_, , see iii. § , says 'that action is best which secures the greatest happiness of the greatest number.' beccaria, in the preface to his essay, speaks of _la massima felicità divisa nel maggior numero_. j. s. mill says that he found the word 'utilitarian' in galt's _annals of the parish_, and gave the name to the society founded by him in - (_autobiography_, p. ). the word had been used by bentham himself in , and he suggested it to dumont in as the proper name of the party, instead of 'benthamite' (_works_, x. , ). he afterwards thought it a bad name, because it gave a 'vague idea' (_works_, x. ), and substituted 'greatest happiness principle' for 'principle of utility' (_works_, i. 'morals and legislation'). [ ] a letter in the additional mss. , , shows that bentham sent his 'fragment' and his 'hard labour' pamphlet to d'alembert in , apparently introducing himself for the first time. cf. _works_, x. - , - . [ ] the translation of . see lowndes' _manual_ under voltaire, _works_, x. _n._ [ ] _review of the acts of the thirteenth parliament, etc._ ( ). [ ] _works_, x. , . [ ] _works_, x. - . [ ] _ibid._ x. . [ ] _ibid._ x. . [ ] _works_, x. . [ ] _works_, x. - . blackstone took no notice of the work, except by some allusions in the preface to his next edition. bentham criticised blackstone respectfully in the pamphlet upon the hard labour bill ( ). blackstone sent a courteous but 'frigidly cautious' reply to the author.--_works_, i. . [ ] _works_, x. - , [ ] _ibid._ x. . [ ] _ibid._ x. . [ ] _ibid._ x. ; i. . [ ] _works_, x. ; i. . [ ] _ibid._ x. , . [ ] _works_, x. , , . [ ] _ibid._ i. . [ ] _ibid._ x. , . [ ] _ibid._ x. - . [ ] _ibid._ x. . [ ] _works_, v. . [ ] _souvenirs sur mirabeau_ (preface). [ ] _works_, x. . [ ] _works_, x. . colls (p. ) tells the same story. [ ] _works_ ('fragment, etc.'), i. , and _ibid._ ii. _n._ [ ] _ibid._ i. , , . [ ] _ibid._ i. . [ ] _ibid._ x. . [ ] bentham says (_works_, i. ) that he was a member of a club of which johnson was the despot. the only club possible seems to be the essex street club, of which daines barrington was a member. if so, it was in , though bentham seems to imply an earlier date. [ ] _works_, x. . [ ] _ibid._ x. . [ ] _works_, x. . [ ] reid's _works_ (hamilton), p. . [ ] _works_, x. . [ ] _works_, x. - . cf. _ibid._ x. , where wilson is often 'tempted to think'--erroneously, of course--that paley must have known something of bentham's work. paley's chief source was abraham tucker. [ ] see j. h. burton in _works_, i. . [ ] given in _works_, x. - . [ ] see lecky's _eighteenth century_, x. - , for an account of these transactions. [ ] bowring tells this gravely, and declares that george iii. also wrote letters to the _gazette de leyde_. george iii. certainly contributed some letters to arthur young's _annals of agriculture_, and is one of the suggested authors of junius. iii. the panopticon the crash of the french revolution was now to change the whole course of european politics, and to bring philosophical jurists face to face with a long series of profoundly important problems. bentham's attitude during the early stages of the revolution and the first war period is significant, and may help to elucidate some characteristics of the utilitarian movement. revolutions are the work of passion: the product of a social and political condition in which the masses are permeated with discontent, because the social organs have ceased to discharge their functions. they are not ascribable to the purely intellectual movement alone, though it is no doubt an essential factor. the revolution came in any case because the social order was out of joint, not simply because voltaire or rousseau or diderot had preached destructive doctrines. the doctrines of the 'rights of man' are obvious enough to have presented themselves to many minds at many periods. the doctrines became destructive because the old traditions were shaken, and the traditions were shaken because the state of things to which they corresponded had become intolerable. the french revolution meant (among other things) that in the mind of the french peasant there had accumulated a vast deposit of bitter enmity against the noble who had become a mere parasite upon the labouring population, retaining, as arthur young said, privileges for himself, and leaving poverty to the lower classes. the peasant had not read rousseau; he had read nothing. but when his discontent began to affect the educated classes, men who had read rousseau found in his works the dialect most fitted to express the growing indignation. rousseau's genius had devised the appropriate formula; for rousseau's sensibility had made him prescient of the rising storm. what might be a mere commonplace for speculative students suddenly became the warcry in a social upheaval. in england, as i have tried to show, there was no such popular sentiment behind the political theories: and reformers were content with measures which required no appeal to absolute rights and general principles. bentham was no rousseau; and the last of men to raise a warcry. passion and sentimentalism were to him a nuisance. his theories were neither suggested nor modified by the revolution. he looked on with curious calmness, as though the revolutionary disturbances were rather a transitory interruption to the progress of reform than indicative of a general convulsion. his own position was isolated. he had no strong reforming party behind him. the whigs, his main friends, were powerless, discredited, and themselves really afraid to support any vigorous policy. they had in the main to content themselves with criticising the warlike policy which, for the time, represented the main current of national sentiment. bentham shared many of their sympathies. he hated the abstract 'rights of man' theory as heartily as burke. it was to him a 'hodge-podge' of fallacies. on the other hand, he was absolutely indifferent to the apotheosis of the british constitution constructed by burke's imagination. he cared nothing for history in general, or regarded it, from a voltairean point of view, as a record of the follies and crimes of mankind. he wished to deal with political, and especially with legal, questions in a scientific spirit--but 'scientific' would mean not pure mathematics but pure empiricism. he was quite as far from paine's abstract methods as from burke's romantic methods. both of them, according to him, were sophists: though one might prefer logical and the other sentimental sophistries. dumont, when he published ( ) his versions of bentham, insisted upon this point. nothing, he says, was more opposed to the trenchant dogmatism of the abstract theorists about 'rights of man' and 'equality' than bentham's thoroughly scientific procedure (_discours préliminaire_). bentham's intellectual position in this respect will require further consideration hereafter. all his prejudices and sympathies were those of the middle class from which he sprang. he was no democrat: he had no particular objection to the nobility, though he preferred shelburne to the king's friends or to the whig aristocracy. the reforms which he advocated were such as might be adopted by any enlightened legislator, not only by shelburne but even by blackstone. he had only, he thought, to convert a few members of parliament to gain the acceptance for a rational criminal code. it had hardly even occurred to him that there was anything wrong in the general political order, though he was beginning to find out that it was not so modifiable as he could have wished by the new ideas which he propounded. bentham's activity during the first revolutionary war corresponded to this position. the revolution, whatever else it might do, obviously gave a chance to amateur legislators. there was any amount of work to be done in the way of codifying and reforming legislative systems. the deviser of utopias had such an opening as had never occurred in the world's history. lord lansdowne, on the rd january , expresses his pleasure at hearing that bentham intends to 'take up the cause of the people in france.'[ ] bentham, as we have seen, was already known to some of the french leaders, and he was now taking time by the forelock. he sent to the abbé morellet a part of his treatise on political tactics, hoping to have it finished by the time of the meeting of the states general.[ ] this treatise, civilly accepted by morellet, and approved with some qualifications by bentham's counsellors, romilly, wilson, and trail, was an elaborate account of the organisation and procedure of a legislative assembly, founded chiefly on the practice of the house of commons. it was published in by dumont in company with _anarchic fallacies_, a vigorous exposure of the _declaration of rights_, which bentham had judiciously kept on his shelf. had the french known of it, he remarks afterwards, they would have been little disposed to welcome him.[ ] an elaborate scheme for the organisation of the french judiciary was suggested by a report to the national assembly, and published in march . in , bentham offered to go to france himself in order to establish a prison on his new scheme (to be mentioned directly), and become 'gratuitously the gaoler thereof.'[ ] the assembly acknowledged his 'ardent love of humanity,' and ordered an extract from his scheme to be printed for their instruction. the tactics actually adopted by the french revolutionists for managing assemblies and their methods of executing justice form a queer commentary on the philosopher who, like voltaire's mamres in the _white bull_, continued to 'meditate profoundly' in placid disregard of facts. he was in fact proposing that the lava boiling up in a volcanic eruption should arrange itself entirely according to his architectural designs. but his proposal to become a gaoler during the revolution reaches the pathetic by its amiable innocence. on th august , bentham was one of the men upon whom the expiring assembly, anxious to show its desire of universal fraternity, conferred the title of citizen. with bentham were joined priestley, paine, wilberforce, clarkson, washington, and others. the september massacres followed. on th october the honour was communicated to bentham. he replied in a polite letter, pointing out that he was a royalist in london for the same reason which would make him a republican in france. he ended by a calm argument against the proscription of refugees.[ ] the convention, if it read the letter, and had any sense of humour, must have been amused. the war and the reign of terror followed. bentham turned the occasion to account by writing a pamphlet (not then published) exhorting the french to 'emancipate their colonies.' colonies were an aimless burthen, and to get rid of them would do more than conquest to relieve their finances. british fleets and the insurrection of st. domingo were emancipating by very different methods. bentham was, of course, disgusted by the divergence of his clients from the lines chalked out by proper respect for law and order. on st october he writes to a friend, expressing his wish that jacobinism could be extirpated; no price could be too heavy to pay for such a result: but he doubts whether war or peace would be the best means to the end, and protests against the policy of appropriating useless and expensive colonies instead of 'driving at the heart of the monster.'[ ] never was an adviser more at cross-purposes with the advised. it would be impossible to draw a more striking portrait of the abstract reasoner, whose calculations as to human motives omit all reference to passion, and who fancied that all prejudice can be dispelled by a few bits of logic. meanwhile a variety of suggestions more or less important and connected with passing events were seething in his fertile brain. he wrote one of his most stinging pamphlets, '_truth versus ashhurst_' in december , directed against a judge who, in the panic suggested by the september massacres, had eulogised the english laws. bentham's aversion to jacobin measures by no means softened his antipathy to english superstitions; and his attack was so sharp that romilly advised and obtained its suppression for the time. projects as to war-taxes suggested a couple of interesting pamphlets written in , and published in . in connection with this, schemes suggested themselves to him for improved systems of patents, for limited liability companies and other plans.[ ] his great work still occupied him at intervals. in he offers to dundas to employ himself in drafting statutes, and remarks incidentally that he could legislate for hindostan, should legislation be wanted there, as easily as for his own parish.[ ] in , dumont is begging him to 'conquer his repugnance' to bestowing a few hints upon his interpreter.[ ] in , bentham writes long letters suggesting that he should be sent to france with wilberforce, in order to re-establish friendly relations.[ ] in he is corresponding at great length with patrick colquhoun upon plans for improving the metropolitan police.[ ] in he says[ ] that for two years and a half 'he has thought of scarce anything else' than a plan for interest-bearing notes, which he carefully elaborated and discussed with nicholas vansittart and dr. beeke. in september , however, he had found time to occupy himself with a proposed _frigidarium_ or ice-house for the preservation of fish, fruits, and vegetables; and invited dr. roget, a nephew of romilly, to come to his house and carry out the necessary experiments.[ ] in january he writes to dumont[ ] proposing to send him a trifling specimen of the panopticon, a set of hollow fire-irons invented by his brother, which may attract the attention of buonaparte and talleyrand. he proceeds to expound the merits of samuel's invention for making wheels by machinery. dumont replies, that fire-irons are 'superfluities'--(fire-arms might have been more to buonaparte's taste)--and that the panopticon itself was coldly received. this panopticon was to be bentham's masterpiece. it occupied his chief attention from his return to england until the peace of amiens. his brother had returned from russia in . their father died th march , dividing his property equally between his sons. jeremy's share consisted of the estate at queen's square place, westminster, and of landed property producing £ or £ a year. the father, spite of the distance between them, had treated his son with substantial kindness, and had learned to take a pride in achievements very unlike those which he had at first desired.[ ] bentham's position, however, was improved by the father's death. the westminster estate included the house in which he lived for the rest of his life. there was a garden in which he took great delight, though london smoke gradually destroyed the plants: and in the garden was the small house where milton had once lived.[ ] here, with the co-operation of his brother and his increased income, he had all the means necessary for launching his grand scheme. the panopticon, as defined by its inventor to brissot, was a 'mill for grinding rogues honest, and idle men industrious.'[ ] it was suggested by a plan designed by his brother in russia for a large house to be occupied by workmen, and to be so arranged that they could be under constant inspection. bentham was working on the old lines of philanthropic reform. he had long been interested in the schemes of prison reform, to which howard's labours had given the impetus. blackstone, with the help of william eden, afterwards lord auckland, had prepared the 'hard labour bill,' which bentham had carefully criticised in . the measure was passed in , and provided for the management of convicts, who were becoming troublesome, as transportation to america had ceased to be possible. howard, whose relation to bentham i have already noticed, was appointed as one of the commissioners to carry out the provisions of the act. the commissioners disagreed; howard resigned; and though at last an architect (william blackburn) was appointed who possessed howard's confidence, and who constructed various prisons in the country, the scheme was allowed to drop. bentham now hoped to solve the problem with his panopticon. he printed an account of it in . he wrote to his old antagonist, george iii., describing it, together with another invention of samuel's for enabling armies to cross rivers, which might be more to his majesty's taste.[ ] in march he made a proposal to the government offering to undertake the charge of a thousand convicts upon the panopticon system.[ ] after delays suspicious in the eyes of bentham, but hardly surprising at such a period, an act of parliament was obtained in to adopt his schemes. bentham had already been making preparations. he says[ ] ( th september ) that he has already spent £ , and is spending at the rate of £ a year, while his income was under £ a year. he obtained, however, £ from the government. he had made models and architectural plans, in which he was helped by reveley, already known to him at constantinople. this sum, it appears, was required in order to keep together the men whom he employed. the nature of their employment is remarkable.[ ] samuel, a man of singular mechanical skill, which was of great use to the navy during the war, had devised machinery for work in wood and metal. bentham had joined his brother, and they were looking out for a steam-engine. it had now occurred to them to employ convicts instead of steam, and thus to combine philanthropy with business. difficulties of the usual kind arose as to the procurement of a suitable site. the site secured under the provisions of the 'hard labour bill' was for some reason rejected; and bentham was almost in despair. it was not until that he at last acquired for £ , an estate at millbank, which seemed to be suitable. meanwhile bentham had found another application for his principle. the growth of pauperism was alarming statesmen. whitbread proposed in february to fix a minimum rate of wages. the wisest thing that government could do, he said, was to 'offer a liberal premium for the encouragement of large families.' pitt proceeded to prepare the abortive poor-law bill,[ ] upon which bentham (in february ) sent in some very shrewd criticisms. they were not published, but are said to have 'powerfully contributed to the abandonment of the measure.'[ ] they show bentham's power of incisive criticism, though they scarcely deal with the general principle. in the following autumn bentham contributed to arthur young's _annals of agriculture_ upon the same topic. it had struck him that an application of his panopticon would give the required panacea. he worked out details with his usual zeal, and the scheme attracted notice among the philanthropists of the time. it was to be a 'succedaneum' to pitt's proposal. meanwhile the finance committee, appointed in , heard evidence from bentham's friend, patrick colquhoun, upon the panopticon, and a report recommending it was proposed by r. pole carew, a friend of samuel bentham. although this report was suppressed, the scheme apparently received an impetus. the millbank estate was bought in consequence of these proceedings, and a sum of only £ was wanted to buy out the tenant of one piece of land. bentham was constantly in attendance at a public office, expecting a final warrant for the money. it never came, and, as bentham believed, the delay was due to the malice of george iii. had any other king been on the throne, panopticon in both 'the prisoner branch and the pauper branch' would have been set at work.[ ] such are the consequences of newspaper controversies with monarchs! after this, in any case, the poor panopticon, as the old lawyers said, 'languishing did live,' and at last 'languishing did die.' poor bentham seems to have struggled vainly for a time. he appealed to pitt's friend, wilberforce; he appealed to his step-brother abbot; he wrote to members of parliament, but all was in vain. romilly induced him in to suppress a statement of his grievances which could only have rendered ministers implacable.[ ] but he found out what would hardly have been a discovery to most people, that officials can be dilatory and evasive; and certain discoveries about the treatment of convicts in new south wales convinced him that they could even defy the laws and the constitution when they were beyond inspection. he published ( ) a _plea for the constitution_, showing the enormities committed in the colony, 'in breach of magna charta, the petition of right, the habeas corpus act, and the bill of rights.' romilly in vain told him that the attorney-general could not recommend the author of such an effusion to be keeper of a panopticon.[ ] the actual end did not come till . a committee then reported against the scheme. they noticed one essential and very characteristic weakness. the whole system turned upon the profit to be made from the criminals' labour by bentham and his brother. the committee observed that, however unimpeachable might be the characters of the founders, the scheme might lead to abuses in the hands of their successors. the adoption of this principle of 'farming' had in fact led to gross abuses both in gaols and in workhouses; but it was, as i have said, in harmony with the whole 'individualist' theory. the committee recommended a different plan; and the result was the foundation of millbank penitentiary, opened in .[ ] bentham ultimately received £ , by way of compensation in .[ ] the objections of the committee would now be a commonplace, but bentham saw in them another proof of the desire to increase government patronage. he was well out of the plan. there were probably few men in england less capable of managing a thousand convicts, in spite of his theories about 'springs of action.' if anything else had been required to ensure failure, it would have been association with a sanguine inventor of brilliant abilities. bentham's agitation had not been altogether fruitless. his plan had been partly adopted at edinburgh by one of the adams,[ ] and his work formed an important stage in the development of the penal system. bentham, though he could not see that his failure was a blessing in disguise, had learned one lesson worth learning. he was ill-treated, according to impartial observers. 'never,' says wilberforce,[ ] 'was any one worse used. i have seen the tears run down the cheeks of that strong-minded man through vexation at the pressing importunity of his creditors, and the indolence of official underlings when day after day he was begging at the treasury for what was indeed a mere matter of right.' wilberforce adds that bentham was 'quite soured,' and attributes his later opinions to this cause. when the _quarterly review_ long afterwards taunted him as a disappointed man, bentham declared himself to be in 'a state of perpetual and unruffled gaiety,' and the 'mainspring' of the gaiety of his own circle.[ ] no one, indeed, could be less 'soured' so far as his habitual temper was concerned. but wilberforce's remark contained a serious truth. bentham had made a discovery. he had vowed war in his youth against the 'demon of chicane.' he had now learned that the name of the demon was 'legion.' to cast him out, it would be necessary to cast out the demon of officialism; and we shall see what this bit of knowledge presently implied. notes: [ ] _works_, x. . [ ] _ibid._ x. - . [ ] _ibid._ x. . [ ] _ibid._ x. . [ ] _works_, x. . [ ] _works_, x. . [ ] _ibid._ x. . [ ] _ibid._ x. . [ ] _ibid._ x. . [ ] _works_, x. . [ ] _ibid._ x. . [ ] _ibid._ x. . [ ] _ibid._ x. . [ ] _ibid._ x. . [ ] see his letter to lansdowne, sending a portrait to jeremy.--_works_, x. . [ ] _works_, xi. . [ ] _ibid._ x. . [ ] _works_, x. . it is doubtful whether the letter was sent. [ ] the panopticon story is confusedly told in bowring's life. the _panopticon correspondence_, in the eleventh volume, gives fragments from a 'history of the war between jeremy bentham and george iii.,' written by bentham in - , and selections from a voluminous correspondence. [ ] _works_, x. . [ ] _ibid._ xi. . [ ] the plan, according to bentham (_works_, xi. ), was suggested by ruggles, author of the work upon the poor-laws, first printed in young's _annals_. [ ] _works_, viii. . [ ] _works_, xi. - . [ ] _ibid._ x. . [ ] _works_, xi. . [ ] for its later history see _memorials of millbank_, by arthur griffiths. vols., . [ ] _works_, xi. . [ ] _ibid._ x. . [ ] wilberforce's _life_, ii. . [ ] _works_, x. . iv. the utilitarian propaganda bentham in had reached the respectable age of fifty-four. he had published his first work twenty-six years, and his most elaborate treatise thirteen years, previously. he had been brought into contact with many of the eminent politicians and philanthropists of the day. lansdowne had been a friendly patron: his advice had been treated with respect by pitt, dundas, and even by blackstone; he was on friendly terms with colquhoun, sir f. eden, arthur young, wilberforce, and others interested in philanthropic movements, and his name at least was known to some french politicians. but his reputation was still obscure; and his connections did not develop into intimacies. he lived as a recluse and avoided society. his introduction to great people at bowood had apparently rather increased than softened his shyness. the little circle of intimates, romilly and wilson and his own brother, must have satisfied his needs for social intercourse. it required an elaborate negotiation to bring about a meeting between him and dr. parr, the great whig prophet, although they had been previously acquainted, and parr was, as romilly said by way of introduction, a profound admirer and universal panegyrist.[ ] he refused to be introduced by parr to fox, because he had 'nothing particular to say' to the statesman, and considered that to be 'always a sufficient reason for declining acquaintance.'[ ] but, at last, bentham's fame was to take a start. bentham, i said, had long before found himself. dumont had now found bentham. after long and tedious labours and multiplied communications between the master and the disciple, dumont in the spring of brought out his _traités de législation de m. jérémie bentham_. the book was partly a translation from bentham's published and unpublished works,[ ] and partly a statement of the pith of the new doctrine in dumont's own language. it had the great merit of putting bentham's meaning vigorously and compactly, and free from many of the digressions, minute discussions of minor points and arguments requiring a special knowledge of english law, which had impeded the popularity of bentham's previous works. the jacobin controversies were passing into the background: and bentham began to attain a hearing as a reformer upon different lines. in dumont visited st. petersburg, and sent home glowing reports of bentham's rising fame. as many copies of the _traités_ had been sold there as in london. codes were wanted; laws were being digested; and bentham's work would supply the principles and the classification. a magnificent translation was ordered, and russian officials wrote glowing letters in which bentham was placed in a line with bacon, newton, and adam smith--each the founder of a new science.[ ] at home the new book was one of the objects of what dumont calls the 'scandalous irreverence' of the _edinburgh review_.[ ] this refers to a review of the _traités_ in the _edinburgh review_ of april . although patronising in tone, and ridiculing some of bentham's doctrines as commonplace and condemning others as criminal, it paid some high compliments to his ability. the irreverence meant at least that bentham had become one of the persons worth talking about, and that he was henceforth to influence the rising generation. in january the _edinburgh_ itself (probably jeffrey) suggested that bentham should be employed in a proposed reform of the scottish judicial system. his old friend, lansdowne, died on th may , and in one of his last letters expresses a hope that bentham's principles are at last beginning to spread.[ ] the hope was fulfilled. during the eighteenth century benthamism had gone through its period of incubation. it was now to become an active agency, to gather proselytes, and to have a marked influence not only upon legislative but upon political movements. the immediate effect upon bentham of the decline of the panopticon, and his consequent emancipation from immediately practical work, was apparently his return to his more legitimate employment of speculative labour. he sent to dumont at st. petersburg[ ] part of the treatise upon political economy, which had been naturally suggested by his later work: and he applied himself to the scottish judiciary question, to which many of his speculations had a close application. he published a work upon this subject in . to the period between and belongs also the book, or rather the collection of papers, afterwards transformed into the book, upon evidence, which is one of his most valuable performances. a letter, dated st november , gives a characteristic account of his position. he refers to hopes of the acceptance of some of his principles in south america. in spain spaniards are prepared to receive his laws 'as oracles.' 'now at length, when i am just ready to drop into the grave' (he had still twenty years of energetic work before him), 'my fame has spread itself all over the civilised world.' dumont's publication of is considered to have superseded all previous writings on legislation. in germany and france codes have been prepared by authorised lawyers, who have 'sought to do themselves credit by references to that work.'[ ] it has been translated into russian. even in england he is often mentioned in books and in parliament. 'meantime i am here scribbling on in my hermitage, never seeing anybody but for some special reason, always bearing relation to the service of mankind.'[ ] making all due allowance for the deceptive views of the outer world which haunt every 'hermitage,' it remains true that bentham's fame was emerging from obscurity. the end of this period, moreover, was bringing him into closer contact with english political life. bentham, as we have seen, rejected the whole jacobin doctrine of abstract rights. so long as english politics meant either the acceptance of a theory which, for whatever reason, gathered round it no solid body of support, or, on the other hand, the acceptance of an obstructive and purely conservative principle, to which all reform was radically opposed, bentham was necessarily in an isolated position. he had 'nothing particular to say' to fox. he was neither a tory nor a jacobin, and cared little for the paralysed whigs. he allied himself therefore, so far as he was allied with any one, with the philanthropic agitators who stood, like him, outside the lines of party. the improvement of prisons was not a party question. a marked change--not always, i think, sufficiently emphasised by historians--had followed the second war. the party-divisions began to take the form which was to become more marked as time went on. the old issues between jacobin and anti-jacobin no longer existed. napoleon had become the heir of the revolution. the great struggle was beginning in which england commanded the ocean, while the continent was at the feet of the empire. for a time the question was whether england, too, should be invaded. after trafalgar invasion became hopeless. the napoleonic victories threatened to exclude english trade from the continent: while england retorted by declaring that the continent should trade with nobody else. upon one side the war was now appealing to higher feelings. it was no longer a crusade against theories, but a struggle for national existence and for the existence of other nations threatened by a gigantic despotism. men like wordsworth and coleridge, who could not be anti-jacobins, had been first shocked by the jacobin treatment of switzerland, and now threw themselves enthusiastically into the cause which meant the rescue of spain and germany from foreign oppression. the generous feeling which had resented the attempt to forbid frenchmen to break their own bonds, now resented the attempts of frenchmen to impose bonds upon others. the patriotism which prompted to a crusade had seemed unworthy, but the patriotism which was now allied with the patriotism of spain and germany involved no sacrifice of other sentiment. many men had sympathised with the early revolution, not so much from any strong sentiment of evils at home as from a belief that the french movement was but a fuller development of the very principles which were partially embodied in the british constitution. they had no longer to choose between sympathising with the enemies of england and sympathising with the suppressors of the old english liberties. but, on the other hand, an opposite change took place. the disappearance of the jacobin movement allowed the radicalism of home growth to display itself more fully. english whigs of all shades had opposed the war with certain misgivings. they had been nervously anxious not to identify themselves with the sentiments of the jacobins. they desired peace with the french, but had to protest that it was not for love of french principles. that difficulty was removed. there was no longer a vision--such as gillray had embodied in his caricatures--of a guillotine in st. james's street: or of a committee of public safety formed by fox, paine, and horne tooke. meanwhile whig prophecies of the failure of the war were not disproved by its results. though the english navy had been victorious, english interference on the continent had been futile. millions of money had been wasted: and millions were flowing freely. even now we stand astonished at the reckless profusion of the financiers of the time. and what was there to show for it? the french empire, so far from being destroyed, had been consolidated. if we escaped for the time, could we permanently resist the whole power of europe? when the peninsular war began we had been fighting, except for the short truce of amiens, for sixteen years; and there seemed no reason to believe that the expedition to portugal in would succeed better than previous efforts. the walcheren expedition of was a fresh proof of our capacity for blundering. pauperism was still increasing rapidly, and forebodings of a war with america beginning to trouble men interested in commerce. the english opposition had ample texts for discourses; and a demand for change began to spring up which was no longer a reflection of foreign sympathies. an article in the _edinburgh_ of january , which professed to demonstrate the hopelessness of the peninsular war, roused the wrath of the tories. the _quarterly review_ was started by canning and scott, and the _edinburgh_, in return, took a more decidedly whig colour. the radicals now showed themselves behind the whigs. cobbett, who had been the most vigorous of john bull anti-jacobins, was driven by his hatred of the tax-gatherer and the misery of the agricultural labourers into the opposite camp, and his _register_ became the most effective organ of radicalism. demands for reform began again to make themselves heard in parliament. sir francis burdett, who had sat at the feet of horne tooke, and whose return with cochrane for westminster in was the first parliamentary triumph of the reformers, proposed a motion on th june , which was, of course, rejected, but which was the first of a series, and marked the revival of a serious agitation not to cease till the triumph of . meanwhile bentham, meditating profoundly upon the panopticon, had at last found out that he had begun at the wrong end. his reasoning had been thrown away upon the huge dead weight of official indifference, or worse than indifference. why did they not accept the means for producing the greatest happiness of the greatest number? because statesmen did not desire the end. and why not? to answer that question, and to show how a government could be constructed which should desire it, became a main occupation of bentham's life. henceforward, therefore, instead of merely treating of penal codes and other special reforms, his attention is directed to the previous question of political organisation; while at times he diverges to illustrate incidentally the abuses of what he ironically calls the 'matchless constitution.' bentham's principal occupation, in a word, was to provide political philosophy for radical reformers.[ ] bentham remained as much a recluse as ever. he seldom left queen's square place except for certain summer outings. in he took a house at barrow green, near oxted, in surrey, lying in a picturesque hollow at the foot of the chalk hills.[ ] it was an old-fashioned house, standing in what had been a park, with a lake and a comfortable kitchen garden. bentham pottered about in the grounds and under the old chestnut-trees, codifying, gardening, and talking to occasional disciples. he returned thither in following years; but in , probably in consequence of his compensation for the panopticon, took a larger place, ford abbey, near chard in somersetshire. it was a superb residence,[ ] with chapel, cloisters, and corridors, a hall eighty feet long by thirty high, and a great dining parlour. parts of the building dated from the twelfth century or the time of the commonwealth, or had undergone alterations attributed to inigo jones. no squire western could have cared less for antiquarian associations, but bentham made a very fair monk. the place, for which he paid £ a year, was congenial. he rode his favourite hobby of gardening, and took his regular 'ante-jentacular' and 'post-prandial' walks, and played battledore and shuttlecock in the intervals of codification. he liked it so well that he would have taken it for life, but for the loss of £ or £ , in a devonshire marble-quarry.[ ] in he gave it up, and thenceforward rarely quitted queen's square place. his life was varied by few incidents, although his influence upon public affairs was for the first time becoming important. the busier journalists and platform orators did not trouble themselves much about philosophy. but they were in communication with men of a higher stamp, romilly, james mill, and others, who formed bentham's innermost council. thus the movements in the outside world set up an agitation in bentham's study; and the recluse was prompted to set himself to work upon elaborating his own theories in various directions, in order to supply the necessary substratum of philosophical doctrine. if he had not the power of gaining the public ear, his oracles were transmitted through the disciples who also converted some of his raw materials into coherent books. the most important of bentham's disciples for many years was james mill, and i shall have to say what more is necessary in regard to the active agitation when i speak of mill himself. for the present, it is enough to say that mill first became bentham's proselyte about . mill stayed with bentham at barrow green and at ford abbey. though some differences caused superficial disturbances of their harmony, no prophet could have had a more zealous, uncompromising, and vigorous disciple. mill's force of character qualified him to become the leader of the school; but his doctrine was always essentially the doctrine of bentham, and for the present he was content to be the transmitter of his master's message to mankind. he was at this period a contributor to the _edinburgh review_; and in october he inserted some praises of bentham in a review of a book upon legislation by s. scipion bexon. the article was cruelly mangled by jeffrey, according to his custom, and jeffrey's most powerful vassal, brougham, thought that the praises which remained were excessive.[ ] obviously the orthodox whigs were not prepared to swear allegiance to bentham. he was drawing into closer connection with the radicals. in cobbett was denouncing the duke of york in consequence of the mrs. clarke scandal. bentham wrote to him, but anonymously and cautiously, to obtain documents in regard to a previous libel case,[ ] and proceeded to write a pamphlet on the _elements of the art of packing (as applied to special juries)_, so sharp that his faithful adviser, romilly, procured its suppression for the time.[ ] copies, however, were printed and privately given to a few who could be trusted. bentham next wrote ( ) a 'catechism of parliamentary reform,' which he communicated to cobbett ( th november ), with a request for its publication in the _register_.[ ] cobbett was at this time in prison for his attack upon flogging militia men; and, though still more hostile to government, was bound to be more cautious in his line of assault. the plan was not published, whether because too daring or too dull; but it was apparently printed. bentham's opinion of cobbett was anything but flattering. cobbett, he thought in , was a 'vile rascal,' and was afterwards pronounced to be 'filled with the _odium humani generis_--his malevolence and lying beyond everything.'[ ] cobbett's radicalism, in fact, was of the type most hostile to the utilitarians. john hunt, in the _examiner_, was 'trumpeting' bentham and romilly in , and was praised accordingly.[ ] bentham formed an alliance with another leading radical. he had made acquaintance by with sir f. burdett, to whom he then appealed for help in an attack upon the delays of chancery.[ ] burdett, indeed, appeared to him to be far inferior to romilly and brougham, but he thought that so powerful a 'hero of the mob' ought to be turned to account in the good cause.[ ] burdett seems to have courted the old philosopher; and a few years later a closer alliance was brought about. the peace of was succeeded by a period of distress, the more acutely felt from the disappointment of natural hopes of prosperity; and a period of agitation, met by harsh repression, followed. applications were made, to bentham for permission to use his 'catechism,' which was ultimately published ( ) in a cheap form by wooler, well known as the editor of the democratic _black dwarf_.[ ] burdett applied for a plan of parliamentary reform. henry bickersteth ( - ), afterwards lord langdale and master of the rolls, at this time a rising barrister of high character, wrote an appeal to bentham and burdett to combine in setting forth a scheme which, with such authority, must command general acceptance. the result was a series of resolutions moved by burdett in the house of commons on nd june ,[ ] demanding universal suffrage, annual parliaments, and vote by ballot. bentham had thus accepted the conclusions reached in a different way by the believers in that 'hodge-podge' of absurdities, the declaration of the rights of man. curiously enough, his assault upon that document appeared in dumont's french version in the year , at the very time when he was accepting its practical conclusions. the schemes in which mill was interested at this time drew bentham's attention in other directions. in the quaker, william allen, who had been a close ally of mill, induced bentham to invest money in the new lanark establishment. owen, whose benevolent schemes had been hampered by his partners, bought them out, the new capital being partly provided by allen, bentham, and others. bentham afterwards spoke contemptuously of owen, who, as he said, 'began in vapour and ended in smoke,'[ ] and whose disciples came in after years into sharp conflict with the utilitarians. bentham, however, took pleasure, it seems, in owen's benevolent schemes for infant education, and made money by his investment, for once combining business with philanthropy successfully.[ ] probably he regarded new lanark as a kind of panopticon. owen had not as yet become a prophet of socialism. another set of controversies in which mill and his friends took an active part, started bentham in a whole series of speculations. a plan (which i shall have to mention in connection with mill), was devised in for a 'chrestomathic school,' which was to give a sound education of proper utilitarian tendencies to the upper and middle classes. brougham, mackintosh, ricardo, william allen, and place were all interested in this undertaking.[ ] bentham offered a site at queen's square place, and though the scheme never came to the birth, it set him actively at work. he wrote a series of papers during his first year at ford abbey[ ] upon the theory of education, published in as _chrestomathia_; and to this was apparently due a further excursion beyond the limits of jurisprudence. educational controversy in that ignorant day was complicated by religious animosity; the national society and the 'british and foreign' society were fighting under the banners of bell and lancaster, and the war roused excessive bitterness. bentham finding the church in his way, had little difficulty in discovering that the whole ecclesiastical system was part of the general complex of abuse against which he was warring. he fell foul of the catechism; he exposed the abuses of non-residence and episcopal wealth; he discovered that the thirty-nine articles contained gross fallacies; he went on to make an onslaught upon the apostle st paul, whose evidence as to his conversion was exposed to a severe cross-examination; and, finally, he wrote, or supplied the materials for, a remarkable _analysis of natural religion_, which was ultimately published by grote under the pseudonym 'philip beauchamp,' in . this procedure from the particular case of the catechism in schools up to the general problem of the utility of religion in general, is curiously characteristic of bentham. bentham's mind was attracted to various other schemes by the disciples who came to sit at his feet, and professed, with more or less sincerity, to regard him as a solon. foreigners had been resorting to him from all parts of the world, and gave him hopes of new fields for codifying. as early as he had been visited at barrow green by the strange adventurer, politician, lawyer, and filibuster, aaron burr, famous for the duel in which he killed alexander hamilton, and now framing wild schemes for an empire in mexico. unscrupulous, restlessly active and cynical, he was a singular contrast to the placid philosopher, upon whom his confidences seem to have made an impression of not unpleasing horror. burr's conversation suggested to bentham a singular scheme for emigrating to mexico. he applied seriously for introductions to lord holland, who had passed some time in spain, and to holland's friend, jovellanos ( - ), a member of the spanish junta, who had written treatises upon legislation ( ), of which bentham approved.[ ] the dream of mexico was succeeded by a dream of venezuela. general miranda spent some years in england, and had become well known to james mill. he was now about to start upon an unfortunate expedition to venezuela, his native country. he took with him a draft of a law for the freedom of the press, which bentham drew up, and he proposed that when his new state was founded, bentham should be its legislator.[ ] miranda was betrayed to the spanish government in , and died ( ) in the hands of the inquisition. bolivar, who was also in london in and took some notice of joseph lancaster, applied in flattering terms to bentham. long afterwards, when dictator of columbia, he forbade the use of bentham's works in the schools, to which, however, the privilege of reading him was restored, and, let us hope, duly valued, in .[ ] santander, another south american hero, was also a disciple, and encouraged the study of bentham. bentham says in that forty thousand copies of dumont's _traités_ had been sold in paris for the south american trade.[ ] what share bentham may have had in modifying south american ideas is unknown to me. in the united states he had many disciples of a more creditable kind than burr. he appealed in to madison, then president, for permission to construct a 'pannomion' or complete body of law, for the use of the united states; and urged his claims both upon madison and the governor of pennsylvania in , when peace had been restored. he had many conversations upon this project with john quincy adams, who was then american minister in england.[ ] this, of course, came to nothing, but an eminent american disciple, edward livingston ( - ), between and prepared codes for the state of louisiana, and warmly acknowledged his obligations to bentham.[ ] in bentham also acknowledges a notice of his labours, probably resulting from this, which had been made in one of general jackson's presidential messages.[ ] in his later years the united states became his ideal, and he never tired of comparing its cheap and honest enactment with the corruption and extravagance at home. notes: [ ] _works_, x. . [ ] _ibid._ x. . [ ] bentham had himself written some of his papers in french. [ ] _works_, x. , , , . [ ] _ibid._ x. . [ ] lord e. fitzmaurice's _life of shelburne_. [ ] _works_, x. . [ ] this statement, i believe, refers to a complimentary reference to bentham in the preface to the french code. [ ] _works_, x. . [ ] bentham says that he reached these conclusions some time before : _works_, iii. . cf. _ibid._ v. . [ ] _works_, x. . [ ] see description in bain's _james mill_, - . [ ] _works_, x. , . [ ] _works_, x. - .; bain's _james mill_, . [ ] the case of the 'king _v._ cobbett,' ( ), which led to the proceedings against mr. justice johnson in .--cobbett's _state trials_, xxix. [ ] _works_, x. - . [ ] _ibid._ x. . [ ] _works_, x. , . [ ] _ibid._ x. . [ ] _ibid._ x. . [ ] _ibid._ x. . [ ] _ibid._ x. . [ ] printed in _works_, x. - . [ ] _ibid._ x. . [ ] _ibid._ x. . [ ] _works_, x. . [ ] bain's _james mill_, . _church of englandism_ and _not paul but jesus_ were also written at ford abbey. [ ] _works_, x. , . [ ] _ibid._ x. - ; bain's _james mill_, . [ ] _works_, - , . [ ] _ibid._ xi. . [ ] see _memoirs of j. q. adams_ ( ), iii. , , , - , , , , - . and bentham's letter to adams in _works_, x. . [ ] _works_, xi. . [ ] _ibid._ xi. . v. codification the unsettled conditions which followed the peace in various european countries found bentham other employment. in dumont did some codifying for the emperor of russia, and in was engaged to do the same service for geneva. he was employed for some years, and is said to have introduced a benthamite penal code and panopticon, and an application of the tactics.[ ] in and bentham was consulted by the constitutional party in spain and portugal, and wrote elaborate tracts for their enlightenment. he made an impression upon at least one spaniard. borrow, when travelling in spain some ten years after bentham's death, was welcomed by an alcalde on cape finisterre, who had upon his shelves all the works of the 'grand baintham,' and compared him to solon, plato, and even lope de vega.[ ] the last comparison appeared to borrow to be overstrained. bentham even endeavoured in - to administer some sound advice to the government of tripoli, but his suggestions for 'remedies against misrule' seem never to have been communicated.[ ] in and he was a member of the greek committee; he corresponded with mavrocordato and other leaders; and he begged parr to turn some of his admonitions into 'parrian' greek for the benefit of the moderns.[ ] blaquière and stanhope, two ardent members of the committee, were disciples; and stanhope carried with him to greece bentham's _table of the springs of action_, with which he tried to indoctrinate byron. the poet, however, thought with some plausibility that he was a better judge of human passions than the philosopher. parry, the engineer, who joined byron at the same time, gives a queer account of the old philosopher trotting about london in the service of the greeks.[ ] the coarse and thoughtless might laugh, and perhaps some neither coarse nor thoughtless might smile. but bowring tells us that these were days of boundless happiness for bentham.[ ] tributes of admiration were pouring in from all sides, and the true gospel was spreading across the atlantic and along the shores of the mediterranean. at home the utilitarian party was consolidating itself; and the struggle which resulted in the reform bill was slowly beginning. the veteran cartwright, bentham's senior by eight years, tried in to persuade him to come out as one of a committee of 'guardians of constitutional reform,' elected at a public meeting.[ ] bentham wisely refused to be drawn from his privacy. he left it to his friends to agitate, while he returned to labour in his study. the demand for legislation which had sprung up in so many parts of the world encouraged bentham to undertake the last of his great labours. the portuguese cortes voted in december that he should be invited to prepare an 'all-comprehensive code'; and in he put out a curious 'codification proposal,' offering to do the work for any nation in need of a legislator, and appending testimonials to his competence for the work. he set to work upon a 'constitutional code,' which occupied him at intervals during the remainder of his life, and embodied the final outcome of his speculations. he diverged from this main purpose to write various pamphlets upon topics of immediate interest; and was keenly interested in the various activities of his disciples. the utilitarians now thought themselves entitled to enter the field of politics as a distinct body. an organ to defend their cause was desirable, and bentham supplied the funds for the _westminster review_, of which the first number appeared in april . the editorship fell chiefly into the hands of bowring ( - ). bowring had travelled much upon the continent for a commercial house, and his knowledge of spanish politics had brought him into connection with bentham, to whom blaquière recommended him in .[ ] a strong attachment sprang up between the two. bentham confided all his thoughts and feelings to the young man, and bowring looked up to his teacher with affectionate reverence. in bentham says that bowring is 'the most intimate friend he has.'[ ] bowring complains of calumnies, by which he was assailed, though they failed to alienate bentham. what they may have been matters little; but it is clear that a certain jealousy arose between this last disciple and his older rivals. james mill's stern and rigid character had evidently produced some irritation at intervals; and to him it would naturally appear that bowring was the object of a senile favouritism. in any case it is to be regretted that bentham thus became partly alienated from his older friends[ ]. mill was too proud to complain; and never wavered in his allegiance to the master's principles. but one result, and to us the most important, was that the new attachment led to the composition of one of the worst biographies in the language, out of materials which might have served for a masterpiece. bowring was a great linguist, and an energetic man of business. he wrote hymns, and one of them, 'in the cross of christ i glory,' is said to have 'universal fame.' a benthamite capable of so singular an eccentricity judiciously agreed to avoid discussions upon religious topics with his master. to bowring we also owe the _deontology_, which professes to represent bentham's dictation. the mills repudiated this version, certainly a very poor one, of their teacher's morality, and held that it represented less bentham than such an impression of bentham as could be stamped upon a muddle-headed disciple.[ ] the last years of his life brought bentham into closer connection with more remarkable men. the radicals had despised the whigs as trimmers and half-hearted reformers, and james mill expressed this feeling very frankly in the first numbers of the _westminster review_. reform, however, was now becoming respectable, and the whigs were gaining the courage to take it up seriously. foremost among the edinburgh reviewers was the great henry brougham, whose fame was at this time almost as great as his ambition could desire, and who considered himself to be the natural leader of all reform. he had shown eagerness to distinguish himself in lines fully approved by bentham. his admirers regarded him as a giant; and his opponents, if they saw in him a dash of the charlatan, could not deny his amazing energy and his capacity as an orator. the insatiable vanity which afterwards ruined his career already made it doubtful whether he fought for the cause or the glory. but he was at least an instrument worth having. he was a kind of half-disciple. if in he had checked mill's praise of bentham, he was soon afterwards in frequent communication with the master. in july bentham announces that brougham is at last to be admitted to a dinner, for which he had been 'intriguing any time this six months,' and expects that his proselyte will soon be the first man in the house of commons, and eclipse even romilly.[ ] in later years they had frequent communications; and when in brougham was known to be preparing an utterance upon law reform, bentham's hopes rose high. he offered to his disciple 'some nice little sweet pap of my own making,' sound teaching that is, upon evidence, judicial establishments and codification. brougham thanks his 'dear grandpapa,' and bentham offers further supplies to his 'dear, sweet little poppet.'[ ] but when the orator had spoken bentham declares ( th february ) that the mountain has been delivered of a mouse. brougham was 'not the man to set up' simple and rational principles. he was the sham adversary but the real accomplice of peel, pulling up lies by the root to plant others equally noxious.[ ] in bentham had even to hold up 'master peel' as a 'model good boy' to the self-styled reformer. brougham needs a dose of jalap instead of pap, for he cannot even spell the 'greatest happiness principle' properly.[ ] bentham went so far as to write what he fondly took to be an epigram upon brougham: 'so foolish and so wise, so great, so small, everything now, to-morrow nought at all.'[ ] in september brougham as chancellor announced a scheme for certain changes in the constitution of the courts. the proposal called forth bentham's last pamphlet, _lord brougham displayed_.[ ] bentham laments that his disciple has 'stretched out the right hand of fellowship to jobbers of all sorts.'[ ] in vain had brougham in his speech called bentham 'one of the great sages of the law.' bentham acknowledges his amiability and his genius; but laments over the untrustworthy character of a man who could only adopt principles so far as they were subservient to his own vanity. another light of the _edinburgh review_, who at this time took brougham at his own valuation, did an incidental service to bentham. upon the publication of the _book of fallacies_ in , sydney smith reviewed or rather condensed it in the _edinburgh review_, and gave the pith of the whole in his famous _noodle's oration_. the noodle utters all the commonplaces by which the stupid conservatives, with eldon at their head, met the demands of reformers. nothing could be wittier than smith's brilliant summary. whigs and radicals for the time agreed in ridiculing blind prejudice. the day was to come when the whigs at least would see that some principles might be worse than prejudice. all the fools, said lord melbourne, 'were against catholic emancipation, and the worst of it is, the fools were in the right.' sydney smith was glad to be bentham's mouthpiece for the moment: though, when benthamism was applied to church reform, smith began to perceive that noodle was not so silly as he seemed. one other ally of bentham deserves notice. o'connell had in , in speaking of legal abuses, called himself 'an humble disciple of the immortal bentham.'[ ] bentham wrote to acknowledge the compliment. he invited o'connell to become an inmate of his hermitage at queen's square place, and o'connell responded warmly to the letters of his 'revered master.' bentham's aversion to catholicism was as strong as his objection to catholic disqualifications, and he took some trouble to smooth down the difficulties which threatened an alliance between ardent believers and thoroughgoing sceptics. o'connell had attacked some who were politically upon his side. 'dan, dear child,' says bentham, 'whom in imagination i am at this moment pressing to my fond bosom, put off, if it be possible, your intolerance.'[ ] their friendship, however, did not suffer from this discord, and their correspondence is in the same tone till the end. in one of bentham's letters he speaks of a contemporary correspondence with another great man, whom he does not appear to have met personally. he was writing long letters, entreating the duke of wellington to eclipse cromwell by successfully attacking the lawyers. the duke wrote 'immediate answers in his own hand,' and took good-humouredly a remonstrance from bentham upon the duel with lord winchilsea in .[ ] bentham was ready to the end to seek allies in any quarter. when lord sidmouth took office in , bentham had an interview with him, and had some hopes of being employed to prepare a penal code.[ ] although experience had convinced him of the futility of expectations from the sidmouths and eldons, he was always on the look out for sympathy; and the venerable old man was naturally treated with respect by people who had little enough of real interest in his doctrines. during the last ten years of his life, bentham was cheered by symptoms of the triumph of his creed. the approach of the millennium seemed to be indicated by the gathering of the various forces which carried roman catholic emancipation and the reform bill. bentham still received testimonies of his fame abroad. in he visited paris to consult some physicians. he was received with the respect which the french can always pay to intellectual eminence.[ ] all the lawyers in a court of justice rose to receive him, and he was placed at the president's right hand. on the revolution of , he addressed some good advice to the country of which he had been made a citizen nearly forty years before. in , talleyrand, to whom he had talked about the panopticon in , dined with him alone in his hermitage.[ ] when bowring observed to the prince that bentham's works had been plundered, the polite diplomatist replied, _et pillé de tout le monde, il est toujours riche_. bentham was by this time failing. at eighty-two he was still, as he put it, 'codifying like any dragon.'[ ] on th may he did his last bit of his lifelong labour, upon the 'constitutional code.' the great reform agitation was reaching the land of promise, but bentham was to die in the wilderness. he sank without a struggle on th june , his head resting on bowring's bosom. he left the characteristic direction that his body should be dissected for the benefit of science. an incision was formally made; and the old gentleman, in his clothes as he lived, his face covered by a wax mask, is still to be seen at university college in gower street. bentham, as we are told, had a strong personal resemblance to benjamin franklin. sagacity, benevolence, and playfulness were expressed in both physiognomies. bentham, however, differed from the man whose intellect presents many points of likeness, in that he was not a man of the market-place or the office. bentham was in many respects a child through life:[ ] a child in simplicity, good humour, and vivacity; his health was unbroken; he knew no great sorrow; and after emerging from the discouragement of his youth, he was placidly contemplating a continuous growth of fame and influence. he is said to have expressed the wish that he could awake once in a century to contemplate the prospect of a world gradually adopting his principles and so making steady progress in happiness and wisdom. no man could lead a simpler life. his chief luxuries at table were fruit, bread, and tea. he had a 'sacred teapot' called dick, with associations of its own, and carefully regulated its functions. he refrained from wine during the greatest part of his life, and was never guilty of a single act of intemperance. in later life he took a daily half-glass of madeira. he was scrupulously neat in person, and wore a quaker-like brown coat, brown cassimere breeches, white worsted stockings and a straw hat. he walked or 'rather trotted' with his stick dapple, and took his 'ante-prandial' and other 'circumgyrations' with absolute punctuality. he loved pets; he had a series of attached cats; and cherished the memory of a 'beautiful pig' at hendon, and of a donkey at ford abbey. he encouraged mice to play in his study--a taste which involved some trouble with his cats, and suggests problems as to the greatest happiness of the greatest number. kindness to animals was an essential point of his moral creed. 'i love everything,' he said, 'that has four legs.' he had a passion for flowers, and tried to introduce useful plants. he loved music--especially handel--and had an organ in his house. he cared nothing for poetry: 'prose,' he said,[ ] 'is when all the lines except the last go on to the margin. poetry is when some of them fall short of it.' he was courteous and attentive to his guests, though occasionally irritable when his favourite crotchets were transgressed, or especially if his fixed hours of work were deranged. his regularity in literary work was absolute. he lived by a time-table, working in the morning and turning out from ten to fifteen folio pages daily. he read the newspapers regularly, but few books, and cared nothing for criticisms on his own writings. his only substantial meal was a dinner at six or half-past, to which he occasionally admitted a few friends as a high privilege. he liked to discuss the topics of which his mind was full, and made notes beforehand of particular points to be introduced in conversation. he was invariably inaccessible to visitors, even famous ones, likely to distract his thoughts. 'tell mr. bentham that mr. richard lovell edgeworth desires to see him.' 'tell mr. richard lovell edgeworth that mr. bentham does not desire to see him' was the reply. when mme. de staël came to england, she said to dumont: 'tell bentham i shall see nobody till i have seen him.' 'i am sorry for it,' said bentham, 'for then she will never see anybody.' and he summed up his opinion of the famous author of _corinne_ by calling her 'a trumpery magpie.'[ ] there is a simplicity and vivacity about some of the sayings reported by bowring, which prove that bentham could talk well, and increase our regret for the absence of a more efficient boswell. at ten bentham had his tea, at eleven his nightcap, and by twelve all his guests were ignominiously expelled. he was left to sleep on a hard bed. his sleep was light, and much disturbed by dreams. bentham was certainly amiable. the 'surest way to gain men,' he said, 'is to appear to love them, and the surest way to appear to love them is to love them in reality.' the least pleasing part of his character, however, is the apparent levity of his attachments. he was, as we have seen, partly alienated from dumont, though some friendly communications are recorded in later years, and dumont spoke warmly of bentham only a few days before his death in .[ ] he not only cooled towards james mill, but, if bowring is to be trusted, spoke of him with great harshness.[ ] bowring was not a judicious reporter, indeed, and capable of taking hasty phrases too seriously. what bentham's remarks upon these and other friends suggest is not malice or resentment, but the flippant utterance of a man whose feelings are wanting in depth rather than kindliness. it is noticeable that, after his early visit at bowood, no woman seems to have counted for anything in bentham's life. he was not only never in love, but it looks as if he never even talked to any woman except his cook or housemaid. the one conclusion that i need draw concerns a question not, i think, hard to be solved. it would be easy to make a paradox by calling bentham at once the most practical and most unpractical of men. this is to point out the one-sided nature of bentham's development. bentham's habits remind us in some ways of kant; and the thought may be suggested that he would have been more in his element as a german professor of philosophies. in such a position he might have devoted himself to the delight of classifying and co-ordinating theories, and have found sufficient enjoyment in purely intellectual activity. after a fashion that was the actual result. how far, indeed, bentham could have achieved much in the sphere of pure philosophy, and what kind of philosophy he would have turned out, must be left to conjecture. the circumstances of his time and country, and possibly his own temperament generally, turned his thoughts to problems of legislation and politics, that is to say, of direct practical interest. he was therefore always dealing with concrete facts, and a great part of his writings may be considered as raw material for acts of parliament. bentham remained, however, unpractical, in the sense that he had not that knowledge which we ascribe either to the poet or to the man of the world. he had neither the passion nor the sympathetic imagination. the springs of active conduct which byron knew from experience were to bentham nothing more than names in a careful classification. any shrewd attorney or bow street runner would have been a better judge of the management of convicts; and here were dozens of party politicians, such as rigby and barré, who could have explained to him beforehand those mysteries in the working of the political machinery, which it took him half a lifetime to discover. in this sense bentham was unpractical in the highest degree, for at eighty he had not found out of what men are really made. and yet by his extraordinary intellectual activity and the concentration of all his faculties upon certain problems, he succeeded in preserving an example, and though not a unique yet an almost unsurpassable example, of the power which belongs to the man of one idea. notes: [ ] see correspondence upon his codification plans in russia, america, and geneva in _works_, iv. - . [ ] borrow's _bible in spain_, ch. xxx. [ ] _works_, viii. - . [ ] _ibid._ x. . see blaquière's enthusiastic letter to bentham.--_works_, x. . [ ] see, however, bentham's reference to this story.--_works_, xi. . [ ] _works_, x. . [ ] _ibid._ x. . [ ] _works_, x. . [ ] _ibid._ x. . [ ] a letter from mill in the university college mss. describes a misunderstanding about borrowed books, a fertile, but hardly adequate, cause of quarrel. [ ] bowring's religious principles prevented him from admitting some of bentham's works to the collective edition. [ ] _works_, x. - . [ ] _ibid._ x. . [ ] _ibid._ x. . [ ] _works_, xi. . papers preserved at university college show that during peel's law reforms at this time bentham frequently communicated with him. [ ] _ibid._ xi. . [ ] _ibid._ v. . [ ] _ibid._ v. . [ ] _works_, x. . [ ] _ibid._ xi. . [ ] _ibid._ xi. , . [ ] _works_, x. . [ ] _ibid._ x. . [ ] _ibid._ xi. . [ ] _ibid._ xi. . [ ] mill's _dissertations_, i. and _n._ [ ] _works_, x. . [ ] _works_, x. ; xi. . [ ] _ibid._ xi. - . [ ] _ibid._ x. . chapter vi bentham's doctrine i. first principles bentham's position is in one respect unique. there have been many greater thinkers; but there has been hardly any one whose abstract theory has become in the same degree the platform of an active political party. to accept the philosophy was to be also pledged to practical applications of utilitarianism. what, then, was the revelation made to the benthamites, and to what did it owe its influence? the central doctrine is expressed in bentham's famous formula: the test of right and wrong is the 'greatest happiness of the greatest number.' there was nothing new in this assertion. it only expresses the fact that bentham accepted one of the two alternatives which have commended themselves to conflicting schools ever since ethical speculation was erected into a separate department of thought. moreover, the side which bentham took was, we may say, the winning side. the ordinary morality of the time was utilitarian in substance. hutcheson had invented the sacred phrase: and hume had based his moral system upon 'utility.'[ ] bentham had learned much from helvétius the french freethinker, and had been anticipated by paley the english divine. the writings in which bentham deals explicitly with the general principles of ethics would hardly entitle him to a higher position than that of a disciple of hume without hume's subtlety; or of paley without paley's singular gift of exposition. why, then, did bentham's message come upon his disciples with the force and freshness of a new revelation? our answer must be in general terms that bentham founded not a doctrine but a method: and that the doctrine which came to him simply as a general principle was in his hands a potent instrument applied with most fruitful results to questions of immediate practical interest. beyond the general principle of utility, therefore, we have to consider the 'organon' constructed by him to give effect to a general principle too vague to be applied in detail. the fullest account of this is contained in the _introduction to the principles of morals and legislation_. this work unfortunately is a fragment, but it gives his doctrine vigorously and decisively, without losing itself in the minute details which become wearisome in his later writings. bentham intended it as an introduction to a penal code; and his investigation sent him back to more general problems. he found it necessary to settle the relations of the penal code to the whole body of law; and to settle these he had to consider the principles which underlie legislation in general. he had thus, he says, to 'create a new science,' and then to elaborate one department of the science. the 'introduction' would contain prolegomena not only for the penal code but for the other departments of inquiry which he intended to exhaust.[ ] he had to lay down primary truths which should be to this science what the axioms are to mathematical sciences.[ ] these truths therefore belong to the sphere of conduct in general, and include his ethical theory. 'nature has placed mankind' (that is his opening phrase) 'under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. it is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do.' there is the unassailable basis. it had been laid down as unequivocally by locke,[ ] and had been embodied in the brilliant couplets of pope's _essay on man_.[ ] at the head of the curious table of universal knowledge, given in the _chrestomathia_, we have eudæmonics as an all-comprehensive name of which every art is a branch.[ ] eudæmonics, as an art, corresponds to the science 'ontology.' it covers the whole sphere of human thought. it means knowledge in general as related to conduct. its first principle, again, requires no more proof than the primary axioms of arithmetic or geometry. once understood, it is by the same act of the mind seen to be true. some people, indeed, do not see it. bentham rather ignores than answers some of their arguments. but his mode of treating opponents indicates his own position. 'happiness,' it is often said, is too vague a word to be the keystone of an ethical system; it varies from man to man: or it is 'subjective,' and therefore gives no absolute or independent ground for morality. a morality of 'eudæmonism' must be an 'empirical' morality, and we can never extort from it that 'categorical imperative,' without which we have instead of a true morality a simple system of 'expediency.' from bentham's point of view the criticism must be retorted. he regards 'happiness' as precisely the least equivocal of words; and 'happiness' itself as therefore affording the one safe clue to all the intricate problems of human conduct. the authors of the _federalist_, for example, had said that justice was the 'end of government.' 'why not happiness?' asks bentham. 'what happiness is every man knows, because what pleasure is, every man knows, and what pain is, every man knows. but what justice is--this is what on every occasion is the subject-matter of dispute.'[ ] that phrase gives his view in a nutshell. justice is the means, not the end. that is just which produces a maximum of happiness. omit all reference to happiness, and justice becomes a meaningless word prescribing equality, but not telling us equality of what. happiness, on the other hand, has a substantial and independent meaning from which the meaning of justice can be deduced. it has therefore a logical priority: and to attempt to ignore this is the way to all the labyrinths of hopeless confusion by which legislation has been made a chaos. bentham's position is indicated by his early conflict with blackstone, not a very powerful representative of the opposite principle. blackstone, in fact, had tried to base his defence of that eminently empirical product, the british constitution, upon some show of a philosophical groundwork. he had used the vague conception of a 'social contract,' frequently invoked for the same purpose at the revolution of , and to eke out his arguments applied the ancient commonplaces about monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. he thus tried to invest the constitution with the sanctity derived from this mysterious 'contract,' while appealing also to tradition or the incarnate 'wisdom of our ancestors,' as shown by their judicious mixture of the three forms. bentham had an easy task, though he performed it with remarkable vigour, in exposing the weakness of this heterogeneous aggregate. look closely, and this fictitious contract can impose no new obligation: for the obligation itself rests upon utility. why not appeal to utility at once? i am bound to obey, not because my great-grandfather may be regarded as having made a bargain, which he did not really make, with the great-grandfather of george iii.; but simply because rebellion does more harm than good. the forms of government are abstractions, not names of realities, and their 'mixture' is a pure figment. king, lords, and commons are not really incarnations of power, wisdom, and goodness. their combination forms a system the merits of which must in the last resort be judged by its working. 'it is the principle of utility, accurately apprehended and steadily applied, that affords the only clew to guide a man through these streights.'[ ] so much in fact bentham might learn from hume; and to defend upon any other ground the congeries of traditional arrangements which passed for the british constitution was obviously absurd. it was in this warfare against the shifting and ambiguous doctrines of blackstone that bentham first showed the superiority of his own method: for, as between the two, bentham's position is at least the most coherent and intelligible. blackstone, however, represents little more than a bit of rhetoric embodying fragments of inconsistent theories. the _morals and legislation_ opens by briefly and contemptuously setting aside more philosophical opponents of utilitarianism. the 'ascetic' principle, for example, is the formal contradiction of the principle of utility, for it professedly declares pleasure to be evil. could it be consistently carried out it would turn earth into hell. but in fact it is at bottom an illegitimate corollary from the very principle which it ostensibly denies. it professes to condemn pleasure in general; it really means that certain pleasures can only be bought at an excessive cost of pain. other theories are contrivances for avoiding the appeal 'to any external standard'; and in substance, therefore, they make the opinion of the individual theorist an ultimate and sufficient reason. adam smith by his doctrine of 'sympathy' makes the sentiment of approval itself the ultimate standard. my feeling echoes yours, and reciprocally; each cannot derive authority from the other. another man (hutcheson) invents a thing made on purpose to tell him what is right and what is wrong and calls it a 'moral sense.' beattie substitutes 'common' for 'moral' sense, and his doctrine is attractive because every man supposes himself to possess common sense. others, like price, appeal to the understanding, or, like clarke, to the 'fitness of things,' or they invent such phrases as 'law of nature,' or 'right reason' or 'natural justice,' or what you please. each really means that whatever he says is infallibly true and self-evident. wollaston discovers that the only wrong thing is telling a lie; or that when you kill your father, it is a way of saying that he is not your father, and the same method is applicable to any conduct which he happens to dislike. the 'fairest and openest of them all' is the man who says, 'i am of the number of the elect'; god tells the elect what is right: therefore if you want to know what is right, you have only to come to me.[ ] bentham is writing here in his pithiest style. his criticism is of course of the rough and ready order; but i think that in a fashion he manages to hit the nail pretty well on the head. his main point, at any rate, is clear. he argues briefly that the alternative systems are illusory because they refer to no 'external standard.' his opponents, not he, really make morality arbitrary. this, whatever the ultimate truth, is in fact the essential core of all the utilitarian doctrine descended from or related to benthamism. benthamism aims at converting morality into a science. science, according to him, must rest upon facts. it must apply to real things, and to things which have definite relations and a common measure. now, if anything be real, pains and pleasures are real. the expectation of pain or pleasure determines conduct; and, if so, it must be the sole determinant of conduct. the attempt to conceal or evade this truth is the fatal source of all equivocation and confusion. try the experiment. introduce a 'moral sense.' what is its relation to the desire for happiness? if the dictates of the moral sense be treated as ultimate, an absolutely arbitrary element is introduced; and we have one of the 'innate ideas' exploded by locke, a belief summarily intruded into the system without definite relations to any other beliefs: a dogmatic assertion which refuses to be tested or to be correlated with other dogmas; a reduction therefore of the whole system to chaos. it is at best an instinctive belief which requires to be justified and corrected by reference to some other criterion. or resolve morality into 'reason,' that is, into some purely logical truth, and it then remains in the air--a mere nonentity until experience has supplied some material upon which it can work. deny the principle of utility, in short, as he says in a vigorous passage,[ ] and you are involved in a hopeless circle. sooner or later you appeal to an arbitrary and despotic principle and find that you have substituted words for thoughts. the only escape from this circle is the frank admission that happiness is, in fact, the sole aim of man. there are, of course, different kinds of happiness as there are different kinds of physical forces. but the motives to action are, like the physical forces, commensurable. two courses of conduct can always be compared in respect of the happiness produced, as two motions of a body can be compared in respect of the energy expended. if, then, we take the moral judgment to be simply a judgment of amounts of happiness, the whole theory can be systematised, and its various theorems ranged under a single axiom or consistent set of axioms. pain and pleasure give the real value of actions; they are the currency with a definite standard into which every general rule may be translated. there is always a common measure applicable in every formula for the estimation of conduct. if you admit your moral sense, you profess to settle values by some standard which has no definite relation to the standard which in fact governs the normal transactions. but any such double standard, in which the two measures are absolutely incommensurable, leads straight to chaos. or, if again you appeal to reason in the abstract, you are attempting to settle an account by pure arithmetic without reference to the units upon which your operation is performed. two pounds and two pounds will make four pounds whatever a pound may be; but till i know what it is, the result is nugatory. somewhere i must come upon a basis of fact, if my whole construction is to stand. this is the fundamental position implied in bentham's doctrine. the moral judgment is simply one case of the judgment of happiness. bentham is so much convinced of this that to him there appeared to be in reality no other theory. what passed for theories were mere combinations of words. having said this, we know where to lay the foundations of the new science. it deals with a vast complicity of facts: it requires 'investigations as severe as mathematical ones, but beyond all comparison more intricate and extensive.'[ ] still it deals with facts, and with facts which have a common measure, and can, therefore, be presented as a coherent system. to present this system, or so much of it as is required for purposes of legislation, is therefore his next task. the partial execution is the chief substance of the _introduction_. right and wrong conduct, we may now take for granted, mean simply those classes of conduct which are conducive to or opposed to happiness; or, in the sacred formula, to act rightly means to promote the greatest happiness of the greatest number. the legislator, like every one else, acts rightly in so far as he is guided by the principle (to use one of the phrases coined by bentham) of 'maximising' happiness. he seeks to affect conduct; and conduct can be affected only by annexing pains or pleasures to given classes of actions. hence we have a vitally important part of his doctrine--the theory of 'sanctions.' pains and pleasures as annexed to action are called 'sanctions.' there are 'physical or natural,' 'political, 'moral or popular,' and 'religious' sanctions. the 'physical' sanctions are such pleasures and pains as follow a given course of conduct independently of the interference of any other human or supernatural being; the 'political' those which are annexed by the action of the legislator; the 'moral or popular' those which are annexed by other individuals not acting in a corporate capacity; and the 'religious' those which are annexed by a 'superior invisible being,' or, as he says elsewhere,[ ] 'such as are capable of being expected at the hands of an invisible ruler of the universe.' the three last sanctions, he remarks, 'operate through the first.' the 'magistrate' or 'men at large' can only operate, and god is supposed only to operate, 'through the powers of nature,' that is, by applying some of the pains and pleasures which may also be natural sanctions. a man is burnt: if by his own imprudence, that is a 'physical' sanction; if by the magistrate, it is a 'political' sanction; if by some neglect of his neighbours, due to their dislike of his 'moral character,' a 'moral' sanction; if by the immediate act of god or by distraction caused by dread of god's displeasure, it is a 'religious' sanction. of these, as bentham characteristically observes[ ] in a later writing the political is much stronger than the 'moral' or 'religious.' many men fear the loss of character or the 'wrath of heaven,' but all men fear the scourge and the gallows.[ ] he admits, however, that the religious sanction and the additional sanction of 'benevolence' have the advantage of not requiring that the offender should be found out.[ ] but in any case, the 'natural' and religious sanctions are beyond the legislator's power. his problem, therefore, is simply this: what sanctions ought he to annex to conduct, or remembering that 'ought' means simply 'conducive to happiness,' what political sanctions will increase happiness? to answer this fully will be to give a complete system of legislation; but in order to answer it we require a whole logical and psychological apparatus. bentham shows this apparatus at work, but does not expound its origin in any separate treatise. enough information, however, is given as to his method in the curious collection of the fragments connected with the _chrestomathia_. a logical method upon which he constantly insisted is that of 'bipartition,'[ ] called also the 'dichotomous' or 'bifurcate' method, and exemplified by the so-called 'porphyrian tree.' the principle is, of course, simple. take any genus: divide it into two classes, one of which has and the other has not a certain mark. the two classes must be mutually exclusive and together exhaustive. repeat the operation upon each of the classes and continue the process as long as desired.[ ] at every step you thus have a complete enumeration of all the species, varieties, and so on, each of which excludes all the others. no mere logic, indeed, can secure the accuracy and still less the utility of the procedure. the differences may be in themselves ambiguous or irrelevant. if i classify plants as 'trees' and 'not trees,' the logical form is satisfied: but i have still to ask whether 'tree' conveys a determinate meaning, and whether the distinction corresponds to a difference of any importance. a perfect classification, however, could always be stated in this form. each species, that is, can be marked by the presence or absence of a given difference, whether we are dealing with classes of plants or actions: and bentham aims at that consummation though he admits that centuries may be required for the construction of an accurate classification in ethical speculations.[ ] he exaggerates the efficiency of his method, and overlooks the tendency of tacit assumptions to smuggle themselves into what affects to be a mere enumeration of classes. but in any case, no one could labour more industriously to get every object of his thought arranged and labelled and put into the right pigeon-hole of his mental museum. to codify[ ] is to classify, and bentham might be defined as a codifying animal. things thus present themselves to bentham's mind as already prepared to fit into pigeon-holes. this is a characteristic point, and it appears in what we must call his metaphysical system. 'metaphysics,' indeed, according to him, is simply 'a sprig,' and that a small one, of the 'branch termed logic.'[ ] it is merely the explanation of certain general terms such as 'existence,' 'necessity,' and so forth.[ ] under this would apparently fall the explanation of 'reality' which leads to a doctrine upon which he often insists, and which is most implicitly given in the fragment called _ontology_. he there distinguishes 'real' from 'fictitious entities,' a distinction which, as he tells us,[ ] he first learned from d'alembert's phrase _Ã�tres fictifs_ and which he applies in his _morals and legislation_. 'real entities,' according to him,[ ] are 'individual perceptions,' 'impressions,' and 'ideas.' in this, of course, he is following hume, though he applies the johnsonian argument to berkeley's immaterialism.[ ] a 'fictitious entity' is a name which does note 'raise up in the mind any correspondent images.'[ ] such names owe their existence to the necessities of language. without employing such fictions, however, 'the language of man could not have risen above the language of brutes';[ ] and he emphatically distinguishes them from 'unreal' or 'fabulous entities.' a 'fictitious entity' is not a 'nonentity.'[ ] he includes among such entities all aristotle's 'predicaments' except the first: 'substance.'[ ] quantity, quality, relation, time, place are all 'physical fictitious entities.' this is apparently equivalent to saying that the only 'physical entities' are concrete things--sticks, stones, bodies, and so forth--the 'reality' of which he takes for granted in the ordinary common sense meaning. it is also perfectly true that things are really related, have quantity and quality, and are in time and space. but we cannot really conceive the quality or relation apart from the concrete things so qualified and related. we are forced by language to use substantives which in their nature have only the sense of adjectives. he does not suppose that a body is not really square or round; but he thinks it a fiction to speak of squareness or roundness or space in general as something existing apart from matter and, in some sense, alongside of matter. this doctrine, which brings us within sight of metaphysical problems beyond our immediate purpose, becomes important to his moral speculation. his special example of a 'fictitious entity' in politics is 'obligation.'[ ] obligations, rights, and similar words are 'fictitious entities.' obligation in particular implies a metaphor. the statement that a man is 'obliged' to perform an act means simply that he will suffer pain if he does not perform it. the use of the word obligation, as a noun substantive, introduces the 'fictitious entity' which represents nothing really separable from the pain or pleasure. here, therefore, we have the ground of the doctrine already noticed. 'pains and pleasures' are real.[ ] 'their existence,' he says,[ ] 'is matter of universal and constant experience.' but other various names referring to these: emotion, inclination, vice, virtue, etc., are only 'psychological entities.' 'take away pleasures and pains, not only happiness but justice and duty and obligation and virtue--all of which have been so elaborately held up to view as independent of them--are so many empty sounds.'[ ] the ultimate facts, then, are pains and pleasures. they are the substantives of which these other words are properly the adjectives. a pain or a pleasure may exist by itself, that is without being virtuous or vicious: but virtue and vice can only exist in so far as pain and pleasure exists. this analysis of 'obligation' is a characteristic doctrine of the utilitarian school. we are under an 'obligation' so far as we are affected by a 'sanction.' it appeared to bentham so obvious as to need no demonstration, only an exposition of the emptiness of any verbal contradiction. such metaphysical basis as he needed is simply the attempt to express the corresponding conception of reality which, in his opinion, only requires to be expressed to carry conviction. notes: [ ] see note under bentham's life, _ante_, p. . [ ] preface to _morals and legislation_. [ ] _works_, i. ('morals and legislation'), ii. _n._ [ ] _essay_, bk. ii. ch. xxi. § -§ . the will, says locke, is determined by the 'uneasiness of desire.' what moves desire? happiness, and that alone. happiness is pleasure, and misery pain. what produces pleasure we call good; and what produces pain we call evil. locke, however, was not a consistent utilitarian. [ ] epistle iv., opening lines. [ ] _works_, vii. . [ ] _works_ ('constitutional code'), ix. . [ ] _works_ ('fragment'), i. . [ ] _works_ ('morals and legislation'), i. - . mill quotes this passage in his essay on bentham in the first volume of his _dissertations_. this essay, excellent in itself must be specially noticed as an exposition by an authoritative disciple. [ ] _works_ ('morals and legislation'), i. . [ ] _works_ ('morals and legislation'), i. v. [ ] _works_ ('evidence'), vi. . [ ] _works_ ('evidence'), vii. . [ ] _ibid._ ('morals and legislation'), i. , etc.; _ibid._ vi. . in _ibid._ ('evidence') vii. , 'humanity,' and in 'logical arrangements,' _ibid._ ii. , 'sympathy' appears as a fifth sanction. another modification is suggested in _ibid._ i. _n._ [ ] _ibid._ ('morals and legislation'), i. . [ ] _works_ ('morals and legislation'), i. _n._ [ ] see especially _ibid._ viii. , etc.; , etc.; , etc. [ ] _ibid._ viii. . [ ] 'codify' was one of bentham's successful neologisms. [ ] _works_ ('logic'), viii. . [ ] here bentham coincides with horne tooke, to whose 'discoveries' he refers in the _chrestomathia_ (_works_, viii. , , ). [ ] _works_, iii. ; viii. . [ ] _ibid._ ('ontology') viii. _n._ [ ] _ibid._ viii, _n._ [ ] _ibid._ viii. . [ ] _works_ ('ontology'), viii. . [ ] _ibid._ viii. . [ ] _ibid._ viii. . [ ] _ibid._ viii. , . [ ] helvétius adds to this that the only real pains and pleasures are the physical, but bentham does not follow him here. see helvétius, _oeuvres_ ( ), ii. , etc. [ ] _works_, i. ('springs of action'). [ ] _ibid._ i. . ii. springs of action our path is now clear. pains and pleasures give us what mathematicians call the 'independent variable.' our units are (in bentham's phrase) 'lots' of pain or pleasure. we have to interpret all the facts in terms of pain or pleasure, and we shall have the materials for what has since been called a 'felicific calculus.' to construct this with a view to legislation is his immediate purpose. the theory will fall into two parts: the 'pathological,' or an account of all the pains and pleasures which are the primary data; and the 'dynamical,' or an account of the various modes of conduct determined by expectations of pain and pleasure. this gives the theory of 'springs of action,' considered in themselves, and of 'motives,' that is, of the springs as influencing conduct.[ ] the 'pathology' contains, in the first place, a discussion of the measure of pain and pleasure in general; secondly, a discussion of the various species of pain and pleasure; and thirdly, a discussion of the varying sensibilities of different individuals to pain and pleasure.[ ] thus under the first head, we are told that the value of a pleasure, considered by itself, depends upon its intensity, duration, certainty, and propinquity; and, considered with regard to modes of obtaining it, upon its fecundity (or tendency to produce other pains and pleasures) and its purity (or freedom from admixture of other pains and pleasures). the pain or pleasure is thus regarded as an entity which is capable of being in some sense weighed and measured.[ ] the next step is to classify pains and pleasures, which though commensurable as psychological forces, have obviously very different qualities. bentham gives the result of his classification without the analysis upon which it depends. he assures us that he has obtained an 'exhaustive' list of 'simple pleasures.' it must be confessed that the list does not commend itself either as exhaustive or as composed of 'simple pleasures.' he does not explain the principle of his analysis because he says, it was of 'too metaphysical a cast,'[ ] but he thought it so important that he published it, edited with considerable modifications by james mill, in , as a _table of the springs of action_.[ ] j. s. mill remarks that this table should be studied by any one who would understand bentham's philosophy. such a study would suggest some unfavourable conclusions. bentham seems to have made out his table without the slightest reference to any previous psychologist. it is simply constructed to meet the requirements of his legislative theories. as psychology it would be clearly absurd, especially if taken as giving the elementary or 'simple' feelings. no one can suppose, for example, that the pleasures of 'wealth' or 'power' are 'simple' pleasures. the classes therefore are not really distinct, and they are as far from being exhaustive. all that can be said for the list is that it gives a sufficiently long enumeration to call attention from his own point of view to most of the ordinary pleasures and pains; and contains as much psychology as he could really turn to account for his purpose. the omissions with which his greatest disciple charges him are certainly significant. we find, says mill, no reference to 'conscience,' 'principle,' 'moral rectitude,' or 'moral duty' among the 'springs of action,' unless among the synonyms of a 'love of reputation,' or in so far as 'conscience' and 'principle' are sometimes synonymous with the 'religious' motive or the motive of 'sympathy.' so the sense of 'honour,' the love of beauty, and of order, of power (except in the narrow sense of power over our fellows) and of action in general are all omitted. we may conjecture what reply bentham would have made to this criticism. the omission of the love of beauty and æsthetic pleasures may surprise us when we remember that bentham loved music, if he cared nothing for poetry. but he apparently regarded these as 'complex pleasures,'[ ] and therefore not admissible into his table, if it be understood as an analysis into the simple pleasures alone. the pleasures of action are deliberately omitted, for bentham pointedly gives the 'pains' of labour as a class without corresponding pleasure; and this, though indicative, i think, of a very serious error, is characteristic rather of his method of analysis than of his real estimate of pleasure. nobody could have found more pleasure than bentham in intellectual labour, but he separated the pleasure from the labour. he therefore thought 'labour,' as such, a pure evil, and classified the pleasure as a pleasure of 'curiosity.' but the main criticism is more remarkable. mill certainly held himself to be a sound utilitarian; and yet he seems to be condemning bentham for consistent utilitarianism. bentham, by admitting the 'conscience' into his simple springs of action, would have fallen into the very circle from which he was struggling to emerge. if, in fact, the pleasures of conscience are simple pleasures, we have the objectionable 'moral sense' intruded as an ultimate factor of human nature. to get rid of that 'fictitious entity' is precisely bentham's aim. the moral judgment is to be precisely equivalent to the judgment: 'this or that kind of conduct increases or diminishes the sum of human pains or pleasures.' once allow that among the pains and pleasures themselves is an ultimate conscience--a faculty not constructed out of independent pains and pleasures--and the system becomes a vicious circle. conscience on any really utilitarian scheme must be a derivative, not an ultimate, faculty. if, as mill seems to say, the omission is a blunder, bentham's utilitarianism at least must be an erroneous system. we have now our list both of pains and pleasures and of the general modes of variation by which their value is to be measured. we must also allow for the varying sensibilities of different persons. bentham accordingly gives a list of thirty-two 'circumstances influencing sensibility.'[ ] human beings differ in constitution, character, education, sex, race, and so forth, and in their degrees of sensibility to all the various classes of pains and pleasures; the consideration of these varieties is of the highest utility for the purposes of the judge and the legislator.[ ] the 'sanctions' will operate differently in different cases. a blow will have different effects upon the sick and upon the healthy; the same fine imposed upon the rich and the poor will cause very different pains; and a law which is beneficent in europe may be a scourge in america. we have thus our 'pathology' or theory of the passive sensibilities of man. we know what are the 'springs of action,' how they vary in general, and how they vary from one man to another. we can therefore pass to the dynamics.[ ] we have described the machinery in rest, and can now consider it in motion. we proceed as before by first considering action in general: which leads to consideration of the 'intention' and the 'motive' implied by any conscious action: and hence of the relation of these to the 'springs of action' as already described. the discussion is minute and elaborate; and bentham improves as he comes nearer to the actual problems of legislation and further from the ostensible bases of psychology. the analysis of conduct, and of the sanctions by which conduct is modified, involves a view of morals and of the relations between the spheres of morality and legislation which is of critical importance for the whole utilitarian creed. 'moral laws' and a 'positive law' both affect human action. how do they differ? bentham's treatment of the problem shows, i think, a clearer appreciation of some difficulties than might be inferred from his later utterances. in any case, it brings into clear relief a moral doctrine which deeply affected his successors. notes: [ ] _works_, i. ; and dumont's _traités_ ( ), i. xxv, xxvi. the word 'springs of action' perhaps comes from the marginal note to the above-mentioned passage of locke (bk. ii. chap. xxvi, § , ). [ ] _morals and legislation_, chaps. iv., v., vi. [ ] see 'codification proposal' (_works_, iv. ), where bentham takes money as representing pleasure, and shows how the present value may be calculated like that of a sum put out to interest. the same assumption is often made by political economists in regard to 'utilities.' [ ] _works_ ('morals and legislation'), i. _n._ [ ] it is not worth while to consider this at length; but i give the following conjectural account of the list as it appears in the _morals and legislation_ above. in classifying pain or pleasures, bentham is, i think, following the clue suggested by his 'sanctions.' he is really classifying according to their causes or the way in which they are 'annexed.' thus pleasures may or may not be dependent upon other persons, or if upon other persons, may be indirectly or directly caused by their pleasures or pains. pleasures not caused by persons correspond to the 'physical sanction,' and are those ( ) of the 'senses,' ( ) of wealth, _i.e._ caused by the possession of things, and ( ) of 'skill,' _i.e._ caused by our ability to use things. pleasures caused by persons indirectly correspond first to the 'popular or moral sanction,' and are pleasures ( ) of 'amity,' caused by the goodwill of individuals, and ( ) of a 'good name,' caused by the goodwill of people in general; secondly, to 'political sanction,' namely ( ) pleasures of 'power'; and thirdly, to the 'religious sanction,' or ( ) pleasures of 'piety.' all these are 'self-regarding pleasures.' the pleasures caused directly by the pleasure of others are those ( ) of 'benevolence,' and ( ) of malevolence. we then have what is really a cross division by classes of 'derivative' pleasures; these being due to ( ) memory, ( ) imagination, ( ) expectation, ( ) association. to each class of pleasures corresponds a class of pains, except that there are no pains corresponding to the pleasures of wealth or power. we have, however, a general class of pains of 'privation,' which might include pains of poverty or weakness: and to these are opposed ( ) pleasures of 'relief,' _i.e._ of the privation of pains. in the _table_, as separately published, bentham modified this by dividing pleasures of sense into three classes, the last of which includes the two first; by substituting pleasures of 'curiosity' for pleasures of 'skill' by suppressing pleasures of relief and pains of privation; and by adding, as a class of 'pains' without corresponding pleasures, pains ( ) of labour, ( ) of 'death, and bodily pains in general.' these changes seem to have been introduced in the course of writing his _introduction_, where they are partly assumed. another class is added to include all classes of 'self-regarding pleasures or pains.' he is trying to give a list of all 'synonyms' for various pains and pleasures, and has therefore to admit classes corresponding to general names which include other classes. [ ] _works_ i. , where he speaks of pleasures of the 'ball-room,' the 'theatre,' and the 'fine arts' as derivable from the 'simple and elementary' pleasures. [ ] _works_ ('morals and legislation'), i. etc. [ ] _ibid._ i. . [ ] _morals and legislation_, ch. vii. to xi. iii. the sanctions let us first take his definitions of the fundamental conceptions. all action of reasonable beings implies the expectation of consequences. the agent's 'intention' is defined by the consequences actually contemplated. the cause of action is the hope of the consequent pleasures or the dread of the consequent pains. this anticipated pleasure or pain constitutes the 'internal motive' (a phrase used by bentham to exclude the 'external motive' or event which causes the anticipation).[ ] the motive, or 'internal motive,' is the anticipation of pain to be avoided or pleasure to be gained. actions are good or bad simply and solely as they are on the whole 'productive of a balance of pleasure or pain.' the problem of the legislator is how to regulate actions so as to incline the balance to the right side. his weapons are 'sanctions' which modify 'motives.' what motives, then, should be strengthened or checked? here we must be guided by a principle which is, in fact, the logical result of the doctrines already laid down. we are bound to apply our 'felicific calculus' with absolute impartiality. we must therefore assign equal value to all motives. 'no motives,' he says,[ ] are 'constantly good or constantly bad.' pleasure is itself a good; pain itself an evil: nay, they are 'the only good and the only evil.' this is true of every sort of pain and pleasure, even of the pains and pleasures of illwill. the pleasures of 'malevolence' are placed in his 'table' by the side of pleasures of 'benevolence.' hence it 'follows immediately and incontestably, that there is no such thing as any sort of motive that is in itself a bad one.' the doctrine is no doubt a logical deduction from bentham's assumptions, and he proceeds to illustrate its meaning. a 'motive' corresponds to one of his 'springs of action.' he shows how every one of the motives included in his table may lead either to good or to bad consequences. the desire of wealth may lead me to kill a man's enemy or to plough his field for him; the fear of god may prompt to fanaticism or to charity; illwill may lead to malicious conduct or may take the form of proper 'resentment,' as, for example, when i secure the punishment of my father's murderer. though one act, he says, is approved and the other condemned, they spring from the same motive, namely, illwill.[ ] he admits, however, that some motives are more likely than others to lead to 'useful' conduct; and thus arranges them in a certain 'order of pre-eminence.'[ ] it is obvious that 'goodwill,' 'love of reputation,' and the 'desire of amity' are more likely than others to promote general happiness. 'the dictates of utility,' as he observes, are simply the 'dictates of the most extensive and enlightened (that is, _well advised_) benevolence.' it would, therefore, seem more appropriate to call the 'motive' good; though no one doubts that when directed by an erroneous judgment it may incidentally be mischievous. the doctrine that morality depends upon 'consequences' and not upon 'motives' became a characteristic utilitarian dogma, and i shall have to return to the question. meanwhile, it was both a natural and, i think, in some senses, a correct view, when strictly confined to the province of legislation. for reasons too obvious to expand, the legislator must often be indifferent to the question of motives. he cannot know with certainty what are a man's motives. he must enforce the law whatever may be the motives for breaking it; and punish rebellion, for example, even if he attributes it to misguided philanthropy. he can, in any case, punish only such crimes as are found out; and must define crimes by palpable 'external' marks. he must punish by such coarse means as the gallows and the gaol: for his threats must appeal to the good and the bad alike. he depends, therefore, upon 'external' sanctions, sanctions, that is, which work mainly upon the fears of physical pain; and even if his punishments affect the wicked alone, they clearly cannot reach the wicked as wicked, nor in proportion to their wickedness. that is quite enough to show why in positive law motives are noticed indirectly or not at all. it shows also that the analogy between the positive and the moral law is treacherous. the exclusion of motive justifiable in law may take all meaning out of morality. the utilitarians, as we shall see, were too much disposed to overlook the difference, and attempt to apply purely legal doctrine in the totally uncongenial sphere of ethical speculation. to accept the legal classification of actions by their external characteristics is, in fact, to beg the question in advance. any outward criterion must group together actions springing from different 'motives' and therefore, as other moralists would say, ethically different. there is, however, another meaning in this doctrine which is more to the purpose here. bentham was aiming at a principle which, true or false, is implied in all ethical systems based upon experience instead of pure logic or _a priori_ 'intuitions.' such systems must accept human nature as a fact, and as the basis of a scientific theory. they do not aim at creating angels but at developing the existing constitution of mankind. so far as an action springs from one of the primitive or essential instincts of mankind, it simply proves the agent to be human, not to be vicious or virtuous, and therefore is no ground for any moral judgment. if bentham's analysis could be accepted, this would be true of his 'springs of action.' the natural appetites have not in themselves a moral quality: they are simply necessary and original data in the problem. the perplexity is introduced by bentham's assumption that conduct can be analysed so that the 'motive' is a separate entity which can be regarded as the sole cause of a corresponding action. that involves an irrelevant abstraction. there is no such thing as a single 'motive.' one of his cases is a mother who lets her child die for love of 'ease.' we do not condemn her because she loves ease, which is a motive common to all men and therefore unmoral, not immoral. but neither do we condemn her merely for the bad consequences of a particular action. we condemn her because she loves ease better than she loves her child: that is, because her whole character is 'unnatural' or ill-balanced, not on account of a particular element taken by itself. morality is concerned with concrete human beings, and not with 'motives' running about by themselves. bentham's meaning, if we make the necessary correction, would thus be expressed by saying that we don't blame a man because he has the 'natural' passions, but because they are somehow wrongly proportioned or the man himself wrongly constituted. passions which may make a man vicious may also be essential to the highest virtue. that is quite true; but the passion is not a separate agent, only one constituent of the character. bentham admits this in his own fashion. if 'motives' cannot be properly called good or bad, is there, he asks, nothing good or bad in the man who on a given occasion obeys a certain motive? 'yes, certainly,' he replies, 'his disposition.'[ ] the disposition, he adds, is a 'fictitious entity, and designed for the convenience of discourse in order to express what there is supposed to be permanent in a man's frame of mind.' by 'fictitious,' as we have seen, he means not 'unreal' but simply not tangible, weighable, or measurable--like sticks and stones, or like pains and pleasures. 'fictitious' as they may be, therefore, the fiction enables us to express real truths, and to state facts which are of the highest importance to the moralist and the legislator. bentham discusses some cases of casuistry in order to show the relation between the tendency of an action and the intention and motives of the agent. ravaillac murders a good king; ravaillac's son enables his father to escape punishment, or conveys poison to his father to enable him to avoid torture by suicide.[ ] what is the inference as to the son's disposition in either case? the solution (as he substantially and, i think, rightly suggests) will have to be reached by considering whether the facts indicate that the son's disposition was mischievous or otherwise; whether it indicates political disloyalty or filial affection, and so forth, and in what proportions. the most interesting case perhaps is that of religious persecution, where the religious motive is taken to be good, and the action to which it leads is yet admitted to be mischievous. the problem is often puzzling, but we are virtually making an inference as to the goodness or badness of the 'disposition' implied by the given action under all the supposed circumstances. this gives what bentham calls the 'meritoriousness'[ ] of the disposition. the 'intention' is caused by the 'motive.' the 'disposition' is the 'sum of the intentions'; that is to say, it expresses the agent's sensibility to various classes of motives; and the merit therefore will be in proportion to the total goodness or badness of the disposition thus indicated. the question of merit leads to interesting moral problems. bentham, however, observes that he is not here speaking from the point of view of the moralist but of the legislator. still, as a legislator he has to consider what is the 'depravity' of disposition indicated by different kinds of conduct. this consideration is of great importance. the 'disposition' includes sensibility to what he calls 'tutelary motives'--motives, that is, which deter a man from such conduct as generally produces mischievous consequences. no motive can be invariably, though some, especially the motive of goodwill, and in a minor degree those of 'amity' and a 'love of reputation,' are generally, on the right side. the legislator has to reinforce these 'tutelary motives' by 'artificial tutelary motives,' and mainly by appealing to the 'love of ease,' that is, by making mischievous conduct more difficult, and to 'self-preservation,' that is, by making it more dangerous.[ ] he has therefore to measure the force by which these motives will be opposed; or, in other words, the 'strength of the temptation.' now the more depraved a man's disposition, the weaker the temptation which will seduce him to crime. consequently if an act shows depravity, it will require a stronger counter-motive or a more severe punishment, as the disposition indicated is more mischievous. an act, for example, which implies deliberation proves a greater insensibility to these social motives which, as bentham remarks,[ ] determine the 'general tenor of a man's life,' however depraved he may be. the legislator is guided solely by 'utility,' or aims at maximising happiness without reference to its quality. still, so far as action implies disposition, he has to consider the depravity as a source of mischief. the legislator who looks solely at the moral quality implied is wrong; and, if guided solely by his sympathies, has no measure for the amount of punishment to be inflicted. these considerations will enable us to see what is the proper measure of resentment.[ ] the doctrine of the neutrality or 'unmorality' of motive is thus sufficiently clear. bentham's whole aim is to urge that the criterion of morality is given by the consequences of actions. to say the conduct is good or bad is to say in other words that it produces a balance of pleasure or pain. to make the criterion independent, or escape the vicious circle, we must admit the pleasures and pains to be in themselves neutral; to have, that is, the same value, if equally strong, whatever their source. in our final balance-sheet we must set down pains of illwill and of goodwill, of sense and of intellect with absolute impartiality, and compare them simply in respect of intensity. we must not admit a 'conscience' or 'moral sense' which would be autocratic; nor, indeed, allow moral to have any meaning as applied to the separate passions. but it is quite consistent with this to admit that some motives, goodwill in particular, generally tend to bring out the desirable result, that is, a balance of pleasure for the greatest number. the pains and pleasures are the ultimate facts, and the 'disposition' is a 'fictitious entity' or a name for the sum of sensibilities. it represents the fact that some men are more inclined than others to increase the total of good or bad. notes: [ ] _works_ ('morals and legislation'), i. . [ ] _ibid._ i. . [ ] _works_ ('morals and legislation'), i. . [ ] _ibid._ i. . [ ] _works_ ('morals and legislation'), i. . [ ] _ibid._ i. . [ ] _ibid._ i. . [ ] these are the two classes of 'springs of action' omitted in the _table_. [ ] _works_ ('morals and legislation'), i. . [ ] here bentham lays down the rule that punishment should rise with the strength of the temptation, a theory which leads to some curious casuistical problems. he does not fully discuss, and i cannot here consider, them. i will only note that it may conceivably be necessary to increase the severity of punishment, instead of removing the temptation or strengthening the preventive action. if so, the law becomes immoral in the sense of punishing more severely as the crime has more moral excuse. this was often true of the old criminal law, which punished offences cruelly because it had no effective system of police. bentham would of course have agreed that the principle in this case was a bad one. iv. criminal law we have now, after a long analysis, reached the point at which the principles can be applied to penal law. the legislator has to discourage certain classes of conduct by annexing 'tutelary motives.' the classes to be suppressed are of course those which diminish happiness. pursuing the same method, and applying results already reached, we must in the first place consider how the 'mischief of an act' is to be measured.[ ] acts are mischievous as their 'consequences' are mischievous; and the consequences may be 'primary' or 'secondary.' robbery causes pain to the loser of the money. that is a primary evil. it alarms the holders of money; it suggests the facility of robbery to others; and it weakens the 'tutelary motive' of respect for property. these are secondary evils. the 'secondary' evil may be at times the most important. the non-payment of a tax may do no appreciable harm in a particular case. but its secondary effects in injuring the whole political fabric may be disastrous and fruitful beyond calculation. bentham proceeds to show carefully how the 'intentions' and 'motives' of the evildoer are of the greatest importance, especially in determining these secondary consequences, and must therefore be taken into account by the legislator. a homicide may cause the same primary evil, whether accidental or malignant; but accidental homicide may cause no alarm, whereas the intentional and malignant homicide may cause any quantity of alarm and shock to the general sense of security. in this way, therefore, the legislator has again indirectly to take into account the moral quality which is itself dependent upon utility. i must, however, pass lightly over a very clear and interesting discussion to reach a further point of primary importance to the utilitarian theory, as to the distinction between the moral and legal spheres.[ ] bentham has now 'made an analysis of evil.' he has, that is, classified the mischiefs produced by conduct, measured simply by their effect upon pleasures or pains, independently of any consideration as to virtue and vice. the next problem is: what conduct should be criminal?--a subject which is virtually discussed in two chapters (xv. and xix.) 'on cases unmeet for punishment' and on 'the limits between private ethics and the act of legislation.' we must, of course, follow the one clue to the labyrinth. we must count all the 'lots' of pain and pleasure indifferently. it is clear, on the one hand, that the pains suffered by criminals are far less than the pains which would be suffered were no such sanctions applied. on the other hand, all punishment is an evil, because punishment means pain, and it is therefore only to be inflicted when it excludes greater pain. it must, therefore, not be inflicted when it is 'groundless,' 'inefficacious,' 'unprofitable,' or 'needless.' 'needless' includes all the cases in which the end may be attained 'as effectually at a cheaper rate.'[ ] this applies to all 'dissemination of pernicious principles'; for in this case reason and not force is the appropriate remedy. the sword inflicts more pain, and is less efficient than the pen. the argument raises the wider question, what are the true limits of legislative interference? bentham, in his last chapter, endeavours to answer this problem. 'private ethics,' he says, and 'legislation' aim at the same end, namely, happiness, and the 'acts with which they are conversant are _in great measure_ the same.' why, then, should they have different spheres? simply because the acts 'are not _perfectly and throughout_ the same.'[ ] how, then, are we to draw the line? by following the invariable clue of 'utility.' we simply have to apply an analysis to determine the cases in which punishment does more harm than good. he insists especially upon the cases in which punishment is 'unprofitable'; upon such offences as drunkenness and sexual immorality, where the law could only be enforced by a mischievous or impossible system of minute supervision, and such offences as ingratitude or rudeness, where the definition is so vague that the judge could not safely be entrusted with the power to punish.'[ ] he endeavours to give a rather more precise distinction by subdividing 'ethics in general' into three classes. duty may be to oneself, that is 'prudence'; or to one's neighbour negatively, that is 'probity'; or to one's neighbour positively, that is 'benevolence.'[ ] duties of the first class must be left chiefly to the individual, because he is the best judge of his own interest. duties of the third class again are generally too vague to be enforced by the legislator, though a man ought perhaps to be punished for failing to help as well as for actually injuring. the second department of ethics, that of 'probity,' is the main field for legislative activity.[ ] as a general principle, 'private ethics' teach a man how to pursue his own happiness, and the art of legislation how to pursue the greatest happiness of the community. it must be noticed, for the point is one of importance, that bentham's purely empirical method draws no definite line. it implies that no definite line can be drawn. it does not suggest that any kind of conduct whatever is outside the proper province of legislator except in so far as the legislative machinery may happen to be inadequate or inappropriate. our analysis has now been carried so far that we can proceed to consider the principles by which we should be guided in punishing. what are the desirable properties of a 'lot of punishment'? this occupies two interesting chapters. chapter xvi., 'on the proportion between punishments and offences,' gives twelve rules. the punishment, he urges, must outweigh the profit of the offence; it must be such as to make a man prefer a less offence to a greater--simple theft, for example, to violent robbery; it must be such that the punishment must be adaptable to the varying sensibility of the offender; it must be greater in 'value' as it falls short of certainty; and, when the offence indicates a habit, it must outweigh not only the profit of the particular offence, but of the undetected offences. in chapter xvii. bentham considers the properties which fit a punishment to fulfil these conditions. eleven properties are given. the punishment must be ( ) 'variable,' that is, capable of adjustment to particular cases; and ( ) equable, or inflicting equal pain by equal sentences. thus the 'proportion' between punishment and crimes of a given class can be secured. in order that the punishments of different classes of crime may be proportional, the punishments should ( ) be commensurable. to make punishments efficacious they should be ( ) 'characteristical' or impressive to the imagination; and that they may not be excessive they should be ( ) exemplary or likely to impress others, and ( ) frugal. to secure minor ends they should be ( ) reformatory; ( ) disabling, _i.e._ from future offences; and ( ) compensatory to the sufferer. finally, to avoid collateral disadvantages they should be ( ) popular, and ( ) remittable. a twelfth property, simplicity, was added in dumont's redaction. dumont calls attention here to the value of bentham's method.[ ] montesquieu and beccaria had spoken in general terms of the desirable qualities of punishment. they had spoken of 'proportionality,' for example, but without that precise or definite meaning which appears in bentham's calculus. in fact, bentham's statement, compared to the vaguer utterances of his predecessors, but still more when compared to the haphazard brutalities and inconsistencies of english criminal law, gives the best impression of the value of his method. bentham's next step is an elaborate classification of offences, worked out by a further application of his bifurcatory method.[ ] this would form the groundwork of the projected code. i cannot, however, speak of this classification, or of many interesting remarks contained in the _principles of penal law_, where some further details are considered. an analysis scarcely does justice to bentham, for it has to omit his illustrations and his flashes of real vivacity. the mere dry logical framework is not appetising. i have gone so far in order to illustrate the characteristic of bentham's teaching. it was not the bare appeal to utility, but the attempt to follow the clue of utility systematically and unflinchingly into every part of the subject. this one doctrine gives the touchstone by which every proposed measure is to be tested; and which will give to his system not such unity as arises from the development of an abstract logical principle, but such as is introduced into the physical sciences when we are able to range all the indefinitely complex phenomena which arise under some simple law of force. if bentham's aim could have been achieved, 'utility' would have been in legislative theories what gravitation is in astronomical theories. all human conduct being ruled by pain and pleasure, we could compare all motives and actions, and trace out the consequences of any given law. i shall have hereafter to consider how this conception worked in different minds and was applied to different problems: what were the tenable results to which it led, and what were the errors caused by the implied oversight of some essential considerations. certain weaknesses are almost too obvious to be specified. he claimed to be constructing a science, comparable to the physical sciences. the attempt was obviously chimerical if we are to take it seriously. the makeshift doctrine which he substitutes for psychology would be a sufficient proof of the incapacity for his task. he had probably not read such writers as hartley or condillac, who might have suggested some ostensibly systematic theory. if he had little psychology he had not even a conception of 'sociology.' the 'felicific calculus' is enough to show the inadequacy of his method. the purpose is to enable us to calculate the effects of a proposed law. you propose to send robbers to the gallows or the gaol. you must, says bentham, reckon up all the evils prevented: the suffering to the robbed, and to those who expect to be robbed, on the one hand; and, on the other, the evils caused, the suffering to the robber, and to the tax-payer who keeps the constable; then strike your balance and make your law if the evils prevented exceed the evils caused. some such calculation is demanded by plain common sense. it points to the line of inquiry desirable. but can it be adequate? to estimate the utility of a law we must take into account all its 'effects.' what are the 'effects' of a law against robbery? they are all that is implied in the security of property. they correspond to the difference between england in the eighteenth century and england in the time of hengist and horsa; between a country where the supremacy of law is established, and a country still under the rule of the strong hand. bentham's method may be applicable at a given moment, when the social structure is already consolidated and uniform. it would represent the practical arguments for establishing the police-force demanded by colquhoun, and show the disadvantages of the old constables and watchmen. bentham, that is, gives an admirable method for settling details of administrative and legislative machinery, and dealing with particular cases when once the main principles of law and order are established. those principles, too, may depend upon 'utility,' but utility must be taken in a wider sense when we have to deal with the fundamental questions. we must consider the 'utility' of the whole organisation, not the fitness of separate details. finally, if bentham is weak in psychology and in sociology, he is clearly not satisfactory in ethics. morality is, according to him, on the same plane with law. the difference is not in the sphere to which they apply, or in the end to which they are directed; but solely in the 'sanction.' the legislator uses threats of physical suffering; the moralist threats of 'popular' disapproval. either 'sanction' may be most applicable to a given case; but the question is merely between different means to the same end under varying conditions. this implies the 'external' character of bentham's morality, and explains his insistence upon the neutrality of motives. he takes the average man to be a compound of certain instincts, and merely seeks to regulate their action by supplying 'artificial tutelary motives.' the 'man' is given; the play of his instincts, separately neutral, makes his conduct more or less favourable to general happiness; and the moralist and the legislator have both to correct his deviations by supplying appropriate 'sanctions.' bentham, therefore, is inclined to ignore the intrinsic character of morality, or the dependence of a man's morality upon the essential structure of his nature. he thinks of the superficial play of forces, not of their intimate constitution. the man is not to be changed in either case; only his circumstances. such defects no doubt diminish the value of bentham's work. yet, after all, in his own sphere they are trifles. he did very well without philosophy. however imperfect his system might be considered as a science or an ultimate explanation of society and human nature, it was very much to the point as an expression of downright common sense. dumont's eulogy seems to be fully deserved, when we contrast bentham's theory of punishment with the theories (if they deserve the name) of contemporary legislators. his method involved a thoroughgoing examination of the whole body of laws, and a resolution to apply a searching test to every law. if that test was not so unequivocal or ultimate as he fancied, it yet implied the constant application of such considerations as must always carry weight, and, perhaps, be always the dominant considerations, with the actual legislator or jurist. what is the use of you? is a question which may fairly be put to every institution and to every law; and it concerns legislators to find some answer, even though the meaning of the word 'use' is not so clear as we could wish. notes: [ ] _morals and legislation_, ch. xii. [ ] _morals and legislation_, ch. xiv. (a chapter inserted from dumont's _traités_). [ ] _works_ ('morals and legislation'), i. p. . [ ] _ibid._ i. . [ ] _ibid._ i. . [ ] _works_ ('morals and legislation'), i. . [ ] _ibid._ i. - . [ ] _works_ ('morals and legislation'), i _n._ [ ] _works_ ('morals and legislation'), i. _n._ v. english law the practical value of bentham's method is perhaps best illustrated by his _rationale of evidence_. the composition of the papers ultimately put together by j. s. mill had occupied bentham from to . the changed style is significant. nobody could write more pointedly, or with happier illustrations, than bentham in his earlier years. he afterwards came to think that a didactic treatise should sacrifice every other virtue to fulness and precision. to make a sentence precise, every qualifying clause must be somehow forced into the original formula. still more characteristic is his application of what he calls the 'substantive-preferring principle.'[ ] he would rather say, 'i give extension to an object,' than 'i extend an object.' where a substantive is employed, the idea is 'stationed upon a rock'; if only a verb, the idea is 'like a leaf floating on a stream.' a verb, he said,[ ] 'slips through your fingers like an eel.' the principle corresponds to his 'metaphysics.' the universe of thought is made up of a number of separate 'entities' corresponding to nouns-substantive, and when these bundles are distinctly isolated by appropriate nouns, the process of arranging and codifying according to the simple relations indicated by the copula is greatly facilitated. the ideal language would resemble algebra, in which symbols, each representing a given numerical value, are connected by the smallest possible number of symbols of operation, +, -, =, and so forth. to set two such statements side by side, or to modify them by inserting different constants, is then a comparatively easy process, capable of being regulated by simple general rules. bentham's style becomes tiresome, and was often improperly called obscure. it requires attention, but the meaning is never doubtful--and to the end we have frequent flashes of the old vivacity. the _rationale of evidence_, as mill remarks,[ ] is 'one of the richest in matter of all bentham's productions.' it contains, too, many passages in bentham's earlier style, judiciously preserved by his young editor; indeed, so many that i am tempted even to call the book amusing. in spite of the wearisome effort to say everything, and to force language into the mould presented by his theory, bentham attracts us by his obvious sincerity. the arguments may be unsatisfactory, but they are genuine arguments. they represent conviction; they are given because they have convinced; and no reader can deny that they really tend to convince. we may complain that there are too many words, and that the sentences are cumbrous; but the substance is always to the point. the main purpose may be very briefly indicated. bentham begins by general considerations upon evidence, in which he and his youthful editor indicate their general adherence to the doctrines of hume.[ ] this leads to an application of the methods expounded in the 'introduction,' in order to show how the various motives or 'springs of action' and the 'sanctions' based upon them may affect the trustworthiness of evidence. any motive whatever may incidentally cause 'mendacity.' the second book, therefore, considers what securities may be taken for 'securing trustworthiness.' we have, for example, a discussion of the value of oaths (he thinks them valueless), of the advantages and disadvantages of reducing evidence to writing, of interrogating witnesses, and of the publicity or privacy of evidence. book iii. deals with the 'extraction of evidence.' we have to compare the relative advantages of oral and written evidence, the rules for cross-examining witnesses and for taking evidence as to their character. book iv. deals with 'pre-appointed evidence,' the cases, that is, in which events are recorded at the time of occurrence with a view to their subsequent use as evidence. we have under this head to consider the formalities which should be required in regard to contracts and wills; and the mode of recording judicial and other official decisions and registering births, deaths, and marriages. in books v. and vi. we consider two kinds of evidence which is in one way or other of inferior cogency, namely, 'circumstantial evidence,' in which the evidence if accepted still leaves room for a process of more or less doubtful inference; and 'makeshift evidence,' such evidence as must sometimes be accepted for want of the best, of which the most conspicuous instance is 'hearsay evidence.' book vii. deals with the 'authentication' of evidence. book viii. is a consideration of the 'technical' system, that namely which was accepted by english lawyers; and finally book ix. deals with a special point, namely, the exclusion of evidence. bentham announces at starting[ ] that he shall establish 'one theorem' and consider two problems. the problems are: 'what securities can be taken for the truth of evidence?' and 'what rules can be given for estimating the value of evidence?' the 'theorem' is that no evidence should be excluded with the professed intention of obtaining a right decision; though some must be excluded to avoid expense, vexation, and delay. this, therefore, as his most distinct moral, is fully treated in the last book. had bentham confined himself to a pithy statement of his leading doctrines, and confirmed them by a few typical cases, he would have been more effective in a literary sense. his passion for 'codification,' for tabulating and arranging facts in all their complexity, and for applying his doctrine at full length to every case that he can imagine, makes him terribly prolix. on the other hand, this process no doubt strengthened his own conviction and the conviction of his disciples as to the value of his process. follow this clue of utility throughout the whole labyrinth, see what a clear answer it offers at every point, and you cannot doubt that you are in possession of the true compass for such a navigation. indeed, it seems to be indisputable that bentham's arguments are the really relevant and important arguments. how can we decide any of the points which come up for discussion? should a witness be cross-examined? should his evidence be recorded? should a wife be allowed to give evidence against her husband? or the defendant to give evidence about his own case? these and innumerable other points can only be decided by reference to what bentham understood by 'utility.' this or that arrangement is 'useful' because it enables us to get quickly and easily at the evidence, to take effective securities for its truthfulness, to estimate its relevance and importance, to leave the decision to the most qualified persons, and so forth. these points, again, can only be decided by a careful appeal to experience, and by endeavouring to understand the ordinary play of 'motives' and 'sanctions.' what generally makes a man lie, and how is lying to be made unpleasant? by rigorously fixing our minds at every point on such issues, we find that many questions admit of very plain answers, and are surprised to discover what a mass of obscurity has been dispelled. it is, however, true that although the value of the method can hardly be denied unless we deny the value of all experience and common sense, we may dispute the degree in which it confirms the general principle. every step seems to bentham to reflect additional light upon his primary axiom. yet it is possible to hold that witnesses should be encouraged to speak the truth, and that experience may help us to discover the best means to that end without, therefore, admitting the unique validity of the 'greatest happiness' principle. that principle, so far as true, may be itself a deduction from some higher principle; and no philosopher of any school would deny that 'utility' should be in some way consulted by the legislator. the book illustrates the next critical point in bentham's system--the transition from law to politics. he was writing the book at the period when the failure of the panopticon was calling his attention to the wickedness of george iii. and lord eldon, and when the english demand for parliamentary reform was reviving and supplying him with a sympathetic audience. now, in examining the theory of evidence upon the plan described, bentham found himself at every stage in conflict with the existing system, or rather the existing chaos of unintelligible rules. english lawyers, he discovered, had worked out a system of rules for excluding evidence. sometimes the cause was pure indolence. 'this man, were i to hear him,' says the english judge, 'would come out with a parcel of lies. it would be a plague to hear him: i have heard enough already; shut the door in his face.'[ ] but, as bentham shows with elaborate detail, a reason for suspecting evidence is not a reason for excluding it. a convicted perjurer gives evidence, and has a pecuniary interest in the result. that is excellent ground for caution; but the fact that the man makes a certain statement may still be a help to the ascertainment of truth. why should that help be rejected? bentham scarcely admits of any exception to the general rule of taking any evidence you can get--one exception being the rather curious one of confession to a catholic priest; secrecy in such cases is on the whole, he thinks, useful. he exposes the confusion implied in an exclusion of evidence because it is not fully trustworthy, which is equivalent to working in the dark because a partial light may deceive. but this is only a part of a whole system of arbitrary, inconsistent, and technical rules worked out by the ingenuity of lawyers. besides the direct injury they gave endless opportunity for skilful manoeuvring to exclude or admit evidence by adopting different forms of procedure. rules had been made by judges as they were wanted and precedents established of contradictory tendency and uncertain application. bentham contrasts the simplicity of the rules deducible from 'utility' with the amazing complexity of the traditional code of technical rules. under the 'natural' system, that of utility, you have to deal with a quarrel between your servants or children. you send at once for the disputants, confront them, take any relevant evidence, and make up your mind as to the rights of the dispute. in certain cases this 'natural' procedure has been retained, as, for example, in courts-martial, where rapid decision was necessary. had the technical system prevailed, the country would have been ruined in six weeks.[ ] but the exposure of the technical system requires an elaborate display of intricate methods involving at every step vexation, delay, and injustice. bentham reckons up nineteen separate devices employed by the courts. he describes the elaborate processes which had to be gone through before a hearing could be obtained; the distance of courts from the litigants; the bandying of cases from court to court; the chicaneries about giving notice; the frequent nullification of all that had been done on account of some technical flaw; the unintelligible jargon of latin and law-french which veiled the proceedings from the public; the elaborate mysteries of 'special pleading'; the conflict of jurisdictions, and the manufacture of new 'pleas' and new technical rules; the 'entanglement of jurisdictions,' and especially the distinction between law and equity, which had made confusion doubly confounded. english law had become a mere jungle of unintelligible distinctions, contradictions, and cumbrous methods through which no man could find his way without the guidance of the initiated, and in which a long purse and unscrupulous trickery gave the advantage over the poor to the rich, and to the knave over the honest man. one fruitful source of all these evils was the 'judge-made' law, which bentham henceforth never ceased to denounce. his ideal was a distinct code which, when change was required, should be changed by an avowed and intelligible process. the chaos which had grown up was the natural result of the gradual development of a traditional body of law, in which new cases were met under cover of applying precedents from previous decisions, with the help of reference to the vague body of unwritten or 'common law,' and of legal fictions permitting some non-natural interpretation of the old formulæ. it is the judges, he had already said in ,[ ] 'that make the common law. do you know how they make it? just as a man makes laws for his dog. when your dog does anything you want to break him of, you wait till he does it and then beat him. this is the way you make laws for your dog, and this is the way the judges make laws for you and me.' the 'tyranny of judge-made law' is 'the most all-comprehensive, most grinding, and most crying of all grievances,'[ ] and is scarcely less bad than 'priest-made religion.'[ ] legal fictions, according to him, are simply lies. the permission to use them is a 'mendacity licence.' in 'rome-bred law ... fiction' is a 'wart which here and there disfigures the face of justice. in english law fiction is a syphilis which runs into every vein and carries into every part of the system the principle of rottenness.'[ ] the evils denounced by bentham were monstrous. the completeness of the exposure was his great merit; and his reputation has suffered, as we are told on competent authority, by the very efficiency of his attack. the worst evils are so much things of the past, that we forget the extent of the evil and the merits of its assailant. bentham's diagnosis of the evil explains his later attitude. he attributes all the abuses to consciously corrupt motives even where a sufficient explanation can be found in the human stupidity and honest incapacity to look outside of traditional ways of thought. he admits, indeed, the personal purity of english judges. no english judge had ever received a bribe within living memory.[ ] but this, he urges, is only because the judges find it more profitable as well as safer to carry out a radically corrupt system. a synonym for 'technical' is 'fee-gathering.' lawyers of all classes had a common interest in multiplying suits and complicating procedure: and thus a tacit partnership had grown up which he describes as 'judge and co.' he gives statistics showing that in the year five hundred and forty-three out of five hundred and fifty 'writs of error' were 'shams,' or simply vexatious contrivances for delay, and brought a profit to the chief justice of over £ .[ ] lord eldon was always before him as the typical representative of obstruction and obscurantism. in his _indications respecting lord eldon_ ( ) he goes into details which it must have required some courage to publish. under eldon, he says, 'equity has become an instrument of fraud and extortion.'[ ] he details the proceedings by which eldon obtained the sanction of parliament for a system of fee-taking, which he had admitted to be illegal, and which had been denounced by an eminent solicitor as leading to gross corruption. bentham intimates that the masters in chancery were 'swindlers,'[ ] and that eldon was knowingly the protector and sharer of their profits. romilly, who had called the court of chancery 'a disgrace to a civilised nation,' had said that eldon was the cause of many of the abuses, and could have reformed most of the others. erskine had declared that if there was a hell, the court of chancery was hell.[ ] eldon, as bentham himself thought, was worse than jeffreys. eldon's victims had died a lingering death, and the persecutor had made money out of their sufferings. jeffreys was openly brutal; while eldon covered his tyranny under the 'most accomplished indifference.'[ ] yet eldon was but the head of a band. judges, barristers, and solicitors were alike. the most hopeless of reforms would be to raise a 'thorough-paced english lawyer' to the moral level of an average man.[ ] to attack legal abuses was to attack a class combined under its chiefs, capable of hoodwinking parliament and suppressing open criticism. the slave-traders whom wilberforce attacked were comparatively a powerless excrescence. the legal profession was in the closest relations to the monarchy, the aristocracy, and the whole privileged and wealthy class. they were welded into a solid 'ring.' the king, and his ministers who distributed places and pensions; the borough-mongers who sold votes for power; the clergy who looked for bishoprics; the monied men who aspired to rank and power, were all parts of a league. it was easy enough to talk of law reform. romilly had proposed and even carried a 'reformatiuncle' or two;[ ] but to achieve a serious success required not victory in a skirmish or two, not the exposure of some abuse too palpable to be openly defended even by an eldon, but a prolonged war against an organised army fortified and entrenched in the very heart of the country. notes: [ ] _works_, iii. . [ ] _ibid._ x. [ ] _autobiography_, p. . [ ] the subject is again treated in book v. on 'circumstantial evidence.' [ ] _works_, vi. . [ ] _works_, vii. . [ ] _works_, vii. - . court-martials are hardly a happy example now. [ ] 'truth _v._ ashhurst' ( ), _works_, v. . [ ] _works_ ('codification petition'), v. . [ ] _ibid._ vi. . [ ] _ibid._ v. . [ ] _works_, vii. , ; ix. . [ ] _ibid._ vii. . [ ] _ibid._ v. . [ ] _ibid._ v. . [ ] _works_, v. . [ ] _ibid._ v. . [ ] _ibid._ vii. . [ ] _ibid._ v. . vi. radicalism thus bentham, as his eyes were opened, became a radical. the political purpose became dominant, although we always see that the legal abuses are uppermost in his mind; and that what he really seeks is a fulcrum for the machinery which is to overthrow lord eldon. some of the pamphlets deal directly with the special instruments of corruption. the _elements of the art of packing_ shows how the crown managed to have a permanent body of special 'jurors' at its disposal. the 'grand and paramount use'[ ] of this system was to crush the liberty of the press. the obscure law of libel, worked by judges in the interest of the government, enabled them to punish any rash radical for 'hurting the feelings' of the ruling classes, and to evade responsibility by help of a 'covertly pensioned' and servile jury. the pamphlet, though tiresomely minute and long-winded, contained too much pointed truth to be published at the time. the _official aptitude minimised_ contains a series of attacks upon the system of patronage and pensions by which the machinery of government was practically worked. in the _catechism_ of reformers, written in , bentham began the direct application of his theories to the constitution; and the final and most elaborate exposition of these forms the _constitutional code_, which was the main work of his later years. this book excited the warmest admiration of bentham's disciples.[ ] j. s. mill speaks of its 'extraordinary power ... of at once seizing comprehensive principles and scheming out minute details,' and of its 'surpassing intellectual vigour.' nor, indeed, will any one be disposed to deny that it is a singular proof of intellectual activity, when we remember that it was begun when the author was over seventy, and that he was still working at eighty-four.[ ] in this book bentham's peculiarities of style reach their highest development, and it cannot be recommended as light reading. had bentham been a mystical philosopher, he would, we may conjecture, have achieved a masterpiece of unintelligibility which all his followers would have extolled as containing the very essence of his teaching. his method condemned him to be always intelligible, however crabbed and elaborate. perhaps, however, the point which strikes one most is the amazing simple-mindedness of the whole proceeding. bentham's light-hearted indifference to the distinction between paper constitutions and operative rules of conduct becomes almost pathetic. bentham was clearly the victim of a common delusion. if a system will work, the minutest details can be exhibited. therefore, it is inferred, an exhibition of minute detail proves that it will work. unfortunately, the philosophers of laputa would have had no more difficulty in filling up details than the legislators of england or the united states. when bentham had settled in his 'radical reform bill'[ ] that the 'voting-box' was to be a double cube of cast-iron, with a slit in the lid, into which cards two inches by one, white on one side and black on the other, could be inserted, he must have felt that he had got very near to actual application: he can picture the whole operation and nobody can say that the scheme is impracticable for want of working plans of the machinery. there will, doubtless, be no difficulty in settling the shape of the boxes, when we have once agreed to have the ballot. but a discussion of such remote details of utopia is of incomparably less real interest than the discussion in the _rationale of evidence_ of points, which, however minute, were occurring every day, and which were really in urgent need of the light of common sense. bentham's general principles may be very simply stated. they are, in fact, such as were suggested by his view of legal grievances. why, when he had demonstrated that certain measures would contribute to the 'greatest happiness of the greatest number,' were they not at once adopted? because the rulers did not desire the greatest happiness of the greatest number. this, in bentham's language, is to say that they were governed by a 'sinister interest.' their interest was that of their class, not that of the nation; they aimed at the greatest happiness of some, not at the greatest happiness of all. a generalisation of this remark gives us the first axioms of all government. there are two primary principles: the 'self-preference' principle, in virtue of which every man always desires his own greatest happiness'; and the 'greatest happiness' principle, in virtue of which 'the right and proper end' of government is the 'greatest happiness of the greatest number.'[ ] the 'actual end' of every government, again, is the greatest happiness of the governors. hence the whole problem is to produce a coincidence of the two ends, by securing an identity of interest between governors and governed. to secure that we have only to identify the two classes or to put the government in the hands of all.[ ] in a monarchy, the ruler aims at the interest of one--himself; in a 'limited monarchy' the aim is at the happiness of the king and the small privileged class; in a democracy, the end is the right one--the greatest happiness of the greatest number. this is a short cut to all constitutional questions. probably it has occurred in substance to most youthful members of debating societies. bentham's confidence in his logic lifts him above any appeal to experience; and he occasionally reminds us of the proof given in _martin chuzzlewit_ that the queen must live in the tower of london. the 'monarch,' as he observes,[ ] 'is naturally the very worst--the most maleficent member of the whole community.' wherever an aristocracy differs from the democracy, their judgment will be erroneous.[ ] the people will naturally choose 'morally apt agents,' and men who wish to be chosen will desire truly to become 'morally apt,' for they can only recommend themselves by showing their desire to serve the general interest.[ ] 'all experience testifies to this theory,' though the evidence is 'too bulky' to be given. other proofs, however, may at once be rendered superfluous by appealing to 'the uninterrupted and most notorious experience of the united states.'[ ] to that happy country he often appeals indeed[ ] as a model government. in it, there is no corruption, no useless expenditure, none of the evils illustrated by our 'matchless constitution.' the constitution deduced from these principles has at least the merit of simplicity. we are to have universal suffrage, annual parliaments, and vote by ballot. he inclines to give a vote to women.[ ] there is to be no king, no house of peers, no established church. members of parliament are not to be re-eligible, till after an interval. elaborate rules provide for their regular attendance and exclusive devotion to their masters' business. they are to be simply 'deputies,' not 'representatives.' they elect a prime minister who holds office for four years. officials are to be appointed by a complex plan of competitive examination; and they are to be invited to send in tenders for doing the work at diminished salary. when once in office, every care is taken for their continual inspection by the public and the verification of their accounts. they are never for an instant to forget that they are servants, not the masters, of the public. bentham, of course, is especially minute and careful in regard to the judicial organisation--a subject upon which he wrote much, and much to the purpose. the functions and fees of advocates are to be narrowly restricted, and advocates to be provided gratuitously for the poor. they are not to become judges: to make a barrister a judge is as sensible as it would be to select a procuress for mistress of a girls' school.[ ] judges should be everywhere accessible: always on duty, too busy to have time for corruption, and always under public supervision. one characteristic device is his quasi-jury. the english system of requiring unanimity was equivalent to enforcing perjury by torture. its utility as a means of resisting tyranny would disappear when tyranny had become impossible. but public opinion might be usefully represented by a 'quasi-jury' of three or five, who should not pronounce a verdict, but watch the judge, interrogate, if necessary, and in case of need demand a rehearing. judges, of course, were no longer to make law, but to propose amendments in the 'pannomion' or universal code, when new cases arose. his leading principle may be described in one word as 'responsibility,' or expressed in his leading rule, 'minimise confidence.'[ ] 'all government is in itself one vast evil.'[ ] it consists in applying evil to exclude worse evil. even 'to reward is to punish,'[ ] when reward is given by government. the less government, then, the better; but as governors are a necessary evil, they must be limited by every possible device to the sole legitimate aim, and watched at every turn by the all-seeing eye of public opinion. every one must admit that this is an application of a sound principle, and that one condition of good government is the diffusion of universal responsibility. it must be admitted, too, that bentham's theory represents a vigorous embodiment and unflinching application of doctrines which since his time have spread and gained more general authority. mill says that granting one assumption, the constitutional code is 'admirable.'[ ] that assumption is that it is for the good of mankind to be under the absolute authority of a majority. in other words, it would justify what mill calls the 'despotism of public opinion.' to protest against that despotism was one of the main purposes of mill's political writings. how was it that the disciple came to be in such direct opposition to his master? that question cannot be answered till we have considered mill's own position. but i have now followed bentham far enough to consider the more general characteristics of his doctrine. i have tried, in the first place, to show what was the course of bentham's own development; how his observation of certain legal abuses led him to attempt the foundation of a science of jurisprudence; how the difficulty of obtaining a hearing for his arguments led him to discover the power of 'judge and co.'; how he found out that behind 'judge and co.' were george iii. and the base sidmouth, and the whole band of obstructors entrenched within the 'matchless constitution'; and how thus his attack upon the abuses of the penal law led him to attack the whole political framework of the country. i have also tried to show how bentham's development coincided with that of the english reformers generally. they too began with attacking specific abuses. they were for 'reform, not revolution.' the constitution satisfied them in the main: they boasted of the palladia of their liberties, 'trial by jury' and the 'habeas corpus' act, and held frenchmen to be frog-eating slaves in danger of _lettres de cachet_ and the bastille. english public opinion in spite of many trammels had a potent influence. their first impulse, therefore, was simply to get rid of the trammels--the abuses which had grown up from want of a thorough application of the ancient principles in their original purity. the english whig, even of the more radical persuasion, was profoundly convinced that the foundations were sound, however unsatisfactory might be the superstructure. thus, both bentham and the reformers generally started--not from abstract principles, but from the assault upon particular abuses. this is the characteristic of the whole english movement, and gives the meaning of their claim to be 'practical.' the utilitarians were the reformers on the old lines; and their philosophy meant simply a desire to systematise the ordinary common sense arguments. the philosophy congenial to this vein is the philosophy which appeals to experience. locke had exploded 'innate ideas.' they denounced 'intuitions,' or beliefs which might override experience as 'innate ideas' in a new dress; and the attempt to carry out this view systematically became the distinctive mark of the whole school. bentham accepted, though he did little to elaborate, this doctrine. that task remained for his disciples. but the tendency is shown by his view of a rival version of radicalism. bentham, as we have seen, regarded the american declaration of independence as so much 'jargon.' he was entirely opposed to the theory of the 'rights of man,' and therefore to the 'ideas of .' from that theory the revolutionary party professed to deduce their demands for universal suffrage, the levelling of all privileges, and the absolute supremacy of the people. yet bentham, repudiating the premises, came to accept the conclusion. his constitutional code scarcely differs from the ideal of the jacobins', except in pushing the logic further. the machinery by which he proposed to secure that the so-called rulers should become really the servants of the people was more thoroughgoing and minutely worked out than that of any democratic constitution that has ever been adopted. how was it that two antagonist theories led to identical results; and that the 'rights of man,' absurd in philosophy, represented the ideal state of things in practice? the general answer may be that political theories are not really based upon philosophy. the actual method is to take your politics for granted on the one side and your philosophy for granted on the other, and then to prove their necessary connection. but it is, at any rate, important to see what was the nature of the philosophical assumptions implicitly taken for granted by bentham. the 'rights of man' doctrine confounds a primary logical canon with a statement of fact. every political theory must be based upon facts as well as upon logic. any reasonable theory about politics must no doubt give a reason for inequality and a reason, too, for equality. the maxim that all men were, or ought to be, 'equal' asserts correctly that there must not be arbitrary differences. every inequality should have its justification in a reasonable system. but when this undeniable logical canon is taken to prove that men actually are equal, there is an obvious begging of the question. in point of fact, the theorists immediately proceeded to disfranchise half the race on account of sex, and a third of the remainder on account of infancy. they could only amend the argument by saying that all men were equal in so far as they possessed certain attributes. but those attributes could only be determined by experience, or, as bentham would have put it, by an appeal to 'utility.' it is illogical, said the anti-slavery advocate, to treat men differently on account of the colour of their skins. no doubt it is illogical if, in fact, the difference of colour does not imply a difference of the powers which fit a man for the enjoyment of certain rights. we may at least grant that the burden of proof should be upon those who would disfranchise all red-haired men. but this is because experience shows that the difference of colour does not mark a relevant difference. we cannot say, _a priori_, whether the difference between a negro and a white man may not be so great as to imply incapacity for enjoyment of equal rights. the black skin might--for anything a mere logician can say--indicate the mind of a chimpanzee. the case against slavery does not rest on the bare fact that negroes and whites both belong to the class 'man,' but on the fact that the negro has powers and sensibilities which fit him to hold property, to form marriages, to learn his letters, and so forth. but that fact is undeniably to be proved, not from the bare logic, but from observation of the particular case. bentham saw with perfect clearness that sound political theory requires a basis of solid fact. the main purpose of his whole system was to carry out that doctrine thoroughly. his view is given vigorously in the 'anarchical fallacies'--a minute examination of the french declaration of rights in . his argument is of merciless length, and occasionally so minute as to sound like quibbling. the pith, however, is clear enough. 'all men are born and remain free and equal in respect of rights' are the first words of the declaration. nobody is 'born free,' retorts bentham. everybody is born, and long remains, a helpless child. all men born free! absurd and miserable nonsense! why, you are complaining in the same breath that nearly everybody is a slave.[ ] to meet this objection, the words might be amended by substituting 'ought to be' for 'is.' this, however, on bentham's showing, at once introduces the conception of utility, and therefore leads to empirical considerations. the proposition, when laid down as a logical necessity, claims to be absolute. therefore it implies that all authority is bad; the authority, for example, of parent over child, or of husband over wife; and moreover, that all laws to the contrary are _ipso facto_ void. that is why it is 'anarchical.' it supposes a 'natural right,' not only as suggesting reasons for proposed alterations of the legal right, but as actually annihilating the right and therefore destroying all government. '_natural rights_,' says bentham,[ ] is simple nonsense; natural and imprescriptible rights 'rhetorical nonsense--nonsense upon stilts.' for 'natural right' substitute utility, and you have, of course, a reasonable principle, because an appeal to experience. but lay down 'liberty' as an absolute right and you annihilate law, for every law supposes coercion. one man gets liberty simply by restricting the liberty of others.[ ] what bentham substantially says, therefore, is that on this version absolute rights of individuals could mean nothing but anarchy; or that no law can be defended except by a reference to facts, and therefore to 'utility.' one answer might be that the demand is not for absolute liberty, but for as much liberty as is compatible with equal liberty for all. the fourth article of the declaration says: 'liberty consists in being able to do that which is not hurtful to another, and therefore the exercise of the natural rights of each man has no other bounds than those which ensure to the other members of the society the enjoyment of the same rights.' this formula corresponds to a theory held by mr. herbert spencer; and, as he observes,[ ] held on different grounds by kant. bentham's view, indicated by his criticism of this article in the 'anarchical fallacies,' is therefore worth a moment's notice. the formula does not demand the absolute freedom which would condemn all coercion and all government; but it still seems to suggest that liberty, not utility, is the ultimate end. bentham's formula, therefore, diverges. all government, he holds, is an evil, because coercion implies pain. we must therefore minimise, though we cannot annihilate, government; but we must keep to utility as the sole test. government should, of course, give to the individual all such rights as are 'useful'; but it does not follow, without a reference to utility, that men should not be restrained even in 'self-regarding' conduct. some men, women, and children require to be protected against the consequences of their own 'weakness, ignorance, or imprudence.'[ ] bentham adheres, that is, to the strictly empirical ground. the absolute doctrine requires to be qualified by a reference to actual circumstances: and, among those circumstances, as bentham intimates, we must include the capacity of the persons concerned to govern themselves. carried out as an absolute principle, it would imply the independence of infants; and must therefore require some reference to 'utility.' bentham, then, objects to the jacobin theory as too absolute and too 'individualist.' the doctrine begs the question; it takes for granted what can only be proved by experience; and therefore lays down as absolute theories which are only true under certain conditions or with reference to the special circumstances to which they are applied. that is inconsistent with bentham's thoroughgoing empiricism. but he had antagonists to meet upon the other side: and, in meeting them, he was led to a doctrine which has been generally condemned for the very same faults--as absolute and individualist. we have only to ask in what sense bentham appealed to 'experience' to see how he actually reached his conclusions. the adherents of the old tradition appealed to experience in their own way. the english people, they said, is the freest, richest, happiest in the world; it has grown up under the british constitution: therefore the british constitution is the best in the world, as burke tells you, and the british common law, as blackstone tells you, is the 'perfection of wisdom.' bentham's reply was virtually that although he, like burke, appealed to experience, he appealed to experience scientifically organised, whereas burke appealed to mere blind tradition. bentham is to be the founder of a new science, founded like chemistry on experiment, and his methods are to be as superior to those of burke as those of modern chemists to those of the alchemists who also invoked experience. the true plan was not to throw experience aside because it was alleged by the ignorant and the prejudiced, but to interrogate experience systematically, and so to become the bacon or the newton of legislation, instead of wandering off into the _a priori_ constructions of a descartes or a leibniz. bentham thus professes to use an 'inductive' instead of the deductive method of the jacobins; but reaches the same practical conclusions from the other end. the process is instructive. he objected to the existing inequalities, not as inequalities simply, but as mischievous inequalities. he, as well as the jacobins, would admit that inequality required justification; and he agreed with them that, in this case, there was no justification. the existing privileges did not promote the 'greatest happiness of the greatest number.' the attack upon the 'anarchical fallacies' must be taken with the _book of fallacies_, and the _book of fallacies_ is a sustained and vigorous, though a curiously cumbrous, assault upon the conservative arguments. its pith may be found in sydney smith's _noodle's oration_; but it is itself well worth reading by any one who can recognise really admirable dialectical power, and forgive a little crabbedness of style in consideration of genuine intellectual vigour. i only notice bentham's assault upon the 'wisdom of our ancestors.' after pointing out how much better we are entitled to judge now that we have got rid of so many superstitions, and have learned to read and write, he replies to the question, 'would you have us speak and act as if we never had any ancestors?' 'by no means,' he replies; 'though their opinions were of little value, their practice is worth attending to; but chiefly because it shows the bad consequences of their opinions.' 'from foolish opinion comes foolish conduct; from foolish conduct the severest disaster; and from the severest disaster the most useful warning. it is from the folly, not from the wisdom, of our ancestors that we have so much to learn.'[ ] bentham has become an 'ancestor,' and may teach us by his errors. pointed and vigorous as is his exposure of many of the sophistries by which conservatives defended gross abuses and twisted the existence of any institution into an argument for its value, we get some measure from this of bentham's view of history. in attacking an abuse, he says, we have a right to inquire into the utility of any and every arrangement. the purpose of a court of justice is to decide litigation; it has to ascertain facts and apply rules: does it then ascertain facts by the methods most conducive to the discovery of truth? are the rules needlessly complex, ambiguous, calculated to give a chance to knaves, or to the longest purse? if so, undoubtedly they are mischievous. bentham had done inestimable service in stripping away all the disguises and technical phrases which had evaded the plain issue, and therefore made of the laws an unintelligible labyrinth. he proceeded to treat in the same way of government generally. does it work efficiently for its professed ends? is it worked in the interests of the nation, or of a special class, whose interests conflict with those of the nation? he treated, that is, of government as a man of business might investigate a commercial undertaking. if he found that clerks were lazy, ignorant, making money for themselves, or bullying and cheating the customers, he would condemn the management. bentham found the 'matchless constitution' precisely in this state. he condemned political institutions worked for the benefit of a class, and leading, especially in legal matters, to endless abuses and chicanery. the abuses everywhere imply 'inequality' in some sense; for they arise from monopoly. the man who holds a sinecure, or enjoys a privilege, uses it for his own private interest. the 'matter of corruption,' as bentham called it, was provided by the privilege and the sinecure. the jacobin might denounce privileges simply as privileges, and bentham denounce them because they were used by the privileged class for corrupt purposes. so far, bentham and the jacobins were quite at one. it mattered little to the result which argument they preferred to use, and without doubt they had a very strong case, and did in fact express a demand for justice and for a redress of palpable evils. the difference seems to be that in one case the appeal is made in the name of justice and equality; in the other case, in the name of benevolence and utility. the important point here, however, is to understand bentham's implicit assumptions. j. s. mill, in criticising his master, points out very forcibly the defects arising from bentham's attitude to history. he simply continued, as mill thinks, the hostility with which the critical or destructive school of the eighteenth century regarded their ancestors. to the revolutionary party history was a record of crimes and follies and of little else. the question will meet us again; and here it is enough to ask what is the reason of his tacit implication of bentham's position. bentham's whole aim, as i have tried to show, was to be described as the construction of a science of legislation. the science, again, was to be purely empirical. it was to rest throughout upon the observation of facts. that aim--an admirable aim--runs through his whole work and that of his successors. i have noticed, indeed, how easily bentham took for granted that his makeshift classification of common motives amounted to a scientific psychology. a similar assumption that a rough sketch of a science is the same thing as its definite constitution is characteristic of the utilitarians in general. a scientific spirit is most desirable; but the utilitarians took a very short cut to scientific certainty. though appealing to experience, they reach formulæ as absolute as any 'intuitionist' could desire. what is the logical process implied? to constitute an empirical science is to show that the difference between different phenomena is due simply to 'circumstances.' the explanation of the facts becomes sufficient when the 'law' can be stated, as that of a unit of constant properties placed in varying positions. this corresponds to the procedure in the physical sciences, where the ultimate aim is to represent all laws as corresponding to the changes of position of uniform atoms. in social and political changes the goal is the same. j. s. mill states in the end of his _autobiography_[ ] that one main purpose of his writing was to show that 'differences between individuals, races, or sexes' are due to 'differences in circumstances.' in fact, this is an aim so characteristic from the beginning of the whole school, that it may be put down almost as a primary postulate. it was not, indeed, definitely formulated; but to 'explain' a social theorem was taken to be the same thing as to show how differences of character or conduct could be explained by 'circumstance'--meaning by 'circumstance' something not given in the agent himself. we have, however, no more right as good empiricists to assert than to deny that all difference comes from 'circumstance.' if we take 'man' as a constant quantity in our speculations, it requires at least a great many precautions before we can assume that our abstract entity corresponds to a real concrete unit. otherwise we have a short cut to a doctrine of 'equality.' the theory of 'the rights of man' lays down the formula, and assumes that the facts will correspond. the utilitarian assumes the equality of fact, and of course brings out an equally absolute formula. 'equality,' in some sense, is introduced by a side wind, though not explicitly laid down as an axiom.[ ] this underlying tendency may partly explain the coincidence of results--though it would require a good many qualifications in detail; but here i need only take bentham's more or less unconscious application. bentham's tacit assumption, in fact, is that there is an average 'man.' different specimens of the race, indeed, may vary widely according to age, sex, and so forth; but, for purposes of legislation, he may serve as a unit. we can assume that he has on the average certain qualities from which his actions in the mass can be determined with sufficient accuracy, and we are tempted to assume that they are mainly the qualities obvious to an inhabitant of queen's square place about the year . mill defends bentham against the charge that he assumed his codes to be good for all men everywhere. to that, says mill,[ ] the essay upon the 'influence of time and place in matters of legislation' is a complete answer. yet mill[ ] admits in the same breath that bentham omitted all reference to 'national character.' in fact, as we have seen, bentham was ready to legislate for hindoostan as well as for his own parish; and to make codes not only for england, spain, and russia, but for morocco. the essay mentioned really explains the point. bentham not only admitted but asserted as energetically as became an empiricist, that we must allow for 'circumstances'; and circumstances include not only climate and so forth, but the varying beliefs and customs of the people under consideration. the real assumption is that all such circumstances are superficial, and can be controlled and altered indefinitely by the 'legislator.' the moor, the hindoo, and the englishman are all radically identical; and the differences which must be taken into account for the moment can be removed by judicious means. without pausing to illustrate this from the essay, i may remark that for many purposes such an assumption is justifiable and guides ordinary common sense. if we ask what would be the best constitution for a commercial company, or the best platform for a political party, we can form a fair guess by arguing from the average of bentham and his contemporaries--especially if we are shrewd attornies or political wirepullers. only we are not therefore in a position to talk about the 'science of human nature' or to deal with problems of 'sociology.' this, however, gives bentham's 'individualism' in a sense of the phrase already explained. he starts from the 'ready-made man,' and deduces all institutions or legal arrangements from his properties. i have tried to show how naturally this view fell in with the ordinary political conceptions of the time. it shows, again, why bentham disregards history. when we have such a science, empirical or _a priori_, history is at most of secondary importance. we can deduce all our maxims of conduct from the man himself as he is before us. history only shows how terribly he blundered in the pre-scientific period. the blunders may give us a hint here and there. man was essentially the same in the first and the eighteenth century, and the differences are due to the clumsy devices which he made by rule of thumb. we do not want to refer to them now, except as illustrations of errors. we may remark how difficult it was to count before the present notation was invented; but when it has once been invented, we may learn to use it without troubling our heads about our ancestors' clumsy contrivances for doing without it. this leads to the real shortcoming. there is a point at which the historical view becomes important--the point, namely, where it is essential to remember that man is not a ready-made article, but the product of a long and still continuing 'evolution.' bentham's attack (in the _fragment_) upon the 'social contract' is significant. he was, no doubt, perfectly right in saying that an imaginary contract could add no force to the ultimate grounds for the social union. nobody would now accept the fiction in that stage. and yet the 'social contract' may be taken to recognise a fact; namely, that the underlying instincts upon which society alternately rests correspond to an order of reasons from those which determine more superficial relations. society is undoubtedly useful, and its utility may be regarded as its ground. but the utility of society means much more than the utility of a railway company or a club, which postulates as existing a whole series of already established institutions. to bentham an 'utility' appeared to be a kind of permanent and ultimate entity which is the same at all periods--it corresponds to a psychological currency of constant value. to show, therefore, that the social contract recognises 'utility' is to show that the whole organism is constructed just as any particular part is constructed. man comes first and 'society' afterwards. i have already noticed how this applies to his statements about the utility of a law; how his argument assumes an already constituted society, and seems to overlook the difference between the organic law upon which all order essentially depends, and some particular modification or corollary which may be superinduced. we now have to notice the political version of the same method. the 'law,' according to bentham, is a rule enforced by a 'sanction.' the imposer of the rule in the phrase which hobbes had made famous is the 'sovereign.' hobbes was a favourite author, indeed, of the later utilitarians, though bentham does not appear to have studied him. the relation is one of natural affinity. when in the _constitutional code_ bentham transfers the 'sovereignty' from the king to the 'people,'[ ] he shows the exact difference between his doctrine and that of the _leviathan_. both thinkers are absolutists in principle, though hobbes gives to a monarch the power which bentham gives to a democracy. the attributes remain though their subject is altered. the 'sovereign,' in fact, is the keystone of the whole utilitarian system. he represents the ultimate source of all authority, and supplies the motive for all obedience. as hobbes put it, he is a kind of mortal god. mill's criticism of bentham suggests the consequences. there are, he says,[ ] three great questions: what government is for the good of the people? how are they to be induced to obey it? how is it to be made responsible? the third question, he says, is the only one seriously considered by bentham; and bentham's answer, we have seen, leads to that 'tyranny of the majority' which was mill's great stumbling-block. why, then, does bentham omit the other questions? or rather, how would he answer them? for he certainly assumes an answer. people, in the first place, are 'induced to obey' by the sanctions. they don't rob that they may not go to prison. that is a sufficient answer at a given moment. it assumes, indeed, that the law will be obeyed. the policeman, the gaoler, and the judge will do what the sovereign--whether despot or legislature--orders them to do. the jurist may naturally take this for granted. he does not go 'behind the law.' that is the law which the sovereign has declared to be the law. in that sense, the sovereign is omnipotent. he can, as a fact, threaten evildoers with the gallows; and the jurist simply takes the fact for granted, and assumes that the coercion is an ultimate fact. no doubt it is ultimate for the individual subject. the immediate restraint is the policeman, and we need not ask upon what does the policeman depend. if, however, we persist in asking, we come to the historical problems which bentham simply omits. the law itself, in fact, ultimately rests upon 'custom,'--upon the whole system of instincts, beliefs, and passions which induce people to obey government, and are, so to speak, the substance out of which loyalty and respect for the law is framed. these, again, are the product of an indefinitely long elaboration, which bentham takes for granted. he assumes as perfectly natural and obvious that a number of men should meet, as the americans or frenchmen met, and create a constitution. that the possibility of such a proceeding involves centuries of previous training does not occur to him. it is assumed that the constitution can be made out of hand, and this assumption is of the highest importance, not only historically, but for immediate practice. mill assumes too easily that bentham has secured responsibility. bentham assumes that an institution will work as it is intended to work--perhaps the commonest error of constitution-mongers. if the people use the instruments which he provides, they have a legal method for enforcing obedience. to infer that they will do so is to infer that all the organic instincts will operate precisely as he intends; that each individual, for example, will form an independent opinion upon legislative questions, vote for men who will apply his opinions, and see that his representatives perform his bidding honestly. that they should do so is essential to his scheme; but that they will do so is what he takes for granted. he assumes, that is, that there is no need for inquiring into the social instincts which lie beneath all political action. you can make your machine and assume the moving force. that is the natural result of considering political and legislative problems without taking into account the whole character of the human materials employed in the construction. bentham's sovereign is thus absolute. he rules by coercion, as a foreign power may rule by the sword in a conquered province. thus, force is the essence of government, and it is needless to go further. to secure the right application of the force, we have simply to distribute it among the subjects. government still means coercion, and ultimately nothing else; but then, as the subjects are simply moved by their own interests, that is, by utility, they will apply the power to secure those interests. therefore, all that is wanted is this distribution, and mill's first problem, what government is for the good of the people? is summarily answered. the question, how obedience is to be secured, is evaded by confining the answer to the 'sanctions,' and taking for granted that the process of distributing power is perfectly simple, or that a new order can be introduced as easily as parliament can pass an act for establishing a new police in london. the 'social contract' is abolished; but it is taken for granted that the whole power of the sovereign can be distributed, and rules made for its application by the common sense of the various persons interested. finally, the one bond outside of the individual is the sovereign. he represents all that holds society together; his 'sanctions,' as i have said, are taken to be on the same plane with the 'moral sanctions'--not dependent upon them, but other modes of applying similar motives. as the sovereign, again, is in a sense omnipotent, and yet can be manufactured, so to speak, by voluntary arrangements among the individual members of society, there is no limit to the influence which he may exercise. i note, indeed, that i am speaking rather of the tendencies of the theory than of definitely formulated conclusions. most of the utilitarians were exceedingly shrewd, practical people, whose regard for hard facts imposed limits upon their speculations. they should have been the last people to believe too implicitly in the magical efficacy of political contrivances, for they were fully aware that many men are knaves and most men fools. they probably put little faith in bentham's utopia, except as a remote ideal, and an ideal of unimaginative minds. the utopia was constructed on 'individualist' principles, because common sense naturally approves individualism. the whole social and political order is clearly the sum of the individuals, who combine to form an aggregate; and theories about social bonds take one to the mystical and sentimental. the absolute tendency is common to bentham and the jacobins. whether the individual be taken as a unit of constant properties, or as the subject of absolute rights, we reach equally absolute conclusions. when all the social and political regulations are regarded as indefinitely modifiable, the ultimate laws come to depend upon the absolute framework of unalterable fact. this, again, is often the right point of view for immediate questions in which we may take for granted that the average individual is in fact constant; and, as i have said in regard to bentham's legislative process, leads to very relevant and important, though not ultimate, questions. but there are certain other results which require to be noticed. 'individualism,' like other words that have become watchwords of controversy, has various shades of meaning, and requires a little more definition. notes: [ ] _works_, v. , etc. [ ] see preface to _constitutional code_ in vol. ix. [ ] bentham's nephew, george, who died when approaching his eighty-fourth birthday, devoted the last twenty-five years of his life with equal assiduity to his _genera plantarum_. see a curious anecdote of his persistence in the _dictionary of national biography_. [ ] _works_, iii. . [ ] _works_, ix. , . [ ] the theory, as mill reminds us, had been very pointedly anticipated by helvétius. bentham's practical experience, however, had forced it upon his attention. [ ] _works_, ix. . the general principle, however, is confirmed by the case of george iii. [ ] _ibid._ ix. . [ ] _ibid._ ix. . [ ] _works_, ix. . [ ] e.g. _ibid._ ix. , , , , etc. [ ] _ibid._ ('plan of parliamentary reform,') iii. . [ ] _works_, ix. . [ ] _ibid._ ix. . [ ] _ibid._ ix. . [ ] _ibid._ ix. . [ ] _dissertations_, i. . [ ] _works_, ii. . [ ] _ibid._ ii. . [ ] _ibid._ ii. . [ ] _justice_, p. ; so price, in his _observations on liberty_, lays it down that government is never to entrench upon private liberty, 'except so far as private liberty entrenches on the liberty of others.' [ ] _works_, ii. . [ ] _works_, ii. . [ ] _autobiography_, p. . [ ] hobbes, in the _leviathan_ (chap. xiii.), has in the same way to argue for the _de facto_ equality of men. [ ] _dissertations_, i. . [ ] i remark by anticipation that this expression implies a reference to mill's _ethology_, of which i shall have to speak. [ ] _works_, ix. , . [ ] _dissertations_, i. . vii. individualism 'individualism' in the first place is generally mentioned in a different connection. the 'ready-made' man of whom i have spoken becomes the 'economic man.' bentham himself contributed little to economic theory. his most important writing was the _defence of usury_, and in this, as we have seen, he was simply adding a corollary to the _wealth of nations_. the _wealth of nations_ itself represented the spirit of business; the revolt of men who were building up a vast industrial system against the fetters imposed by traditional legislation and by rulers who regarded industry in general, as telford is said to have regarded rivers. rivers were meant to supply canals, and trade to supply tax-gatherers. with this revolt, of course, bentham was in full sympathy, but here i shall only speak of one doctrine of great interest, which occurs both in his political treatises and his few economical remarks. bentham objected, as we have seen, to the abstract theory of equality; yet it was to the mode of deduction rather than to the doctrine itself which he objected. he gave, in fact, his own defence; and it is one worth notice.[ ] the principle of equality is derivative, not ultimate. equality is good because equality increases the sum of happiness. thus, as he says,[ ] if two men have £ , and you transfer £ from one to the other, you increase the recipient's wealth by one-third, and diminish the loser's wealth by one-half. you therefore add less pleasure than you subtract. the principle is given less mathematically[ ] by the more significant argument that 'felicity' depends not simply on the 'matter of felicity' or the stimulus, but also on the sensibility to felicity which is necessarily limited. therefore by adding wealth--taking, for example, from a thousand labourers to give to one king--you are supersaturating a sensibility already glutted by taking away from others a great amount of real happiness. with this argument, which has of late years become conspicuous in economics, he connects another of primary importance. the first condition of happiness, he says, is not 'equality' but 'security.' now you can only equalise at the expense of security. if i am to have my property taken away whenever it is greater than my neighbour's, i can have no security.[ ] hence, if the two principles conflict, equality should give way. security is the primary, which must override the secondary, aim. must the two principles, then, always conflict? no; but 'time is the only mediator.'[ ] the law may help to accumulate inequalities; but in a prosperous state there is a 'continual progress towards equality.' the law has to stand aside; not to maintain monopolies; not to restrain trade; not to permit entails; and then property will diffuse itself by a natural process, already exemplified in the growth of europe. the 'pyramids' heaped up in feudal times have been lowered, and their '_débris_ spread abroad' among the industrious. here again we see how bentham virtually diverges from the _a priori_ school. their absolute tendencies would introduce 'equality' by force; he would leave it to the spontaneous progress of security. hence bentham is in the main an adherent of what he calls[ ] the '_laissez-nous faire_' principle. he advocates it most explicitly in the so-called _manual of political economy_--a short essay first printed in .[ ] the tract, however, such as it is, is less upon political economy proper than upon economic legislation; and its chief conclusion is that almost all legislation is improper. his main principle is 'be quiet' (the equivalent of the french phrase, which surely should have been excluded from so english a theory). security and freedom are all that industry requires; and industry should say to government only what diogenes said to alexander, 'stand out of my sunshine.'[ ] once more, however, bentham will not lay down the 'let alone' principle absolutely. his adherence to the empirical method is too decided. the doctrine 'be quiet,' though generally true, rests upon utility, and may, therefore, always be qualified by proving that in a particular case the balance of utility is the other way. in fact, some of bentham's favourite projects would be condemned by an absolute adherent of the doctrine. the panopticon, for example, though a 'mill to grind rogues honest' could be applied to others than rogues, and bentham hoped to make his machinery equally effective in the case of pauperism. a system of national education is also included in his ideal constitution. it is, in fact, important to remember that the 'individualism' of benthamism does not necessarily coincide with an absolute restriction of government interference. the general tendency was in that direction; and in purely economical questions, scarcely any exception was admitted to the rule. men are the best judges, it was said, of their own interest; and the interference of rulers in a commercial transaction is the interference of people inferior in knowledge of the facts, and whose interests are 'sinister' or inconsistent with those of the persons really concerned. utility, therefore, will, as a rule, forbid the action of government: but, as utility is always the ultimate principle, and there may be cases in which it does not coincide with the 'let alone' principle, we must always admit the possibility that in special cases government can interfere usefully, and, in that case, approve the interference. hence we have the ethical application of these theories. the individualist position naturally tends to take the form of egoism. the moral sentiments, whatever they may be, are clearly an intrinsic part of the organic social instincts. they are intimately involved in the whole process of social evolution. but this view corresponds precisely to the conditions which bentham overlooks. the individual is already there. the moral and the legal sanctions are 'external'; something imposed by the action of others; corresponding to 'coercion,' whether by physical force or the dread of public opinion; and, in any case, an accretion or addition, not a profound modification of his whole nature. the utilitarian 'man' therefore inclines to consider other people as merely parts of the necessary machinery. their feelings are relevant only as influencing their outward conduct. if a man gives me a certain 'lot' of pain or pleasure, it does not matter what may be his motives. the 'motive' for all conduct corresponds in all cases to the pain or pleasure accruing to the agent. it is true that his happiness will be more or less affected by his relations to others. but as conduct is ruled by a calculation of the balance of pains or pleasures dependent upon any course of action, it simplifies matters materially, if each man regards his neighbour's feelings simply as instrumental, not intrinsically interesting. and thus the coincidence between that conduct which maximises my happiness and that conduct which maximises happiness in general, must be regarded as more or less accidental or liable in special cases to disappear. if i am made happier by action which makes others miserable, the rule of utility will lead to my preference of myself. here we have the question whether the utilitarian system be essentially a selfish system. bentham, with his vague psychology, does not lay down the doctrine absolutely. after giving this list of self-regarding 'springs of action,' he proceeds to add the pleasures and pains of 'sympathy' and 'antipathy' which, he says, are not self-regarding. moreover, as we have seen, he has some difficulty in denying that 'benevolence' is a necessarily moral motive: it is only capable of prompting to bad conduct in so far as it is insufficiently enlightened; and it is clear that a moralist who makes the 'greatest happiness of the greatest number' his universal test, has some reason for admitting as an elementary pleasure the desire for the greatest happiness. this comes out curiously in the _constitutional code_. he there lays down the 'self-preference principle'--the principle, namely, that 'every human being' is determined in every action by his judgment of what will produce the greatest happiness to himself, 'whatsoever be the effect ... in relation to the happiness of other similar beings, any or all of them taken together.'[ ] afterwards, however, he observes that it is 'the constant and arduous task of every moralist' and of every legislator who deserves the name to 'increase the influence of sympathy at the expense of that of self-regard and of sympathy for the greater number at the expense of sympathy for the lesser number.'[ ] he tries to reconcile these views by the remark 'that even sympathy has its root in self-regard,' and he argues, as mr. herbert spencer has done more fully, that if adam cared only for eve and eve only for adam--neither caring at all for himself or herself--both would perish in less than a year. self-regard, that is, is essential, and sympathy supposes its existence. hence bentham puts himself through a catechism.[ ] what is the 'best' government? that which causes the greatest happiness of the given community. what community? 'any community, which is as much as to say, every community.' but _why_ do you desire this happiness? because the establishment of that happiness would contribute to _my_ greatest happiness. and _how_ do you prove that you desire this result? by my labours to obtain it, replies bentham. this oddly omits the more obvious question, how can you be sure that your happiness will be promoted by the greatest happiness of all? what if the two criteria differ? i desire the general happiness, he might have replied, because my benevolence is an original or elementary instinct which can override my self-love; or i desire it, he would perhaps have said, because i know as a fact that the happiness of others will incidentally contribute to my own. the first answer would fall in with some of his statements; but the second is, as i think must be admitted, more in harmony with his system. perhaps, indeed, the most characteristic thing is bentham's failure to discuss explicitly the question whether human action is or is not necessarily 'selfish.' he tells us in regard to the 'springs of action' that all human action is always 'interested,' but explains that the word properly includes actions in which the motive is not 'self-regarding.'[ ] it merely means, in fact, that all conduct has motives. the statement, which i have quoted about the 'self-preference' principle may only mean a doctrine which is perfectly compatible with a belief in 'altruism'--the doctrine, namely, that as a fact most people are chiefly interested by their own affairs. the legislator, he tells us, should try to increase sympathy, but the less he takes sympathy for the 'basis of his arrangements'--that is, the less call he makes upon purely unselfish motives--the greater will be his success.[ ] this is a shrewd and, i should say, a very sound remark, but it implies--not that all motives are selfish in the last analysis, but--that the legislation should not assume too exalted a level of ordinary morality. the utterances in the very unsatisfactory _deontology_ are of little value, and seem to imply a moral sentiment corresponding to a petty form of commonplace prudence.[ ] leaving this point, however, the problem necessarily presented itself to bentham in a form in which selfishness is the predominating force, and any recognition of independent benevolence rather an incumbrance than a help. if we take the 'self-preference principle' absolutely, the question becomes how a multitude of individuals, each separately pursuing his own happiness, can so arrange matters that their joint action may secure the happiness of all. clearly a man, however selfish, has an interest generally in putting down theft and murder. he is already provided with a number of interests to which security, at least, and therefore a regular administration of justice, is essential. his shop could not be carried on without the police; and he may agree to pay the expenses, even if others reap the benefit in greater proportion. a theory of legislation, therefore, which supposes ready formed all the instincts which make a decent commercial society possible can do without much reference to sympathy or altruism. bentham's man is not the colourless unit of _a priori_ writing, nor the noble savage of rousseau, but the respectable citizen with a policeman round the corner. such a man may well hold that honesty is the best policy; he has enough sympathy to be kind to his old mother, and help a friend in distress; but the need of romantic and elevated conduct rarely occurs to him; and the heroic, if he meets it, appears to him as an exception, not far removed from the silly. he does not reflect--especially if he cares nothing for history--how even the society in which he is a contented unit has been built up, and how much loyalty and heroism has been needed for the work; nor even, to do him justice, what unsuspected capacities may lurk in his own commonplace character. the really characteristic point is, however, that bentham does not clearly face the problem. he is content to take for granted as an ultimate fact that the self-interest principle in the long run coincides with the greatest 'happiness' principle, and leaves the problem to his successors. there we shall meet it again. finally, bentham's view of religion requires a word. the short reply, however, would be sufficient, that he did not believe in any theology, and was in the main indifferent to the whole question till it encountered him in political matters. his first interest apparently was roused by the educational questions which i have noticed, and the proposal to teach the catechism. bentham, remembering the early bullying at oxford, examines the catechism; and argues in his usual style that to enforce it is to compel children to tell lies. but this leads him to assail the church generally; and he regards the church simply as a part of the huge corrupt machinery which elsewhere had created judge and co. he states many facts about non-residence and bloated bishoprics which had a very serious importance; and he then asks how the work might be done more cheaply. as a clergyman's only duty is to read weekly services and preach sermons, he suggests (whether seriously may be doubted) that this might be done as well by teaching a parish boy to read properly, and provide him with the prayer-book and the homilies.[ ] a great deal of expense would be saved. this, again, seems to have led him to attack st. paul, whom he took to be responsible for dogmatic theology, and therefore for the catechism; and he cross-examines the apostle, and confronts his various accounts of the conversion with a keenness worthy of a professional lawyer. in one of the mss. at university college the same method is applied to the gospels. bentham was clearly not capable of anticipating renan. from these studies he was led to the far more interesting book, published under the name of _philip beauchamp_. bentham supplied the argument in part; but to me it seems clear that it owes so much to the editor, grote, that it may more fitly be discussed hereafter. the limitations and defects of bentham's doctrine have been made abundantly evident by later criticism. they were due partly to his personal character, and partly to the intellectual and special atmosphere in which he was brought up. but it is more important to recognise the immense real value of his doctrine. briefly, i should say, that there is hardly an argument in bentham's voluminous writings which is not to the purpose so far as it goes. given his point of view, he is invariably cogent and relevant. and, moreover, that is a point of view which has to be taken. no ethical or political doctrine can, as i hold, be satisfactory which does not find a place for bentham, though he was far, indeed, from giving a complete theory of his subject. and the main reason of this is that which i have already indicated. bentham's whole life was spent in the attempt to create a science of legislation. even where he is most tiresome, there is a certain interest in his unflagging working out of every argument, and its application to all conceivable cases. it is all genuine reasoning; and throughout it is dominated by a respect for good solid facts. his hatred of 'vague generalities'[ ] means that he will be content with no formula which cannot be interpreted in terms of definite facts. the resolution to insist upon this should really be characteristic of every writer upon similar subjects, and no one ever surpassed bentham in attention to it. classify and re-classify, to make sure that at every point your classes correspond to realities. in the effort to carry out these principles, bentham at least brought innumerable questions to a sound test, and exploded many pestilent fallacies. if he did not succeed further, if whole spheres of thought remained outside of his vision, it was because in his day there was not only no science of 'sociology' or psychology--there are no such sciences now--but no adequate perception of the vast variety of investigation which would be necessary to lay a basis for them. but the effort to frame a science is itself valuable, indeed of surpassing value, so far as it is combined with a genuine respect for facts. it is common enough to attempt to create a science by inventing technical terminology. bentham tried the far wider and far more fruitful method of a minute investigation of particular facts. his work, therefore, will stand, however different some of the results may appear when fitted into a different framework. and, therefore, however crudely and imperfectly, bentham did, as i believe, help to turn speculation into a true and profitable channel. of that, more will appear hereafter; but, if any one doubts bentham's services, i will only suggest to him to compare bentham with any of his british contemporaries, and to ask where he can find anything at all comparable to his resolute attempt to bring light and order into a chaotic infusion of compromise and prejudice. notes: [ ] _works_, 'civil code' (from dumont), i. , ; _ibid._ ('principles of constitutional code') ii. ; _ibid._ ('constitutional code') ix. - . [ ] _works_, i. _n._ [ ] _ibid._ ix. . [ ] _ibid._ ('principles of penal code') i. . [ ] _ibid._ i. . [ ] _works_, x. . [ ] _ibid._ iii. , etc. [ ] _ibid._ iii. . [ ] _works_, ix. . [ ] _ibid._ ix. . [ ] _ibid._ ix. . [ ] _works_, i. . [ ] _ibid._ ix. . [ ] see, _e.g._, i. , where sympathy seems to be taken as an ultimate pleasure; and ii. , where he says 'dream not that men will move their little finger to serve you unless their advantage in so doing be obvious to them.' see also the apologue of 'walter wise,' who becomes lord mayor, and 'timothy thoughtless,' who ends at botany bay (i. ), giving the lowest kind of prudential morality. the manuscript of the _deontology_, now in university college, london, seems to prove that bentham was substantially the author, though the mills seem to have suspected bowring of adulterating the true doctrine. he appears to have been an honest if not very intelligent editor; though the rewriting, necessary in all bentham's works, was damaging in this case; and he is probably responsible for some rhetorical amplification, especially in the later part. [ ] _church of englandism_ (catechism examined), p. . [ ] see this phrase expounded in _works_ ('book of fallacies'), ii. , etc. end of vol. i note on bentham's writings the following account of bentham's writings may be of some use. the arrangement is intended to show what were the topics which attracted his attention at successive periods. the collected _works_, edited by bowring, appeared from to in eleven volumes, the last two containing the life and an elaborate index. the first nine volumes consist partly of the works already published; partly of works published for the first time from bentham's mss.; and partly of versions of dumont's redactions of bentham. dumont's publications were ( ) _traités de legislation civile et pénale_ ( ; second edition, revised, ): [vol. i. contains _principes généraux de legislation_ and _principes du code civil_; vol. ii. _principes du code pénal_; and vol. iii. _mémoire sur le panoptique_, _de la promulgation des lois_, _de l'influence du temps et des lieux_, and _vue générale d'un corps complet des lois_]; ( ) _théorie des peines et des récompenses_, , , ; ( ) _tactiques des assemblées déliberantes et traité des sophismes politiques_, ; ( ) _traité des preuves judiciaires_, ; and ( ) _de l'organisation judiciaire et de la codification_, . in the following i give references to the place of each work in bowring's edition. bentham's first book was the _fragment on government_, (i. - ). an interesting 'historical preface,' intended for a second edition (i. - ), was first printed in . the _fragment_, edited by mr. f. c. montague, was republished in . the _introduction to the principles of morals and legislation_ was published in , in one vol. to (i. - ). it had been printed in . a second edition, in two vols. vo, appeared in . it was intended as an introduction to the plan of a penal code. bentham says in his preface that his scheme would be completed by a series of works applying his principles to ( ) civil law; ( ) penal law; ( ) procedure; ( ) reward; ( ) constitutional law; ( ) political tactics; ( ) international law; ( ) finance; and ( ) political economy, and by a tenth treatise giving a plan of a body of law 'considered in respect of its form,' that is, upon 'nomography.' he wrote more or less in the course of his life upon all these topics. dumont's _traités_ of were based partly upon the _introduction_ and partly upon bentham's mss. corresponding to unfinished parts of this general scheme. the two first sections of this scheme are represented in the _works_ by _principles of the civil code_ (i. - ) and _principles of penal law_ (i. - ). the _principles of the civil code_ is translated from dumont's _traités_, where it follows a condensed statement of 'general principles' taken from the opening chapters of the _introduction_. an appendix 'on the levelling system' is added in the _works_ from bentham's mss. the _principles of penal law_ consists of three parts: the first and third (on 'political remedies for the evil of offences' and on 'indirect means of preventing crimes') are translated from parts and of dumont's _principes du code pénal_ (parts and of dumont being adaptations from the _introduction to morals and legislation_). the second part of the _penal law_, or _the rationale of punishment_ is from dumont's _théorie des peines et des récompenses_. dumont took it from a ms. written by bentham in . (see bentham's _works_, i. .) an appendix on 'death punishment,' addressed by bentham to the french people in , is added to part ii. in the _works_ (i. - ). no. of bentham's general scheme corresponds to the _rationale of reward_, founded upon two mss., one in french and one in english, used by dumont in the _théorie des peines et des récompenses_. the english version in the _works_, chiefly translated from dumont and compared with the original manuscript, was first published in (ii. - ). richard smith 'of the stamps and taxes' was the editor of this and of an edition of the _rationale of punishment_ in , and of various minor treatises. (bentham's _works_, x. _n._) the _table of the springs of action_ (i. - ), written at an early period, was printed in , and published, with modifications, in . the _vue générale_ included in the _traités_ of was intended by bentham as a sketch for his own guidance, and is translated as _view of a complete code of laws_ in the _works_ (iii. - ). the two essays in the _traités_ on 'the promulgation of laws' and the 'influence of time and place in matters of legislation' are translated in _works_ (i. - ). a fragment on _international law_--a phrase invented by bentham--written between and , first appeared in the _works_ (ii. - ), with _junctiana proposal_--a plan for a canal between the atlantic and the pacific--written in , as an appendix. besides the above, all written before in pursuance of his scheme, bentham had published in his _view of the hard labour bill_ (iv. - ); and in his _defence of usury_ (iii. - ). a third edition of the last (with the 'protest against law taxes') was published in . during the following period ( - ) bentham wrote various books, more or less suggested by the french revolution. the _essay on political tactics_ (ii. - ), (corresponding to no. of the scheme), was sent to morellet in , but first published by dumont in . with it dumont also published the substance of the _anarchical fallacies_ (ii. - ), written about . a _draught of a code for the organisation of the judicial establishment of france_, dated march , is reprinted in _works_ iv. - . _truth v. ashhurst_, written in (v. - ), was first published in . a _manual of political economy_, written by (see _works_, iii. _n._), corresponds to no. of his scheme. a chapter appeared in the _bibliothèque britannique_ in . it was partly used in dumont's _théorie des récompenses_, and first published in english in _works_ (iii. - ). _emancipate your colonies_ (iv. - ) was privately printed in , and first published for sale in . a _protest against law taxes_, printed in , was published in together with _supply without burthen, or escheat vice taxation_, written in . to them is appended a short paper called _tax with monopoly_ (ii. - ). _a plan for saving all trouble and expense in the transfer of stock_, written and partly printed in , was first published in _works_ (iii. - ). during this period bentham was also occupied with the panopticon, and some writings refer to it. _the panopticon, or the inspection house_ (iv. - ), written in , was published in . _the panopticon versus new south wales_ (iv. - ) appeared in ; and _a plea for the constitution_ (on transportation to new south wales) (iv. - ), in . closely connected with these are _poor-laws and pauper management_ (viii. - ), reprinted from arthur young's _annals_ of september and following months; and _observations on the poor bill_ (viii. - ), written in february , privately printed in , and first published in the _works_. about bentham returned to jurisprudence. james mill prepared from the papers then written an _introductory view of the rationale of evidence_, finished and partly printed in (see _works_, x. _n._ and bain's _james mill_, , ). dumont's _traité des preuves judiciaires_ ( ) was a redaction of the original papers, and an english translation of this appeared in . the parts referring to english law were omitted. the _rationale of evidence_ ( vols. vo, ), edited by j. s. mill, represents a different and fuller redaction of the same papers. it is reprinted in vols. vi. and vii. of the _works_ with the _introductory view_ (now first published) prefixed. to the same period belongs _scotch reform_, with a _summary view of a plan for a judicatory_, (second edition , v. - ). after bentham's attention was especially drawn to political questions. his _catechism of parliamentary reform_ (iii. - ), written in , was first published with a long 'introduction' in the _pamphleteer_ for january . bentham's _radical reform bill, with explanations_ (iii. - ) followed in december . _radicalism not dangerous_ (iii. - ), written at the same time, first appeared in the _works_ (iii. - ). _elements of the art of packing as applied to special juries, especially in cases of libel law_ (v. - ), written in , was published in . _swear not at all_ (v. - ) (referring chiefly to oxford tests), written in , was published in . _the king against edmonds_ and _the king against wolseley_ (v. - ) were published in . _official aptitude minimized; official expense limited_ (v. - ), is a series of papers, first collected in . it contains a _defence of economy against burke_, and a _defence of economy against george rose_, both written in , and published in the _pamphleteer_ in , with _observations_ on a speech by peel in , and _indications respecting lord eldon_. the two last appeared in . connected with these political writings is the _book of fallacies_ (ii. - ), edited by bingham in , from the 'most unfinished of all bentham's writings.' allusions seem to show that the original mss. were written from to . it was partly published by dumont with the _tactique, etc._ bentham, during this period ( - ), was also led into various outlying questions. _the pannomial fragments_, _nomography_, and _appendix on logical arrangements employed by jeremy bentham_ (iii. - ) were first published in the _works_ from mss. written from to . with the _chrestomathia_ (viii. - ), first published in , are connected fragments upon 'ontology,' 'language,' and 'universal grammar' (viii. - ), first published in _works_ from fragments of mss. of and later. george bentham's _outline of a new system of logic_ was partly founded upon his uncle's papers. bentham at the ford abbey time ( - ) was also writing his _church of englandism and its catechism examined_, . the _analysis of the influence of natural religion upon the temporal happiness of mankind_, by philip beauchamp, edited by george grote, appeared in ; and _not paul but jesus_, by gamaliel smith, in . francis place helped in preparing this at ford abbey in (mr. wallas's _life of place_, p. ). _mother church of england relieved by bleeding_ ( ) and the _book of church reform_ ( ) are extracted from _church of englandism_. bowring did not admit these works to his collection. in his later years ( - ) bentham began to be specially occupied with codification. _papers upon codification and public instruction_ (iv. - ) consist chiefly of letters, written from to , offering himself for employment in codification in america and russia, and first published in . in appeared _three tracts relating to spanish and portuguese affairs, with a continual eye to english ones_; and in _three letters to count toreno on the proposed penal code_ (in spain) (viii. - ). a short tract on _liberty of the press_ was addressed to the spanish people in (ii. - ). _codification proposals_ (iv. - ) appeared in , offering to prepare an 'all-comprehensive code of law' for 'any nation professing liberal opinions.' _securities against misrule addressed to a mahommedan state, and prepared with a special reference to tripoli_, written in - , was first published in the _works_ (viii. - ). a tract on the _leading principles of a constitutional code_ (ii. - ) appeared in the _pamphleteer_ in . the first volume of the _constitutional code_, printed in , was published with the first chapter of the second volume in . the whole book, edited by r. doane from papers written between and , was published in , and forms volume ix. of the _works_. doane also edited _principles of judicial procedure_ (ii. - ) from papers written chiefly from to , though part had been written in . several thousand pages upon this subject--the third part of the original scheme--were left by bentham at his death. during his last years bentham also wrote a _commentary on mr. humphrey's real property code_, published in the _westminster review_ for october (v. - ); _justice and codification petitions_ (v. - ), printed in ; _jeremy bentham to his fellow-citizens in france on houses of peers and senates_ (iv. - ), dated th october ; _equity dispatch court proposals_ (iii. - ), first published in _works_ and written from to ; _outline of a plan of a general register of real property_ (v. - ), published in the report of the real property commission in ; and _lord brougham displayed_ (v. - ), . the _deontology_ or _science of morality_ was published by bowring in two vols. vo in , but omitted from the _works_, as the original edition was not exhausted. the ms. preserved at university college, london, shows that a substantial beginning had been made in ; most of the remainder about . the second volume, made, as bowring says, from a number of scraps, is probably more 'bowringised' than the first. dumont's _traités_ were translated into spanish in , and the _works_ in - . there are also russian and italian translations. in a translation from dumont, edited by f. e. beneke, as _grundsätze der civil- und criminal-gesetzgebung_, etc., was published at berlin. beneke observes that bentham had hitherto received little attention in germany, though well known in other countries. he reports a saying attributed to mme. de staël that the age was that of bentham, not of byron or buonaparte. the neglect of bentham in germany was due, as beneke says, to the prevalence of the kantian philosophy. bentham, however, had been favourably noticed in the _hermes_ for , and his merits since acknowledged by mittermaier and warnkönig in the _zeitschrift für rechtswissenschaft_. beneke ( - ) was opposed to the hegelian tendencies of his time, and much influenced by herbart. see ueberweg's _history of philosophy_ (english translation, , ii. , etc.) and the account of bentham in robert von mohl's _staatswissenschaften_, etc. ( ), iii. - . a great mass of bentham mss. belongs to university college, london. they are contained in boxes, which were examined and catalogued by mr. t. whittaker in . a few of these contain correspondence, part of which was printed by bowring. others are the manuscripts of published works. some are upon the same subjects as the published works, and others refer to topics not included in his publications. besides the _deontology_ manuscripts and a fragment upon 'political deontology,' there is a discussion of the means of suppressing duels, an argument against the legal punishment of certain offences against decency, and a criticism of the gospel narrative similar to _not paul_, etc. i have not thought it necessary to examine these fragments after reading mr. whittaker's report. bentham's principles are sufficiently stated in his published works; and the papers which have been reposing in the cellars of university college can have had no influence upon the world. there is another large collection of mss. in the british museum from the papers of bentham and his brother, sir samuel. ten folio volumes contain correspondence, much of it referring only to sir samuel. a long correspondence upon the acquisition of the 'panopticon' land is included. another volume contains many of bentham's school and college exercises. there are also the manuscripts of the _nomography_, _logical arrangements_, etc. this collection was used by bowring and by lady bentham in the life of her husband. printed by t. and a. constable, printers to her majesty at the edinburgh university press little journeys to the homes of the great, volume little journeys to the homes of great philosophers by elbert hubbard memorial edition new york . contents socrates seneca aristotle marcus aurelius immanuel kant swedenborg spinoza auguste comte voltaire herbert spencer schopenhauer henry d. thoreau socrates i do not think it possible for a better man to be injured by a worse.... to a good man nothing is evil, neither while living nor when dead, nor are his concerns neglected by the gods. --_the republic_ [illustration: socrates] it was four hundred seventy years before christ that socrates was born. he never wrote a book, never made a formal address, held no public office, wrote no letters, yet his words have come down to us sharp, vivid and crystalline. his face, form and features are to us familiar--his goggle eyes, bald head, snub nose and bow-legs! the habit of his life--his goings and comings, his arguments and wrangles, his infinite leisure, his sublime patience, his perfect faith--all these things are plain, lifting the man out of the commonplace and setting him apart. the "memorabilia" of xenophon and the "dialogues" of plato give us boswellian pictures of the man. knowing the man, we know what he would do; and knowing what he did, we know the man. socrates was the son of sophroniscus, a stonecutter, and his wife phænarete. in boyhood he used to carry dinner to his father, and sitting by, he heard the men, in their free and easy way, discuss the plans of pericles. these workmen didn't know the plans--they were only privates in the ranks, but they exercised their prerogatives to criticize, and while working to assist, did right royally disparage and condemn. like sailors who love their ship, and grumble at grub and grog, yet on shore will allow no word of disparagement to be said, so did these athenians love their city, and still condemn its rulers--they exercised the laborer's right to damn the man who gives him work. little did the workmen guess--little did his father guess--that this pug-nosed boy, making pictures in the sand with his big toe, would also leave his footprints on the sands of time, and a name that would rival that of phidias and pericles! socrates was a product of the greek renaissance. great men come in groups, like comets sent from afar. athens was seething with thought and feeling: pericles was giving his annual oration--worth thousands of weekly sermons--and planning his dream in marble; phidias was cutting away the needless portions of the white stone of pentelicus and liberating wondrous forms of beauty; sophocles was revealing the possibilities of the stage; Æschylus was pointing out the way as a playwright; and the passion for physical beauty was everywhere an adjunct of religion. prenatal influences, it seems, played their part in shaping the destiny of socrates. his mother followed the profession of sairy gamp, and made her home with a score of families, as she was needed. the trained nurse is often untrained, and is a regular encyclopedia of esoteric family facts. she wipes her mouth on her apron and is at home in every room of the domicile from parlor to pantry. then as now she knew the trials and troubles of her clients, and all domestic underground happenings requiring adjustment she looked after as she was "disposed." evidently phænarete was possessed of considerable personality, for we hear of her being called to mythæia on a professional errand shortly before the birth of socrates; and in a month after his birth, a similar call came from another direction, and the bald little philosopher was again taken along--from which we assume, following in the footsteps of conan doyle, that socrates was no bottle-baby. the world should be grateful to phænarete that she did not honor the sairy gamp precedents and observe the platonic maxim, "sandal-makers usually go barefoot": she gave her customers an object-lesson in well-doing as well as teaching them by precept. none of her clients did so well as she--even though her professional duties were so exacting that domesticity to her was merely incidental. it was only another case of the amateur distancing the professional. * * * * * from babyhood we lose sight of socrates until we find him working at his father's trade as a sculptor. certainly he had a goodly degree of skill, for the "graces" which he carved were fair and beautiful and admired by many. this was enough: he just wanted to reveal what he could do; and then to show that to have no ambition was his highest ambition, he threw down his tools and took off his apron for good. he was then thirty-five years old. art is a jealous mistress, and demands that "thou shalt have no other gods before me." socrates did not concentrate on art. his mind went roaming the world of philosophy, and for his imagination the universe was hardly large enough. i said that he deliberately threw down his tools; but possibly this was by request, for he had acquired a habit of engaging in much wordy argument and letting the work slide. he went out upon the streets to talk, and in the guise of a learner he got in close touch with all the wise men of athens by stopping them and asking questions. in physique he was immensely strong--hard work had developed his muscles, plain fare had made him oblivious of the fact that he had a stomach, and as for nerves, he had none to speak of. socrates did not marry until he was about forty. his wife was scarcely twenty. of his courtship we know nothing, but sure it is socrates did not go and sue for the lady's hand in the conventional way, nor seek to gain the consent of her parents by proving his worldly prospects. his apparel was costly as his purse could buy, not gaudy nor expressed in fancy. it consisted of the one suit that he wore, for we hear of his repairing beyond the walls to bathe in the stream, and of his washing his clothing, hanging it on the bushes and waiting for it to dry before going back to the city. as for shoes, he had one pair, and since he never once wore them, going barefoot summer and winter, it is presumed that they lasted well. one can not imagine socrates in an opera-hat--in fact, he wore no hat, and he was bald. i record the fact so as to confound those zealous ones who badger the bald as a business, who have recipes concealed on their persons, and who assure us that baldness has its rise in headgear. socrates belonged to the leisure class. his motto was, "know thyself." he considered himself of much more importance than any statue he could make, and to get acquainted with himself as being much more desirable than to know physical phenomena. his plan of knowing himself was to ask everybody questions, and in their answers he would get a true reflection of his own mind. his intellect would reply to theirs, and if his questions dissolved their answers into nothingness, the supremacy of his own being would be apparent; and if they proved his folly he was equally grateful--if he was a fool, his desire was to know it. so sincere was socrates in this wish to know himself that never did he show the slightest impatience nor resentment when the argument was turned upon him. he looked upon his mind as a second party, and sat off and watched it work. should it become confused or angered, it would be proof of its insufficiency and littleness. if socrates ever came to know himself, he knew this fact: as an economic unit he was an absolute failure; but as a gadfly, stinging men into thinking for themselves, he was a success. a specialist is a deformity contrived by nature to get the work done. socrates was a thought-specialist, and the laziest man who ever lived in a strenuous age. the desire of his life was to live without desire--which is essentially the thought of nirvana. he had the power never to exercise his power except in knowing himself. he accepted every fact, circumstance and experience of life, and counted it gain. life to him was a precious privilege, and what were regarded as unpleasant experiences were as much a part of life as the pleasant ones. he who succeeds in evading unpleasant experiences cheats himself out of so much life. you know yourself by watching yourself to see what you do when you are thwarted, crossed, contradicted, or deprived of certain things supposed to be desirable. if you always get the desirable things, how do you know what you would do if you didn't have them? you exchange so much life for the thing, that's all, and thus do we see socrates anticipating emerson's essay on compensation. everything is bought with a price--all things are of equal value--no one can cheat you, for to be cheated is a not undesirable experience, and in the act, if you are really filled with the thought, "know thyself," you get the compensation by increase in mental growth. however, to deliberately go in search of experience, socrates said, would be a mistake, because then you would so multiply impressions that none would be of any avail and your life would be burned out. to clutch life by the throat and demand that it shall stand and deliver is to place yourself so out of harmony with your environment that you will get nothing. above all things, we must be calm, self-centered, never anxious, and be always ready to accept whatever the gods may send. the world will come to us if we only wait. it will be seen that socrates is at once the oldest and most modern of thinkers. he was the first to express the new thought. a thought, to socrates, was more of a reality than a block of marble--a moral principle was just as persistent as a chemical agent. * * * * * the silken-robed and perfumed sophist was sport and game for socrates. for him socrates recognized no closed season. if socrates ever came near losing his temper, it was in dealing with this edmund russell of athens. grant allen used to say, "the spores of everything are everywhere, and a certain condition breeds a certain microbe." a period of prosperity always warms into life this social paragon, who lives in a darkened room hung with maroon drapery where incense is burned and a turbaned hindu carries your card to the master, who faces the sun and exploits a prie-dieu when the wind blows east. athens had these men of refined elegance, rome evolved them, london has had her day, new york knows them, and chicago--i trust i will not be contradicted when i say that chicago understands her business! and so we find these folks who cultivate a pellucid passivity, a phthisicky whisper, a supercilious smirk, and who win our smothered admiration and give us gooseflesh by imparting a taupe tinge of mystery to all their acts and words, thus proving to the assembled guests that they are the quality and wisdom will die with them. this lingo of meaningless words and high-born phrases always set socrates by the ears, and when he could corner a sophist, he would very shortly prick his pretty toy balloon, until at last the tribe fled him as a pestilence. socrates stood for sanity. the sophist represented moonshine gone to seed, and these things, proportioned ill, drive men transverse. extremes equalize themselves: the pendulum swings as far this way as it does that. the saponaceous sophist who renounced the world and yet lived wholly in a world of sense, making vacuity pass legal tender for spirituality, and the priest who, mystified with a mumble of words, evolved a diogenes who lived in a tub, wore regally a robe of rags, and once went into the temple, and cracking a louse on the altar-rail, said solemnly, "thus does diogenes sacrifice to all the gods at once!" are but two sides of the same shield. in socrates was a little jollity and much wisdom pickled in the scorn of fortune; but the sophists inwardly bowed down and worshiped the fickle dame on idolatrous knees. socrates won immortality because he did not want it, and the sophists secured oblivion because they deserved it. * * * * * we hear of socrates going to aspasia, and holding long conversations with her "to sharpen his mind." aspasia did not go out in society much: she and pericles lived very simply. it is worth while to remember that the most intellectual woman of her age was democratic enough to be on friendly terms with the barefoot philosopher who went about regally wrapped in a table-spread. socrates did not realize the flight of time when making calls--he went early and stayed late. possibly prenatal influences caused him often to call before breakfast and remain until after supper. just imagine pericles, aspasia and socrates sitting at table--with walter savage landor behind the arras making notes! doubtless socrates and mrs. pericles did most of the talking, while the first citizen of athens listened and smiled indulgently now and then as his mind wandered to construction contracts and walking delegates. pericles, the builder of a city--pericles, first among practical men since time began, and socrates, who jostles history for first place among those who have done nothing but talk--imagine these two eating melons together, while aspasia, gentle and kind, talks of spirit being more than matter and love being greater than the parthenon! socrates is usually spoken of as regarding women with slight favor, but i have noticed that your genus woman-hater holds the balance true by really being a woman-lover. if a man is enough interested in women to hate them, note this: he is only searching for the right woman, the woman who compares favorably with the ideal woman in his own mind. he measures every woman by this standard, just as ruskin compared all modern painters with turner and discarded them with fitting adjectives as they receded from what he regarded as the perfect type. if ruskin had not been much interested in painters, would he have written scathing criticisms about them? in several instances we hear of socrates reminding his followers that they are "weak as women," and he was the first to say "woman is an undeveloped man." but socrates was a great admirer of human beauty, whether physical or spiritual, and his abrupt way of stopping beautiful women on the streets and bluntly telling them they were beautiful, doubtless often confirmed their suspicions. and thus far he was pleasing, but when he went on to ask questions so as to ascertain whether their mental estate compared with their physical, why, that was slightly different. it is good to hear him say, "there is no sex in intellect," and also, "i have long held the opinion that the female sex is nothing inferior to ours, save only in strength of body and possibly in steadiness of judgment." and xenophon quotes him thus: "it is more delightful to hear the virtue of a good woman described than if the painter zeuxis were to show me the portrait of the fairest woman in the world." perhaps thackeray is right when he says, "the men who appreciate woman most are those who have felt the sharpness of her claws." that is to say, things show up best on the darkest background. if so, let us give xantippe due credit. she tested the temper of the sage by railing on him and deluging him with socratic propositions, not waiting for the answers; she often broke in with a broom upon his introspective efforts to know himself; if this were not enough, she dashed buckets of scrubbing-water over him; presents that were sent him by admiring friends she used as targets for her mop and wit; if he invited friends with faith plus to dine, she upset the table, dishes and all, before them--not much to their loss; she occasionally elbowed her way through a crowd where her husband was entertaining the listeners upon the divine harmonies, and would tear off his robe and lead him home by the ear. but these things never ruffled socrates--he might roll his eyes in comic protest at the audiences as he was being led away captive, but no resentment was shown. he had the strength of a hercules, but he was a far better non-resistant than tolstoy, because he took his medicine with a wink, while fate is obliged to hold the nose of the author of "anna karenina," who never sees the comedy of an inward struggle and an outward compliance, any more than does the benedict, safely entrenched under the bed, who shouts out, "i defy thee, i defy thee!" as did mephisto when goethe thrust him into tophet. * * * * * the popular belief is that xantippe, the wife of socrates, was a shrew, and had she lived in new england in cotton mather's time would have been a candidate for the ducking-stool. socrates said he married her for discipline. a man in east aurora, however, has recently made it plain to himself that xantippe was possessed of a great and acute intellect. she knew herself, and she knew her liege as he never did--he was too close to his subject to get the perspective. she knew that under right conditions his name would live as one of the world's great teachers, and so she set herself to supply the conditions. she deliberately sacrificed herself and put her character in a wrong light before the world in order that she might benefit the world. most women have a goodly grain of ambition for themselves, and if their husbands have genius, their business is not to prove it, but to show that they themselves are not wholly commonplace. not so xantippe--she was quite willing to be misunderstood that her husband might live. what the world calls a happy marriage is not wholly good--ease is bought with a price. suppose xantippe and socrates had settled down and lived in a cottage with a vine growing over the portico, and two rows of hollyhocks leading from the front gate to the door; a pathway of coal-ashes lined off with broken crockery, and inside the house all sweet, clean and tidy; socrates earning six drachmas a day carving marble, with double pay for overtime, and he handing the pay-envelope over to her each saturday night, keeping out just enough for tobacco, and she putting a tidy sum in the Ægean savings-bank every month--why, what then? well, that would have been an end of socrates. xantippe was big enough to know this and so she supplied the domestic cantharides and drove him out upon the streets--he grew to care very little for her, not much for the children, nothing for his home. she drove him out into the world of thought, instead of allowing him to settle down and be content with her society. i once knew a sculptor--another sculptor--an elemental bit of nature, original and, better still, aboriginal. he used to sleep out under the stars so as to wake up in the night and see the march of the milky way, and watch the pleiades disappear over the brink of the western horizon. he wore a flannel shirt, thick-soled shoes, and overalls, no hat, and his hair was thick and coarse as a horse's mane. this man had talent, and he had sublime conceptions, great dreams, and splendid aspirations. his soul was struggling to find expression. "leave him alone," i said. "he needs time to ripen. he is a michelangelo in embryo!" did he ripen? not he. he married a wellesley girl of good family. she, too, had ideas about art--she painted china-buttons for shirtwaists, embroidered chasubles and sang "the rosary" in a raucous quinsigamond voice. the big barbarian became respectable, and the last time i saw him he wore a tuxedo and was passing out platitudes and raspberry-shrub at a lawn-party. the wellesley girl had tamed her bear--they were very happy, he assured me, and she was preparing a course of lectures for him which he was to give at mrs. jack gardner's. a xantippe might have saved him. * * * * * a captious friend once suggested to socrates this: "if you prize the female nature so highly, how does it happen that you do not instruct xantippe?"--a rather indelicate proposition to put to a married man. and socrates, quite unruffled, replied: "my friend, if one wants to learn horsemanship, does he choose a tame horse or one with mettle and a hard mouth? i wish to converse with all sorts of people, and i believe that nothing can disturb me after i grow accustomed to the tongue of xantippe." again we hear of his suggesting that his wife's scolding tongue may have been only the buzzing of his own waspish thoughts, and if he did not call forth these qualities in her they would not otherwise have appeared. and so, beholding her impatience and unseemliness, he would realize the folly of an ill temper and thus learn by antithesis to curb his own. old doctor johnson used to have a regular menagerie of wrangling, jangling, quibbling, dissatisfied pensioners in his household; and so far as we know he never learned the truth that all pensioners are dissatisfied. "if i can stand things at home, i can stand things anywhere," he once said to boswell, as much as to say, "if i can stand things at home, i can stand even you." goldsmith referred to boswell as a cur; garrick said he thought he was a bur. socrates had a similar satellite by the name of cheropho, a dark, dirty, weazened, and awfully serious little man of the tribe of buttinsky, who sat breathlessly trying to catch the pearls that fell from the ample mouth of the philosopher. aristophanes referred to cheropho as "socrates' bat," a play-off on minerva and her bird of night, the owl. there were quite a number of these "bats," and they seemed to labor under the same hallucination that catches the lady students of the pundit vivakenanda h. darmapala: they think that wisdom is to be imparted by word of mouth, and that by listening hard and making notes one can become very wise. socrates said again and again, "character is a matter of growth and all i hope to do is to make you think for yourselves." that chilly exclusiveness which regards a man's house as his castle, his home, the one sacred spot, and all outside as the cold and cruel world, was not the ideal of socrates. his family was his circle of friends, and these were of all classes and conditions, from the first citizen to beggars on the street. he made no charge for his teaching, took up no collections, and never inaugurated a correspondence school. america has produced one man who has been called a reincarnation of socrates; that man was bronson alcott, who peddled clocks and forgot the flight of time whenever any one would listen to him expound the unities. alcott once ran his wheelbarrow into a neighbor's garden and was proceeding to load his motor-car with cabbages, beets and potatoes. glancing up, the philosopher saw the owner of the garden looking at him steadfastly over the wall. "don't look at me that way," called alcott with a touch of un-socratic acerbity, "don't look at me that way--i need these things more than you!" and went on with the annexation. the idea that all good things are for use and belong to all who need them was a favorite maxim of socrates. the furniture in his house never exceeded the exemption clause. once we find him saying that xantippe complained because he did not buy her a stewpan, but since there was nothing to put in it, he thought her protests ill-founded. the climate of athens is about like that of southern california--one does not need to bank food and fuel against the coming of winter. life can be adjusted to its simplest forms. from his fortieth to his fiftieth year, socrates worked every other thursday; then he retired from active life, and xantippe took in plain sewing. socrates was surely not a good provider, but if he had provided more for his family, he would have provided less for the world. the wealthy crito would have turned his pockets inside out for socrates, but socrates had all he wished, and explained that as it was he had to dance at home in order to keep down the adipose. aristides, who was objectionable because he so shaped his conduct that he was called "the just" and got himself ostracized, was one of his dear friends. antisthenes, the original cynic, used to walk six miles and back every day to hear socrates talk. the cynic was a rich man, but so captivated was he with the preaching of socrates that he adopted the life of simplicity and dressed in rags and boycotted both the barber and the bath. on one occasion socrates looked sharply at a rent in the cloak of his friend and said, "ah, antisthenes, through that hole in your cloak i see your vanity!" xenophon sat at the feet of socrates for a score of years, and then wrote his recollections of him as a vindication of his character. euclid of megara was nearly eighty when he came to socrates as a pupil, trying to get rid of his ill-temper and habit of ironical reply. cebes and simmias left their native country and became greek citizens for his sake. charmides, the pampered son of wealthy parents, learned pedagogics by being shown that, in households where there were many servants, the children got cheated out of their rightful education because others did all the work, and to deprive a child of the privilege of being useful was to rob him of so much life. Æschines, the ambitious son of a sausage-maker, was advised by socrates to borrow money of himself on long time without interest, by reducing his wants. so pleased was the recipient with this advice, that he went to publishing socratic dialogues as a business and had the felicity to fail with tidy liabilities. but the two men who loom largest in the life of socrates are alcibiades and plato--characters very much unlike. alcibiades was twenty-one years old when we find him first. he was considered the handsomest young man in athens. he was aristocratic, proud, insolent, and needlessly rich. he had a passion for gambling, horse-racing, dog-fighting, and indulged in the churchly habit of doing that which he ought not and leaving undone that which he should have done. he was worse than that degenerate scion of a proud ancestry, who a-kneiping went with his lady friends in the cincinnati fountain, after the opera, on a wager. he whipped a man who admitted he did not have a copy of the "iliad" in his house; publicly destroyed the record of a charge against one of his friends; and when his wife applied for a divorce, he burst into the courtroom and vacated proceedings by carrying the lady off by force. at banquets he would raise a disturbance, and while he was being forcibly ejected from one door, his servants would sneak in at another and steal the silverware, which he would give away as charity. he also indulged in the mark antony trick of rushing into houses at night and pulling good folks out of bed by the heels, and then running away before they were barely awake. his introduction to socrates came in an attempt to break up a socratic prayer-meeting. socrates succeeded in getting the roysterer to listen long enough to turn the laugh on him and show all concerned that the life of a rowdy was the life of a fool. alcibiades had expected socrates to lose his temper, but it was alcibiades who gave way, and blurted out that he could not hope to beat his antagonist talking, but he would like to wrestle with him. legend has it that socrates gave the insolent young man a shock by instantly accepting his challenge. in the bout that followed, the philosopher, built like a gorilla, got a half-nelson on his man, who was a little the worse for wine, and threw him so hard, jumping on his prostrate form with his knees, that the aristocratic hoodlum was laid up for a moon. ever after alcibiades had a thorough respect for socrates. they became fast friends, and whenever the old man talked in the agora, alcibiades was on hand to keep order. when war came with sparta and her allies in the peloponnesus they enlisted, socrates going as corporal and alcibiades as captain. they occupied the same tent during the entire campaign. socrates proved a fearless soldier, and walked the winter ice in bare feet, often pulling his belt one hole tighter in lieu of breakfast, to show the complaining soldiers that endurance was the thing that won battles. at the battle of delium, when there was a rout, xenophon says socrates walked off the field leisurely, arm in arm with the general, explaining the nature of harmony. through the influence of socrates, the lawless alcibiades was tamed and became almost a model citizen, although his head was hardly large enough for a philosopher. "say what you will, you'll find it all in plato," said emerson. if socrates had done nothing else but give bent to the mind of plato, he would deserve the gratitude of the centuries. plato is the mine to which all thinkers turn for treasure. when they first met, plato was twenty and socrates sixty, and for ten years, to the day of socrates' death, they were together almost constantly. plato died aged eighty-one, and for fifty years he had lived but to record the dialogues of socrates. it was curiosity that first attracted this fine youth to the old man--socrates was so uncouth that he was amusing. plato was interested in politics, and like most athenian youths, was intent on having a good time. however, he was no rowdy, like alcibiades: he was suave, gracious, and elegant in all of his acts. he had been taught by the sophists and the desire of his life was to seem, rather than to be. by very gentle stages, plato began to perceive that to make an impression on society was not worth working for--the thing to do was to be yourself, and yourself at your best. and we can give no better answer to the problem of life than plato gives in the words of socrates: "it is better to be than to seem. to live honestly and deal justly is the meat of the whole matter." plato was not a disciple--he was big enough not to ape the manners and eccentricities of his master--he saw beneath the rough husk and beyond the grotesque outside the great controlling purpose in the life of socrates. he would be himself--and himself at his best--and he would seek to satisfy the voice within, rather than to try to please the populace. plato still wore his purple cloak, and the elegance and grace of his manner were not thrown aside. wouldn't it have been worth our while to travel miles to see these friends: the one old, bald, short, fat, squint-eyed, barefoot; and the other with all the poise of aristocratic youth--tall, courtly and handsome, wearing his robe with easy, regal grace! and so they have walked and talked adown the centuries, side by side, the most perfect example that can be named of that fine affection which often exists between teacher and scholar. plato's "republic," especially, gives us an insight into a very great and lofty character. from his tower of speculation, plato scanned the future, and saw that the ideal of education was to have it continue through life, for none but the life of growth and development ever satisfies. and love itself turns to ashes of roses if not used to help the soul in her upward flight. it was plato who first said, "there is no profit where no pleasure's ta'en." he further perceived that in the life of education, the sexes must move hand in hand; and he also saw that, while religions are many and seemingly diverse, goodness and kindness are forever one. his faith in the immortality of the soul was firm, but whether we are to live in another world or not, he said there is no higher wisdom than to live here and now--live our highest and best--cultivate the receptive mind and the hospitable heart, "partaking of all good things in moderation." it takes these two to make the whole. there is no virtue in poverty--no merit in rags--the uncouth qualities in socrates were not a recommendation. yet he was himself. but plato made good, in his own character, all that socrates lacked. some one has said that fitzgerald's omar is two-thirds fitzgerald and one-third omar. in his books, plato modestly puts his wisest maxims into the mouth of his master, and just how much plato and how much socrates there is in the "dialogues," we will never know until we get beyond the river styx. * * * * * socrates was deeply attached to athens, and he finally became the best known figure in the city. he criticized in his own frank, fearless way all the doings of the times--nothing escaped him. he was a self-appointed investigating committee in all affairs of state, society and religion. hypocrisy, pretense, affectation and ignorance trembled at his approach. he was feared, despised and loved. but those who loved him were as one in a hundred. he became a public nuisance. the charge against him was just plain heresy--he had spoken disrespectfully of the gods and through his teaching he had defiled the youth of athens. ample warning had been given to him, and opportunity to run away was provided, but he stuck like a leech, asking the cost of banquets and making suggestions about all public affairs. he was arrested, bailed by plato and crito, and tried before a jury of five hundred citizens. socrates insisted on managing his own case. a rhetorician prepared an address of explanation, and the culprit was given to understand that if he read this speech to his judges and said nothing else, it would be considered as an apology and he would be freed--the intent of the trial being more to teach the old man a lesson in minding his own business than to injure him. but socrates replied to his well-meaning friend, "think you i have not spent my whole life in preparing for this one thing?" and he handed back the smoothly polished manuscript with a smile. montaigne says, "should a suppliant voice have been heard out of the mouth of socrates now; should that lofty virtue strike sail in the very height of its glory, and his rich and powerful nature be committed to flowing rhetoric as a defense? never!" socrates cross-questioned his accusers in the true socratic style and showed that he had never spoken disrespectfully of the gods: he had only spoken disrespectfully of their absurd conception of the gods. and here is a thought which is well to consider even yet: the so-called "infidel" is often a man of great gentleness of spirit, and his disbelief is not in god, but in some little man's definition of god--a distinction the little man, being without humor, can never see. when socrates had confounded his accusers, this time not giving them the satisfaction of the last word, he launched out on a general criticism of the city, and told where its rulers were gravely at fault. being cautioned to bridle his tongue, he replied, "when your generals at potidæa and amphipolis and delium assigned my place in the battle i remained there, did my work, and faced the peril, and think you that when deity has assigned me my duty at this pass in life i should, through fear of death, evade it, and shirk my post?" this man appeared at other times, to some, as an idle loafer, but now he arose to a sublime height. he repeated with emphasis all he had ever said against their foolish superstitions, and arraigned the waste and futility of the idle rich. the power of the man was revealed as never before, and those who had intended to let him go with a fine, now thought it best to dispose of him. the safety of the state was endangered by such an agitator--the question of religion is really not what has sent the martyrs to the stake--it is the politician, not the priest, who fears the heretic. by a small majority, socrates was found guilty and sentenced to death. let plato tell of that last hour--he has done it once for all: when he had done speaking, crito said, "and have you any commands for us, socrates--anything to say about your children, or any other matter in which we can serve you?" "nothing particular," he said; "only, as i have always told you, i would have you to look to your own conduct; that is a service which you may always be doing to me and mine as well as to yourselves." ... "we will do our best," said crito. "but in what way would you have us bury you?" "in any way that you like; only you must get hold of me, and take care that i do not walk away from you." then he turned to us, and added with a smile: "i can not make crito believe that i am the same socrates who has been talking and conducting the argument; he fancies that i am the other socrates whom he will soon see, a dead body--and he asks, 'how shall he bury me?' and though i have spoken many words in the endeavor to show that when i have drunk the poison i shall leave you and go to the joys of the blessed--these words of mine, with which i comforted you and myself, have had, as i perceive, no effect upon crito. and therefore i want you to be surety for me now, as he was surety for me at the trial: but let the promise be of another sort; for he was my surety to the judges that i would remain, but you must be my surety to him that i shall not remain, but go away and depart; and then he will suffer less at my death, and not be grieved when he sees my body being burned. i would not have him sorrow at my hard lot, or say at the burial,'thus we lay out socrates,' or, 'thus we follow him to the grave or bury him'; for false words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil. be of good cheer then, my dear crito, and say that you are burying my body only, and do with that as is usual, and as you think best." when he had spoken these words, he arose and went into the bath-chamber with crito, who bid us wait; and we waited, talking and thinking of the subject of discourse, and also of the greatness of our sorrow; he was like a father of whom we were being bereaved, and we were about to pass the rest of our lives as orphans. when he had taken his bath, his children were brought to him--and the women of his family also came, and he talked to them and gave them a few directions in the presence of crito; and he then dismissed them and returned to us. now the hour of sunset was near. when he came out, he sat down with us again after his bath, but not much was said. soon the jailer, who was the servant, entered and stood by him, saying: "to you, socrates, whom i know to be the noblest and gentlest and best of all who ever came to this place, i will not impute the angry feelings of other men, who rage and swear at me when, in obedience to the authorities, i bid them drink the poison--indeed i am sure that you will not be angry with me; for others, as you are aware, and not i, are the guilty cause. and so fare you well, and try to bear lightly what must needs be; you know my errand." then bursting into tears, he turned away, and went out. socrates looked at him and said, "i return your good wishes, and will do as you bid." then turning to us, he said: "how charming the man is! since i have been in prison, he has always been coming to see me, and at times, he would talk to me, and was as good as could be to me, and now see how generously he sorrows for me. but we must do as he says, crito; let the cup be brought." "not yet," said crito; "the sun is still upon the hill-tops, and many a one has taken the draft late, and after the announcement has been made to him, he has eaten and drunk and indulged in sensual delights; do not hasten then--there is still time." socrates said: "yes, crito, and they of whom you speak are right in doing thus, but i do not think that i should gain anything by drinking the poison a little later; i should be sparing and saving a life which is already gone: i could only laugh at myself for this. please then to do as i say, and not to refuse me." crito, when he heard this, made a sign to the servant; and the servant went in, and remained for some time, and then returned with the jailer carrying the cup of poison. socrates said, "you, my good friend, who are experienced in these matters, shall give me directions how i am to proceed." the man answered, "you have only to walk about until your legs are heavy, and then to lie down, and the poison will act." at the same time, he handed the cup to socrates, who, in the easiest and gentlest manner, without the least fear or change of color or feature, looking at the man with his eyes, echecrates, as his manner was, took the cup and said: "what do you say about making the libation out of this cup to any god? may i, or not?" the man answered, "we only prepare, socrates, just so much as we deem enough." "i understand," he said. "yet i may and must pray to the gods to prosper my journey from this to that other world--may this, then, which is my prayer, be granted to me!" then holding the cup to his lips, quite readily and cheerfully, he drank off the poison. and hitherto most of us had been able to control our sorrow; but now we saw him drinking, and saw, too, that he had finished the draft, we could no longer forbear, and in spite of myself, my own tears were flowing fast; so that i covered my face and wept over myself, for certainly i was not weeping over him, but at the thought of my own calamity in having lost such a companion. nor was i the first, for crito, when he found himself unable to restrain his tears, had got up and moved away, and i followed; and at that moment, apollodorus, who had been weeping all the time, broke out into a loud cry, which made cowards of us all. socrates alone retained his calmness. "what is this strange outcry?" he said, "i sent away the women mainly in order that they might not offend in this way, for i have heard that a man should die in peace. be quiet, then, and have patience." when we heard that, we were ashamed, and refrained our tears; and he walked about until, as he said, his legs began to fail, and then he lay on his back, according to directions, and the man who gave him the poison, now and then looked at his feet and legs; and after a while, he pressed his foot hard and asked him if he could feel; and he said, "no"; and then his leg, and so upwards and upwards, and showed us that he was cold and stiff. and he felt them himself, and said, "when the poison reaches the heart, that will be the end." he was beginning to grow cold, when he uncovered his face, for he had covered himself up, and said (they were his last words), "crito, i owe a cock to asclepius; will you remember to pay the debt?" "the debt shall be paid," said crito. "is there anything else?" there was no answer to this question; but in a minute or two, a movement was heard, and the attendants uncovered him; his eyes were set, and crito closed his eyes and mouth. such was the end, echecrates, of our friend, whom i may truly call the wisest, the justest, and best of all the men whom i have ever known. seneca if we wish to be just judges of all things, let us first persuade ourselves of this: that there is not one of us without fault; no man is found who can acquit himself; and he who calls himself innocent does so with reference to a witness, and not to his conscience. --_letters of seneca_ [illustration: seneca] true americans and patriotic, who live in york state, often refer you to the life of red jacket as proof that "seneca" is an iroquois indian word. the indians, however, whom we call the senecas never called themselves thus until they took to strong water and became civilized. before that they were the tsonnundawaonas. the dutch traders, intent on pelts and pelf, called them the sinnekaas, meaning the valiant or the beautiful. then came that fateful day when the reverend peleg spooner, the discoverer of the erie canal, journeyed to niagara falls, and having influence with the authorities at washington, gave to towns along the way these names: troy, rome, ithaca, syracuse, ilion, manlius, homer, corfu, palmyra, utica, delhi, memphis and marathon. he really exhausted grote's "history of greece" and gibbon's "rome," revealing a most depressing lack of humor. this classic flavor of the map of new york is as surprising to english tourists as was the discovery to hendrik hudson when, on sailing up the north river, he found on nearing albany that the river bore the same name as himself. * * * * * in the eighteenth chapter of the acts of the apostles we read of paul being brought before gallio, proconsul of achaia. and the accusers, clutching the bald and bow-legged bachelor by the collar, bawl out to the judge, "this fellow persuadeth men to worship god contrary to law!" and the little man is about to make reply, when gallio says, with a touch of impatience: "if indeed it were a matter of wrong or of wicked villainy, o ye jews, reason would that i should bear with you: but if they are questions about words and names and your own law, look to it yourselves; i am not minded to be a judge of these matters!" and the account concludes, "and he drove them from the judgment-seat." that is to say, he gave saint paul a "nolle pros." had gallio wished to be severe, he might have put the quietus on christianity for all time, for saint paul had all there was of it stowed in his valiant head and heart. gallio was the elder brother of seneca; his right name was annæus seneca, but he changed it to junius gallio, in honor of a patron who had especially befriended him in youth. gallio seems to have been a man of good, sturdy commonsense--he could distinguish between right living and a mumble of words, man-made rules, laws such as heresy, blasphemy, sabbath-breaking and marrying one's deceased wife's sister. the moqui indians believe that if any one is allowed to have a photograph taken of himself he will dry up in a month and blow away. moreover, lists of names are not wanting with memoranda of times and places. in america there are yet people who hotly argue as to what mode of baptism is correct; who talk earnestly about the "saved" and the "lost"; and who will tell you of the "heathen" and those who are "without the pale." they seem to think that the promise, "seek and ye shall find, knock and it shall be opened unto you," applies only to the caucasian race. in the earlier translations of seneca there were printed various letters that were supposed to have passed between saint paul and seneca. later editors have dropped them out for lack of authenticity. but the fact that saint paul met seneca's brother face to face, as well as the fact that the brother was willing to discuss right living, but had no time to waste on the gemara and theological quibbles, is undisputed. * * * * * it was the proud boast of augustus that he found rome a place of brick and left it a city of marble. commercial prosperity buys the leisure upon which letters flourish. we flout the businessman, but without him there would be no poets. poets write for the people who have time to read. and out of the surplus that is left after securing food, we buy books. augustus built his marble city, and he also made vergil, horace, ovid and livy possible. augustus reigned forty-four years, and it was in the twenty-seventh year of his reign that there was born in bethlehem of judæa a babe who was to revolutionize the calendar. the dean of ely subtly puts forth the suggestive thought that if it had not been for augustus we might never have heard of jesus. it was augustus who made jerusalem a roman province; and it was the economic and political policy of augustus that evolved the scribes and pharisees; and ill-gotten gains made the hypocrites and publicans possible; then comes pontius pilate with his receding chin. jesus was seventeen years old when augustus died--augustus never heard of him, and the roman's unprophetic mind sent no searchlight into the future, neither did his eyes behold the star in the east. we are all making and shaping history, and how much, none of us knows, any more than did augustus. julius cæsar had no son to take his place, so he named his nephew, augustus, his heir. augustus was succeeded by tiberius, his adopted child. caligula, successor of tiberius, was the son of the great roman general, germanicus. caligula revealed his good sense by drinking life to its lees in a reign of four years, dying without heirs--nature refusing to transmit either infamy or genius. claudius, an uncle of caligula, accepted the vacant place, as it seemed to him there was no one else could fill it so well. claudius had the felicity to be married four times, and left several sons, but fate had it that he should be followed by nero, his stepson, who called himself "cæsar," yet in whose veins there leaped not a single cæsarean corpuscle. the guardian and tutor of nero was lucius seneca, the greatest, best and wisest man of his time, a fact i here state in order to show the vanity of pedagogics. harking back once more to augustus, let it be known that but for him seneca would probably have never left his mark upon this bank and shoal of time. seneca was a spaniard, born in cordova, a roman province, that was made so by augustus, under whose kindly and placating influence all citizens of hispania became roman citizens--just as, when california was admitted to the union, every man in the state was declared a naturalized citizen of the united states, the act being performed for political purposes, based on the precedents of augustus, and never done before nor since in america. seneca was four years old when his father's family moved from cordova to rome; this was three years before the birth of christ. years pass, but the human heart is forever the same. the elder seneca, marcus seneca, had ambitions--he was a great man in cordova: he could memorize a list of two thousand words. these words had no relationship one to another, and marcus seneca could not put words together so as to make good sense, but his name was "loisette": he had a scheme of mnemonics that he imparted for a consideration. he was also a teacher of elocution, and had compiled a yearbook of the sayings of horace, which secured him a knighthood. augustus paid his colonists pretty compliments, very much as england gives out brevets to strathcona and other worthy canadians, who raise troops of horse to fight england's battles in south africa when duty calls. marcus seneca made haste to move to rome when augustus let down the bars. rome was the center of the art-world, the home of letters, and all that made for beauty and excellence. there were three boys and a girl in the seneca family. the elder boy, annæus, was to become gallio, the roman governor, and have his name mentioned in the most widely circulated book the world has ever known; the second boy was lucius, the subject of this sketch; the younger boy, mela, was to become the father of lucan, the poet. the sister of seneca became the wife of the roman governor of egypt. it was at a time when the scheming rapacity of women was so much in evidence that the senate debated whether it should not forbid its representatives abroad to be accompanied by their wives. france has seen such times--england and america have glanced that way. women, like men, often do not know that the big prizes gravitate where they belong; instead, they set traps for them, lie in wait and consider prevarication and duplicity better than truth. when women use their beauty, their wit and their pink persons in politics, trouble lies low around the corner. but this sister of seneca was never seen in public unless it was at her husband's side; she asked no favors, and presents sent to her personally by provincials were politely returned. the province praised her, and perhaps what was better, didn't know her, and begged the emperor to send them more of such excellent and virtuous women--from which we infer that virtue consists in minding one's own business. in making up a list of great mothers, do not leave out helvia, mother of three sons and a daughter who made their mark upon the times. it is no small thing to be a great mother! women of intellect were not much appreciated then, but seneca dedicated his "consolations," his best book, to his mother. the very mintage of his mind was for her, and again and again he tells of her insight, her gentle wit, and her appreciation of all that was beautiful and best in the world of thought. in a letter addressed to her when he was past forty, he says, "you never stained your face with walnut-juice nor rouge; you never wore gowns cut conspicuously low; your ornaments were a loveliness of mind and person that time could not tarnish." but the father had the knighthood, and he called his family to witness it at odd times and sundry. in rome, marcus seneca made head as he never did in cordova. there he was only marcus micawber: but here his memory feats won him the distinction that genius deserves. there is a grave question whether a verbal memory does not go with a very mediocre intellect, but marcus said this argument was put out by a man with no memory worth mentioning. rome was at her ripest flower--the petals were soon to loosen and flutter to the ground, but nobody thought so--they never do. everywhere the roman legions were victorious, and commerce sailed the seas in prosperous ships. power manifests itself in conspicuous waste, and the habit grows until conspicuous waste imagines itself power. conditions in rome had evolved our old friend, the sophist, the man who lived but to turn an epigram, to soulfully contemplate a lily, to sigh mysteriously, and cultivate the far-away look. these men were elocutionists who gesticulated in curves, and let the thought follow the attitude. they were not content to be themselves, but chased the airy, fairy fabric of a fancy and called it life. * * * * * the pretense and folly of roman society made the sophists possible--like all sects they ministered to a certain cast of mind. over against the sophists there were the stoics, the purest, noblest and sanest of all ancient cults, corresponding very closely to our quakers, before worth and wanamaker threw them a hawse and took them in tow. it is a tide of feeling produces a sect, not a belief: primitive christianity was a revulsion from phariseeism, and a william penn and a wan ann lee form the antithesis of an o'ervaulting, fantastic and soulless ritual. the father of seneca hung upon the favor of the sophists: he taught them mnemonics, rhetoric and elocution, and the fact that he was a courtly spaniard was in his favor--we dote on a foreign accent and relish the thing that comes from afar. marcus seneca was getting rich. he never perceived the absurdity of a life of make-believe; but his son, lucius seneca, heir to his mother's discerning mind, when nineteen years old forswore the sophists, and sided with the unpopular stoics, much to the chagrin of the father. seneca--let us call him so after this--wore the simple white robe of the stoics, without ornament or jewelry. he drank no wine, and ate no meat. vegetarianism comes in waves, and it is interesting to see that in an essay on the subject, seneca plagiarizes every argument put forth by colonel ernest crosby, even to mentioning a butcher as an "executioner," his goods as "dead corpses," and the customers as "cannibals." this kind of talk did not help the family peace, and the father spoke of disowning the son, if he did not cease affronting the best society. soon after, the emperor tiberius issued an edict banishing all "strange sects who fasted on feast-days, and otherwise displeased the gods." this was a suggestion for the benefit of the crosbyites. it is with a feeling of downright disappointment that we find seneca shortly appearing in an embroidered robe, and making a speech wherein the moderate use of wine is recommended, also the flesh of animals for those who think they need it. this, doubtless, is the same speech we, too, would have made had we been there; but we want our hero to be strong, and defy even an emperor, if he comes between the man and his right to eat what he wishes and wear what he listeth, and we blame him for not doing the things we never do. but seneca was getting on in the world--he had become a lawyer, and his sophist training was proving its worth. henry ward beecher, in reply to a young man who asked him if he advised the study of elocution, said, "elocution is all right, but you will have to forget it all before you become an orator." seneca was shedding his elocution, and losing himself in his work. a successful lawsuit had brought him before the public as a strong advocate. he was able to think on his feet. his voice was low, musical and effective, and the word, "dulcis," was applied to him as it was to his brother, gallio. possibly there was something in ol' marcus micawber's pedagogic schemes, after all! in moderating his stoic philosophy, seneca gives us the key to his character: the man wanted to be gentle and kind; he wished to affront neither his father nor society; so he compromised--he would please and placate. ease and luxury appealed to him, and yet his cool intellect stood off, and reviewing the proceeding pronounced it base. he succumbed to the strongest attraction, and attempted the feat of riding two horses at once. from his twentieth year, seneca dallied with the epigram, found solace in a sentence, and got a sweet, subtle joy by taking a thought captive. lucullus tells us of the fine intoxication of oratory, but neither opium nor oratory imparts a finer thrill than successfully to drive a flock of clauses, and round up an idea, roping it in careless grace, with what my lord hamlet calls words, words, words. the early christian fathers spoke of him as "our seneca." his writings abound in the purest philosophy--often seemingly paraphrasing saint paul--and every argument for directness of speech, simplicity, manliness and moderation is put forth. his writings became the rage in rome: at feasts he read his essays on the ideal life, just as the disciples of tolstoy often travel by the gorge road, and give banquets in honor of the man who no longer attends one; or princely paid preachers glorify the man who said to his apostles, "take neither scrip nor purse." seneca was a combination of delsarte and emerson. he was as popular as henry irving, and as wise as thomas brackett reed. his writings were in demand; when he spoke in public, crowds hung upon his words, and the families of the great and powerful sent him their sons, hoping he would impart the secret of success. the world takes a man at the estimate he puts upon himself. seneca knew enough to hold himself high. honors came his way, and the wealth he acquired is tokened in those five hundred tables, inlaid with ivory, to which at times he invited his friends to feast. as a lawyer, he took his pick of cases, and rarely appeared, except on appeal, before the emperor. the poise of his manner, the surety of his argument, the gentle grace of his diction, caused him to be likened to julius cæsar. and this led straight to exile, and finally--death. to mediocrity, genius is unforgivable. * * * * * there are various statements to the effect that claudius was a mental defective, a sort of town fool, patronized by the nobles for their sport and jest. we are also told that he was made emperor by the pretorian guards, in a spirit of rollicking bravado. men too much abused must have some merit, or why should the pack bay so loudly? possibly it is true that, in the youth of claudius, his mother used to declare, when she wanted a strong comparison, "he is as big a fool as my son, claudius." but then the mother of wellington used exactly the same expression; and byron's mother had a way of referring to the son who was to rescue her from oblivion, and send her name down the corridors of time, as "that lame brat." claudius was a brother of the great germanicus, and was therefore an uncle of caligula. caligula was the worst ruler that rome ever had; and he was a brother of agrippina, mother of nero. this precious pair had a most noble and generous father, and their gentle mother was a fit mate for the great germanicus--these things are here inserted for the edification of folks who take stock in that pleasant fallacy, the law of heredity, and who gleefully chase the genealogical anise-seed trail. caligula happily passed out without an heir, and claudius, next of kin, put himself in the way of the pretorian guard, and was declared emperor. he was then fifty years old, a grass-widower--twice over--and on the lookout for a wife. he was neither wise nor great, nor was he very bad; he was kind--after dinner--and generous when rightly approached. canon farrar likened claudius to king james the first, who gave us our english bible. his comparison is worth quoting, not alone for the truth it contains, but because it is an involuntary paraphrase of the faultless literary style of the roman rhetors. says canon farrar: "both were learned, and both were eminently unwise. both were authors, and both were pedants. both delegated their highest powers to worthless favorites, and both enriched these favorites with such foolish liberality that they remained poor themselves. both of them, though of naturally good dispositions, were misled by selfishness into acts of cruelty; and both of them, though laborious in the discharge of duty, succeeded only in rendering royalty ridiculous. king james kept sir walter raleigh, the brightest intellect of his time, in prison; and claudius sent seneca, the greatest man in his kingdom, into exile." new-made kings sweep clean. the impulses of claudius were right and just, a truthful statement i here make in pleasant compliment to a brother author. the man was absent-minded, had much faith in others, and moved in the line of least resistance. like most students and authors, he was decidedly littery. he secured a divorce from one wife because she cleaned up his room in his absence so that he could never find anything; and the other wife got a divorce from him because he refused to go out evenings and scintillate in society--but this was before he was made emperor. god knows, people had their troubles then as now. to take this man who loved his slippers and easy-chair, and who was happy with a roll of papyrus, and plunge him into a seething pot of politics, not to mention matrimony, was refined cruelty. the matchmakers were busy, and soon claudius was married to messalina, the handsomest summer-girl in rome. for a short time he bore up bravely, and was filled with the wish to benefit and bless. one of his first acts was to recall julia and agrippina from exile, they having been sent away in a fit of jealous anger by their brother, the infamous caligula. julia was beautiful and intellectual, and she had a high regard for seneca. agrippina was beautiful and infamous, and pretended that she loved claudius. both men were undone. seneca's friendship for julia, as far as we know, was of a kind that did honor to both, but they made a too conspicuous pair of intellects. the fear and jealousy of claudius was aroused by his young and beautiful wife, who showed him that seneca, the courtly, was plotting for the throne, and in this ambition julia was a party. a charge of undue intimacy with julia, the beloved niece and ward of the emperor, was brought against seneca, and he was exiled to corsica. imagine edmund burke sent to saint helena, or john hay to the dry tortugas, and you get the idea. the sensitive nature of seneca did not bear up under exile as we would have wished. unlike victor hugo at guernsey, he was alone, and surrounded by savages. yet even victor hugo lifted up his voice in bitter complaint. seneca failed to anticipate that, in spite of the barrenness of corsica, it would some day produce a man who would jostle his roman cæsar for first place on history's page. at corsica, seneca produced some of his loftiest and best literature. exile and imprisonment are such favorable conditions for letters, having done so much for authorship, that the wonder is the expedient has fallen into practical disuse. banishment gave seneca an opportunity to put into execution some of the ideas he had so long expressed concerning the simple life, and certain it is that the experience was not without its benefits, and at times the grim humor of it all came to him. read the history of greek ostracism, and one can almost imagine that it was devised by the man's friends--a sort of heroic treatment prescribed by a great spiritual physician. personality repels as well as attracts: the people grow tired of hearing aristides called the just--he is exiled. for a few days there is a glad relief; then his friends begin to chant his praises--he is missed. people tell of all the noble, generous things he would do if he were only here. if he were only here! petitions are circulated for his return. the law's delay ensues, and this but increases desire. hate for the man has turned to pity, and pity turns to love, as starch turns to gluten. the man comes back, and is greeted with boughs and bays, with love and laurel. his homecoming is that of a conquering hero. if the supreme court were to issue an injunction requiring all husbands to separate themselves by at least a hundred miles from their wives, for several months in every year, it would cut down divorces ninety-five per cent, add greatly to domestic peace, render race-suicide impossible, and generally liberate millions of love vibrations that would otherwise lie dormant. * * * * * as an example of female depravity, valeria messalina was sister in crime to jezebel, bernice, drusilla, salome and herodias. damned by a dower of beauty, with men at her feet whenever she so ordered, her ambition knew no limit. this type of dictatorial womanhood starts out by making conquests of individual men, but the conquests of pretty women are rarely genuine. women hold no monopoly on duplicity, and there is a deep vein of hypocrisy in men that prompts their playing a part, and letting the woman use them. when the time is ripe, they toss her away as they do any other plaything, as omar suggests the potter tosses the luckless pots to hell. when julia and agrippina were recalled, the act was done without consulting messalina; and we can imagine her rage when these two women, as beautiful as herself, came back without her permission. messalina had never found favor in the eyes of seneca--he treated her with patronizing patience, as though she were a spoilt child. now that julia was back, messalina hatched the plot that struck them both. messalina insisted that the wealth of seneca should be confiscated. claudius at this rebelled. history is replete with instances of great men ruled by their barbers and coachmen. claudius left the affairs of state to narcissus, his private secretary; polybius, his literary helper; and pallas, his accountant. these men were all of lowly birth, and had all risen in the ranks from menial positions, and one of them at least had been sold as a slave, and afterward purchased his freedom. then there was felix, the ex-slave, another protege of claudius, who trembled when paul of tarsus told him a little wholesome truth. these men were all immensely rich, and once, when claudius complained of poverty, a bystander said, "you should go into partnership with a couple of your freedmen, and then your finances would be all right." the fact that narcissus, pallas and polybius constituted the real government is nothing against them, any more than it is to the discredit of certain irish refugees that they manage the municipal machinery of new york city--it merely proves the impotence of the men who have allowed the power to slip from their grasp, and ride as passengers when they should be at the throttle. messalina managed her husband by alternate cajolings and threats. he was proud of her saucy beauty, and it was pleasing to an old man's vanity to think that other people thought she loved him. she bore him two sons--by name, brittanicus and germanicus. a local wit of the day said, "it was kind of messalina to present her husband with these boys, otherwise he would never have had any claim on them." but the lines were tightening around messalina, and she herself was drawing the cords. she had put favorites in high places, banished enemies, and ordered the execution of certain people she did not like. narcissus and pallas gave her her own way, because they knew claudius must find her out for himself. they let her believe that she was the real power behind the throne. her ambitions grew--she herself would be ruler--she gave it out that claudius was insane. finally she decided that the time was right for a "coup de grace." claudius was absent from rome, and messalina wedded at high noon with young silius, her lover. she was led to believe that the army would back her up, and proclaim her son, brittanicus, emperor, in which case, she herself and silius would be the actual rulers. the wedding festivities were at their height, when the cry went up that claudius had returned, and was approaching to demand vengeance. narcissus, the wily, took up the shout, and panic-stricken, messalina fled for safety in one way and silius in another. narcissus followed the woman, adding to her drunken fright by telling her that claudius was close behind, and suggested that she kill herself before the wronged man should appear. a dagger was handed her, and she stabbed herself ineffectually in hysteric haste. the kind secretary then, with one plunge of his sword, completed the work so well begun. a truthful account of messalina's death was told to claudius while he was at dinner. he finished the meal without saying a word, gave a present to the messenger, and went about his business, asking no questions, and never again mentioned the matter. the fact is worthy of note that the name of messalina is never once mentioned by seneca. he pitied her vileness and villainy so much he could not hate her. he saw, with prophetic vision, what her end would be; and when her passing occurred, he was too great and lofty in spirit to manifest satisfaction. * * * * * scarcely had the funeral of messalina occurred, when there was a pretty scramble among the eligible to see who should solace the stricken widower. among other matrimonial candidates was agrippina, a beautiful widow, twenty-nine in june, rich in her own right, and with only a small encumbrance in the way of a ten-year-old boy, nero by name. agrippina was a niece of claudius, and such marriages were considered unnatural; but agrippina had subtly shown that, the deceased emperor being her brother, she already had a sort of claim on the throne, and her marriage with claudius would strengthen the state. then she marshaled her charms past claudius, in a phalanx and back, and so they were married. there was much pomp and ceremony at the wedding, and the high priest pronounced the magic words--i trust i use the right expression. very soon after her marriage, agrippina recalled seneca from exile. it was the infamous messalina who had disgraced him and sent him away, and for agrippina, the sister of julia, to bring him back, was regarded as a certificate of innocence, and a great diplomatic move for agrippina. when seneca returned, the whole city went out to meet him. it is not at all likely that seneca had a suspicion of the true character of agrippina, any more than claudius--which sort of tends to show the futility of philosophy. how could seneca read her true character when it had not really been formed? no one knows what he will do until he gets a good chance. it is unkind condition that keeps most of us where we belong. and even while the honeymoon--or should we say the harvest-moon?--was at full, seneca was made the legal guardian and tutor of nero, the son of the empress, and became a member of the royal household. this was done in gratitude, and to make amends, if possible, for the wrong of banishment inflicted upon the man by scandalously linking his name with that of the sister of the woman who was now first lady of the land. seneca was then forty-nine years of age. he had fifteen years of life yet before him, and was to gain much valuable experience, and get an insight into a side of existence he had not yet known. agrippina was born in cologne, which was called, in her honor, colonia agrippina, and now has been shortened to its present form. whenever you buy cologne, remember where the word came from. agrippina, from her very girlhood, had a thirst for adventure, and her aim was high. when fourteen, she married domitius, a roman noble, thirty years her senior. he was as worthless a rogue as ever wore out his physical capacity for sin in middle life, and filled his dying days with crimes that were only mental. he knew himself so well that when nero was born he declared that the issue of such a marriage could only breed a being who would ruin the state--a monster with his father's vices and his mother's insatiable ambition. agrippina was woman enough to hate this man with an utter detestation; but he was rich, and so she endured him for ten years, and then assisted nature in making him food for worms. the intensity of agrippina's nature might have been used for happy ends if the stream of her life had not been so early dammed and polluted. she loved her child with a clutching, feverish affection, and declared that he would some day rule rome. this was not really such a far-away dream, when we remember that her brother was then emperor and childless. her thought was more for her child than for herself, and her expectation was that he would succeed caligula. the persistency with which she told this ambition for her boy is both beautiful and pathetic. every mother sees her own life projected in her child, and within certain bounds this is right and well. glimpses of kindness and right intent are shown when agrippina recalled seneca, and when she became the mother of the motherless children of claudius. she publicly adopted these children, and for a time gave them every attention and advantage that was bestowed upon her own son. gibbon says for one woman to mother another woman's children is a diplomatic card often played, but gibbon sometimes quibbles. gradually the fierce desire of agrippina's heart began to manifest itself. she plotted and arranged that nero should marry octavia, the daughter of claudius. octavia was seven years older than nero, but the sooner the marriage could be brought about, the better--it would give her a double hold on the throne. to this end suitors for the hand of octavia were disgraced by false charges, and sent off into exile, and the same fate came to at least three young women who stood in the way. but the one real obstacle was claudius himself--he was sixty, and might be so absurd as to live to be eighty. locusta, a famous professional chemist, was employed, and the deed was done by agrippina serving the deadly dish herself. the servants carried claudius off to bed, thinking he was merely drunk, but he was to wake no more. burrus, the blunt and honest old soldier, captain of the pretorian guard, sided with agrippina; brittanicus, the son of claudius, was kept out of the way, and nero was proclaimed emperor. here seneca seems to have shown his good influence, and sent home a desire in the heart of agrippina to serve her people with moderation and justice. she had attained her ends: her son, a youth of fifteen, was emperor, and his guardian, the great and gentle seneca, the man of her own choosing, was the actual ruler. she was the sister of one emperor, wife of another, and now mother of a third--surely this was glory enough to satisfy one woman's ambition! then there came to rome the famed quinquennium neronis, when, for five years, peace and plenty smiled. it is a trite saying that men who can not manage their own finances can look after those of a nation, but seneca was a businessman who proved his ability to manage his own private affairs and also succeeded in managing the exchequer of a kingdom. during his reign, gladiatorial contests were relieved of their savage brutality, work was given to many, education became popular, and people said, "the age of augustus has returned." but the greatest men are not the greatest teachers. seneca's policy with his pupil, nero, was one of concession. a close study of the youth of nero reveals the same traits that outcrop in one-half the students at harvard--traits ill-becoming to grown-up men, but not at all alarming in youth. nero was self-willed and occasionally had tantrums--but a tantrum is only a little whirl-wind of misdirected energy. a tantrum is life plus--it is better far than stagnation, and usually works up into useful life, and sometimes into great art. we have some verses written by nero in his seventeenth year that show a good class b sophomoric touch. he danced, played in the theatricals, raced horses, fought dogs, twanged the harp, and exploited various other musical instruments. he wasn't nearly so bad as alcibiades, but his mother lavished on him her maudlin love, and allowed the fallacy to grow in his mind concerning the divinity that doth hedge a king. in fact, when he asked his mother about his real father, she hid the truth that his father was a rogue--perhaps to shield herself, for it is only a very great person who can tell the truth--and led him to believe his paternal parent was a god, and his birth miraculous. now, let such an idea get into the head of the average freshman and what will be the result? a woman can tell a full-grown man that he is the greatest thing that ever happened, and it does no special harm, for the man knows better than to go out on the street and proclaim it; but you tell a boy of eighteen such pleasing fallacies, and then have fawning courtiers back them up, and at the same time give the youth free access to the strong box, and it surely would be a miracle if he is not doubly damned, and quickly, too. agrippina would not allow the blunt old burrus to discipline her boy, and seneca's plan was one of concession--he loved peace. he hated to thwart the boy, because he knew that it would arouse the ire of the mother, whose love had run away with her commonsense. love is beautiful--soft, yielding, gentle love--but the common law of england upholds wife-beating as being justifiable and desirable on certain occasions. the real trouble was, the dam was out for agrippina and nero--there was no restraint for either. there was no one to teach them that the liberty of one man ends where the right of another begins. no more frightful condition for any man or woman can ever occur than this: to take away all responsibility. when socrates put the chesty alcibiades three points down, and jumped on his stomach with his knees, the youth had a month in bed, and after he got around again he possessed a most wholesome regard for his teacher. if burrus and seneca had applied brockway methods to agrippina and her saucy son, as they easily might, it would have made rome howl with delight, and saved the state as well as the individuals. julius cæsar, like lincoln, let everybody do as they wished, up to a certain point. but all realized that somewhere behind that dulcet voice and the gentle manner was a heart of flint and nerves of steel. no woman ever made julius cæsar dance to syncopated time, nor did a youth of eighteen ever successfully order him to take part in amateur theatricals on penalty. julius cæsar and seneca were both scholars, both were gentlemen and gentle men: their mental attitude was much the same, but one had a will of adamant, and the other moved in the line of least resistance. * * * * * gradually, nero evolved a petulance and impatience toward his mother and his tutor, all of which was quite a natural consequence of his education. every endeavor to restrain him was met with imprecations and curses. about then would have been a good time to apply heroic treatment, instead of halting fear and worshipful acquiescence. the raw stock for making a nero is in every school, and given the conditions, a tyrant-culture would be easy to evolve. the endeavor to make nero wed octavia caused a revulsion to occur in his heart toward her and her brother brittanicus. he feared that these two might combine and wrest from him the throne. locusta, the specialist, was again sent for and brittanicus was gathered to his fathers. soon after, nero fell into a deep infatuation for poppæ sabina, wife of otho, the most beautiful woman in rome. sabina refused to accept his advances so long as he was tied to his mother's apron-strings--i use the exact phrase of tacitus, so i trust no exceptions will be taken to the expression. nero came to believe that the tagging, nagging, mushy love of his mother was standing in the way of his advancement. he had come to know that agrippina had caused the death of claudius, and when she accused him of poisoning brittanicus, he said, "i learned the trick from my dear mother!" and honors were even. he knew the crafty quality of his mother's mind and grew to fear her. and fear and hate are one. to secure sabina he must sacrifice agrippina. he would be free. to poison her would not do--she was an expert in preventives. so nero, regardless of expense, bargained with anicetus, admiral of the fleet, to construct a ship so that, when certain bolts were withdrawn, the craft would sink and tell no tale. this was a bit of daring deviltry never before devised, and by turn, nero chuckled in glee and had cold sweats of fear as he congratulated himself on his astuteness. the boat was built and agrippina was enticed on board. the night of the excursion was calm, but the conspirators, fearing the chance might never come again, let go the canopy, loaded with lead, which was over the queen. it fell with a crash; and at the same time the bolts were withdrawn and the waters rushed in. several of the servants in attendance were killed by the fall of the awning, but agrippina and aceronia, a lady of quality, escaped from the debris only slightly hurt. aceronia, believing the ship was about to sink, called for help, saying, "i am agrippina." she erred slightly in her diplomacy, for she was at once struck on the head with an oar and killed. this gave agrippina a clew to the situation and she was silent. by a strange perversity, the royal scuttling patent would not work and the boat stubbornly refused to sink. agrippina got safely ashore and sent word to her son that there had been a terrible accident, but she was safe--the intent of her letter being to let him know that she understood the matter perfectly, and while she could not admire the job, it was so bungling, yet she would forgive him if he would not try it again. in wild consternation, nero sent for burrus and seneca. this was their first knowledge of the affair. they refused to act in either way, but burrus intimated that anicetus was the guilty party and should be held responsible. "for not completing the task?" said nero. "yes," said the blunt old soldier, and retired. anicetus was notified that the blame of the whole conspiracy was on him. a big crime, well carried out, is its own excuse for being; but failure, like unto genius, is unforgivable. anicetus was in disgrace, but only temporarily, for he towed the obstinate, telltale galley into deep water and sank her at dead of night. then with a few faithful followers he surrounded the villa where agrippina was resting, scattered her guard and confronted her with drawn sword. years before, a soothsayer had told her that her son would be emperor and that he would kill her. her answer was, "let them slay me, if he but reign." now she saw that death was nigh. she did not try to escape, nor did she plead for mercy, but cried, "plunge your sword through my womb, for it bore nero." and anicetus, with one blow, struck her dead. nero returned to naples to mourn his loss. from there he sent forth a lengthy message to the senate, recounting the accidental shipwreck, and telling how agrippina had plotted against his life, recounting her crimes in deprecatory, sophistical phrase. the document wound up by telling how she had tried to secure the throne for a paramour, and the truth coming to some o'erzealous friends of the state, they had arisen and taken her life. in rome there was a strong feeling that nero should not be allowed to return, but this message of explanation and promise, written by seneca, downed the opposition. the senate accepted the report, and nero, at twenty-two, found himself master of the world. yet what booted it when he was not master of himself! from this time on, the career of seneca was one of contumely, suffering and disgrace. this was to endure for six years, when kindly death was then to set him free. the mutual, guilty knowledge of a great crime breeds loathing and contempt. history contains many such instances where the subject had knowledge of the sovereign's sins, and the sovereign found no rest until the man who knew was beneath the sod. seneca knew nero as only his maker knew him. after the first spasm of exultation in being allowed to return to rome, a jealous dread of seneca came over the guilty monarch. seneca hoped against hope that, now that nero's wild oats were sown and the crop destroyed, all would be well. the past should be buried and remembrance of it sunk deep in oblivion. but nero feared seneca might expose his worthlessness and the philosopher himself take the reins. in this nero did not know his man: seneca's love was literary--political power to him was transient and not worth while. it became known that the apology to the senate was the work of seneca, and nero, who wanted the world to think that all his speeches and addresses were his own, got it firmly fixed in his head he would not be happy until seneca was out of the way. sabina said he was no longer a boy, and should not be tagged and dictated to by his old teacher. seneca, seeing what was coming, offered to give his entire property to the state and retire. nero would not have it so--he feared seneca would retire only to come back with an army. a cordon of spies was put around seneca's house--he was practically a prisoner. attempts were made to poison him, but he ate only fruit, and bread made by his wife, paulina, and drank no water except from running streams. finally a charge of conspiracy was fastened upon him, and nero ordered him to die by his own hand. his wife was determined to go with him, and one stroke severed the veins of both. the beautiful sabina realized her hopes--she divorced her husband, and married the emperor of rome. she died from a sudden kick given her by the booted foot of her liege. three years after the death of seneca, nero passed hence by the same route, killing himself to escape the fury of the pretorian guard. and so ended the julian line, none of whom, except the first, was a julian. * * * * * from the death of augustus on to the time of nero there was for rome a steady tide of disintegration. the emperor was the head of the church, and he usually encouraged the idea that he was something different from common men--that his mission was from on high and that he should be worshiped. gibbon, making a free translation from seneca, says, "religion was regarded by the common people as true, by the philosophers as false, and by the rulers as useful." and saint augustine, using the same smoothly polished style, says, in reference to a roman senator, "he worshiped what he blamed, he did what he refuted, he adored that with which he found fault." the sentence is seneca's, and when he wrote it he doubtless had himself in mind, for in spite of his stoic philosophy the life of luxury lured him, and although he sang the praises of poverty he charged a goodly sum for so doing, and the nobles who listened to him doubtless found a vicarious atonement by applauding him as he played to the gallery gods of their self-esteem, like rich ladies who go a-slumming mix in with the poor on an equality, and then hasten home to dress for dinner. * * * * * seneca was one of the purest and loftiest intellects the world has ever known. canon farrar calls him "a seeker after god," and has printed parallel passages from saint paul and seneca which, for many, seem to show that the men were in communication with each other. every ethical maxim of christianity was expressed by this "noble pagan," and his influence was always directed toward that which he thought was right. his mistakes were all in the line of infirmities of the will. voltaire calls him, "the father of all those who wear shovel hats," and in another place refers to him as an "amateur ascetic," but in this the author of the philosophical dictionary pays seneca the indirect compliment of regarding him as a christian. renan says, "seneca shines out like a great white star through a rift of clouds on a night of darkness." the wonder is not that seneca at times lapsed from his high estate and manifested his sophist training, but that to the day of his death he saw the truth with unblinking eyes and held the ideal firmly in his heart. aristotle happiness itself is sufficient excuse. beautiful things are right and true; so beautiful actions are those pleasing to the gods. wise men have an inward sense of what is beautiful, and the highest wisdom is to trust this intuition and be guided by it. the answer to the last appeal of what is right lies within a man's own breast. trust thyself. --_ethics of aristotle_ [illustration: aristotle] the sublime porte recently issued a request to the american bible society, asking that references to macedonia be omitted from all bibles circulated in turkey or turkish provinces. the argument of his sublimity is that the macedonian cry, "come over and help us!" puts him and his people in a bad light. he ends his most courteous petition by saying, "the land that produced a philip, an alexander the great and an aristotle, and that today has citizens who are the equal of these, needs nothing from our dear brothers, the americans, but to be let alone." as to the statement that macedonia today has citizens who are the equals of philip, alexander and aristotle, the proposition, probably, is based on the confession of the citizens themselves, and therefore may be truth. great men are only great comparatively. it is the stupidity of the many that allows one man to bestride the narrow world like a colossus. in the time of alexander and aristotle there wasn't so much competition as now, so perhaps what we take to be lack of humor on the part of the sublime porte may have a basis in fact. aristotle was born three hundred eighty-four b.c., at the village of stagira in the mountains of macedonia. king amyntas used to live at stagira several months in the year and hunt the wild hogs that fed on the acorns which grew in the gorges and valleys. mountain climbing and hunting was dangerous sport, and it was well to have a surgeon attached to the royal party, so the father of aristotle served in that capacity. no doubt, though, but the whole outfit was decidedly barbaric, even including the doctor's little son "aristo," who refused to be left behind. the child's mother had died years before, and boys without mothers are apt to manage their fathers. and so aristo was allowed to trot along by his father's side, carrying a formidable bow, which he himself had made, with a quiver of arrows at his back. those were great times when the king came to stagira! when the king went back to the capital everybody received presents, and the good doctor, by some chance, was treated best of all, and little aristo came in for the finest bow that ever was, all tipped with silver and eagle-feathers. but the bow did not bring good luck, for soon after, the boy's father was caught in an avalanche of sliding stone and crushed to death. aristo was taken in charge by proxenus, a near kinsman. the lad was so active at climbing, so full of life and energy and good spirits, that when the king came the next year to stagira, he asked for aristo. with the king was his son philip, a lad about the age of aristo, but not so tall nor so active. the boys became fast friends, and once when a stranger saw them together he complimented the king on his fine, intelligent boys, and the king had to explain, "the other boy is mine--but i wish they both were." aristo knew where the wild boars fed in gulches, and where the stunted oaks grew close and thick. higher up in the mountains there were bears, which occasionally came down and made the wild pigs scamper. you could always tell when the bears were around, for then the little pigs would run out into the open. the bears had a liking for little pigs, and the bears had a liking for the honey in the bee-trees, too. aristo could find the bee-trees better than the bears--all you had to do was to watch the flight of the bees as they left the clover. then there were deer--you could see their tracks any time around the mountain marshes where the springs gushed forth and the watercress grew lush. still higher up the mountains, beyond where bears ever traveled, there were mountain-sheep, and still higher up were goats. the goats were so wild that hardly any one but aristo had ever seen them, but he knew they were there. the king was delighted to have such a lad as companion for his son, and insisted that he should go back to the capital with them and become a member of the court. not he--there were other ambitions. he wanted to go to athens and study at the school of plato--plato, the pupil of the great socrates. the king laughed--he had never heard of plato. that a youth should refuse to become part of the macedonian court, preferring the company of an unknown school-master, was amusing--he laughed. the next year when the king came back to stagira, aristo was still there. "and you haven't gone to athens yet?" said the king. "no, but i am going," was the firm reply. "we will send him," said the king to proxenus, aristo's guardian. and so we find aristo, aged seventeen, tall and straight and bronzed, starting off for athens, his worldly goods rolled up in a bearskin, tied about with thongs. there is a legend to the effect that philip went with aristo, and that for a time they were together at plato's school. but, anyway, philip did not remain long. aristo--or aristotle, we had better call him--remained with plato just twenty years. at plato's school aristotle was called by the boys, "the stagirite," a name that was to last him through life--and longer. in winter he wore his bearskin, caught over one shoulder, for a robe, and his mountain grace and native beauty of mind and body must have been a joy to plato from the first. such a youth could not be overlooked. to him that hath shall be given. the pupil that wants to learn is the teacher's favorite--which is just as it should not be. plato proved his humanity by giving his all to the young mountaineer. plato was then a little over sixty years of age--about the same age that socrates was when plato became his pupil. but the years had touched plato lightly--unlike socrates, he had endured no thracian winters in bare feet, neither had he lived on cold snacks picked up here and there, as providence provided. plato was a bachelor. he still wore the purple robe, proud, dignified, yet gentle, and his back was straight as that of a youth. lowell once said, "when i hear plato's name mentioned, i always think of george william curtis--a combination of pride and intellect, a man's strength fused with a woman's gentleness." plato was an aristocrat. he accepted only such pupils as he invited, or those that were sent by royalty. like franz liszt, he charged no tuition, which plan, by the way, is a good scheme for getting more money than could otherwise be obtained, although no such selfish charge should be brought against either plato or liszt. yet every benefit must be paid for, and whether you use the word fee or honorarium, matters little. i hear there be lecturers who accept invitations to banquets and accept an honorarium mysteriously placed on the mantel, when they would scorn a fee. plato's garden school, where the pupils reclined under the trees on marble benches, and read and talked, or listened to lectures by the master, was almost an ideal place. not the ideal for us, because we believe that the mental and the manual must go hand in hand. the world of intellect should not be separated from the world of work. it was too much to expect that in a time when slavery was everywhere, plato would see the fallacy of having one set of men to do the thinking, and another do the work. we haven't got far from that yet; only free men can see the whole truth, and a free man is one who lives in a country where there are no slaves. to own slaves is to be one, and to live in a land of slavery is to share in the bondage--a partaker in the infamy and the profits. plato and aristotle became fast friends--comrades. with thinking men years do not count--only those grow old who think by proxy. plato had no sons after the flesh, and the love of his heart went out to the stagirite: in him he saw his own life projected. when aristotle had turned twenty he was acquainted with all the leading thinkers of his time; he read constantly, wrote, studied and conversed. the little property his father left had come to him; the king of macedon sent him presents; and he taught various pupils from wealthy families--finances were easy. but success did not spoil him. the brightest scholars do not make the greatest success in life, because alma mater usually catches them for teachers. sometimes this is well, but more often it is not. plato would not hear of aristotle's leaving him, and so he remained, the chief ornament and practical leader of the school. he became rich, owned the largest private library at athens, and was universally regarded as the most learned man of his time. in many ways he had surpassed plato. he delved into natural history, collected plants, rocks, animals, and made studies of the practical workings of economic schemes. he sought to divest the platonic teaching of its poetry, discarded rhetoric, and tried to get at the simple truth of all subjects. toward the last of plato's career this repudiation by aristotle of poetry, rhetoric, elocution and the polite accomplishments caused a schism to break out in the garden school. plato's head was in the clouds at times; aristotle's was, too, but his feet were always on the earth. when plato died, aristotle was his natural successor as leader of the school, but there was opposition to him, both on account of his sturdy, independent ways and because he was a foreigner. he left athens to become a member of the court of hermias, a former pupil, now king of atarneus. he remained here long enough to marry the niece of his patron, and doubtless saw himself settled for life--a kingly crown within his reach should his student-sovereign pass away. and the royal friend did pass away, by the dagger's route. as life-insurance risks i am told that kings have to pay double premium. revolution broke out, and as aristotle was debating in his mind what course to pursue, a messenger with soldiers arrived from king philip of macedon, offering safe convoy, enclosing transportation, and asking that aristotle come and take charge of the education of his son, alexander, aged thirteen. aristotle did not wait to parley: he accepted the invitation. horses were saddled, camels packed and that night, before the moon arose, the cavalcade silently moved out into the desert. * * * * * the offer that had been made twenty-four years before, by philip's father, was now accepted. aristotle was forty-two years old, in the prime of his power. time had tempered his passions, but not subdued his zest in life. he had the curious, receptive, alert and eager mind of a child. his intellect was at its ripest and best. he was a lover of animals, and all outdoor life appealed to him as it does to a growing boy. he was a daring horseman, and we hear of his riding off into the desert and sleeping on the sands, his horse untethered watching over him. aristotle was the first man to make a scientific study of the horse, and with the help of alexander he set up a skeleton, fastening the bones in place, to the mighty astonishment of the natives, who mistook the feat for an attempt to make a living animal; and when the beast was not at last saddled and bridled there were subdued chuckles of satisfaction among the "hoi polloi" at the failure of the scheme, and murmurs of "i told you so!" eighteen hundred years were to pass before another man was to take up the horse as a serious scientific study; and this was leonardo da vinci, a man in many ways very much like aristotle. the distinguishing feature in these men--the thing that differentiates them from other men--was the great outpouring sympathy with every living creature. everything they saw was related to themselves--it came very close to them--they wanted to know more about it. this is essentially the child-mind, and the calamity of life is to lose it. leonardo became interested in aristotle's essay on the horse, and continued the subject further, dissecting the animal in minutest detail and illustrating his discoveries with painstaking drawings. his work is so complete and exhaustive that nobody nowadays has time to more than read the title-page. leonardo's bent was natural science, and his first attempts at drawing were done to illustrate his books. art was beautiful, of course--it brought in an income, made friends and brought him close to people who saw nothing unless you made a picture of it. he made pictures for recreation and to amuse folks, and his threat to put the peeping prior into the "last supper," posed as judas, revealed his contempt for the person to whom a picture was just a picture. the marvel to leonardo was the mind that could imagine, the hand that could execute, and the soul that could see. and the curious part is that leonardo lives for us through his play and not through his serious work. his science has been superseded, but his art is immortal. this expectant mental attitude, this attitude of worship, belongs to all great scientists. the man divines the thing first and then looks for it, just as the herschels knew where the star ought to be and then patiently waited for it. the bishop of london said that if darwin had spent one-half as much time in reading his bible as in studying earthworms, he would have really benefited the world, and saved his soul alive. to walt whitman, a hair on the back of his hand was just as curious and wonderful as the stars in the sky, or god's revelation to man through a printed book. aristotle loved animals as a boy loves them--his house was a regular menagerie of pets, and into this world of life alexander was very early introduced. we hear of young alexander breaking the wild horse, bucephalus, and beyond a doubt aristotle was seated on the top rail of the paddock when he threw the lariat. aristotle and his pupil had the first circus of which we know, and they also inaugurated the first zoological garden mentioned in history, barring noah, of course. so much was alexander bound up in this menagerie, and in his old teacher as well, that in after-life, in all of his travels, he was continually sending back to aristotle specimens of every sort of bird, beast and fish to be found in the countries through which he traveled. when philip was laid low by the assassin's thrust, it was aristotle who backed up alexander, aged twenty--but a man--in his prompt suppression of the revolution. the will that had been used to subdue man-eating stallions and to train wild animals, now came in to repress riot, and the systematic classification of things was a preparation for the forming of an army out of a mob. aristotle said, "an army is a huge animal with a million claws--it must have only one brain, and that the commander's." alexander gave credit again and again to aristotle for those elements in his character that went to make up success: steadiness of purpose, self-reliance, systematic effort, mathematical calculation, attention to details, and a broad and generous policy that sees the end. when aristotle argued with philip, years before, that horse-breaking should be included in the educational curriculum of all young men, he evidently divined football and was endeavoring to supplant it. * * * * * i think history has been a trifle severe on alexander. he was elected captain-general of greece, and ordered to repel the persian invasion. and he did the business once for all. war is not all fighting--providence is on the side of the strongest commissariat. alexander had to train, arm, clothe and feed a million men, and march them long miles across a desert country. the real foe of a man is in his own heart, and the foe of an army is in its own camp--disease takes more prisoners than the enemy. fever sniped more of our boys in blue than did the hostile filipinos. alexander's losses were principally from men slain in battle; from this, i take it that alexander knew a deal of sanitary science, and had a knowledge of practical mathematics, in order to systematize that mob of restless, turbulent helots. we hear of aristotle cautioning him that safety lies in keeping his men busy--they must not have too much time to think, otherwise mutiny is to be feared. still, they must not be over-worked, or they will be in no condition to fight when the eventful time occurs. and we are amazed to see this: "do not let your men drink out of stagnant pools--athenians, city-born, know no better. and when you carry water on the desert marches, it should be first boiled to prevent its getting sour." concerning the jews, alexander writes to his teacher and says, "they are apt to be in sullen rebellion against their governors, receiving orders only from their high priests, and this leads to severe measures, which are construed as persecution"; all of which might have been written yesterday by the czar in a message to the hague convention. alexander captured the east, and was taken captive by the east. like the male bee that never lives to tell the tale of its wooing, he succeeded and died. yet he vitalized all asia with the seeds of greek philosophy, turned back the hungry barbaric tide, and made a new map of the eastern world. he built far more cities than he destroyed. he set andrew carnegie an example at alexandria, such as the world had never up to that time seen. at the entrance to the harbor of the same city he erected a lighthouse, surpassing far the one at minot's ledge, or race rock. this structure endured for two centuries, and when at last wind and weather had their way, there was no hopkinson smith who could erect another. at thebes, alexander paid a compliment to letters, by destroying every building in the city except the house of the poet, pindar. at corinth, when the great, the wise, the noble, came to pay homage, one great man did not appear. in vain did alexander look for his card among all those handed in at the door--diogenes, the philosopher, oft quoted by aristotle, was not to be seen. alexander went out to hunt him up, and found him sunning himself, propped up against the wall in the public square, busy doing nothing. the philosopher did not arise to greet the conqueror; he did not even offer a nod of recognition. "i am alexander--is there not something i can do for you?" modestly asked the descendant of hercules. "just stand out from between me and the sun," replied the philosopher, and went on with his meditations. alexander enjoyed the reply so much that he said to his companions, and afterward wrote to aristotle, "if i were not alexander, i would be diogenes," and thus did strenuosity pay its tribute to self-sufficiency. * * * * * aristotle might have assumed important affairs of state, but practical politics were not to his liking. "what aristotle is in the world of thought i will be in the world of action," said alexander. on all of his journeys alexander found time to keep in touch with his old teacher at home; and we find the ruler of asia voicing that old request, "send me something to read," and again, "i live alone with my thoughts, amidst a throng of men, but without companions." plutarch gives a copy of a letter sent by alexander wherein aristotle is chided for publishing his lecture on oratory. "now all the world will know what formerly belonged to you and me alone," plaintively cries the young man who sighed for more worlds to conquer, and therein shows he was the victim of a fallacy that will never die--the idea that truth can be embodied in a book. when will we ever learn that inspired books demand inspired readers! there are no secrets. a book may stimulate thought, but it can never impart it. aristotle wrote out the laws of oratory. "alas!" groans alexander, "everybody will turn orator now." but he was wrong, because oratory and the laws of oratory are totally different things. a boston man of excellent parts has just recently given out the sixteen perfective laws of oratory, and the nineteen steps in evolution. the real truth is, there are fifty-seven varieties of artistic vagaries, and all are valuable to the man who evolves them--they serve him as a scaffolding whereby he builds thought. but woe betide alexander and all rareripe bostonians who mistake the scaffolding for the edifice. there are no laws of art. a man evolves first, and builds his laws afterward. the style is the man, and a great man, full of the spirit, will express himself in his own way. bach ignored all the laws of harmony made before his day and set down new ones--and these marked his limitations, that was all. beethoven upset all these, and wagner succeeded by breaking most of beethoven's rules. and now comes grieg, and writes harmonious discords that wagner said were impossible, and still it is music, for by it we are transported on the wings of song and uplifted to the stars. the individual soul striving for expression ignores all man-made laws. truth is that which serves us best in expressing our lives. a rotting log is truth to a bed of violets, while sand is truth to a cactus. but when the violet writes a book on "expression as i have found it," making laws for the evolution of beautiful blossoms, it leaves the century plant out of its equation, or else swears, i' faith, that a cactus is not a flower, and that a night-blooming cereus is a disordered thought from a madman's brain. and when the proud and lofty cactus writes a book it never mentions violets, because it has never stooped to seek them. art is the blossoming of the soul. we can not make the plant blossom--all we can do is to comply with the conditions of growth. we can supply the sunshine, moisture and aliment, and god does the rest. in teaching, he only is successful who supplies the conditions of growth--that is all there is of the science of pedagogics, which is not a science, and if it ever becomes one, it will be the science of letting alone, and not a scheme of interference. just so long as some of the greatest men are those who have broken through pedagogic fancy and escaped, succeeding by breaking every rule of pedagogy, as wagner discarded every law of harmony, there will be no such thing as a science of education. recently i read aristotle's essays on rhetoric and oratory, and i was pained to see how i had been plagiarized by this man who wrote three hundred years before christ. aristotle used charts in teaching and indicated the mean by a straight horizontal line, and the extreme by an upright dash. he says: "from one extreme the mean looks extreme, and from another extreme the mean looks small--it all depends upon your point of view. beware of jumping to conclusions, for beside the appearance you must look within and see from what vantage-ground you gain the conclusions. all truth is relative, and none can be final to a man six feet high, who stands on the ground, who can walk but forty miles at a stretch, who needs four meals a day and one-third of his time for sleep. a loss of sleep, or loss of a meal, or a meal too much, will disarrange his point of view, and change his opinions," and thus do we see that a belief in "eternal punishment" is a mere matter of indigestion. a certain bishop, we have seen, experienced a regret that darwin expended so much time on earthworms; and we might also express regret that aristotle did not spend more. as long as he confined himself to earth, he was eminently sure and right: he was really the first man who ever used his eyes. but when he quit the earth, and began to speculate about the condition of souls before they are clothed with bodies, or what becomes of them after they discard the body, or the nature of god, he shows that he knew no more than we. that is to say, he knew no more than the barbarians who preceded him. he attempted to grasp ideas which herbert spencer pigeonholes forever as the unknowable; and in some of his endeavors to make plain the unknowable, aristotle strains language to the breaking-point--the net bursts and all of his fish go free. here is an aristotelian proposition, expressed by hegel to make lucid a thing nobody comprehends: "essential being as being that meditates with itself, with itself by the negativity of itself, is relative to itself only as it is relative to another; that is, immediate only as something posited and meditated." it gives one a slight shock to hear him speak of headache being caused by wind on the brain, or powdered grasshopper-wings being a cure for gout, but when he calls the heart a pump that forces the blood to the extremities, we see that he anticipates harvey, although more than two thousand years of night lie between them. some of aristotle reads about like this geometrical domestic equation: _definitions:_ all boarding-houses are the same boarding-houses. boarders in the same boarding-house, and on the same flat, are equal to one another. a single room is that which hath no parts and no magnitude. the landlady of the boarding-house is a parallelogram--that is, an oblong figure that can not be described, and is equal to anything. a wrangle is the disinclination to each other of two boarders that meet together, but are not on the same floor. all the other rooms being taken, a single room is a double room. _postulates and propositions:_ a pie may be produced any number of times. the landlady may be reduced to her lowest terms by a series of propositions. a bee-line is the shortest distance between the phalanstery and by allen's. the clothes of a boarding-house bed stretched both ways will not meet. any two meals at a boarding-house are together less than one meal at the phalanstery. on the same bill and on the same side of it there should not be two charges for the same thing. if there be two boarders on the same floor, and the amount of the side of the one be equal to the amount of the side of the other, and the wrangle between the one boarder and the landlady be equal to the wrangle between the landlady and the other boarder, then shall the weekly bills of the two boarders be equal. for, if not, let one bill be the greater, then the other bill is less than it might have been, which is absurd. therefore the bills are equal. _quod erat demonstrandum._ * * * * * the business of the old philosophers was to philosophize. to philosophize as a business is to miss the highest philosophy. to do a certain amount of useful work every day, and not trouble about either the past or the future, is the highest wisdom. the man who drags the past behind him, and dives into the future, spreads the present out thin. therein lies the bane of most religions. a man goes out into the woods to study the birds: he walks and walks and walks and sees no birds. but just let him sit down on a log and wait, and lo! the branches are full of song. those who pursue culture never catch up with her. culture takes alarm at pursuit and avoids the stealthy pounce. culture is a woman, and a certain amount of indifference wins her. ardent wooing will not secure either wisdom or a woman--except in the case where a woman marries a man to get rid of him, and then he really does not get the woman--he only secures her husk. and the husks of culture are pedantry and sciolism. the highest philosophy of the future will consist in doing each day that which is most useful. talking about it will be quite incidental and secondary. * * * * * after alexander had completed his little task of conquering the world, it was his intention to sit down and improve his mind. he was going back to greece to complete the work pericles had so well begun. to this end aristotle had left macedonia and established his peripatetic school at athens. plato was exclusive, and taught in the garden with its high walls. aristotle taught in the "peripatos," or porch of the lyceum, and his classes were for all who wished to attend. socrates was really the first peripatetic philosopher, but he was a roustabout. nothing sanctifies like death--and now socrates had become respectable, and his methods were to be made legal and legitimate. socrates discovered the principle of human liberty; he taught the rights of the individual, and as these threatened to interfere with the state, the politicians got alarmed and put him to death. plato, much more cautious, wrote his "republic," wherein everything is subordinated for the good of the state, and the individual is but a cog in a most perfectly lubricated machine. aristotle saw that socrates was nearer right than plato--sin is the expression of individuality and is not wholly bad--the state is made up of individuals, and if you suppress the thinking-power of the individual, you will get a weak and effeminate body politic; there will be none to govern. the whole fabric will break down of its own weight. a man must have the privilege of making a fool of himself--within proper bounds, of course. to that end learning must be for all, and liberty both to listen and to teach should be the privilege of every man. this is a problem that boston has before it today: shall free speech be allowed on the common? william morris tried it in trafalgar square, to his sorrow; but in hyde park, if you think you have a message, london will let you give it. but this is not considered good form, and the "best society" listen to no speeches in the park. however, there are signs that aristotle's outdoor school may come back. phillips brooks tried outdoor preaching, and if his health had not failed, he might have popularized it. it only wants a man who is big enough to inaugurate it. aristotle had various helpers, and arranged to give his lectures and conferences daily in certain porches or promenades. these lectures covered the whole range of human thought--logic, rhetoric, oratory, physics, ethics, politics, esthetics, and physical culture. these outdoor talks were called exoteric, and there gradually grew up esoteric lessons, which were for the rich or luxurious and the dainty. and there being money in the esoteric lessons, these gradually took the place of the exoteric, and so we get the genesis of our modern private school or college, where we send our children to be taught great things by great men, for a consideration. will the exoteric, peripatetic school come back? i think so. i believe that university education will soon be free to every boy and girl in america, and this without going far from home. esoteric education is always more or less of a sham. our public-school system is purely exoteric, only we stop too soon. we also give our teachers too much work and too little pay. stop building warships, and use the money to double the teachers' salaries, making the profession respectable, raise the standard of efficiency, and the free university with the old greek lyceum will be here. america must do this--the old world can't. we have the money, and we have the men and the women; all that is needed is the desire, and this is fast awakening. * * * * * when alexander died, of acute success, aged thirty-two, aristotle's sustaining prop was gone. the athenians never thought much of the macedonians--not much more than saint paul did, he having tried to convert both and failed. athens was jealous of the power of alexander: that a provincial should thus rule the mother-country was unforgivable. it was as if a canadian should make himself king of england! everybody knew that aristotle had been the tutor of alexander, and that they were close friends. and that a macedonian should be the chief school-teacher in athens was an affront. the very greatness of the man was his offense: athens had none to match him, and the world has never since matched him, either. how to get rid of the macedonian philosopher was the question. and so our old friend, heresy, comes in again. a poem was found, written by aristotle many years before, on the death of his friend, king hermias, wherein apollo was disrespectfully mentioned. it was the old charge against socrates come back--the hemlock was brewing. but life was sweet to aristotle; he chose discretion to valor, and fled to his country home at chalcis in euboea. the humiliation of being driven from his work, and the sudden change from active life to exile, undermined his strength, and he died in a year, aged sixty-two. in morals the world has added nothing new to the philosophy of aristotle: gentleness, consideration, moderation, mutual helpfulness, and the principle that one man's privileges end where another man's rights begin--these make up the sum. and on them, all authorities agree, and have for twenty-five hundred years. the family relations of aristotle were most exemplary. the unseemly wrangles of philip and his wife were never repeated in the home of aristotle. yet we will have to offer this fact in the interests of stirpiculture: the inconstant philip and the termagant olympias brought into the world alexander; whereas the sons of aristotle lived their day and died, without making a ripple on the surface of history. as in the scientific study of the horse, no progress was made from the time of aristotle to that of leonardo, so hegel says there was no advancement in philosophy from the time of aristotle to that of spinoza. eusebius called aristotle "nature's private secretary." dante spoke of him as the "master of those who know." sir william hamilton said, "in the range of his powers and perceptions, only leonardo can be compared with him." marcus aurelius we are made for co-operation, like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the rows of the upper and lower teeth. to act against one another then is contrary to nature, and it is acting against one another to be vexed and turn away. --_the meditations_ [illustration: marcus aurelius] annius verus was one of the great men of rome. he had been a soldier, governor of provinces, judge, senator and consul. sixty years had passed over his head and whitened his hair, but the lines of care that were on his fine face ten years before had now given way to a cherubic double chin, and his complexion was ruddy as a baby's. the entire atmosphere of the man was one of gentleness, repose and kindly good-will. annius verus was grateful to the gods, for the years had brought him much good fortune, and better still, knowledge. "being old i shall know ... the last of life for which the first was made!" religion isn't a thing outside of a man, taught by priests out of a book. religion is in the heart of man, and its chief quality is resignation and a grateful spirit. annius verus was religious in the best sense, and his life was peaceful and happy. and surely annius verus should have been content--he was a roman consul, rich, powerful, honored by the wisest and best men in rome, who considered it a privilege to come and dine at his table. his villa was on mount coelius, a suburb of rome. the house was surrounded by a big stone wall enclosing a tract of about ten acres, where grew citron, orange and fig trees, and giant cedars of lebanon lifted their branches to the clouds. at least it seemed to little marcus, grandson of the consul, as if they reached the clouds. there was a long ladder running up one of these big cedar trees to a platform or "crow's-nest" nearly a hundred feet from the ground. no boy was allowed to climb up there until he was twelve years old, and when marcus was ten, time got stuck, he thought, and refused to budge. but this was only little marcus' idea, for he finally got to be twelve years old, and then he climbed the long ladder to the lookout in the tree and looked down on the eternal city that lay below in the valley and stretched away over the seven hills. often the boy would take a book and climb up there to read; and when the good grandfather missed him, he knew where to look, and standing under the tree the old man would call: "come down, marcus, come down and kiss your old grandfather--it is lonesome down here! come down and read to your grandfather who loves his little marcus!" such an appeal as this was irresistible, and the boy, slight, slim and agile, would clamber over the side of the crow's-nest and down the ladder to the outstretched arms. the boy's father had died when he was only three months old, and the grandfather had adopted the child as his heir, and brought lucilla, the widowed mother, and her baby to live in his house. years before, the consul's wife had passed away, and faustina, his daughter, became the lady of the house. lucilla and faustina didn't get along very well together--no house is big enough for two families, some man has said. lucilla was gentle, gracious, spiritual, modest and refined; faustina was beautiful and not without intellect, but she was proud, domineering and fond of admiration. but be it said to the credit of the good old consul, he was able to suffuse the whole place with love, and even if faustina had a tantrum now and then, it did not last long. there were always visitors in the household--soldiers home on furloughs, governors on vacations, lawyers who came to consult the wise and judicial verus. one visitor of note was a man by the name of aurelius antoninus. he was about forty years old as marcus first remembered him--tall and straight, with a full, dark beard, and short, curly hair touched with gray. he was a quiet, self-contained man, and at first little marcus was a bit afraid of him. aurelius antoninus had been a soldier, but he showed such a studious mind, and was so intent on doing the right thing that he was made an under-secretary, then private secretary to the emperor, and finally he had been sent away to govern a rebellious province, and put down mutiny by wise diplomacy instead of by force of arms. aurelius antoninus was inclined towards the stoics, although he didn't talk much about it. he usually ate but two meals a day, worked with the servants, and wrote this in his diary, "men are made for each other: even the inferior for the superior, and these for the sake of one another." this philosophy of the stoics rather appealed to the widow lucilla, also, and she read zeno with aurelius antoninus. verus did not object to it--he had been a soldier and knew the advantages of doing without things and of being able to make the things you needed, and of living simply and being plain and direct in all your acts and speech. but faustina laughed at it all--to her it was preposterous that one should wear plain clothing and no jewelry when he could buy the costliest and best; and why one should eschew wine and meat and live on brown bread and fruit and cold water, when he could just as well have spiced and costly dishes--all this was clear beyond her. various fetes and banquets were given by faustina, to which the young nobles were invited. she was a beautiful woman and never for a moment forgot it, and by some mistake or accident she got herself betrothed to three men at the same time. two of these fought a duel and one was killed. the third man looked on and hoped both would be killed, for then he could have the woman. faustina got this third man to challenge the survivor, and then by one of those strange somersaults of fate the unexpected occurred. faustina and aurelius antoninus were married. it was a most queer mismating, for the man was plain, sincere and honorable, and she was almost everything else. yet she had wit and she had beauty, and aurelius had been living in the desert so long he imagined that all women were gentle and good. the consul was very glad to unite his house with so fine and excellent a man as aurelius; lucilla cried for two days and more and little marcus cried because his mother did, and neither cried because faustina had gone away. but grief is transient. in a little over a year antoninus and faustina came back to rome, and brought with them a little girl baby, faustina second. marcus was very much interested in this baby, and made great plans about how they would play together when she got older. among other visitors at the house of the old consul often came the emperor himself. hadrian and verus were spaniards and had been soldiers together, and now hadrian often liked to get away from the cares of state, and in the evening hide himself from the office-seekers and flattering parasites, in the quiet villa on mount coelius--he liked it here even better than at his own wonderful gardens at tivoli. and little marcus wasn't afraid of him, either. marcus would sit on the emperor's knee and listen to tales about hunting wild boars and bears, or men as wild. then they would play tag or i-spy among the bushes and trees; and once marcus dared the emperor to climb the long ladder to the lookout in the big cedar. hadrian accepted the challenge and climbed to the crow's-nest and cut his initials in the trunk of the tree. instead of calling the boy marcus verus, the emperor gave him the name "verissimus," which means "the open-eyed truthful one," and this name stuck to marcus for life. between antoninus and marcus there grew up a very close friendship. antoninus could scale the ladder up the tall cedar, three rungs at a time, and come down hand over hand without putting his foot on a rest. he and marcus built another crow's-nest thirty feet above the first. they drew up the lumber by ropes, and antoninus being sinewy and strong climbed up first, and with thongs and nails they fixed the boards in place, and made a rope ladder such as sailors make, that they could pull up after them so no one could reach them. when the kind old emperor came to the villa they showed him what they had done. he said he would not try to climb up now as he had a touch of rheumatism. but a light was fixed in the upper lookout, drawn up by a cord, so they could signal to the emperor down at the palace. then antoninus taught marcus to ride horseback and pick up a spear off the ground, with his horse at a gallop. this was great sport for the consul and the emperor, who looked on, but they did not try it then, but said they would later on when they were feeling just right. and beside all this aurelius antoninus taught marcus to read from epictetus, and told him how this hunchback slave, epictetus, who was owned by a man who had been a slave himself, was one of the sweetest, gentlest souls who had ever lived. together they read the stoic-slave philosopher and made notes from him. and so impressed was marcus that, boy though he was, he adopted the simple robe of the stoics, slept on a plank, and made his life and language plain, truthful and direct. this was all rather amusing to those near him--to all except antoninus and the boy's mother. the others said, "leave him alone and he'll get over it." faustina was still fond of admiration--the simple, studious ways of her husband were not to her liking. he was twenty years her senior, and she demanded gaiety as her right. her delight was to tread the borderline of folly, and see how close she could come to the brink and not step off. julius cæsar's wife was put away on suspicion, but faustina was worse than that! she would go down to the city to masquerades, leaving her little girl at home, and be gone for three days. when she returned aurelius antoninus spoke no word of anger or reproof. her father said to her, "beware! your husband's patience has a limit. if he divorces you, i shall not blame him; and even if he should kill you, roman law will not punish him!" but long years after, marcus, in looking back on those days, wrote: "his patience knew no limit; he treated her as a perverse child, and he once said to me: 'i pity and love her. i will not put her away--this were selfish. how can her follies injure me? we are what we are, and no one can harm us but ourselves. the mistakes of those near us afford us an opportunity for self-control--we will not imitate their errors, but rather strive to avoid them. in this way what might be a great humiliation has its benefits.'" let no one imagine, however, that the tolerance of antoninus was the soft acquiescence of weakness. after his death marcus wrote: "whatsoever excellent thing he had planned to do, he carried out with a persistency that nothing could divert. if he punished men, it was by allowing them to be led by their own folly--his foresight, wisdom and calm deliberation were beyond those of any man i ever knew." the studious, direct and manly ways of marcus were not cast aside when he put on the toga virilis, as faustina had predicted. in spite of the difference in their ages, antoninus and marcus mutually sustained each other. little faustina was much more like her father than her mother, and very early showed her preference for her father's society. marcus was her playmate and taught her to ride a pony astride, just as her father had taught him. the three would often ride over to the village of lorium, twelve miles from rome, where antoninus had a summer villa. at lanuvium, near at hand, the emperor spent a part of his time, and he would occasionally join the party and listen to marcus recite from cicero and cæsar. when marcus was sixteen, hadrian appointed him prefect of festivities in rome, to take the place of the regular officer, a man of years, who was out of the city. so well did marcus fill the place and make up his report, that when they again met, the old emperor kissed his cheek, calling him, "my brave verissimus," and said, "if i had a son, i would want him just like you." not long after this the emperor was taken violently ill. he called his counselors about his bedside and directed that aurelius antoninus should be his successor, and that, further, antoninus should adopt marcus verus, so that marcus should succeed aurelius antoninus. hadrian loved marcus for his own sake, and he loved him, too, for the sake of the grandfather, his old soldier comrade, annius verus; and beside that he was intent on preserving the spanish strain. in a short time hadrian passed away, and aurelius antoninus was crowned emperor of rome, and marcus verus, aged seventeen, slim, slender and studious, took the name, marcus aurelius. * * * * * the new reign did not begin under very favorable auspices. there was a prejudice against the spanish blood, and hadrian had alienated some of the aristocrats by measures they considered too democratic. aurelius antoninus knew of these prejudices toward his predecessor and he boldly met them by carrying the ashes of hadrian to the senate, demanding that the dead emperor should be enrolled among the gods. so earnest and convincing was his eulogy of the great man gone, that a vote was taken and the resolution passed without a dissenting voice. this gives us a slight clew to the genesis of the gods, and also reveals to us the character of antoninus. he so impressed the senate that this honorable body thought best to waive all matters of difference, and in pretty compliment they voted to bestow on the new emperor the degree of "pius." antoninus pius was a man born to rule--in little things, lenient, but firm at the right time. faustina still had her little social dissipations, but as she was not allowed to mix in affairs of state, her pink person was not a political factor. marcus aurelius was only seventeen years old: his close studies had robbed him of a bit of the robust health a youth should have. but horseback-riding and daily outdoor games finally got him back into good condition. he was the secretary and companion of the emperor wherever he went. great responsibilities confronted these two strong men. in point of intellect and aspiration they were far beyond the people they governed--so far, indeed, that they were almost isolated. there was a multitude of slaves and consequently there was a feeling everywhere that useful work was degrading. the tendency of the slave-owner is always toward profligacy and conspicuous waste. to do away with slavery was out of the question--that was a matter of time and education--the ruler can never afford to get much in advance of his people. the court was infected with parasites in the way of informers and busybodies who knew no way to thrive except through intrigue. superstitions were taught by hypocritical priests in order to make the people pay tithes; and attached to the state religion were soothsayers, fortune-tellers, astrologers, gamblers and many pretenders who waxed fat by ministering to ignorance and depravity. these were the cheerful parasites mentioned as "money-changers" a hundred years before, that infested the entrance to every temple. many long consultations did the emperor and his adopted son have concerning the best policy to pursue. they could have issued an edict and swept the wrongs out of existence, but they knew that folly sprouts from a disordered brain, and so they did not treat a symptom: the disease was ignorance, the symptom, superstition. for themselves they kept an esoteric doctrine, and for the many they did what they could. twenty-three years of probation lay before marcus aurelius--years of study, work, and patient endeavor. he shared in all the honors of the emperor and bore his part of the burden as well. never did he thirst for more power--the responsibilities of the situation saddened him--there was so much to be done and he could do so little. well does dean farrar call him "a seeker after god." the office of young marcus aurelius at first was that of questor, which literally means a messenger, but the word with the romans meant more--an emissary or an ambassador. when marcus was eighteen he read to the senate all speeches and messages from the emperor; and in a few years more he wrote the messages as well as delivered them. and all the time his education was being carried along by competent instructors. one of these teachers, fronto, has come down to us, his portrait well etched on history's tablets, because he saved all the letters written him by marcus aurelius; and his grandchildren published them in order to show the excellence of true scientific teaching. that old fronto was a dear old dear, these letters do fully attest. when marcus went away on a little journey, even to lorium, he wrote a letter to fronto telling about the trip--the sheep by the wayside, the dogs that herded them, the shower they saw coming across the campagna, and incidentally a little freshman philosophy mixed in, for fronto had cautioned his pupil always to write out a great thought when it came, for fear he would never have another. marcus was a sprightly letter-writer, and must have been a quick observer, and fronto's gentle claims that he made the man are worthy of consideration. as a literary exercise the daily theme, prompted by love, can never be improved upon. the way to learn to write is to write. and pronto, who resorted to many little tricks in order to get his pupil to express himself, was a teacher whose name should be written high. the correspondence-school has many advantages--fronto purposely sent his pupil away or absented himself, that the carefully formulated or written thought might take the place of the free and easy conversation. in one letter marcus ends: "the day was perfect but for one thing--you were not here. but then if you were here, i would not now have the pleasure of writing to you, so thus is your philosophy proved: that all good is equalized, and love grows through separation!" this sounds a bit preachy, but is valuable, as it reveals the man to whom it is written: the person to whom we write dictates the message. fronto's habit of giving a problem to work out was quite as good a teaching plan as anything we have to offer now. thus: "an ambassador of rome visiting an outlying province attended a gladiatorial contest. and one of the fighters being indisposed, the ambassador replied to a taunt by putting on a coat of mail and going into the ring to kill the lion. question, was this action commendable? if so, why, and if not, why not?" the proposition was one that would appeal at once to a young man, and thus did fronto lead his pupils to think and express. another teacher that marcus had was rusticus, a blunt old farmer turned pedagog, who has added a word to our language. his pupils were called rusticana, and later plain rustics. that rusticus developed in marcus a deal of plain, sturdy commonsense there is no doubt. rusticus had a way of stripping a subject of its gloss and verbiage--going straight to the vital point of every issue. for the wisdom of marcus' legal opinions rusticus deserves more than passing credit. for the youth who was destined to be the next emperor of rome, there was no dearth of society if he chose to accept it. managing mammas were on every corner, and kind kinsmen consented to arrange matters with this heiress or that. for the frivolities of society marcus had no use--his hours were filled with useful work or application to his books. his father and fronto we find were both constantly urging him to get out more in the sunshine and meet more people, and not bother too much about the books. how best to curtail over-application, i am told, is a problem that seldom faces a teacher. as for society as a matrimonial bazaar, marcus aurelius could not see that it had its use. he was afraid of it--afraid of himself, perhaps. he loved the little faustina. they had been comrades together, and played "keep house" under the olive-trees at lorium; and had ridden their ponies over the hills. once marcus and faustina, on a ride across the country, bought a lamb out of the arms of a shepherd, and kept it until it grew great curling horns, and made visitors scale the wall or climb trees. then three priests led it away to sacrifice, and marcus and faustina fell into each other's arms and rained tears down each other's backs, and refused to be comforted. what if their father was an emperor, and marcus would be some day! it would not bring back beppo, with his innocent lamblike ways, and make him get down on his knees and wag his tail when they fed him out of a pail! beppo always got on his knees to eat, and showed his love and humility before he grew his horns and reached the age of indiscretion; then he became awfully wicked, and it took three stout priests to lead him away and sacrifice him to the gods for his own good! but gradually the grass grew on beppo's make-believe grave in the garden, and fronto's problems filled the vacuum in their hearts. fronto gave his lessons to marcus, and marcus gave them to faustina--thus do we keep things by giving them away. but problems greater than pet sheep grown ribald and reckless were to confront marcus and faustina. they had both been betrothed to others, years before, and this they now resented. they talked of this much, and then suddenly ceased to talk of it, and each evaded mentioning it, and pretended they never thought of it. then they explosively began again--began as suddenly to talk of it, and always when they met they mentioned it. folks called them brother and sister--they were not brother and sister, only cousins. finally the matter was brought to antoninus, and he pretended that he had never thought about it; but in fact he had thought of little else for a long time. and antoninus said that if they loved each other very much, and he was sure they did, why, it was the will of the gods that they should marry, and he never interfered with the will of the gods; so he kissed them both and cried a few foolish tears, a thing an emperor should never do. so they were married at the country seat at lorium, out under the orange-trees as was often the custom, for orange-trees are green the year 'round, and bear fruit and flowers at the same time, and the flowers are very sweet, and the fruit is both beautiful and useful--and these things symbol constancy and fruitfulness and good luck, and that is why we yet have orange-blossoms at weddings and play the "lohengrin march," which is orange-trees expressed in sweet sounds. marcus was only twenty, and faustina could not have been over sixteen--we do not know her exact age. there are stories to the effect that the wife of marcus aurelius severely tried her husband's temper at times, but these tales seem to have arisen through a confusion of the two faustinas. the elder faustina was the one who set the merry pace in frivolity, and once said that any woman with a husband twenty years her senior must be allowed a lover or two--goodness gracious! as far as we know, the younger faustina was a most loyal and loving wife, the mother of a full dozen children. coins issued by marcus aurelius stamped with the features of his wife, and the inscription concordia, faustina and venus felix, attest the felicity, or "felixity," of the marriage. their oldest boy, commodus, was very much like his grandmother, faustina, and a man who knows all about the law of heredity tells me that children are much more apt to resemble their grandparents than their father and mother. i believe i once said that no house is big enough for two families, but this truth is like the greek verb--it has many exceptions. in the same house with emperor antoninus pius dwelt lucilla, mother of marcus, and marcus and his wife. and they were all very happy--but life was rather more peaceful after the death of faustina, the elder, which occurred a few years after her husband became emperor. she could not endure prosperity. but her husband mourned her death and made a public speech in eulogy of her, determined that only the best should be remembered of one who had been the wife of an emperor and the mother of his children. as far as we know, antoninus never spoke a word concerning his wife except in praise, not even when she left his house to be gone for months. it was ouida, she of the aqua-fortis ink, who said, "a woman married to a man as good as antoninus must have been very miserable, for while men who are thoroughly bad are not lovable, yet a man who is not occasionally bad is unendurable." and so ouida's heart went out in sympathy and condolence to the two faustinas, who wedded the only two men mentioned in roman history who were infinitely wise and good. in one of his essays, richard steele writes this, "no woman ever loved a man through life with a mighty love if the man did not occasionally abuse her." i give the remark for what it is worth. however, montesquieu somewhere says that the chief objection to heaven is its monotony; so possibly there may be something in the ouida-steele philosophy--but of this i really can't say, knowing nothing about the subject, myself. * * * * * happy is the man who has no history. the reign of antoninus pius was peaceful and prosperous. no great wars nor revulsions occurred, and the times made for education and excellence. antoninus worked to conserve the good, and that he succeeded, gibbon says, there is no doubt. he left the country in better condition than he found it, and he could have truthfully repeated the words of pericles, "i have made no person wear crape." but there came a day when antoninus was stricken by the hand of death. the captain of the guard came to him and asked for the password for the night. "equanimity," replied the emperor, and turning on his side, sank into sleep, to awake no more. his last word symbols the guiding impulse of his life. well does renan say: "simple, loving, full of sweet gaiety, antoninus was a philosopher without saying so, almost without knowing it. marcus was a philosopher, but often consciously, and he became a philosopher by study and reflection, aided and encouraged by the older man. you can not consider the one man and leave the other out, and the early contention that antoninus was, in fact, the father of marcus has at least a poetic and spiritual basis in truth." there was much in renan's suggestions. the greatest man is he who works his philosophy up into life--this is better than to talk about it. we only discuss that to which we have not attained, and the virtues we talk most of are those beyond us. the ideal outstrips the actual. but it is no discredit that a man pictures more than he realizes--such a one is preparing the way for others. marcus antoninus has been a guiding star--an inspiration--to untold millions. marcus aurelius was forty years old when he became emperor of rome. at the age of forty a man is safe, if ever: character is formed, and what he will do or become, can be safely presaged. more than once rome has repudiated the man in the direct line of accession to the throne, and before marcus aurelius took the reins of government he asked the senate to ratify the people's choice, and thus make it the choice of the gods, and this was done. as emperor, we find marcus endeavored to carry out the policy of his predecessor. he did not favor expansion, but hoped by peace and propitiation to cement the empire and thus work for education, harmony and prosperity. it is interesting to see how marcus aurelius in the year one hundred sixty-four was cudgeling his brains concerning problems about which we yet argue and grow red in the face. the emperor was also chief justice, and questions were being constantly brought to him to decide. from him there was no appeal, and his decisions made the law upon which all lesser judges based their rulings. and curiously enough we are dealing most extensively in judge-made law even today. one vexed question that confronted marcus was the lessening number of marriages, with a consequent increase in illegitimate births and a gradual dwindling of the free population. he seems to have disliked this word illegitimate, for he says, "all children are beautiful blessings--sent by the gods." but people who were legally married objected to this view, and said to recognize children born out of wedlock as entitled to all the privileges of citizenship is virtually to do away with legal marriage. as a compromise, marcus decided to recognize all people as married who said they were married. this is exactly our common-law marriage as it exists in various states today. however, a man could put away his wife at will, and by recording the fact with the nearest pretor, the act was legalized. it will thus be seen that if a man could marry at will and put away his wife at will, there was really no marriage beyond that of nature. to meet the issue, and prevent fickle and unjust men from taking advantage of women, marcus decided that the pretor could refuse to record the desired divorce, if he saw fit, and demand reasons. we then for the first time get a divorce trial, and on appeal to marcus, he decided that if the man were in the wrong, he must still support the injured wife. then, for the first time, we find women asking for a divorce. now, nearly three-fourths of all divorces are granted to women; but at first, that a woman should want marital freedom caused a howl of merriment. marcus was the first roman emperor to allow women the right of petition, and the privilege, too, of practising law, for capitolanus cites various instances of women coming to ask for justice, and women friends coming with them to help plead their case, and the emperor of rome, leaning his tired head on his arm, listening for hours with great patience. we also hear of petitions for damages being presented for failure to keep a promise to marry--the action being brought against the girl's father. this would be thought a trifle strange, but an action against a woman for breach of promise is quite in order yet. recently the honorable henry ballard of vermont won heavy damages against a coy and dallying heiress who had played pitch and toss with a good man's heart. the case was carried to the united states supreme court and judgment sustained. the question of marriage and divorce now in the united states is almost precisely where it was in rome in the time of marcus aurelius. no two states have the same marriage-laws, and marriages which are illegal in one state may be made legal in another. yet with us, any court of jurisdiction may declare any marriage illegal, or set any divorce aside. what makes marriage and what constitutes divorce are matters of opinion in the mind of the judge. we have gone a bit further than marcus, though, in that we allow couples to marry if they wish, yet divorce is denied if both parties desire it. the fact that they want it is construed as proof that they should not have it. we meet the issue, however, by connivance of the lawyers, who are officers of the court, and a legal fiction is inaugurated by allowing a little bird to tell the judge what decision will be satisfactory to both sides. and in states or countries where no divorce is allowed, marriage can be annulled if you know how--see ruskin versus ruskin, coleridge, j. our zealous new thought friends, who clamor to have marriage made difficult and divorce easy, forget that the whole question has been threshed over for three thousand years, and all schemes tried. the romans issued marriage-licenses, but before doing so a pretor passed on the fitness of the candidates for each other. this was so embarrassing to many coy couples that they just waived formal proceedings and set up housekeeping. to declare these people lawbreakers, marcus aurelius said, would put half of rome in limbo, just as, if we should technically enforce all laws, it would send most members of the legislature to the penitentiary. so the emperor declared de-facto marriage de jure, and for a short time succeeded in striking out the word illegitimate as applied to a person, on the ground that, in justice, no act of a parent could be charged up against and punished in the offspring. * * * * * men who make laws have forever to watch most closely and dance attendance on nature. laws which fly in the face of nature are gently waived or conveniently forgotten. should chief justice fuller issue an injunction restraining all men from coming within a quarter of a mile of a woman, on penalty of death, we would all place ourselves in contempt in an hour; and should the army try to enforce the order, we would smother justice fuller in his wool-sack and hang his effigy on a sour-apple tree. law isn't worth the paper it is written on unless it embodies the will and natural tendencies of the governed. where poaching is popular, no law can stop it. marriage is easy, and divorce difficult, because this is nature's plan. the natural law of attraction brings men and women together, and it is difficult to separate them. natural things are easy, and artificial ones difficult. most couples who desire freedom only think they do: what they really want is a vacation; but they would not separate for good if they could. it is hard to part--people who have lived together grow to need each other. they want some one to quarrel with. cæsar augustus, in his close study of character, introduced a limited divorce. that is, in case of a family quarrel, he ordered the couple to live apart for six months as a penalty. quintilian says that usually before the expired time the man and woman were surreptitiously living together again, at which the court quietly winked, and finally this form of penalty had to be abandoned because it made the courts ridiculous. men and women do not get married because marriage is legal, nor do they continue living together because divorce is difficult. they marry because they desire to, and they do not separate because they do not want to. the task that confronts the legislator is to find out what the people want to do, and then legalize it. in rome, the custom of the parties divorcing themselves was prevalent, and the courts were called upon to ratify the act, just to give the matter respectability. below a certain stratum in society, the formality of legal marriage and divorce was waived entirely, just as it is largely, now, among our colored population in the south. during the french revolution, the same custom largely obtained in france. and about the year one hundred fifty in rome there was danger that the people would overlook the majesty of the law entirely in their domestic affairs. this condition is what prompted marcus aurelius to recognize as legal the common-law marriage and say if a couple called themselves husband and wife, they were. and for a time, if they said they were divorced, they were. but as a mortgage owned by a man on his own property cancels the debt, and legally there is no mortgage, so if the people could get married at will and divorce themselves at their convenience, there really was no legal marriage. thus the matter was argued. so marcus adopted the plan of making marriage easy and divorce difficult, and this has been the policy in all civilized countries ever since. it is very evident, however, that marcus aurelius looked forward to a time when men and women would be wise enough, and just enough, to arrange their own affairs, without calling on the police to ratify either their friendships or their misunderstandings. he says: "love is beautiful, and that a man and a woman loving each other should live together is the will of god, but if there comes a time when they can not live in peace, let them part. to have no relationship is not a disgrace; to have wrong relations is, for disgrace means lack of grace, discord, and love is harmony." marcus aurelius tried the plan of probationary marriages; and to offset this he also introduced the augustinian plan of probationary divorces--that is, the interlocutory decree. this scheme has recently been adopted in several states in america with the avowed intent of preventing fraud in divorce procedure, but actually the logic of the situation is the same now as in the time of marcus aurelius--it postpones the final decree so as to prevent the couple from becoming the victims of their own rashness, and to give them an opportunity to become reconciled if possible. so anxious was marcus aurelius to decide justly with his people that he found himself swamped with cases of every sort and description. he tried to pass upon each case by its merits, regardless of law and precedent. then other judges construed his decisions as law, and the lesser courts cited the upper ones, until gibbon says, "there grew up such a mass of judge-made laws that a skilful lawyer could prove anything, and legal practise swung on the ability to cite similar cases and call attention to desired decisions." in america we are now back exactly to the same condition. a lawyer in new york state requires over fourteen thousand law-books if he would cover all the ground; and his business is to make it easy for the judge to dispense justice and not dispense with law. that is to say, before a judge can decide a case, he must be able to back up his opinion by precedent. judges are not elected to deal out justice between man and man; they are elected to decide on points of law. law is often a great disadvantage to a judge--it may hamper justice--and in america there must surely soon come a day when we will make a bonfire of every law-book in the land, and electing our judges for life, we will make the judiciary free. we will then require our lawyers and judges to read, and pass examinations on browning's "ring and the book," and none other. and if we would follow the aurelian suggestion of remitting all direct taxes to every citizen who had not been plaintiff in a lawsuit for ten years, we would gradually get something approaching pure justice. the people must be educated to decide quietly and calmly their own disputes, and this can be done only by placing an obvious penalty on litigation. progress in the future will consist in having less law, and fulfilment will be reached when we have no law at all--each man governing himself, and being willing that his neighbor shall do the same. trouble arises largely from each man regarding himself as his brother's keeper, and ceasing to be his friend. marcus aurelius, the wise judge, saw that most litigation is foolish and absurd--both parties are at fault, and both right. and to bring about the good time when men shall live in peace, he began earnestly to govern himself. his ideal was a state where men would need no governing. hence his "meditations," a book which dean farrar says is not inferior to the new testament in its lofty aim and purity of conception. every great book is an evolution: marcus had been getting ready to write this immortal volume for nearly half a century. and now in his fifty-seventh year he found himself in the desert of asia at the head of the army, endeavoring to put down an insurrection of various barbaric tribes. later, the seat of war was shifted to the north. the enemy struck and retreated, and danced around him as the boers fought the english in south africa. but marcus aurelius had time to think, and so with no books near and all memoranda far away, he began to write out his best thoughts. at first he expressed just for his own satisfaction, but later, as the work progressed, we see that its value grew upon him, and it was his intention to put it in systematic form for posterity. and while working at this task, the exposures of field and camp, and the business of war, in which he had no heart, worked upon him so adversely that he sickened and died, aged fifty-nine. his body was carried back to rome and placed by the side of that of his beloved adopted father, antoninus pius. and so he sleeps, but the precious legacy of the "meditations," written during those last two years of travel, turmoil and strife, is ours. a few quotations seem in order: remember, on every occasion which leads thee to vexation, to apply this principle: not that this is a misfortune, but that to bear it nobly is good fortune. things do not touch the soul, for they are eternal, and remain immovable; but our perturbations come only from the opinion which is within.... the universe is transformation; life is opinion. to the jaundiced, honey tastes bitter; and to those bitten by mad dogs, water causes fear; and to little children, the ball is a fine thing. why then am i angry? dost thou think that a false opinion has less power than the bile in the jaundiced, or the poison in him who is bitten by a mad dog? how easy it is to repel and to wipe away every impression which is troublesome and unsuitable, and immediately to be in all tranquillity! all things come from the universal ruling power, either directly or by way of consequence. and accordingly the lion's gaping jaws, and that which is poisonous, and every hurtful thing, as a thorn, as mud, are after-products of the grand and beautiful. do not therefore imagine that they are of another kind from that which thou dost venerate, but form a just opinion of the source of all. pass through the rest of life like one who has entrusted to the gods, with his whole soul, all that he has, making himself neither the tyrant nor the slave of any man. never value anything as profitable to thyself which shall compel thee to break thy promise, to lose thy self-respect, to hate any man, to suspect, to curse, to act the hypocrite, to desire anything which needs walls and curtains. i am thankful to the gods that i was subjected to a ruler and a father who was able to take away all pride from me, and to bring me to the knowledge that it is possible for a man to live in a palace without wanting either guards or embroidered dresses, or torches and statues, and such-like show; but that it is in such a man's power to bring himself very near to the fashion of a private person, without being, for this reason, either meaner in thought or more remiss in action, with respect to the things which must be done for the public interest in a manner that befits a ruler. what more dost thou want when thou hast done a man a service? art thou not content that thou hast done something conformable to thy nature, and dost thou seek to be paid for it? just as if the eye demanded a recompense for seeing, or the feet for walking. as a horse when he has run, a dog when he has traced the game, a bee when it has made the honey, so a man, when he has done a good act, does not call out for others to come and see, but goes on to another act, as a vine goes on to produce again the grapes in season. accustom thyself to attend carefully to what is said by another, and as much as it is possible, be in the speaker's mind. some things are hurrying into existence, and others are hurrying out of it; and of that which is coming into existence, part is already extinguished. motions and changes are continually renewing the world, just as the uninterrupted course of time is always renewing the infinite duration of ages. understand that every man is worth just so much as the things are worth about which he busies himself. wickedness does no harm at all to the universe--it is only harmful to him who has it in his power to be released from it. nothing is more wretched than a man who traverses everything in a round, and pries into the things beneath the earth, as the poet says, and seeks by conjecture what is in the minds of his neighbors, without perceiving that it is sufficient to attend to the deity within him, and to reverence it sincerely. the prayers of marcus aurelius to the gods are for one thing only--that their will be done. all else is vain, all else is rebellion against the universe itself. our form of worship should be like this: everything harmonizes with me which is harmonious to thee, o universe. nothing for me is too early nor too late, which is in due time for thee. everything is fruit to me which thy seasons bring, o nature: from thee are all things, in thee are all things, to thee all things return. in the morning when thou risest unwillingly, let this thought be present--i am rising to the work of a human being. why, then, am i dissatisfied if i am going to do the things for which i exist, and for which i was brought into the world? or have i been made for this, to lie in the bedclothes and keep myself warm? but this is more pleasant. dost thou exist, then, to take thy pleasure, and not for action or exertion? dost thou not see the little plants, the little birds, the ants, the spiders, the bees, working together to put in order their several parts of the universe? and art thou unwilling to do the work of a human being, and dost thou not make haste to do that which is according to thy nature? judge every word and deed which are according to nature to be fit for thee, and be not diverted by the blame which follows.... but if a thing is good to be done or said, do not consider it unworthy of thee. since it is possible that thou mayest depart from life this very moment, regulate every act and thought accordingly.... death certainly, and life, honor and dishonor, pain and pleasure, all these things equally happen to good men and bad, being things which make us neither better nor worse. therefore they are neither good nor evil. to say all in a word, everything which belongs to the body is a stream, and what belongs to the soul is a dream and vapor; and life is a warfare, and a stranger's sojourn, and after fame is oblivion. what, then, is that which is able to enrich a man? one thing, and only one--philosophy. but this consists in keeping the guardian spirit within a man free from violence and unharmed, superior to pains and pleasures, doing nothing without a purpose, nor yet falsely, and with hypocrisy ... accepting all that happens and all that is allotted ... and finally waiting for death with a cheerful mind. if thou findest in human life anything better than justice, truth, temperance, fortitude, and, in a word, than thine own soul's satisfaction in the things which it enables thee to do according to right reason, and in the condition that is assigned to thee without thy own choice; if, i say, thou seest anything better than this, turn to it with all thy soul, and enjoy that which thou hast found to be the best. but ... if thou findest everything else smaller and of less value than this, give place to nothing else.... simply and freely choose the better, and hold to it. men seek retreats for themselves, houses in the country, seashores, and mountains; and thou too art wont to desire such things very much. but this is altogether a mark of the most common sort of men, for it is in thy power whenever thou shalt choose to retire into thyself. for nowhere either with more quiet or more freedom from trouble does a man retire than into his own soul, particularly when he has within him such thoughts that by looking into them he is immediately in perfect tranquillity--which is nothing else than the good ordering of the mind. unhappy am i, because this has happened to me? not so, but happy am i though this has happened to me, because i continue free from pain; neither crushed by the present nor fearing the future. be cheerful, and seek no external help, nor the tranquillity which others give. a man must stand erect, not be kept erect by others. be like the promontory against which the waves continually break, but it stands firm and tames the fury of the water around it. it is not fit that i should give myself pain, for i have never intentionally given pain even to another. immanuel kant the canons of scientific evidence justify us neither in accepting nor rejecting the ideas upon which morality and religion repose. both parties to the dispute beat the air; they worry their own shadow; for they pass from nature into the domain of speculation, where their dogmatic grips find nothing to lay hold upon. the shadows which they hew to pieces grow together in a moment like the heroes in valhalla, to rejoice again in bloodless battles. metaphysics can no longer claim to be the cornerstone of religion and morality. but if she can not be the atlas that bears the moral world she can furnish a magic defense. around the ideas of religion she throws her bulwark of invisibility; and the sword of the skeptic and the battering-ram of the materialist fall harmless on vacuity. --_immanuel kant_ [illustration: immanuel kant] we find that most men fit easily into types. you describe to me one durham cow and you picture all durham cows. so it is with men: they belong to breeds, which we politely call denominations, sects or parties. tell me the man's sect, and i know his dress, his habit of life, his thought. his dress is the uniform of his party, and his thought is that which is ordered and prescribed. dull indeed is the intellect which can not correctly prophesy the opinions to which this man will arrive on any subject. durham cows are not exactly alike, i well know, but a trifle more length of leg, a variation in color, or an off-angle of the horn, and that cow is forever barred from exhibition as a durham. she is fit only for beef, and the first butcher that makes a bid takes her, hide and horns. members of sects do not think exactly alike, but there are well-defined limits of thought and action, beyond which they dare not stray lest the butcher bag them. in joining a sect they have given bonds to uniformity, and have signed their willingness to think and act like all other members of the sect. herbert spencer deals with this "jiner" propensity in man, and describes it as a manifestation of the herding instinct in animals. it is a combination for mutual protection--a social contract, each one waiving a part of his personality in order to secure a supposed benefit. a herd of cattle can stand against a pack of wolves, but a cow alone is doomed. few men indeed can stand against the pack. wise are the many who seek safety in numbers! think of those who have stood out alone and expressed their individuality, and you count on your fingers god's patriots dead and turned to dust. the paradox of things is shown in that the entrenched many, having found safety in aggregation, pay their debt of homage to the bold few who lived their lives and paid the penalty by death. across the disk of existence, each decade, there glide five hundred million souls, and disappear forever in the dim and dusk of the eternity that lies behind. out of the bare handful that are remembered, we cherish only the memories of those who stood alone and expressed their honest, inmost thought. and this thought is, always and forever, the thought of liberty. exile, ostracism, death, have been their fate, and on the smoke of martyr-fires their souls mounted to immortality. future generations often confuse these men with deity, the maker of the worlds. and thus do we arrive at truth by indirection, for in very fact these were the sons of god, vitalized by divinity, part and parcel of the power that guides the planets on their way and holds the worlds in space. upon their tombs we carve a single word: _savior_. * * * * * kant was sixty years old before he was known to any extent beyond his native town; but so fast then did his fame travel that at his death it was recognized that the greatest thinker of the world had passed away. kant founded no school; but fichte, schelling, hegel, herde and schopenhauer were all his children--and all but schopenhauer showed their humanity by denouncing him, for men are prone to revile that which has benefited them most. kant marks an epoch and all thinkers who came after him are his debtors. his philosophy has passed into the current coin of knowledge. kant's lifelong researches revolve around four propositions: . who am i? . what am i? . what can i do? . what can i know? the answer to number four is that i can not know anything. that is to say, the wise man is the man who knows that he does not know. and this disposes of number one and number two, leaving only number three for our consideration. it took, however, a good many years and a vast amount of study and writing for kant to thus simplify. for years he toiled with algebraic formulas and syllogistic theorems before he concluded that the best wisdom of life lies in simplification, not complexity. "what can i do?" resolves itself into, "what must i do?" and the answer is: you must do four things in order to retain your place as a normal being upon this earth: eat, work, associate with your kind, rest. just four things we must do, and outside of this everything is incidental, accidental, irrelevant and inconsequential. then how to eat, work, associate and rest wisely and best constitutes life. every man should be free to work out these four equations for himself, his freedom ending where another man's rights begin. to these four questions we should bring our highest reason, our ripest experience and our best endeavor. as for himself we know that kant made a schedule of life which evolved a sickly boy into a reasonably strong man who banished pain, sorrow and regret from his existence and lived a long life of deep, quiet satisfaction, sane to the end, watching every symptom of approaching dissolution with keen interest, and at the last passing into quiet sleep, his spirit gliding peacefully away, perhaps to answer those two great questions which he said were unanswerable here: "who am i?" "what am i?" * * * * * immanuel kant was born in seventeen hundred twenty-four at the city of konigsberg, in the northeastern corner of prussia. there he received his education; there he was a teacher for nearly half a century; and there, in his eightieth year, he died. he was never out of east prussia and never journeyed sixty miles from his birthplace during his whole life. professor josiah royce of harvard, himself in the sage business, and perhaps the best example that america has produced of the pure type of philosopher, says, "kant is the only modern thinker who in point of originality is worthy to be ranked with plato and aristotle." like emerson, kant regarded traveling as a fool's paradise; only emerson had to travel much before he found it out, while kant gained the truth by staying at home. once a lady took him for a carriage ride, and on learning from the footman that they were seven miles from home he was so displeased that he refused to utter a single orphic on the way back; and further, the story is that he never after entered a vehicle, and living for thirty years was never again so far from the lodging he called home. in his lectures on physical geography kant would often describe mountains, rivers, waterfalls, volcanoes, with great animation and accuracy, yet he had never seen any of these. once a friend offered to take him to switzerland, so he could actually see the mountains; but he warmly declined, declaring that the man who was not satisfied until he could touch, taste and see was small, mean and quibbling as was thomas, the doubting disciple. moreover, he had samples of the strata of the alps, and this was enough, which reminds us of the man who had a house for sale and offered to send a prospective purchaser a sample brick. mind was the great miracle to kant--the ability to know all about a thing by seeing it with your inward eye. "the imagination hath a stage within the brain upon which all scenes are played," and the play to kant was greater than the reality. or, to use his own words: "time and space have no existence apart from mind. there is no such thing as sound unless there be an ear to receive the vibrations. things and places, matter and substance come under the same law, and exist only as mind creates them." * * * * * the parents of kant were very lowly people. his father was a day laborer--a leather-cutter who never achieved even to the honors and emoluments of a saddler. there were seven children in the family, and never a servant crossed the threshold. one daughter survived immanuel, and in her eighty-fourth year she expressed regrets that her brother had proved so recreant to the teachings of his parents as practically to alienate him from all his relatives. one brother became a lutheran minister and lived out an honored career; the others vanish and fade away into the mist of forgetfulness. so far as we know, all the children were strong and well except this one. at birth he weighed but five pounds, and his weakness was pitiable. he was the kind of child the spartans used to make way with quickly, for the good of the state. he had a big, bulging head, thin legs, a weak chest, and one shoulder was so much higher than the other that it amounted almost to a deformity. as the years went by, the parents saw he was not big enough to work, but hope was not dead--they would make a preacher of him! to this end he was sent to the "fredericianium," a graded school of no mean quality. the master of this school was a worthy clergyman by the name of schultz, who was attracted to the kant boy, it seems, on account of his insignificant size. it was the affection of the shepherd for the friendless ewe lamb. a little later the teacher began to love the boy for his big head and the thoughts he worked out of it. brawn is bought with a price--young men who bank on it get it as legal tender. those who have no brawn have to rely on brain or go without honors. immanuel kant began to ask his school-teacher questions that made the good man laugh. at sixteen kant entered albertina university. and there he was to remain his entire life--student, tutor, teacher, professor. he must have been an efficient youth, for before he was eighteen he realized that the best way to learn is to teach. the idea of becoming a clergyman was at first strong upon him; and pastor schultz occasionally sent the youth out to preach, or lead religious services in rural districts. this embryo preacher had a habit of placing a box behind the pulpit and standing on it while preaching. then we find him reasoning the matter out in this way: "i stand on a box to preach so as to impress the people by my height or to conceal my insignificant size. this is pretense and a desire to carry out the idea that the preacher is bigger every way than common people. i talk with god in pretended prayer, and this looks as if i were on easy and familiar terms with deity. is it like those folks who claim to be on friendly terms with princes: if i do not know anything about god, why should i pretend i do?" this desire to be absolutely honest with himself gradually grew until he informed the pastor that he had better secure young men for preachers who could impress people without standing on a box. as for himself, he would impress people by the size of his head, if he impressed them at all. let it here be noted that kant then weighed exactly one hundred pounds, and was less than five feet high. his head measured twenty-four inches around, and fifteen and one-half inches over "firmness" from the opening of the ears. to put it another way, he wore a seven-and-a-half hat. it is a great thing for a man to pride himself on what he is and make the best of it. the pride of craftsman betokens a valuable man. we exaggerate our worth, and this is nature's plan to get the thing done. kant's pride of intellect, in degree, came from his insignificant form, and thus do all things work together for good. but this bony little form was often full of pain, and he had headaches, which led a wit to say, "if a head like yours aches, it must be worse than to be a giraffe and have a sore throat." young kant began to realize that to have a big head, and get the right use from it, one must have vital power enough to feed it. the brain is the engine--the lungs and digestive apparatus the boiler. thought is combustion. young kant, the uncouth, became possessed of an idea that made him the butt of many gibes and jeers. he thought that if he could breathe enough, he would be able to think clearly, and headaches would be gone. life, he said, was a matter of breathing, and all men died from one cause--a shortness of breath. in order to think clearly, you must breathe. we believe things first and prove them later; our belief is usually right, when derived from experience, but the reasons we give are often wrong. for instance, kant cured his physical ills by going out of doors, and breathing deeply and slowly with closed mouth. gradually his health began to improve. but the young man, not knowing at that time much about physiology, wrote a paper proving that the benefit came from the fresh air that circulated through his brain. and of course in one sense he was right. he related the incident of this thesis many years after in a lecture, to show the result of right action and wrong reasoning. the doctors had advised kant he must quit study, but when he took up his breathing fad, he renounced the doctors, and later denounced them. if he were going to die, he would die without the benefit of either the clergy or the physicians. he denied that he was sick, and at night would roll himself in his blankets and repeat half-aloud, "how comfortable i am, how comfortable i am," until he fell asleep. near his house ran a narrow street, just a half-mile long. he walked this street up and back, with closed mouth, breathing deeply, waving a rattan cane to ward away talkative neighbors, and to keep up the circulation in his arms. once and back--in a month he had increased this to twice and back. in a year he had come to the conclusion that to walk the length of that street eight times was the right and proper thing--that is to say, four miles in all. in other words, he had found out how much exercise he required--not too much or too little. at exactly half-past three he came out of his lodging, wearing his cocked hat and long, snuff-colored coat, and walked. the neighbors used to set their clocks by him. he walked and breathed with closed mouth, and no one dare accost him or walk with him. the hour was sacred and must not be broken in upon: it was his holy time--his time of breathing. the little street is there now--one of the sights of konigsberg, and the cab-drivers point it out as the philosopher's walk. and kant walked that little street eight times every afternoon from the day he was twenty to within a year of his death, when eighty years old. this walking and breathing habit physiologists now recognize as eminently scientific, and there is no sensible physician but will endorse kant's wisdom in renouncing doctors and adopting a regimen of his own. the thing you believe in will probably benefit you--faith is hygienic. the persistency of the little man's character is shown in the breathing habit--he believed in himself, relied on himself, and that which experience commended, he did. this firmness in following his own ideas saved his life. when we think of one born in obscurity, living in poverty, handicapped by pain, weakness and deformity; never traveling; and then by sheer persistency and force of will rising to the first place among thinking men of his time, one is almost willing to accept kant's dictum, "mind is supreme, and the universe is but the reflected thought of god." * * * * * kant was great enough to doubt appearances and distrust popular conclusions. he knew that fallacies of reasoning follow fast upon actions--reason follows by slow freight. it is quite necessary that we should believe in a supreme power, but quite irrelevant that we should prove it. truth for the most part is unpopular, and the proof of this statement lies in the fact that it is so seldom told. preachers tell people what they wish to hear, and indeed this must be so as long as the congregation that hears the preaching pays for it. people will not pay for anything they do not like. hence, preaching leads naturally to sophistication and hypocrisy, and the promise of endless bliss for ourselves and a hell for our enemies comes about as a matter of course. what men will listen to and pay for is the real science of theology. that is to say, the science of theology is the science of manipulating men. success in theology consists in finding a fallacy that is palatable and then banking on it. again and again kant points out that a clergyman's advice is usually worthless, because pure truth is out of his province--unaccustomed, undesirable, inexpedient. and kant thought this was true also of doctors--doctors care more about pleasing their patients than telling them truth. "in fact," he said, "no doctor with a family to support can afford to tell his patients that his symptoms are no token of a disease--rather uncomfortable feelings are proof of health, for dead men don't have them." most of the aches, pains and so-called irregularities are remedial moves on the part of nature to keep the man well. kant says that doctors treat symptoms, not diseases, and often the treatment causes the disease; so no man can tell what proportion of diseases is caused by medicine and what by other forms of applied ignorance. as for lawyers, our little philosopher considered them, for the most part, sharks and wreckers. a lawyer looks over an estate, not with the idea of keeping it intact, but of dissolving it, and getting a part of it for himself. not that men prefer to do what is wrong, but self-interest can always produce sufficient reasons to satisfy the conscience. lawyers, being attaches of courts of justice, regard themselves as protectors of the people, when really they are the plunderers of the people, and their business is quite as much to defeat justice as to administer it. the evasion of law is as truly a lawyer's work as compliance with law. then our philosopher explains that if law and justice were synonymous, this state of affairs would be most deplorable; but as it is, no particular harm is worked, save in the moral degradation of the lawyers. the connivance of lawyers tames the rank injustices of law; hence, to a degree, we live in a land where there is neither law nor justice--save such justice as can be appropriated by the man who is diplomat enough to do without lawyers and wise enough to have no property. justice, however, to kant is a very uncertain quantity, and he is rather inclined to regard the idea that men are able to administer justice as on a par with the assumption of the priest that he is dealing with god. kant once said, "when a woman demands justice, she means revenge." a pupil here interposed, and asked the master if this was not equally true of men, and the answer was, "i accept the amendment--it certainly is true of all men i ever saw in courtrooms." "does death end all?" "no," said kant; "there is the litigation over the estate." kant's constant reiteration that he had no use for doctors, lawyers and preachers, we can well imagine did not add to his popularity. as for his reasoning concerning lawyers, we can all, probably, recall a few jug-shaped attorneys who fill the kant requirements--takers of contingent fees and stirrers-up of strife: men who watch for vessels on the rocks and lure with false lights the mariner to his doom. but matters since kant's day have changed considerably for the better. there is a demand now for a lawyer who is a businessman and who will keep people out of trouble instead of getting them in. and we also have a few physicians who are big enough to tell a man there is nothing the matter with him, if they think so, and then charge him accordingly--in inverse ratio to the amount of medicine administered. and while we no longer refer to the clergyman as our spiritual adviser, except, perhaps, in way of pleasantry, he surely is useful as a social promoter. * * * * * the parents of kant were lutherans--punctilious and pious. they were descended from scotch soldiers who had come over there two hundred years before and settled down after the war, just as the hessians settled down and went to farming in pennsylvania, their descendants occasionally becoming daughters of the revolution, because their grandsires fought with washington. this scotch strain gave a sturdy bias to the kants--these lutherans were really rebels, and as every one knows, there are only two ways of dealing with a religious scotchman--agree with him or kill him. most people said that kant was supremely stubborn--he himself called it "firmness in the right." once, when a couple of calumniators were thinking up all the bad things they could say about him, one of them exclaimed, "he isn't five feet high!" "liar!" came the shrill voice of the philosopher, who had accidentally overheard them, "liar! i am exactly five feet!" and he drew himself up, and struck his staff proudly and defiantly on the ground. which reminds one of the story told of professor josiah royce, who once rang up six fares on the register when he wished to stop a boston street-car. when the conductor protested, the philosopher called him "up-start," "curmudgeon" and "nincompoop," and showed the fallacy of his claim that thirty cents had been lost, since nobody had found it. moreover, he offered to prove his proposition by algebraic equation, if one of the gentlemen present had chalk and blackboard on his person. once kant was looking at the flowers in a beautiful garden. but instead of looking through the iron pickets, he stooped over and was squinting through the key-hole of the lock. a student coming along asked him why he didn't look through the pickets and thus get a perfect view. "go on, you fool," was the stern reply; "i am studying the law of optics--the unobstructed vision reveals too much--the vivid view is only gotten through a small aperture." all of which was believed to be a sudden inspiration in way of reply that came to the great professor when caught doing an absent-minded thing. that kant was not above a little pious prevarication is shown by a story he himself tells. he was never inside of a church once during the last fifty years of his life. but when he became chancellor of the university, one of his duties was to lead a procession to the cathedral, where certain formal religious services were held. kant tried to have the exercises in a hall, but failing in this, he did his duty, and marched like a pigmy drum-major at the head of the cavalcade. "now he will have to go in," the scoffers said. but he didn't. arriving at the church-door, he excused himself, pleading an urgent necessity, walked around to the back of the church, sacrificed, like diogenes, to all the gods at once, and made off for home, quietly chuckling to himself at the thought of how he had circumvented the enemy. every actor has just so many make-ups and no more. usually the characters he assumes are variations of a single one. steele mackaye used to say, "there are only five distinct dramatic situations." the artist, too, has his properties. and the recognition of this truth caused massillon to say, "the great preacher has but one sermon, yet out of this he makes many--by giving portions of it backwards, or beginning in the middle and working both ways, or presenting patchwork pieces, tinted and colored by his mood." all public speakers have canned goods they fall back upon when the fresh fruit of thought grows scarce. the literary man also has his puppets, pet phrases, and situations to his liking. victor hugo always catches the attention by a blind girl, a hunchback, a hunted convict or some mutilated and maimed unfortunate. in his lectures, kant used to please the boys by such phrases as this, "i dearly love the muse, although i must admit that i have never been the recipient of any of her favors." this took so well that later he was encouraged to say, "the old metaphysics is positively unattractive, but the new metaphysics is to me most lovely, although i can not boast that i have ever been honored by any of her favors." a large audience caused kant to lose his poise--he became self-conscious--but in his own little lecture-room, with a dozen, or fifty at the most (because this was the capacity of the room), he was charming. he would fix his eye on a single boy, and often upon a single button on this boy's coat, and forgetting the immediate theme in hand, would ramble into an amusing and most instructive monolog of criticism concerning politics, pedagogy or current events. in his writing he was exact, heavy and complex, but in these heart-to-heart talks, herder, who attended kant's lectures for five years, says, "the man had a deal of nimble wit, and here kant was at his best." so we have two different men--the man who wrote the "critique" and the man who gave the lectures and clarified his thought by explaining things to others. it was in the lectures that he threw off this: "men are creatures that can not do without their kind, yet are sure to quarrel when together." this took fairly well, and later he said, "men can not do without men, yet they hate each other when together." and in a year after, comes this: "a man is miserable without a wife, and is seldom happy after he gets one." no doubt this caused a shout of applause from the students, college boys being always on the lookout for just such things; and coming from a very confirmed old bachelor it was peculiarly fetching. to say that kant was devoid of wit, as many writers do, is not to know the man. about a year after the "critique of pure reason" appeared, he wrote this: "i am obliged to the learned public for the silence with which it has honored my book, as this silence means a suspension of judgment and a wise determination not to voice a premature opinion." he knew perfectly well that the "learned public" had not read his book, and moreover, could not, intelligently, and the silence betokened simply a stupid lack of interest. moreover, he knew there was no such thing as a learned public. kant's remark reveals a keen wit, and it also reveals something more--the pique of the unappreciated author who declares he doesn't care what the public thinks of him, and thereby reveals the fact that he does. here are a couple of remarks that could only have been made in the reign of frederick the great, and under the spell of a college lecture: "the statement that man is the noblest work of god was never made by anybody but man, and must therefore be taken 'cum grano salis.'" "we are told that god said he made man in his own image, but the remark was probably ironical." schopenhauer says: "the chief jewel in the crown of frederick the great is immanuel kant. such a man as kant could not have held a salaried position under any other monarch on the globe at that time and have expressed the things that kant did. a little earlier or a little later, and there would have been no such person as immanuel kant. rulers are seldom big men, but if they are big enough to recognize and encourage big men, they deserve the gratitude of mankind!" swedenborg when a man's deeds are discovered after death, his angels, who are inquisitors, look into his face, and extend their examination over his whole body, beginning with the fingers of each hand. i was surprised at this, and the reason was thus explained to me: every volition and thought of man is inscribed on his brain; for volition and thought have their beginnings in the brain, thence they are conveyed to the bodily members, wherein they terminate. whatever, therefore, is in the mind is in the brain, and from the brain in the body, according to the order of its parts. so a man writes his life in his physique, and thus the angels discover his autobiography in his structure. --_swedenborg's "spirit world"_ [illustration: swedenborg] a bucolic citizen of east aurora, on being questioned by a visitor as to his opinion of a certain literary man, exclaimed: "smart? is he smart? why, missus, he writes things nobody can understand!" this sounds like a paraphrase (but it isn't) of the old lady's remark on hearing henry ward beecher preach. she went home and said, "i don't think he is so very great--i understood everything he said!" paganini wrote musical scores for the violin, which no violinist has ever been able to play. victor herbert has recently analyzed some of these compositions and shown that paganini himself could never have played them without using four hands and handling two bows at once. so far, no one can play a duet on the piano; the hand can span only so many keys, and the attempt of robert schumann to improve on nature by building an artificial extension to his fingers was vetoed by paralysis of the members. two bodies can not occupy the same space at the same time; mathematics has its limit, for you can not look out of a window four and a half times. the dictum of ingersoll that all sticks and strings have two ends has not yet been disproved; and herbert spencer discovered, for his own satisfaction, fixed limits beyond which the mind can not travel. his expression, the unknowable, reminds one of those old maps wherein vast sections were labeled, terra incognita. if we read emanuel swedenborg, we find that these vast stretches in the domain of thought which herbert spencer disposed of as the unknowable have been traversed and minutely described. swedenborg's books are so learned that even herbert spencer could not read them: his scores are so intricate, his compositions so involved, that no man can play them. the mystic who sees more than he can explain is universally regarded as an unsafe and unreliable person. the people who consult him go away and do as they please, and faith in his prophecies weaken as his opinions and hopes vary from theirs. we stand by the clairvoyant just as long as he gives us palatable things, and no longer, and nobody knows this better than your genus clairvoyant. when his advice is contrary to our desires, we pronounce him a fraud and go our way. when enterprises of great pith and moment are to be carried through, we give the power into the hands of the worldling infidel, rather than the spiritual seer. the person on intimate terms with another world seldom knows much about this, and when robert browning tells of sludge, the medium, he symbols his opinion of all mediums. a medium, if sincere, is one who has abandoned his intellect and turned the bark of reason rudderless, adrift. this is entirely apart from the very common reinforcement of usual psychic powers with fraud, which, beginning in self-deception, puts out from port without papers and sails the sea with forged letters of marque and reprisal. there are mediums in every city who tell us they are guided by shakespeare, dante, milton, luther, tennyson or henry ward beecher. so we are led to believe that the chief business of great men in the spiritual realm is to guide commonplace men in this, and cause them to take pen in hand. all publishers are perfectly familiar with these productions written by people who think they are psychic when they are only sick. and i have never yet seen a publisher's reader who had found anything in inspirational writing but words, words, words. high-sounding paraphrases and rolling sentences do not make literature; and so far as we know, only the fallible, live and loving man or woman can breathe into the nostrils of a literary production the breath of life. all the rest is only lifeless clay. that mystery enshrouds the workings of the mind, and that some people have remarkable mental experiences, none will deny. people who can not write at all in a normal mood will, under a psychic spell, produce high-sounding literary reverberations, or play the piano or paint a picture. yet the literature is worthless, the music indifferent, and the picture bad; but, like doctor johnson's simile of the dog that walked on its hind legs, while the walking is never done well, we are amazed that it can be done at all. the astounding assumption comes in when we leap the gulf and attribute these peculiar rappings and all this ability of seeing around a corner to disembodied spirits. the people with credulity plus, however, always close our mouths with this, "if it isn't spirits, what in the world is it?" and we, crestfallen and abashed, are forced to say, "we do not know." the absolute worthlessness of spiritual communication comes in when we are told by the medium, caught in a contradiction, that spirits are awful liars. on this point all mediums agree: many disembodied spirits are much given to untruth, and the man who is a liar here will be a liar there. swedenborg was so annoyed with this disposition on the part of spirits to prevaricate that he says, "i usually conduct my affairs regardless of their advice." when a spirit came to him and said, "i am the shade of aristotle," swedenborg challenged him, and the spirit acknowledged he was only jimmy smith. this is delightfully naive and surely reveals the man's sanity: he was deceived by neither living nor dead: he accepted or rejected communications as they appealed to his reason: he kept his literature and his hallucinations separate from his business, and never did a thing which did not gibe with his reason. in this way he lived to be eighty, earnest, yet composed, serene, steering safely clear from bedlam, by making his commonsense the court of last appeal. emerson says that the critic who will render the greatest gift to modern civilization is the one who will show us how to fuse the characters of shakespeare and swedenborg. one stands for intellect, the other for spirituality. we need both, but we tire of too much goodness, virtue palls on us, and if we hear only psalms sung, we will long for the clink of glasses and the brave choruses of unrestrained good-fellowship. a slap on the back may give you a thrill of delight that the touch of holy water on your forehead can not lend. shakespeare hasn't much regard for concrete truth; swedenborg is devoted to nothing else. shakespeare moves jauntily, airily, easily, with careless indifference; swedenborg lives earnestly, seriously, awfully. shakespeare thinks that truth is only a point of view, a local issue, a matter of geography; swedenborg considers it an exact science, with boundaries fixed and cornerstones immovable, and the business of his life was to map the domain. if you would know the man shakespeare, you will find him usually in cap and bells. jaques, costard, trinculo, mercutio, are confessions, for into the mouths of these he puts his wisest maxims. shakespeare dearly loved a fool, because he was one. he plays with truth as a kitten gambols with a ball of yarn. so emerson would have us reconcile the holy zeal for truth and the swish of this bright blade of the intellect. he himself confesses that after reading swedenborg he turns to shakespeare and reads "as you like it" with positive delight, because shakespeare isn't trying to prove anything. the monks of the olden time read rabelais and saint augustine with equal relish. possibly we take these great men too seriously--literature is only incidental, and what any man says about anything matters little, except to himself. no book is of much importance; the vital thing is: what do you yourself think? when we read shakespeare in a parlor class there are many things we read over rapidly--the teacher does not stop to discuss them. the remarks of ophelia or the shepherd talk of corin are indecent only when you stop and linger over them; it will not do to sculpture such things--let them forever remain in gaseous form. when george francis train picked out certain parts of the bible and printed them, and was arrested for publishing obscene literature, the charge was proper and right. there are things that need not to be emphasized--they may all be a part of life, but in books they should be slurred over as representing simply a passing glimpse of nature. and so the earnest and minute arguments of swedenborg need not give us headache in efforts to comprehend them. they were written for himself, as a scaffolding for his imagination. don't take jonathan edwards too seriously--he means well, but we know more. we know we do not know anything, and he never got that far. the bracketing of the names of shakespeare and swedenborg is eminently well. they are titans both. in the presence of such giants, small men seem to wither and blow away. swedenborg was cast in heroic mold, and no other man since history began ever compassed in himself so much physical science, and with it all on his back, made such daring voyages into the clouds. the men who soar highest and know most about another world usually know little about this. no man of his time was so competent a scientist as swedenborg, and no man before or since has mapped so minutely the heavenly kingdom. shakespeare's feet were really never off the ground. his excursion in "the tempest" was only in a captured balloon. ariel and caliban he secured out of an old book of fables. shakespeare knew little about physics; economics and sociology never troubled him; he had small latin and less greek; he never traveled, and the history of the rocks was to him a blank. swedenborg anticipated darwin in a dozen ways; he knew the classic languages and most of the modern; he traveled everywhere; he was a practical economist, and the best civil engineer of his day. shakespeare knew the human heart--where the wild storms arise and where the passions die--the delectable isles where allah counts not the days, and the swamps where love turns to hate and hell knocks on the gates of heaven. shakespeare knew humanity, but little else; swedenborg knew everything else, but here he balked, for woman's love never unlocked for him the secrets of the human heart. * * * * * emanuel swedenborg was born at stockholm, sweden, in sixteen hundred eighty-eight. his father was a bishop in the lutheran church, a professor in the theological seminary, a writer on various things, and withal a man of marked power and worth. he was a spiritualist, heard voices and received messages from the spirit world. it will be remembered that martin luther, in his monkish days, heard voices, and was in communication with both angels and devils. many of his followers, knowing of his strange experiences, gave themselves up to fasts and vigils, and they, too, saw things. abstain from food for two days and this sense of lightness and soaring is the usual result. so strong is example, and so prone are we to follow in the footsteps of those we love, that one "psychic" is sure to develop more. little emanuel swedenborg, aged seven, saw angels, too, and when his father had a vision, he straightway matched it with a bigger one. then we find the mother of the boy getting alarmed, and peremptorily putting her foot down and ordering her husband to cease all celestial excursions. emanuel was set to work at his books and in the garden, and no more rappings was he to hear, nor strange white lights to see, until he was fifty-six years old. sweden is the least illiterate country on the globe, and has been for three hundred years. her climate is eminently fitted to produce one fine product--men. the winter's cold does not subdue nor suppress, but tends to that earnest industry which improves the passing hours. the scandinavians make hay while the sun shines; but in countries where the sun shines all the time men make no hay. in florida, where flowers bloom the whole year through, even the bees quit work and say, "what's the use?" emanuel swedenborg climbed the mountains with his father, fished in the fjords, collected the mosses on the rocks, and wrote out at length all of their amateur discoveries. the boy grew strong in body, lithe of limb, clear of eye--noble and manly. his affection for his parents was perfect. when fifteen he addressed to them letters of apostrophe, all in studied words of deference and curious compliment, like, say, the letters of columbus to ferdinand and isabella. his purity of purpose was sublime, and the jewel of his soul was integrity. at college he easily stood at the head of his class. he reduced calculus to its simplest forms, and made abstractions plain. even his tutors could not follow him. once the king's actuary was called upon to verify some of his calculations. this brought him to the notice of the king, and thereafter he was always on easy and familiar terms with royalty. there is no hallucination in mathematics--figures do not lie, although mathematicians may, but this one never did. we look in vain for college pranks, and some of those absurd and foolish things in which young men delight. we wish he could unbend, and be indiscreet, or even impolite, just to show us his humanity. but no, he is always grave, earnest, dignified, and rebukingly handsome. the college "grind" with bulging forehead, round shoulders, myopic vision and shambling gait is well known in every college, and serves as the butt of innumerable practical jokes. but no one took liberties with emanuel swedenborg either in boyhood or in after-life. his countenance was stern, yet not forbidding; his form tall, manly and muscular, and his persistent mountain-climbing and outdoor prospecting and botanizing gave him a glow of health which the typical grubber after facts very seldom has. thus we find emanuel swedenborg walking with stately tread through college, taking all the honors, looked upon by teachers and professors with a sort of awe, and pointed out by his fellow students in subdued wonder. his physical strength became a byword, yet we do not find he ever exercised it in contests; but it served as a protection, and commanded respect from all the underlings. at twenty we find him falling violently in love, the one sole love-affair of his lone life. instead of going to the girl he placed the matter before her father, and secured from him a written warrant for the damsel, returnable in three years' time. this document he carried with him, pored over it, slept with it under his pillow. as for the girl, timid, sensitive, aged fifteen, she fled on his approach, and shook with fear if he looked at her. he made his love plain by logical formulas and proved his passion by geometrical permutations--by charts and diagrams. a seasoned widow might have broken up the icy fastness of his soul and melted his forbidding nature in the crucible of feeling, but this poor girl just wanted some one to hold her little hand and say peace to her fluttering heart. how could she go plump herself in his lap, pull his ears and tell him he was a fool? finally, the girl's brother, seeing her distress, stole the precious warrant from swedenborg's coat, tore it up, and swedenborg knew his case was hopeless. he brought calculus to bear, and proved by the law of averages that there were just as good fish in the sea as ever were caught. * * * * * at twenty-one swedenborg graduated at the university of upsala. he took the degree of doctor of philosophy, and was sent on a tour of the european capitals to complete his education. he visited hamburg, paris, vienna and then went to london, where he remained a year. he bore letters from the king of sweden that admitted him readily into the best society, and as far as we know he carried himself with dignity, filled with a zeal to know and to become. one prime object in his travel was to learn the language of the country that he was in, and so we hear of his writing home, "in hamburg i speak only german; at paris i talk and think in french; in london no one doubts but that i am an englishman." this not only reveals the young man's accomplishments, but shows that sublime confidence in himself which never forsook him. the desire of his father was that he should enter the diplomatic service of the government, and the interest the king took in his welfare shows that the way was opening in that direction. but in the various cities where he traveled he merely used his consular letters to reach the men in each place who knew most of mathematics, anatomy, geology, astronomy and physics. he hunted out the thinkers and the doers, and it seems he had enough specific gravity of soul so he was never turned away. when big men meet for the first time, they try conclusions just as surely as do the patriarchs of the herds. instantly there is a mental duel, before scarcely a word is spoken, and the psychic measurements then and there taken are usually about correct. the very silence of a superior person is impressive. and knowing this, we do not wonder that swedenborg would sometimes call unannounced on men in high station, and forgetting his letters, would ask for an interview. the audacity of the request would break down the barriers, and his calm, quiet self-possession would do the rest. the man wanted nothing but knowledge. returning home at twenty-seven, he wrote out two voluminous reports of his travels, one for his father and one for the king. these reports were so complete, so learned, so full of allusion, suggestion and advice, that it is probable they were never read. he was made assessor of the school of mines, an office which we would call that of assayer, and his business was to give scientific advice as to the value of ores and the best ways to mine and smelt them. about this time we hear of swedenborg writing to his brother explaining that he was working on the model of a boat that would navigate below the surface of the sea, and do great damage to the enemy; a gun that would discharge a thousand bullets a minute; a flying machine that would sail the air like a gull; a mechanical chariot that would go twenty miles an hour on a smooth road without horses; and a plan of mathematics which would quickly and simply enable us to compute and express fractions. we also hear of his inventing a treadmill chariot, which carried the horse on board the vehicle, but the horse once ran away and attained such a velocity in the streets of stockholm that people declared the whole thing was a diabolical invention, and in deference to popular clamor swedenborg discontinued his experiments along this line. one is amazed that this man in the early days of the eighteenth century should have anticipated the submarine boat, and guessed what could be done by the expansion of steam; prophesied a gatling gun, and made a motor-car that carried the horse, working on a treadmill and propelling the vehicle faster than the horse could go on the ground; and if the inventor had had the gasoline he surely would have made an automobile. his diversity of inventive genius was finally focalized on building sluiceways and canals for the government, and he set holyoke an example by running the water back and forth in canals and utilizing the power over and over again. later he was called upon to break a blockade by transferring ships overland a distance of fourteen miles. this he successfully did by the use of a roller railway, and as a reward for the feat was duly knighted by the king. the one idea that he worked out in detail and gave to the world, and which the world has not improved upon, is our present decimal system. as the years passed, swedenborg became rich. he lived well, but not lavishly. we hear of his having his private carriages and being attended by servants on his travels. he lectured at various universities, and on account of his close association with royalty, as well as on account of his own high character and strong personality, he was a commanding figure wherever he went. his life was full to the brim. and we naturally expect that a man of wealth, with all the honors belonging to any one person, should take on a comforting accumulation of adipose, and encyst himself in the conventionalities of church, state and society. and this was what the man himself saw in store, for at forty-six he wrote a book on science, setting forth his ideas and making accurate prophecies as to what would yet be brought about. he regrets that a multiplicity of duties and failing health forbid his carrying out his plans, and further adds, "as this is probably the last book i shall ever write, i desire here to make known to posterity these thoughts which so far as i know have never been explained before." the real fact was that at this time swedenborg's career had not really begun, and if he had then died, his fame would not have extended beyond the country of his birth. * * * * * mr. poultney bigelow, happening to be in brighton, england, a few years ago, was entertained at the home of a worthy london broker. the family was prosperous and intelligent, but clung closely to all conventional and churchly lines. as happens often in english homes, the man does most of the thinking and sets metes and bounds to all conversation as well as reading. the mother refers to him as "he," and the children and servants look up to him and make mental obeisance when he speaks. "i hear herbert spencer lives in brighton--do you ever see him?" ventured the guest of the hostess, in a vain reaching 'round for a topic of mutual interest. "spencer--spencer? who is herbert spencer?" asked the good mother. but "he" caught the run of the talk and came to the rescue: "oh, mother, spencer is nobody you are interested in--just a writer of infidelic books!" the next day bigelow called on spencer and saw upon his table a copy of "science and health," which some one had sent him. he smiled when the american referred to the book, and in answer to a question said: "it is surely interesting, and i find many pleasing maxims scattered through it. but we can hardly call it scientific, any more than we can call swedenborg's 'conjugal love' scientific." and the author of "first principles" showed he had read mrs. eddy's book, for he turned to the chapter on "marriage," calling attention to the statement that marriage in its present status is a permitted condition--a matter of expediency--and children will yet be begotten by telepathic correspondence. "the unintelligibility of the book recommends it to many and accounts for its vogue. swedenborg's immortality is largely owing to the same reason," and the man who once loved george eliot smiled not unkindly, and the conversation drifted to other themes. this comparison of swedenborg with mary baker eddy is not straining a point. no one can read "science and health" intelligently unless his mind is first prepared for it by some one whose mind has been prepared for it by some one else. it requires a deal of explanation; and like the plan of salvation, no one would ever know anything about it if it wasn't elucidated by an educated person. books strong in abstraction are a convenient rag-bag for your mental odds and ends. swedenborg's philosophy is "science and health" multiplied by forty. he lays down propositions and proves them in a thousand pages. yet this must be confessed: the swedenborgians and the christian scientists as sects rank above most other denominations in point of intellectual worth. in speaking of the artist thompson, nathaniel hawthorne once wrote: "this artist is a man of thought, and with no mean idea of art, a swedenborgian, or, as he prefers to call it, a member of the new church. i have generally found something marked in men who adopt that faith. he seems to me to possess truth in himself, and to aim at it is his artistic endeavor." swedenborg's essay on "conjugal love" contains four hundred thousand words and divides the theme into forty parts, each of these being subdivided into forty more. the delights of paradise are pictured in the perfect mating of the right man with the right woman. in order to explain what perfect marriage is, swedenborg works by the process of elimination and reveals every possible condition of mismating. every error, mistake, crime, wrong and fallacy is shown in order to get at the truth. swedenborg tells us that he got his facts from four husbands and four wives in the spirit land, and so his statements are authentic. emerson disposes of swedenborg's ideal marriage as it exists in heaven, as "merely an indefinite bridal-chamber," and intimates that it is the dream of one who had never been disillusioned by experience. in maudsley's fine book, "body and mind," the statement is made that during swedenborg's stay in london his life was decidedly promiscuous. fortunately the innocence and ignorance of swedenborg's speculations are proof in themselves that his entire life was absolutely above reproach. swedenborg's bridal-chamber is the dream of a school-girl, presented by a scientific analyst, a man well past his grand climacteric, who imagined that the perpetuation of sexual "bliss" was a desirable thing. emerson hints that there is the taint of impurity in swedenborg's matrimonial excursions, for "life and nature are right, but closet speculations are bound to be vicious when persisted in." max müller's little book, "a story of german love," showing the intellectual and spiritual uplift that comes from the natural and spontaneous friendship of a good man and woman, is worth all the weighty speculations of all the virtuous bachelors who ever lived and raked the stagnant ponds of their imagination for an ideal. the love of a recluse is not god's kind--only running water is pure; the living love of a live man and woman absolves itself, refines, benefits, and blesses, though it be the love of aucassin and nicolete, plutarch and laura, paola and francesca, abelard and heloise, and they go to hell for it. from his thirty-fourth year to his forty-sixth swedenborg wrote nothing for publication. he lectured, traveled, and advised the government on questions of engineering and finance, and in various practical ways made himself useful. then it was that he decided to break the silence and give the world the benefit of his studies, which he does in his great work, "principia." well does emerson say that this work, purporting to explain the birth of worlds, places the man side by side with aristotle, leonardo, bacon, selden, copernicus and humboldt. it is a book for giants, written by one. although the man was a nominal christian, yet to him, plainly, the bible was only a book of fables and fairy-tales. the mosaic account of creation is simply waived, as we waive jack the giant-killer when dealing with the question of capital punishment. that darwin read swedenborg with minute care, there is no doubt. in the "principia" is a chapter on mosses wherein it is explained how the first vestige of lichen catches the dust particles of disintegrating rock, and we get the first tokens of a coming forest. darwin never made a point better; and the nebular hypothesis and the origin of species are worked out with conjectures, fanciful flights, queer conceits, poetic comparisons, far-reaching analogies, and most astounding leaps of imagination. the man was warming to his task--this was not to be his last book--the heavens were opening before him, and if he went astray it was light from heaven that dazzled him. no one could converse with him, because there was none who could understand him; none could refute him, because none could follow his winding logic, which led to heights where the air was too rarefied for mortals to breathe. he speculated on magnetism, chemistry, astronomy, anatomy, geology and spiritism. he believed a thing first and then set the mighty machinery of his learning to bear to prove it. this is the universal method of great minds--they divine things first. but no other scientist the world has ever known divined as much as this man. he reminds us of his own motor-car, with the horse inside running away with the machine and none to stop the beast in its mad flight. to his engine there is no governor, and he revolves like the screw of a steamship when the waves lift the craft out of the water. there is no stimulant equal to expression. the more men write the more they know. swedenborg continued to write, and following the "principia" came "the animal kingdom," "the economy of the universe," and more vast reaches into the realm of fact and fancy. his books were published at his own expense, and the work was done under his own supervision at antwerp, amsterdam, venice, vienna, london and paris. in all these cities he worked to get the benefit of their libraries and museums. popularity was out of the question--only the learned attempted to follow his investigations, and these preferred to recommend his books rather than read them. and as for heresy, his disbelief in popular superstitions was so veiled in scientific formulas that it went unchallenged. had he simplified truth for the masses his career would have been that of erasmus. his safety lay in his unintelligibility. he was gracious, gentle, suave, with a calm self-confidence that routed every would-be antagonist. it was in his fifty-sixth year that the supreme change came over him. he was in london, in his room, when a great light came to him. he was prostrated as was saint paul on the road to damascus; he lost consciousness, and was awakened by a reassuring voice. christ came to him and talked with him face to face; he was told that he would be shown the inmost recesses of the spirit world, and must write out the revelation for the benefit of humanity. there was no disturbance in the man's general health, although he continued to have visions, trances and curious dreams. he began to write--steadily, day by day the writings went on--but from this time experience was disregarded, and for him the material world slept; he dealt only with spiritual things, using the physical merely for analogy, and his geology and botany were those of the old testament. returning to stockholm he resigned his government office, broke his engagements with the university, repudiated all scientific studies, and devoted himself to his new mission--that is, writing out what the spirits dictated, and what he saw on his celestial journeys. that there are passages of great beauty and insight in his work, is very sure, and by discarding what one does not understand, and accepting what seems reasonable and right, a practical theology that serves and benefits can be built up. the value of swedenborg lies largely in what you can read into him. the swedish protestant church in london chose him as their bishop without advising with him. gradually other scattering churches did the same, and after his death a well-defined cult, calling themselves swedenborgians, arose and his works were ranked as holy writ and read in the churches, side by side with the bible. swedenborg died in london, march twenty-ninth, seventeen hundred seventy-two, aged eighty-four years. up to the very day of his passing away he enjoyed good health, and was possessed of a gentle, kind and obliging disposition that endeared him to all he met. there is an idea in the minds of simple people that insanity is always accompanied by violence, ravings and uncouth and dangerous conduct. dreams are a temporary insanity--reason sleeps and the mind roams the universe, uncurbed and wildly free. on awakening, for an instant we may not know where we are, and all things are in disorder; but gradually time, location, size and correspondences find their proper place and we are awake. should, however, the dreams of the night continue during the day, when we are awake and moving about, we would say the man was insane. swedenborg could become oblivious to every external thing, and dream at will. and to a degree his mind always dictated the dreams, at least the subject was of his own volition. if it was necessary to travel or transact business, the dreams were postponed and he lived right here on earth, a man of good judgment, safe reason and proper conduct. unsoundness of mind is not necessarily folly. across the murky clouds of madness shoots and gleams, at times, the deepest insight into the heart of things. and the fact that swedenborg was unbalanced does not warrant us in rejecting all he said and taught as false and faulty. he was always well able to take care of himself and to manage his affairs successfully, even to printing the books that contain the record of his ravings. follow closely the lives of great inventors, discoverers, poets and artists, and it will be found that the world is debtor to so-called madmen for many of its richest gifts. few, indeed, are they who can burst the bonds of custom and condition, sail out across the unknown seas, and bring us records of the enchanted isles. and who shall say where originality ends and insanity begins? swedenborg himself attributed his remarkable faculties to the development of a sixth sense, and intimates that in time all men will be so equipped. death is as natural as life, and possibly insanity is a plan of nature for sending a searchlight flash into the darkness of futurity. insane or not, thinking men everywhere agree that swedenborg blessed and benefited the race--preparing the way for the thinkers and the doers who should come after him. spinoza men are so made as to resent nothing more impatiently than to be treated as criminal on account of opinions which they deem true, and charged as guilty for simply what wakes their affection to god and men. hence, laws about opinions are aimed not at the base but at the noble, and tend not to restrain the evil-minded but rather to irritate the good, and can not be enforced without great peril to the government.... what evil can be imagined greater for a state, than that honorable men, because they have thoughts of their own and can not act a lie, are sent as culprits into exile! what more baneful than that men, for no guilt or wrongdoing, but for the generous largeness of their mind, should be taken for enemies and led off to death, and that the torture-bed, the terror of the bad, should become, to the signal shame of authority, the finest stage for the public spectacle of endurance and virtue! --_benedict spinoza_ [illustration: spinoza] the word philosophy means the love of truth: "philo," love; "soph," truth; or, if you prefer, the love of that which is reasonable and right. philosophy refers directly to the life of man--how shall we live so as to get the most out of this little earth-journey! life is our heritage--we all have so much vitality at our disposal--what shall we do with it? truth can be proved in just one way, and no other--that is, by living it. you know what is good, only by trying. truth, for us, is that which brings good results--happiness or reasonable content, health, peace and prosperity. these things are all relative--none are final, and they are good only as they are mixed in right proportion with other things. oxygen, we say, is life, but it is also death, for it attacks every living thing with pitiless persistency. hydrogen is good, but it makes the very hottest fire known, and may explode if you try to confine it. prosperity is excellent, but too much is very dangerous to most folks; and to seek happiness as a final aim is like loving love as a business--the end is desolation, death. good health is best secured and retained by those who are not anxious about health. absolute good can never be known, for always and forever creeps in the suspicion that if we had acted differently a better result might have followed. and that which is good for one is not necessarily good for another. but there are certain general rules of conduct which apply to all men, and to sum these up and express them in words is the business of the philosopher. as all men live truth, in degree, and all men express some truth in language, so to that extent all men are philosophers; but by common assent, we give the title only to the men who make other men think for themselves. whistler refers to velasquez as "a painter's painter." john wesley said, "no man is worthy to be called a teacher, unless he be a teacher of teachers." the great writer is the one who inspires writers. and in this book i will not refer to a man as a philosopher unless he has inspired philosophers. preachers and priests in the employ of a denomination are attorneys for the defense. god is not found in a theological seminary, for very seldom is the seminary seminal--it galvanizes the dead rather than vitalizes the germs of thought in the living. no man understands theology--it is not intended to be understood; it is merely believed. most colleges are places where is taught the gentle art of sophistication; and memorizing the theories of great men gone passes for knowledge. words are fluid and change their meaning with the years and according to the mind and mood of the hearer. a word means all you read into it, and nothing more. the word "soph" once had a high and honorable distinction, but now it is used to point a moral, and the synonym of sophomore is soft. originally the sophist was a lover of truth; then he became a lover of words that concealed truth, and the chief end of his existence was to balance a feather on his nose and keep three balls in the air for the astonishment and admiration of the bystanders. education is something else. education is growth, development, life in abundance, creation. we grow only through exercise. the faculties we use become strong, and those we fail to use are taken away from us. this exercise of our powers through which growth is attained affords the finest gratification that mortals know. to think, reason, weigh, sift, decide and act--this is life. it means health, sanity and length of days. those live longest who live most. the end of college education to the majority of students and parents is to secure a degree, and a degree is valuable only to the man who needs it. visiting the office of the "outlook," a weekly, religious newspaper, i noticed that the titles, rev., prof, and dr., and the degrees, m. d., d. d., ll. d., ph. d., were carefully used by the clerks in addressing envelopes and wrappers. and i said to the manager, "why this misuse of time and effort? the ink thus wasted should be sold and the proceeds given to the poor!" and the man replied, "to omit these titles and degrees would cost us half our subscription-list." and so i assume that man is a calculating animal, not a thinking one. and the point of this sermonette is that truth is not monopolized by universities and colleges; nor must we expect much from those who parade degrees and make professions. it is one thing to love truth and it is another thing to lust after honors. the larger life--the life of love, health, self-sufficiency, usefulness and expanding power--this life in abundance is often taught best out of the mouths of babes and sucklings. it is not esoteric, nor hidden in secret formulas, nor locked in languages old and strange. no one can compute how much the bulwarked learned ones have blocked the path of wisdom. socrates, the barefoot philosopher, did more good than all the sophists with their schools. diogenes, who lived in a tub, searched in vain for an honest man, owned nothing but a blanket and a bowl, and threw the bowl away when he saw a boy drinking out of his hand, even yet makes men think, and so blesses and benefits the race. jesus of nazareth, with no place to lay his tired head, associating with publicans and sinners, and choosing his closest companions from among ignorant fishermen, still lives in the affections of millions of people, a molding force for good untold. friedrich froebel, who first preached the propensity to play as a pedagogic dynamo, as the tides of the sea could be used to turn the countless wheels of trade, is yet only partially accepted, but has influenced every teacher in christendom and stamped his personality upon the walls of schoolrooms unnumbered. then comes richard wagner, the political outcast, writing from exile the music that serves as a mine for much of our modern composing, marching down the centuries to the solemn chant of his "pilgrims' chorus"; william morris, oxford graduate and uncouth workingman in blouse and overalls, arrested in the streets of london for haranguing crowds on socialism, let go with a warning, on suspended sentence--canceled only by death--making his mark upon the walls of every well-furnished house in england or america; jean francois millet, starved out in art-loving paris, his pictures refused at the salon, living next door to abject want in barbizon, dubbed the "wild man of the woods," dead and turned to dust, his pictures commanding such sums as paris never before paid; walt whitman, issuing his book at his own expense, publishers having refused it, this book excluded from the mails, as wanamaker immortalized himself by serving a like sentence on tolstoy; walt whitman, riding on top of a broadway 'bus all day, happy in the great solitude of bustling city streets, sending his barbaric yawp down the ages, singing pæans to those who fail, chants to death--strong deliverer--and giving courage to a fear-stricken world; thoreau, declining to pay the fee of five dollars for his harvard diploma "because it wasn't worth the price," later refusing to pay poll-tax and sent to jail, thus missing, possibly, the chance of finding that specimen of victoria regia on concord river--thoreau, most virile of all the thinkers of his day, inspiring emerson, the one man america could illest spare; spinoza, the intellectual hermit, asking nothing, and giving everything--all these worked their philosophy up into life and are the type of men who jostle the world out of its ruts--creators all, one with deity, sons of god, saviors of the race. * * * * * washington irving once spoke of spain as the paradise of jews. but it must be borne in mind that he wrote the words in granada, which was essentially a moorish province. the moors and the jews are both semitic in origin--they trace back to a common ancestry. it was the moslem moors that welcomed the jews in both venetia and spain, not the christians. the wealth, energy and practical business sense of the jews recommended them to the grandees of leon, aragon and castile. to the jews they committed their exchequer, the care of their health, the setting of their jewels, and the fashioning of their finery. in this genial atmosphere many of the jews grew great in the study of science, literature, history, philosophy and all that makes for mental betterment. they increased in numbers, in opulence and in culture. their thrift and success set them apart as a mark for hate and envy. it was a period of ominous peace, of treacherous repose. a senseless and fanatical cry went up, that the moors--the infidels--must be driven from spain. the iniquities and inhuman barbarities visited upon the mohammedan moors would make a book in itself, but let it go at this: ferdinand and isabella drove the mohammedans from spain. in the struggle, the jews were overlooked--and anyway, christians do not repudiate the old testament, and if the jews would accept christ, why, they could remain! it looked easy to the gracious king and queen of spain--it was really generous: two religions were unnecessary, and christianity was beautiful and right. if the jews would become catholics, all barriers would be removed--the jews would be recognized as citizens and every walk of life would be open to them. this manifesto to the jews is still quoted by churchmen to show the excellence, tolerance, patience and love of the spanish rulers. turn your synagogues over to the catholics--come and be one with us--we will all worship the one god together--come, these open arms invite--no distinctions--no badges--no preferences--no prejudices--come! in quoting the edict it is not generally stated that the jews were given thirty days to make the change. the jews who loved their faith fled; the weak succumbed, or pretended to. if a jew wished to flee the country he could, but he must leave all his property behind. this caused many to remain and profess christianity, only awaiting a time when their property could be turned into gold or jewels and be borne upon the person. this fondness for concrete wealth is a race instinct implanted in the jewish mind by the inbred thought that possibly tomorrow he must fly. after attending service at a catholic church, jews would go home and in secret read the talmud and in whispers chant the psalms of david. laws were passed making such action a penal offense--spies were everywhere. no secret can be kept long, and in the province of seville over two thousand jews were hanged or burned in a single year. when ferdinand and isabella gave torquemada, deza and lucio orders to make good catholics of all jews, they had not the faintest idea what would be the result. every jew that was hurried to the stake was first stripped of his property. no jew was safe, especially if he was rich--his sincerity or insincerity had really little to do in the matter. the prisons were full, the fagots crackled, the streets ran blood, and all in the name of the gentle christ. then for a time the severity relaxed, for the horror had spent itself. but early in the seventeenth century the same edicts were again put forth. fortunately, priesthood had tried its mailed hand on the slow and sluggish dutch, with the result that the spaniards were driven from the netherlands. holland was the home of freedom. amsterdam became a mecca for the oppressed. the jews flocked thither, and among others who, in sixteen hundred thirty-one, landed on the quay was a young jew by the name of michael d'espinoza. with him was a moorish girl that he had rescued from the clutch of a spanish grandee, in whose house she had been kept a prisoner. by a happy accident, this beautiful girl of seventeen had escaped from her tormentors and was huddling, sobbing, in an alley as the young jew came hurrying by on his way to the ship that was to bear him to freedom. it was near day-dawn--there was no time to lose--the young man only knew that the girl, like himself, was in imminent peril. a small boat waited near--soon they were safely secreted in the hold of the ship. before sundown the tide had carried the ship to sea, and portugal was but a dark line on the horizon. other refugees were on board the boat; they came from their hiding-places--and the second day out a refugee rabbi called a meeting on deck. it was a solemn service of thanksgiving and the songs of zion were sung, the first time for some in many months, and only friends and the great, sobbing, salt sea listened. the tears of the moorish girl were now dried--the horror of the future had gone with the black memories of the past. other women, not quite so poor, contributed to her wardrobe, and there and then, after she had been accepted into the jewish faith, she and michael d'espinoza, aged twenty-two, were married. the ship arrived at amsterdam in safety. in a year, on november twenty-fourth, sixteen hundred thirty-two, in a little stone house that still stands on the canal bank, was born benedict spinoza. * * * * * benedict spinoza was brought up in the faith and culture of his people. beyond his religious training at the synagogue, there was a jewish high school at amsterdam which he attended. this school might compare very favorably with our modern schools, in that it included a certain degree of manual training. besides this he had received special instruction from several learned rabbis. in matters of true education, the jews have ever been in advance of the gentile world--they bring their children up to be useful. the father of benedict was a maker of lenses for spectacles, and at this trade the boy was very early set to work. again and again in the writings of spinoza, we find the argument that every man should have a trade and earn his living with his hands, not by writing, speaking or philosophizing. if you can earn a living at your trade, you thus make your mind free. this early idea of usefulness led to a sympathy with another religious body, of which there were quite a number of members in holland: the mennonites. this sect was founded by menno simons, a frieslander, contemporary of luther; only this man swung on further from catholicism than luther and declared that a paid priesthood was what made all the trouble. religion to him was a matter of individual inspiration. when an institution was formed, built on man's sense of relation with his maker, property purchased, and paid priests employed, instantly there was a pollution of the well of life. it became a money-making scheme, and a grand clutch for place and power followed: it really ceased to be religion at all, so long as we define religion in its spiritual sense. "a priest," said menno, "is a man who thrives on the sacred relations that exist between man and god, and is little better than a person who would live on the love-emotions of men and women." this certainly was bold language, but to be exact, it was persecution that forced the expression. the catholics had placed an interdict on all services held by protestant pastors, and the deprivation proved to menno that paid preaching and costly churches and trappings were really not necessary at all. man could go to god without them, and pray in secret. spirituality is not dependent on either church or priest. the mennonites in holland escaped theological criticism by disclaiming to be a church, and calling their institution a college, and themselves "collegiants." all the mennonites asked was to be let alone. they were plain, unpretentious people, who worked hard, lived frugally, refused to make oaths, to accept civil office, or to go to war. they are a variant of the impulse that makes quakers and all those peculiar people known as primitive christians, who mark the swinging of the pendulum from pride and pretense to simplicity and a life of modest usefulness. the sincerity, truthfulness and virtue of the mennonites so impressed itself upon even the ruthless corsican, that he made them exempt from conscription. before spinoza was twenty, he had come into acquaintanceship with these plain people. his relationship with the rabbis and learned men of israel had given him a culture that the mennonites did not possess; but these plain people, by the earnestness of their lives, showed him that the science of theology was not a science at all. nobody understands theology: it is not meant to be understood--it is for belief. spinoza compared the mennonites, who confessed they knew nothing, but hoped much, to the rabbis, who pretended they knew all. his praise of the mennonites, and his criticisms of the growing love for power in judaism, were carried to the jewish authorities by some young men who had come to him in the guise of learners. moreover, the report was abroad that he was to marry a gentile--the daughter of van den ende, the infidel. on order, he appeared at the synagogue, and defended his position. his ability in argument, his knowledge of jewish law, his insight into the lessons of history, were alarming to the assembled rabbis. the young man was quiet, gentle, but firm. he expressed the belief that god might possibly have revealed himself to other peoples beside the jews. "then you are not a jew!" was the answer. "yes, i am a jew, and i love my faith." "but it is not all to you?" "i confess that occasionally i have found what seems to be truth outside of the law." the rabbis tore their raiment in mingled rage and surprise at the young man's temerity. spinoza did not withdraw from the jewish congregation--he was thrust out. moreover, a fanatical jew, in the warmth of his religious zeal, attempted to kill him. spinoza escaped, his clothing cut through by a dagger-thrust, close to the heart. the curse of israel was upon him--his own brothers and sisters refused him shelter, his father turned against him, and again was the icy unkindness of kinsmen made manifest. the tribe of spinoza lives in history, saved from the fell clutch of oblivion by the man it denied with an oath and pushed in bitterness from its heart. spinoza fled to his friends, the mennonites, plain market-gardeners who lived a few miles out of the city. spinoza had not meant to leave the jews--the racial instinct was strong in him, and the pride of his people colored his character to the last. but the attempts to bribe him and coerce him into a following of fanatical law, when this law did not appeal to his commonsense, forced him into a position that his enemies took for innate perversity. when an eagle is hatched in a barnyard brood and mounts on soaring pinions toward the sun, it is always cursed and vilified because it does not remain at home and scratch in the compost. its flight skyward is construed as proof of its vile nature. how can people who do not think, and can not think, and therefore have no thoughts to express, sympathize with one whose highest joy comes from the expression of his thought? deprive a thinker of the privilege to think and you take from him his life. the joy of existence lies in self-expression. what if we should order the painter to quit his canvas, the sculptor to lay aside his tools, the farmer to leave the soil? do these things, and you do no more than you do when you force a thinker to follow in the groove that dead men have furrowed. the thirst for knowledge must be slaked or the soul sickens and slow death follows. in spinoza's time the literature of greece and rome was locked in the latin language, which the jews were forbidden to acquire. young spinoza longed to know what plato, aristotle, cicero, seneca and vergil had taught, but these authors were considered anathema by the rabbinical councils. spinoza desired to be honest, and so asked for a special dispensation in his favor, as he was to be a teacher--could he study the latin language? and the answer was, "read your joshua, first chapter and eighth verse, 'this book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth, but thou shalt meditate therein day and night.'" from this time on spinoza was more or less under the ban, and rumors of his heresy were rife. it is possible, if it had not been for one person, that the growing desire for knowledge, the reaching out for better things, the dissatisfaction with his environment, might have passed in safety and the restless young rabbi slipped back into the conventional jew. youth always has its periods of unrest--sometimes more, sometimes less. spinoza had made the acquaintance of van den ende, a teacher of greek and latin, an erratic, argumentative rationalist, who had his say on all topics of the time, and fixed his place in history by being shot as a revolutionary, just outside the walls of the bastile. but at this time van den ende was fairly prosperous and amsterdam was the freest city in christendom. van den ende had a daughter, clara maria, a little younger than spinoza, who surely was a most superior woman. she was the companion of her father in his studies. it speaks well for the father and it speaks well for the daughter that they were comrades and that his highest thought was expressed to her. i can conceive of no finer joy coming to a man than, as his hair whitens, to have a daughter who understands him at his best, who enters into his life, sympathizes with his ideals, ministers to his mental needs, who is his companion and friend. only a great man ever has such a daughter. madame de stael, who delighted in being called "the daughter of necker," was such a woman, and the splendor of her mind was no less her father's glory than was the fact that he was the greatest financier of his time. clara van den ende was her father's helper and companion, and when he was busied in other tasks she took charge of his classes. auerbach has written a charming story with clara van den ende and spinoza as a central theme. in the tale is pictured with skilful psychology the awakening of the sleeping soul of spinoza as he was introduced from a cheerless home, devoid of art and freedom, into the beauties of undraped greece and the fine atmosphere of a forum where nothing human was considered alien. from a love for vergil, cicero and horace, to a love for each other, was a very natural sequence. a growing indifference for the censure of judaism was quite a natural result. auerbach would have us believe that no man alone ever stood out against the revilings of kinsmen and the stupidity of sectarians: we move in the line of least resistance and only a very great passion makes it possible for a man calmly to face the contumely of an angry world. zangwill, in his vivid sketch, "the maker of lenses," makes this single love-episode in the life of spinoza the controlling impulse of his life, probably reasoning on the premise that men who mark epochs are ever and always, without exception, those with the love nature strongly implanted in their hearts. so thoroughly does zangwill believe in the one passion of spinoza's life, that a score of years after the chief incident of it had transpired, he pictures the philosopher trembling at mention of the woman's name, coughing to conceal his agitation and clutching the doorpost for support. and this a man who smilingly faced a mob that howled for his life, and was only moved to philosophize on the nature of human intellect when a flying stone grazed his cheek! but the lady had ambitions--the lens-maker was penniless, and probably always would be--his passion was passive--he lacked the show and dash that made other women jealous. and so oldenburg, a rival with love and jewels, won the heart that could not be won by love alone. that the lady soon knew she had erred did not help her case--spinoza loved his ideal, and he had thought it was the woman. * * * * * follow zangwill's stories of the ghetto and your heart is wrung by the injustice, cruelty and inhumanity visited upon the jews by the people who worship a jew as god and make daily supplications to a jewess. but read between the lines and you will see that israel zangwill, child of the ghetto, knows that the peculiar people are peculiar through persecution, and not necessarily so through innate nature. zangwill knows that no religion is pure except in its stage of persecution, and that judaism, grown rich and powerful, would oppress and has oppressed. martyr and persecutor shift places easily. the jew arrives in a city at night, and in the morning takes down the shutters and is doing business. the jew winds his way into the life of every city and becomes at once an integral part of it--a part, yet separate and distinct, for his social and religious life is not colored by his environment. children imitate unconsciously. the golden rule is not natural to children: it has to be taught them. they do unto others as others have done unto them, and have no question as to right or wrong. we are all children, and have to think hard before we are conscious of any feeling of the brotherhood of man. as soon as the jews relaxed in amsterdam--got their breath, and felt secure--they did unto others as they had been done by--they persecuted. a jew must be a jew, and as they had been watched with suspicion in spain and portugal by the christians, so now they watched each other for heresies. they compelled strictest obedience to every form and ceremony. to the jew the law forms the firmament above and the earth beneath. all is law to him, and his part and work in this life is obedience to law. the jewish religion is a concrete, unbroken mass of laws. the jew is bounded on the east by law; on the north by law; on the west by law; on the south by law. there are set rules and laws that govern his getting up, his going to bed, his eating, drinking, sleeping, and praying. there is no phase of human relationship that is not covered by the mishna and gemara. being learned in the law means being learned in the proper way to kill chickens, to dress ducks, wear your vestments, go to prayers, and what to say when you meet two christians in an alley. if a jew quarrels with a neighbor and goes to his rabbi for advice, the learned man gets down his talmud and finds the page. the relation of wife and husband, child and parent, brother and sister, lover and sweetheart, are covered by law, fixed, immovable. the learned men of judah are men learned in the law, not learned in the science of life, and commonsense. when these learned men meet they argue for six days and nights together as to interpretations of the law concerning whether it is right to make a fire in your cook-stove on the sabbath if a christian is starving for food on your doorstep, or what will become of you if you eat pork to save your life. rational jews are those who do what they think is right, but orthodox jews are those who do what the law prescribes. when jesus plucked the ears of corn on the sabbath day, he proved himself a rational jew--he set his own opinion higher than law and thereby made himself an outcast. jewish law provides curdling curses for just such offenses. plato's republic was a scheme of life regulated absolutely by law; every contingency was provided for. and plato's plan was founded on the hypothesis that it is the duty of wise men to do the thinking and regulate the conduct of those who are supposed not to be wise enough to think and to act for themselves. but plato's idea lacked the "thus saith the lord," with which moses and aaron enforced their edicts. so plato's republic is still on paper, for no set of rules minutely regulating conduct has ever been enforced except as the ruler made his subjects believe he received his instructions direct from god. yet all the jewish laws are founded with an eye to a sanitary and hygienic good--they are built on the basis of expediency. and that rule of the gemara which provides that if you have gravy on the table, you can not also have butter, without sin, seems more of a move in the direction of economics than a matter of ethics. laws are good for the people who believe that a blind obedience to a good thing is better than to work your way alone and find out for yourself what is best and right. the jewish law is based, like all religious codes, on the assumption that man by nature is vile, and really prefers wrong to right. the thought that all men prefer the good, and think at the moment they are doing what is best, no matter what they do, was first sharply and clearly expressed by spinoza. truth, he said, could only be reached through freedom--a man must even have the privilege of thinking wrong so long as his actions do not jeopardize the life and immediate safety of others. for a people whose every act is governed by fixed laws there can be no progression. mistakes are the rungs of the ladder by which we reach the skies. the man who allows the dead to regulate his life, and accepts their thinking as final, satisfied to repeat what he is taught, remains forever in the lowlands. his wings are leaden. the jews--most law-bound and priest-ridden of all peoples--are at home everywhere because they have no home. they mix in the life of every nation and remain forever separate and apart. they will run with you, ride with you, trade with you, but they will not eat with you nor pray with you. they build no altars to the unknown god, out of courtesy to visitors and guests from distant climes. mohammedans recognize the divinity of jesus, the buddhists look upon him as one of many christs, the universalist sees good in every faith, but the jew regards all other religions than his own as pestilence. if by chance, or in the line of business, he finds himself in a heathen temple or christian church, his gemara orders that he shall present himself at his own temple for purification. read leviticus, numbers and deuteronomy, and you behold on every page curses, revilings, threats and bitter scorn for all outside the pale. orders by jehovah to burn, kill and utterly destroy are frequent. and we must remember that every people make their god in their own image. a man's god is himself at his best; his devil is himself at his worst. the very expression, "the chosen people," would be an insult to every man outside the pale, were it not such a petulant and childish boast that its serious assumption makes us smile. well does moses mendelssohn, the jew, say: "the ghetto is an arrangement first contrived by jews for keeping infidels out of a sacred precinct. when the infidels were strong enough they turned the tables and forbade the jews to leave their ghetto except at certain hours. for the misery, poverty and squalor of the ghetto the jew is not to blame--if he could, he would have the ghetto a place of opulence, beauty and all that makes for the good. every undesirable thing he would bestow on the outsider. in the twilight days of jewish power, the jew, with bigotry, arrogance and intolerance unsurpassed, regulated the infidels and fixed their goings and comings as they now do his, and he would do it again if he had the power. the jew never changes--once a jew always a jew." this was written by a man who was not only a jew, but a man. he was a jew in pride of race--in racial instinct, but he was great enough to know that all men are god's children, and that to set up a fixed, dogmatic standard regulating every act of life has its serious penalties. he was a jew so big that he knew that the cruelty and inhumanity visited upon the jews by christians was first taught to these christians by jews--it is all in the old testament. the villainy you have taught me i will execute. it shall go hard, but i will better the instruction. the christians who had persecuted jews were really orthodox jews in disguise, and were actuated more by the jewish law expressed in the old testament, than by the life of jesus, who placed man above the sabbath and taught that the good is that which serves. and so benedict spinoza, the rabbi, gentle, spiritual, kind, heir to the jewish faith, learned in all the refinements of jewish law, knowing minutely the history of the race, knowing that for which the curses of judaism were reserved, perceiving with unblinking eyes the absurdity and folly of all dogmatic belief, gradually withdrew from practising and following "law," preferring his own commonsense. there were threats, then attempts to bribe, and again threats and finally excommunication and curses so terrible that if they were carried out, a man would walk the earth an exile--unknown by brothers and sisters, shunned by the mother that gave him birth, a moral leper to his father, despised, rejected, turned away, spit upon by every being of his kind. and here is the document: by the sentence of the angels, by the decree of the saints, we anathematize, cut off, curse, and execrate baruch spinoza, in the presence of these sacred books with the six hundred and thirteen precepts which are written therein, with the anathema wherewith joshua anathematized jericho; with the cursing wherewith elisha cursed the children; and with all the cursings which are written in the book of the law; cursed be he by day, and cursed by night; cursed when he lieth down, and cursed when he riseth up; cursed when he goeth out, and cursed when he cometh in; the lord pardon him never; the wrath and fury of the lord burn upon this man, and bring upon him all the curses which are written in the book of the law. the lord blot out his name under heaven. the lord set him apart for destruction from all the tribes of israel, with all the curses of the firmament which are written in the book of the law. there shall no one speak to him, no man write to him, no man show him any kindness, no man stay under the same roof with him, no man come nigh him. * * * * * when the jewish congregation had placed its ban upon spinoza, he dropped the jewish name baruch, for the latin benedictus. in this action he tokened his frame of mind: he was going to persist in his study of the latin language, and his new name stood for peace or blessing, just as the other had, being essentially the same as our word benediction. the man's purpose was firm. to perfect himself in latin, he began a study of descartes' "meditations," and this led to proving the cartesian philosophy by a geometrical formula. in his quiet home among the simple mennonites, five miles from amsterdam, there gradually grew up around him a body of students to whom he read his writings. the cartesian philosophy swings around the proposition that only through universal doubt can we at last reach truth. spinoza soon went beyond this and made his plea for faith in a universal good. five years went by--years of work at his lenses, helping his friends in their farm work, and several hours daily devoted to study and writing. spinoza's manuscripts were handed around by his pupils. he wrote for them, and in making truth plain to them he made it clear to himself. the jews at amsterdam kept track of his doings and made charges to the protestant authorities to the effect that spinoza was guilty of treason, and his presence a danger to the state. spies were about, and their presence becoming known to the mennonites, caused uneasiness. to relieve his friends of a possible unpleasant situation, the gentle philosopher packed up his scanty effects and moved away. he went to the village of voorburg, two miles from the hague. here he lived for seven years, often for six months not going farther than three miles from home. he studied, worked and wrote, and his writings were sent out to his few friends who circulated them among friends of theirs, and in time the manuscripts came back soiled and dog-eared, proof that some one had read them. persecution binds human hearts, and at this time there was a brotherhood of thinkers throughout the capitals and university towns of europe. spinoza's name became known gradually to these--they grew to look for his monthly contribution, and in many places when his manuscript arrived little bands of earnest students would meet, and the manuscript would be read and discussed. the interdict placed on free thought made it attractive. spinoza became recognized by the esoteric few as one of the world's great thinkers, although the good people with whom he lived knew him only as a model lodger, who kept regular hours and made little trouble. occasionally visitors would come from a distance and remain for hours discussing such abstract themes as the freedom of the will or the nature of the over-soul. and these visitors caused the rustic neighbors to grow curious, and we find spinoza moving into the city and renting a modest back room. by a curious chance, his landlady, fifty years before, had been a servant in the household of grotius, and once had locked that great man in a trunk and escorted him, right side up, across the border into switzerland to escape the heresy-hunters who were looking for human kindling. this kind landlady, now grown old, and living largely in the past, saw points of resemblance between her philosophic boarder and the great grotius, and soon waxed boastful to the neighbors. spinoza noticed that he was being pointed out on the streets. his record had followed him. the jews hated him because he was a renegade; the christians hated him because he was a jew, and both catholics and protestants shunned him when they ought not, and greeted him with howls when they should have let him alone. he again moved his lodgings to the suburbs of the city, where he lived with the family of van der spijck, a worthy dutch painter who smoked his pipe in calm indifference to the higher criticism. for their quiet and studious lodger van der spijck and his wife had a profound regard. they did not understand him, but they believed in him. often he would go to church with them and coming home would discuss the sermon with them at length. the lutheran pastor who came to call on the family invited spinoza to join his flock, and they calmly discussed the questions of baptism and regeneration by faith together; but genius only expresses itself to genius, and the pastor went away mystified. van der spijck did not produce great art, yet his pictures are now in demand because he was the kind and loyal friend of spinoza, and his heart, not his art, fixes his place in history. in his sketch, zangwill has certain of his old friends, members of the van den ende family, hunt out the philosopher in his obscure lodgings and pay him a social visit. then it was that he turned pale, and stammeringly tried to conceal his agitation at mention of the name of the only woman he had ever loved. the image of that one fine flaming up of divine passion followed him to the day of his death. it was too sacred for him to discuss--he avoided women, kept out of society, and forever in his sad heart there burned a shrine to the ideal. and so he lived, separate and apart. a single little room sufficed--the work-bench where he made his lenses near the window, and near at hand the table covered with manuscript where he wrote. renan says that when he died, aged forty-three, his passing was like a sigh, he had lived so quietly--so few knew him--there were no earthly ties to break. the worthy van der spijcks, plain, honest people, had invited him to go to church with them. he smilingly excused himself--he had thoughts he must write out ere they escaped. when the good man and his wife returned in an hour, their lodger was dead. a tablet on the house marks the spot, and but a short distance away in the open square sits his form in deathless bronze, pensively writing out an idea which we can only guess--or is it a last love-letter to the woman to whom he gave his heart and who pushed from her the gift? * * * * * spinoza had courage, yet great gentleness of disposition. his habit of mind was conciliatory: if strong opinions were expressed in his presence concerning some person or thing, he usually found some good to say of the person or an excuse for the thing. he was one of the most unselfish men in history--money was nothing to him, save as it might minister to his very few immediate wants or the needs of others. he smilingly refused a pension offered him by a french courtier if he would but dedicate a book to the king; and a legacy left him by an admiring student, simon de vries, was declined for the reason that it was too much and he did not wish the care of it. later, he compromised with the heirs by accepting an income of one hundred and twenty-five dollars a year. "how unreasonable," he exclaimed, "they want me to accept five hundred florins a year--i told them i would take three hundred, but i will not be burdened by a stiver more." if he was financially free from the necessity of earning his living at his trade, he feared the quality of his thought might be diluted. you can not think intently and intensely all of the time. those who try it never are able to dive deep nor soar high.... good digestion demands a certain amount of coarse food--refined and condensed aliment alone kills. man should work and busy himself with the commonplace, rest himself for his flight, and when the moment of transfiguration comes, make the best of it. all he asked was to be given the privilege to work and to think. as for expressing his thoughts, he made no public addresses and during his life only one of his books was printed. this was the "tractatus theologico-politicus," which mentioned "hamburg" on the title page, but with the author's name wisely omitted. trite enough now are the propositions laid down--that god is everywhere and that man is brother to the tree, the rock, the flower. emerson states the case in his "over-soul" and "spiritual laws" in the true, calm spinozistic style--as if the gentle jew had come back to earth and dictated his thought, refined, polished and smooth as one of his own little lenses, to the man of concord. benedictus concordia, blessing and peace be with thee! but the lynx-eyed censors soon discovered this single, solitary book of spinoza's, and although they failed to locate the author, spinoza had the satisfaction of seeing the work placed on the index and a general interdict issued against it by christendom and judea as well. it was really of some importance. it was so thoroughly in demand that it still circulated with false title pages. in the lenox library, new york, is a copy of the first edition, finely bound, and lettered thus: "a treatise on the sailing of ships against the wind," which shows the straits booksellers were put to in evading the censors, and also reveals a touch of wit that doubtless was appreciated by the elect. his modesty, patience, kindness and freedom from all petty whim and prejudice set spinoza apart as a marked man. withal he was eminently religious, and the reference to him by novalis as "the god-intoxicated man" seems especially applicable to one who saw god in everything. renan said at the dedication of the hague monument to spinoza, "since the days of epictetus and marcus aurelius we have not seen a life so profoundly filled with the sentiment of the divine." when walking along the streets of the hague and coarse voices called after him in guttural, "kill the renegade!" he said calmly, "we must remember that these men are expressing the essence of their being, just as i express the essence of mine." * * * * * spinoza taught that the love of god is the supreme good; that virtue is its own reward, and folly its own punishment; and that every one ought to love his neighbor and obey the civil powers. he made no enemies except by his opinions. he was infinitely patient, sweet in temper--had respect for all religions, and never offended by parading his heresies in the faces of others. nothing but the kicks of scorn and the contumely that came to spinoza could possibly have freed him to the extent he was free from judaistic bonds. he had disciples who called him "master," and who taught him nothing but patience in answering their difficulties. one is amazed at the hunger of the mind at the time of spinoza. men seemed to think, and dare to grasp for "new thought" to a marvelous extent. spinoza says that "evil" and "good" have no objective reality, but are merely relative to our feelings, and that "evil" in particular is nothing positive, but a privation only, or non-existence. spinoza says that love consecrates every indifferent particular connected with the object of affection. good is that which we certainly know to be useful to us. evil is that which we certainly know stands in the way of our command of good. good is that which helps. bad is that which hinders our self-maintenance and active powers. a passage from spinoza which well reveals his habit of thought and which placed the censors on his track runs as follows: the ultimate design of the state is not to dominate men, to restrain them by fear, to make them subject to the will of others, but, on the contrary, to permit every one, as far as possible, to live in security. that is to say, to preserve intact the natural right which is his, to live without being harmed himself or doing harm to others. no, i say, the design of the state is not to transform men into animals or automata from reasonable beings; its design is to arrange matters that citizens may develop their minds and bodies in security, and to make free use of their reason. the true design of the state, then, is liberty. whoever would respect the rights of the sovereign ought never to act in opposition to his decrees; but each has a right to think as he pleases and to say what he thinks, provided that he limits himself to speaking and to teaching in the name of pure reason, and that he does not attempt, in his private capacity, to introduce innovations into the state. for example, a citizen demonstrates that a certain law is repugnant to sound reason, and believing this, he thinks it ought to be abrogated. if he submits his opinion to the judgment of the sovereign, to which alone it belongs to establish and to abolish laws, and if, in the meantime, he does nothing contrary to law, he certainly deserves well of the state as being a good citizen. let us admit that it is possible to stifle liberty of men and to impose on them a yoke, to the point that they dare not even murmur, however feebly, without the consent of the sovereign: never, it is certain, can any one hinder them from thinking according to their own free will. what follows hence? it is that men will think one way and speak another; that, consequently, good faith, so essential a virtue to a state, becomes corrupted; that adulation, so detestable, and perfidy, shall be held in honor, bringing in their train a decadence of all good and sound habitudes. what can be more fatal to a state than to exile, as malcontents, honest citizens, simply because they do not hold the opinion of the multitude, and because they are ignorant of the art of dissembling! what can be more fatal to a state than to treat as enemies and to put to death men who have committed no other crime than that of thinking independently! behold, then, the scaffold, the dread of the bad man, which now becomes the glorious theater where tolerance and virtue blaze forth in all their splendor, and covers publicly with opprobrium the sovereign majesty! assuredly, there is but one thing which that spectacle can teach us, and that is to imitate these noble martyrs, or, if we fear death, to become the abject flatterers of the powerful. nothing hence can be so perilous as to relegate and submit to divine right things which are purely speculative, and to impose laws upon opinions which are, or at least ought to be, subject to discussion among men. if the right of the state were limited to repressing acts, and speech were allowed impunity, controversies would not turn so often into seditions. auguste comte in the name of the past and of the future, the servants of humanity--both its philosophical and its practical servants--come forward to claim as their due the general direction of the world. their object is to constitute at length a real providence in all departments--moral, intellectual and material. --_auguste comte_ [illustration: auguste comte] a little city girl asked of her country cousin, when honey was the topic up for discussion, "does your papa keep a bee?" let the statement go unchallenged, that a single bee has neither the disposition nor the ability to make honey. bees accomplish nothing save as they work together, and neither do men. great men come in groups. six men, three living at the village of concord, massachusetts, and three at cambridge, fifteen miles away, supplied america really all her literature, until indiana suddenly loomed large on the horizon, and assumed the center of the stage, like the spirit of the brocken. five men made up the barbizon school of painting, which has influenced the entire art education of the world. and that those who have been influenced and helped most, deny their redeemer with an oath, is a natural phenomenon psychologists look for and fully understand. greece had a group of seven thinkers, in the time of pericles, who made the name and fame of the city deathless. rome had a similar group in the time of augustus; then the world went to sleep, and although there were individuals, now and then, of great talent, their lights went out in darkness, for it takes bulk to make a conflagration. florence had her group of thinkers and doers when michelangelo and leonardo lived only a few miles apart, but never met. yet each man spurred the other on to do and dare, until an impetus was reached that sent the names of both down the centuries. boswell gives us a group of a dozen men who made each other possible--often helped by hate and strengthened by scorn. the mutual admiration society does not live in piping times of peace, where glowing good-will strews violets; often the sessions of this interesting aggregation are stormy and acrimonious, but one thing holds--the man who arises at this board must have something to say. strong men, matched by destiny, set each other a pace. criticism is full and free. the most interesting and the most successful social experiment in america owed its lease of life largely to its scheme of public criticism, a plan society at large will adopt when it puts off swaddling-clothes. public criticism is a diversion of gossip into a scientific channel. it is a plan of healthful, hygienic, social plumbing. england produced one group of thinkers that changed the complexion of the theological belief of christendom--darwin, spencer, wallace, huxley and mill. but this group built on the french philosophers, who were taught antithetically by the decaying and crumbling aristocracy of france. rousseau and voltaire loved each other and helped each other, as the proud leonardo helped the humble and no less proud peasant, michelangelo--by absent treatment. victor hugo says that when the skulls of voltaire and rousseau were taken in a sack from the pantheon and tumbled into a common grave, a spark of recognition was emitted that the gravedigger did not see. voltaire was patronized by frederick the great, who, though a married man, lived a bachelor life and forbade women his court, and protected kant with the bulging forehead and independent ways. kant lived among a group of thinkers he never saw, but reached out and touched finger-tips with them over the miles that his feet never traversed. to kant are we indebted for turgot, that practical and farseeing man of affairs told of in matchless phrase in thomas watson's "story of france," the best book ever written in america, with possibly a few exceptions. condorcet kept step with him, and auguste comte calls condorcet his spiritual stepfather, and a wit of the time here said, "then turgot is your uncle"; and comte replied, "i am proud of the honor, for if turgot is my uncle, then indeed am i of royal blood." auguste comte is the one bright particular star amid that milky way of riotous thinkers which followed close upon the destruction of the french monarchy. when napoleon visited the grave of rousseau, he mused in silence and then said, "perhaps it might have been as well if this man had never lived." and marshal ney, standing near, said, "it reveals small gratitude for napoleon bonaparte to say so." napoleon smiled and answered, "possibly the world would be as well off if neither of us had ever lived." auguste comte thought that napoleon was just as necessary in the social evolution as rousseau, and that both were needed--and he himself was needed to make the matter plain in print. * * * * * auguste comte was born at montpelier, france, in seventeen hundred ninety-eight. his father was receiver of taxes, an office that carried with it much leisure and a fair income. men of leisure seldom have time to think--if you want a thing done it is safest and best not to pick a publican. only busy men have time to do things. the men who have good incomes and work little are envied only by those with a mental impediment. the boy auguste owed little to his parents for his peculiar evolution, save as his father taught him by antithesis: the children of drunkards make temperance fanatics, and shiftless fathers sometimes have sons who are great financiers. when nine years of age, the passion to know and to become was upon auguste comte. he was small in stature, insignificant in appearance, and had a great appetite for facts. comte is a fine refutation of the maxim that infant prodigies fall victims to arrested development. at twelve years of age he was filled with the idea that the social order was all wrong. to the utter astonishment of his parents and tutors, he argued that the world could not be bettered until mankind was taught the lesson that history, languages, theology and polite etiquette were not learning at all; and as long as educated men centered on these things, there was no hope for the race. the birch was brought in to disannex the boy from his foolishness, but this only seemed to make him cling the closer to what he was pleased to call his convictions. he read books that wearied the brains of grown-ups, and took a hearty interest in the abstruse, the obscure and the complex. at thirteen, that peculiar time when the young turn to faith, this perverse rareripe was so filled with doubt that it ran over and he stood in the slop. he offered to publicly debate the question of freewill with the local curé; and on several occasions stood up in meeting and contradicted the preacher. his parents, thinking to divert his mind from abstractions to useful effort, sent him to the polytechnic school at paris, that excellent institution founded by napoleon, which served america most nobly as a model for the boston school of technology, only the french "polytechnique" was purely a government institution--a sample of the twentieth century sent for the benefit of the nineteenth. but institutions are never much beyond the people--they can not be, for the people dilute everything until it is palatable. laws that do not embody public opinion can never be enforced. no man who expresses himself is really much ahead of his time--if he is, the times snuff him out, and quickly. in eighteen hundred fourteen, the polytechnic school was well saturated with the priestly idea of education, and the attempt was made to produce an alumni of cultured men, rather than a race of useful ones. revolt was rife in the ranks of the students. it is still debatable whether revolution and riot in colleges are actuated by a passion for truth or a love of excitement. anyway, the "techs" laid deep places to the effect that when a certain professor appeared at chapel, a unique reception would be in store for him. he appeared, and a fusillade of books, rulers and ink-wells shot at his learned head from every quarter of the room. other professors appeared and sought to restore order. riot followed--seats were torn up, windows broken, and there was much loud talk and gesticulation peculiarly gallic. it was ninety-three done in little. instead of expelling the delinquents, the national assembly took the matter in hand and simply voted to close the school. auguste comte went home a hero, proud as a heidelberg student, with a sweeping scar on his chin and the end of his nose gone. "i have dealt the old education its deathblow," he solemnly said, mistaking a cane-rush for a revolution. against the direct command of his parents, he went back to paris. he had now reached the mature age of eighteen. he resolved to write out truth as it occurred to him, and incidentally he would gain a livelihood by teaching mathematics. at paris, the mental audacity of the youth won him recognition; he picked up a precarious living, and was a frequenter at scientific lectures and discussions, and in gatherings where great themes were up for debate, he was always present. benjamin franklin was his ideal. in his notebook he wrote this: "franklin at twenty-five resolved he would become great and wise. i now vow the same at twenty." he had five years the start! franklin, calm, healthy, judicial, wise--the greatest man america has produced--worked his philosophy up into life. he did not think much beyond his ability to perform. to him, to think was to do. and he did things that to many men were miracles. comte once said, "i would have followed the venerable benjamin franklin through the street, and kissed the hem of the homespun overcoat, made by deborah." these men were very unlike. one was big, gentle, calm and kind; the other was small, dyspeptic, excitable and full of challenge. yet the little man had times of insight and abstraction, when he tracked reasons further than the big, practical man could have followed them. franklin's habit of life--the semi-ascetic quality of getting your gratification by doing without things--especially pleased comte. he lived in a garret on two meals a day, and was happy in the thought that he could endure and yet think and study. the old monastic impulse was upon him, minus the religious features--or stay! why may not science become a religion? and surely science can become dogmatic, and even tyrannically build a hierarchy on a hypothesis no less than theology. a friend, pitying young comte's hard lot, not knowing its sweet recompense, got him a position as tutor in the household of a nobleman; like unto the kind man who caught the sea-gulls roosting on an iceberg, and in pity, transferred them to the warm delights of a compost-pile in his barnyard. comte held the place for three weeks and then resigned. he went back to the garret and sweet liberty--having had his taste of luxury, but miserable in it all--wondering how a gavotte or a minuet could make a man forget that he was living in a city where thirty thousand human beings were constantly only one meal beyond the sniff of starvation. at this time comte came into close relationship with a man who was to have a very great influence in his life--this was count henri of saint-simon, usually spoken of as saint-simon. saint-simon was rich, gently proud, and fondly patronizing. he was a sort of scientific mæcenas--and be it known that mæcenas was a poet and philosopher of worth, and one horace was his pupil. saint-simon was an excellent and learned man who wrote, lectured and taught on philosophic themes. he had a garden-school, modeled in degree after that of plato. saint-simon became much interested in young comte, invited him to his classes, supplied him books, clothing, and tickets to the opera. part of the time comte lived under saint-simon's roof, and did translating and copying in partial payment for his meal-ticket. the teacher and the pupil had a fine affection for each other. what comte needed, he took from saint-simon as if it were his own. in writing to friends at this time, comte praises saint-simon as the greatest man who ever lived--"a model of patience, generosity, learning and love--my spiritual father!" there was fifty years' difference in their ages, but they studied, read and rambled the realm of books together, with mutual pleasure and profit. the central idea of the "positive philosophy" is that of the three stages through which man passes in his evolution. this was gotten from saint-simon, and together they worked out much of the thought that comte afterward carried further and incorporated in his book. but about this time, saint-simon, in one of his lectures, afterward printed, made use of some of the thoughts that comte had expressed, as if they were his own--and possibly they were. there is no copyright on an idea, no caveat can be filed on feeling, and at the last there is no such thing as originality, except as a matter of form. young comte now proved his humanity by accusing his teacher of stealing his radium. a quarrel followed, in which comte was so violent that saint-simon had to put the youth out of his house. the wrangles of grub street would fill volumes: both sides are always right, or wrong--it matters little, and is simply a point of view. but the rancor of it all, if seen from heaven, must serve finely to dispel the monotony of the place--a panacea for paradisiacal ennui. from lavish praise, comte swung over to words of bitterness and accusation. having sat at the man's table and partaken of his hospitality for several years, he was now guilty of the unpardonable offense of ridiculing and berating him. he speaks of the saint as a "depraved quack," and says that the time he spent with him was worse than wasted. if saint-simon was the rogue and pretender that comte avers, it is no certificate of comte's insight that it took him four years to find it out. * * * * * in eighteen hundred twenty-five comte married. the ceremony was performed civilly, on a sudden impulse of what schopenhauer would call "the genius of the genus." the lady was young, agreeable; and having no opinions of her own, was quite willing to accept his. comte congratulated himself that here was virgin soil, and he laid the flattering unction to his soul that he could mold the lady's mind to match his own. she would be his helpmeet. comte had not read ouida, who once wrote that when god said, "i will make a helpmeet for him," he was speaking ironically. comte had associated but very little with women--he had theories about them. small men, with midget minds, know femininity much better than do the great ones. traveling salesmen, with checkered vests, gauge women as herbert spencer never could. comte's wife was pretty and she was astute--as most pretty women are. john fiske, in his lecture on "communal life," says that astute persons add nothing of value to the community in which they live--their mission being to be the admired glass of fashion for the non-cogitabund. the value of astuteness is that it protects us from the astute. samuel johnson and his wife had their first quarrel on the way from the church, and auguste comte and his wife tiffed going down the steps from the notary's. comte had no use for ecclesiastical forms, and the lady agreed with him until after the notary had earned his fee. then she suddenly had qualms, like those peculiar ladies told of by robert louis stevenson, who turn the madonna's face to the wall. the couple went to montpelier on their wedding-tour, to visit comte's parents. the new wife agreed with the old folks on but one point--the marriage should be solemnized by a priest. having won them on this point, they stood a solid phalanx against the husband; but the lady took exceptions to montpelier on all other grounds--she hated it thoroughly and said so. instead of molding her to his liking, comte was being kneaded into animal crackers for her amusement. then we find him writing to a friend, confessing that his hopes were ashes; but in his misery he grows philosophical and says, "it is all good, for now i am driven back to my work, and from now on my life is dedicated to science." no doubt the lady was as much disappointed in the venture as was the husband, but he, being literary, eased his grief by working it up into art, while her side of the story lies buried deep in silence glum. in choosing the names of philosophers for this series, no thought was given in the selection beyond the achievements of the men. but it now comes to me with a slight surprise that seven out of the twelve were unmarried, and probably it would have been as well--certainly for the wives--if the other five had remained bachelors, too. xantippe would have been the gainer, even if socrates did miss his discipline. to center on science and devote one's thought to philosophy produces a being more or less deformed. there is great danger in specialization: nature sacrifices the man in order to get the thing done. abstract thought unfits one for domestic life; for, to a degree, it separates a man from his kind. the proper advice to a woman about to marry a philosopher would be, "don't!" * * * * * the advantage of a little actual hardship in one's life is that it makes existence real and not merely literary. comte was inclined to thrive on martyrdom. his restless, eager mind invented troubles, if there were no real ones, but he was wise enough to know this, as he once said: "the trials of life are all of one size--imaginary pains are as bad as real ones, and men who have no actual troubles usually conjure forth a few. thus far, happily, i am not reduced to this strait." we thus see that the true essence of philosophy was there. comte got a gratification by dissecting, analyzing and classifying his emotions. all was grist that came to his mill. when he was twenty-eight the positive philosophy had assumed such proportions in his mind that he announced a course of twelve lectures on the subject. he was jealous of his discoveries, and was intent on getting all the credit that was due him. money he cared little for; power and reputation to him were the only gods worth appeasing. the thought of domestic joy was forever behind, but philosophy came as a solace. a prospectus was sent out and tickets were issued. the landlady where he boarded offered her parlor and her boarder, second floor back, for the benefit of science. several zealous denizens of the latin quarter made a canvass, and enough tickets were sold so that the philosopher felt that at last the world was really at his feet. when the afternoon for the first lecture arrived, no carriages blocked the street, and as only about half of those who had purchased tickets appeared, the difficulties of the landlady and her nervous boarder were much lessened. there was one man at this first lecture who was profoundly impressed, and if we had his testimony, and none other, we might well restrain our smiles. that man was alexander von humboldt. in various passages humboldt does comte the honor of quoting from him, and in one instance says, "he has summed up certain phases of truth better than they have ever been expressed before." little did the landlady guess that her crusty, crabbed boarder was firing a shot that would be heard 'round the world, and surely the gendarme on that particular beat never heard it--so small and commonplace are the beginnings of great things! comte was so saturated with this theme--so immersed in it--that it consumed him like a fever. three lectures were given, but at the third, without warning, the man's nerves snapped--he stopped, sat down, and the audience filed out perplexed, thinking they had merely seen an exhibition of one of the eccentricities of genius. the philosopher's mind was a blank, and kind friends sent him away to a hospital. it was two years before he regained his reason. the enforced rest did him good. nervous prostration is heroic treatment on the part of nature. it is an intent to do for the man what he will never do for himself. * * * * * unkind critics, hotly intent on refuting the positive philosophy, seized upon the fact of comte's mental trouble and made much of it. "look you!" said they, "the man is insane!" this is convenient, but not judicial. comte's philosophy stands or falls on its own merits, and what the author did before, after, or during the writing of his theses matters not. madmen are not mad all the time, and the fact that sir isaac newton was for a time unbalanced does not lessen our regard for the "principia," nor consign to limbo the law of gravitation. ruskin's work is not the less thought of because the man had his pathetic spells of indecision. martin luther had visions of devils before he saw the truth, and emerson's love for longfellow need not be disparaged because he looked down on his still, white face and said, "a dear gentle soul, but i really can not remember his name." men write on physiology, and then die, but this does not disprove the truth they expressed, but failed, possibly, to fully live. the great man always thinks further than he can travel--even the rest of us can do that. we can think "chicago" in a second, but to go there takes time, strength and money. when comte's mental trouble was at its height, and two men were required to care for him, lamennais persuaded his wife to have their marriage solemnized by the church, and this was done. this performance was such a violation of sanctity and decency that in after-years comte could not believe it was true, until he consulted the church records. "they might as well have had me confirmed," said comte, grimly. and we can well guess that the action did not increase his regard for either his wife or the church. the trick seems quite on a par with that of the astute colored gentleman who anxiously asks for love-powders at the corner drugstore; or the good wives who purchase harmless potions from red-dyed rogues to place in the husband's coffee to cure him of the liquor habit. however, the incident gives a clew to the mental processes of madame comte--she would accomplish by trickery what she had failed to do by moral suasion, and this in the name of religion! two years of enforced rest, and the glowing mind of the philosopher awoke with a start. he rubbed his eyes after his rip-van-winkle sleep, and called for his manuscripts--he must prepare for the fourth lecture! the rest of the course was given, and in eighteen hundred thirty the first volume of positive philosophy was issued. the sixth and last volume appeared in eighteen hundred forty-two--twelve years of intense application and ceaseless work. this was the happiest time of comte's life; he had the whole scheme in his head from the start, but he now saw it gradually taking form, and it was meeting with appreciation from a few earnest thinkers, at least. his services were in demand for occasional lectures on scientific subjects. in astronomy, especially, he excelled, and on this theme he was able to please a popular assembly. the polytechnic school had now grown to large proportions, and the institution that comte had helped to slide into dissolution now called him back to serve as examiner and professor. the constant misunderstandings with his wife had increased to such a point that both felt a separation desirable. married people do not separate on slight excuse--they go because they must. that comte thought much more of the lady when they were several hundred miles apart than when they were together, there is no doubt. he wrote to her at regular intervals, one-half of his income was religiously sent to her, and he practised the most painstaking economy in order that he might feel that she was provided for. one letter, especially, to his wife reveals a side of comte's nature that shows he had the instinct of a true teacher. he says, "i hardly dare disclose the sweet and softened feeling that comes over me when i find a scholar whose heart is thoroughly in his work." the positive philosophy was taken up by john stuart mill, who wrote a fine essay on it. it was mill who introduced the work to harriet martineau. mr. and mrs. mill had intended to translate and condense the philosophy of comte for english readers, but when miss martineau expressed her intention of attempting the task, they relinquished the idea, but backed her up in her efforts. miss martineau condensed the six volumes into two, and what is most strange, comte thought so well of the work that he wrote a glowing acknowledgment of it. the martineaus were of good old huguenot stock, and the french language came easy to harriet. for the plain people of france she had a profound regard, and being sort of a revolutionary by prenatal instincts, comte's work from the start appealed to her. james martineau had such a bristling personality--being very much like his sister harriet--that when this sister wrote a review of a volume of his sermons, showing the fatuity and foolishness of the reasoning, and calling attention to much bad grammar, the good man cut her off with a shilling--"which he will have to borrow," said harriet. james hugged the idea to his death that his sister had insulted his genius--"but i forgive her," he said, which remark proves that he hadn't, for if he had, he would not have thought to mention the matter. james martineau was a great man, but if he had been just a little greater he would have taken a profound pride in a sister who was so sharp a shooter that she could puncture his balloon. james martineau was a theologian; harriet was a positivist. but positivity had a lure for him, and so there is a long review, penned largely with aqua fortis, on miss martineau's translation, done by her brother for the "edinburgh review," wherein harriet is not once mentioned. when robert ingersoll's wife would occasionally, under great stress of the servant-girl problem, break over a bit, as good women will, and say things, robert would remark, "gently, my dear, gently--i fear me you haven't yet gotten rid of all your christian virtues." the reverend doctor james martineau never quite got rid of his christian virtues, which perhaps proves that a little hate, like strychnin, is useful as a stimulant when properly reduced, for doctor martineau died only a few years ago, having nearly rounded out a century run. harriet martineau was in much doubt about how comte would regard her completed work, but was greatly relieved when he gave it his unqualified approval. on his earnest invitation she visited him in paris. fortunately, she did not have to resort to the herbert spencer expedient of wearing ear-muffs for protection against loquacious friends. she liked comte first-rate, until he began to make love to her. then his stock dropped below par. comte was always much impressed by intellectual women. his wife had given him a sample of the other kind, and caused him to swing out and idealize the woman of brains. so that, when harriet martineau admired the positive philosophy, it was proof sufficient to comte of her excellence in all things. she knew better, and started soon for dover. mr. and mrs. mill had called on comte a few months before, and given him a glimpse of the ideal--an intellectual man mated with an intellectual woman. but comte didn't see that it was plain commonsense that made them great. comte prided himself on his own commonsense, but the article was not in his equipment, else he would not have put the blame of all his troubles upon his wife. a man with commonsense, married to a woman who hasn't any, does not necessarily forfeit his own. mr. or mrs. mill would have been great anywhere--singly, separately, together, or apart. each was a radiant center. weakness multiplied by two does not give strength, and naught times naught equals naught. * * * * * having finished the positive philosophy, comte's restless mind began to look around for more worlds to conquer. in the expenditure of money he was careful, and in his accounts exact; but the making of money and its accumulation were things that to him could safely be delegated to second-class minds. a haughty pride of intellect was his, not unmixed with that peculiar quality of the prima donna which causes her to cut fantastic capers and make everybody kiss her big toe. comte had done one thing superbly well. england had recognized his merit to a degree that france had not, and to his english friends he now made an appeal for financial help, so he could have freedom to complete another great work he had in his mind. to john stuart mill he wrote, outlining in a general way his new book on a social science, to be called "the positive polity." it was, in a degree, to be a sequel to the positive philosophy. mill communicated with grote, the banker, known to us through his superb history of greece, and with the help of george henry lewes and a mite from herbert spencer to show his good-will, a purse equal to about twelve hundred dollars was sent to comte. matters went along for a year, when comte wrote a brief letter to mill suggesting that it was about time for another remittance. mill again appealed to grote, and grote, the man of affairs, wrote to his paris correspondent, who ascertained that comte, now believing he was free from the bread-and-butter bugaboo, was giving his services to the polytechnic, gratis, and also giving lectures to the people wherever some one would simply pay for the hall. to advance money to a man that he might write a book showing how the nation should manage its finances, when the author could not look after his own, reminded grote of the individual who wrote from the debtors' prison to the secretary of the exchequer, giving valuable advice. all publishers are familiar with the penniless person who writes a book on "how to achieve success," expecting to achieve success by publishing it. grote wrote to mill, expressing the wholesome truth that the first duty of every man was to make a living for himself--a fact which mill states in "on liberty." mill hadn't the temerity to pass grote's maxim along to comte, and so sent a small contribution out of his own pocket. this was very much like the indian who, feeling that his dog's tail should be amputated, cut it off a little at a time, so as not to hurt the animal. we have all done this, and got the ingratitude we deserved. comte wrote back a most sarcastic letter, accusing mill and grote with having broken faith with him. he now treated them very much as he had saint-simon; and in his lectures seldom failed to tell in pointed phrase what a lot of money-grubbing barbarians inhabited the british isles. to the credit of mill be it said that he still believed in the value of the positive philosophy, and did all he could to further comte's reputation and help the sale of his books. * * * * * in eighteen hundred forty-five, when comte was forty-seven years old, he met madame clothilde de vaux. her husband was in prison, serving a life-sentence for political offenses, and comte was first attracted to her through pity. soon this evolved into a violent attachment, and comte began to quote her in his lectures. comte was now most busy with his "polity" in collaboration with madame de vaux. her part of the work seems to have been to listen to comte while he read her his amusing manuscript: and she, being a good woman and wise, praised the work in every part. they were together almost daily, and she seemed to supply him the sympathy he had all of his life so much craved. in one short year madame de vaux died, and comte for a time was inconsolable. then his sorrow found surcease in an attempt to do for her in prose what dante had done for beatrice in poetry. but the vehicle of comte's thoughts creaked. the exact language of science when applied to a woman becomes peculiarly non-piquant and lacking in perspicacity and perspicuity. no woman can be summed up in an algebraic formula, and when a mathematician does a problem to his lady's eyebrow, he forgets entirely that femininity forever equals _x_. those who can write sonnets from the portuguese may place their loves on exhibition--no others should. sweets too sweet do cloy. for the rest of his life, comte made every wednesday afternoon sacred for a visit to the grave of madame de vaux, and three times every day, with the precision of a mussulman, he retired to his room, locked the door, and in silence apostrophized to her spirit. comte now continued as industrious as ever, but the quality of his writing lamentably declined. his popular lectures to the people on scientific themes were always good, and his work as a teacher was satisfactory, but when he endeavored to continue original research, then his hazards of mind lacked steady flight. the positive polity degenerated into a dogmatic scheme of government where the wisest should rule. the determination of who was wisest was to be left to the wise ones themselves, and comte himself volunteered to be the first pope. the worship of humanity would be the only religion, and women would shine as the high priests. comte thought it all out in detail, and arranged a complete scheme of life, and actually wished to form a political party and overthrow the government, founding a gynecocracy on the ruins. his ebbing mind could not grasp the thought that tyranny founded on goodness is a tyranny still, and that a despotic altruism is a despotism nevertheless. slavery blocks evolution. so thus rounded out the life of auguste comte--beginning in childhood, he traversed the circle, and ended where he began. he died in his sixtieth year. m. littre, his most famous pupil, touchingly looked after his wants to the last, ministered to his necessities, advancing money on royalties that were never due. m. littre occasionally apologized for the meagerness of the returns, and was closely questioned and even doubted by comte, who died unaware of the unflinching loyalty of a friendship that endured distrust and contumely without resentment. such love and patience and loyalty as were shown by m. littre redeem the race. the best certificate to the worth of auguste comte lies in the fact that, in spite of marked personal limitations and much petty querulousness, he profoundly influenced such men as littre, humboldt, mill, lewes, grote, spencer and frederic harrison. to have helped such men as these, and cheered them on their way, was no small achievement. comte's sole claim for immortality lies in the positive philosophy. the word "positive," as used by comte, is similar in intent to pose, poise--fixed, final. so, besides a positive present good, comte believed he was stating a final truth; to-wit: that which is good here is good everywhere, and if there is a future life, the best preparation for it is to live now and here, up to your highest and best. comte protested against the idea of "a preparation for a life to come"--now is the time, and the place is here. the essence of positive philosophy is that man passes through three mental periods--the theological or fictitious; the metaphysical or abstract; the positive or scientific. hence, there are three general philosophies or systems of conceptions concerning life and destiny. the theological, or first system, is the necessary starting-point of the human intellect. the positive, or third period, is the ultimate goal of every progressive, thinking man; the second period is merely a state of transition that bridges the gulf between the first and the third. metaphysics holds the child by the hand until he can trust his feet--it is a passageway between the fictitious and the actual. once across the chasm, it is no longer needed. theology represents the child; metaphysics the youth; science the man. the evolution of the race is mirrored in the evolution of the individual. look back on your own career--your first dawn of thought began in an inquiry, "who made all this--how did it all happen?" and theology comes in with a glib explanation: the fairies, dryads, gnomes and gods made everything, and they can do with it all as they please. later, we concentrate all of these personalities in one god, with a devil in competition, and this for a time satisfies. later, the thought of an arbitrary being dealing out rewards and punishments grows dim, for we see the regular workings of cause and effect. we begin to talk of energy, the divine essence, and the reign of law. we speak, as matthew arnold did, of "a power, not ourselves, that makes for righteousness." but emerson believed in a power that was in himself that made for righteousness. metaphysics reaches its highest stage when it affirms "all is one," or "all is mind," just as theology reaches its highest conception when it becomes monotheistic--having one god and curtailing the personality of the devil to a mere abstraction. but this does not long satisfy, for we begin to ask, "what is this one?" or "what is mind?" then positivity comes in and says that the highest wisdom lies in knowing that we do not know anything, and never can, concerning a first cause. all we find is phenomena and behind phenomena, phenomena. the laws of nature do not account for the origin of the laws of nature. spencer's famous chapter on the unknowable was derived largely from comte, who attempted to define the limits of human knowledge. and it is worth noting that the one thing which gave most offense in both comte's and spencer's works was their doctrine of the unknowable. this, indeed, forms but a small part of the work of these men, and if it were all demolished there would still remain their doctrine of the known. the bitterness of theology toward science arises from the fact that as we find things out we dispense with the arbitrary god, and his business agent, the priest, who insists that no transaction is legal unless he ratifies it. men begin by explaining everything, and the explanations given are always first for other people. parents answer the child, not telling him the actual truth, but giving him that which will satisfy--that which he can mentally digest. to say, "the fairies brought it," may be all right until the child begins to ask who the fairies are, and wants to be shown one, and then we have to make the somewhat humiliating confession that there are no fairies. but now we perceive that this mild fabrication in reference to santa claus, and the fairies, is right and proper mental food for the child. his mind can not grasp the truth that some things are unknowable; and he is not sufficiently skilled in the things of the world to become interested in them--he must have a resting-place for his thought, so the fairy-tale comes in as an aid to the growing imagination. only this: we place no penalty on disbelief in fairies, nor do we make special offers of reward to all who believe that fairies actually exist. neither do we tell the child that people who believe in fairies are good, and that those who do not are wicked and perverse. comte admits that the theological and metaphysical stages are necessary, but the sooner man can be graduated out of them the better. he brought vast research to bear in order to show the growth and death of theological conceptions. hate, fear, revenge and doubt are all theological attributes, detrimental to man's best efforts. that moral ideas were an afterthought, and really form no part of theology, comte emphasized at great length, and shows from much data where these ideas were grafted on to the original tree. and the sum of the argument is, that all progress of mind, body and material things has come to man through the study of cause and effect. and just in degree as he has abandoned the study of theology as futile and absurd, and centered on helping himself here and now, has he prospered. positivism is really a religion. the object of its worship is humanity. it does not believe in a devil or any influence that works for harm, or in opposition to man. man's only enemy is himself, and this is on account of his ignorance of this world, and his superstitious belief in another. our troubles, like diseases, all come from ignorance and weakness, and through our ignorance are we weak and unable to adjust ourselves to conditions. the more we know of this world the better we think of it, and the better are we able to use it for our advancement. so far as we can judge, the unknown cause that rules the world by unchanging laws is a movement forward toward happiness, growth, justice, peace and right. therefore, the scientist, who perceives that all is good when rightly received and rightly understood, is really the priest or holy man--the mediator and explainer of the mysteries. as fast as we understand things they cease to be supernatural, for the supernatural is the natural not yet understood. the theological priest who believes in a god and a devil is the real modern infidel. such a belief is fallacious, contrary to reason, and contrary to all the man of courage sees and knows. the real man of faith is the one who discards all thought of "how it first happened," and fixes his mind on the fact that he is here. the more he studies the conditions that surround him, the greater his faith in the truth that all is well. if men had turned their attention to humanity, discarding theology, using as much talent, time, money and effort to wring from the skies the secrets of the unknowable, this world would now be a veritable paradise. it is theology that has barred the entrance to eden, by diverting the attention of men from this world to another. heaven is here. all religious denominations now dimly perceive the trend of the times, and are gradually omitting theology from their teachings and taking on ethics and sociology instead. a preacher is now simply society's walking delegate. we are evolving theology out and sociology in. theology has ever been the foe of progress and the enemy of knowledge. it has professed to know all and has placed a penalty on advancement. the age of enlightenment will not be here until every church has evolved into a schoolhouse, and every priest is a pupil as well as a teacher. voltaire we are intelligent beings; and intelligent beings can not have been formed by a blind, brute, insensible being. there is certainly some difference between a clod and the ideas of newton. newton's intelligence came from some greater intelligence. --_the philosophical dictionary_ [illustration: voltaire] the man, francois marie arouet, known to us as voltaire (which name he adopted in his twenty-first year), was born in paris in sixteen hundred ninety-four. he was the second son in a family of three children. during his babyhood he was very frail; in childhood sickly and weak; and throughout his whole life he suffered much from indigestion and insomnia. in all the realm of writers no man ever had a fuller and more active career, touching life at so many points, than voltaire. the first requisite in a long and useful career would seem to be, have yourself born weak and cultivate dyspepsia, nervousness and insomnia. whether or not the good die young is still a mooted question, but certainly the athletic often do. all those good men and true, who at grocery, tavern and railroad-station eat hard-boiled eggs on a wager, and lift barrels of flour with one hand, are carried to early graves, and over the grass-grown mounds that cover their dust, consumptive, dyspeptic and neurotic relatives, for twice or thrice a score of years, strew sweet myrtle, thyme and mignonette. voltaire died of an accident--too much four-o'clock--cut off in his prime, when life for him was at its brightest and best, aged eighty-three. the only evidence we have that the mind of voltaire failed at the last came from the abbe gaultier and the curé of saint sulpice. these good men arrived with a written retraction, which they desired voltaire to sign. waiting in the anteroom of the sick-chamber they sent in word that they wished to enter. "assure them of my respect," said the stricken man. but the holy men were not to be thus turned away, so they entered. they approached the bedside, and the curé of saint sulpice said: "m. de voltaire, your life is about to end. do you acknowledge the divinity of jesus christ?" and the dying man stretched out a bony hand, making a gesture that they should depart, and murmured, "let me die in peace." "you see," said the curé to the abbe, as they withdrew, "you see that he is out of his head!" * * * * * the father of voltaire, francois arouet, was a notary who looked after various family estates and waxed prosperous on the crumbs that fell from the rich man's table. he was solicitor to the duc de richelieu, the sullys, and also the duchesse de saint-simon, mother of the philosopher, saint-simon, who made the mistake of helping auguste comte, thus getting himself hotly and positively denounced by the man who formulated the "positive philosophy." arouet belonged to the middle class and never knew that he sprang from a noble line until his son announced the fact. it was then too late to deny it. he was a devout churchman, upright in all his affairs, respectable, took snuff, walked with a waddle and cultivated a double chin. m. arouet pater did not marry until his mind was mature, so that he might avoid the danger of a mismating. he was forty, past. the second son, francois fils, was ten years younger than his brother armand, so the father was over fifty when our hero was born. francois fils used to speak of himself as an afterthought--a sort of domestic postscript--"but," added he musingly, "our afterthoughts are often best." one of the most distinguished clients of m. arouet was ninon de lenclos, who had the felicity to be made love to by three generations of frenchmen. ninon has been likened for her vivacious ways, her flashing intellect, and her perennial youth, to the divine sara, who at sixty plays the part of juliet with a woman of thirty for the old nurse. ninon had turned her three-score and ten, and swung gracefully into the home-stretch, when the second son was born to m. arouet. she was of a deeply religious turn of mind, for she had been loved by several priests, and now the abbe de chateauneuf was paying his devotions to her. ninon was much interested in the new arrival, and going to the house of m. arouet, took to bed, and sent in haste for the abbe de chateauneuf, saying she was in sore trouble. when the good man arrived, he thought it a matter of extreme unction, and was ushered into the room of the alleged invalid. here he was duly presented with the infant that later was to write the "philosophical dictionary." it was as queer a case of kabojolism as history records. doubtless the abbe was a bit agitated at first, but finally getting his breath, he managed to say, "as there is a vicarious atonement, there must also be, on occasion, vicarious births, and this is one--god be praised." the child was then baptized, the good abbe standing as godfather. there must be something, after all, in prenatal influences, for as the little francois grew up he evolved the traits of ninon de lenclos and the abbe much more than those of his father and mother. when the boy was a little over six years old the mother died. of her we know absolutely nothing. in her son's writings he refers to her but once, wherein he has her say that "boileau was a clever book, but a silly man." the education of the youngster seemed largely to have been left to the abbe, his godfather, who very early taught him to recite the "mosiad," a metrical effusion wherein the mistakes of moses were related in churchly latin, done first for the divertisement of sundry pious monks in idle hours. at ten years of age francois was sent to the college of louis-le-grand, a jesuit school where the minds of youth were molded in things sacred and secular. in only one thing did the boy really excel, and that was in the matter of making rhymes. the abbe chateauneuf had taught him the trick before he could speak plainly, and ninon had been so pleased with the wee poet that she left him two thousand francs in her will for the purchase of books. as ninon insisted on living to be ninety, voltaire discounted the legacy and got it cashed on dedicating a sonnet to the divine ninon. in this sonnet voltaire suggests that a life of virtue conduces largely to longevity, as witness the incomparable ninon de lenclos, to which sentiment ninon filed no exceptions. in one of the school debates young francois presented his argument in rhyme, and evidently ran in some choice passages from the "mosiad," for father le jay, according to condorcet, left his official chair, and rushing down the aisle, grabbed the boy by the collar, and shaking him, said, "unhappy boy! you will one day be the standard-bearer of deism in france!"--a prophecy, possibly, made after its fulfilment. young francois remained at the college until he was seventeen years old. from letters sent by him while there, it is evident that the chief characteristic of his mind was already a contempt for the clergy. of two of his colleagues who were preparing for the priesthood, he says, "they had reflected on the dangers of a world of the charms of which they were ignorant; and on the pleasures of a religious life of which they knew not the disagreeableness." already we see he was getting handy in polishing a sentence with the emery of his wit. continuing, he says: "in a quarter of an hour they ran over all the orders, and each seemed so attractive that they could not decide. in which predicament they might have been left like the ass, which died of starvation between two bundles of hay, not knowing which to choose. however, they decided to leave the matter to providence, and let the dice decide. so one became a carmelite and the other a jesuit." * * * * * arouet, at first intent on having his son become a priest, now fell back on the law as second choice. the young man was therefore duly articled with a firm of advocates and sent to hear lectures on jurisprudence. but his godfather introduced him into the society of the temple, a group of wits, of all ages, who could take snuff and throw off an epigram on any subject. the bright young man, flashing, dashing and daring, made friends at once through his skill in writing scurrilous verse upon any one whose name might be mentioned. this habit had been begun in college, where it was much applauded by the underlings, who delighted to see their unpopular teachers done to a turn. the scribbling habit is a variant of that peculiar propensity which finds form in drawing a portrait on the blackboard before the teacher gets around in the morning. if the teacher does not happen to love art for art's sake, there may be trouble; but verses are safer, for they circulate secretly and are copied and quoted anonymously. the thing we do best in life is that which we play at most in youth. ridicule was this man's weapon. for the benefit of the society of the temple he paid his respects to the sham piety and politics of versailles. he had been educated by priests, and his father was a politician feeding at the public trough. the young man knew the faults and foibles of both priest and politician, and his keen wit told truths about the court that were so well expressed the wastebasket did not capture them. one of these effusions was printed, anonymously, of course, but a copy coming into the hands of m. arouet, the old gentleman recognized the literary style and became alarmed. he must get the young man out of paris--the bastile yawned for poets like this! a brother of the abbe de chateauneuf was ambassador at the hague, and the great man, being importuned, consented to take the youth as clerk. life at the hague afforded the embryo poet an opportunity to meet many distinguished people. in francois there was none of the bourgeois--he associated only with nobility--and as he had an aristocracy of the intellect, which served him quite as well as a peerage, he was everywhere received. in his manner there was nothing apologetic--he took everything as his divine right. in this brilliant little coterie at the hague was one madame dunoyer, a writer of court gossip and a social promoter of ability, separated from her husband for her husband's good. francois crossed swords with her in an encounter of wit, was worsted, but got even by making love to her; and later he made love to her daughter, a beautiful girl of about his own age. the air became surcharged with gossip. there was danger of an explosion any moment. madame dunoyer gave it out that the brilliant subaltern was to marry the girl. the madame was going to capture the youth, either with her own charms or those of her daughter--or combined. rumblings were heard on the horizon. the ambassador, fearing entanglement, bundled young arouet back to paris, with a testimonial as to his character, quite unnecessary. a denial without an accusation is equal to a plea of guilty; and that the young man had made the mistake of making violent love to the mother and daughter at the same time there is no doubt. the mother had accused him and he said things back; he even had shown the atrocious bad taste of references in rhyme to the mutual interchange of confidences that the mother and daughter might enjoy. the ambassador had acted none too soon. the father was frantic with alarm--the boy had disgraced him, and even his own position seemed to be threatened when some wit adroitly accused the parent of writing the doggerel for his son. m. arouet denied it with an oath--while the son refused to explain, or to say anything beyond that he loved his father, thus carrying out the idea that the stupid old notary was really a wit in disguise, masking his intellect by a seeming dulness. no more biting irony was ever put out by voltaire than this, and the pathos of it lies in the fact that the father was quite unable to appreciate the quip. it was a sample of filial humor much more subtle than that indulged in by charles dickens, who pilloried his parents in print, one as mr. micawber and the other as mrs. nickleby. dickens told the truth and painted it large, but francois arouet dealt in indiscreet fallacy when he endeavored to give his father a reputation for raillery. a peculiarly offensive poem, appearing about this time, with the regent and his daughter, the duchesse de berri, for a central theme, a rescript was issued which indirectly testified to the poetic skill of young arouet. he was exiled to a point three hundred miles from paris and forbidden to come nearer on penalty, like unto the injunction issued by prince henry against the blameless falstaff. rumor said that the father had something to do with the matter. but the exile was not for long. the young poet wrote a most adulatory composition to the regent, setting forth his innocence. the regent was a mild and amiable man and much desired peace with all his subjects--especially those who dipped their quills in gall. he was melted by the rhyme that made him out such a paragon of virtue, and made haste to issue a pardon. the elder arouet now proved that he was not wholly without humor, for he wrote to a friend, "the exile of my dear son distressed me much less than does this precipitate recall." in order to protect himself the father now refused a home to the son, and francois became a lodger at a boarding-house. he wrote plays and acted in them, penned much bad poetry, went in good society and had a very rouge time. up to this period he knew little latin and less greek, but now he had an opportunity to furbish up on both. he found himself an inmate of the bastile, on the charge of expressing his congratulations to the people of france on the passing of louis the fourteenth. in america libel only applies to live men, but the world had not then gotten this far along. in the prison it was provided that sieur arouet fils should not be allowed pens and paper on account of his misuse of these good things when outside. he was given copies of homer, however, in greek and latin, and he set himself at work, with several of the other prisoners, to perfect himself in these languages. we have glimpses of his dining with the governor of the prison, and even organizing theatrical performances, and he was finally allowed writing materials on promise that he would not do anything worse than translate the bible, so altogether he was very well treated. in fact, he himself referred to this year spent in prison as "a pious retreat, that i might meditate, and chasten my soul in quiet thought." he was only twenty-one, and yet he had set paris by the ears, and his name was known throughout france. "i am as well known as the regent and will be remembered longer," he wrote--a statement and a prophecy that then seemed very egotistical, but which time has fully justified. it was in prison that he decided to change his name to voltaire, a fanciful word of his own coining. his pretended reason for the change was that he might begin life anew and escape the disgrace he had undergone of being in prison. there is reason to believe, however, that he was rather proud of being "detained," it was proof of his power--he was dangerous outside. but his family had practically cast him off--he owed nothing to them--and the change of name fostered a mysterious noble birth, an idea that he allowed to gain currency without contradiction. moliere had changed his name from poquolin--and was he not really following in moliere's footsteps, even to suffering disgrace and public odium? * * * * * the play of "oedipe" was presented by voltaire at the theater francaise, november eighteenth, seventeen hundred eighteen. this play was written before the author's sojourn in prison, but there he had sandpapered its passages, and hand-polished the epigrams. it was rehearsed at length with the help of the "guests" at the bastile, and once voltaire wrote a note of appreciation to the prefect of police, thanking him for his thoughtfulness in sending such excellent and pure-minded people to help him in his work. these things had been managed so they discreetly leaked out, and the cafes echoed with the name of voltaire. very soon after his release the play was presented to a crowded house. it was a success from the start, for into its lines the audience was allowed to read many veiled allusions to paris public characters. it ran for forty-five nights, and was the furore. on one occasion when interest seemed to lag, voltaire, on a sudden inspiration, dressed up as a bumpkin page, and attended the pontiff, carrying his train, playing various and sundry sly pranks in pantomime, a la francis wilson. in one of the boxes sat a famous beauty, the duchesse de villars. "who is this strange person who is intent upon spoiling the play?" she asked. on being told that he was the author of the drama, her censure turned to approbation and she sent for the young man. his appearance in her box was duly noted. the regent and his daughter, the duchesse de berri, could not resist the temptation to attend the play, and see how much they were satirized. voltaire did his little train-bearing act for their benefit, with a few extra grimaces, which pleased them very much, and seeing his opportunity, wrote a gracious letter of thanks to his highness for having deigned to visit his play, winding up with thanks for the years in the bastile where, "god wot, all of my evil inclinations were duly chastened and corrected." it had the desired effect--each side feared the other. the regent wanted the ready writers on his side, and the playwright who was opposed by the party in power could not hope for success. the regent sent a present of a thousand crowns to voltaire and also fixed on him a pension of twelve hundred livres a year. at once every passage in the play that could be construed as bearing on royalty was revised into words of adulation, and all went merry as a marriage-bell. financially the play was a success, and better yet was the pension and the good-will of the young king and his regent. thus at twenty-two did voltaire have the world at his feet. * * * * * when voltaire was twenty-four, his father died. the will provided that the property should be equally divided between his three children, but it was stipulated that the second son should not come into possession of his share until he was thirty-five, and not then unless he was able to show the master in chancery that he was capable of wisely managing his own affairs. this doubt of the father concerning the son's financial ability has often been commented upon ironically, in view of the pronounced thrift shown by voltaire in later life. but who shall say whether the father by that provision in his will did not drive home a stern lesson in economy? commodore vanderbilt had so much distrust of his son william's capacity for business that he exiled him to a long island farm, on an allowance. years after, when william had shown his ability to outstrip his father, he rebuked a critic who volunteered a suggestion to the effect that the father had erred in the boy problem. said william, "my father was right in this, as in most other things--i was a fool, and he knew it." voltaire's vacation of a year in the bastile had done him much good. then the will of his father, with its cautious provisions, tended to sober the youth to a point where he was docile enough for society's needs. a good deal of ballast in way of trouble was necessary to hold this man down. marriage might have tamed him. bachelors are of two kinds--those who are innocent of women, and those who know women too well. the second class, i am told, outnumbers the first as ten to one. voltaire had been a favorite of various women--usually married ladies, and those older than himself. he had plagiarized franklin, saying, fifty years before the american put out his famous advice, "if you must fall in love, why, fall in love with a woman much older than yourself, or at least a homely one--for only such are grateful." in answer to a man who said divorce and marriage were instituted at the same time, voltaire said: "this is a mistake: there is at least three days' difference. men sometimes quarrel with their wives at the end of three days, beat them in a week and divorce them at the end of a month." voltaire was small and slight in stature, but his bubbling wit and graceful presence more than made amends for any deficiency in way of form and feature. had he desired, he might have taken his pick among the young women of nobility, but we see the caution of his nature in limiting his love-affairs to plain women, securely married. "gossip isn't busy with the plain women--that is why i like you," he once said to madame de bernieres. what the madame's reply was, we do not know, but probably she was not displeased. if a woman knows she is loved, it matters little what you say to her. compliments by the right oblique are construed into lavish praise when expressed in the right tone of voice by the right person. the regent had allowed voltaire another pension of two thousand francs, at the same time intimating that he hoped the writer's income was sufficient so he could now tell the truth. voltaire took the hint, so subtly veiled, to the effect that if he again affronted royalty by unkind criticisms, his entire pension would be canceled. from this time on to the end of his life, he was full of lavish praise for royalty. he was needlessly loyal, and dedicated poems and pamphlets to nobility, right and left, in a way that would have caused a smile were not nobility so hopelessly bound in three-quarters pachyderm. he also wrote religious poems, protesting his love for the church. and here seems a good place to say that voltaire was a member of the catholic church to his death. many of his worst attacks on the priesthood were put in way of defense for outrageous actions which he enumerated in detail. he kept people guessing as to what he meant and what he would do next. immediately after the death of president mckinley there was a fine scramble among the editors of certain saffron sheets--to get in line and shake their ulsters free from all taint of anarchy. some writers, in order to divert suspicion from themselves, hotly denounced other men as anarchists. throughout his life voltaire had spasms of repentance, prompted by caution, possibly, when he warmly denounced atheists, and swore, i' faith, that one object of his life was to purify the church and cleanse it of its secret faults. in his twenty-sixth year, when he was trying hard to be good, he got into a personal altercation with the chevalier de rohan, an insignificant man bearing a proud name. the chevalier's wit was no match for the other's rapier-like tongue, but he had a way of his own in which to get even. he had his servants waylay the luckless poet and chastise him soundly with rattans. voltaire was furious; he tried to get the courts to take it up, but the prevailing idea was that he had gotten what he deserved, and the fact that the whole affair occurred after dark and the chevalier did not do the beating in person, made conviction impossible. but voltaire now quit the anapest and dactyl and devoted his best hours to taking fencing lessons. his firm intent was to baptize the soil with rohan's blood. voltaire was of enough importance so the secret police knew of all his doings. suddenly he found himself taking a post-graduate course in the bastile. i am not sure that the fiery little man was entirely displeased with the procedure. it proved to the world that he was a dangerous character, and it also gave him a respite from the tyranny of the fencing-master, and allowed him to turn to his first, last and only love--literature. in voltaire's cosmos was a good deal of the bob acres quality. there were plenty of reasons for locking him up--heresy and treason have ever been first cousins--and pamphlets lampooning churchmen high in office were laid at his door. no doubt some of the anonymous literature was not his--"i would have done the thing better or not at all," he once said in reference to a scurrilous brochure. the real fact was, that that particular pamphlet was done by a disciple, and if voltaire's writings were vile, then was his offense doubled in that he vitalized a ravenous brood of scribblers. they played caliban to his setebos. voltaire's most offensive contributions were always attributed by him to this bishop or that, and to various dignitaries who had no existence save in the figment of his own fertile pigment. he once carried on a controversy between the bishop of berlin and the archbishop of paris, each man thundering against the other with a monthly pamphlet wherein each one gored the other without mercy, and revealed the senselessness of the other's religion. they flung the literary stinkpot with great accuracy. "the other man's superstition is always ridiculous to us--our own is sacred," said voltaire, and so he allowed his controversialists to fight it out for his own quiet joy, and the edification of the onlookers. then his plan of printing an alleged sermon, giving some unknown prelate due credit on the title-page, starting in with a pious text and a page of trite nothings and gradually drifting off into ridicule of the things he had started in to defend--all this gives a comic tinge to his wail that "some evil-minded person is attributing things to me i never wrote," if an occasional sly churchman got after him with his own weapon, writing things in his style more hazardous than he dare express, surely he should not have complained. but this was a fact--the enemy could not follow him long with a literary fusillade--they hadn't the mental ammunition. well has voltaire been called "the father of all those who wear shovel-hats." * * * * * a few months in the bastile, and voltaire's indeterminate sentence was commuted to exile. he was allowed to leave his country for his country's good. early in the year seventeen hundred twenty-six he landed in england, evidently knowing nobody there except one merchant, a man of no special prominence. voltaire belonged to the nobility by divine right--as much as did disraeli. both had an inward contempt for titles, but they knew the hearts of the owners so well that they simply played a game of chess, and the "men" they moved were live knights, bishops, kings and queens, with rollers under the castles. the pawns they pushed here and there were the literary puppets of the time. the first thing voltaire had to master in england was the language, and this he did passably inside of three months. he took grub street by storm; dawdled at dodsley's; met dean swift, and these worthies respected each other's wit so much that they simply took snuff, grimaced and let it go at that; pope came in for a visit, and the french poet crossed twickenham ferry and offered a handmade sonnet in admiration of the "essay on man," which he had probably never read. gay gave voltaire "the beggar's opera," in private, and together they called on congreve, who interrupted the frenchman's flow of flattery long enough to say that he wished to be looked on as a gentleman, not a poet. and voltaire replied that there were many gentlemen but few poets, and if congreve had had the misfortune to be simply a gentleman he would not have troubled to call on him at all. congreve, who really regarded himself as the peer of shakespeare, was won, and sent voltaire on his way with letters to horace walpole of strawberry hill. thomson, who lived at hammersmith, and wrote his "seasons" in a "public" next door to kelmscott, corrected and revised some of voltaire's attempts at english poetry. young evolved some of his "night thoughts" while on a visit with voltaire at bubb dodington's. a call on the duchess of marlborough led to a dinner at lord chesterfield's. next he met queen caroline and assured her that she spoke french like a parisian. king george the second quite liked voltaire, because voltaire quite liked lady sandon, his mistress. only a frenchman could have successfully paid court to the king, queen and lady sandon at the same time, as voltaire did. his great epic poem, "henriade," that he had been sandpapering for ten years, was now published, dedicated to the queen. the king headed the subscription-list with more copies than he needed, at five guineas each, on agreement. voltaire afterward said that he would not be expected to read the poem. the queen's good offices were utilized--she became for the time a royal book-agent, and her signature and the author's adorned all deluxe copies. a suggestion from the queen was equal to an order, and the edition was soon worked off. voltaire now spent three years in england. he had written his "life of charles the twelfth," several plays, an "english note-book," and best of all, had gotten together a thousand pounds good money as proceeds of "henriade," a stiff and stilted piece of pedantic bombast, written with sweat and lamp-smoke. the "letters on the english" were published a few years later in paris with good results, considering it was only a by-product. it is a deal better-natured than dickens' "american note-book," and had more humor than emerson's "english traits." among other things quite voltairesque in the "letters" is this: "the anglican church has retained many of the good old catholic customs--not the least of which is the collection of tithes with great regularity." * * * * * the priestly habit of voltaire's life manifested itself even to the sharp collecting from the world all that the world owed him. the snug little sum he had secured in england would have shown his ability, but there was something better in store, awaiting his return to france. it seems the controller of finance had organized a lottery to help pay the interest on the public debt. a considerable sum of money had been realized, but there was still a large number of tickets unsold, and the drawing was soon to take place. voltaire knew the officials who had the matter in charge and they knew him. he organized a syndicate that would take all tickets there were left, on guarantee that among the tickets purchased would be the one that called for the principal prize of forty thousand pounds. just how it was known in advance what ticket would win must be left to those good people who understand these little things in detail. in any event, voltaire put in every sou he had--and his little fortune was then a matter of about ten thousand dollars. several of his friends contributed a like sum. the drawing took place, and the prize of forty thousand pounds was theirs. it is said that voltaire took twenty-five thousand pounds as his share--the whole scheme was his anyway--and his friends were quite satisfied with having doubled their money in a fortnight. immediately on securing this money, voltaire presented himself at the office of the president of accounts, and asked for the legacy left him by his father. as proof of his financial ability, and as a guarantee of good faith, he opened a hand-satchel and piled on the president's table a small mountain of gold and bank-notes. the first question of the astonished official was, "will m. de voltaire have the supreme goodness to explain where he stole all this money?" this was soon followed by an apology, as the visitor explained the reason of his visit. the father's legacy amounted to nearly four thousand pounds, and this was at once paid over to voltaire with a flattering letter expressing perfect faith in his ability to manage his own finances. there is a popular opinion that voltaire made considerable money by his pen, but the fact is, that at no period of his life did literature contribute in but a very scanty way to his prosperity. after the lottery scheme, voltaire embarked in grain speculations, importing wheat from barbary for french consumption. in this he made a fair profit, but when war broke out between italy and france, he entered into an arrangement with duverney, who had the army commissariat in his hands, to provision the troops. it was not much of a war, but it lasted long enough, as most wars do, for a few contractors to make much moneys. the war spirit is usually fanned by financiers, kuhn, loeb and company giving the ultimatum. voltaire cleared about twenty thousand pounds out of his provision contract. thus we find this thrifty poet at forty with a fortune equal to a half-million dollars. this money he loaned out in a way of his own--a way as original as his literary style. his knowledge of the upper circles again served him well. among the proud scions of nobility there were always a few who, through gambling proclivities, and other royal qualities, were much in need of funds. voltaire picked the men who had only a life interest in their estates, and made them loans, secured by the rentals. the loans were to be paid back in annuities as long as both men lived. all insurance is a species of gambling--the company offers to make you a bet that your house will burn within a year. in life-insurance, the company's expert looks you over, and if your waist measurement is not too great for your height, a bargain is entered into wherein you agree to pay so much now, and so much every year as long as you live, in consideration that the company will pay your heirs so much at your death. the chief value of life-insurance lies in the fact that it insures a man against his own indiscretion, a thing supposedly under his own control--but which never is. voltaire's scheme banked on the man's weakness, and laid his indiscretion open before the world. it was life-insurance turned wrong side out, and could only have been devised and carried out by a man of courage with an actuary's bias for mathematics. instead of agreeing to pay the man so much at death, voltaire paid him the whole sum in advance, and the man agreed to pay, say, ten per cent interest until either the lender or the borrower died. no principal was to be paid, and on the death of either party, the whole debt was canceled. voltaire picked only men younger than himself. it was a tempting offer to the borrower, for voltaire looked like a consumptive, and it is said that on occasion he evolved a wheezy cough that helped close the deal. the whole scheme, for voltaire, was immensely successful. on some of the risks he collected his yearly ten per cent for over forty years, or until his death. on voltaire's loan of sixteen hundred pounds to the marquis du chatelet, however, it is known that he collected nothing either in way of principal or interest. this was as strange a piece of financiering as was ever consummated; and the inside history of the matter, with its peculiar psychology, has never been written. the only two persons who could have told that story in its completeness were voltaire and the madame du chatelet, and neither ever did. * * * * * madame du chatelet--the divine emilie--was twenty-seven and voltaire was thirty-nine when they first met. he was living in obscure lodgings in paris for prudential reasons, the executioner having just burned, in the public street, all the copies of his last book that could be found. the madame called on him to express her sympathy--and congratulations. she had written a book, but it had not been burned--not even read! she was tall, thin, angular, far from handsome, but had beaming eyes and a face that tokened intellect. and best of all, her voice was low, finely modulated, and was not exercised more than was meet. she leaned her chin upon her hand and looked at him. she had met voltaire when she was a child--at least she said so, and he, being a gentleman, remembered perfectly. she read to him a little manuscript she had just dashed off. it was deep, profound and full of reasons--that is the way learned women write--they write like professors of rhetoric. really great men write lightly, suggestively, and with a certain amount of indifference, dash, froth and foam. when women evolve literary foam, it is the sweet, cloying, fixed foam of the charlotte russe--not the bubbling, effervescent voltaire article. could m. de voltaire suggest a way in which her manuscript might be lightened up so the public executioner would deign to notice it? m. de voltaire responded by reading to her a little thing of his own. the next day she called again. some say that madame called on voltaire to secure a loan on her husband's estate at civey. no matter--she got the loan. doubtless she did not know where she was going--none of us do. we are all sailing under sealed orders. the madame had been married eight years. she was versed in latin and knew italian literature. she was educated; voltaire was not. she offered to teach him italian if he would give her lessons in english. they read to each other things they had recently written. when men and women read to each other and mingle their emotions, the danger-line is being reached. literary people of the opposite sex do not really love each other. all they desire is to read their manuscript aloud to a receptive listener. thus are the literary germs vitalized--by giving our thoughts to another we really make them our own. only well-sexed people produce literature--poetry is the pollen of the mind. meter, rhythm, lilt and style are stamen, pistil and stalk swaying in the warm breeze of springtime. an order for arrest was out for voltaire. pamphlets which he had been refused permission to publish in paris were printed at rouen and were setting all paris by the ears. with madame du chatelet he fled to civey, where was the tumbledown chateau of the marquis--the madame's complaisant husband. voltaire advanced the marquis sixteen hundred pounds to put the place in order, and then on his own account fitted up two sumptuous apartments, one for himself and one for madame. the marquis went away with his regiment, and occasionally came back and lounged about the chateau. but voltaire was the real master of the place. voltaire was neither domestic nor rural in his tastes, but the du chatelet seemed to fill his cup to the brim, and made him enjoy what otherwise would have been exile. he wrote incessantly--poems, essays, plays--and fired pamphlets at a world of fools. all that he wrote during the day he read to madame at night. one of her maids has given us a vivid little picture of how voltaire, at exactly eleven o'clock each night, would come out of hiding, and entering the madame's room, would partake of the dainty supper that was always prepared for him. the divine emilie had the french habit of receiving her visitors in bed, and as her hours were much more regular than voltaire's, she usually enjoyed a nap before he entered. after his supper he would read aloud to her all he had written since they last met. if the piece was dramatic he would act it out with roll of r's, striding walk, grimace and gesticulations gracefully done, for the man was an actor of rare talent. emerson says, "let a man do a thing incomparably well, and the world will make a path to his door, though he live in a forest." there was no lack of society at civey--the writers, poets and philosophers found their way there. voltaire fitted up a little private theater, where his plays were given, and concerts and lectures held from time to time. the divine emilie's forte was science and mathematics--and on these themes she wrote much, competing for prizes and winning the recognition of various learned societies. it will be seen that the man and the woman were not in competition with each other, which, perhaps, accounts, in degree, for their firm friendship. yet they did quarrel, too, as true lovers will, i am told. but their quarreling was all done in english, so the servants and his inertia, the marquis, did not know the purpose of it. it is probable that the accounts of their misunderstandings are considerably exaggerated, as the rehearsal of a tragedy by this pair of histrions would be taken by the servants for a sure-enough fight. and they were always acting--often beginning breakfast with a "stunt." the madame sang well, and her little impromptu arias pleased her thin little lover immensely and he would improvise and answer in kind, and then take the part of an audience and applaud, calling loudly, "bravo! bravo!" mornings they would ride horseback through the winding woods, or else hunt for geological and botanical specimens. about all of voltaire's science he got from the lady and this was true of languages as well. to a nervous, irritable and intense thinker a certain amount of solitude seems necessary. voltaire occasionally grew weary of the delicious quiet of civey, and the indictment against him having been quashed, he would go away to paris or elsewhere. on these trips if he did not take madame along she would grow furious, then lacrimose and finally submissive--with a weepy protest. if he failed to write her daily she grew hysterical. two winters they spent together in paris and another at brussels. a lawsuit involving the estate of the marquis du chatelet, that had been in the courts for eighty years, was pushed to a successful issue by voltaire and madame. four hundred fifty thousand dollars were secured, but of this voltaire, strangely enough, took nothing. that the bond between emilie and voltaire was very firm is shown by the fact that, after they had been together ten years, he declined to leave her to accept an invitation to visit frederick the great at berlin. frederick was a married man, but his was a strictly bachelor court--for prudential reasons. frederick and emilie had carried on a spirited correspondence, but this was as close as he cared for her to come to him. all of his communications with females were limited to letters, and voltaire once said that that was the reason he was called frederick the great. madame du chatelet died when she was forty-two; voltaire was fifty-five. for fifteen years this strange and most romantic friendship had continued, and to a degree it had worn itself out. toward the last the lady had been exacting and dictatorial, and thinking that voltaire had slighted her by not taking her more into his confidence, she had accepted another lover, a man ten years her junior. if she had thought to make voltaire jealous, she had reckoned without her host--he was relieved to find her fierce supervision relaxed. when she passed away he worked his woe up into a pretty panegyric, closed up his affairs at civey, and left there forever. * * * * * so far as the government was concerned, voltaire seems to have passed his days in accepting rewards and receiving punishments. interdict, exile, ostracism were followed by honors, pension and office. his one lasting love was the drama. about every two years a swirl of excitement was caused at paris by the announcement of a new play by voltaire. these plays seemed to appeal mostly to the nobility, the clergy and those in public office. and the object in every instance was to get even with somebody, and place some one in a ridiculous light. innocent historical dramas were passed by the censor, and afterward it was found that in them some local bigwig was flayed without mercy. then the play had to be withdrawn, and all printed copies were burned in public, and voltaire would flee to brussels or geneva to escape summary punishment. however, he never fooled all of the people all of the time. there was always a goodly number of dignitaries who richly enjoyed the drubbing he gave the other fellow, and these would gloat in inward glee over the voltaire ribaldry until it came their turn. then the other side would laugh. the fact is, voltaire always represented a constituency, otherwise his punishment might have been genuine, instead of forty lashes with a feather, well laid on. about the time madame du chatelet passed away, voltaire seemed to be enjoying a period of kingly favor. he had been made a knight of the bedchamber and also historiographer of france. the chief duty of the first office consisted in signing the monthly voucher for salary, and the other was about the same as poet laureate--with salary in inverse ratio to responsibility. it was considered, however, that the holder of these offices was one of the king's family, and therefore was bound to indulge in no unseemly antics. on june twenty-sixth, seventeen hundred fifty, voltaire applied to the king in person for permission to visit frederick of prussia. tradition has it that the king replied promptly, "you may go--the sooner the better--and you may remain as long as you choose." voltaire pocketed the veiled acerbity without a word, and bowing himself out, made hot haste to pack up and be on his way before an order rescinding the permission was issued. frederick was a freethinker, a scientist, a poet, and a wit well worthy of the companionship of voltaire. in fact, they were very much alike. both had the dual qualities of being intensely practical and yet iconoclastic. both were witty, affable, seemingly indifferent and careless, but yet always with an eye on the main chance. each was small, thin and bony, but both had the intellect of the lean and hungry cassius that looked quite through the deeds of man. frederick received voltaire with royal honors. princes, ministers of state, grandees and generals high in office, knelt on one knee as he passed. frederick tried to make it appear that france had failed to appreciate her greatest philosopher, and so he had come to prussia--the home of letters. his pension was fixed at twenty thousand francs a year, he was given the golden key of chamberlain, and the grand cross of the order of merit. he was a member of the king's household, and was the nearest and dearest friend of the royal person. frederick thought he had bound the great man to him for life. personality repels as well as attracts. voltaire's viper-like pen was never idle. he wrote little plays for the court, and these were presented with much eclat, the author superintending their presentation, and considerately taking minor parts himself, so as to divide the honors. but amateur theatricals stand for heart-burnings and jealousy. the german poets were scored, other writers ridiculed, and big scientists came in for their share of pen-pricking. voltaire corrected the king's manuscript and taught him the secret of literary style. then they fell into a controversy, done in caslon old-style, thundering against each other's theories in pamphlets across seas of misundertandings. neither side publicly avowed the authorship, but nobody was deceived. the king and voltaire met daily at meals, and carefully avoided the topics they were fighting out in print. voltaire was rich and all of his wants were supplied, but he entered the financial lists, and taking advantage of his inside knowledge, speculated in scrip and got into a disgraceful lawsuit over the proceeds with a man he should never have known. frederick was annoyed--then disturbed. he personally chided voltaire for his folly in mixing with the king's enemies. voltaire had tired of the benevolent assimilation--he craved freedom. a friend who loves you, if he spies upon your every action, will become intolerable. voltaire intimated to frederick that he would like to go. but frederick had a great admiration for the man--he considered voltaire the greatest living thinker, and to have such a one in the court would help give the place an atmosphere of learning. he recognized that there were two voltaires--one covetous, quibbling, spiteful and greedy; and the other the peerless poet and philosopher--the man who hated shams and pretense, and had made a brave fight for liberty; the charming companion, the gracious friend. frederick was philosopher enough to realize that he could not have the one without the other--if he had the angel he must also tolerate the demon. this he would do--he must have his voltaire, and so he refused the passports asked for, and sought to interest his literary lion in new projects. finally, court life became intolerable to voltaire, as life is to anybody when he realizes that he is being detained against his will. voltaire packed his effects, secured a four-horse carriage, and with his secretary, departed by night, without leaving orders where his mail should be forwarded. when frederick found that his singing bird had flown, he was furious. fear had much to do with the matter, for voltaire had taken various manuscripts written by the king, wherein potentates in high places were severely scored. the first thought of frederick evidently was that voltaire had really been a spy in the employ of the french government. he sent messengers after him in hot haste--the fugitive was overtaken, and arrested. his luggage was searched, and after being detained at frankfort for three weeks he was allowed to depart for pastures new. the news of his flight, arrest and disgrace became the gossip of every court of christendom. who was disgraced more by the arrest--voltaire or frederick--the world has not yet decided. carlyle deals with the subject in detail in his "life of frederick," and exonerates the king. but taine says carlyle wrote neither history nor poetry, and certainly we do not consider the sage of cheyne row an impartial judge. voltaire took time to cool, and then wrote a history of the affair which is published in his "my private life," that is one of the most delicious pieces of humor ever written. that he should have looked forward to life at the prussian court as the ideal, and then after bravely enduring it for three years, make his escape by night, was only a huge joke. nothing else could have been expected, he says. men of fifty should know that environment does not make heaven, and people who expect other people to make paradise for them are forever doomed to wander without the walls. voltaire acknowledges that he got better treatment than he deserved, and makes no apology for working the whole affair up into good copy. the final proof that voltaire was a true philosopher is that he was able to laugh at himself. * * * * * when voltaire left prussia, it was voluntary exile. paris was forbidden--all of france was for him unsafe; england he had hopelessly offended. by slow stages he made his way to switzerland. but on the way there his courage failed him and he wrote back to frederick, suggesting reconciliation. but frederick promptly reminded him that he had repeatedly broken promises by writing about frederick's personal friends, and "voltaire and frederick had better keep apart, that their love for each other might not grow cold"--a subtle bit of sarcasm. at geneva, where calvin had instituted a little tyranny of his own, voltaire was made welcome. nominally no catholics were allowed in geneva, and when voltaire wrote to the authorities, explaining that he was a good catholic, the matter was taken as a great joke. he bought a beautiful little farm a few miles away, on the banks of the river rhone, overlooking the city of geneva and the lake. it was an ideal spot, and rightly he called it "delices." here he was going to end his days amid flowers and birds and books and bees, an onlooker and possibly a commentator on the times, but not a doer. his days of work were over. of the world of strife he had had enough--thus he wrote to frederick. visitors of a literary turn of mind at geneva began to come his way. he established an inn, and later built a theater out of the ruins of an old church that he had bought and dismantled. "this is what i am going to do with all the churches in france," he explained with a smile. his pen was never idle. he wrote plays that were presented at his own little theater, and on such occasions he would send word to his geneva friends not to come, as they could not be accommodated. of course they came. he wrote a history of peter the great, and this brought him into communication with queen catherine of russia, with whom he carried on quite an animated correspondence. this worthy widow invited him to saint petersburg, and he slyly wrote to frederick for advice as to whether he should go or not. it is said that frederick advised him to go, pay court to the queen, marry her, seize the throne, and get his head cut off for his pains, thus achieving immortality and benefiting the world at one stroke. voltaire had no intention of going to saint petersburg; he had created a little court of letters, of which he himself was the czar, and for the first time in his life he was experiencing a degree of genuine content. his flowers, bees, manuscripts and theater filled every moment of the day from six in the morning until ten at night. he had arrived in switzerland broken in health, with mind dazed, his frail body undone. there at the little farm at delices, overlooking the lake, health came back and youth seemed to return to this man of three-score. some of the nobility in paris, to whom he had loaned money, took advantage of his exile to withhold payments, but voltaire secured an agent to look after his affairs, so his losses were not great. he bought the tumbledown chateau of tournay, near at hand, which carried with it the right to call himself count tournay. frederick, with mock respect, so addressed his letters. his next financial venture, begun when he was sixty-eight, might well have tested the strength of a much younger man. a few miles from geneva, at ferney, just over the border from switzerland, voltaire had bought a large tract of waste land, intending to use it for pasturage. here he built a cottage and lived a part of the time when visitors were too persistent at delices. ferney was on french soil, delices in switzerland. voltaire had criticized the protestants of geneva, and given it as his opinion that a calvinistic tyranny was in no wise preferable to one built on catholicism. some then said, "this man is really what he professes--a catholic." there had also been a demonstration to drive him out of switzerland, since it was pretty well known that voltaire's crowds of visitors were neither catholic nor protestant. "delices is infidelic," was the cry, and this doubtless had something to do with voltaire's establishing himself at ferney. if protestant switzerland drove this catholic over to france, why, catholic france would not molest him. every country, no matter how tyrannical its government, prides itself on being the home of the exile, just as every man thinks of himself as being sincere and without prejudice. it is now believed that voltaire had much to do with inciting the civil riots in geneva against the catholics. he had circulated pamphlets purporting to be written by a catholic, upholding the pope, and ridiculing most unmercifully the pretenses of protestantism, declaring it a compromise with the devil, made up of the scum of the catholic church. this pamphlet declared calvin a monster, and arraigned him for burning servetus, and hinted that all calvinists would soon be paid back in their own coin. no one else could have penned this vitriolic pamphlet but voltaire--he knew both sides. but since geneva regarded voltaire as an infidel, it never occurred to the authorities that he would take up the cudgel of the catholic church that had burned his books. the real fact was, the pamphlet wasn't a defense of catholicism--it was only a drubbing of calvinism, and the wit was too subtle for the presbyterians to digest. very soon another pamphlet appeared, answering the first. it arraigned the catholics in scathing phrase, suggested that they were getting ready to burn the city--hinted at a repetition of saint bartholomew, and declared the order had gone forth from rome to scourge and kill. it was as choice an a.p.a. document as was ever issued by a relentless joker. the result was that the workers in the watch-factory and silk-mills who were catholics found themselves ostracized by the protestant workmen. i do not find that the authorities drove the catholics out of geneva, it was simply a species of labor trouble--protestants would not work with catholics. at this juncture voltaire comes in, and invites all persecuted catholic watch-workers and silk-weavers to move to ferney. here voltaire laid out a town--erected houses, factories, churches and schools. in two years he had built up a town of twelve hundred people, and had a watch-factory and silk-mill in full and paying operation. the problem of every manufacturer is to sell his wares--voltaire knew how to release purse-strings of friends and enemies alike. he sent watches to all of his enemies in paris, bishops, priests and potentates, explaining that he had quit literature forever, and was now engaged in helping struggling, exiled catholics to get an honest living--he was doing penance as foreman of a watch-factory--would the most reverend not help in this worthy work? money flowed in on ferney--frederick ordered a consignment of watches, queen catherine did the same, and the bishop of paris sent his blessing and an order for enough silk to keep voltaire's factory going for six months. voltaire really got the pick of the workmen of geneva--the goods made were of the best, and while at first catholics only were employed, yet in five years ferney was quite as much protestant as catholic. voltaire respected the religious beliefs of his workmen, and there was liberty for all. he paid better wages and treated his workers better than they had ever been treated in geneva. voltaire built houses for his people and allowed them to pay him in monthly instalments. and not only did he himself make much money out of his ferney investment, but he established the town upon such a safe financial basis that its prosperity endures even unto this day. * * * * * it was at ferney, in his old age, that voltaire first made open war upon "revealed religion." all religions that professed a miraculous origin were to him baneful in the extreme, the foes of light and progress, the enemies of mankind. he did not perceive, as modern psychology does, that the period of supernaturalism is the childhood of the mind. myths and fairy-tales are not of themselves base--the injury lies with the men who seek to profit by these things, and build up a tyranny founded on innocence and ignorance--seeking to perpetuate these things, issuing threats against growth, and offers of reward to all who stand still. voltaire called superstition "the infamy," and he summoned the thinkers of the world to crush it beneath a heel of scorn. letters, pamphlets, plays, essays, were sent out in various languages, by his own printing-presses. the wit of the man--his scathing mockery--were weapons no one could wield in reply. the priests and preachers did not answer him--they could not--they only grew purple with wrath and hissed. says victor hugo, "jesus wept; voltaire smiled." to which bernard shaw has recently rejoined, "jesus wept; voltaire smiled; william morris worked." from the prosperity, peace and security of ferney, voltaire pointed a bony finger at every hypocrite in christendom, and laughed his mocking smile. the man expressed himself, and happiness lies in that and nothing else. misery comes from lack of full, free self-expression, and from nothing else. the man who fights for freedom fights for the right of self-expression for himself and others--and immortality lies in nothing else. there is no fight worth making--no struggle worth the while--save the struggle for freedom. no name is honored among men--no name lives--save the name of the man who worked for liberty and light--who has fought freedom's fight. run the list in your mind of the names that are immortal, and you will recall only those of men who have widened the horizon for other men, and that select number who are remembered in infamy because they linked their names with greatness by doubting, denying, betraying and persecuting it--deathless through disgrace. voltaire sided with the weak, the defenseless, the fallen. he demanded that men should not be hounded for their belief, that they should not be arrested without cause and without knowing why, and without letting their friends know why. we realize his faults, we know his imperfections and limitations, yet, through his influence, life throughout the world became safer, liberty dearer, freedom a more sacred thing. his words were a battery that eventually razed the walls of the bastile, and best of all, freed countless millions from theological superstition, that bastile of the brain. herbert spencer what knowledge is of most worth? the uniform reply is: science. this is the verdict on all counts. for direct self-preservation, or the maintenance of life and health, the all-important knowledge is--science. for that indirect self-preservation which we call gaining a livelihood, the knowledge of greatest value is--science. for the discharge of parental functions, the proper guidance is to be found only in science. for the interpretation of national life, past and present, without which the citizen can not rightly regulate his conduct, the indispensable key is--science. alike for the most perfect production and present enjoyment of art in all its forms, the needful preparation is still--science. and for purposes of discipline--intellectual, moral, religious--the most efficient study is, once more--science. --_essay on education_ [illustration: herbert spencer] in derby, england, april twenty-seventh, eighteen hundred twenty, herbert spencer, the only child of his parents, was born. his mother died in his childhood, so he really never had any vivid recollection of her, but hearsay, fused with memory and ideality, vitalized all. and thus to him, to the day of his death, his mother stood for gentleness, patience, tenderness, intuitive insight, and a love that never grew faint. man makes his mother in his own image. herbert spencer's father was a school-teacher, and in very moderate circumstances. little herbert could not remember when he did not go to school, and yet as a real scholar, he never went to school at all. the family lived over the schoolroom, and while the youngster yet wore dresses his father would hold him in his arms, and carry him around the room as he instructed his classes. william george spencer was both father and mother to herbert, and used to sing to him lullabies as the sun went down. after school there were always walks afield, and in the evening the brother of the school-master would call, and then there was much argument as to why and what, whence and whither. people talk gossip, we are told, for lack of a worthy theme. these two spencers--one a school-master and the other a clergyman--found the time too short for their discussions. in their walks and talks they were always examining, comparing, classifying, selecting, speculating. flowers, plants, bugs, beetles, birds, trees, weeds, earth and rocks were scrutinized and analyzed. where did it come from? how did it get here? i am told that lions never send their cubs away to be educated by a cubless lioness and an emasculated lion. the lion learns by first playing at the thing and then doing it. a motherless boy, brought up by an indulgent father, one might prophesy, would be sure to rule the father and be spoiled himself through omission of the rod. but in the boy problem all signs fail. the father taught by exciting curiosity and animating his pupils to work out problems and make discoveries--keeping his discipline well out of sight. how well the plan worked is revealed in the life of herbert spencer himself; and his book, "education," is based on the ideas evolved by his father, to whom he gives much credit. no man ever had so divine a right to compile a book on education as herbert spencer, for he proved in his own life every principle he laid down. on all excursions herbert was taken along--because he couldn't be left at home, you know. he listened to the conversations and learned by hearing the older pupils recite. all out-of-doors was fairyland to him--a curiosity-shop filled with wonderful things--over your head, under your feet, all around was life--action, pulsing life, everything in motion--going somewhere, evolving into something else. this habit of observation, adoration and wonder--filled with pleasurable emotions and recollections from the first--lasted the man through life, and allowed him, even with a frail constitution, to round out a long period of severe mental work, with never a tendency to die at the top. herbert spencer never wrote a thing more true than this: "the man to whom in boyhood information came in dreary tasks, along with threats of punishment, is unlikely to be a student in after-years; while those to whom it came in natural forms, at the proper times, and who remember its facts as not only interesting in themselves, but as a long series of gratifying successes, are likely to continue through life that self-instruction begun in youth." when thirteen years old herbert went to live with his uncle, the reverend thomas spencer, at bath. here the same methods of education were continued that had been begun at home--conversation, history in the form of story-telling, walks and talks, and mathematical calculations carried out as pleasing puzzles. in mathematics the boy made rapid progress, but the faculty of observation was the dominant one. every phase of cloud and sky, of water and earth, rock and mountain, bird and bush, plant and tree, was curious to him. he kept a journal of his observations, which had the double advantage of deepening his impressions by recounting them, and second, it taught him the use of language. the best way to learn to write is to write. herbert spencer never studied grammar until he had learned to write. he took his grammar at sixty, which is a good age to begin this interesting study, as by that time you have largely lost your capacity to sin. men who swim exceedingly well are not those who have taken courses in the theory of swimming at natatoriums from professors of the amphibian art--they were boys who just jumped in. correspondence-schools for the taming of broncos are as naught; and treatises on the gentle art of wooing are of no avail--follow nature's lead. grammar is the appendenda vermiformis of pedagogics: it is as useless as the letter q in the alphabet, or as the proverbial two tails to a cat, which no cat ever had, and the finest cat in the world, the manx cat, has no tail at all. "the literary style of most university men is commonplace, when not positively bad," wrote herbert spencer in his old age. "educated englishmen all write alike," said taine. that is to say, they have no literary style, for style is character, individuality--the style is the man. and grammar tends to obliterate all individuality. no study is so irksome to everybody, except to the sciolists who teach it, as grammar. it remains forever a bad taste in the mouth of the man of ideas, and has weaned bright minds innumerable from all desire to express themselves through the written word. grammar is the etiquette of words, and the man who does not know how to properly salute his grandmother on the street until he has consulted a book, is always so troubled about his tenses that his fancies break through language and escape. orators who keep their thoughts upon the proper way to gesticulate in curves impress nobody. if poor grammar were a sin against decency, or an attempt to poison the minds of the people, it might be wise enough to hire men to protect the well of english from defilement. but a stationary language is a dead one--moving water only is pure--and the well that is not fed by springs is a breeding-place for disease. let men express themselves in their own way, and if they express themselves poorly, look you, their punishment shall be that no one will read them. oblivion, with her smother-blanket, waits for the writer who has nothing to say and says it faultlessly. in the making of hare-soup, i am told the first requisite is to catch your hare. the literary scullion who has anything to offer a hungry world will doubtless find a way to fricassee it. * * * * * when seventeen, herbert spencer was apprenticed to a surveyor on the london and birmingham railway. the pay was meager--board and keep and five pounds for the first year, with ten pounds the second year "if he deserved it." however, school-teachers and clergymen are used to small reward, and to make a living for one's self was no small matter to the spencers. the youth who has gotten his physical growth should earn his own living, this as a necessary factor in his further mental evolution. neither william george spencer, herbert's father, nor thomas, his uncle, seemed ever to anticipate that they were helping to develop the greatest thinker of his time. they themselves were obscure men, and quite happy therein, and if young herbert could attain to a fair degree of physical health, make his living as an honest surveyor or as a teacher of mathematics, it would be all one could reasonably hope for. and thus they lived out the measure of their days, and passed away unaware that this boy they claimed in partnership was to be the maker of an epoch. young spencer began his surveying work by carrying a flag, and soon he was advanced to "chainman." his skill in mathematics made his services valuable, and his willingness to sit up nights and work out the measurements of the day, so pleased his employer that the letter of the contract was waived and he was paid ten pounds for his first year's work, instead of five. he invented shorter methods for bridges and culverts, and i believe was the first engineer to build a cantilever railroad-bridge in england. when he was twenty-one he had so thoroughly mastered the work that his employers offered to place him in charge of a construction-gang at a salary of two hundred pounds a year, which was then considered high pay. he, however, loved liberty more than money, and his tastes were in the direction of invention and science, rather than in working out an immediate practical success for himself. he returned home and invented a scheme for making type; and had another plan for watchmaking, which he illustrated with painstaking designs. half of his time was spent in the fields, and he made a large botanical collection--indexing it carefully, with many notes and comments. he also wrote articles for the "civil engineers' and artisans' journal." for these he received no pay, but the acceptance of manuscript gives a great glow to a writer's cosmos: young spencer was encouraged in the belief that he had something to offer the public. but his father and kinsmen saw only failure in these days of dawdling; and the money being gone, herbert spencer, aged twenty-two, went up to london to try to get a renewal of the offer from his old employer. but things had changed--chances gone are gone forever, and he was told that opportunity knocks but once at each man's door. sadly he returned home--not disappointed in himself, but depressed that he should disappoint others. his inventions languished--nobody was interested in them. to get a living was the problem, and writing seemed the only way. and so he prepared a series of articles for "the non-conformist," and there was enough non-conformity in them so he was paid a small sum for his work. it proved this, though--he could get a living by his pen. in these "non-conformist" articles, spencer put forth a daring statement concerning the evolution of the soldier, that straightway made him a few enemies, and gave his clerical uncle gooseflesh. his hypothesis was this: when man first evolved out of the stone age, and began to live in villages, the oldest and wisest individual was regarded as patriarch or chief. this chief appointed certain men to punish wrongdoers and keep order. but there were always a few who would not work and who, through their violence and contumacious spirit, were finally driven from the camp. or more likely they fled to escape punishment--which is the same thing--for they were outcasts. these men found refuge in the mountain fastnesses and congregated for two reasons--one, so they could avoid capture, and the other so they could swoop down and "secure their own." robbery and commerce came hand in hand, and piracy is almost as natural as production. finally, the robbers became such a problem to industry that terms were made with them. their tribute took the form of a tax, and to make sure that this tax was paid, the robbers protected the people against other robbers. and then, for the first time, the world saw a standing army. an army has two purposes--to protect the people, and to collect the tax for protecting the people. at the headquarters of this army grew up a court, and all the magnificent splendor of a capitol centered around the captains. in fact, the word "capitol" means the home of the captain. herbert spencer did not say that a soldier was a respectable brigand, and that a lawyer is a man who protects us from lawyers, but he came so close to it that his immediate friends begged him to moderate his expressions for his own safety. spencer also at the same time traced the evolution of the priest. he showed how the "holy man" was one frenzied with religious ecstasy, who went away and lived in a cave. occasionally this man came back to beg, to preach and to do good. in order to succeed in his begging, he revealed his peculiar psychic powers, and then reinforced these with claims of supernatural abilities. these claims were not exactly founded upon truth, but once put forth were in time believed by those who advanced them. this priest, who claimed to have influence with the power of the unseen, found early favor with the soldier--and the soldier and the priest naturally joined hands. the soldier protected the priest and the priest absolved the soldier. one dictated man's place in this world--the other in the next. the calm way in which herbert spencer reasoned these things out, and his high literary style, which made him unintelligible to all those whose minds were not of scientific bent, and his emphatic statement that what is, is right, and all the steps in man's development mean a mounting to better things, saved him from the severe treatment that greeted, say, charles bradlaugh, who translated the higher criticisms for the hoi polloi. spencer's first essays on "the proper sphere of government," done in his early twenties for "the non-conformist" and "the economist," outlined his occupation for life--he was to be a writer. he became assistant editor of the "westminster review," and contributed to various literary and scientific journals. these essays, enlarged, rewritten and revised, finally emerged in eighteen hundred fifty-one in the form of "social statics, or the conditions essential to human happiness." this book, so bold in its radical suggestions, now almost universally admitted, was printed at the author's expense--a fact that should put a quietus for all time upon all those indelicate and sarcastic allusions concerning "when the author prints." there was an edition of seven hundred fifty copies of the book, and it took every shilling the young man had saved, and a few borrowed pounds as well, to pay the bill. the book made no splash in the literary sea--nobody read it except a dozen good people who did so as a matter of friendship. after six years there were still five hundred copies left, and the author wrote this slightly ironical line: "i am glad the public is taking plenty of time to fully digest my work before passing judgment upon it. of all things, hasty criticisms are to be regretted." yet there was one person who read herbert spencer's first book with close consideration and profound sympathy. this was a young woman, the same age as spencer, who had come up to london from the country to make her fortune. her name was mary ann evans. * * * * * in "notes and comments," spencer's last book, published two years before his death, are several quotations and allusions to george eliot. no other woman is mentioned in the volume. herbert spencer and mary ann evans first met at the house of the editor of the "westminster review" about the year eighteen hundred fifty-one. their tastes, aptitudes and inclinations were much the same. they were born the same year; both were brought up in the country; both were naturalists by inclination, and scientists because they could not help it. "social statics" made a profound impression on george eliot, and she protested to the last that it was the best book the author ever wrote. he had read her "essay on spinoza," and remembered it so well that he repeated a page of it the first time they met. they loved the same things, and united, too, in their dislikes. both were democrats, and the cards, curds and custards of society were to them as naught. in a few months after the first meeting, george eliot wrote to a friend in warwickshire: "the bright side of my life, after the affection for my old friends, is the new and delightful friendship which i have found in herbert spencer. we see each other every day, and in everything we enjoy a delightful comradeship. if it were not for him my life would be singularly arid." the synthetic philosophy was taking form in spencer's mind, and together they threshed out the straw and garnered the grain. she was getting to be a necessity to spencer--and he saw no reason why the beautiful friendship should not continue just this way for years and years. both were literary grubbers and lived in boarding-houses of the class b variety. and here george henry lewes appeared upon the scene. legend says that spencer introduced lewes to miss evans, and both miss evans and mr. spencer were a bit in awe of him, for he was a literary success, and they were willing to be. lewes had written at this time sixteen books--novels, essays, scientific treatises, poems, and a drama. he spoke five languages, had studied medicine, theology, and had been a lecturer and actor. he was small, had red hair, combed his whiskers by the right oblique, and wore a yellow necktie. thackeray says he was the most learned and versatile man he ever knew, "and if i should see him in piccadilly, perched on a white elephant, i would not be in the least surprised." none of the various ventures of lewes had paid very well, but he had great hopes, and money enough to ride in a cab. he gave advice, and radiated good-cheer wherever he went. in eighteen hundred fifty-four lewes and miss evans disappeared from london, having gone to germany, leaving letters behind, stating that thenceforward they wished to be considered as man and wife. lewes was in his fortieth year, and slightly bald; george eliot was thirty-six, and there were silver threads among the gold. they had taken the philosophy of "social statics" in dead earnest. herbert spencer lost appetite, ceased work, roamed through the park aimlessly, and finally fell into a fit of sickness--"night air, and too close confinement to mental tasks," the doctor said. spencer was not a marrying man--he was wedded to science, yet he craved the companionship of the female mind. had he and miss evans married, he would doubtless have continued his work just the same. he would have absorbed her into his being--they would have lived in a garret, and possibly we might have had a better synthetic philosophy, if that were possible. but we would have had no "adam bede" nor "mill on the floss." we often see mention, by the ready writers, of "mental equals" and "perfect mates," but in all business partnerships, one man is the court of last appeal by popular acclaim. if power is absolutely equal, the engine stops on the center. twins may look exactly alike, but one is the spokesman. in all literary collaboration, one does the work and the other looks on. when george henry lewes took mary ann evans as his wife, that was the last of lewes. he became her inspiration, secretary, protector, friend and slave. and this was all beautiful and right. i believe it was augustine birrell who said, "george henry lewes was the busy drone to a queen bee." it probably is well that mr. spencer and miss evans did not marry--they were too much alike--they might have gotten into competition with each other. george eliot had a poise and dignity in her character that kept the versatile lewes just where he belonged; and at the same time she lived her own life and preserved in ascending degree the strong and simple beauties of her character. truly was george eliot "a citizen of the sacred city of fine minds--the jerusalem of celestial art." lewes was the tug that puffed and steamed and brought the majestic steamship into port. for one book george eliot received a sum equal to forty thousand dollars, and her income after "adam bede" was published was never less than ten thousand dollars a year. spencer lived out his days in the boarding-house, and until after he was seventy, had not reached a point where absolute economy was not in order. spencer faced the universe alone, and tried to solve its mysteries. not only did he live alone, with no close confidants or friends, but when he died he left not a single living relative nearer than the fourth generation. with him died the name. * * * * * the leading note in "social statics" is a plea for the liberty of the individual. that government is best which governs least. the liberty of each, limited only by the liberty of all, is the rule to which society must conform in order to attain the highest development. governments have no business to scrutinize the life and belief of the individual. interference should only come where one man interferes with the liberties of another. liberty of action is the first requisite to progress, and the prime essential in human happiness. it is better that men have wrong opinions than no opinions--through our blunders we reach the light. government is for man, and not man for government. men wish to do what is best for themselves, and eventually they will, if let alone, but they can only grow through constant practise and frequent mistakes. plato's plan for an ideal republic provided rules and laws for the guidance of the individual. in the mosaic laws it is the same: every circumstance and complication of life is thought out, and the law tells the individual what he shall do, and what he shall not do. that is to say, a few men were to do the thinking for the many. and the argument that plain people should not be allowed to think for themselves, since the wise know better what is for their good, is exactly the argument used by slaveholders: that they can take better care of the man than the man can of himself. there is a certain plausibility and truth in this proposition. it is all a point of view. but to herbert spencer there was little difference between enslavement of the mind and enslavement of the body. both were essentially wrong in this--they interfered with nature's law of evolution, and anything contrary to nature must pay the penalty of pain and death. all forms of enslavement react upon the slaveholder, and a society founded on force can not evolve--and not to evolve is to die. the wellsprings of nature must not be dammed--and in fact can not be dammed but for a day. overflow, revolution and violence are sure to follow. this is the general law; and so give the man liberty. one man's rights end only where another man's begin. the idea of evolution, as opposed to a complete creation, was in the mind of spencer as early as eighteen hundred forty-eight. in that year he said, "creation still goes forward, and to what supreme heights man may yet attain no one can say." by a sort of general misapprehension, darwin is usually given credit for the discovery and elucidation of the law of evolution, but the "origin of species" did not appear until eighteen hundred fifty-nine, and both spencer and alfred russel wallace had stated, years before, that the theological dogma of a complete creation had not a scintilla of proof from the world of nature and science, while there was much general proof that the animal and vegetable kingdom had evolved from lower forms, and was still ascending. the usual idea of the clergy of christendom was that if the account of creation given by moses were admitted to be untrue, then the bible in all its parts would be declared untrue, and religion would go by the board. now that the theory of evolution is everywhere accepted, even in the churches, we see how groundless were the fears. all that is beautiful and best we still have in religion in a degree never before known. in an essay on "manners and fashion," published in the "westminster review" of eighteen hundred fifty-four, herbert spencer says: "forms, ceremonies and even beliefs are cast aside only when they become hindrances--only when some finer and better plan has been formed; and they bequeath to us all the good that was in them. the abolition of tyrannical laws has left the administration of justice not only unimpaired, but purified. dead and buried creeds have not carried down with them the essential morality they contained, which still exists, uncontaminated by the sloughs of superstition. and all that there is of justice, kindness and beauty embodied in our cumbrous forms will live perennially, when the forms themselves have been repudiated and forgotten." in the year eighteen hundred fifty-five, spencer issued his "principles of psychology," showing that the doctrine of evolution was then with him a fixed fact. the struggle was on, and from now forward his life was enlisted to viewing this theory from every side, anticipating every possible objection to it, and restating the case in its relation to every phase of life and nature. spencer's income was small, but his wants were few, and a single room in a boarding-house sufficed for both workshop and sleeping-room. to a degree, he now largely ceased original investigations and made use of the work of others. his intuitive mind, long trained in analytical research, was able to sift the false from the true, the trite from the peculiar, the exceptional from the normal. * * * * * the year eighteen hundred sixty should be marked on history's page with a silver star, for it was in that year that herbert spencer issued his famous prospectus setting forth that he was engaged in formulating a system of philosophy which he proposed to issue in periodical parts to subscribers. he then followed with an outline of the ground he intended to cover. ten volumes would be issued, and he proposed to take twenty years to complete the task. the entire synthetic philosophy was then in his mind and he knew what he wanted to do. the courage and faith of the man were dauntless. michael rossetti once said, "spencer, darwin, huxley, tyndall and wallace owe nothing to the universities of england, except for the scorn and opposition that have been offered them." but patriotic americans and true are glad to remember that it was professor e. l. youmans of yale who made it possible for spencer to carry out his great plan. five years after the prospectus was issued, spencer was again penniless and was thinking seriously of abandoning the project. youmans heard of this and reissued the prospectus, and sent it out among the thinking men of the world, asking them to subscribe. the announcement was then followed up by letters, and youmans forced the issue until the sum of seven thousand dollars was raised. this he took over to europe in person and presented to spencer, with a gold watch and a box of cigars. youmans found spencer at his boarding-house, and together they wandered out in the park, where youmans presented the philosopher the box of cigars. the great man took out one, cut it in three parts and proceeded to smoke one, then youmans handed him the gold watch and the draft for the money. spencer took the gifts of the watch and cigars and was much moved, but when it was followed by the draft for seven thousand dollars, he merely gasped and said: "wonderful! magnificent! magnificent! wonderful!" and smoked his third of a cigar in silence. and when he spoke, it was to say: "i think i will have to revise what i wrote in 'first principles' on the matter of divine providence." those who have read spencer's will must remember that this watch, presented to him by his american friends, is given a special paragraph. spencer once said to huxley, "from the day i first carried that watch, every good thing i needed has been brought and laid at my feet." "if i have succeeded in my art, it is simply because i have been well sustained," said henry irving in one of his modest, flattering, yet charming little speeches. sir henry might have gone on and said that no man succeeds unless well sustained, and happy is that man who has radioactivity of spirit enough to attract to him loving and loyal helpers who scintillate his rays. the average individual does not know very much about edward l. youmans, but no man ever did greater work in popularizing nature study in america. and if for nothing else, let his name be deathless for two things: he inspired john burroughs with the thirst to see and know--and then to write--and he introduced herbert spencer to the world. it is easy to say that burroughs was peeping his shell when youmans discovered him, and that spencer would have found a way in any event. we simply do not know what would have happened if something else occurred, or hadn't. youmans was born in a new york state country village, and very early discovered for himself that the world was full of curious and wonderful things, just as most children do. he became a district school-teacher, and so far as we know, was the very first man to publicly advocate nature study as a distinctive means of child-growth. he taught his children to observe; then he gave lectures on elementary botany; he studied and he wrote, and he worked at the microscope. and he became blind. did the closest observer on the continent cease work and grow discouraged when sight failed? not he. he no more quit work than did beethoven cease composing music when he no longer was able to hear it. we hear with the imagination, and we see with the soul. youmans' sister, eliza anne, became his guide and amanuensis; he saw the things through her eyes and inspected the wonders with his finger-tips. he became professor of physics and natural history at yale, and when the new england lecture lyceum was at its height, he rivaled phillips, emerson and beecher as a popular attraction. he made science a pleasure to plain people, and started starr king off on that tangent of putting knowledge in fairylike and acceptable form. youmans' lecture on "the chemistry of a sunbeam" is one of the unforgettable things of a generation past, so full of animation and rare, radiant spirit of good-cheer was the man. he founded the "popular science monthly," wrote a dozen books on science, and several of these are now used in most of the colleges and advanced schools of america and england. the man had a head for business--he became rich. it was about the year eighteen hundred fifty-six that youmans was in england on a business errand, introducing his books in the english schools, that he first met herbert spencer, having been attracted to him through a chance copy of "social statics" that his sister had read to him. youmans saw that spencer was going right to the heart of things in a way he himself could not. the men became friends, and of all youmans' wonderful discoveries, he considered herbert spencer the greatest. "sir humphry davy discovered, and possibly evolved, michael faraday; but i didn't evolve herbert spencer, any more than balboa evolved the pacific ocean," said youmans at a dinner given to herbert spencer when he visited new york in eighteen hundred eighty-one. the name of youmans is not in the hall of fame as one of the world's great men, but as naturalist, teacher, writer, lecturer and practical man of affairs, he reflects credit on his maker. the light went out of his eyes, but it never went out of his soul. * * * * * in making payment to a publishing-house for sixty volumes of an american historical work, speaker cannon recently made this endorsement on the back of the check: "this check is in full payment, both legal and moral, for sixty volumes of books. the books are not worth a damn--and are dear at that. we are never too old to learn, but the way your gentlemanly agent came it over your uncle joseph, is worth the full amount." when speaker cannon says the books are not worth a damn, he does not necessarily state a fact about the books: he merely states a fact about himself--that is, he gives his opinion. the value of the books is still undetermined. the speaker's discontent with the books seems to have arisen from the one fact that he had to pay for them. this condition is a classic one, and the world long ago has conceded to the man who pays, the privilege of protest. when herbert spencer issued that world-famous prospectus, announcing his intention to publish ten volumes setting forth his synthetic philosophy, it was one of the most daring things ever done in the realm of thought. spencer was forty, and he was penniless and obscure. he had issued two books at his own expense, and it had taken twelve years to dispose of seven hundred fifty copies of one, and most of the edition of the other was still on hand. edward l. youmans had such faith in spencer that he sent out the prospectus, and followed it up with letters and personal solicitations, until seven thousand dollars was subscribed, and herbert spencer, relieved from the uncertainties of finance, was free to think and write. among other subscribers secured by youmans, was the reverend doctor jowett of balliol. spencer's books were issued in periodical parts. after paying for three years, jowett sent a check to the publishers for the full amount of the subscription, saying, in an accompanying note: "to save myself the bother of periodical payments for mr. spencer's books, i herewith hand you check covering the full amount of my subscription. i feel that i have already had full returns, for, while the books are absolutely valueless, save as showing the industry of an uneducated and indiscreet person, yet the experience that has come to me in this transaction is not without its benefits." this is the oxford way of expressing the illinois formula, "your books are not worth a damn--and are dear at that." but the curious part of this transaction is that, after the death of doctor jowett, his library was sold at auction, and his set of the synthetic philosophy brought an advance of eight times its original cost. truly my lord hamlet doth say: rashly, and prais'd be rashness for it--let us know, our indiscretion sometimes serves us well, when our deep plots do fail. no one man's opinion concerning any book, or any man, is final. speaker cannon is admired by one set of men and detested by others--all of equal intelligence, although on this point the speaker might possibly file an exception. books are condemned offhand, or regarded as bibles--it all depends upon your point of view. speaker cannon may be right in his estimate of the newly annexed sixty volumes of history that now grace his library-shelves in danville, proudly shown to constituents, or he may be wrong; but anyway, cannon's judgment about books is probably worth no more than was the reverend doctor jowett's. gladstone spoke of jowett as that "saintly character"; and disraeli called him "the bear of balliol--erratic, obtuse and perverse." but jowett, gladstone and disraeli all united in this: they had supreme contempt for the work of herbert spencer; while the honorable joseph cannon is neutral, but inclined to be generous, having recently in a speech quoted from the "faerie queene," which he declared was the best thing herbert spencer had written, even if it was not fully up to date. * * * * * all during his life, spencer was subject to attacks of indigestion and insomnia. that these bad spells were "a disease of the imagination" made them no less real. his isolation and lack of social ties gave him time to feel his pulse and lie in wait for sleepless nights. with the old ladies of his boarding-house, he was on friendly terms, and his commonplace talk with them never gave them a guess concerning the worldwide character of his work. very seldom did he refer to what he was doing and thinking--and then only among his most intimate friends. huxley was his nearest confidant; and a recent writer, who knew him closely in a business way for many years, says that only with huxley did he throw off his reserve and enter the social lists with abandon. no one could meet spencer, even in the most casual way, without being impressed with the fact that he was in the presence of a most superior person. the man was tall and gaunt, self-contained--a little aloof--he asked for nothing, and realized his own worth. he commanded respect because he respected himself--there was neither abnegation, apology nor abasement in his manner. once i saw him walking in the strand, and i noticed that the pedestrians instinctively made way, although probably not one out of a thousand had any idea who he was. no one ever affronted him, nor spoke disrespectfully to his face; if unkind things were said of the man and his work, it was in print and at a distance. his standard of life was high--his sense of justice firm; with pretense and hypocrisy he had little patience, while for the criminal he had a profound pity. music was to him a relaxation and a rest. he knew the science of composition, and was familiar in detail with the best work of the great composers. in order to preserve the quiet of his thoughts in the boarding-house, he devised a pair of ear-muffs which fitted on his head with a spring. if the conversation took a turn in which he had no interest, he would excuse himself to his nearest neighbor and put on his ear-muffs. the plan worked so well that he carried them with him wherever he went, and occasionally at lectures or concerts, when he would grow more interested in his thoughts than in the performance, he would adjust his patent. so well pleased was he with his experiment that he had a dozen pairs of the ear-muffs made one christmas and gave them to friends, but it is hardly probable they had the hardihood to carry them to a four-o'clock. seldom, indeed, is there a man who prizes his thoughts more than a polite appearance. in an address before the london medical society, in eighteen hundred seventy-one, spencer said, "the man who does not believe in devils during his life, will probably never be visited by devils on his deathbed." herbert spencer died december eighth, nineteen hundred three, in his eighty-fourth year. up to within two days of his death, his mind was clear, active and alert, and he worked at his books with pleasure and animation--revising, correcting and amending. he never lost the calm serenity of life. he sank gradually into sleep and passed painlessly away. and thus was gracefully rounded out the greatest life of its age--the age of herbert spencer. he left no request as to where he should be buried, but the thinking people who recognized his genius considered westminster abbey the fitting place--an honor to england's valhalla. the church of england denied him a place there before it was asked, and the hallowed precincts which shelter the remains of queen anne's cook and john broughton the pugilist are not for herbert spencer. his dust does not rest in consecrated ground. herbert spencer had no titles nor degrees--he belonged to no sect, party, nor society. practically, he had no recognition in england until after he was sixty years of age. america first saw his star in the east, and long before the first edition of "social statics" had been sold, we waived the matter of copyright and were issuing the book here. on receiving a volume of the pirated edition, the author paraphrased byron's famous mot, and grimly said, "now, barabbas was an american." however, spencer was really pleased to think that america should steal his book; we wanted it--the english didn't. it took him twelve years to dispose of the seven hundred fifty volumes, and most of these were given away as inscribed copies. they lasted about as long as walt whitman's first edition of "leaves of grass," although whitman had the assistance of the attorney-general of massachusetts in advertising his remarkable volume. henry thoreau's first book fared better, for when the house burned where the remnant of four hundred copies lingered long, he wrote to a friend, "thank god, the edition is exhausted." england recognized the worth of thoreau and whitman long before america did; and so, perhaps, it was meet that we should do as much for spencer, ruskin and carlyle. one of the most valuable of the many great thoughts evolved by spencer was on the "art of mentation," or brain-building. you can not afford to fix your mind on devils or hell, or on any other form of fear, hate and revenge. of course, hell is for others, and the devils we believe in are not for ourselves. but the thoughts of these things are registered in the brain, and the hell we create for others, we ourselves eventually fall into; and the devils we conjure forth, return and become our inseparable companions. that is to say, all thought and all work--all effort--are for the doer primarily, and as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he. this sounds like the language of metaphysics, which kant said was the science of disordered moonshine. but herbert spencer's work was all a matter of analytical demonstration. and while the word "materialist" was everywhere applied to him, and he did not resent it, yet he was one of the most spiritual of men. a meta-physician is one who proves ten times as much as he believes; a scientist is one who believes ten times as much as he can prove. science speaks with lowered voice. before spencer's time, german scientists had discovered that the cell was the anatomical unit of life, but it was for spencer to show that it was also the psychologic or spiritual unit. new thoughts mean new brain-cells, and every new experience or emotion is building and strengthening a certain area of brain-tissue. we grow only through exercise, and all expression is exercise. the faculties we use grow strong, and those not used, atrophy and wither away. this is no less true, said spencer, in the material brain than in the material muscle. a new thought causes a new structural enregistration. if it is the repetition of thought, the cells holding that thought are exercised and trained, and finally they act automatically, and repeated thought becomes habit, and exercised habit becomes character--and character is the man. it thus is plain that no man can afford to entertain the thought of fear, hate and revenge--and their concomitants, devils and hell--because he is enregistering these things physically in his being. these physical cells, as science has shown, are transmitted to offspring; and thus through continued mind-activity and consequent brain-cell building, a race with fixed characteristics is evolved. pleasant memories and good thoughts must be exercised, and these in time will replace evil memories, so that the cells containing negative characteristics will atrophy and die. and when herbert spencer says that the process of doing away with evil is not through punishment, threat or injunction, but simply through a change of activities--thus allowing the bad to die through disuse--he states a truth that is even now coloring our whole fabric of pedagogics and penology. i couple these two words advisedly, for fifty years ago, pedagogics was a form of penology--the boarding-school with its mentors, scheme of fines, repressions and disgrace! and now we have lifted penology into the realm of pedagogics. i doubt me much whether the present penitentiary is a more unhappy place than a boys' english boarding-school was in the time of squeers. all of our progress has come from replacing bad activities with the good. bad people we now believe are good folks who have misdirected their energies; and we all believe a deal more in the goodness of the bad than the badness of the good, with the result that "total depravity" and "endless punishment" have been shamed out of every pulpit where sane men preach. no devils danced on the footboard of herbert spencer's bed, because there were no devil-cells in his brain. another great discovery of herbert spencer's was that the emotions control the secretions. and the quality of the secretions determines the chemical changes which constitute all cellular growth. thus, cheerful, happy emotions are similar to sunshine--they stand for health and harmony, and as such, are constructive. good-will is sanitary; kindness is hygienic; friendship works for health. these happy emotions secrete a quality in the blood called anabolism, which is essentially vitalizing and life-producing. on the other hand, fear, hate, and all forms of unkindness evolve a toxin, katabolism, which tends to clog circulation, disturb digestion, congest the secretions and stupefy the senses; and it tends to the dissolution and destruction of life. all that saddens, embitters and disappoints produces this chemical change that makes for death. "a poison," said spencer, "is only a concentrated form of hate." * * * * * spencer's discoveries in electricity have been most valuable, and it was by building on his suggestions and seeing with his prophetic eye that the crookes tube, the roentgen ray, and the discovery of radium have become possible. the distinguishing feature of radium is its radioactivity, brought about through its affinity for electricity. it absorbs electricity from the atmosphere and gives it off spontaneously in the form of light and heat without appreciable loss of form or substance. every good thing in life is dual, and through this natural and spontaneous marriage of radium and electricity, we get very close to the secret of life. as the sun is the giver of life and death, so by the use of the salts of radium have scientists vitalized certain forms of cell-life into growth and activity, and by the same token, and the use of the radium-ray, do they destroy the germs of disease. by his prophetic vision, spencer saw years ago that we would yet be able to eliminate and refine the substances of earth until we found the element that would combine spontaneously with electricity, and radiate life and heat. among the very last letters dictated by spencer, only a few days before his death, was one to madame curie congratulating her on her discovery of radium, and urging her not to relax in her further efforts to seek out the secret of life. "my only regret is," wrote the great man, "that i will not be here to rejoice with you in the fulness of your success." thus to the last did he preserve the eager, curious and receptive heart of youth, and prove to the scientific world his theory that brain-cells, properly exercised, are the last organs of the body to lose their functions. schopenhauer wherever one goes one immediately comes upon this incorrigible mob of humanity. it exists everywhere in legions; crowding, soiling everything, like flies in summer. hence the numberless bad books, those rank weeds of literature which extract nourishment from the corn and choke it. they monopolize the time, money and attention which really belong to good books and their noble aims; they are written merely with a view to making money or procuring places. they are not only useless, but they do positive harm. nine-tenths of the whole of our present literature aims solely at taking a few shillings out of the public's pocket, and to accomplish this, author, publisher and reviewer have joined forces. --_schopenhauer_ [illustration: schopenhauer] the philosophy we evolve is determined by what we are; just as a nation passes laws legalizing the things it wishes to do. "where the artist is, there you will find art," said whistler. we will not get the ideal commonwealth until we get ideal people; and we will not get an ideal philosophy until we get an ideal philosopher. place the mentally and morally slipshod in ideal surroundings and they will quickly evolve a slum, just as did john shakespeare, when at stratford he was fined two pounds ten for maintaining a sequinarium. all we can say for john is that he was the author of a fine boy, who resembled his mother much more than he did his father. this seems to prove schopenhauer's remark concerning a divine sonship: "paternity is a cheap office, anyway, accomplished without cost, care or risk, and of it no one should boast. a divine motherhood is the only thing that is really sacred." it isn't his philosophy that makes a man--man makes his philosophy, and he makes it in his own image. living in a world of strife, where the most savage beast that roams the earth is man, the philosophy of pessimism has its place. schopenhauer proved himself a true philosopher when he said: "all we see in the world is a projection from our own minds. i may see one thing, you another; and according to the test of a third party we are both wrong, for he sees something else. so we are all wrong, yet all are right." he was quite willing to admit that he had a well-defined moral squint and a touch of mental strabismus; but he revealed his humanity by blaming his limitations on his parents, and charging up his faults and foibles to other people. it is possible that carlyle's famous remark about the people who daily cross london bridge was inspired by schopenhauer, who, when asked what kind of people the berliners were, replied, "mostly fools!" "i believe," ventured the interrogator--"i believe, herr schopenhauer, that you yourself live at berlin?" "i do," was the response, "and i feel very much at home there." * * * * * heinrich schopenhauer, the father of arthur schopenhauer, was a banker and shipping merchant of the city of danzig, germany. he was a successful man, and, like all successful men, he was an egotist. before the world will believe in you, you must believe in yourself. and another necessary element in success is that you must exaggerate your own importance, and the importance of your work. self-esteem will not alone make you successful, but without a goodly jigger of self-esteem, success will forever dally and dance just beyond your reach. the humble men who have succeeded in impressing themselves upon the world have all taken much pride in their humility. heinrich schopenhauer was a proud man--as proud as the merchant of venice--and in his veins there ran a strain of the blue blood of the castilian jew. too much success is most unfortunate. heinrich schopenhauer was proud, unbending, harsh, arbitrary, wore a full beard and a withering smile, and looked upon musicians, painters, sculptors and writers as court clowns, to be trusted only as far as you could fling taurus by the tail. all good bookkeepers have, even yet, this pitying contempt for those whose chief assets are ideas--the legal tender of the spirit. the alameda smile is the smile of scorn worn by the bookkeepers who prepare the balance-sheets for the great merchants of san francisco. alameda is young, but the alameda smile is classic. when heinrich schopenhauer was forty he married a beautiful girl of twenty. she had ideas about art and poetry, and was passing through her byronic stage, before byron did, and taking it rather hard, when her parents gave her in troth to heinrich schopenhauer, the rich merchant. it was regarded as a great catch. i wish that i could say that heinrich and johanna were happy ever after, but in view of the well-known facts put forth by their firstborn child, i can not do it. before marriage the woman has her way: let her make the most of her power--she'll not keep it long! shortly after their marriage heinrich saw symptoms of the art instinct creeping in, and players on sweet zither-strings, who occasionally called, compelled him to take measures. he bought a country seat, four miles from the city, on an inaccessible road, and sent his bride thither. here he visited her only on saturdays and sundays, and her callers were the good folk he chose to bring with him. marital peace is only possible where women are properly suppressed--lumity dee! it was under these conditions that arthur schopenhauer was born, on february twenty-second--in deference to our george washington--seventeen hundred eighty-eight. the chief quality that schopenhauer inherited from his father was the alameda smile--and this smile of contempt was for all those who did not think as he did. the mother never professed to have any love for her husband, or the child either, and the child never professed to have any love for his mother. he once wrote this: "i was an unwelcome child, born of a mother in rebellion--she never wanted me, and i reciprocate the sentiment." * * * * * in that troublous year of seventeen hundred ninety-three, the free city of danzig fell under the sway of prussia. heinrich schopenhauer, who loved freedom, jealous of his privileges, fearful of his rights, immediately packed up his effects, sold out his property--at great loss--and moved to the free city of hamburg. that his fears for the future were quite groundless, as most fears are, is a fact relevant but not consequent. johanna was vivacious and eminently social. she spoke french, german, english and italian. she played the harp, sang, wrote poetry and acted in dramas of her own composition. around her there always clustered a goodly group of men with long hair, dreamy eyes and pointed beards, who soared high, dived deep, but seldom paid cash. this is the paradise to which most women wish to attain: to be followed by a concourse of artistic archangels--what nobler ambition! and let the great biological and historical fact here be written down--that there are no female angels. heinrich did not settle down in hamburg and go into business, as he expected. he and his wife and boy traveled much--through england, france, germany and switzerland. this man and his wife were trying to get away from themselves. long years after, their son wrote, "when people die and wake up in hell they will probably be surprised to find that they are just such beings as they were when they were on earth." for a year the lad was left at school with a clergyman at wimbledon, in england. the strict religious discipline to which he was there subjected seemed to have had much to do with forming in him a fierce hatred of english orthodoxy; but he learned the language and became familiar with the great names in english literature. the king arthur stories pleased him, and he always took a peculiar satisfaction in the fact that the name arthur was the same in english, german and french. he was a prenatal cosmopolitan. boarding-schools are a great scheme for getting the children out of the way--it throws the responsibility upon some one else. when nine years of age, arthur was placed in a french boarding-school, remaining for two years. there he learned to speak french so fluently that when he returned to hamburg and tried to talk to his mother in german, his broken speech threw that excellent woman into fits of laughter. when the mature man of affairs takes a young girl to wife, he expects to mold her to his nature, but he reckons without his host. heinrich schopenhauer's opposition to his wife's wishes was not strong enough to crush her--it simply developed in her a deal of wilful, dogged strength. one winter day in eighteen hundred four the body of heinrich schopenhauer was found in the canal at hamburg. arthur was then sixteen years of age--old for his years, traveled, clever--strong in body and robust in health. in wandering with his parents, he had met goethe, wieland, madame de stael, lord nelson and lady hamilton, and many other distinguished people, for his mother was a famous lion-hunter, and wherever they went, the great ones were tracked to their lairs. but however much madame schopenhauer indulged in hero-worship, she had no expectations or ambitions for her son. she apprenticed him as a clerk and did her utmost to immerse him in commerce. what she desired was freedom for herself, and the popular plan to gain freedom is to enslave others. madame schopenhauer moved to weimar and opened there a sort of literary salon. she wrote verses, novels, essays, and her home became the center of a certain artistic group. the fortune her husband had left was equal to about forty thousand dollars, one-third of which was to go to arthur when he was twenty-one. the mother had the handling of it all until that time, and as the funds were well invested, her income was equal to about two thousand dollars a year. a handsome widow, under forty, with no encumbrances to speak of, and a fair income, is very fortunately situated. indeed, a great writer has recently written an essay showing that widows, discreetly bereaved, are the happiest creatures on earth. young schopenhauer, at his desk in hamburg, grieved over the death of his father. that which is lost becomes valuable--bereavement softens the heart. the only tenderness that is revealed in the writings of schopenhauer refers to his father. he affirms the sterling honesty of the man, and lauds the merchant who boldly states that he is in business to make money, and compares him with the philosophers who clutch for power and fame and yet pretend they are working for humanity. when schopenhauer was past sixty, he dedicated his complete works to the memory of his father. as nothing purifies like fire, so does nothing sanctify like death--the love we lose is the only love we keep. mathematics, bills and balance-sheets were odious to young schopenhauer. he reverenced the memory of his father, but his mother had endowed him with a strong impulse for expression. he wrote little essays on the backs of envelopes, philosophized over his bills, sneaked out of the countingroom the back way to attend the afternoon lectures by the great doctor gall, and finally, boldly followed his mother to weimar, that he might bask in the shadow of the mighty goethe. it was shortly after this that he sat in a niche of goethe's library, musing, sad and solitary, while a gay throng chattered by. some young women, seeing him there, laughed, and one asked, "is it alive?" and goethe, overhearing the pleasantry, rebuked it by saying, "do not smile at that youth--he will yet eclipse us all." at weimar there was no greeting for schopenhauer from his mother--she welcomed all but her son. unfortunately for her, she put herself on record by writing him letters. scathing letters are all right, but they should be directed and stamped, then burned just before they are trusted to the mails. to record unkindness is tragedy, for the unkind word lives long after the event that caused it is forgotten. here is one letter written by madame schopenhauer that this methodical son saved for posterity: _my dear son:_ i have always told you it is difficult to live with you. the more i get to know you, the more i feel this difficulty increase. i will not hide it from you: as long as you are what you are, i would rather bring any sacrifice than consent to be near you. i do not undervalue your good points, and that which repels me does not lie in your heart; it is in your outer, not your inner being; in your ideas, your judgment, your habits; in a word, there is nothing concerning the outer world in which we agree. your ill-humor, your complaints of things inevitable, your sullen looks, the extraordinary opinions you utter, like oracles, none may presume to contradict; all this depresses me and troubles me, without helping you. your eternal quibbles, your laments over the stupid world and human misery, give me bad nights and unpleasant dreams.... your dear mother, etc., _johanna schopenhauer_ * * * * * the young man took lodgings at weimar, at a goodly distance from his mother. goethe held out a friendly hand, as he did to mendelssohn, and all bright young men. they talked much, and goethe read to arthur his essay on the theory of colors (for wolfgang goethe was human and dearly loved the sound of his own voice). the reasoning so impressed the youth that he devised a chromatic theory of his own--almost as peculiar. theories are for the theorizer, so all theories are useful. at the earnest importunity of his mother, who starved him to it, arthur went back to his clerkship, but soon returned and made terms, agreeing not to call on his mother, in consideration of a pound a week. he took lessons in greek and latin of a retired professor, attended lectures, fell in love with an actress--vowed he would marry her, but, luckily for her, he didn't. when he was twenty-one, his mother turned over to him his patrimony, amounting to about fourteen thousand dollars; and suggested that he leave weimar and make his fortune elsewhere--the world was wide. his money was invested so it brought him an income of seven hundred dollars a year. and here seems a good place to say that schopenhauer's income was never over a thousand dollars a year until after he was fifty-six years of age. although he could not make money, yet he had inherited from his father an ability to care for it. throughout his life he kept exact books of account, never ran in debt, and never allowed his expenditures to outrun his income, thus complying with charles dickens' recipe for happiness. in still another way he revealed that he could apply philosophy to daily life: he exercised regularly in the open air, took long walks, was absurdly exact about his cold baths, and like kant, served the neighbors as a chronometer, so they set their clocks at three when they saw him going forth for a walk. and in the interests of truth, we will have to make the embarrassing admission that the great apostle of pessimism was neither a dyspeptic nor an invalid--if he was ever aware that he had a stomach we do not hear of it. * * * * * the life of schopenhauer is the life of a recluse--a visionary--a hermit who lost himself amid the maze of city streets, and moved solitary in the throng. berlin, dresden, hamburg, gottingen, frankfort, engaged him, and from one to the other he turned, looking for the rest he never found, and which he knew he would never find, so in the vain search there was no disappointment. he was always happiest when most miserable, for then were his theories proved. a single room in a lodging-house sufficed, and this room always had the appearance of being occupied by a transient. he had few books, accumulated no belongings in way of domestic ballast, persistently giving away things that were presented to him, satisfied if he had a chair, a bed, and a table upon which to write; getting his own breakfast, dining at the table d'hote of the nearest inn, with supper at a "gast-haus"--so passed his days. he had no intimate friends, and his chief dissipation was playing the flute. his black poodle, named "homo" in a subtle mood of irony, accompanied him everywhere, and on this dog he lavished what he was pleased to call his love. he anticipated rip van winkle concerning dogs and women, and when homo died, he bought another dog that looked exactly like the first, and was just as good. in a few instances schopenhauer read his essays in public as lectures, but his ideas were keyed to concert pitch and were too pronounced for average audiences. he was offered a professorship at gottingen and also at heidelberg, if he would "tone things down," but he scornfully declined the proposition, and said, "the universities must grow to my level before i can talk to them." by his caustic criticisms of contemporaries he became both feared and shunned, and no doubt he found a certain satisfaction in the fact that the so-called learned men of his time would neither listen to his lectures, read his books, nor abide his presence. he had made himself felt in any event. "blessed are ye when men shall revile you," is the sweet consolation of all persecuted persons--and persecution is only the natural resentment towards those who have too much ego in their cosmos. his opinions concerning love and marriage need not be taken too seriously. ideas are the results of temperaments and moods. when a man amplifies on the woman question he describes the women he knows best, and more especially the particular she who is in his head. literature is only autobiography, more or less discreetly veiled. schopenhauer hated his mother to the day of her death, and although during the last twenty-four years of her life he never once saw her, her image could at any time be quickly and vividly thrown upon the screen. the women a strong man has known are never forgotten--here is where time does not tarnish, nor the days grow dim. between his twenty-eighth and fortieth years, schopenhauer had wandered through italy--spent months at venice, and dawdled away the days at rome and florence. he had dipped deep into life--and the wrong kind of life. and his experiences had confirmed his suspicions--it was all bitter--he was not disappointed. until schopenhauer was past thirty he was known as the son of johanna schopenhauer. and when he once told her that posterity would never remember her except as the mother of her son, she reciprocated by congratulating him that his books could always be had cheap in the first editions. he retorted, "mamma dear, my books will be read when butchers are using yours for wrapping up meat." in some ways this precious pair were very much alike. it is very probable that schopenhauer's mother was not so base as he thought; and when he declared, "woman's morality is only a kind of prudence," he might have said the same of his own. he stood aloof from life and said things about it. he had no wife, no child, no business, no home--he dared not venture boldly into the tide of existence--he stood forever on the bank, and watched the current carrying its flotsam and jetsam to the hungry sea. in his love for the memory of his father, and in his tender care for his dog, we get a glimpse of depths that were never sounded. one side of his nature was never developed. and the words of the undeveloped man are worth what they are worth. schopenhauer once said to wieland, "life is a ticklish business--i propose to spend my time looking at it." this he did, viewing existence from every angle, and writing out his thoughts in terse, epigrammatic language. among all the german writers on philosophy, the only one who had a distinct literary style is schopenhauer. form was quite as much to him as matter--and in this he showed rare wisdom; although i am told that the writers who have no literary style are the only ones who despise it. dishes to be palatable must be rightly served: appetite--literary, gastronomic or sexual--is largely a matter of imagination. schopenhauer need not be regarded as final. the chief virtue of the man lies in the fact that he makes us think, and thus are we his debtors. in this summary of schopenhauer's philosophy i have had the valuable assistance of my friend and fellow-worker in the roycroft shop, george pannebakker, a kinsman and enthusiastic admirer of the great prophet of pessimism. in talking to mr. pannebakker, i am inclined to exclaim, "thou almost persuadest me to be a pessimist!" it is unfortunate that our english tongue contains no word that stands somewhere between pessimism and optimism--that symbols a judicial cast of mind which sees the truth without blinking and accepts it without complaint. the word pessimist was first flung in contempt at those who dared to express unpalatable truth. it is now accepted by a large number of intellectuals, and if to be a pessimist is to have insight, wit, calm courage, patience, persistency, and a disposition that accepts all fate sends and makes the best of it, then pity 'tis we haven't more. * * * * * the root of existence, the inmost kernel of all being, the original vitalizing power, the fundamental reality of the universe, is, according to schopenhauer, "will." what is will? will, in the usual sense, is the faculty of our mind by which we decide to do or not to do. will is the power to choose. in schopenhauer's philosophy, will is something less as we know will, and something more than force. will, connected with consciousness, as peculiar to man, is, in a less developed form, the real essence of all matter, of all things, organic or inorganic. will is the blind, irresistible striving for existence; the unconscious organizing power, the omnipotent creative force of nature, pervading the whole limitless universe; the endeavor to be, to evolve, to expand. the whole world of phenomena is the objectivation or apparition of will. will, the same force which slumbers in the stone as inert gravity, forms the crystals with such wonderful regularity. will impels a piece of iron to move with ardent desire toward the magnet. will causes the magnet to point with unfailing constancy to the north. will causes the embryo to cling as a parasite and feed on the body of the mother. will causes the mother's breast to fill that her babe may be fed. will fills the mother-heart with love that the young may be cared for. the same force urges the tender germ of the plant to break through the hard crust of the earth and, stretching toward the light, to enfold itself in the proud crown of the palm-tree. will sharpens the beak of the eagle and the tooth of the tiger and, finally, reaches its highest grade of objectivation in the human brain. want, the struggle for existence, the necessity of procuring and selecting sufficient food for the preservation of the individual and the species, has at last developed a suitable tool, the brain, and its function, the intellect. with the intellect appear consciousness and a realm of rational life full of yearning and desires, pleasures and pain, hatred and love. brothers slay their brothers, conquerors trample down the races of the earth, and tyrants are forging chains for the nations. there is violence and fear, vexation and trouble. unrest is the mark of existence, and onward we are swept in the hurrying whirlpool of change. this manifold restless motion is produced and kept up by the agency of two single impulses--hunger and the sexual instinct. these are the chief agents of the lord of the universe--the will--and set in motion so strange and varied a scene. the will-to-live is at the bottom of all love-affairs. every kind of love springs entirely from the instinct of sex. love is under bonds to secure the existence of the human race in future times. the real aim of the whole of love's romance, although the persons concerned are unconscious of the fact, is that a particular being may come into the world. it is the will-to-live, presenting itself in the whole species, which so forcibly and exclusively attracts two individuals of different sex towards each other. this yearning and this pain do not arise from the needs of an ephemeral individual, but are, on the contrary, the sigh of the spirit of the species. since life is essentially suffering, the propagation of the species is an evil--the feeling of shame proves it. in his "metaphysics of love," schopenhauer says: "we see a pair of lovers exchanging longing glances--yet why so secretly, timidly and stealthily? because these lovers are traitors secretly striving to perpetuate all the misery and turmoil that otherwise would come to a timely end." will, as the source of life, is the origin of all evil. having awakened to life from the night of unconsciousness, the individual finds itself in an endless and boundless world, striving, suffering, erring; and, as though passing through an ominous dream, it hurries back to the old unconsciousness. until then, however, its desires are boundless, and every satisfied wish begets a new one. so-called pleasures are only a mode of temporary relief. pain soon returns in the form of satiety. life is a more or less violent oscillation between pain and ennui. the latter, like a bird of prey, hovers over us, ready to swoop down wherever it sees a life secure from need. the enjoyment of art, as the disinterested cognition devoid of will, can afford an interval of rest from the drudgery of will service. but esthetic beatitude can be obtained only by a few; it is not for the hoi polloi. and then, art can give only a transient consolation. everything in life indicates that earthly happiness is destined to be frustrated or to be recognized as an illusion. life proves a continuous deception, in great as well as in small matters. if it makes a promise, it does not keep it, unless to show that the coveted object was little desirable. life is a business that does not pay expenses. misery and pain form the essential feature of existence. life is hell, and happy is that man who is able to procure for himself an asbestos overcoat and a fire-proof room. looking at the turmoil of life, we find all occupied with its want and misery, exerting all their strength in order to satisfy its endless needs and avert manifold suffering, without daring to expect anything else in return than merely the preservation of this tormented individual existence, full of want and misery, toil and moil, strife and struggle, sorrow and trouble, anguish and fear--from the cradle to the grave. existence, when summed up, has an enormous surplus of pain over pleasure. you complain that this philosophy is comfortless! but schopenhauer sees life through schopenhauer's eyes, and tells the truth about it as he sees it. he does not care for your likes and dislikes. if you want to hear soft platitudes, he advises you to go to a non-conformist church--read the newspapers, go somewhere else, but not to the philosopher who cares only for truth. although schopenhauer's picture of the world is gloomy and somber, there is nothing weak or cowardly in his writings, and the extent to which he is read, proves he is not depressing. since a happy life is impossible, he says the highest that a man can attain to is the fate of a hero. a man must take misfortune quietly, because he knows that very many dreadful things may happen in the course of life. he must look upon the trouble of the moment as only a very small part of that which will probably come. we must not expect very much from life, but learn to accommodate ourselves to a world where all is relative and no perfect state exists. let us look misfortune in the face and meet it with courage and calmness! fate is cruel and men are miserable. life is synonymous with suffering; positive happiness a fata morgana, an illusion. only negative happiness, the cessation of suffering, is possible, and can be obtained by the annihilation of the will-to-live. but it is not suicide that can deliver us from the pains of existence. suicide, according to schopenhauer, frustrates the attainment of the highest moral aim by the fact that, for a real release from this world of misery, it substitutes one that is merely apparent. for death merely destroys the phenomenon, that is, the body, and never my inmost being, or the universal will. suicide can deliver me merely from my phenomenal existence, and not from my real self, which can not die. how, then, can man be released from this life of misery and pain? where is the road that leads to salvation? slow and weary is the way of redemption. the deliverance from life and its sufferings is the freedom of the intellect from its creator and despot, the will. the intellect, freed from the bondage of the will, sees through the veil of selfhood into the unity of all being, and finds that he who has done wrong to another has done wrong to his own self. for selfhood--the asserting of the ego--is the root of all evil. covetousness and sensuality are the causes of misery. sympathy is the basis of all true morality, and only through renunciation, through self-sacrifice, and universal benevolence, can salvation be obtained. he who has recognized that existence is evil, that life is vanity, and self an illusion, has obtained true knowledge, which is the reflection of reality. he is in possession of the highest wisdom, which is not merely theoretical, but also practical perfection; it is the ultimate true cognition of all things in mass and in detail, which has so penetrated man's being that it appears as the guide of all his actions. it illumines his head, warms his heart, leads his hand. we take the sting out of life by accepting it as it is. "drink ye all of it." * * * * * arthur schopenhauer very early in life contracted a bad habit of telling the truth. he stated the thing absolutely as he saw it. he spared no one's feelings, and conciliation was not in his bright lexicon of words. if any belief or any institution was in his way, the pilot in charge of the craft had better put his prow hard a' port--schopenhauer swerved for nobody. should every one deal in plain speaking on all occasions, the philosophy of ali baba--that this earth is hell, and we are now suffering for sins committed in a former incarnation--would be fully proved. our friends are the pleasant hypocrites who sustain our illusions. society is made possible only through a vast web of delicate evasions, polite subterfuges, and agreeable falsehoods. the word person comes from "persona," which means a mask. the reference is to one who plays a part--assumes a role. the naked truth is not pleasant to look upon, and that is the reason it is so seldom put upon parade. the man schopenhauer would be intolerable, but the writer schopenhauer is gaining ground in inverse ratio to the square of the distance we are from him. "where shall we bury you?" a friend asked him a few days before his death. "oh, anywhere--posterity will find me!" was the answer. and so on the modest stone that marks his resting-place at frankfort, are engraved the two words, arthur schopenhauer, and nothing more. the world will not soon forget the pessimist who had such undying optimism--such unquenchable faith--that he knew the world would make a path to his tomb. schopenhauer was the only prominent writer that ever lived who persistently affirmed that life is an evil--existence a curse. yet every man who has ever lived has at times thought so; but to proclaim the thought--or even entertain it long--would stagger sanity, befog the intellect and make mind lose its way. and yet we prize schopenhauer the more for having said the thing that we secretly thought; in some subtle way we get a satisfaction out of his statement, and at the same time, we perceive the man was wrong. the man who can vivisect an emotion, and lay bare a heart-beat in print, knows a subtle joy. the misery that can explain itself is not all misery. complete misery is dumb; and pain that is all pain is quickly transformed into insensibility. schopenhauer's life was quite as happy as that of many men who persistently depress us by requesting us to "cheer up." schopenhauer says, "don't try to cheer up--the worst is yet to come." and we can not refrain a smile. a mother once called to her little boy to come into the house. and the boy answered, "i won't do it!" and the mother replied, "stay out then!" and very soon the child came in. truth is only a point of view, and when a man tells us what he sees, we swiftly take into consideration who and what the man is. everybody does this, unconsciously. it depends upon who says it! the garrulous man who habitually overstates--painting things large--does not deceive anybody, and is quite as good a companion as the painstaking, exact man who is always setting us straight on our statistics. one man we take gross and the other net. the liar gross is all right, but the liar net is very bad. schopenhauer was a talkative, whimsical and sensitive personality, with a fine assortment of harmless superstitions of his own manufacture. he was vain, frivolous, self-absorbed, but he had an eye for the subtleties of existence that quite escape the average individual. he lived in a world of mind--alert, active, receptive mind--with a rapid-fire gun in way of a caustic, biting, scathing vocabulary at his command. the test of every literary work is time. the trite, the commonplace, and the irrelevant die and turn to dust. the vital lives. schopenhauer began writing in his youth. neglect, indifference and contempt were his portion until he was over fifty years of age. his passion for truth was so repelling that the mutual admiration society refused to record his name even on its waiting-list. he was of that elect few who early in life succeed in ridding themselves of the friendship of the many. his enemies discovered him first, and gave him to the world, and after they had launched his fame with their charges of plagiarism, pretense, bombast, insincerity and fraud, he has never been out of the limelight, and in favor he has steadily grown. no man was ever more thoroughly denounced than schopenhauer, but even his most rabid foe never accused him of buying his way into popular favor, or bribing the judges who sit on the bookcase. we admire the man because he is such a sublime egotist--he is so fearfully honest. we love him because he is so often wrong in his conclusions: he gives us the joy of putting him straight. schopenhauer's writing is never the product of a tired pen and ink unstirred by the spirit. with him we lose our self-consciousness. and the man who can make other men forget themselves has conferred upon the world a priceless boon. introspection is insanity--to open the windows and look out is health. henry d. thoreau seeing how all the world's ways came to nought, and how death's one decree merged all degrees, he chose to pass his time with birds and trees, reduced his life to sane necessities: plain meat and drink and sleep and noble thought. and the plump kine which waded to the knees through the lush grass, knowing the luxuries of succulent mouthfuls, had our gold-disease as much as he, who only nature sought. who gives up much the gods give more in turn: the music of the spheres for dross of gold; for o'er-officious cares, flame-songs that burn their pathway through the years and never old. and he who shunned vain cares and vainer strife found an eternity in one short life. [illustration: henry thoreau] as a rule, the man who can do all things equally well is a very mediocre individual. those who stand out before a groping world as beacon-lights were men of great faults and unequal performances. it is quite needless to add that they do not live on account of their faults or imperfections, but in spite of them. henry david thoreau's place in the common heart of humanity grows firmer and more secure as the seasons pass; his life proves for us again the paradoxical fact that the only men who really succeed are those who fail. thoreau's obscurity, his poverty, his lack of public recognition in life, either as a writer or lecturer, his rejection as a lover, his failure in business, and his early death, form a combination of calamities that make him as immortal as a martyr. especially does an early death sanctify all and make the record complete, but the death of a naturalist while right at the height of his ability to see and enjoy--death from tuberculosis of a man who lived most of the time in the open air--these things array us on the side of the man 'gainst unkind fate, and cement our sympathy and love. nature's care forever is for the species, and the individual is sacrificed without ruth that the race may live and progress. this dumb indifference of nature to the individual--this apparent contempt for the man--seems to prove that the individual is only a phenomenon. man is merely a manifestation, a symptom, a symbol, and his quick passing proves that he isn't the thing. nature does not care for him--she produces a million beings in order to get one who has thoughts--all are swept into the dustpan of oblivion but the one who thinks; he alone lives, embalmed in the memories of generations unborn. one of the most insistent errors ever put out was that statement of rousseau, paraphrased in part by t. jefferson, that all men are born free and equal. no man was ever born free, and none are equal, and would not remain so an hour, even if jove, through caprice, should make them so. the thoreau race is dead. in sleepy hollow cemetery at concord there is a monument marking a row of mounds where a half-dozen thoreaus rest. the inscriptions are all of one size, but the name of one alone lives, and he lives because he had thoughts and expressed them. if any of the tribe of thoreau gets into elysium, it will be by tagging close to the only man among them who glorified his maker by using his reason. nothing should be claimed as truth that can not be demonstrated, but as a hypothesis (borrowed from henry thoreau) i give you this: man is only the tool or vehicle--mind alone is immortal--thought is the thing. * * * * * heredity does not account for the evolution of henry thoreau. his father was of french descent--a plain, stolid, little man who settled in concord with his parents when a child; later he tried business in boston, but the march of commerce resolved itself into a double-quick, and john thoreau dropped out of line, and turned to the country village of concord, where he hoped that between making lead-pencils and gardening he might secure a living. he moved better than he knew. john thoreau's wife was cynthia dunbar, a tall and handsome woman, with a ready tongue and nimble wit. her attentions were largely occupied in looking after the affairs of the neighbors, and as the years went by her voice took on the good old metallic twang of the person who discusses people, not principles. henry thoreau was the third child in the family of seven. he was born in an old house on the virginia road, concord, about a mile and a half from the village. this house was the home of mrs. thoreau's mother, but the thoreaus had taken refuge there, temporarily, to escape a financial blizzard which seems to have hit no one else but themselves. john thoreau was assisted in the pencil-making by the whole family. the thoreaus used to sell their pencils down at cambridge, fifteen miles away, and harvard professors, for the most part, used the concord article in jotting down their sublime thoughts. at ten years of age, thoreau had a furtive eye on harvard, directed thither, they say, by his mother. all the best people in concord, who had sons, sent them to harvard--why shouldn't the thoreaus? the spirit of emulation and family pride were at work. henry was educated principally because he wasn't very strong, nor was he on good terms with work, and these are classic reasons for imparting classical education to youth, aspiring or otherwise. the concord academy prepared henry for college, and when he was sixteen, he trudged off to cambridge and was duly entered in the harvard class of eighteen hundred thirty-seven. at harvard, his cosmos seemed to be of such a slaty gray that no one said, "go to--we will observe this youth and write anecdotes about him, for he is going to be a great man." the very few in his class who remembered him wrote their reminiscences long years afterward, with memories refreshed by magazine accounts written by pious pilgrims from michigan. in college pranks and popular amusements he took no part, neither was he a "grind," for he impressed himself on no teacher or professor so that they opened their mouths and made prophecies. once safely through college, and standing on the threshold (i trust i use the right expression), henry thoreau refused to accept his diploma and pay five dollars for it--he said it wasn't worth the money. in his "walden," thoreau expresses his opinion of college training this way: "if i wished a boy to know something about the arts and sciences i would not pursue the common course, which is merely to send him into the neighborhood of some professor, where everything is professed and practised but the art of life. to my astonishment, i was informed when i left college that i had studied navigation! why, if i had taken one turn down the harbor i would have known more about it." it is well to remember, however, that thoreau had no ambitions to become a navigator. his mission was simply to paddle his own canoe on walden pond and concord river. the men who really launched him on his voyage of discovery were ellery channing and ralph waldo emerson--both harvard men. had he not been a college man, it is quite probable he would never have caught the speaker's eye. his efforts in working his way through college, assisted by his poverty-stricken parents, proved his quality. and as for his life in a shanty on the shores of walden pond, the occurrence is too commonplace to mention, were it not for the fact that the solitary occupant of the shanty was a harvard graduate who used no tobacco. harvard prepares a youth for life--but here is a man who, having prepared for life, deliberately turns his back on life and lives in the woods. a genuine woodsman is no curiosity, but a civilized woodsman is. the tendency of colleges is to turn men from nature to books; from bonfires to stoves, steam-heat and cash-registers; but thoreau, by reversing all rules, suddenly found himself, and others, explaining his position in print. harvard supplied him the alternating current; he influenced the people in his environment, and he was influenced by his environment. but without harvard there would have been no thoreau. having earned his diploma, he had the privilege of declining it; and having gone to college, it was his right to affirm the emptiness of the classics. only the man with a goodly bank-balance can wear rags with impunity. * * * * * john thoreau made his lead-pencils and peddled them out, and we hear of his saying, "pencils, i fear, are going out of fashion--people are buying nothing but these miserable new-fangled steel pens." when called upon to surrender, paul jones replied, "we haven't yet begun to fight." the truth was, the people had not really begun to use pencils. pencils weren't going out of fashion, but john thoreau was. the poor man moved here and there, evicted by rapacious landlords and taken in by his relatives, who didn't care whether he was a stranger or not. if he owed them ten dollars, they took fifty dollars' worth of pencils and called it square. then they undersold john one-half, and he said times were scarce. this, it need not be explained, was in massachusetts. a hundred years ago, these men who whittled useful things out of wood during the long winter days were everywhere in new england. the sons of these men invented machines to make the same things, and thus were started the new england manufactories. it was brains against hands, cleverness against skill, initiative against plodding industry. and the man who can tell of the sorrow and suffering of all those industrious sparrows that were caught and wound around flying shuttles, or stamped beneath the swift presses of invention, hadn't yet been born. god doesn't seem to care for sparrows--three-fourths of all that are hatched die in the nest or fall fluttering to the ground and perish, grant allen says. comparatively few persons can adjust themselves happily to new conditions: the rest are pushed and broken and bent--and die. when dixon and faber invented machines that could be fed automatically, and turn out more pencils in a day than john thoreau could in a year, john was out of the game. john had brought up his children to work, and henry became an expert pencil-maker. henry, we say, should have found employment with faber and company, as foreman, or else evaded their patents and made a pencil-machine of his own. instead, however, he settled down and made pencils just like his father used to make, and in the same way. he peddled out a few to his friends, but his business instinct was shown in that he himself tells how one year he made a thousand dollars' worth of pencils, but was obliged to sacrifice them all to cancel a debt of one hundred dollars. and yet there are people who declare that genius is not transmissible. john thoreau failed at pencil-making, but henry thoreau failed because he played the flute morning, noon and night, and went singing the immunity of pan. he fished, and tramped the woods and fields, looking, listening, dreaming and thinking. at keswick, where the water comes down at lodore, there is a pencil-factory that has been there since the days of william the conqueror. the wife of coleridge used to work there and get money that supported her philosopher-husband and their children. southey lived near, and became poet laureate of england through the right exercise of keswick pencils; wordsworth lived only a few miles away, and once he brought over charles and mary lamb, and bought pencils for both, with their names stamped on them. the good old man who now keeps the pencil-factory explained these things to me, and also explained the direct relationship of good lead-pencils to literature, but i do not remember what it was. if henry thoreau had held on a few years, until the pilgrims began to arrive at concord, he could have gotten rich selling souvenir pencils. but he just dozed and dreamed and tramped and philosophized; and when he wrote he used an eagle's quill, with ink he himself distilled from elderberries, and at first, birch-bark sufficed for paper. "wild men and wild things are the only ones that have life in abundance," he used to say. * * * * * brook farm was a serious, sober experiment inaugurated by the reverend george ripley with intent to live the ideal life--the life of useful effort, direct honesty, simplicity and high thinking. but thoreau could not be induced to join the community--he thought too much of his liberty to entrust it to a committee. he was interested in the experiment, but not enough to visit the experimenters. emerson looked in on them, remained one night, and went back home to continue his essay on idealism. hawthorne remained long enough to get material for his "blithedale romance." margaret fuller secured good copy and the cordial and lifelong dislike of hawthorne, all through misprized love, alas! george william curtis and charles dana graduated out of brook farm, and went down to new york to make goodly successes in the great game of life. at brook farm they succeeded in the high thinking all right, but the entrepreneur is quite as necessary as the poet--and a little more so. brook farm had no business head, and things unfit fall into natural dissolution. but the enterprise did not fail, any more than a rotting log fails when it nourishes a bank of violets. the net results of brook farm's high thinking have passed into the world's treasury, smelted largely by emerson and thoreau, who were not there. * * * * * immanuel kant has been called the father of modern transcendentalists: but socrates and his pupil plato, so far as we know, were the first of the race. neither buzzing bluebottles nor the fall of dynasties disturbed them. "the soul is everything," said plato. "the soul knows all things," says emerson. in every century a few men have lived who knew the value of plain living and high thinking, and very often the men who reversed the maxim have passed them the hemlock. all those sects known as primitive christians represent variations of the idea--quakers, mennonites, communists, shakers and dunkards! a transcendentalist is a dukhobortsi with a college education. a quaker with an artistic bias becomes a preraphaelite, and lo! we have news from nowhere, a dream of john ball, merton abbey, kelmscott, and half a world is touched and tinted by the simplicity, sterling honesty and genuineness of one man. george ripley, bronson alcott, and ralph waldo emerson evolved new england transcendentalism, and very early henry thoreau added a few bars of harmonious discords to the symphony. horace greeley once contended in a "tribune" editorial that sam staples, the bum bailiff who locked thoreau behind the bars, was an important factor in the new england renaissance, and as such should be immortalized by a statue made of punk, set up on boston common for the delectation of bean-eaters. i fear me horace was a joker. california quail are quite different from the quail of new york state, and naturalists tell us that this is caused by a difference in environment--quail being a product of soil and climate. and man is a product of soil and climate--for only in a certain soil can you produce a certain type of man. as a whole, this world is better adapted for the production of fish than genius--most of the really good climate falls on the sea. christian scientists are transcendentalists whose distinguishing point is that they secrete millinery--california quail with rainbow tints and topknots, balboaic instincts well defined. * * * * * let this fact stand: it was emerson who made concord. he saw it first--he was on the ground, and the place was his by right of discovery, the title strengthened by the fact that four of his ancestors had been concord clergymen, and the most excellent and venerable doctor ripley, a near kinsman. concord and emerson, as early as eighteen hundred forty, when emerson was thirty-seven years old, were synonymous. he had defied the traditions of harvard, been excommunicated by his alma mater, published his pantheistic essay on nature, and his thin little books and sermons had been placed on the boston theological index expurgatorius. through it all he had remained gentle, smiling, sympathetic, unresentful. the world can never spare the man who does his work and holds his peace. emerson was being lifted up, and souls were being drawn unto him. in eighteen hundred forty, bronson alcott, the american socrates, with his interesting family, moved to concord, drawn thither by the magnet of emerson's personality. louisa wore short dresses, and used to pick wild blackberries and sell them to the emersons and get goodly reward in silver, and kindly smiles, and pats on her brown head by the hand that wrote "compensation." alcott was a great, honest, sincere soul, and a true anarch, for he took his own wherever he saw it. he used to run his wheelbarrow into emerson's garden and load it up with potatoes, cabbages or turnips, and once in response to a hint that the vegetables were private property, the old man somewhat petulantly exclaimed, "i need them!--i need them!" and that was all: anything that any man needed was his by divine right. and the consistency of alcott's philosophy was shown in that he never took anything or any more than he needed, and if he had something that you needed, you were certainly welcome to it. if alcott helped himself to the thrifty emerson's vegetables, both emerson and thoreau helped themselves to alcott's ideas. once a wagonload of wood broke down in front of alcott's house, and the farmer unhitched his horses and went on to the village to procure a new wheel. before he got back, alcott had carried every stick of the combustibles into his own wood-shed. "providence remembers us!" he said. his faith was sublime. when all the world reaches the alcott stage, there will be no need of soldiers, policemen, night-watchmen, or bolts, bars and locks. in eighteen hundred forty, nathaniel hawthorne came to concord from salem, where he had resigned his clerkship in the custom-house, that he might devote all his time to literature. he moved into the old manse, which had just been vacated by doctor ripley, who had gone a-brook-farming--the old manse where emerson himself once lived. elizabeth peabody, the talented sister of hawthorne's wife, lived at a convenient distance, and to her hawthorne read most of his manuscript, for i need not explain that literature is not literature until it is read aloud and reflected back by a sympathetic, discerning mind. literature is a collaboration between the reader and the listener. margaret fuller, with her tragic life-story still unwound, lived hard by, and hawthorne had already worked her up into copy as "zenobia." margaret's sister ellen had married ellery channing, the closest, warmest friend that henry thoreau ever knew. the gossips arranged a doublewedding, with henry and margaret as the other principals; but when interviewed on the theme, henry had merely shaken his head and said, "in the first place, margaret fuller is not fool enough to marry me; and second, i am not fool enough to marry her." an irishman who saw thoreau in the field making a minute in his notebook took it for granted that he was casting up his wages, and inquired what they came to. it was a peculiar farmhand who cared more for ideas than for wages. george william curtis was also a farmhand out on the lowell road, but came into town saturday evenings--taking a swim in the river on the way--to attend the philosophical conferences at emerson's house, and then went off and made gentle fun of them. little doctor holmes occasionally drove out from boston to concord in a one-horse chaise; james russell lowell had walked over from cambridge; and longfellow had invited all hands to a birthday fete on his lawn at cambridge, but thoreau had declined for himself, saying he had to look after his pond-lilies and the field-mice on bedford flats. thoreau, at this time, was a member of emerson's household, and in a letter emerson says, "he has his board for what labor he chooses to do; he is a great benefactor and physician to me, for he is an indefatigable and skilful laborer, besides being a scholar and a poet, and as full of promise as a young apple-tree." and again, in a letter to carlyle: "one reader and friend of yours dwells in my household, henry thoreau, a poet whom you may one day be proud of--a noble, manly youth, full of melodies and invention. we work together day by day in my garden, and i grow well and strong." to work and talk is the true way to acquire an education. all of our best things are done incidentally--not in cold blood. hawthorne says in his journal that most of emerson's and thoreau's farming was done leaning on the hoe-handles, while alcott sat on the fence and explained the whyness of the wherefore. but we must remember that in hawthorne's ink-bottle there was a goodly dash of tincture of iron. in his journal of september first, eighteen hundred forty-two, he writes: "mr. thoreau dined with us yesterday. he is a singular character--a young man with much of wild, original nature still remaining in him; and so far as he is sophisticated, it is in a way and method of his own. he is as ugly as sin, long-nosed, queer-mouthed, and with uncouth and somewhat rustic ways, though his courteous manner corresponds very well with such an exterior. but his ugliness is of an honest character and really becomes him better than beauty." little did hawthorne's guests imagine they were being basted, roasted, or fricasseed for the edification of posterity. prosperity at this time had just begun to smile on hawthorne, and among other extravagances in which he indulged was a boat, bought from thoreau--made by the hands of this expert yankee whittler. hawthorne quotes a little transcendental advice given to him by the maker of the boat: "in paddling a canoe, all you have to do is to will that your boat shall go in any particular direction, and she will immediately take the course, as if imbued with the spirit of the steersman." hawthorne then adds this sober postscript: "it may be so with you, but it is certainly not so with me." admiration for thoreau gradually grew very strong with hawthorne, and he quotes emerson, who called thoreau "the young god pan." and this lends much semblance to the statement that thoreau served hawthorne as a model for donatello, the mysterious wood-sprite in the "marble faun." as to the transformation of thoreau himself, one of his classmates records this: meeting mr. emerson one day, i inquired if he saw much of my classmate, henry d. thoreau, who was then living in concord. "of thoreau?" replied mr. emerson, his face lighting up with a smile of enthusiasm. "oh, yes, we could not do without him. when carlyle comes to america, i expect to introduce thoreau to him as the man of concord," and i was greatly surprised at these words. they set an estimate on thoreau which seemed to be extravagant.... not long after i happened to meet thoreau in mr. emerson's study at concord--the first time we had come together after leaving college. i was quite startled by the transformation that had taken place in him. his short figure and general cast of countenance were, of course, unchanged; but in his manners, in the tones of his voice, in his modes of expression, even in the hesitations and pauses of his speech, he had become the counterpart of mr. emerson. thoreau's college voice bore no resemblance to mr. emerson's, and was so familiar to my ear that i could have readily identified him by it in the dark. i was so much struck by the change that i took the opportunity, as they sat near together talking, of listening with closed eyes, and i was unable to determine with certainty which was speaking. i do not know to what subtle influences to ascribe it, but after conversing with mr. emerson for even a brief time, i always found myself able and inclined to adopt his voice and manner of speaking. * * * * * thoreau had tried schoolteaching, but he had to give up his position because he would not exercise the birch and ferule. "if the scholars once find out the teacher is not goin' to sting 'em up when they need it, that is an end to the skule," said one of the directors, and he spat violently at a fly, ten feet away. the others agreeing with him, thoreau was asked to resign. william emerson, a brother of ralph waldo's, a prosperous new york merchant, had lured ralph waldo's hired man away from him and taken him down to staten island, new york. here thoreau acted as private tutor, and imparted the mysteries of woodcraft to boys who cared more for marbles. staten island was about two hundred miles too far from concord to suit thoreau. his loneliness in new york city made concord and the pine-trees of walden woods seem paradise enow. there is no heart desolation equal to that which can come to one in a throng. margaret fuller was now in new york city, working for greeley on the editorial staff of the "tribune." greeley was so much pleased with thoreau that he offered to set him to work as reporter, for greeley had guessed the truth that the best city reporters are country boys. they observe and hear--all is curious and wonderful to them: by and by they will become blase--sophisticated--that is, blind and deaf. greeley was a great talker, and he had a way of getting others to talk also. he got thoreau to talking about communal life and life in the woods, and then horace worked henry's words up into copy--for that is the way all good newspaper-writers evolve their original ideas. thoreau was amazed to pick up a number of the daily "tribune" and find his conversation of the day before, with greeley, skilfully transformed into a leader. fourierism had been the theme--the phalanstery versus individual housekeeping. greeley had prophesied that the phalanstery, with one kitchen for forty families, instead of forty kitchens for forty families, would soon come about. greeley's prophetic vision did not quite anticipate the modern apartment-house, which perhaps is a transitional expedient, moving toward the phalanstery, but he quoted thoreau by saying, "a woman enslaved by her housekeeping is just as much a chattel as if owned by a man." this was in eighteen hundred forty-five, and thoreau was now twenty-eight years of age. he was homesick for the dim pine-woods with their ceaseless lullaby, the winding and placid river, and the great, massive, sullen, self-sufficient boulders of concord. he was resolved to follow the example of brook farm, and start a community of his own in opposition. his community would be on the shores of walden pond, and the only member of the genus homo who would be eligible to membership would be himself; the other members would be the birds and squirrels and bees, and the trees would make up the rest. brook farm was a retreat for transcendentalists--a place to meditate, dream and work--a place where one could exist close to nature, and live a simple, hardy and healthful life. thoreau's retreat would be the same, with the disadvantage of personal contact eliminated. it was in march, eighteen hundred forty-five, that thoreau began building his shanty. the spot was in a dense woods, on a hillside that gently sloped down to the clear, cold, deep water of walden pond. the land belonged to emerson, who obligingly gave thoreau the use of it, rent free, with no conditions. alcott helped in the carpenter work, and discussed betimes of the wherefore, and when it came to the raising, a couple of neighboring farmers were hailed and pressed into service. the cabin was twelve by fifteen, and cost--furnished--the sum of twenty-eight dollars, good money, not counting labor, which thoreau did not calculate as worth anything, since he had had the fun of the thing--something for which men often pay high. the furniture consisted of a table, a chair, and a bed, all made by the owner. for bedclothes and dishes the emerson household was put under contribution. on the door was a latch, but no lock. and thoreau looked upon his work and pronounced it good. stripped of the fact that a man of culture and education built the shanty and lived in it, the incident is scarcely worth noting. boys passing through the shanty stage, all build shanties, and forage through their mothers' pantries for provender, which they carry off to their robbers' roost. thoreau was an example of shanty-arrested development. but as the import of every sentence depends upon who wrote it, and the worth of advice hinges upon who gave it, so does the value of every act depend upon who did it. thus when a man, who was in degree an inspiration of emerson, takes to the woods, it is worth our while to follow him afield and see what he does. thoreau set to work to clean up two acres of blackberry brambles for a garden-patch. he did not work except when he felt like it. his plan was to go to bed at dusk, with window and door open, and get up at five o'clock in the morning. after a plunge in the lake he would dress and prepare his simple breakfast. then he would work in his garden, or if the mood struck him, he would sit in the door of his shanty and meditate, or else write. in the arrangement of his home he followed no system or rule, merely allowing the passing inclination to lead. his provisions were gotten of friends in the village, and were paid for in labor. it was part of thoreau's philosophy that to accept something for nothing was theft, and that the giving or acceptance of presents was immoral. for all he received he conscientiously gave an equivalent in labor; and as for ideas, he always considered himself a learner; if he had thoughts they belonged to anybody who could annex them. and that emerson and horace greeley were alike in their capacity to absorb, digest and regurgitate, is everywhere acknowledged. to paraphrase emerson's famous remark concerning plato: say what you will, you will find everything mentioned by emerson hinted at somewhere in thoreau. the younger man had as much mind as the elder, but he lacked the capacity for patient effort that works steadily, persistently, and weighs, sifts, decides, classifies and arranges. the voice was the voice of jacob, but the hand was the hand of esau. that is to say, thoreau lacked business instinct. during the winter at walden pond, all the work thoreau had to do was to gather firewood. there was plenty of time to think and write, and here the better part of "walden" and "a week on the concord and merrimac rivers" were written. he had no neighbors, no pets, no domesticated animals--only the squirrels on the roof, a woodchuck under the floor, the scolding blue jays in the pines overhead, the wild ducks on the pond, and the hooting owls that sat on the ridgepole at night. thoreau loved solitude more because he prized society--the society of simple men who could talk and tell things. thoreau was no hermit--at least twice a week he would go to the village and meander along the street, gossiping with all or any. often he would accept invitations to supper, but on principle refused all invitations to remain overnight, no matter what the weather. indeed, as hawthorne hints, there is a trace of the theatrical in the man who leaves a warm fireside at nine or ten o'clock at night and trudges off through the darkness, storm and sleet, feeling his way through the blackness of the woods to a cold and cheerless shanty which he with unconscious humor calls home. hawthorne hints that thoreau was a delightful poseur--he posed so naturally that he deceived even himself. on one particular visit to the village, however, he did not go back home for the night. it seems that he had been called upon by the local taxgatherer for his poll-tax, a matter of a dollar and a quarter. thoreau argued the question at length, and among other things, said, "i will not give money to buy a musket, and hire a man to use this musket to shoot another." and also, "the best government is not that which governs least, but that which governs not at all." "but what shall i do?" said the patient publican. "resign," said the philosopher. thoreau seemed to forget that officeholders seldom die and never resign. in the argument the publican was worsted, but he was not without resource. he went back to town and told the other officials what had happened. their dignity was at stake. alcott had been guilty of a like defiance some time before, and now it was the belief that he was putting the younger man up to insurrection. the next time thoreau came over to the village for his mail he was arrested and lodged in the local bastile. emerson, hearing of the trouble, hastened to the jail, and reaching the presence of the prisoner asked sternly, "henry, why are you here?" and the answer was, "waldo, why are you not here?" emerson had no use for such finespun theories of duty, and the matter was too near home for a joke, so he turned away and let the culprit spend the night in limbo. the next morning thoreau was released, the tax having been paid by some unknown person--emerson, undoubtedly. this was a tame enough ending to what was rather an interesting affair--the hope of the best citizens being that thoreau would get a goodly sentence for vagrancy. the townfolk looked upon thoreau and alcott with suspicious eyes. they both came in for much well-deserved censure, and emerson did not go unsmirched, since he was guilty of harboring and encouraging these ne'er-do-wells. thoreau's cabin-life continued for two summers and winters. he had proved that two hours' manual work each day was sufficient to keep a man--twenty cents a day would suffice. the last year in the woods he had many callers: agassiz had been to see him, emerson had often called, ellery channing was a frequent visitor, and picnickers were constant. lowell had made a few cutting remarks to the effect that "as compared with shanty-life, the tub of diogenes was preferable, as it had a much sounder bottom," and hawthorne had written of "the beauties of conspicuous solitude." thoreau felt that he was attracting too much attention, and that perhaps hawthorne was right: a recluse who holds receptions is becoming the thing he pretends to despise. besides that, there was plenty of precedent for quitting--brook farm had gone by the board, and was but a memory. thoreau's shanty was turned over to a utilitarian scotchman with red hair. later the immortal shanty was a useful granary. thoreau went back to the village to live in a garret and work at odd jobs of boat-building and gardening. now only a pile of boulders marks the place where the cabin stood. for some years, each visitor to the spot threw a stone upon the heap, but recently the proposition has been reversed, and each visitor takes a stone away, which reveals not a reversal in the sentiment toward the memory of thoreau, but a change in the quality of the concord pilgrim. * * * * * thoreau's early death was the direct result of his reckless lack of common prudence. that which made him live, in a literary way, curtailed his years. the man was improperly and imperfectly nourished, physically. men who live alone do not cook any more than they have to: men and women, both, cook for emulation. that is to say, we work for each other, and we succeed only as we help each other. thoreau was such a pronounced individualist that he cared for no one but himself, and he cared for himself not at all. it is wife, children and home that teach a man prudence, and make him bank against the storm. "at walden no one bothered me but the state," said thoreau. if thoreau had had a family and treated his household as he treated himself, that scorned thing, the state, would have stepped in and sent him to the workhouse, and his children to the home for the friendless. if he had treated dumb animals as he treated himself, the society for the prevention of cruelty to animals would have interfered. the absence of social ties and of all responsibilities fixed in his peculiar temperament an indifference to hunger, heat, cold, wet, damp, and all bodily discomfort that classes the man with the flagellants. he tells of whole days when he ate nothing but berries and drank only cold water; and at other times of how he walked all day in a soaking rain and went to bed at night, supperless, under a pine-tree. emerson records the fact that on long tramps thoreau would carry only a chunk of plum-cake for food, because it was rich and contained condensed nutriment. the question is sometimes asked, "how can one eat his cake and keep it too?" but this does not refer to plum-cake. a few years of plum-cake, cold mince-pie and continual wet feet will put the petard under even the stoutest constitution. during his shanty-life thoreau was imperfectly nourished, and for the victim of malassimilation, tuberculosis hunts and needs no spyglass. it is absurd for a man to make a god of his digestive apparatus, but it is just as bad to forget that the belly is as much the gift of god as the brain. in childhood, thoreau was frail and weak. outdoor life gradually developed on his slight frame a splendid strength and a power to do and endure. he could outrun, outrow, outwalk any of his townsmen. in him developed the confidence of the athlete--the confidence of the athlete who dies young. thoreau was an athlete, and he died as the athlete dieth. irregular diet and continued exposure did their work--the vital powers became reduced, the man "caught cold," bronchitis followed, and the tuberculæ laughed. * * * * * during thoreau's life he published but two volumes, and these met with scanty sale. since his death ten volumes have been issued from his manuscripts and letters, and his fame has steadily increased. boston had no recognition for thoreau as long as he was alive. among the most popular writers of the time, feted and feasted, invited and exalted, were george s. hillard, n. p. willis, caroline kirkland, george w. green, parke godwin and charles f. briggs. these writers, who had the run of the magazines, would have smiled in derision if told that the name and fame of uncouth thoreau would outlive them all. they wrote for the people who bought their books, but thoreau dedicated his work to time. he wrote what he thought, but they wrote what they thought other people thought. in the publication of "the dial," thoreau took a hearty interest, and was a frequent contributor. the official organ of the transcendentalists, however, paid no honorariums--it was both sincere and serious, and died in due time of too much dignity. the "atlantic monthly" accepted one article by thoreau, and paid for it, but as james russell lowell, the editor, used his blue pencil a trifle, without first consulting the author, he never got an opportunity to do so again. horace greeley had interested himself in thoreau's writings and gotten several articles accepted by graham's and also putnam's magazine. "the week" had been published on the author's guaranty that enough copies would be sold the first year to cover the cost. after four years, of the edition of one thousand copies only three hundred were disposed of, and these were mostly given away. to pay the publisher for the expense incurred, thoreau buckled down and worked hard at surveying for a year. the only man he ever knew, of whom he stood a little in awe, was walt whitman. in a letter to blake he says: nineteenth november, eighteen hundred fifty-six.--alcott has been here, and last sunday i went with him to greeley's farm, thirty-six miles north of new york. the next day alcott and i heard beecher preach; and what was more, we visited whitman the next morning, and we were much interested and provoked. he is apparently the greatest democrat the world has seen, kings and aristocracy go by the board at once, as they have long deserved to. a remarkably strong though coarse nature, of a sweet disposition, and much prized by his friends. though peculiar and rough in his exterior, he is essentially a gentleman. i am still somewhat in a quandary about him--feel that he is essentially strange to me, at any rate; but i am surprised by the sight of him. he is very broad, but, as i have said, not fine. seventh december, eighteen hundred fifty-six.--that walt whitman, of whom i wrote you, is the most interesting fact to me at present. i have just read his second edition (which he gave me), and it has done me more good than any reading for a long time. perhaps i remember best the poem of "walt whitman an american" and the "sundown" poem. there are two or three pieces in the book which are disagreeable, to say the least, simply sensual.... as for its sensuality--and it may turn out to be less sensual than it appears--i do not so much wish that those parts were not written, as that men and women were so pure that they could read them without harm. on the whole, it sounds to me very brave and american, after whatever deductions. i do not believe that all the sermons, so called, that have been preached in this land, put together, are equal to it for preaching. we ought greatly to rejoice in him. he occasionally suggests something a little more than human. you can't confound him with the other inhabitants of brooklyn. how they must shudder when they read him! to be sure, i sometimes feel a little imposed on. by his heartiness and broad generalities he puts me into a liberal frame of mind, prepared to see wonders--as it were, sets me upon a hill or in the midst of a plain--stirs me well up, and then--throws in a thousand of brick. though rude and sometimes ineffectual, it is a great primitive poem, an alarum or trumpet-note ringing through the american camp. wonderfully like the orientals, too, considering that, when i asked him if he had read them, he answered, "no; tell me about them." since i have seen him, i find that i am not disturbed by any brag or egoism in his book. he may turn out the least of a braggart of all, having a better right to be confident. walt is a great fellow. a lady once asked john burroughs this question: "what would become of this world if everybody in it patterned after henry thoreau?" and ol' john replied, "it would be much improved." but your uncle john is a humorist--he knows that henry ward beecher was right when he said, "god never made but one thoreau--that was enough, but we are grateful for the one." thoreau was a poet-naturalist, and the lesson he taught us is that this is the most beautiful world to know anything about, and there are enough curious and wonderful things right under our feet, and over our heads, and all around us, to amuse, divert, interest and instruct us for a lifetime. we need only a little. use your eyes! "how do you manage to find so many indian relics?" a friend asked thoreau. "just like this," he replied, and stooping over, he picked up an arrowhead under the friend's foot. at dinner once at a neighbor's he was asked what dish he preferred, and his answer was, "the nearest." to him, everything was good--he uttered no complaints and made no demands. when asked by a clergyman why he did not go to church, he said, "it is the rafters--i can't stand them--when i look up, i want to gaze straight into the blue sky." then he turned the tables and asked the interrogator a question: "did you ever happen, accidentally, to say anything while you were preaching?" yet preachers of brains were always attracted to him: harrison blake, to whom he wrote more letters than to any one else, was a congregational preacher. and when horace greeley took thoreau to plymouth church, beecher invited him to sit on the platform and quoted him as one who saw god in autumn's every burning bush. the wit of the man--his direct speech, and all of his beautiful indifference for the good opinion of those whom others follow after and lie in wait for--was sublime. meanness, hypocrisy, secrecy and subterfuge had no place in thoreau's nature. he wanted nothing--nothing but liberty--he did not even ask for your applause or approval. when walking on country roads, laborers would hail him and ask for tobacco--seeing in him only one of their own kind. farmers would stop and gossip with him about the weather. children ran to him on the village streets and would cling to his hands and clutch his coat, and ask where the berries grew, or the first spring flowers were to be found. with children he was particularly patient and kind. with them he would converse as freely as did george francis train with the children in madison square. the children recognized in him something very much akin to themselves--he would play upon his flute for them and whittle out toy boats, regardless of the flight of time. imbeciles and mental defectives from the almshouse used occasionally to wander over to his cabin in the woods, and he would treat them with gentle consideration, and accompany them back home. his lack of worldly prudence, blake thought, tokened a courage which under certain conditions would have made him as formidable as john brown. blake tells this: once on a lonely road, two miles from concord, two loafers stopped a girl who was picking berries, and began to bother her. thoreau just then happened along, and seeing the young woman's distress, he collared the rogues and marched them into the village, turning them over to that redoubtable transcendentalist, sam staples, who locked them up. thoreau's hook nose and features could be transformed in rare instances into a look of command that no man dare question--it was the look of the fatalist--the benign fanatic--the look of marat--the look of a man who has nothing but his life to lose, and places small store on that. "a little more ambition, and a trifle less sympathy, and the world would have had a cæsar to deal with," says blake. cowardice is only caution carried to an extreme. thoreau exercised no prudence in making money, securing fame, preserving his health, holding his friends or making new ones. this spartan-like quality, that counts not the cost, is essentially heroic. but thoreau was not given to strife; for the most part, he was non-resistant. the chief thing he prized was equanimity, and this you can not secure through struggle and strife. his game was all captured with the spyglass, or carried home in his botanists' drum. for worldly wealth and what we call progress, he had small appreciation--this marks his limitations. but his reasons are surely good literature: they make a great ado nowadays about hard times; but i think that the community generally, ministers and all, take a wrong view of the matter. this general failure, both private and public, is rather occasion for rejoicing, as reminding us whom we have at the helm--that justice is always done. if our merchants did not most of them fail, and the banks too, my faith in the old laws of the world would be staggered. the statement that ninety-six in a hundred doing such business surely break down, is perhaps the sweetest fact that statistics have revealed--exhilarating as the fragrance of the flowers in the spring. does it not say somewhere, "the lord reigneth, let the earth rejoice"? if thousands are thrown out of employment, it suggests that they were not well employed. why don't they take the hint? it is not enough to be industrious; so are the ants. what are you industrious about? the merchants and company have long laughed at transcendentalism, higher law, etc., crying, "none of your moonshine," as if they were anchored to something not only definite, but sure and permanent. if there were any institution which was presumed to rest on a solid and secure basis, and more than any other, represented this boasted commonsense, prudence, and practical talent, it was the bank; and now these very banks are found to be mere reeds shaken by the wind. scarcely one in the land has kept its promise. not merely the brook farm and fourierite communities, but now the community generally has failed. but there is the moonshine still, serene, beneficent and unchanged. thoreau was no pessimist. he complained neither of men nor of destiny--he felt that he was getting out of life all that was his due. his remarks might be sharp and his words sarcastic, but in them there was no bitterness. he made life for none more difficult--he added to no one's burdens. sympathy with nature, pride, buoyancy, self-sufficiency, were his prevailing traits. the habit of his mind was hopeful. his wit and good-nature were his to the last, and when asked if he had made his peace with god, he replied, "i have never quarreled with him." he died, aged forty-four, in the modest home of his mother. the village school was dismissed that the scholars might attend the funeral, and three hundred children walked in the procession to sleepy hollow. emerson made an address at the grave; alcott read selections from thoreau's own writings; and louisa alcott read this poem, composed for the occasion: we sighing said, "our pan is dead; his pipe hangs mute beside the river, around it wistful sunbeams quiver, but music's airy voice is fled. spring mourns as for untimely frost: the bluebird chants a requiem; the willow-blossom waits for him;-- the genius of the wood is lost." then from the flute, untouched by hands, there came a low, harmonious breath: "for such as he there is no death; his life the eternal life commands; above man's aims his nature rose. the wisdom of a just content made one small spot a continent, and turned to poetry life's prose. "to him no vain regrets belong, whose soul, that finer instrument, gave to the world no poor lament, but wood-notes ever sweet and strong. o lonely friend! he still will be a potent presence, though unseen-- steadfast, sagacious, and serene; seek not for him--he is with thee." * * * * * so here endeth "little journeys to the homes of great philosophers," being volume eight of the series, as written by elbert hubbard; edited and arranged by fred bann; borders and initials by roycroft artists, and produced by the roycrofters, at their shops, which are in east aurora, erie county, new york, mcmxxii. none the english utilitarians by leslie stephen in three volumes vol. ii james mill london duckworth and co. henrietta street, w.c. contents chapter i james mill page i. early life, ii. bentham's lieutenant, iii. leader of the utilitarians, chapter ii reform movements i. political change, ii. law reform, iii. economic reform, iv. church reform, v. sinister interests, chapter iii political theory i. mill on government, ii. whiggism, iii. conservatism, iv. socialism, chapter iv malthus i. malthus's starting-point, ii. the ratios, iii. moral restraint, iv. social remedies, v. political application, vi. rent, chapter v ricardo i. ricardo's starting-point, ii. the distribution problem, iii. value and labour, iv. the classical political economy, v. the ricardians, chapter vi economic heretics i. the malthusian controversy, ii. socialism, chapter vii psychology i. thomas brown, ii. james mill's _analysis_, iii. james mill's ethics, chapter viii religion i. philip beauchamp, ii. contemporary thought, chapter i james mill i. early life bentham's mantle fell upon james mill.[ ] mill expounded in the tersest form the doctrines which in bentham's hands spread into endless ramifications and lost themselves in minute details. mill became the leader of bentham's bodyguard; or, rather, the mediator between the prophet in his 'hermitage' and the missionaries who were actively engaged on the hustings and in committee-rooms. the special characteristics of english utilitarianism in the period of its greatest activity were thus more affected by mill than by any other leader of opinion. james mill was one of the countless scots who, having been trained at home in strict frugality and stern puritanic principles, have fought their way to success in england. he was born th april in the parish of logie pert, forfarshire. his father, also named james mill, was a village shoemaker, employing two or three journeymen when at the height of his prosperity. his mother, isabel fenton, daughter of a farmer, had been a servant in edinburgh. her family had some claims to superior gentility; she was fastidious, delicate in frame, and accused of pride by her neighbours. she resolved to bring up james, her eldest son, to be a gentleman, which practically meant to be a minister. he probably showed early promise of intellectual superiority. he received the usual training at the parish school, and was then sent to the montrose academy, where he was the school-fellow and friend of a younger lad, joseph hume ( - ), afterwards his political ally. he boarded with a montrose shopkeeper for s. d. a week, and remained at the academy till he was seventeen. he was never put to work in his father's shop, and devoted himself entirely to study. the usual age for beginning to attend a scottish university was thirteen or fourteen; and it would have been the normal course for a lad in mill's position to be sent at that age to aberdeen. mill's education was prolonged by a connection which was of great service to him. sir john stuart (previously belches), of fettercairn house, in mill's neighbourhood, had married lady jane leslie, and was by her father of an only child, wilhelmina. lady jane was given to charity, and had set up a fund to educate promising lads for the ministry. mill was probably recommended to her by the parish minister, as likely to do credit to her patronage. he also acted as tutor to wilhelmina, who afterwards became the object of scott's early passion. mill spent much time at fettercairn house, and appears to have won the warm regards both of the stuarts and of their daughter, who spoke of him affectionately 'with almost her last breath.'[ ] the stuarts passed their winters at edinburgh, whither mill accompanied them. he entered the university in , and seems to have applied himself chiefly to greek and to philosophy. he became so good a greek scholar that long afterwards ( ) he had some thoughts of standing for the greek chair at glasgow.[ ] he was always a keen student of plato. he read the ordinary scottish authorities, and attended the lectures of dugald stewart. besides reading rousseau, he studied massillon, probably with a view to his future performances in the pulpit. massillon might be suggested to him by quotations in adam smith's _moral sentiments_. there are few records of acquaintanceship with any of his distinguished contemporaries, except the chemist thomas thomson, who became a lifelong friend. he probably made acquaintance with brougham, and may have known jeffrey; but he was not a member of the speculative society, joined by most young men of promise. in he began his course of divinity, and on th october was licensed to preach. he lived in his father's house, where part of the family room was screened off to form a study for him. he delivered some sermons, apparently with little success. he failed to obtain a call from any parish; and there are vague reports of his acting as tutor in some families, and of a rebuff received at the table of the marquis of tweeddale, father of one of his pupils, which made him resolve to seek for independence by a different career. in mill went to london in company with sir john stuart, who was about to take his seat in parliament. stuart procured admission for him to the gallery of the house of commons, where he attended many debates, and acquired an interest in politics. his ambition, however, depended upon his pen; and at first, it would seem, he was not more particular than other journalists as to the politics of the papers to which he contributed. he had obtained a testimonial from thomson, on the strength of which he introduced himself to john gifford, editor of the _anti-jacobin review_.[ ] this was a monthly magazine, which had adopted the name and politics of the deceased _anti-jacobin_, edited by william gifford. mill obtained employment, and wrote articles implying an interest in the philosophy, and especially in the political economy, of the time. it is noteworthy, considering his later principles, that he should at this time have taken part in a strong tory organ. he wrote a pamphlet in (the first publication under his name) to prove the impolicy of a bounty upon the exportation of grain; and in replied in _commerce defended_ to william spence's _britain independent of commerce_. meanwhile he had found employment of a more regular kind. he had formed a connection with a bookseller named baldwin, for whom he undertook to help in rewriting a book called _nature delineated_. this scheme was changed for a periodical called the _literary journal_, which started at the beginning of , and lived through four years with mill as editor. at the same time apparently he edited the _st. james's chronicle_, also belonging to baldwin, which had no very definite political colour. the _journal_ professed to give a systematic survey of literary, scientific, and philosophical publications. for the scientific part mill was helped by thomson. his own contributions show that, although clearly a rationalist, he was still opposed to open infidelity. a translation of villers' _history of the reformation_ implies similar tendencies. other literary hack-work during this and the next few years is vaguely indicated. mill was making about £ a year or something more during his editorships, and thought himself justified in marrying. on th june he became the husband of harriett burrow, daughter of a widow who kept a private lunatic asylum originally started by her husband. the mills settled in a house in pentonville belonging to mrs. burrow, for which they paid £ a year. the money question soon became pressing. the editorships vanished, and to make an income by periodical writing was no easy task. his son observes that nothing could be more opposed to his father's later principles than marrying and producing a large family under these circumstances. nine children were ultimately born, all of whom survived their father. the family in his old home were an additional burthen. his mother died before his departure from scotland. his father was paralysed, and having incautiously given security for a friend, became bankrupt. his only brother, william, died soon afterwards, and his only sister, mary, married one of her father's journeymen named greig, and tried to carry on the business. the father died about , and the greigs had a hard struggle, though two of the sons ultimately set up a business in montrose. james mill appears to have helped to support his father, whose debts he undertook to pay, and to have afterwards helped the greigs. they thought, it seems, that he ought to have done more, but were not unlikely to exaggerate the resources of a man who was making his way in england. mill was resolute in doing his duty, but hardly likely to do it graciously. at any rate, in the early years, it must have been a severe strain to do anything. in spite of all difficulties mill, by strict frugality and unremitting energy, managed to keep out of debt. in the end of he undertook the history of british india. this was to be the great work which should give him a name, and enable him to rise above the herd of contemporary journalists. he calculated the time necessary for its completion at three years, but the years were to be more than trebled before the book was actually finished. at that period there were fewer facilities than there could now be for making the necessary researches: and we do not know what were the reasons which prompted the selection of a subject of which he could have no first-hand knowledge. the book necessarily impeded other labours; and to the toil of writing mill added the toil of superintending the education of his children. his struggle for some years was such as to require an extraordinary strain upon all his faculties. mill, however, possessed great physical and mental vigour. he was muscular, well-made, and handsome; he had marked powers of conversation, and made a strong impression upon all with whom he came in contact. he gradually formed connections which effectually determined his future career. ii. bentham's lieutenant the most important influence in mill's life was the friendship with bentham. this appears to have begun in . mill speedily became a valued disciple. he used to walk from pentonville to dine with bentham in queen's square place. soon the elder man desired to have his new friend nearer at hand. in mill moved to the house in bentham's garden, which had once belonged to milton; when this proved unsuitable, he was obliged to move to a more distant abode at stoke newington; but finally, in , he settled in another house belonging to bentham, queen's square, close under the old gentleman's wing. here for some years they lived in the closest intimacy. the mills also stayed with bentham in his country-houses at barrow green, and afterwards at ford abbey. the association was not without its troubles. bentham was fanciful, and mill stern and rigid. no one, however, could be a more devoted disciple. the most curious illustration of their relations is a letter written to bentham by mill, th september , while they were both at ford abbey. mill in this declares himself to be a 'most faithful and fervent disciple' of the truths which bentham had the 'immortal honour' of propounding. he had fancied himself to be his master's favourite disciple. no one is so completely of bentham's way of thinking, or so qualified by position for carrying on the propaganda. now, however, bentham showed that he had taken umbrage at some part of mill's behaviour. an open quarrel would bring discredit upon both sides, and upon their common beliefs. the great dangers to friendship are pecuniary obligation and too close intimacy. mill has made it a great purpose of his life to avoid pecuniary obligation, though he took pride in receiving obligations from bentham. he has confined himself to accepting bentham's house at a low rent, and allowing his family to live for part of the year at bentham's expense. he now proposes so to arrange his future life that they shall avoid an excessively close intimacy, from which, he thinks, had arisen the 'umbrage.' the letter, which is manly and straightforward, led to a reconciliation, and for some years the intercourse was as close as ever.[ ] mill's unreserved adoption of bentham's principles, and his resolution to devote his life to their propagation, implies a development of opinion. he had entirely dropped his theology. in the early years of his london life, mill had been only a rationalist. he had by this time become what would now be called an agnostic. he thought 'dogmatic atheism' absurd, says j. s. mill;[ ] 'but he held that we can know nothing whatever as to the origin of the world.' the occasion of the change, according to his family, was his intercourse with general miranda, who was sitting at bentham's feet about this time. j. s. mill states that the turning-point in his father's mind was the study of butler's _analogy_. that book, he thought, as others have thought, was conclusive against the optimistic deism which it assails; but he thought also that the argument really destroyed butler's own standing-ground. the evils of the world are incompatible with the theory of almighty benevolence. the purely logical objection was combined with an intense moral sentiment. theological doctrines, he thought, were not only false, but brutal. his son had heard him say 'a hundred times' that men have attributed to their gods every trait of wickedness till the conception culminated in the christian doctrine of hell. mill still attended church services for some time after his marriage, and the children were christened. but the eldest son did not remember the period of even partial conformity, and considered himself to have been brought up from the first without any religious belief. james mill had already taken up the uncompromising position congenial to his character, although the reticence which the whole party observed prevented any open expression of his sentiments. mill's propaganda of benthamism was for some time obscure. he helped to put together some of bentham's writings, especially the book upon evidence. he was consulted in regard to all proposed publications, such as the pamphlet upon jury-packing, which mill desired to publish in spite of romilly's warning. mill endeavoured also to disseminate the true faith through various periodicals. he obtained admission to the _edinburgh review_, probably through its chief contributor, brougham. neither brougham nor jeffrey was likely to commit the great whig review to the support of a creed still militant and regarded with distrust by the respectable. mill contributed various articles from to , but chiefly upon topics outside of the political sphere. the _edinburgh review_, as i have said, had taken a condescending notice of bentham in . mill tried to introduce a better tone into an article upon bexon's _code de la législation pénale_, which he was permitted to publish in the number for october . knowing jeffrey's 'dislike of praise,' he tried to be on his guard, and to insinuate his master's doctrine without openly expressing his enthusiasm. jeffrey, however, sadly mangled the review, struck out every mention but one of bentham, and there substituted words of his own for mill's. even as it was, brougham pronounced the praise of bentham to be excessive.[ ] mill continued to write for a time, partly, no doubt, with a view to jeffrey's cheques. almost his last article (in january ) was devoted to the lancasterian controversy, in which mill, as we shall directly see, was in alliance with the whigs. but the edinburgh reviewers were too distinctly of the whig persuasion to be congenial company for a determined radical. they would give him no more than a secondary position, and would then take good care to avoid the insertion of any suspicious doctrine. mill wrote no more after the summer of . meanwhile he was finding more sympathetic allies. first among them was william allen ( - ), chemist, of plough court. allen was a quaker; a man of considerable scientific tastes; successful in business, and ardently devoted throughout his life to many philanthropic schemes. he took, in particular, an active part in the agitation against slavery. he was, as we have seen, one of the partners who bought owen's establishment at new lanark; and his religious scruples were afterwards the cause of owen's retirement. these, however, were only a part of his multifarious schemes. he was perhaps something of a busybody; his head may have been a little turned by the attentions which he received on all hands; he managed the affairs of the duke of kent; was visited by the emperor alexander in ; and interviewed royal personages on the continent, in order to obtain their support in attacking the slave-trade, and introducing good schools and prisons. but, though he may have shared some of the weaknesses of popular philanthropists, he is mentioned with respect even by observers such as owen and place, who had many prejudices against his principles. he undoubtedly deserves a place among the active and useful social reformers of his time. i have already noticed the importance of the quaker share in the various philanthropic movements of the time. the quaker shared many of the views upon practical questions which were favoured by the freethinker. both were hostile to slavery, in favour of spreading education, opposed to all religious tests and restrictions, and advocates of reform in prisons, and in the harsh criminal law. the fundamental differences of theological belief were not so productive of discord in dealing with the quakers as with other sects; for it was the very essence of the old quaker spirit to look rather to the spirit than to the letter. allen, therefore, was only acting in the spirit of his society when he could be on equally good terms with the emperor alexander or the duke of kent, and, on the other hand, with james mill, the denouncer of kings and autocrats. he could join hands with mill in assailing slavery, insisting upon prison reform, preaching toleration and advancing civilisation, although he heartily disapproved of the doctrines with which mill's practical principles were associated. mill, too, practised--even to a questionable degree--the method of reticence, and took good care not to offend his coadjutor. their co-operation was manifested in a quarterly journal called the _philanthropist_, which appeared during the seven years, - , and was published at allen's expense. mill found in it the opportunity of advocating many of his cherished opinions. he defended toleration in the name of penn, whose life had been published by clarkson. he attacked the slave-owners, and so came into alliance with wilberforce, zachary macaulay, and others of the evangelical persuasion. he found, at the same time, opportunities for propagating the creed of bentham in connection with questions of prison reform and the penal code. his most important article, published in , was another contribution to the lancasterian controversy. in this mill had allies of a very different school; and his activity brings him into close connection with one of the most remarkable men of the time.[ ] this was francis place, the famous radical tailor. place, born rd november , had raised himself from the position of a working-man to be occupant of a shop at charing cross, which became the centre of important political movements. between place and mill there was much affinity of character. place, like mill, was a man of rigid and vigorous intellect. dogmatic, self-confident, and decidedly censorious, not attractive by any sweetness or grace of character, but thoroughly sincere and independent, he extorts rather than commands our respect by his hearty devotion to what he at least believed to be the cause of truth and progress. place was what is now called a thorough 'individualist.' he believed in self-reliance and energy, and held that the class to which he belonged was to be raised, as he had raised himself, by the exercise of those qualities, not by invoking the direct interference of the central power, which, indeed, as he knew it, was only likely to interfere on the wrong side. he had the misfortune to be born in london instead of scotland, and had therefore not mill's educational advantages. he tried energetically, and not unsuccessfully, to improve his mind, but he never quite surmounted the weakness of the self-educated man, and had no special literary talent. his writing, in fact, is dull and long-winded, though he has the merit of judging for himself, and of saying what he thinks. place had been a member of the corresponding society, and was at one time chairman of the weekly committee. he had, however, disapproved of their proceedings, and retired in time to escape the imprisonment which finally crushed the committee. he was now occupied in building up his own fortunes at charing cross. when, during the second war, the native english radicalism began again to raise its head, place took a highly important share in the political agitation. westminster, the constituency in which he had a vote, had long been one of the most important boroughs. it was one of the few large popular constituencies, and was affected by the influences naturally strongest in the metropolis. after being long under the influence of the court and the dean and chapter, it had been carried by fox during the discontents of , when the reform movement took a start and the county associations were symptoms of a growing agitation. the great whig leader, though not sound upon the question of reform, represented the constituency till his death, and reform dropped out of notice for the time. upon fox's death ( th september ) lord percy was elected without opposition as his successor by an arrangement among the ruling families. place was disgusted at the distribution of 'bread and cheese and beer,' and resolved to find a truly popular candidate. in the general election which soon followed at the end of he supported paull, an impecunious adventurer, who made a good fight, but was beaten by sir j. hood and sheridan. place now proposed a more thorough organisation of the constituency, and formed a committee intended to carry an independent candidate. sir francis burdett, a typical country gentleman of no great brains and of much aristocratic pride, but a man of honour, and of as much liberal feeling as was compatible with wealth and station, had sat at the feet of the old radical, home tooke. he had sympathised with the french revolution; but was mainly, like his mentor, tooke, a reformer of the english type, and a believer in magna charta and the bill of rights. he had sat in parliament, and in had been elected for middlesex. after a prolonged litigation, costing enormous sums, the election had been finally annulled in . he had subscribed £ towards paull's expenses; but was so disgusted with his own election experiences that he refused to come forward as a candidate. place's committee resolved therefore to elect him and paull free of expense. disputes between paull and burdett led to a duel, in which both were wounded. the committee threw over paull, and at the election on the dissolution of parliament in the spring of , burdett and cochrane--afterwards lord dundonald--were triumphantly elected, defeating the whig candidates, sheridan and elliot. the election was the first triumph of the reformers, and was due to place more than any one. burdett retained his seat for westminster until , and, in spite of many quarrels with his party, was a leading representative of the movement, which henceforward slowly gathered strength. place, indeed, had apparently but scanty respect for the candidate whose success he had secured. burdett and his like aimed at popularity, while he was content to be ignored so long as he could by any means carry the measures which he approved. place, therefore, acted as a most efficient wire-puller, but had no ambition to leave his shop to make speeches on the hustings. the scandals about the duke of york and the walcheren expedition gave a chance to the radicals and to their leader in the house of commons. events in led to a popular explosion, of which burdett was the hero. john gale jones, an old member of the corresponding societies, had put out a placard denouncing the house of commons for closing its doors during a debate upon the walcheren expedition. the house proceeded against jones, who was more or less advised by place in his proceedings. burdett took the part of jones, by a paper published in cobbett's _register_, and was ultimately committed to the tower in consequence. the whole of london was for a time in a state of excitement, and upon the verge of an outbreak. burdett refused to submit to the arrest. mobs collected; soldiers filled the streets and were pelted. burdett, when at last he was forced to admit the officers, appeared in his drawing-room in the act of expounding magna charta to his son. that, it was to be supposed, was his usual occupation of an afternoon. meetings were held, and resolutions passed, in support of the martyr to liberty; and when his imprisonment terminated on the prorogation of parliament, vast crowds collected, and a procession was arranged to convoy him to his home. place had been active in arranging all the details of what was to be a great popular manifestation. to his infinite disgust, burdett shrank from the performance, and went home by water. the crowd was left to expend its remaining enthusiasm upon the hackney carriage which contained his fellow-sufferer jones. jones, in the following december, was sentenced to twelve months' imprisonment for a libel. cobbett, burdett's special supporter at this time, was also imprisoned in june . for a time the popular agitation collapsed. place seems to have thought that the failure was due to burdett's want of courage, and dropped all communication with him till a later contest at westminster. place was thus at the centre of the political agitation which, for the time, represented the most energetic reforming movement. it was in or that he became acquainted with mill.[ ] in mill he recognised a congenial spirit, and a man able to defend and develop principles. he perhaps, as professor bain thinks, made advances to mill upon the strength of the history of india; and in he was certainly endeavouring to raise money to put mill above the need of precarious hack-work.[ ] the anticipated difficulty of persuading mill so far to sacrifice his independence was apparently fatal to the scheme. place was in occasional communication with bentham, and visited him at ford abbey in . he became intimate with the great man; helped him in business affairs; and was one of the disciples employed to prepare his books for publication.[ ] bentham was the source of philosophy, and mill only his prophet. but mill, who was capable of activity in practical affairs, was more useful to a man of the world. the first business which brought them into close connection was the lancasterian controversy. the strong interest roused by this agitation was significant of many difficulties to come. the average mind had been gradually coming to the conclusion that the poor should be taught to read and write. sunday schools and hannah more's schools in somersetshire had drawn the attention of the religious world to the subject. during the early years of the century the education question had steadily become more prominent, and the growing interest was shown by a singularly bitter and complicated controversy. the opposite parties fought under the banners of bell and lancaster. andrew bell, born at st. andrews, th march , was both a canny scot and an anglican clergyman. he combined philanthropy with business faculties. he sailed to india in with £ , s. in his pocket to be an army chaplain; he returned in with £ , and a new system of education which he had devised as superintendent of an orphan asylum. he settled in england, published an account of his plan, and did something to bring it into operation. meanwhile joseph lancaster ( - ), a young quaker, had set up a school in london; he devised a plan similar to that of bell, and in published an account of his improvements in education with acknowledgments to bell. for a time the two were on friendly terms. lancaster set about propagating his new system with more enthusiasm than discretion. his fame rapidly spread till it reached the throne. in george iii. sent for him; the royal family subscribed to his schools; and the king declared his wish that every child in his dominions should be taught to read the bible. the king's gracious wish unconsciously indicated a difficulty. was it safe to teach the bible without the safeguard of authorised interpretation? orthodox opponents feared the alliance with a man whose first principle was toleration, and first among them was the excellent mrs. trimmer, who had been already engaged in the sunday-school movement. she pointed out in a pamphlet that the schismatic lancaster was weakening the established church. the _edinburgh review_ came to his support in and ; for the whig, especially if he was also a scot, was prejudiced against the church of england. lancaster went on his way, but soon got into difficulties, for he was impetuous, careless of money, and autocratic. william allen, with another quaker, came to his support in , and founded the royal lancasterian society to maintain his school in the borough road, and propagate its like elsewhere. lancaster travelled through the country, and the agitation prospered, and spread even to america. the church, however, was now fairly aroused. bishop marsh preached a sermon in st. paul's, and followed it up by pamphlets; the cause was taken up by the _quarterly review_ in , and in the same year the national society was founded to 'educate the poor in the principles of the established church.' bell had suggested a national system, but the times were not ripe. meanwhile the controversy became furious. the _edinburgh_ and the _quarterly_ thundered on opposite sides. immense importance was attached by both parties to the scheme devised by bell, and partly adopted by lancaster. the war involved a personal element and the charges of plagiarism which give spice to a popular controversy. all parties, and certainly the utilitarians, strangely exaggerated the value of the new method. they regarded the proposal that children should be partly taught by other children instead of being wholly taught by adults as a kind of scientific discovery which would enormously simplify and cheapen education. believers in the 'panopticon' saw in it another patent method of raising the general level of intelligence. but the real question was between church and dissent. was the church catechism to be imposed or not? this, as we have seen, was the occasion of bentham's assault upon church and catechism. on the other side, bell's claims were supported with enthusiasm by all the tories, and by such men as southey and coleridge. southey, who had defended bell in the _quarterly_,[ ] undertook to be bell's biographer[ ] and literary executor. coleridge was so vehement in the cause that when lecturing upon 'romeo and juliet' in , he plunged by way of exordium into an assault upon lancaster's modes of punishment.[ ] de quincey testifies that he became a positive bore upon bell's virtues. in lancaster had got deeply into debt to the trustees of the society, who included besides allen, joseph fox--a 'shallow, gloomy bigot' according to place--and some other quakers. lancaster resented their control, and in made over his borough road school to them, and set up one of his own at tooting. they continued, however, to employ him, and in formed themselves into the 'british and foreign' school society. place had known lancaster from , and mill had supported him in the press. they both became members of the committee, though place took the most active part. he makes many grave charges against lancaster, whom he regarded as hopelessly flighty and impracticable, if not worse. ultimately in lancaster resigned his position, and naturally retorted that place was an infidel. place, meanwhile, was ill at ease with the 'gloomy bigot,' as he calls fox. after many quarrels, fox succeeded in getting the upper hand, and place finally withdrew from the committee in . two other schemes arose out of this, in which mill was specially interested, but which both proved abortive. mill and place resolved in to start a 'west london lancasterian institution,' which was to educate the whole population west of temple bar. they were joined by edward wakefield, father of the edward gibbon wakefield who in later years was known as an economist, and himself author of a work of considerable reputation, _an account of ireland, statistical and political_ ( ). the three joined joseph fox, and ultimately a meeting was held in august . sir james mackintosh was in the chair. mill wrote the address, and motions were proposed by his friend joseph hume and by william allen. papers were circulated, headed 'schools for all,'[ ] and the institution was launched with a sufficiency of applause. but the 'gloomy bigot' was secretary. he declared that he would rather see the institution destroyed than permit it to be used for infidel purposes. the bible was, of course, to be read in the schools, but fox wished that the bible alone should be read. as the committee, according to place, included four infidels, three unitarians, six methodists, two baptists, two roman catholics, and several members of the established church, it was hardly a happy family. to add to the confusion, sir francis burdett, who had contributed a thousand pounds, had taken it into his head that place was a government spy.[ ] the association, as is hardly surprising, ceased to exist in , after keeping up a school of less than three hundred children, and ended in hopeless failure. the utilitarians had higher hopes from a scheme of their own. this was the chrestomathic school which occasioned bentham's writing. an association was formed in february . mackintosh, brougham, mill, allen, fox, and wakefield were to be trustees. the school was to apply lancasterian principles to the education of the middle classes, and bentham was to supply them with a philosophy and with a site in his garden. there the old gentleman was to see a small version of the panopticon building, and, for a time, he took great delight in the prospect. gradually, however, it seems to have dawned upon him that there might be inconveniences in being overlooked by a set of even model schoolboys. there were difficulties as to funds. ricardo offered £ and collected subscriptions for £ , but place thought that he might have been more liberal. about they counted upon subscriptions for £ . allen was treasurer, place secretary, and the dukes of kent and york were on the committee. romilly was persuaded to join, and they had hopes of the £ given by burdett to the west london institution. but the thing could never be got into working order, in spite of place's efforts and mill's counsels; and, after painful haulings and tuggings, it finally collapsed in .[ ] the efforts of the utilitarians to effect anything directly in the way of education thus fell completely flat. one moral is sufficiently obvious. they were, after all, but a small clique, regarded with suspicion by all outsiders; and such a system as could seriously affect education could only be carried out either by government, which was thinking of very different things, or by societies already connected with the great religious bodies. the only function which could be adequately discharged by the little band of utilitarians was to act upon public opinion; and this, no doubt, they could do to some purpose. i have gone so far into these matters in order to illustrate their position; but, as will be seen, mill, though consulted at every stage by place, and doing what he could to advocate the cause, was, after all, in the background. he was still wrestling with the indian history, which was, as he hoped, to win for him an independent position. the effort was enormous. in he told place that he was working at the history from a.m. till p.m. when at ford abbey his regular day's work began at a.m. and lasted till p.m., during which time three hours were given to teaching his children, and a couple of short walks supplied him with recreation. how, with all his energy, he managed to pay his way is a mystery, which his biographer is unable fully to solve.[ ] the history at last appeared in vols. to, at the end of . dry and stern as its author, and embodying some of his political prejudices, it was at least a solid piece of work, which succeeded at once, and soon became the standard book upon the subject. mill argues in the preface with characteristic courage that his want of personal knowledge of india was rather an advantage. it made him impartial. a later editor[ ] has shown that it led to some serious misconceptions. it is characteristic of the utilitarian attitude to assume that a sufficient knowledge of fact can always be obtained from blue-books and statistics. some facts require imagination and sympathy to be appreciated, and there mill was deficient. he could not give an adequate picture of hindoo beliefs and customs, though he fully appreciated the importance of such questions. whatever its shortcomings, the book produced a remarkable change in mill's position. he applied for a vacant office in the india house. his friends, joseph hume and ricardo, made interest for him in the city. place co-operated energetically.[ ] canning, then president of the board of control, is said to have supported him; and the general impression of his ability appears to have caused his election, in spite of some tory opposition. he became assistant to the examiner of india correspondence, with a salary of £ on th may . on th april he became second assistant, with £ a year; on th april he was made assistant examiner, with £ a year; and on st december examiner, with £ , which on th february was raised to £ . the official work came in later years to absorb the greatest part of mill's energy, and his position excluded him from any active participation in politics, had he ever been inclined for it. mill, however, set free from bondage, was able to exert himself very effectually with his pen; and his writings became in a great degree the text-books of his sect. during he had again co-operated with place in a political matter. the dissolution of parliament in produced another contest at westminster. place and mill were leaders in the radical committee, which called a public meeting, where burdett and kinnaird were chosen as candidates. they were opposed to romilly, the old friend of bentham and of mill himself. both mill and bentham regarded him as not sufficiently orthodox. romilly, however, was throughout at the head of the poll, and the radical committee were obliged to withdraw their second candidate, kinnaird, in order to secure the election of burdett against the government candidate maxwell. romilly soon afterwards dined at bentham's house, and met mill, with dumont, brougham, and rush, on friendly terms. on romilly's sad death on nd november following, mill went to worthing to offer his sympathy to the family, and declared that the 'gloom' had 'affected his health.' he took no part in the consequent election, in which hobhouse stood unsuccessfully as the radical candidate. iii. leader of the utilitarians politics were beginning to enter upon a new phase. the period was marked by the 'six acts' and the 'peterloo massacre.' the radical leaders who upheld the cause in those dark days were not altogether to the taste of the utilitarians. after burdett, john cartwright ( - ) and henry (or 'orator') hunt ( - ), hero of the 'peterloo massacre,' were the most conspicuous. they were supported by cobbett, the greatest journalist of the time, and various more obscure writers. the utilitarians held them in considerable contempt. burdett was flashy, melodramatic, and vain; hunt an 'unprincipled demagogue'; and cartwright, the nestor of reform, who had begun his labours in , was, according to place, wearisome, impracticable, and a mere nuisance in matters of business. the utilitarians tried to use such men, but shared the tory opinion of their value. they had some relations with other obscure writers who were martyrs to the liberty of the press. place helped william hone in the _reformer's register_, which was brought out in . the famous trial in which hone triumphed over ellenborough occurred at the end of that year. richard carlile ( - ), who reprinted hone's pamphlets, and in published paine's works, was sentenced in to three years' imprisonment; and while in confinement began the _republican_, which appeared from to . ultimately he passed nine years in jail, and showed unflinching courage in maintaining the liberty of speech. the utilitarians, as professor bain believes, helped him during his imprisonments, and john mill's first publication was a protest against his prosecution.[ ] a 'republican, an atheist, and malthusian,' he was specially hated by the respectable, and had in all these capacities claims upon the sympathy of the utilitarians. one of carlile's first employments was to circulate the _black dwarf_, edited by thomas jonathan wooler from to .[ ] this paper represented cartwright, but it also published bentham's reform _catechism_, besides direct contributions and various selections from his works. the utilitarians were opposed on principle to cobbett, a reformer of a type very different from their own; and still more vitally opposed to owen, who was beginning to develop his socialist schemes. if they had sympathy for radicalism of the wooler or carlile variety, they belonged too distinctly to the ranks of respectability, and were too deeply impressed with the necessity of reticence, to allow their sympathies to appear openly. as, on the other hand, they were too radical in their genuine creed to be accepted by edinburgh reviewers and frequenters of holland house, there was a wide gap between them and the genuine whig. their task therefore was to give a political theory which should be radical in principle, and yet in such a form as should appeal to the reason of the more cultivated readers without too openly shocking their prejudices. james mill achieved this task by the publication of a series of articles in the supplement to the _encyclopædia britannica_, which appeared from to , of which i shall presently speak at length. it passed for the orthodox profession of faith among the little circle of friends who had now gathered round him. first among them was david ricardo. he had become known to mill in . 'i,' said bentham, 'was the spiritual father of mill, and mill the spiritual father of ricardo.'[ ] mill was really the disciple of ricardo in economics; but it was mill who induced him to publish his chief work, and mill's own treatise upon the subject published in is substantially an exposition of ricardo's doctrine. mill, too, encouraged ricardo to take a seat in parliament in , and there for the short remainder of his life, ricardo defended the characteristic utilitarian principles with the authority derived from his reputation as an economist.[ ] the two were now especially intimate. during mill's first years in the india house, his only recreation was an annual visit to ricardo at gatcombe. meetings at ricardo's house in london led to the foundation of the 'political economy club' in . mill drafted the rules of the club, emphasising the duty of members to propagate sound economic opinions through the press. the club took root and helped to make mill known to politicians and men of commercial influence. one of the members was malthus, who is said, and the assertion is credible enough, to have been generally worsted by mill in the discussions at the club. mill was an awkward antagonist, and malthus certainly not conspicuous for closeness of logic. the circle of mill's friends naturally extended as his position in the india house enabled him to live more at his ease and brought him into contact with men of political position. his old school-fellow joseph hume had made a fortune in india, and returned to take a seat in parliament and become the persistent and tiresome advocate of many of the utilitarian doctrines. a younger generation was growing up, enthusiastic in the cause of reform, and glad to sit at the feet of men who claimed at least to be philosophical leaders. john black ( - ), another sturdy scot, who came from duns in berwickshire, had, in , succeeded perry as editor of the _morning chronicle_. the _chronicle_ was an opposition paper, and day by day black walked with mill from the india house, discussing the topics of the time and discharging himself through the _chronicle_. the _chronicle_ declined after , owing to a change in the proprietorship.[ ] albany fonblanque ( - ) took to journalism at an early age, succeeded leigh hunt as leader-writer for the _examiner_ in , became another exponent of utilitarian principles, and for some time in alliance with john stuart mill was among the most effective representatives of the new school in the press. john ramsay m'culloch ( - ) upheld the economic battle in the _scotsman_ at edinburgh from - , and edited it from - . he afterwards devoted himself to lecturing in london, and was for many years the most ardent apostle of the 'dismal science.' he was a genial, whisky-loving scot; the favourite object of everybody's mimicry; and was especially intimate with james mill. many other brilliant young men contributed their help in various ways. henry bickersteth ( - ), afterwards lord langdale and master of the rolls, had brought bentham and burdett into political alliance; and his rising reputation at the bar led to his being placed in upon a commission for reforming the procedure of the court of chancery, one of the most cherished objects of the utilitarian creed. besides these there were the group of young men, who were soon to be known as the 'philosophical radicals.' john stuart mill, upon whom the mantle of his father was to descend, was conspicuous by his extraordinary precocity, and having been carefully educated in the orthodox faith, was employed in upon editing bentham's great work upon evidence. george grote ( - ), the future historian, had been introduced to mill by ricardo; and was in defending mill's theory of government against mackintosh, and in published the _analysis of revealed religion_, founded upon bentham's manuscripts and expressing most unequivocally the utilitarian theory of religion. with them were associated the two austins, john ( - ) who, in , lived close to bentham and mill in queen's square, and who was regarded as the coming teacher of the utilitarian system of jurisprudence; and charles ( - ), who upheld the true faith among the young gentlemen at cambridge with a vigour and ability which at least rivalled the powers of his contemporary, macaulay. meanwhile, mill himself was disqualified by his office from taking any direct part in political agitations. place continued an active connection with the various radical committees and associations; but the younger disciples had comparatively little concern in such matters. they were more interested in discussing the applications of utilitarianism in various directions, or, so far as they had parliamentary aspirations, were aspiring to found a separate body of 'philosophical radicals,' which looked down upon place and his allies from the heights of superior enlightenment. mill could now look forward to a successful propaganda of the creed which had passed so slowly through its period of incubation. the death of ricardo in affected him to a degree which astonished his friends, accustomed only to his stern exterior. a plentiful crop of young proselytes, however, was arising to carry on the work; and the party now became possessed of the indispensable organ. the _westminster review_ was launched at the beginning of . bentham provided the funds; mill's official position prevented him from undertaking the editorship, which was accordingly given to bentham's young disciple, bowring, helped for a time by henry southern. the _westminster_ was to represent the radicals as the two older reviews represented the whigs and the tories; and to show that the new party had its philosophers and its men of literary cultivation as well as its popular agitators and journalists. it therefore naturally put forth its claims by opening fire in the first numbers against the _edinburgh_ and the _quarterly reviews_. the assault upon the _edinburgh review_, of which i shall speak presently, made an impression, and, as j. s. mill tells us, brought success to the first number of the new venture. the gauntlet was thrown down with plenty of vigour, and reformers were expected to rally round so thoroughgoing a champion. in later numbers mill afterwards (jan. , ) fell upon southey's _book of the church_, and (april ) assailed church establishments in general. he defended toleration during the same year in a review of samuel bailey's _formation of opinions_, and gave a general account of his political creed in an article (october) on the 'state of the nation.' this was his last contribution to the _westminster_; but in he contributed to the _parliamentary history and review_, started by james marshall of leeds, an article upon recent debates on reform, which ended for a time his political writings. the utilitarians had no great talent for cohesion. their very principles were indeed in favour of individual independence, and they were perhaps more ready to diverge than to tolerate divergence. the _westminster review_ had made a good start, and drew attention to the rising 'group'--j. s. mill declares that it never formed a 'school.'[ ] from the very first the mills distrusted bowring and disapproved of some articles; the elder mill failed to carry his disciples with him, partly because they were already in favour of giving votes to women; and as the _review_ soon showed itself unable to pay its way, some new arrangement became necessary. it was finally bought by perronet thompson, and ceased for a time to be the official organ of benthamism. another undertaking occupied much of mill's attention in the following years. the educational schemes of the utilitarians had so far proved abortive. in , however, it had occurred to the poet, thomas campbell, then editing the _new monthly magazine_, that london ought to possess a university comparable to that of berlin, and more on a level with modern thought than the old universities of oxford and cambridge, which were still in the closest connection with the church. campbell addressed a letter to brougham, and the scheme was taken up energetically on several sides. place[ ] wrote an article, which he offered to campbell for the _new monthly_, who declined out of modesty to publish it in his own organ. it was then offered to bowring for the _westminster_, and ultimately suppressed by him, which may have been one of the causes of his differences with the mills. brougham took a leading part in the agitation; joseph hume promised to raise £ , . george birkbeck, founder of the mechanics' institution, and zachary macaulay, who saw in it a place of education for dissenting ministers, joined the movement, and among the most active members of the new body were james mill and grote. a council was formed at the end of , and after various difficulties a sum of £ , was raised, and the university started in gower street in . among the first body of professors were john austin and m'culloch, both of them sound utilitarians. the old difficulty, however, made itself felt. in order to secure the unsectarian character of the university, religious teaching was omitted. the college was accused of infidelity. king's college was started in opposition; and violent antipathies were aroused. a special controversy raged within the council itself. two philosophical chairs were to be founded; and philosophy cannot be kept clear of religion. after long discussions, one chair was filled by the appointment of the reverend john hoppus, an independent minister. grote, declaring that no man, pledged by his position to the support of any tenets, should be appointed, resigned his place on the council.[ ] the university in became a college combined with its rival king's college under the newly formed examining body called the university of london. it has, i suppose, been of service to education, and may be regarded as the one practical achievement of the utilitarians in that direction, so far as its foundation was due to them. it must, however, be admitted that the actual body still falls very far short of the ideal present to the minds of its founders. from james mill spent his vacations at dorking, and afterwards at mickleham. he had devoted them to a task which was necessary to fill a gap in the utilitarian scheme. hitherto the school had assumed, rather than attempted to establish, a philosophical basis of its teaching. bentham's fragmentary writings about the chrestomathic school supplied all that could by courtesy be called a philosophy. mill, however, had been from the first interested in philosophical questions. his reading was not wide; he knew something of the doctrines taught by stewart and stewart's successor, brown. he had been especially impressed by hobbes, to some degree by locke and hume, but above all by hartley. he knew something, too, of condillac and the french ideologists. of recent german speculation he was probably quite ignorant. i find indeed that place had called his attention to the account of kant, published by wirgman in the _encyclopædia londinensis_ . mill about the same time tells place that he has begun to read _the critic of pure reason_. 'i see clearly enough,' he says, 'what poor kant would be about, but it would require some time to give an account of him.' he wishes (december , ) that he had time to write a book which would 'make the human mind as plain as the road from charing cross to st. paul's.'[ ] this was apparently the task to which he applied himself in his vacations. the _analysis_ appeared in , and, whatever its defects of incompleteness and one-sidedness from a philosophical point of view, shows in the highest degree mill's powers of close, vigorous statement; and lays down with singular clearness the psychological doctrine, which from his point of view supplied the fundamental theorems of knowledge in general. it does not appear, however, to have made an impression proportionate to the intellectual power displayed, and had to wait a long time before reaching the second edition due to the filial zeal of j. s. mill. james mill, after his articles in the _westminster_, could take little part in political agitation. he was still consulted by place in regard to the reform movement. place himself took an important part at the final crisis, especially by his circulation in the week of agony of the famous placard, 'go for gold.' but the utilitarians were now lost in the crowd. the demand for reform had spread through all classes. the attack upon the ruling class carried on by the radicals of all shades in the dark days of sidmouth and the six acts was now supported by the nation at large. the old toryism could no longer support itself by appealing to the necessities of a struggle for national existence. the prestige due to the victorious end of the war had faded away. the reform bill of was passed, and the utilitarians hoped that the millennium would at least begin to dawn. mill in removed from queen's square to vicarage place, kensington. he kept his house at mickleham, and there took long sunday walks with a few of his disciples. his strength was more and more absorbed in his official duties. he was especially called upon to give evidence before the committees which from to considered the policy to be adopted in renewing the charter of the east india company. mill appeared as the advocate of the company, defended their policy, and argued against the demands of the commercial body which demanded the final suppression of the old trading monopoly of the company. the abolition, indeed, was a foregone conclusion; but mill's view was not in accordance with the doctrines of the thoroughgoing freetraders. his official experience, it seems, upon this and other matters deterred him from the _a priori_ dogmatism too characteristic of his political speculations. mill also suggested the formation of a legislative council, which was to contain one man 'versed in the philosophy of men and government.' this was represented by the appointment of the legal member of council in the act of . mill approved of macaulay as the first holder of the post. it was 'very handsome' of him, as macaulay remarks, inasmuch as the famous articles written by macaulay himself, in which the _edinburgh_ had at last retorted upon the utilitarians, must still have been fresh in his memory. the 'penal code' drawn by macaulay as holder of the office was the first actual attempt to carry out bentham's favourite schemes under british rule, and the influence of the chief of bentham's disciples at the india house may have had something to do with its initiation. macaulay's chief subordinate, it may be remarked, charles hay cameron, was one of the benthamites, and had been proposed by grote for the chair at the london university ultimately filled by hoppus. after mill wrote the severe fragment on mackintosh, which, after a delay caused by mackintosh's death, appeared in . he contributed some articles to the _london review_, founded by sir w. molesworth, as an organ of the 'philosophical radicals,' and superintended, though not directly edited, by j. s. mill. these, his last performances, repeat the old doctrines. it does not appear, indeed, that mill ever altered one of his opinions. he accepted bentham's doctrine to the end, as unreservedly as a mathematician might accept newton's _principia_. mill's lungs had begun to be affected. it was supposed that they were injured by the dust imbibed on coach journeys to mickleham. he had a bad attack of hæmorrhage in august , and died peacefully on rd june . what remains to be said of mill personally may be suggested by a noticeable parallel. s. t. coleridge, born about six months before mill, died two years before him. the two lives thus coincided for more than sixty years, and each man was the leader of a school. in all else the contrast could hardly be greater. if we were to apply the rules of ordinary morality, it would be entirely in mill's favour. mill discharged all his duties as strenuously as a man could, while coleridge's life was a prolonged illustration of the remark that when an action presented itself to him as a duty he became physically incapable of doing it. whatever mill undertook he accomplished, often in the face of enormous difficulties. coleridge never finished anything, and his works are a heap of fragments of the prolegomena to ambitious schemes. mill worked his hardest from youth to age, never sparing labour or shirking difficulties or turning aside from his path. coleridge dawdled through life, solacing himself with opium, and could only be coaxed into occasional activity by skilful diplomacy. mill preserved his independence by rigid self-denial, temperance, and punctuality. coleridge was always dependent upon the generosity of his friends. mill brought up a large family, and in the midst of severe labours found time to educate them even to excess. coleridge left his wife and children to be cared for by others. and coleridge died in the odour of sanctity, revered by his disciples, and idolised by his children; while mill went to the grave amidst the shrugs of respectable shoulders, and respected rather than beloved by the son who succeeded to his intellectual leadership. the answer to the riddle is indeed plain enough; or rather there are many superabundantly obvious answers. had mill defended orthodox views and coleridge been avowedly heterodox, we should no doubt have heard more of coleridge's opium and of mill's blameless and energetic life. but this explains little. that coleridge was a man of genius and, moreover, of exquisitely poetical genius, and that mill was at most a man of remarkable talent and the driest and sternest of logicians is also obvious. it is even more to the purpose that coleridge was overflowing with kindliness, though little able to turn goodwill to much effect; whereas mill's morality took the form chiefly of attacking the wicked. this is indicated by the saying attributed by bowring to bentham that mill's sympathy for the many sprang out of his hatred of the oppressing few.[ ] j. s. mill very properly protested against this statement when it was quoted in the _edinburgh review_. it would obviously imply a gross misunderstanding, whether bentham, not a good observer of men, said so or not. but it indicates the side of mill's character which made him unattractive to contemporaries and also to posterity. he partook, says his son,[ ] of the stoic, the epicurean, and the cynic character. he was a stoic in his personal qualities; an epicurean so far as his theory of morals was concerned; and a cynic in that he cared little for pleasure. he thought life a 'poor thing' after the freshness of youth had passed; and said that he had never known an old man happy unless he could live over again in the pleasures of the young. temperance and self-restraint were therefore his favourite virtues. he despised all 'passionate emotions'; he held with bentham that feelings by themselves deserved neither praise nor blame; he condemned a man who did harm whether the harm came from malevolence or from intellectual error. therefore all sentiment was objectionable, for sentiment means neglect of rules and calculations. he shrank from showing feeling with more than the usual english reserve; and showed his devotion to his children by drilling them into knowledge with uncompromising strictness. he had no feeling for the poetical or literary side of things; and regarded life, it would seem, as a series of arguments, in which people were to be constrained by logic, not persuaded by sympathy. he seems to have despised poor mrs. mill, and to have been unsuccessful in concealing his contempt, though in his letters he refers to her respectfully. mill therefore was a man little likely to win the hearts of his followers, though his remarkable vigour of mind dominated their understandings. the amiable and kindly, whose sympathies are quickly moved, gain an unfair share of our regard both in life and afterwards. we are more pleased by an ineffectual attempt to be kindly, than by real kindness bestowed ungraciously. mill's great qualities should not be overlooked because they were hidden by a manner which seems almost deliberately repellent. he devoted himself through life to promote the truth as he saw it; to increase the scanty amounts of pleasures enjoyed by mankind; and to discharge all the duties which he owed to his neighbours. he succeeded beyond all dispute in forcibly presenting one set of views which profoundly influenced his countrymen; and the very narrowness of his intellect enabled him to plant his blows more effectively. footnotes: [ ] the chief authority for james mill is _james mill: a biography_, by alexander bain, emeritus professor of logic in the university of aberdeen, london, . the book contains very full materials; and, if rather dry, deals with a dry subject. [ ] wallas's _francis place_, p. _n._ [ ] bain's _james mill_, p. . [ ] gifford's real name was john richards green. the identity of his assumed name with that of the more famous william gifford has led to a common confusion between the two periodicals. 'peter pindar' assaulted william gifford under the erroneous impression that he was editor of the second. [ ] letter in bain's _james mill_, pp. - . [ ] _autobiography_, p. . [ ] bain's _james mill_, pp. - . mill appears to have said something 'extravagant' about bentham in an article upon miranda in the _edinburgh review_ for january . he also got some praises of bentham into the _annual review_ of (bain, - ). [ ] see the very interesting life of francis place, by mr. graham wallas, . [ ] bain's _james mill_, p. , and wallas's _francis place_, p. . [ ] wallas's _francis place_, p. . [ ] he 'put together' the _not paul but jesus_ at ford abbey in , and helped to preface the reform _catechism_. wallas's _francis place_, p. . [ ] the article of was also published separately. [ ] he wrote only the first volume. two others were added by cuthbert southey. [ ] _lectures_ (ashe, ), pp. , . [ ] james mill, according to place, wrote a 'memorable and admirable essay, "schools for all, not schools for churchmen only."'--wallas's _francis place_, _n._ [ ] this absurd suspicion was aroused by the quarrel about burdett's arrest. see wallas's _place_, p. . [ ] mr. wallas gives an account of these schemes in chap. iv. of his life of place. i have also consulted place's collections in additional mss., , . [ ] bain's _james mill_, p. . [ ] h. h. wilson in his preface to the edition of . [ ] wallas's _francis place_, p. . [ ] bain's _james mill_, p. . [ ] _ibid._ p. . [ ] bentham's _works_, p. . [ ] see carman in _economic review_, . [ ] see under black in _dictionary of national biography_. [ ] _autobiography_, p. . [ ] see place's account in additional mss. , . [ ] g. c. robertson, _philosophical remains_, p. ; and under george grote in _dictionary of national biography_. [ ] letters communicated by mr. graham wallas. see mr. wallas's _francis place_, p. . [ ] so place observed that mill 'could help the mass, but could not help the individual, not even himself or his own.'--wallas's _francis place_, p. . [ ] _autobiography_, p. . chapter ii reform movements i. political change the last years of mill's life correspond to the period in which utilitarianism reached, in certain respects, its highest pitch of influence. the little band who acknowledged him as their chief leader, and as the authorised lieutenant of bentham, considered themselves to be in the van of progress. though differing on many points from each other, and regarded with aversion or distrust by the recognised party leaders, they were in their most militant and confident state of mind. they were systematically reticent as to their religious views: they left to popular orators the public advocacy of their favourite political measures; and the credit of finally passing such of those measures as were adopted fell chiefly to the hands of the great political leaders. the utilitarians are ignored in the orthodox whig legend. in the preface to his collected works, sydney smith runs over the usual list of changes which had followed, and, as he seems to think, had in great part resulted from, the establishment of the _edinburgh review_. smith himself, and jeffrey and horner and, above all, 'the gigantic brougham,' had blown the blast which brought down the towers of jericho. sir g. o. trevelyan, in his _life of macaulay_, describes the advent of the whigs to office in a similar sense. 'agitators and incendiaries,' he says, 'retired into the background, as will always be the case when the country is in earnest: and statesmen who had much to lose, and were not afraid to risk it, stepped quietly and firmly to the front. the men and the sons of the men who had so long endured exclusion from office, embittered by unpopularity, at length reaped their reward.'[ ] the radical version of the history is different. the great men, it said, who had left the cause to be supported by agitators so long as the defence was dangerous and profitless, stepped forward now that it was clearly winning, and received both the reward and the credit. mill and place could not find words to express their contempt for the trimming, shuffling whigs. they were probably unjust enough in detail; but they had a strong case in some respects. the utilitarians represented that part of the reforming party which had a definite and a reasoned creed. they tried to give logic where the popular agitators were content with declamation, and represented absolute convictions when the whig reformers were content with tentative and hesitating compromises. they had some grounds for considering themselves to be the 'steel of the lance'; the men who formulated and deliberately defended the principles which were beginning to conquer the world. the utilitarians, i have said, became a political force in the concluding years of the great war struggle. the catastrophe of the revolution had unchained a whole whirlwind of antagonisms. the original issues had passed out of sight; and great social, industrial, and political changes were in progress which made the nation that emerged from the war a very different body from the nation that had entered it nearly a generation before. it is not surprising that at first very erroneous estimates were made of the new position when peace at last returned. the radicals, who had watched on one side the growth of debt and pauperism, and, on the other hand, the profits made by stockjobbers, landlords, and manufacturers, ascribed all the terrible sufferings to the selfish designs of the upper classes. when the war ended they hoped that the evils would diminish, while the pretext for misgovernment would be removed. a bitter disappointment followed. the war was followed by widespread misery. plenty meant ruin to agriculturists, and commercial 'gluts' resulting in manufacturers' warehouses crammed with unsaleable goods. the discontent caused by misery had been encountered during the war by patriotic fervour. it was not a time for redressing evils, when the existence of the nation was at stake. now that the misery continued, and the excuse for delaying redress had been removed, a demand arose for parliamentary reform. unfortunately discontent led also to sporadic riotings, to breaking of machinery and burning of ricks. the tory government saw in these disturbances a renewal of the old jacobin spirit, and had visions--apparently quite groundless--of widespread conspiracies and secret societies ready to produce a ruin of all social order. it had recourse to the old repressive measures, the suspension of the habeas corpus act, the passage of the 'six acts,' and the prosecution of popular agitators. many observers fancied that the choice lay between a servile insurrection and the establishment of arbitrary power. by degrees, however, peace brought back prosperity. things settled down; commerce revived; and the acute distress passed away. the whole nation went mad over the wrongs of queen caroline; and the demand for political reform became for the time less intense. but it soon appeared that, although this crisis had been surmounted, the temper of the nation had profoundly changed. the supreme power still belonged constitutionally to the landed interest. but it had a profoundly modified social order behind it. the war had at least made it necessary to take into account the opinions of larger classes. an appeal to patriotism means that some regard must be paid to the prejudices and passions of people at large. when enormous sums were to be raised, the moneyed classes would have their say as to modes of taxation. commerce and manufactures went through crises of terrible difficulty due to the various changes of the war; but, on the whole, the industrial classes were steadily and rapidly developing in wealth, and becoming relatively more important. the war itself was, in one aspect at least, a war for the maintenance of the british supremacy in trade. the struggle marked by the policy of the 'orders in council' on one side, and napoleon's decrees on the other, involved a constant reference to manchester and liverpool and the rapidly growing manufacturing and commercial interests. the growth, again, of the press, at a time when every one who could read was keenly interested in news of most exciting and important events, implied the rapid development of a great organ of public opinion. the effects of these changes soon became palpable. the political atmosphere was altogether different; and an entirely new set of influences was governing the policy of statesmen. the change affected the tory as much as the whig. however strongly he might believe that he was carrying on the old methods, he was affected by the new ideas which had been almost unconsciously incorporated in his creed. how great was the change, and how much it took the shape of accepting utilitarian theories, may be briefly shown by considering a few characteristic facts. the ablest men who held office at the time were canning, huskisson, and peel. they represented the conservatism which sought to distinguish itself from mere obstructiveness. their influence was felt in many directions. the holy alliance had the sympathy of men who could believe that the war had brought back the pre-revolutionary order, and that its main result had been to put the jacobin spirit in chains. canning's accession to office in meant that the foreign policy of england was to be definitely opposed to the policy of the 'holy alliance.' a pithy statement of his view is given in a remarkable letter, dated st february , to the prince who was soon to become charles x.[ ] the french government had declared that a people could only receive a free constitution as a gift from their legitimate kings. should the english ministry, says canning, after this declaration, support the french in their attack upon the constitutional government of spain, it would be driven from office amid 'the execration of tories and whigs alike.' he thought that the doctrine of the sovereignty of the people was less alien to the spirit of the british constitution than the opposite doctrine of the legitimists. in the early days, when canning sat at the feet of pitt, the war, if not in their eyes an anti-jacobin crusade, had to be supported by stimulating the anti-jacobin sentiment. in later days, the war had come to be a struggle against the oppression of nations by foreign despots. canning could now accept the version of pitt's policy which corresponded to the later phase. englishmen in general had no more sympathy for despots who claimed a divine right than for despots who acted in the name of democracy--especially when the despots threatened to interfere with british trade. when canning called 'the new world into existence to redress the balance of the old,'[ ] he declared that english policy should resist threats from the holy alliance directed against some of our best customers. the general approval had special force among the utilitarians. in the south american states bentham had found eager proselytes, and had hoped to become a solon. he had been consulted by the constitutionalists in spain and portugal; and he and his disciples, joseph hume in particular, had joined the greek committee, and tried to regenerate athens by sound utilitarian tracts. all english liberals sympathised with the various movements which were more or less favoured by canning's policy; but the utilitarians could also see in them the opening of new fields already white for the harvest. the foreign policy was significant. it proved that the war, whatever else it had done, had not brought back the old order; and the old british traditions in favour of liberty of speech and action would revive now that they were no longer trammelled by the fears of a destructive revolution. the days of july in gave fresh importance to the reaction of foreign upon english politics. ii. law reform meanwhile, however, the utilitarians had a far stronger interest in domestic problems. in the first place, in bentham's especial province a complete change of feeling had taken place. romilly was bentham's earliest disciple (so bentham said), and looked up to him with 'filial reverence.' every 'reformatiuncle' introduced by romilly in parliament had been first brought to bentham, to be conned over by the two.[ ] with great difficulty romilly had got two or three measures through the house of commons, generally to be thrown out by eldon's influence in the lords.[ ] after romilly's death in , the cause was taken up by the whig philosopher, sir james mackintosh, and made a distinct step in advance. though there were still obstacles in the upper regions, a committee was obtained to consider the frequency of capital punishment, and measures were passed to abolish it in particular cases. finally, in , the reform was adopted by peel. peel was destined to represent in the most striking way the process by which new ideas were gradually infiltrating the upper sphere. though still a strong tory and a representative of the university of oxford, he was closely connected with the manufacturing classes, and had become aware, as he wrote to croker ( rd march ), that public opinion had grown to be too large for its accustomed channels. as home secretary, he took up the whole subject of the criminal law, and passed in the next years a series of acts consolidating and mitigating the law, and repealing many old statutes. a measure of equal importance was his establishment in of the metropolitan police force, which at last put an end to the old chaotic muddle described by colquhoun of parish officers and constables. other significant legal changes marked the opening of a new era. eldon was the very incarnation of the spirit of obstruction; and the court of chancery, over which he presided for a quarter of a century, was thought to be the typical stronghold of the evil principles denounced by bentham. an attack in upon eldon was made in the house of commons by john williams ( - ), afterwards a judge. eldon, though profoundly irritated by the personal imputations involved, consented to the appointment of a commission, which reported in , and recommended measures of reform. in , brougham made a great display upon which he had consulted bentham.[ ] in a speech of six hours' length he gave a summary of existing abuses, which may still be read with interest.[ ] commissions were appointed to investigate the procedure of the common law court and the law of real property. another commission, intended to codify the criminal law, was appointed in . brougham says that of 'sixty capital defects' described in his speech, fifty-five had been removed, or were in course of removal, when his speeches were collected (_i.e._ ). another speech of brougham's in dealt with the carrying into execution of a favourite plan of bentham's--the formation of local courts, which ultimately became the modern county courts.[ ] the facts are significant of a startling change--no less than an abrupt transition from the reign of entire apathy to a reign of continuous reform extending over the whole range of law. the reform bill accelerated the movement, but it had been started before bentham's death. the great stone, so long immovable, was fairly set rolling. bentham's influence, again, in bringing about the change is undeniable. he was greatly dissatisfied with brougham's speech, and, indeed, would have been dissatisfied with anything short of a complete logical application of his whole system. he held brougham to be 'insincere,'[ ] a trimmer and popularity-hunter, but a useful instrument. brougham's astonishing vanity and self-seeking prompted and perverted his amazing activity. he represents the process, perhaps necessary, by which a philosopher's ideas have to be modified before they can be applied to practical application. brougham, however, could speak generously of men no longer in a position to excite his jealousy. he says in the preface to his first speech that 'the age of law reform and the age of jeremy bentham' were the same thing, and declares bentham to be the 'first legal philosopher' who had appeared in the world. as the chief advocates of bentham he reckons romilly, his parliamentary representative; dumont, his literary interpreter; and james mill, who, in his article upon 'jurisprudence,' had popularised the essential principles of the doctrine. the utilitarians had at last broken up the barriers of obstruction and set the stream flowing. whigs and tories were taking up their theories. they naturally exaggerated in some respects the completeness of the triumph. the english law has not yet been codified, and it was characteristic of the benthamite school to exaggerate the facility of that process. in their hatred of 'judge-made law' they assumed too easily that all things would be arranged into convenient pigeon-holes as soon as 'judge and co.' were abolished. it was a characteristic error to exaggerate the simplicity of their problem, and to fail to see that 'judge-made' law corresponds to a necessary inductive process by which the complex and subtle differences have to be gradually ascertained and fitted into a systematic statement. one other remark suggests itself. the utilitarians saw in the dogged obstructiveness of eldon and his like the one great obstacle to reform. it did not occur to them that the clumsiness of parliamentary legislation might be another difficulty. they failed to notice distinctly one tendency of their reforms. to make a code you require a sovereign strong enough to dominate the lawyers, not a system in which lawyers are an essential part of a small governing class. codification, in short, means centralisation in one department. blindness to similar results elsewhere was a characteristic of the utilitarian thinkers. iii. economic reform in another department the utilitarians boasted, and also with good reason, of the triumph of their tenets. political economy was in the ascendant. professorships were being founded in oxford, cambridge,[ ] london, and edinburgh. mrs. marcet's _conversations_ ( ) were spreading the doctrine among babes and sucklings. the utilitarians were the sacred band who defended the strictest orthodoxy against all opponents. they spoke as recognised authorities upon some of the most vital questions of the day, of which i need here only notice free trade, the doctrine most closely associated with the teaching of their revered adam smith. in ricardo remarks with satisfaction that the principle 'is daily obtaining converts' even among the most prejudiced classes; and he refers especially to a petition in which the clothiers of gloucestershire[ ] expressed their willingness to give up all restrictions. there was, indeed, an important set-off against this gain. the landowners were being pledged to protection. they had decided that in spite of the peace, the price of wheat must be kept up to s. a quarter. they would no longer be complimented as adam smith had complimented them on their superior liberality, and were now creating a barrier only to be stormed after a long struggle. meanwhile the principle was making rapid way among their rivals. one symptom was the adoption by the london merchants in of a famous petition on behalf of free trade.[ ] it was drawn up by thomas tooke ( - ), who had long been actively engaged in the russian trade, and whose _history of prices_ is in some respects the most valuable economic treatise of the time. tooke gives a curious account of his action on this occasion.[ ] he collected a few friends engaged in commerce, who were opposed to the corn laws. he found that several of them had 'crude and confused' notions upon the subject, and that each held that his own special interests should be exempted on some pretext from the general rule. after various dexterous pieces of diplomacy, however, he succeeded in obtaining the signature of samuel thornton, a governor of the bank of england, and ultimately procured a sufficient number of signatures by private solicitation. he was favourably received by the prime minister lord liverpool, and vansittart (then chancellor of the exchequer), and finally got the petition presented to the house of commons by alexander baring (afterwards lord ashburton). tooke remarks that the liverpool administration was in advance, not only of the public generally, but of the 'mercantile community,' glasgow and manchester, however, followed in the same steps, and the petition became a kind of official manifesto of the orthodox doctrine. the political economy club formed next year at tooke's instigation (april , ) was intended to hasten the process of dispersing crude and confused ideas. it was essentially an organ of the utilitarian propaganda. the influence of the economists upon public policy was shown by the important measures carried through chiefly by huskisson. huskisson ( - ) was a type of the most intelligent official of his time. like his more brilliant friend canning, he had been introduced into office under pitt, and retained a profound reverence for his early leader. huskisson was a thorough man of business, capable of wrestling with blue-books, of understanding the sinking-fund, and having theories about the currency; a master of figures and statistics and the whole machinery of commerce. though eminently useful, he might at any moment be applying some awkward doctrine from adam smith. huskisson began the series of economic reforms which were brought to their full development by peel and gladstone. the collection of his speeches[ ] incidentally brings out very clearly his relation to the utilitarians. the most remarkable is a great speech of april , [ ] (upon the state of the silk manufacture), of which canning declared that he had never heard one abler, or which made a deeper impression upon the house. in this he reviews his policy, going over the most important financial measures of the preceding period. they made a new era, and he dates the beginning of the movement from the london petition, and the 'luminous speech' made by baring when presenting it. we followed public opinion, he says, and did not create it.[ ] adopting the essential principles of the petition, the government had in the first place set free the great woollen trade. the silk trade had been emancipated by abolishing the spitalfield acts passed in the previous century, which enabled magistrates to fix the rates of wages. the principle of prohibition had been abandoned, though protective duties remained. the navigation laws had been materially relaxed, and steps taken towards removing restrictions of different kinds upon trade with france and with india. one symptom of the change was the consolidation of the custom law effected by james deacon hume ( - ), an official patronised by huskisson, and an original member of the political economy club. by a law passed in , five hundred statutes dating from the time of edward i. were repealed, and the essence of the law given in a volume of moderate size. finally, the removal of prohibitions was undermining the smugglers. the measures upon which huskisson justly prided himself might have been dictated by the political economy club itself. so far as they went they were an application of the doctrines of its thoroughgoing members, of mill, ricardo, and the orthodox school. they indeed supported him in the press. the _morning chronicle_, which expressed their views, declared him to be the most virtuous minister, that is (in true utilitarian phrase), the most desirous of national welfare who had ever lived. the praise of radicals would be not altogether welcome. canning, in supporting his friend, maintained that sound commercial policy belonged no more to the whigs than to the tories. huskisson and he were faithful disciples of pitt, whose treaty with france in , assailed by fox and the whigs, had been the first practical application of the wealth of nations. neither party, perhaps, could claim a special connection with good or bad political economy; and certainly neither was prepared to incur political martyrdom in zeal for scientific truth. a question was beginning to come to the front which would make party lines dependent upon economic theories, and huskisson's view of this was characteristic. the speech from which i have quoted begins with an indignant retort upon a member who had applied to him burke's phrase about a perfect-bred metaphysician exceeding the devil in malignity and contempt for mankind. huskisson frequently protested even against the milder epithet of theorist. he asserted most emphatically that he appealed to 'experience' and not to 'theory,' a slippery distinction which finds a good exposure in bentham's _book of fallacies_.[ ] the doctrine, however, was a convenient one for huskisson. he could appeal to experience to show that commercial restrictions had injured the woollen trade, and their absence benefited the cotton trade,[ ] and when he was not being taunted with theories, he would state with perfect clearness the general free trade argument.[ ] but he had to keep an eye to the uncomfortable tricks which theories sometimes play. he argued emphatically in [ ] that analogy between manufactures and agriculture is 'illogical.' he does not wish to depress the price of corn, but to keep it at such a level that our manufactures may not be hampered by dear food. here he was forced by stress of politics to differ from his economical friends. the country gentleman did not wish to pay duties on his silk or his brandy, but he had a direct and obvious interest in keeping up the price of corn. huskisson had himself supported the corn bill of , but it was becoming more and more obvious that a revision would be necessary. in he declared that he 'lamented from the bottom of his soul the mass of evil and misery and destruction of capital which that law in the course of twelve years had produced.'[ ] ricardo, meanwhile, and the economists had from the first applied to agriculture the principles which huskisson applied to manufactures.[ ] huskisson's melancholy death has left us unable to say whether upon this matter he would have been as convertible as peel. in any case the general principle of free trade was as fully adopted by huskisson and canning as by the utilitarians themselves. the utilitarians could again claim to be both the inspirers of the first principles, and the most consistent in carrying out the deductions. they, it is true, were not generally biassed by having any interest in rents. they were to be the allies or teachers of the manufacturing class which began to be decidedly opposed to the squires and the old order. in one very important economic question, the utilitarians not only approved a change of the law, but were the main agents in bringing it about. francis place was the wire-puller, to whose energy was due the abolition of the conspiracy laws in . joseph hume in the house of commons, and m'culloch, then editor of the _scotsman_, had the most conspicuous part in the agitation, but place worked the machinery of agitation. the bill passed in was modified by an act of ; but the modification, owing to place's efforts, was not serious, and the act, as we are told on good authority, 'effected a real emancipation,' and for the first time established the right of 'collective bargaining.'[ ] the remarkable thing is that this act, carried on the principles of 'radical individualism' and by the efforts of radical individualists, was thus a first step towards the application to practice of socialist doctrine. place thought that the result of the act would be not the encouragement, but the decline, of trades-unions. the unions had been due to the necessity of combining against oppressive laws, and would cease when those laws were abolished.[ ] this marks a very significant stage in the development of economic opinion. iv. church reform the movement which at this period was most conspicuous politically was that which resulted in roman catholic emancipation, and here, too, the utilitarians might be anticipating a complete triumph of their principles. the existing disqualifications, indeed, were upheld by little but the purely obstructive sentiment. when the duke of york swore that 'so help him god!' he would oppose the change to the last, he summed up the whole 'argument' against it. canning and huskisson here represented the policy not only of pitt, but of castlereagh. the whigs, indeed, might claim to be the natural representatives of toleration. the church of england was thoroughly subjugated by the state, and neither whig nor tory wished for a fundamental change. but the most obvious differentia of whiggism was a dislike to the ecclesiastical spirit. the whig noble was generally more or less of a freethinker; and upon such topics holland house differed little from queen's square place, or differed only in a rather stricter reticence. both whig and tory might accept warburton's doctrine of an 'alliance' between church and state. the tory inferred that the church should be supported. his prescription for meeting discontent was 'more yeomanry' and a handsome sum for church-building. the whig thought that the church got a sufficient return in being allowed to keep its revenues. on the tory view, the relation might be compared to that of man and wife in christian countries where, though the two are one, the husband is bound to fidelity. on the whig view it was like a polygamous system, where the wife is in complete subjection, and the husband may take any number of concubines. the whig noble regarded the church as socially useful, but he was by no means inclined to support its interests when they conflicted with other political considerations. he had been steadily in favour of diminishing the privileges of the establishment, and had taken part in removing the grievances of the old penal laws. he was not prepared to uphold privileges which involved a palpable danger to his order. this position is illustrated by sydney smith, the ideal divine of holland house. the _plymley letters_[ ] give his views most pithily. smith, a man as full of sound sense as of genuine humour, appeals to the principles of toleration, and is keenly alive to the absurdity of a persecution which only irritates without conversion. but he also appeals to the danger of the situation. 'if bonaparte lives,'[ ] he says, 'and something is not done to conciliate the catholics, it seems to me absolutely impossible but that we must perish.' we are like the captain of a ship attacked by a pirate, who should begin by examining his men in the church catechism, and forbid any one to sponge or ram who had not taken the sacrament according to the forms of the church of england. he confesses frankly that the strength of the irish is with him a strong motive for listening to their claims. to talk of 'not acting from fear is mere parliamentary cant.'[ ] although the danger which frightened smith was evaded, this was the argument which really brought conviction even to tories in . in any case the whigs, whose great boast was their support of toleration, would not be prompted by any quixotic love of the church to encounter tremendous perils in defence of its privileges. smith's zeal had its limits. he observes humorously in his preface that he had found himself after the reform bill engaged in the defence of the national church against the archbishop of canterbury and the bishop of london. the letters to archdeacon singleton, written when the whigs were flirting with the radicals, show how much good an old whig could find in the establishment. this marks the difference between the true whig and the utilitarian. the whig would not risk the country for the sake of church; he would keep the clerical power strictly subordinate to the power of the state, but then, when considered from the political side, it was part of a government system providing him with patronage, and to be guarded from the rude assaults of the radical reformer. the utilitarian, though for the moment he was in alliance with the whig, regarded the common victory as a step to something far more sweeping. he objected to intolerance as decidedly as the whig, for absolute freedom of opinion was his most cherished doctrine. he objected still more emphatically to persecution on behalf of the church, because he entirely repudiated its doctrines. the objection to spreading true doctrine by force is a strong one, but hardly so strong as the objection to a forcible spread of false doctrine. but, besides this, the church represented to the utilitarian precisely the very worst specimen of the corruptions of the time. the court of chancery was bad enough, but the whole ecclesiastical system with its vast prizes,[ ] its opportunities for corrupt patronage, its pluralism and non-residence was an evil on a larger scale. the radical, therefore, unlike the whig, was an internecine enemy of the whole system. the 'church of england system,' as bentham calmly remarks, is 'ripe for dissolution.'[ ] i have already noticed his quaint proposal for giving effect to his views. mill, in the _westminster review_, denounced the church of england as the worst of all churches.[ ] to the utilitarian, in short, the removal of the disqualification of dissenters and catholics was thus one step to the consummation which their logic demanded--the absolute disestablishment and disendowment of the church. conservatives in general anticipated the confiscation of church revenues as a necessary result of reform; and so far as the spirit of reformers was represented by the utilitarians and their radical allies, they had good grounds for the fear. james mill's theory is best indicated by a later article published in the _london review_ of july . after pointing out that the church of england retains all the machinery desired for supporting priests and preventing the growth of intellect and morality, he proceeds to ask what the clergy do for their money. they read prayers, which is a palpable absurdity; they preach sermons to spread superstitious notions of the supreme being, and perform ceremonies--baptism, and so forth--which are obviously silly. the church is a mere state machine worked in subservience to the sinister interest of the governing classes. the way to reform it would be to equalise the pay: let the clergy be appointed by a 'minister of public instruction' or the county authorities; abolish the articles, and constitute a church 'without dogmas or ceremonies'; and employ the clergy to give lectures on ethics, botany, political economy, and so forth, besides holding sunday meetings, dances (decent dances are to be specially invented for the purpose), and social meals, which would be a revival of the 'agapai' of the early christians. for this purpose, however, it might be necessary to substitute tea and coffee for wine. in other words, the church is to be made into a popular london university. the plan illustrates the incapacity of an isolated clique to understand the real tone of public opinion. i need not pronounce upon mill's scheme, which seems to have some sense in it, but one would like to know whether newman read his article. v. sinister interests in questions of foreign policy, of law reform, of political economy, and of religious tests, the utilitarians thus saw the gradual approximation to their most characteristic views on the part of the whigs, and a strong infiltration of the same views among the less obstructive tories. they held the logical creed, to which others were slowly approximating, either from the force of argument or from the great social changes which were bringing new classes into political power. the movement for parliamentary reform which for a time overshadowed all other questions might be regarded as a corollary from the position already won. briefly, it was clear that a new social stratum was exercising a vast influence; the doctrines popular with it had to be more or less accepted; and the only problem worth consideration by practical men was whether or not such a change should be made in the political machinery as would enable the influence to be exercised by direct and constitutional means. to the purely obstructive tory parliamentary reform was a step to the general cataclysm. the proprietor of a borough, like the proprietor of a church patronage or commission in the army, had a right to his votes, and to attack his right was simply confiscation of private property. the next step might be to confiscate his estate. but even the more intelligent conservative drew the line at such a measure. canning, huskisson, and even peel might accept the views of the utilitarians in regard to foreign policy, to law reform, to free trade, or the removal of religious tests, declaring only that they were obeying 'experience' instead of logic, and might therefore go just as far as they pleased. but they were all pledged to resist parliamentary reform to the utmost. men thoroughly steeped in official life, and versed in the actual working of the machinery, were naturally alive to the magnitude of the change to be introduced. they saw with perfect clearness that it would amount to a revolution. the old system in which the ruling classes carried on business by family alliances and bargains between ministers and great men would be impracticable. the fact that so much had been done in the way of concession to the ideas of the new classes was for them an argument against the change. if the governing classes were ready to reform abuses, why should they be made unable to govern? a gradual enfranchisement of the great towns on the old system might be desirable. such a man as huskisson, representing great commercial interests, could not be blind to the necessity. but a thorough reconstruction was more alarming. as canning had urged in a great speech at liverpool, a house of commons, thoroughly democratised, would be incompatible with the existence of the monarchy and the house of lords. so tremendously powerful a body would reduce the other parts of the constitution to mere excrescences, feeble drags upon the new driving-wheel in which the whole real force would be concentrated. that this expressed, in point of fact, a serious truth, was, i take it, undeniable. the sufficient practical answer was, that change was inevitable. to refuse to adapt the constitutional machinery to the altered political forces was not to hinder their growth, but to make a revolution necessary. when, accordingly, the excluded classes began seriously to demand admission, the only question came to lie between violent and peaceable methods. the alarm with which our fathers watched the progress of the measure may seem to us exaggerated, but they scarcely overestimated the magnitude of the change. the old rulers were taking a new partner of such power, that whatever authority was left to them might seem to be left on sufferance. as soon as he became conscious of his strength, they would be reduced to nonentities. the utilitarians took some part in the struggle, and welcomed the victory with anticipations destined to be, for the time at least, cruelly disappointed. but they were still a small minority, whose views rather scandalised the leaders of the party with which they were in temporary alliance. the principles upon which they based their demands, as formulated by james mill, looked, as we shall see, far beyond the concessions of the moment. one other political change is significant, though i am unable to give an adequate account of it. bentham's denunciation of 'sinister interests'--one of his leading topics--corresponds to the question of sinecures, which was among the most effective topics of radical declamation. the necessity of limiting the influence of the crown and excluding 'placemen' from the house of commons had been one of the traditional whig commonplaces, and a little had been done by burke's act of towards limiting pensions and abolishing obsolete offices. when english radicalism revived, the assault was renewed in parliament and the press. during the war little was achieved, though a revival of the old complaints about placemen in parliament was among the first symptoms of the rising sentiment. in an attack was made upon the 'tellers of the exchequer.' romilly[ ] says that the value of one of these offices had risen to £ , or £ , a year. the income came chiefly from fees, and the actual work, whatever it was, was done by deputy. the scandal was enormous at a time when the stress upon the nation was almost unbearable. one of the tellerships was held by a member of the great grenville family, who announced that they regarded the demand for reform as a personal attack upon them. the opposition, therefore, could not muster even its usual strength, and the motion for inquiry was rejected. when the war was over, even the government began to feel that something must be done. in some acts were passed[ ] abolishing a variety of sinecure offices and 'regulating certain offices in the court of exchequer.' the radicals considered this as a mere delusion, because it was provided at the same time that pensions might be given to persons who had held certain great offices. the change, however, was apparently of importance as removing the chief apology for sinecures, and the system with modifications still remains. the marquis of camden, one of the tellers of the exchequer, voluntarily resigned the fees and accepted only the regular salary of £ . his action is commended in the _black book_,[ ] which expresses a regret that the example had not been followed by other great sinecurists. public opinion was beginning to be felt. during the subsequent period the cry against sinecures became more emphatic. the _black book_, published originally in and , and afterwards reissued, gave a list, so far as it could be ascertained, of all pensions, and supplied a mass of information for radical orators. the amount of pensions is stated at over £ , , , including sinecure offices with over £ , annually;[ ] and the list of offices (probably very inaccurate in detail) gives a singular impression of the strange ramifications of the system. besides the direct pensions, every new department of administration seems to have suggested the foundation of offices which tended to become sinecures. the cry for 'retrenchment' was joined to the cry for reform.[ ] joseph hume, who first entered parliament in , became a representative of the utilitarian radicalism, and began a long career of minute criticism which won for him the reputation of a stupendous bore, but helped to keep a steady pressure upon ministers.[ ] sir james graham ( - ) was at this time of radical tendencies, and first made himself conspicuous by demanding returns of pensions.[ ] the settlements of the civil lists of george iv., william iv., and victoria, gave opportunities for imposing new restrictions upon the pension system. although no single sweeping measure was passed, the whole position was changed. by the time of the reform bill, a sinecure had become an anachronism. the presumption was that whenever an opportunity offered, it would be suppressed. some of the sinecure offices in the court of chancery, the 'keeper of the hanaper,' the 'chaffwax,' and so forth, were abolished by an act passed by the parliament which had just carried the reform bill.[ ] in a reform of the system of naval administration by sir james graham got rid of some cumbrous machinery; and graham again was intrusted in with an act under which the court of exchequer was finally reformed, and the 'clerk of the pells' and the 'tellers of the exchequer' ceased to exist.[ ] other offices seem to have melted away by degrees, whenever a chance offered. many other of the old abuses had ceased to require any special denunciations from political theorists. the general principle was established, and what remained was to apply it in detail. the prison system was no longer in want of a howard or a bentham. abuses remained which occupied the admirable mrs. fry; and many serious difficulties had to be solved by a long course of experiment. but it was no longer a question whether anything should be doing, but of the most efficient means of bringing about an admittedly desirable end. the agitation for the suppression of the slave-trade again had been succeeded by the attack upon slavery. the system was evidently doomed, although not finally abolished till after the reform bill; and ministers were only considering the question whether the abolition should be summary or gradual, or what compensation might be made to vested interests. the old agitation had been remarkable, as i have said, not only for its end but for the new kind of machinery to which it had applied. popular agitation[ ] had taken a new shape. the county associations formed in the last days of the american war of independence, and the societies due to the french revolution had set a precedent. the revolutionary societies had been suppressed or had died out, as opposed to the general spirit of the nation, although they had done a good deal to arouse political speculation. in the period of distress which followed the war the radical reformers had again held public meetings, and had again been met by repressive measures. the acts of and [ ] imposed severe restrictions upon the right of public meeting. the old 'county meeting,' which continued to be common until the reform period, and was summoned by the lord-lieutenant or the sheriff on a requisition from the freeholders, had a kind of constitutional character, though i do not know its history in detail.[ ] the extravagantly repressive measures were an anachronism, or could only be enforced during the pressure of an intense excitement. in one way or other, public meetings were soon being held as frequently as ever. the trial of queen caroline gave opportunity for numerous gatherings, and statesmen began to find that they must use instead of suppressing them. canning[ ] appears to have been the first minister to make frequent use of speeches addressed to public meetings; and meetings to which such appeals were addressed soon began to use their authority to demand pledges from the speakers.[ ] representation was to be understood more and more as delegation. meanwhile the effect of public meetings was enormously increased when a general organisation was introduced. the great precedent was the catholic association, founded in by o'connell and sheil. the peculiar circumstances of the irish people and their priests gave a ready-made machinery for the agitation which triumphed in . the political union founded by attwood at birmingham in the same year adopted the method, and led to the triumph of . political combination henceforth took a different shape, and in the ordinary phrase, 'public opinion' became definitely the ultimate and supreme authority. this enormous change and the corresponding development of the power of the press, which affected to mould and, at any rate, expressed public opinion, entirely fell in with utilitarian principles. their part in bringing about the change was of no special importance except in so far as they more or less inspired the popular orators. they were, however, ready to take advantage of it. they had the _westminster review_ to take a place beside the _edinburgh_ and _quarterly reviews_, which had raised periodical writing to a far higher position than it had ever occupied, and to which leading politicians and leading authors on both sides had become regular contributors. the old contempt for journalism was rapidly vanishing. in canning expresses his regret for having given some information to a paper of which an ill use had been made. he had previously abstained from all communication with 'these gentry,' and was now resolved to have done with _hoc genus omne_ for good and all.[ ] in we find his former colleague, lord lyndhurst, seeking an alliance with barnes, the editor of the _times_, as eagerly as though barnes had been the head of a parliamentary party.[ ] the newspapers had probably done more than the schools to spread habits of reading through the country. yet the strong interest which was growing up in educational matters was characteristic. brougham's phrase, 'the schoolmaster is abroad' ( th january ), became a popular proverb, and rejoiced the worthy bentham.[ ] i have already described the share taken by the utilitarians in the great bell and lancaster controversy. parliament had as yet done little. a bill brought in by whitbread had been passed in by the house of commons, enabling parishes to form schools on the scottish model, but according to romilly,[ ] it was passed in the well-grounded confidence that it would be thrown out by the peers. a committee upon education was obtained by brougham after the peace, which reported in , and which led to a commission upon school endowments. brougham introduced an education bill in , but nothing came of it. the beginning of any participation by government in national education was not to take place till after the reform bill. meanwhile, however, the foundation of the london university upon unsectarian principles was encouraging the utilitarians; and there were other symptoms of the growth of enlightenment. george birkbeck ( - ) had started some popular lectures upon science at glasgow about , and having settled as a physician in london, started the 'mechanics' institution' in . brougham was one of the first trustees; and the institution, though exposed to a good deal of ridicule, managed to take root and become the parent of others. in was started the society for the diffusion of useful knowledge, of which brougham was president, and the committee of which included james mill. in the course of its twenty years' existence it published or sanctioned the publication by charles knight of a great mass of popular literature. the _penny magazine_ ( - ) is said to have had two hundred thousand subscribers at the end of its first year of existence. crude and superficial as were some of these enterprises, they clearly marked a very important change. cobbett and the radical orators found enormous audiences ready to listen to their doctrine. churchmen and dissenters, tories and radicals were finding it necessary both to educate and to disseminate their principles by writing; and as new social strata were becoming accessible to such influences, their opinions began to exercise in turn a more distinct reaction upon political and ecclesiastical affairs. no party felt more confidence at the tendency of this new intellectual fermentation than the utilitarians. they had a definite, coherent, logical creed. every step which increased the freedom of discussion increased the influence of the truth. their doctrines were the truth, if not the whole truth. once allow them to get a fulcrum and they would move the world. bit by bit their principles of legislation, of economy, of politics were being accepted in the most different quarters; and even the more intelligent of their opponents were applying them, though the application might be piecemeal and imperfect. it was in vain that an adversary protested that he was not bound by logic, and appealed to experience instead of theory. let him justify his action upon what grounds he pleased, he was, in point of fact, introducing the leaven of true doctrine, and it might be trusted to work out the desirable results. i must now deal more in detail with the utilitarian theories. i will only observe in general terms that their triumph was not likely to be accepted without a struggle. large classes regarded them with absolute abhorrence. their success, if they did succeed, would mean the destruction of religious belief, of sound philosophy, of the great important ecclesiastical and political institutions, and probably general confiscation of property and the ruin of the foundations of society. and, meanwhile, in spite of the progress upon which i have dwelt, there were two problems, at least, of enormous importance, upon which it could scarcely be said that any progress had been made. the church, in the first place, was still where it had been. no change had been made in its constitution; it was still the typical example of corrupt patronage; and the object of the hatred of all thoroughgoing radicals. and, in the second place, pauperism had grown to appalling dimensions during the war; and no effectual attempt had been made to deal with it. behind pauperism there were great social questions, the discontent and misery of great masses of the labouring population. whatever reforms might be made in other parts of the natural order, here were difficulties enough to task the wisdom of legislators and speculators upon legislative principles. footnotes: [ ] _life of macaulay_, p. . (popular edition). [ ] canning's _political correspondence_, i. - . [ ] th december . [ ] bentham's _works_, v. p. . [ ] romilly's attempts to improve the criminal law began in . for various notices of his efforts, see his _life_ ( vols. ), especially vol. ii. - , , , , , , - . romilly was deeply interested in dumont's _théorie des peines légales_ ( ), which he read in ms. and tried to get reviewed in the _quarterly_ (ii. , ; iii. ). the remarks (ii. - ) on the 'stupid dread of innovation' and the savage spirit infused into englishmen by the horrors of the french revolution are worth notice in this connection. [ ] bentham's _works_, x. p. . [ ] brougham's _speeches_ ( ), ii. - . [ ] an interesting summary of the progress of law reforms and of bentham's share in them is given in sir r. k. wilson's _history of modern english law_ ( ). [ ] bentham's _works_, x. . [ ] in cambridge pryme was the first professor in , but had only the title without endowment. the professorship was only salaried in . [ ] ricardo's _works_ ( ), p. . [ ] printed in porter's _progress of the nation_ and elsewhere. [ ] see sixth volume of _history of prices_ by tooke and newmarch, and privately printed _minutes of political economy club_ ( ). [ ] _speeches_, vols. vo, . [ ] _ibid._ ii. - . [ ] _ibid._ ii. . [ ] bentham's _works_, ii. . we may remember how j. s. mill in his boyhood was abashed because he could not explain to his father the force of the distinction. [ ] _speeches_, ii. , . [ ] _ibid._ i. - (currency pamphlet of ). [ ] _ibid._ ii. . [ ] _speeches_, iii. . [ ] ricardo indeed made a reservation as to the necessity of counterbalancing by a moderate duty the special burthens upon agriculture. [ ] in the _history of trades-unionism_ by sidney and beatrice webb ( ), pp. - . the history of place's agitation is fully given in mr. graham wallas's _life_, chap. viii. [ ] wallas's francis _place_, p. . [ ] first published in - . [ ] _letter_ iii. [ ] _ibid._ vi. [ ] sydney smith put very ingeniously the advantages of what he called the 'lottery' system: of giving, that is, a few great prizes, instead of equalising the incomes of the clergy. things look so different from opposite points of views. [ ] _church of englandism_, ii. . [ ] see especially his review of southey's _book of the church_. [ ] romilly's _memoirs_, iii. . [ ] george iii. caps. - . [ ] edition of , p. . [ ] _ibid._ p. . [ ] a mr. gray proposed at a county meeting in that the cry of 'retrenchment and reform' should be raised in every corner of the island (henry jephson's _platform_, p. ). i do not know whether this was the first appearance of the formula. [ ] hume had been introduced to place by james mill, who thought him worth 'nursing.' place found him at first 'dull and selfish,' but 'nursed him' so well that by he had become the 'man of men,'--wallas's _francis place_, p. , . [ ] torrens's _life of graham_, i. - , where his great speech of th may is given. [ ] and william iv. cap. (passed august ). [ ] and william iv. cap. . [ ] _the platform, its origin and progress_, by henry jephson ( ), gives a very interesting historical account of the process. [ ] george iii. cap. , and george iii. cap. . [ ] see jephson's _platform_, pp. - . [ ] see jephson's _platform_, i. , , . [ ] see _ibid._ ii. - for some interesting passages as to this. [ ] _official correspondence_ ( ), . [ ] greville's _george iv. and william iv._, iii. , - , . [ ] bentham's _works_, x. . [ ] romilly's _memoirs_, ii. , . chapter iii political theory i. mill on government i now turn to the general political theory of which mill was the authoritative exponent. the _encyclopædia_ article upon 'government' ( ) gives the pith of their doctrine. it was, as professor bain[ ] thinks, an 'impelling and a guiding force' in the movement which culminated in the reform bill. the younger utilitarians regarded it, says j. s. mill, as 'a masterpiece of political wisdom';[ ] while macaulay[ ] taunts them for holding it to be 'perfect and unanswerable.' this famous article is a terse and energetic summary of the doctrine implied in bentham's _works_, but there obscured under elaboration of minute details. it is rather singular, indeed, that so vigorous a manifesto of utilitarian dogma should have been accepted by macvey napier--a sound whig--for a publication which professed scientific impartiality. it has, however, in the highest degree, the merits of clearness and condensation desirable in a popular exposition. the reticence appropriate to the place excuses the omission of certain implicit conclusions. mill has to give a complete theory of politics in thirty-two vo pages. he has scanty room for qualifying statement or historical illustration. he speaks as from the chair of a professor laying down the elementary principles of a demonstrated science.[ ] mill starts from the sacred principle. the end of government, as the end of all conduct, must be the increase of human happiness. the province of government is limited by another consideration. it has to deal with one class of happiness, that is, with the pains and pleasures 'which men derive from one another.' by a 'law of nature' labour is requisite for procuring the means of happiness. now, if 'nature' produced all that any man desired, there would be no need of government, for there would be no conflict of interest. but, as the material produced is finite, and can be appropriated by individuals, it becomes necessary to insure to every man his proper share. what, then, is a man's proper share? that which he himself produces; for, if you give to one man more than the produce of his labour, you must take away the produce of another man's labour. the greatest happiness, therefore, is produced by 'assuring to every man the greatest possible quantity of the produce of his own labour.' how can this be done? will not the strongest take the share of the weakest? he can be prevented in one and apparently only in one way. men must unite and delegate to a few the power necessary for protecting all. 'this is government.'[ ] the problem is now simple. government is essentially an association of men for the protection of property. it is a delegation of the powers necessary for that purpose to the guardians, and 'all the difficult questions of government relate to the means' of preventing the guardians from themselves becoming plunderers. how is this to be accomplished? the power of protection, says mill, following the old theory, may be intrusted to the whole community, to a few, or to one; that is, we may have a democracy, an aristocracy, or a monarchy. a democracy, or direct government of all by all, is for the ordinary reasons pronounced impracticable. but the objections to the other systems are conclusive. the need of government, he has shown, depends upon 'the law of human nature'[ ] that 'a man, if able, will take from others anything which they have and he desires.' the very principle which makes government necessary, therefore, will prompt a government to defeat its own proper end. mill's doctrine is so far identical with the doctrine of hobbes; men are naturally in a state of war, and government implies a tacit contract by which men confer upon a sovereign the power necessary for keeping the peace. but here, though admitting the force of hobbes's argument, he diverges from its conclusion. if a democracy be impossible, and an aristocracy or monarchy necessarily oppressive, it might seem, he admits, as it actually seemed to hobbes and to the french economists, that the fewer the oppressors the better, and that therefore an absolute monarchy is the best. experience, he thinks, is 'on the surface' ambiguous. eastern despots and roman emperors have been the worst scourges to mankind; yet the danes preferred a despot to an aristocracy, and are as 'well governed as any people in europe.' in greece, democracy, in spite of its defects, produced the most brilliant results.[ ] hence, he argues, we must go 'beyond the surface,' and 'penetrate to the springs within.' the result of the search is discouraging. the hope of glutting the rulers is illusory. there is no 'point of saturation'[ ] with the objects of desire, either for king or aristocracy. it is a 'grand governing law of human nature' that we desire such power as will make 'the persons and properties of human beings subservient to our pleasures.'[ ] this desire is indefinitely great. to the number of men whom we would force into subservience, and the degree in which we would make them subservient, we can assign no limits. moreover, as pain is a more powerful instrument for securing obedience than pleasure, a man will desire to possess 'unlimited power of inflicting pain upon others.' will he also desire, it may be asked, to make use of it? the 'chain of inference,' he replies, in this case is close and strong 'to a most unusual degree.' a man desires the actions of others to be in correspondence with his own wishes. 'terror' will be the 'grand instrument.'[ ] it thus follows that the very principle upon which government is founded leads, in the absence of checks, 'not only to that degree of plunder which leaves the members (of a community) ... the bare means of subsistence, but to that degree of cruelty which is necessary to keep in existence the most intense terror.' an english gentleman, he says, is a favourable specimen of civilisation, and yet west indian slavery shows of what cruelty he could be guilty when unchecked. if equal cruelty has not been exhibited elsewhere, it is, he seems to think, because men were not 'the same as sheep in respect to their shepherd,'[ ] and may therefore resist if driven too far. the difficulty upon this showing is to understand how any government, except the most brutal tyranny, ever has been, or ever can be, possible. what is the combining principle which can weld together such a mass of hostile and mutually repellent atoms? how they can even form the necessary compact is difficult to understand, and the view seems to clash with his own avowed purpose. it is mill's aim, as it was bentham's, to secure the greatest happiness of the greatest number; and yet he seems to set out by proving as a 'law of human nature' that nobody can desire the happiness of any one except himself. he quotes from montesquieu the saying, which shows an 'acute sense of this important truth,' 'that every one who has power is led to abuse it.'[ ] rather it would seem, according to mill, all power implies abuse in its very essence. the problem seems to be how to make universal cohesion out of universal repulsion. mill has his remedy for this deeply seated evil. he attacks, as bentham had already done, the old-fashioned theory, according to which the british constitution was an admirable mixture of the three 'simple forms.' two of the powers, he argues, will always agree to 'swallow up the third.'[ ] 'the monarchy and aristocracy have all possible motives for endeavouring to obtain unlimited power over the persons and property of the community,' though the democracy, as he also says, has every possible motive for preventing them. and in england, as he no doubt meant his readers to understand, the monarchy and aristocracy had to a great extent succeeded. where, then, are we to look? to the 'grand discovery of modern times,' namely, the representative system. if this does not solve all difficulties we shall be forced to the conclusion that good government is impossible. fortunately, however, the representative system may be made perfectly effective. this follows easily. it would, as he has said,[ ] be a 'contradiction in terms' to suppose that the community at large can 'have an interest opposite to its interest,' in the bentham formula, it can have 'no sinister interest.' it cannot desire its own misery. though the community cannot act as a whole, it can act through representatives. it is necessary to intrust power to a governing body; but that body can be prevented by adequate checks from misusing its powers. indeed, the common theory of the british constitution was precisely that the house of commons was 'the checking body.'[ ] the whole problem is to secure a body which shall effectively discharge the function thus attributed in theory to the house of commons. that will be done when the body is chosen in such a way that its interests are necessarily coincident with those of the community at large. hence there is of course no difficulty in deducing the actual demands of reformers. without defining precise limits, he shows that representatives must be elected for brief periods, and that the right to a vote must at least be wide enough to prevent the electoral body from forming a class with 'sinister interests.' he makes some remarkable qualifications, with the view apparently of not startling his readers too much by absolute and impracticable claims. he thinks that the necessary identity of interest would still be secured if classes were unrepresented whose interests are 'indisputably included in those of others.' children's interests are involved in those of their parents, and the interests of 'almost all women' in those of their fathers or husbands.[ ] again, all men under forty might be omitted without mischief, for 'the great majority of old men have sons whose interests they regard as an essential part of their own. this is a law of human nature.'[ ] there would, he observes, be no danger that men above forty would try to reduce the 'rest of the community to the state of abject slaves.' mill, as his son tells us,[ ] disowned any intention of positively advocating these exclusions. he only meant to say that they were not condemned by his general principle. the doctrine, however, about women, even as thus understood, scandalised his younger followers. mill proceeds to argue at some length that a favourite scheme of some moderate reformers, for the representation of classes, could only lead to 'a motley aristocracy,' and then answers two objections. the first is that his scheme would lead to the abolition of the monarchy and the house of lords. the reply is simple and significant. it would only lead to that result if a monarchy or a house of lords were favourable to bad government. he does not inquire whether they are so in fact. the second objection is that the people do not understand their own interest, and to this his answer is more remarkable. if the doctrine be true, he says, we are in 'deplorable' position: we have to choose between evils which will be designedly produced by those who have both the power to oppress and an interest in oppression; and the evils which will be accidentally produced by men who would act well if they recognised their own interests.[ ] now the first evil is in any case the worst, for it supposes an 'invariable' evil; while in the other case, men may at least act well by accident. a governing class, that is with interests separate from those of the government, _must_ be bad. if the interests be identical, the government _may_ be bad. it will be bad if ignorant, but ignorance is curable. here he appeals for once to a historical case. the priesthood at the reformation argued on behalf of their own power from the danger that the people would make a bad use of the bible. the bible should therefore be kept for the sacred caste. they had, mill thinks, a stronger case in appearance than the tories, and yet the effect of allowing the people to judge for themselves in religious matters has been productive of good effects 'to a degree which has totally altered the condition of human nature.'[ ] why should not the people be trusted to judge for themselves in politics? this implies a doctrine which had great influence with the utilitarians. in the remarkable essay upon 'education,' which is contained in the volume of reprints, mill discusses the doctrine of helvétius that all the differences between men are due to education. without pronouncing positively upon the differences between individuals, mill observes that, at any rate, the enormous difference between classes of men is wholly due to education.[ ] he takes education, it must be observed, in the widest possible sense, as meaning what would now be called the whole action of the 'environment' upon the individual. this includes, as he shows at length, domestic education, all the vast influence exercised upon a child in his family, 'technical education,' by which he means the ordinary school teaching, 'social education,' that is the influences which we imbibe from the current opinions of our neighbours, and finally, 'political education,' which he calls the 'keystone of the arch.' the means, he argues, by which the 'grand objects of desire may be attained, depend almost wholly upon the political machine.'[ ] if that 'machine' be so constituted as to make the grand objects of desire the 'natural prizes of just and virtuous conduct, of high services to mankind and of the generous and amiable sentiments from which great endeavours in the service of mankind naturally proceed, it is natural to see diffused among mankind a generous ardour in the acquisition of those admirable qualities which prepare a man for admirable action, great intelligence, perfect self-command, and over-ruling benevolence.' the contrary will be the case where the political machine prompts to the flattery of a small ruling body. this characteristic passage betrays an enthusiasm which really burned under mill's stern outside. he confines himself habitually to the forms of severe logic, and scorns anything like an appeal to sentiment. the trammels of his scientific manner impede his utterance a little, even when he is speaking with unwonted fervour. yet the prosaic utilitarian who has been laying down as a universal law that the strong will always plunder the weak, and that all rulers will reduce their subjects to abject slavery, is absolutely convinced, it seems, of the possibility of somehow transmuting selfishness into public spirit, justice, generosity, and devotion to truth. equally characteristic is the faith in the 'political machine.' mill speaks as if somebody had 'discovered' the representative system as watt (more or less) discovered the steam-engine; that to 'discover' the system is the same thing as to set it to work; and that, once at work, it will be omnipotent. he is not less certain that a good constitution will make men virtuous, than was bentham that he could grind rogues honest by the panopticon. the indefinite modifiability of character was the ground upon which the utilitarians based their hopes of progress; and it was connected in their minds with the doctrine of which his essay upon education is a continuous application. the theory of 'association of ideas' appeared to him to be of the utmost importance in education and in politics, because it implied almost unlimited possibilities of moulding human beings to fit them for a new order. in politics this implied, as j. s. mill says,[ ] 'unbounded confidence' in the influence of 'reason.' teach the people and let them vote freely, and everything would follow. this gives mill's answer to one obvious objection. the conservative who answered him by dwelling upon the ignorance of the lower classes was in some respects preaching to a convert. nobody was more convinced than mill of the depths of popular ignorance or, indeed, of the stupidity of mankind in general. the labourers who cheered orator hunt at peterloo were dull enough; but so were the peers who cheered eldon in the house of lords; and the labourers at least desired general prosperity, while the peers were content if their own rents were kept up. with general education, however, even the lower orders of the people would be fit for power, especially when we take into account one other remarkable conclusion. the 'wise and good,' he says, 'in any class of men do, for all general purposes, govern the rest.'[ ] now, the class in which wisdom and virtue are commonest is not the aristocracy, but the middle rank. another truth follows 'from the principles of human nature in general.' that is the rather surprising truth that the lower orders take their opinions from the middle class; apply to the middle class for help in sickness and old age; hold up the same class as a model to be imitated by their children, and 'account it an honour' to adopt its opinions. consequently, however far the franchise were extended, it is this class which has produced the most distinguished ornaments of art, science, and even of legislation, which will ultimately decide upon political questions. 'the great majority of the people,' is his concluding sentence, 'never cease to be guided by that rank; and we may with some confidence challenge the adversaries of the people to produce a single instance to the contrary in the history of the world.' this article upon 'government' gives the very essence of utilitarian politics. i am afraid that it also suggests that the political theory was chiefly remarkable for a simple-minded audacity. good political treatises are rare. they are apt to be pamphlets in disguise, using 'general principles' for showy perorations, or to be a string of platitudes with no definite application to facts. they are fit only for the platform, or only for the professor's lecture-room. mill's treatise, according to his most famous antagonist, was a mere bundle of pretentious sophistry. macaulay came forth like a whig david to slay the utilitarian goliath. the _encyclopædia_ articles, finished in , were already in ,[ ] as mill says, text-books of the young men at the cambridge union. macaulay, who won his trinity fellowship in , had there argued the questions with his friend charles austin, one of bentham's neophytes. in the next year macaulay made his first appearance as an edinburgh reviewer; and in he took the field against mill. in the january number he attacked the essay upon 'government'; and in two articles in the succeeding numbers of the _review_ replied to a defence made by some utilitarian in the _westminster_. mill himself made no direct reply; and macaulay showed his gratitude for mill's generosity in regard to the indian appointment by declining to republish the articles.[ ] he confessed to have treated his opponent with a want of proper respect, though he retracted none of his criticisms. the offence had its excuses. macaulay was a man under thirty, in the full flush of early success; nor was mill's own treatment of antagonists conciliatory. the dogmatic arrogance of the utilitarians was not unnaturally met by an equally arrogant countercheck. macaulay ridicules the utilitarians for their claim to be the defenders of the true political faith. he is afraid not of them but of the 'discredit of their alliance'; he wishes to draw a broad line between judicious reformers and a 'sect which having derived all its influence from the countenance which they imprudently bestowed upon it, hates them with the deadly hatred of ingratitude.' no party, he says, was ever so unpopular. it had already disgusted people with political economy; and would disgust them with parliamentary reform, if it could associate itself in public opinion with the cause[ ]. this was indeed to turn the tables. the half-hearted disciple was insulting the thoroughbred teacher who had borne the heat and burthen of the day, and from whom he had learned his own doctrine. upon this and other impertinences--the assertion, for example, that utilitarians were as incapable of understanding an argument as any 'true blue baronet after the third bottle at a pitt club'--it is needless to dwell. they illustrate, however, the strong resentment with which the utilitarians were regarded by the classes from whom the whigs drew their most cultivated supporters. macaulay's line of argument will show what was the real conflict of theory. his view is, in fact, a long amplification of the charge that mill was adopting a purely _a priori_ method. mill's style is as dry as euclid, and his arguments are presented with an affectation of logical precision. mill has inherited the 'spirit and style of the schoolmen. he is an aristotelian of the fifteenth century.' he writes about government as though he was unaware that any actual governments had ever existed. he deduces his science from a single assumption of certain 'propensities of human nature.'[ ] after dealing with mill's arguments, macaulay winds up with one of his characteristic purple patches about the method of induction. he invokes the authority of bacon--a great name with which in those days writers conjured without a very precise consideration of its true significance. by bacon's method we are to construct in time the 'noble science of politics,' which is equally removed from the barren theories of utilitarian sophists and the petty craft of intriguing jobbers. the utilitarians are schoolmen, while the whigs are the true followers of bacon and scientific induction. j. s. mill admitted within certain limits the relevancy of this criticism, and was led by the reflections which it started to a theory of his own. meanwhile, he observes that his father ought to have justified himself by declaring that the book was not a 'scientific treatise on politics,' but an 'argument for parliamentary reform.'[ ] it is not quite easy to see how james mill could have made such a 'justification' and distinguished it from a recantation. if mill really meant what macaulay took him to mean, it would be superfluous to argue the question gravely. the reasoning is only fit, like the reasoning of all macaulay's antagonists, for the proverbial schoolboy. mill, according to macaulay, proposes to discover what governments are good; and, finding that experience gives no clear answer, throws experience aside and appeals to absolute laws of human nature. one such 'law' asserts that the strong will plunder the weak. therefore all governments except the representative must be oppressive, and rule by sheer terror. mill's very reason for relying upon this argument is precisely that the facts contradict it. some despotisms work well, and some democracies ill; therefore we must prove by logic that all despotisms are bad, and all democracies good. is this really mill's case? an answer given by mill's champion, to which macaulay replies in his last article, suggests some explanation of mill's position. macaulay had paid no attention to one highly important phrase. the terrible consequences which mill deduces from the selfishness of rulers will follow, he says, 'if nothing checks.'[ ] supplying this qualification, as implied throughout, we may give a better meaning to mill's argument. a simple observation of experience is insufficient. the phenomena are too complex; governments of the most varying kinds have shown the same faults; and governments of the same kind have shown them in the most various degrees. therefore the method which macaulay suggests is inapplicable. we should reason about government, says macaulay,[ ] as bacon told us to reason about heat. find all the circumstances in which hot bodies agree, and you will determine the principle of heat. find all the circumstances in which good governments agree, and you will find the principles of good government. certainly; but the process, as macaulay admits, would be a long one. rather, it would be endless. what 'circumstances' can be the same in all good governments in all times and places? mill held in substance, that we could lay down certain broad principles about human nature, the existence of which is of course known from 'experience', and by showing how they would work, if restrained by no distinct checks, obtain certain useful conclusions. mill indicates this line of reply in his own attack upon mackintosh.[ ] there he explains that what he really meant was to set forth a principle recognised by berkeley, hume, blackstone, and, especially, in plato's _republic_. plato's treatise is a development of the principle that 'identity of interests affords the only security for good government.' without such identity of interest, said plato, the guardians of the flock become wolves. hume[ ] had given a pithy expression of the same view in the maxim 'established,' as he says, 'by political writers,' that in framing the 'checks and controls of the constitution, every man ought to be supposed a knave and to have no other end in his actions than private interest.' mill points this by referring to the 'organs of aristocratical opinion' for the last fifty years. the incessant appeal has been for 'confidence in public men,' and confidence is another name for scope for misrule.[ ] this, he explains, was what he meant by the statement (which mackintosh considered to have been exploded by macaulay) that every man pursued his own interest.[ ] it referred to the class legislation of the great aristocratic ring: kings, nobles, church, law, and army. utilitarianism, in its political relations, was one continuous warfare against these sinister 'interests,' the master-evil of the contemporary political state undoubtedly implied a want of responsibility. a political trust was habitually confounded with private property. moreover, whatever else may be essential to good government, one essential is a strong sense of responsibility in the governors. that is a very sound principle, though not an axiom from which all political science can be deduced. if the essay on 'government' was really meant as a kind of political euclid--as a deduction of the best system of government from this single principle of responsibility--it was as grotesque as macaulay asserted. mill might perhaps have met the criticism by lowering his claims as his son suggests. he certainly managed to express his argument in such terms that it has an uncomfortable appearance of being intended for a scientific exposition. this deserves notice because the position is characteristic of the utilitarians' method. their appeals to experience always end by absolute assertions. we shall find the same difficulty in their economic inquiries. when accused, for example, of laying down absolute principles in such cases, they reply that they are only speaking of 'tendencies,' and recognise the existence of 'checks.' they treat of what would be, if certain forces acted without limit, as a necessary step towards discovering what is when the limits exist. they appear to their opponents to forget the limits in their practical conclusions. this political argument is an instance of the same method. the genesis of his theory is plain. mill's 'government,' like bentham's, is simply the conception of legal 'sovereignty' transferred to the sphere of politics. mill's exposition is only distinguished from his master's by the clearness with which he brings out the underlying assumptions. the legal sovereign is omnipotent, for what he declares to be the law is therefore the law. the law is his commands enforced by 'sanctions,' and therefore by organised force. the motives for obedience are the fear of the gallows on one side, and, on the other, the desire of protection for life and property. law, again, is the ultimate social bond, and can be made at will by the sovereign. he thus becomes so omnipotent that it is virtually assumed that he can even create himself. not only can the sovereign, once constituted, give commands enforced by coercive sanctions upon any kind of conduct, but he can determine his own constitution. he can at once, for example, create a representative system in practice, when it has been discovered in theory, and can by judicious regulations so distribute 'self-interest' as to produce philanthropy and public spirit. macaulay's answer really makes a different assumption. he accepts the purely 'empirical' or 'rule of thumb' position. it is idle, he says, to ask what would happen if there were no 'checks.' it is like leaving out the effect of friction in a problem of mechanics. the logic may be correct, but the conclusions are false in practice.[ ] now this 'friction' was precisely the favourite expedient of the utilitarians in political economy. to reason about facts, they say, you must analyse, and therefore provisionally disregard the 'checks,' which must be afterwards introduced in practical applications. macaulay is really bidding us take 'experience' in the lump, and refrains from the only treatment which can lead to a scientific result. his argument, in fact, agrees with that of his famous essay on bacon, where we learn that philosophy applied to moral questions is all nonsense, and that science is simply crude common-sense. he is really saying that all political reasoning is impossible, and that we must trust to unreasoned observation. macaulay, indeed, has good grounds of criticism. he shows very forcibly the absurdity of transferring the legal to the political sovereignty. parliament might, as he says, make a law that every gentleman with £ a year might flog a pauper with a cat-of-nine-tails whenever he pleased. but, as the first exercise of such a power would be the 'last day of the english aristocracy,' their power is strictly limited in fact.[ ] that gives very clearly the difference between legal and political sovereignty. what parliament makes law is law, but is not therefore enforceable. we have to go behind the commands and sanctions before we understand what is the actual power of government. it is very far from omnipotent. macaulay, seeing this, proceeds to throw aside mill's argument against the possibility of a permanent division of power. the _de facto_ limitation of the sovereign's power justifies the old theory about 'mixed forms of government.' 'mixed governments' are not impossible, for they are real. all governments are, in fact, 'mixed.' louis xiv. could not cut off the head of any one whom he happened to dislike. an oriental despot is strictly bound by the religious prejudices of his subjects. if 'sovereignty' means such power it is a chimera in practice, or only realised approximately when, as in the case of negro slavery, a class is actually ruled by force in the hands of a really external power. and yet the attack upon 'mixed governments,' which bentham had expounded in the _fragment_, has a real force which macaulay seems to overlook. mill's argument against a possible 'balance' of power was, as macaulay asserted, equally applicable to the case of independent sovereigns; yet france might be stronger at calais and england at dover.[ ] mill might have replied that a state is a state precisely because, and in so far as, there is an agreement to recognise a common authority or sovereign. government does not imply a 'mixture,' but a fusion of power. there is a unity, though not the abstract unity of the utilitarian sovereign. the weakness of the utilitarians is to speak as though the sovereign, being external to each individual, could therefore be regarded as external to the whole society. he rules as a strong nation may rule a weak dependency. when the sovereign becomes also the society, the power is regarded as equally absolute, though now applied to the desirable end of maximising happiness. the whole argument ignores the simple consideration that the sovereign is himself in all cases the product of the society over which he rules, and his whole action, even in the most despotic governments, determined throughout by organic instincts, explaining and not ultimately explicable by coercion. macaulay's doctrine partially recognises this by falling back upon the whig theory of checks and balances, and the mixture of three mysterious entities, monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. but, as bentham had sufficiently shown in the _fragment_, the theory becomes hopelessly unreal when we try to translate it into facts. there are not three separate forces, conflicting like three independent forces, but a complex set of social institutions bound together into a whole. it is impossible really to regard government as a permanent balance of antagonistic forces, confronting each other like the three duellists in sheridan's _critic_. the practical result of that theory is to substitute for the 'greatest happiness' principle the vague criterion of the preservation of an equilibrium between indefinable forces; and to make the ultimate end of government the maintenance as long as possible of a balance resting on no ulterior principle, but undoubtedly pleasant for the comfortable classes. nothing is left but the rough guesswork, which, if a fine name be wanted, may be called baconian induction. the 'matchless constitution,' as bentham calls it, represents a convenient compromise, and the tendency is to attach exaggerated importance to its ostensible terms. when macaulay asserted against mill[ ] that it was impossible to say which element--monarchy, aristocracy, or democracy--had gained strength in england in the last century, he is obviously looking at the formulæ and not at the social body behind. this leads to considerations really more important than the argumentation about _a priori_ and inductive methods. mill in practice knew very well the qualifications necessary before his principles applied. he showed it in his indian evidence; and place could have told him, had it required telling, that the actual political machinery worked by very strange and tortuous methods. yet he was content to override such considerations when he is expounding his theory, and laid himself open to macaulay's broad common-sense retort. the nation at large cannot, he says, have a 'sinister interest.' it must desire legislation which is beneficial to the whole. this is to make the vast assumption that every individual will desire what is good for all, and will be a sufficient judge of what is good. but is it clear that a majority will even desire what is good for the whole? may they not wish to sacrifice both other classes and coming generations to their own instantaneous advantages? is it plain that even enlightenment of mind would induce a poor man to see his own advantage in the policy which would in the long run be best for the whole society? you are bound, said macaulay, to show that the poor man will not believe that he personally would benefit by direct plunder of the rich; and indeed that he would not be right in so believing. the nation, no doubt, would suffer, but in the immediate period which alone is contemplated by a selfish pauper, the mass of the poor might get more pleasure out of confiscation. will they not, on your own principles, proceed to confiscation? shall we not have such a catastrophe as the reign of terror? the westminster reviewer retorted by saying that macaulay prophesied a reign of terror as a necessary consequence of an extended franchise. macaulay, skilfully enough, protested against this interpretation. 'we say again and again,' he declares, 'that we are on the defensive. we do not think it necessary to prove that a quack medicine is poison. let the vendor prove it to be sanative. we do not pretend to show that universal suffrage is an evil. let its advocates show it to be a good.'[ ] mill rests his whole case upon the selfishness of mankind. will not the selfishness lead the actual majority at a given moment to plunder the rich and to disregard the interests of their own successors? macaulay's declaration that he was only 'upon the defensive' might be justifiable in an advocate. his real thought may be inferred from a speech on the charter made in . the chartists' petition of that year had asked for universal suffrage. universal suffrage, he replies, would be incompatible with the 'institution of property.'[ ] if the chartists acted upon their avowed principles, they would enforce 'one vast spoliation.' macaulay could not say, of course, what would actually result, but his 'guess' was that we should see 'something more horrible than can be imagined--something like the siege of jerusalem on a far larger scale.' the very best event he could anticipate--'and what must the state of things be, if an englishman and a whig calls such an event the very best?'--would be a military despotism, giving a 'sort of protection to a miserable wreck of all that immense glory and prosperity.'[ ] so in the criticism of mill he had suggested that if his opponent's principles were correct, and his scheme adopted, 'literature, science, commerce, manufactures' would be swept away, and that a 'few half-naked fishermen would divide with the owls and foxes the ruins of the greatest of european cities.'[ ] carefully as macaulay guards himself in his articles upon mill, the speech shows sufficiently what was his 'guess'; that is, his real expectation. this gives the vital difference. what macaulay professes to deduce from mill's principles he really holds himself, and he holds it because he argues, as indeed everybody has to argue, pretty much on mill's method. he does not really remain in the purely sceptical position which would correspond to his version of 'baconian induction.' he argues, just as mill would have argued, from general rules about human nature. selfish and ignorant people will, he thinks, be naturally inclined to plunder; therefore, if they have power, they will plunder. so mill had argued that a selfish class would rule for its own sinister interests and therefore not for the happiness of the greatest number. the argument is the same, and it is the only line of argument which is possible till, if that should ever happen, a genuine science of politics shall have been constituted. the only question is whether it shall take the pomp of _a priori_ speculation or conceal itself under a show of 'baconian induction.' on one point they agree. both mill and macaulay profess unbounded confidence in the virtue and wisdom of the middle, that is, of their own class. macaulay hopes for a reform bill which will make the votes of the house of commons 'the express image of the opinion of the middle orders of britain.'[ ] mill holds that the middle class will retain this moral authority, however widely the franchise be extended; while macaulay fears that they will be swamped by its extension to the masses. the reform bill which they joined in supporting was regarded by the radicals as a payment on account; while the whig hoped that it would be a full and final discharge. the radical held that no barriers against democracy were needed; he took for granted that a democracy would find its natural leaders in the educated and intelligent. the whig, to whom such confidence appeared to be altogether misplaced, had to find some justification for the 'checks' and 'balances' which he thought essential. ii. whiggism i have spoken of macaulay's articles because they represent the most pointed conflict between the utilitarian and the whig. macaulay belongs properly to the next generation, but he appeared as the mouthpiece of the earlier group of writers who in mill's time delivered through the _edinburgh review_ the true oracles of the whig faith. upon that ground mill had assailed them in his article. their creed, he said, was a 'see-saw.' the whigs were aristocrats as much as the tories. they were simply the 'outs' who hoped to be the 'ins.' they trimmed their sails to catch public opinion, but were careful not to drift into the true popular currents. they had no desire to limit the power which they hoped one day to possess. they would attack abuses--the slave-trade or the penal laws--to gain credit for liberality and enlightenment, when the abuses were such as could be removed without injuring the power of the aristocracy. they could use 'vague generalities' about liberty and so forth, but only to evade definite applications. when any measure was proposed which really threatened the power of the privileged classes, they could bring out a contradictory set of fine phrases about jacobinism and democracy. their whole argument was a shuffle and they themselves mere selfish trimmers.[ ] to this jeffrey replied (in december ) by accepting the position.[ ] he pleaded guilty to a love of 'trimming,' which meant a love of the british constitution. the constitution was a compromise--a balance of opposing forces--and the only question could be whether they were properly balanced. the answer was fair enough. mill was imputing motives too easily, and assuming that the reviewers saw the abuses in the same light as he did, and were truckling to public robbers in hopes of sharing the plunder. he was breaking a butterfly upon a wheel. the edinburgh reviewers were not missionaries of a creed. they were a set of brilliant young men, to whom the _review_ was at first a mere pastime, occupying such leisure as was allowed by their professional pursuits. they were indeed men of liberal sympathies, intelligent and independent enough to hold by a party which was out of power. they had read hume and voltaire and rousseau; they had sat at the feet of dugald stewart; and were in sympathy with intellectual liberalism. but they were men who meant to become judges, members of parliament, or even bishops. nothing in their social atmosphere had stimulated the deep resentment against social injustice which makes the fanatic or the enthusiast. we may take as their interpreter the whig philosopher james mackintosh ( - ), a man of wide reading, both in history and philosophy, an eloquent orator, and a very able writer. mackintosh, said coleridge,[ ] is the 'king of the men of talent'; by which was intimated that, as a man of talent, he was not, like some people, a man of genius. mackintosh, that is, was a man to accept plausible formulæ and to make them more plausible; not a man to pierce to the heart of things, or reveal fruitful germs of thought. his intellect was judicial; given to compromises, affecting a judicious _via media_, and endeavouring to reconcile antagonistic tendencies. thoroughgoing or one-sided thinkers, and mill in particular, regarded him with excessive antipathy as a typical representative of the opposite intellectual tendencies. mackintosh's political attitude is instructive. at the outbreak of the french revolution he was a struggling young scot, seeking his fortune in london, just turning from medicine to the bar, and supporting himself partly by journalism. he became secretary to the society of the 'friends of the people,' the whig rival of the revolutionary clubs, and in april sprang into fame by his _vindiciæ gallicæ_. the whigs had not yet lost the fervour with which they had welcomed the downfall of the bastille. burke's _reflections_, the work of a great thinker in a state of irritation bordering upon frenzy, had sounded the note of alarm. the revolution, as burke maintained, was in fact the avatar of a diabolic power. it meant an attack upon the very organic principles of society. it therefore implied a complete breach of historical continuity, and a war against the reverence for 'prescription' and tradition which is essential to all healthy development. to his extreme opponents the same theory afforded the justification of the revolution. it meant that every institution was to be thrown into the crucible, and a new world to arise governed only by reason. the view very ably defended by mackintosh was opposed to both. he looks upon the french revolution as a more complete application of the principles of locke and the english whigs of . the revolutionists are, as he urges,[ ] applying the principles which had been worked out by the 'philosophers of europe' during the preceding century. they were not, as burke urged, rejecting experience for theory. the relation between their doctrine and politics is analogous to the relation between geometry and mechanics.[ ] we are now in the position of a people who should be familiar with newton, but in shipbuilding be still on a level with the esquimaux. the 'rights of man' appear to him to mean, not, as burke and bentham once agreed, a set of 'anarchical fallacies,' but a set of fundamental moral principles; and the declaration of them a most wise and 'auspicious' commencement of the 'regenerating labours' of the new legislators. the french revolution represented what somers would now approve if he had our advantages.[ ] a thoroughgoing change had become necessary in france. the church, army, and law were now 'incorrigible.'[ ] burke had seen, in the confiscation of church property, an attempt to abolish christianity. to mackintosh it seemed to be a reform justifiable in principle, which, though too roughly carried out, would reduce 'a servile and imperious priesthood to humble utility.'[ ] a poor priesthood, indeed, might incline to popular superstition. we could console ourselves by reflecting that the power of the church, as a corporation, was broken, and that toleration and philosophy would restrain fanaticism.[ ] the assignats were still 'almost at par.'[ ] the sale of the national property would nearly extinguish the debt. france had 'renounced for ever the idea of conquest,'[ ] and had no temptations to war, except her colonies. their commercial inutility and political mischievousness had been so 'unanimously demonstrated,' that the french empire must soon be delivered from 'this cumbrous and destructive appendage.' an armed people, moreover, could never be used like a mercenary army to suppress liberty. there was no danger of military despotism, and france would hereafter seek for a pure glory by cultivating the arts of peace and extending the happiness of mankind.[ ] no wonder that mackintosh, with these views, thought that the history of the fall of the bastille would 'kindle in unborn millions the holy enthusiasm of freedom';[ ] or that, in the early disorders, he saw temporary aberrations of mobs, destined to be speedily suppressed by the true leaders of the revolution. mackintosh saw, i take it, about as far as most philosophers, that is, about as far as people who are not philosophers. he observes much that burke ought to have remembered, and keeps fairly to the philosophical principle which he announces of attributing the revolution to general causes, and not to the schemes of individuals.[ ] when assignats became waste paper, when the guillotine got to work, when the religion of reason was being set up against christianity, when the french were conquering europe, when a military despotism was arising, when, in short, it became quite clear that the french revolution meant something very different from a philosophical application of the principles of locke and adam smith, mackintosh began to see that burke had not so far missed the mark. burke, before dying, received his penitent opponent at beaconsfield; and in mackintosh took the opportunity of publicly declaring that he 'abhorred, abjured, and for ever renounced the french revolution, with its sanguinary history, its abominable principles, and its ever execrable leaders.' he hoped to 'wipe off the disgrace of having been once betrayed into that abominable conspiracy against god and man.'[ ] in his famous defence of peltier ( ), he denounced the revolution in a passage which might have been adopted from burke's _letters on a regicide peace_.[ ] in a remarkable letter to windham[ ] of , mackintosh gives his estimate of burke, and takes some credit to himself for having discovered, even in the time of his youthful errors, the consistency of burke's principles, as founded upon an abhorrence of 'abstract politics.'[ ] politics, he now thought, must be made scientific by recognising with burke the supreme importance of prescription and historic continuity, and by admitting that the philosophers had not yet constructed a science bearing to practical politics the same relation as geometry to mechanics. he applied his theory to the question of parliamentary reform in the _edinburgh review_.[ ] here he accepts the doctrine, criticised by james mill, that a proper representative system must be judged, not, as mill maintained, solely by the identity of its interest with that of the community at large, but by its fitness to give power to different classes. it follows that the landowners, the professional classes, and the populace should all be represented. and he discovers that the variety of the english system was calculated to secure this end. though it was only in a few constituencies that the poorest class had a voice, their vote in such places represented the same class elsewhere. it was as well that there should be some extreme radicals to speak for the poorest. but he thinks that any uniform suffrage would be bad, and that universal suffrage would be the most mischievous of all systems.[ ] that would mean the swamping of one class by all--a tyranny more oppressive, perhaps, than any other tyranny. if one class alone were to be represented, it should be the favourite middle class, which has the 'largest share of sense and virtue,' and is most connected in interest with other classes.[ ] a legitimate aim of the legislator is, therefore, to prevent an excess of democracy. with mackintosh it seems essential not simply to suppress 'sinister interests,' but to save both the aristocracy and the middle class from being crushed by the lower classes. the opposition is vital; and it is plain that the argument for the aristocracy, that is, for a system developed from all manner of historical accidents and not evolved out of any simple logical principles, must be defended upon empirical grounds. mackintosh was in india during the early period of the _edinburgh review_. jeffrey, as editor for its first quarter of a century, may be taken more fully to represent its spirit. jeffrey's trenchant, if not swaggering style, covered a very timid, sensitive, and, in some respects, a very conservative temperament. his objection to the 'lake poets' was the objection of the classical to the romantic school. jeffrey's brightness of intellect may justify carlyle's comparison of him to voltaire,--only a voltaire qualified by dislike to men who were 'dreadfully in earnest.' jeffrey was a philosophical sceptic; he interpreted dugald stewart as meaning that metaphysics, being all nonsense, we must make shift with common-sense; and he wrote a dissertation upon taste, to prove that there are no rules about taste whatever. he was too genuine a sceptic to sacrifice peace to the hopeless search for truth. one of the most striking passages in his _essays_[ ] is an attack upon 'perfectibility.' he utterly disbelieves that progress in knowledge will improve morals or diminish war, or cure any of the evils that flesh is heir to. such a man is not of the material of which enthusiastic reformers are made. throughout the war he was more governed by his fear than by his zeal. he was in constant dread of failure abroad and ruin at home. the _review_ provoked the tories, and induced them to start its rival, not by advocacy of political principles, but by its despairing view of the war.[ ] he was still desiring at that time ( ) to avoid 'party politics' in the narrower sense. the political view corresponding to this is given in the articles, some of which (though the authorship was not yet avowed) were assailed by mill in the _westminster_. in an early article[ ] he defends the french philosophers against the imputation of responsibility for the reign of terror. their excellent and humane doctrines had been misapplied by the 'exasperation' and precipitation of inexperienced voters. his most characteristic article is one published in january . the failure of the walcheren expedition had confirmed his disbelief in our military leaders; the rise of english radicalism, led by burdett in the house of commons, and cobbett in the press, the widely spread distress and the severity of oppressive measures, roused his keenest alarm.[ ] we are, he declared, between two violent and pernicious factions--the courtiers of arbitrary power and the democrats. if the whig leaders did not first conciliate and then restrain the people, the struggle of the extreme parties would soon sweep away the constitution, the monarchy, and the whig aristocracy by which that monarchy 'is controlled, confirmed, and exalted above all other forms of polity.' democracy, it was plain, was increasing with dangerous rapidity. a third of every man's income was being taken by taxes, and after twenty years' boastful hostility we were left without a single ally. considering all this, it seems as though 'the wholesome days of england were numbered,' and we are on the 'verge of the most dreadful of all calamities'--a civil war. jeffrey has learned from hume that all government is ultimately founded upon opinion. the great thing is to make the action of public opinion regular and constituted. the whole machinery of the constitution, he says, is for the express purpose of 'preventing the kingly power from dashing itself to pieces against the more radical power of the people.'[ ] the merit of a representative body is not to be tested simply by the goodness of its legislation, but by its diminishing the intensity of the struggle for the supreme power. jeffrey in fact is above all preoccupied with the danger of revolution. the popular will is, in fact, supreme; repression may force it into explosion; but by judicious management it may be tamed and tempered. then we need above all things that it should, as he says in his reply to mill (december ), give their 'natural and wholesome influence to wealth and rank.' the stability of the english constitution depends, as he said in , upon the monarchy and aristocracy, and their stability on their being the natural growth of ages and having 'struck their roots deep into every stratum of the political soil.' the whigs represent the view implied in macaulay's attack upon mill--the view of cultivated men of sense, with their eyes open to many difficulties overlooked by zealots, but far too sceptical and despondent to rouse any enthusiasm or accept any dogmas absolutely. by the time of the reform bill the danger was obviously on the side of dogged obstructionism, and then the 'middle party,' as jeffrey calls it, inclined towards the radical side and begged them to join its ranks and abandon the attempt to realise extreme views. they could also take credit as moderate men do for having all along been in the right. but to both extremes, as jeffrey pathetically complains, they appeared to be mere trimmers.[ ] the utilitarian held the whig to be a 'trimmer'; the whig thought the utilitarian a fanatic; they agreed in holding that the tory was simply stupid. and yet, when we look at the tory creed, we shall find that both whig and utilitarian overlooked some very vital problems. the tories of course represent the advocates of strong government; and, as their opponents held, had no theories--only prejudices. the first article of the creed of an eldon or a sidmouth was, 'i believe in george iii.';--not a doctrine capable of philosophical justification. such toryism meant the content of the rich and powerful with the system by which their power and wealth were guaranteed. their instincts had been sharpened by the french revolution; and they saw in any change the removal of one of the safeguards against a fresh outburst of the nether fires. the great bulk of all political opinion is an instinct, not a philosophy; and the obstructive tories represented little more than class prejudice and the dread of a great convulsion. yet intelligent tories were being driven to find some reasons for their creed, which the utilitarians might have considered more carefully. iii. conservatism a famous man of letters represents certain tendencies more clearly than the average politician. robert southey ( - ), the 'ultra servile sack-guzzler,' as bentham pleasantly calls him in ,[ ] was probably the best abused man, on his own side at least, among mill's contemporaries. he was attacked by mill himself, and savagely denounced by byron and hazlitt. he was not only a conspicuous writer in the _quarterly review_ but, as his enemies thought, a renegade bought by pensions. it is, i hope, needless to defend him against this charge. he was simply an impatient man of generous instincts and no reflective power, who had in his youth caught the revolutionary fever, and, as he grew up, developed the patriotic fever. later views are given in the _colloquies on the progress and prospects of society_ ( ), chiefly known to modern readers by one of macaulay's essays. southey was as assailable as mill. his political economy is a mere muddle; his political views are obviously distorted by accidental prejudices; and the whole book is desultory and disjointed. in a dialogue with the ghost of sir thomas more, he takes the opportunity of introducing descriptions of scenery, literary digressions, and quaint illustrations from his vast stores of reading to the confusion of all definite arrangement. southey is in the awkward position of a dogmatist defending a compromise. an anglican claiming infallibility is necessarily inconsistent. his view of toleration, for example, is oddly obscure. he would apparently like to persecute infidels;[ ] and yet he wishes to denounce the catholic church for its persecuting principles. he seems to date the main social evils to the changes which began at the reformation, and yet he looks back to the period which succeeded the reformation as representing the ideal state of the british polity. his sympathy with the literature of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries predisposed him to this position. he would have been more intelligible if he had been more distinctly reactionary. for all that, his views show the presence of a leaven which was materially to affect the later development of english opinions. that jacobinism meant anarchy, and that anarchy led irresistibly to military despotism were propositions which to him, as to so many others, seemed to be established by the french revolution. what, then, was the cause of the anarchy? sir thomas more comes from the grave to tell us this, because he had witnessed the past symptoms of the process. the transition from the old feudal system to the modern industrial organisation had in his day become unmistakably developed. in feudal times, every man had his definite place in society; he was a member of a little group; supported, if controlled and disciplined, by an elaborate system of spiritual authority. the reformation was the period at which the 'masterless man' made his appearance. the conversion of pastures into arable land, the growth of commerce and of pauperism, were marks of the coming change. it proceeded quietly for some generations; but the development of the modern manufacturing system represents the operation of the same process on a far larger scale, and with far greater intensity. the result may be described by saying that we have instead of a legitimate development a degeneration of society. a vast populace has grown up outside of the old order. it is independent indeed, but at the heavy price of being rather an inorganic mass than a constituent part of the body politic. it is, briefly, to the growth of a huge 'proletariate' outside the church, and hostile to the state, that southey attributes all social evils. the view has become familiar enough in various shapes; and in the reproaches which southey brings against the manufacturing system we have an anticipation of other familiar lamentations. our manufacturing wealth is a 'wen,' a 'fungous excrescence from the body politic';[ ] it is no more a proof of real prosperity than the size of a dropsical patient is a proof of health;[ ] the manufacturer worships mammon instead of moloch;[ ] and wrings his fortune from the degradation of his labourers as his warlike ancestors wrung wealth from their slaves; he confines children in a tainted atmosphere, physical and moral, from morning till night, and a celebrated minister (pitt) boasts of this very evil;[ ] he treats his fellow-creatures as machines,[ ] and wealth, though accumulated, is not diffused; the great capitalists, 'like pikes in a fishpond,' devour the weaker fish;[ ] competition is not directed to providing the best goods, but the cheapest;[ ] every man oppresses his neighbour; the landlord racks his tenant, the farmer grinds the labourer; all the little centres of permanent life are broken up; not one man in a thousand is buried with his fathers, and the natural ties and domestic affections are prematurely dissolved.[ ] here, too, is to be found the source of the infidel opinions which call for suppression. london is a hotbed of corruption;[ ] a centre of wealth; and yet, in spite of poor-laws, a place where wretches are dying of starvation, and which could collect a mob capable of producing the most appalling catastrophes. in such a place, men become unbelievers like savages, because removed from all humanising influences, and booksellers can carry on a trade in blasphemy. infidelity is bred in 'the filth and corruption of large towns and manufacturing districts.'[ ] the disappearance of clerical influence has led to 'a mass of ignorance, vice, and wretchedness which no generous heart can contemplate without grief.'[ ] it is not surprising that, in southey's opinion, it is doubtful whether the bulk of the people has gained or lost in the last thousand years.[ ] macaulay takes all this as mere sentimentalism and preference of a picturesque outside to solid comfort. but whatever southey's errors of fact, they show at least a deeper insight than his opponent into some social evils. his proposed remedies explain his diagnosis of the evil. in the first place, it is not surprising, though it surprised macaulay, that he had many sympathies with the socialist, robert owen. he saw owen in ,[ ] and was much impressed by his views. in the _colloquies_,[ ] owen is called the 'happiest, most beneficent, and most practical of all enthusiasts'; an account is given of one of the earliest co-operative schemes,[ ] and southey believes in the possibility of the plan. he makes, however, one significant remark. owen, he thinks, could not succeed without enlisting in his support some sectarian zeal. as owen happened to object to all religious sects, this defect could not be remedied. southey, in fact, held that the absence of religious discipline was at the root of the whole evil. religion, he declares, much to the scorn of macaulay, 'is the basis upon which civil government rests.'[ ] there must, as he infers, be an established religion, and the state which neglects this duty is preparing its own ruin. 'nothing,' he declares, 'in abstract science can be more certain than these propositions,' though they are denied by 'our professors of the arts babblative and scribblative'--that is, by benthamites and whigs. for here, in fact, we come to the irreconcilable difference. government is not to be a mere machinery for suppressing violence, but an ally of the church in spreading sound religion and morality. the rulers, instead of merely reflecting the popular will, should lead and direct all agencies for suppressing vice and misery. southey, as his son takes pains to show,[ ] though he was for upholding authority by the most stringent measures, was convinced that the one way to make government strong was to improve the condition of the people. he proposed many measures of reform; national education on the principles, of course, of dr. bell; state-aided colonisation and the cultivation of waste lands at home; protestant sisterhoods to reproduce the good effects of the old order which he regretted and yet had to condemn on anglican principles. the english church should have made use of the wesleyans as the church of rome had used the franciscans and dominicans; and his _life of wesley_ was prompted by his fond belief that this might yet be done. government, he said, ought to be 'paternal';[ ] and his leading aspirations have been adopted by socialists on the one hand, and the converts to catholicism on the other. for his philosophy, southey was in the habit of referring to coleridge; and coleridge's _constitution of church and state_ is perhaps the book in which coleridge comes nearest to bringing an argument to a conclusion. though marked by his usual complexities of style, his parentheses and irrelevant allusions and glances at wide metaphysical discussions, he succeeds in laying down a sufficient sketch of his position. the book was originally published in , and refers to the catholic emancipation of the previous year. unlike southey, he approves of the measure, only regretting the absence of certain safeguards; and his general purpose may be said to be to give such a theory of the relations of church and state as may justify an establishment upon loftier grounds than those of the commonplace tory. his method, as he explains, is to find the true 'idea' of a constitution and a national church. the 'idea,' he explains, does not mean the conscious aim of the persons who founded or now constitute the bodies in question. an 'idea' is the subjective counterpart of an objective law.[ ] it corresponds to the vital force which moulds the structure of the social organism, although it may never have been distinctly formulated by any one of the actors. in this sense, therefore, we should have to proceed by a historical method. we should study the constitution as we study the physiology of a physical body;[ ] and he works out the analogy at some length. so far, coleridge is expressing the characteristic view that nature in general is to be regarded as an evolution; only that evolution is to be understood in the sense of schelling not in the sense of either darwin. of course, when coleridge professes to find the 'idea' of the church and state, what he really finds is not the idea so much as his idea of the idea--which may be a very different thing. his theory of 'evolution' is compatible with assuming that evolutions are illegitimate whenever he happens to dislike them. he coincides rather curiously with james mill in asserting that the 'social bond' was originally formed to protect property, not to protect life.[ ] he discovers accordingly that the ancient races, jews, goths, and kelts alike, divided the land into two parts, one to be inherited by separate families, the other to be set apart for the nation. from the latter or the 'nationalty' springs the church establishment. this property belongs rightfully and inalienably to the nation itself. it is held by what he calls the 'clerisy.' its functions are, in the first place, to provide a career by which the poorest classes may rise to a higher position; and secondly, to provide for the development of all the qualities which distinguish the civilised man from the savage.[ ] briefly, then, the church is that part of the national organism which is devoted to educating the people to be 'obedient, free, useful organisable subjects, citizens, and patriots, living to the benefit of the estate, and prepared to die for its defence.' henry viii. would have surpassed alfred if he had directed the 'nationalty' to its true purposes; that is, especially to the maintenance of universities, of a parochial clergy, and of schools in every parish. unluckily, henry viii.'s 'idea' of a national church was vague. ideas were not his strong point. coleridge appears to be especially troubled to work the principles into conformity with his views of catholic emancipation. the peculiarity of the theory is that the church, according to him, seems to be simply a national institution. it might exist, and in fact, did exist before christianity, as is proved not only by the jewish but by the druidical church.[ ] that it should be christian in england is a 'blessed accident,' or 'providential boon'--or, as he puts it, 'most awfully a godsend.' hence it follows that a primary condition of its utility is that the clerisy should contribute to the support of the other organs of the community. they must not be the subjects of a foreign power, nor, as he argues at length, subject to the desocialising influence of celibacy. it follows that the roman church is unfitted to be ever a national church, although, if that danger be sufficiently obviated, no political disqualifications should be imposed upon romanists. and thus, too, the church catholic is essentially a body which has no relations to any particular state. it is opposed to the world, not to the nation, and can have no visible head or 'personal centre of unity.'[ ] the church which makes such claims is the revelation of antichrist. we need not inquire into the prophecies. it is enough to say that to coleridge as to southey the preservation of an established church seemed to be an essential condition of morality and civilisation. they differed from the ordinary tory, who was content to defend any of the abuses by the cry of sacrilege and confiscation. the church was to be made worthy of its position, and rendered capable of discharging its high functions effectually. coleridge, it may be said, would fully admit that an organ which had ceased to correspond to its idea must die. it could not continue to preserve itself by mere force of obstruction, but must arouse, throw off its abuses, and show itself to be worthy of its high claims. meanwhile, however, he was perhaps more anxious to show the utilitarians that in assailing the institution on account of its abuses, they were really destroying the most essential guarantee of progress. he sums up, in a curious passage, the proofs of modern degradation.[ ] the wicked eighteenth century is of course responsible for everything. the 'mechanic corpuscular theory'; the consequent decay of philosophy, illustrated by such phrases as an excellent 'idea' of cooking; 'the ourang-outang theology of the origin of the human species substituted for the first ten chapters of the book of genesis; rights of nature for the duties and privileges of citizens; idealess facts, misnamed proofs from history, for principles and the insight derived from them': all these and other calamitous results of modern philosophy are connected with a neglect of the well-being of the people, the mistaking of a large revenue for prosperity, and the consumption of gin by paupers to the 'value of eighteen millions yearly.' he appeals pathetically to the leaders of the utilitarians. they will scorn him for pronouncing that a 'natural clerisy' is 'an essential element of a rightly constituted nation.' all their tract societies and mechanics' institutes and 'lecture bazaars under the absurd name of universities' are 'empiric specifics' which feed the disease. science will be plebified, not popularised. the morality necessary for a state 'can only exist for the people in the form of religion. but the existence of a true philosophy, or the power and habit of contemplating particulars in the unity and fontal mirror of the idea,--this in the rulers and teachers of a nation is indispensable to a sound state of religion in all classes. in fact, religion, true or false, is and ever has been the centre of gravity in a realm to which all other things must and will accommodate themselves.' the existence of the eighteenth century always remained a hopeless puzzle for coleridge and his followers. why at that period everything went wrong in the higher regions of thought remained a mystery. 'god is above,' says sir thomas more to southey,[ ] 'but the devil is below; evil principles are in their nature more active than good.' the devil seemed to have got into the upper air, and was working with his allies, bentham and mill and paine and cobbett, with remarkable success. but, whatever the theories of conservatives in church and state, the fact that the theories were held is important. the diametrical opposition between two schools, one of which regarded the church as a simple abuse, and its doctrines as effete superstitions, while the other looked to the church and its creed as giving the sole hope for suppressing the evil principle, was a critical point in later movements, political as well as religious. iv. socialism i have spoken of southey's sympathy for robert owen. owen ( - ) is one of the characteristic figures of the time. he was the son of a village tradesman in wales, and had risen to prosperity by the qualities of the virtuous apprentice. industry, patience, an imperturbably good temper, and sagacity in business matters had raised him to high position as a manufacturer at the time of the rapid advance of the cotton trade. many poor men have followed the same path to wealth. owen's peculiarity was that while he became a capitalist he preserved his sympathy with the working classes. while improving machinery, he complained that the 'living machinery' was neglected. one great step in his career was his marriage to the daughter of david dale of new lanark, a religious and worthy manufacturer.[ ] dale had employed a number of pauper children who were in that day to be disposed of by their parishes; and had done his best to make their position more tolerable. owen took up this scheme, and carried it out more systematically. new lanark, in his hands, became a model village; he provided in various ways for the encouragement of sobriety, industry, and honesty among his workmen, set up stores to supply cheap and good provisions, and especially provided infant schools and a systematic education. 'the children,' he declares, 'were the happiest human beings he ever saw.' when his partners interfered with his plans, owen bought them out and started the company to which bentham and allen belonged. new lanark rapidly became famous. it was visited by all the philanthropists of the day. the royal dukes not only of england but of russia were interested; and owen even believed that he had converted napoleon at elba. so far, owen was a benevolent capitalist, exercising a paternal sway over his people. he became convinced, however, that he had discovered the key to the great social problems of the day. when the distresses followed the peace, he was prepared to propound his remedy, and found many willing hearers in all classes. liverpool and sidmouth listened to him with favour, and the duke of kent became president of a committee started to carry out his views. he gave the impetus to the movement by which the factory act of was carried, although it was far from embodying his proposals in their completeness. owen's diagnosis of the social disease explains southey's partiality. like southey, he traced the evil to the development of the manufacturing system. that system involved, as he held, what later socialists have called the 'exploitation' of the labouring classes by the capitalists. with singularly crude notions of political economy, owen assumed that the 'dead machinery' was in competition with the 'living machinery.' he made startling calculations as to the amount of human labour represented by steam-engines; and took for granted that the steam-engine displaced an equal number of workmen. his remedy for poverty was to set up a number of communities, which should maintain themselves by cultivating the soil with the spade, and in which every man should labour for all. thus new lanarks were to be spread over the country, with the difference that the employer was to be omitted. owen, in short, became properly a socialist, having been simply a paternal philanthropist. for a time owen met with considerable support. a great meeting was held in london in , and a committee was started two years afterwards, of which ricardo was a member. ricardo, indeed, took pains to let it be known that he did not believe in the efficacy of owen's plans. meanwhile owen was breaking off his connection with new lanark, and becoming the apostle of a new social creed. his missionary voyages took him to ireland, to the united states and mexico, and attempts were made to establish communities in scotland and in the state of illinois. owen and his followers became natural antagonists of the utilitarians. he agreed with southey in tracing distress to the development of the great manufacturing system, though he went much further. the principles essentially involved in the whole industrial system were, according to him, pernicious. he held the essential doctrine of his modern successors that property is theft. between such a man and the men who took the _wealth of nations_ for their gospel, and ricardo as its authorised commentator, there was an impassable gulf. on the other hand, owen was equally far from the tory view of religious principles. southey's remark that he could only succeed by allying himself with some religious fanaticism was just to the point. owen was a man of very few ideas, though he held such as he had with extraordinary tenacity, and enforced them by the effective if illogical method of incessant repetition. among them was the idea which, as he declares, had occurred to him before he was ten years old that there was something radically wrong in all religions. whether this opinion had come to him from the diffused rationalism of his time, or was congenial to the practical and prosaic temperament which was disquieted by the waste of energy over futile sectarian squabbles, or was suggested by his early study of seneca--the only author of whom he speaks as having impressed him in early years--it became a fixed conviction. he had been an early supporter of lancaster and 'unsectarian' education. when his great meeting was to be held in it occurred to him that he might as well announce his views. he accordingly informed his hearers that the religions of the world were the great obstacles to progress. he expected, as he assures us, that this candid avowal would cause him to be 'torn in pieces.' it provoked on the contrary general applause, and owen congratulated himself rather hastily on having struck the deathblow of superstition. owen's position, at any rate, was a significant symptom. it showed that the socialist movement sprang from motives outside the sphere of the churches. owen's personal simplicity and calmness seems to have saved him from any bitter animosity. he simply set aside christianity as not to the purpose, and went on calmly asserting and re-asserting his views to catholics and protestants, whigs, radicals, and tories. they agreed in considering him to be a bore, but were bored rather than irritated. owen himself, like later socialists, professed indifference to the political warfare of whigs and tories. when, at the height of the reform movement, he published a paper called the _crisis_, the title referred not to the struggle in which all the upper classes were absorbed, but to the industrial revolution which he hoped to bring about. he would have been equally ready to accept help from whig, tory, or radical; but his position was one equally distasteful to all. the tory could not ally himself with the man who thought all religions nonsense; nor any of the regular parties with the man who condemned the whole industrial system and was opposed to all the cherished prejudices of the respectable middle classes. owen's favourite dogma is worth a moment's notice. he was never tired of repeating that 'character is formed by circumstances'; from which he placidly infers that no man deserves praise or blame for his conduct. the inference, it must be admitted, is an awkward one in any ethical system. it represents, probably, owen's most serious objection to the religions of the world. the ultimate aim of the priest is to save men's souls; and sin means conduct which leads to supernatural punishment. owen, on the contrary, held that immorality was simply a disease to be cured, and that wrath with the sinner was as much out of place as wrath with a patient. in this sense owen's view, as i at least should hold, defines the correct starting-point of any social reformer. he has to consider a scientific problem, not to be an agent of a supernatural legislator. he should try to alter the general conditions from which social evils spring, not to deal in pardons or punishment. owen was acting with thoroughly good sense in his early applications of this principle. the care, for example, which he bestowed upon infant education recognised the fact that social reform implied a thorough training of the individual from his earliest years. owen's greatest error corresponds to the transformation which this belief underwent in his mind. since circumstances form character, he seems to have argued, it is only necessary to change the circumstances of a grown-up man to alter his whole disposition. his ambitious scheme in america seemed to suppose that it was enough to bring together a miscellaneous collection of the poor and discontented people, and to invite them all to behave with perfect unselfishness. at present i need only remark that in this respect there was a close coincidence between owen and the utilitarians. both of them really aimed at an improvement of social conditions on a scientific method; and both justified their hopes by the characteristic belief in the indefinite modifiability of human nature by external circumstances. i turn to a man who was in some ways the most complete antithesis to owen. william cobbett ( - ), unlike owen, took a passionate and conspicuous part in the political struggles of the day. cobbett, declares the _edinburgh review_ in july , has more influence than all the other journalists put together. he had won it, as the reviewer thought, by his force of character, although he had changed his politics completely 'within the last six months.' the fact was more significant than was then apparent. cobbett, son of a labourer who had risen to be a small farmer, had in spite of all obstacles learned to read and write and become a great master of the vernacular. his earliest model had been swift's _tale of a tub_, and in downright vigour of homely language he could scarcely be surpassed even by the author of the _drapier's letters_. he had enlisted as a soldier, and had afterwards drifted to america. there he had become conspicuous as a typical john bull. sturdy and pugnacious in the highest degree, he had taken the english side in american politics when the great question was whether the new power should be bullied by france or by england. he had denounced his precursor, paine, in language savouring too much, perhaps, of barrack-rooms, but certainly not wanting in vigour. he defied threats of tar and feathers; put a portrait of george iii. in his shop-window; and gloried in british victories, and, in his own opinion, kept american policy straight. he had, however, ended by making america too hot to hold him; and came back to declare that republicanism meant the vilest and most corrupt of tyrannies, and that, as an englishman, he despised all other nations upon earth. he was welcomed on his return by pitt's government as likely to be a useful journalist, and became the special adherent of windham, the ideal country-gentleman and the ardent disciple of burke's principles. he set up an independent paper and heartily supported the war. on the renewal of hostilities in cobbett wrote a manifesto[ ] directed by the government to be read in every parish church in the kingdom, in order to rouse popular feeling. when windham came into office in , cobbett's friends supposed that his fortune was made. yet at this very crisis he became a reformer. his conversion was put down, of course, to his resentment at the neglect of ministers. i do not think that cobbett was a man to whose character one can appeal as a conclusive answer to such charges. unfortunately he was not free from weaknesses which prevent us from denying that his political course was affected by personal motives. but, in spite of weaknesses and of countless inconsistencies, cobbett had perfectly genuine convictions and intense sympathies which sufficiently explain his position, and make him more attractive than many less obviously imperfect characters. he tells us unconsciously what were the thoughts suggested to a man penetrated to the core by the strongest prejudices--they can hardly be called opinions--of the true country labourer. the labourer, in the first place, if fairly represented by cobbett, had none of the bitter feeling against the nobility which smouldered in the french peasantry. cobbett looked back as fondly to the surroundings of his youth as any nobleman could look back to eton or to his country mansion. he remembered the 'sweet country air' round crooksbury hill, the song of birds, and the rambles through heather and woodland. he loved the rough jovial sports; bull-baiting and prize-fighting and single-stick play. he had followed the squire's hounds on foot, and admired without jealousy the splendid gardens of the bishop's palace at farnham. squire and parson were an intrinsic part of the general order of things. the state of the english working classes was, he often declares, the happiest that could be imagined,[ ] and he appeals in confirmation to his own memories. although, upon enlisting, he had found the army corrupt, he not only loved the soldier for the rest of his life, but shared to the full the patriotic exultation which welcomed the st of june and the nile. even to the last, he could not stomach the abandonment of the title 'king of france'; for so long as it was retained, it encouraged the farmer to tell his son the story of crecy and agincourt.[ ] what, then, alienated cobbett? briefly, the degradation of the class he loved. 'i wish,' he said, 'to see the poor men of england what the poor men of england were when i was born, and from endeavouring to accomplish this task, nothing but the want of means shall make me desist.'[ ] he had a right to make that boast, and his ardour in the cause was as unimpeachable as honourable. it explains why cobbett has still a sympathetic side. he was a mass of rough human nature; no prig or bundle of abstract formulæ, like paine and his radical successors. logic with him is not in excess, but in defect. his doctrines are hopelessly inconsistent, except so far as they represent his stubborn prejudices. any view will serve his purpose which can be made a weapon of offence in his multitudinous quarrels. cobbett, like the radicals of the time, was frightened by the gigantic progress of the debt. he had advocated war; but the peasant who was accustomed to reckon his income by pence, and had cried like a child when he lost the price of a red herring, was alarmed by the reckless piling up of millions of indebtedness. in he calmly proposed to his patron windham to put matters straight by repudiating the interest. 'the nation must destroy the debt, or the debt will destroy the nation,' as he argued in the _register_.[ ] the proposal very likely caused the alienation of a respectable minister, though propounded with an amusing air of philosophical morality. cobbett's alarm developed until it became to him a revelation of the mystery of iniquity. his radical friends were denouncing placemen and jobbery, and cobbett began to perceive what was at the bottom of the evil. the money raised to carry on the war served also to support a set of bloodsuckers, who were draining the national strength. already, in , he was lamenting a change due to pitt's funding system. the old families, he said, were giving way to 'loanjobbers, contractors, and nabobs'; and the country people amazed to find that their new masters had been 'butchers, bakers, bottle-corkers, and old-clothesmen.'[ ] barings and ricardos and their like were swallowing up the old country gentry wholesale; and in later years he reckons up, as he rides, the changes in his own neighbourhood.[ ] his affection for the old country-gentleman might be superficial; but his lamentations over the degradation of the peasantry sprang from his heart. it was all, in his eyes, part of one process. paper money, he found out, was at the bottom of it all; for paper money was the outward and visible symbol of a gigantic system of corruption and jobbery. it represented the device by which the hard-earned wages of the labourer were being somehow conjured away into the pockets of jews and stockjobbers. the classes which profited by this atrocious system formed what he called the 'thing'--the huge, intricate combination of knaves which was being denounced by the radicals--though with a difference. cobbett could join the reformers in so far as, like them, he thought that the rotten boroughs were a vital part of the system. he meets a miserable labourer complaining of the 'hard times.' the harvest had been good, but its blessings were not for the labourer. that 'accursed hill,' says cobbett, pointing to old sarum, 'is what has robbed you of your supper.'[ ] the labourer represented the class whose blood was being sucked. so far, then, as the radicals were assailing the borough-mongers, cobbett could be their cordial ally. two years' imprisonment for libel embittered his feelings. in the distress which succeeded the peace, cobbett's voice was for a time loudest in the general hubbub. he reduced the price of his _register_, and his 'two-penny trash' reached a circulation of , or , copies. he became a power in the land, and anticipated the immediate triumph of reform. the day was not yet. sidmouth's measures of repression frightened cobbett to america (march ), where he wrote his history of the 'last hundred days of english liberty.' he returned in a couple of years, damaged in reputation and broken in fortune; but only to carry on the war with indomitable energy, although with a recklessness and extravagance which alienated his allies and lowered his character. he tried to cover his errors by brags and bombast, which became ridiculous, and which are yet not without significance. cobbett came back from america with the relics of paine. paine, the object of his abuse, had become his idol, not because cobbett cared much for any abstract political theories, or for religious dogmas. paine's merit was that he had attacked paper money. to cobbett, as to paine, it seemed that english banknotes were going the way of french assignats and the provincial currency of the americans. this became one main topic of his tirades, and represented, as he said, the 'alpha and omega' of english politics. the theory was simple. the whole borough-mongering system depended upon the inflated currency. prick that bubble and the whole would collapse. it was absolutely impossible, he said, that the nation should return to cash payments and continue to pay interest on the debt. should such a thing happen, he declared, he would 'give his poor body up to be broiled on one of castlereagh's widest-ribbed gridirons.'[ ] the 'gridiron prophecy' became famous; a gridiron was for long a frontispiece to the _register_; and cobbett, far from retracting, went on proving, in the teeth of facts, that it had been fulfilled. his inference was, not that paper should be preserved, but that the debt should be treated with a 'sponge.' cobbett, therefore, was an awkward ally of political economists, whose great triumph was the resumption of cash payments, and who regarded repudiation as the deadly sin. the burthen of the debt, meanwhile, was so great that repudiation was well within the limits of possibility.[ ] cobbett, in their eyes, was an advocate of the grossest dishonesty, and using the basest incentives. cobbett fully retorted their scorn. the economists belonged to the very class whom he most hated. he was never tired of denouncing scottish 'feelosophers'; he sneers at adam smith,[ ] and ricardo was to him the incarnation of the stock-jobbing interest. cobbett sympathised instinctively with the doctrine of the french economists that agriculture was the real source of all wealth. he nearly accepts a phrase, erroneously attributed to windham, 'perish commerce'; and he argues that commerce was, in fact, of little use, and its monstrous extension at the bottom of all our worst evils.[ ] nobody could be more heartily opposed to the spirit which animated the political economists and the whole class represented by them. at times he spoke the language of modern socialists. he defines capital as 'money taken from the labouring classes, which, being given to army tailors and suchlike, enables them to keep foxhounds and trace their descent from the normans.'[ ] the most characteristic point of his speculations is his view of the poor-laws. nobody could speak with more good sense and feeling of the demoralisation which they were actually producing, of the sapping of the spirit of independence, and of all the devices by which the agricultural labourer was losing the happiness enjoyed in early years. but cobbett's deduction from his principles is peculiar. 'parson malthus' is perhaps the favourite object of his most virulent abuse. 'i have hated many men,' he says, 'but never any one so much as you,' 'i call you parson,' he explains, 'because that word includes "boroughmonger" among other meanings, though no single word could be sufficient.'[ ] cobbett rages against the phrase 'redundant population.' there would be plenty for all if the borough-mongers and stockjobbers could be annihilated, taxes abolished, and the debt repudiated. the ordinary palliatives suggested were little to the taste of this remarkable radical. the man who approved bull-fighting and supported the slave-trade naturally sneered at 'heddekashun,' and thought savings-banks a mean device to interest the poor in the keeping up of the funds. his remedy was always a sponge applied to the debt, and the abolition of taxes. this leads, however, to one remarkable conclusion. cobbett's attack upon the church establishment probably did more to cause alarm than any writings of the day. for paine's attacks upon its creed he cared little enough. 'your religion,' said a parson to him, 'seems to be altogether political.' it might well be, was cobbett's retort, since his creed was made for him by act of parliament.[ ] in fact, he cared nothing for theology, though he called himself a member of the church of england, and retained an intense dislike for unitarians, dissenters in general, 'saints' as he called the evangelical party, scottish presbyterians, and generally for all religious sects. he looked at church questions solely from one point of view. he had learned, it seems, from a passage in ruggles's _history of the poor_,[ ] that the tithes had been originally intended to support the poor as well as the church. gradually, as he looked back upon the 'good old times,' he developed the theory expounded in his _history of the reformation_. it is a singular performance, written at the period of his most reckless exasperation ( - ), but with his full vigour of style. he declares[ ] in that he has sold forty-five thousand copies, and it has been often reprinted. the purpose is to show that the reformation was 'engendered in beastly lust, brought forth in hypocrisy, and cherished and fed by plunder and devastation, and by rivers of english and irish blood.'[ ] briefly, it is the cause of every evil that has happened since, including 'the debt, the banks, the stockjobbers, and the american revolution.'[ ] in proving this, cobbett writes in the spirit of some vehement catholic bigot, maddened by the penal laws. henry viii., elizabeth, and william iii. are his monsters; the marys of england and scotland his ideal martyrs. he almost apologises for the massacre of st. bartholomew and the gunpowder plot; and, in spite of his patriotism, attributes the defeat of the armada to a storm, for fear of praising elizabeth. the bitterest ultramontane of to-day would shrink from some of this radical's audacious statements. cobbett, in spite of his extravagance, shows flashes of his usual shrewdness. he remarks elsewhere that the true way of studying history is to examine acts of parliament and lists of prices of labour and of food;[ ] and he argues upon such grounds for the prosperity of the agricultural labourer under edward iii., 'when a dung-cart filler could get a fat goose and a half for half a day's work.' he makes some telling hits, as when he contrasts william of wykeham with brownlow north, the last bishop of winchester. protestants condemned celibacy. well, had william been married, we should not have had winchester school, or new college; had brownlow north been doomed to celibacy, he would not have had ten sons and sons-in-law to share twenty-four rich livings, besides prebends and other preferments; and perhaps he would not have sold small beer from his episcopal palace at farnham. cobbett's main doctrine is that when the catholic church flourished, the population was actually more numerous and richer, that the care of the priests and monks made pauperism impossible, and that ever since the hideous blunder perpetrated by the reformers everything has been going from bad to worse. when it was retorted that the census proved the population to be growing, he replied that the census was a lie. were the facts truly stated, he declares, we should have a population of near twenty-eight million in england by the end of this century,[ ] a manifest _reductio ad absurdum_. if it were remarked that there was a catholic church in france, and that cobbett proves his case by the superiority of the english poor to the french poor, he remarked summarily that the french laws were different.[ ] thus, the one monster evil is the debt, and the taxes turn out to have been a protestant invention made necessary by the original act of plunder. that was cobbett's doctrine, and, however perverse might be some of his reasonings, it was clearly to the taste of a large audience. the poor-law was merely a partial atonement for a vast and continuous process of plunder. corrupt as might be its actual operation, it was a part of the poor man's patrimony, extorted by fear from the gang of robbers who fattened upon their labours. cobbett's theories need not be discussed from the logical or historical point of view. they are the utterances of a man made unscrupulous by his desperate circumstances, fighting with boundless pugnacity, ready to strike any blow, fair or foul, so long as it will vex his enemies, and help to sell the _register_. his pugnacity alienated all his friends. not only did whigs and tories agree in condemning him, but the utilitarians hated and despised him, and his old friends, burnett and hunt, were alienated from him, and reviled by him. his actual followers were a small and insignificant remnant. yet cobbett, like owen, represented in a crude fashion blind instincts of no small importance in the coming years. and it is especially to be noted that in one direction the philosophic coleridge and the keen quarterly reviewer southey, and the socialist owen and the reactionary radical cobbett, were more in agreement than they knew. what alarmed them was the vast social change indicated by the industrial revolution. in one way or another they connected all the evils of the day with the growth of commerce and manufactures, and the breaking up of the old system of domestic trade and village life.[ ] that is to say, that in a dumb and inarticulate logic, though in the loudest tones of denunciation, tories and socialists, and nondescript radicals were raging against the results of the great social change, which the utilitarians regarded as the true line of advance of the day. this gives the deepest line of demarcation, and brings us to the political economy, which shows most fully how the case presented itself to the true utilitarian. footnotes: [ ] bain's _james mill_, p. . [ ] _autobiography_, p. . [ ] _miscellaneous works_ (popular edition), p. . [ ] the articles from the _encyclopædia_ upon government, jurisprudence, liberty of the press, prisons and prison discipline, colonies, law of nations, education, were reprinted in a volume 'not for sale,' in and . i quote from a reprint not dated. [ ] 'government,' pp. - . [ ] 'government,' p. . [ ] 'government,' p. . [ ] _ibid._ p. . [ ] _ibid._ p. . [ ] _ibid._ p. . [ ] 'government,' p. . [ ] c'est une expérience éternelle que tout homme qui a du pouvoir est porté à en abuser; il va jusqu'à ce qu'il trouve des limites.--_esprit des lois_, bk. xi. chap . [ ] 'government,' p. . [ ] 'government,' p. . [ ] _ibid._ p. . [ ] 'government,' p. . [ ] _ibid._ p. [ ] _autobiography_, p. . [ ] 'government,' p. . [ ] _ibid._ p. . mill especially refers to the exposure of clerical artifices in father paul's _council of trent_. [ ] 'education,' p. [ ] _ibid._ p. . [ ] _autobiography_, p. . [ ] 'government,' p. . [ ] bain's _james mill_, p. . [ ] they were reprinted in the _miscellaneous works_ after macaulay's death. i quote from the 'popular edition' of that work ( ). [ ] _miscellaneous works_, p. . [ ] _miscellaneous works_, p. . [ ] mill's _autobiography_, p. . [ ] 'government,' p. . [ ] _miscellaneous works_, p. . [ ] _fragment on mackintosh_ ( ), pp. - . [ ] essay on the 'independency of parliament.' [ ] _fragment_, p. . [ ] _ibid._ p. . [ ] _miscellaneous works_, p. . [ ] _miscellaneous works_, p. . [ ] _miscellaneous works_, p. . [ ] _miscellaneous works_, pp. - . [ ] _miscellaneous works_, p. , and see pp. - . [ ] _speeches_ (popular edition), p. . [ ] _ibid._ p. . [ ] _miscellaneous works_, p. . [ ] _miscellaneous works_, p. . [ ] a full analysis of this article is in bain's _james mill_, pp. - . [ ] article upon sheridan, reprinted in jeffrey's _essays_, iv. ( ). [ ] _table-talk_, th april . [ ] _vindiciæ gallicæ_, in _miscellaneous works_, iii. ( ), p. . [ ] mackintosh thinks it necessary to add that this parallel was suggested to him by william thomson ( - ), a literary gentleman who continued watson's _philip iii._, and may, for anything i know, deserve mackintosh's warm eulogy. [ ] _vindiciæ gallicæ_, p. . [ ] _ibid._ p. . [ ] _ibid._ p. . [ ] _ibid._ p. . [ ] _ibid._ p. . [ ] _ibid._ p. . [ ] _vindiciæ gallicæ_, p. . [ ] _ibid._ p. . [ ] _ibid._ p. . [ ] _life of mackintosh_, i. . [ ] _miscellaneous works_, iii. - . [ ] _life_, i. - . [ ] see _miscellaneous works_, iii. . [ ] _ibid._ iii. - (an article highly praised by bagehot in his _parliamentary reform_). [ ] _miscellaneous works_, iii. - . [ ] _ibid._ iii. . mackintosh in this article mentions the 'caucus,' and observes that the name implies that combinations have been already formed upon 'which the future government of the confederacy may depend more than on the forms of election, or the letter of the present laws.' he inclines to approve the system as essential to party government. [ ] _essays_ ( ), i. - . [ ] the famous 'cevallos' article of , said to be written by jeffrey and brougham (macvey napier's _correspondence_, p. ), gave the immediate cause of starting the _quarterly_; and, according to brougham, first gave a distinctly liberal character to the _edinburgh_. for jeffrey's desire to avoid 'party politics,' see lockhart's _life of scott_, m. napier's _correspondence_, p. , and homer's _memoirs_ ( ), i. . [ ] april ; reprinted in _essays_, ii. , etc., to show, as he says, how early he had taken up his view of the french revolution. [ ] sydney smith complains in his correspondence of this article as exaggerating the power of the aristocracy. [ ] _essays_, iv. . [ ] i need not speak of brougham, then the most conspicuous advocate of whiggism. he published in a _political philosophy_, which, according to lord campbell, killed the 'society for the diffusion of useful knowledge.' no such hypothesis is necessary to account for the death of a society encumbered by a 'dictionary of universal biography.' but the book was bad enough to kill, if a collection of outworn platitudes can produce that effect. [ ] bentham's _works_, x. . [ ] _colloquies_, i. . [ ] _colloquies_, i. . [ ] _ibid._ i. . [ ] _ibid._ i. . [ ] _ibid._ i. . [ ] _ibid._ i. . [ ] _ibid._ i. . [ ] _ibid._ ii. . [ ] _colloquies_, ii. . [ ] _ibid._ i. . [ ] _ibid._ ii. - . [ ] _ibid._ i. . [ ] _ibid._ i. . [ ] _life and correspondence_, iv. ; _selections_, iii. . [ ] _colloquies_, i. . [ ] _colloquies_, i. . [ ] _ibid._ ii. . southey is here almost verbally following burke's _reflections_. [ ] _life and correspondence_, v. - . [ ] _colloquies_, i. . [ ] _on the constitution of church and state, according to the idea of each_, (fourth edition). [ ] _church and state_, p. . [ ] _ibid._ p. . [ ] _church and state_, p. . [ ] _ibid._ p. . [ ] _church and state_, p. . [ ] _ibid._ pp. - . [ ] _colloquies_, i. . [ ] see an early account of dale (in ) in sydney smith's _life and letters_, i. , and another in wilberforce's _correspondence_ ( ), i. (in ). [ ] printed in _political works_, i. . [ ] _political works_, v. ; vi. . [ ] _political works_, i. ; v. . [ ] _ibid._ ii. . [ ] _political works_, ii. ; iv. . [ ] _ibid._ i. . [ ] _rural rides_ ( ), p. . [ ] _rural rides_, p. . [ ] _political works_, v. ( nd july ). [ ] even m'culloch had recommended a partial repudiation. [ ] _political works_, iv. . [ ] _ibid._ ii. , , , ; and iii. . see _parliamentary history_, xxx., where the first use of the phrase by hardinge is reported. [ ] _political works_, vi. . [ ] _ibid._ . [ ] _rural rides_, p. . [ ] he complains bitterly that ruggles had suppressed this in a second edition. _protestant reformation_ ( ), ii., introduction. [ ] _political register_, th jan. . [ ] _protestant reformation_, p. . [ ] _ibid._ p. . [ ] _advice to young men_, p. . [ ] _political works_, v. . if our census be not a lie, there were twenty-seven million englishmen in . [ ] _protestant reformation_, i. . [ ] coleridge in a letter to allsop (_conversations_, etc., i. ) approves one of cobbett's articles, because it popularises the weighty truth of the 'hollowness of commercial wealth.' cobbett, he sadly reflects, is an overmatch for liverpool. see cobbett's _political works_, v. _n._ chapter iv malthus i. malthus's starting-point the political movement represented the confluence of many different streams of agitation. enormous social changes had generated multifarious discontent. new wants and the new strains and stresses between the various parts of the political mechanism required new adaptations. but, if it were inquired what was the precise nature of the evils, and how the reform of parliament was to operate, the most various answers might be given. a most important line of division did not coincide with the line between the recognised parties. one wing of the radicals agreed with many conservatives in attributing the great evils of the day to the industrial movement and the growth of competition. the middle-class whigs and the utilitarians were, on the contrary, in thorough sympathy with the industrial movement, and desired to limit the functions of government, and trust to self-help and free competition. the socialistic movement appeared for the present to be confined to a few dreamers and demagogues. the utilitarians might approve the spirit of the owenites, but held their schemes to be chimerical. beneath the political controversies there was therefore a set of problems to be answered; and the utilitarian answer defines their distinction from radicals of a different and, as they would have said, unphilosophical school. what, then, was the view really taken by the utilitarians of these underlying problems? they not only had a very definite theory in regard to them, but in working it out achieved perhaps their most important contribution to speculation. beneath a political theory lies, or ought to lie, what we now call a 'sociology'--a theory of that structure of society which really determines the character and the working of political institutions. the utilitarian theory was embodied in their political economy. i must try to define as well as i can what were the essential first principles implied, without going into the special problems which would be relevant in a history of political economy. the two leading names in the literature of political economy during the first quarter of this century were undoubtedly malthus and ricardo. thomas robert malthus[ ] ( - ) was not one of the utilitarian band. as a clergyman, he could not share their opinion of the thirty-nine articles. moreover, he was a whig, not a radical; and he was even tainted with some economic heresy. still, he became one of the prophets, if not the leading prophet, of the utilitarians. belief in the malthusian theory of population was the most essential article of their faith, and marked the line of cleavage between the two wings of the radical party. malthus was the son of a country gentleman in surrey. his father was a man of studious habits, and one of the enthusiastic admirers of rousseau. his study of _Émile_ probably led to the rather desultory education of his son. the boy, after being taught at home, was for a time a pupil of r. graves ( - ), author of the _spiritual quixote_, a whig clergyman who was at least orthodox enough to ridicule methodism. malthus was next sent to attend gilbert wakefield's lectures at the warrington 'academy,' the unitarian place of education, and in went to jesus college, cambridge, of which wakefield had been a fellow. for wakefield, who had become a unitarian, and who was afterwards a martyr to political radicalism, he appears to have retained a strong respect. at jesus, again, malthus was under frend, who also was to join the unitarians. malthus was thus brought up under the influences of the modified rationalism which was represented by the unitarians outside the establishment and by paley within. coleridge was at jesus while malthus was still a fellow, and there became an ardent admirer of priestley, malthus remained within the borders of the church. its yoke was light enough, and he was essentially predisposed to moderate views. he took his degree as ninth wrangler in , became a fellow of his college in , took orders, and in was curate of albury, near his father's house in surrey. malthus's home was within a walk of farnham, where cobbett had been born and passed his childhood. he had, therefore, before his eyes the same agricultural labourer whose degradation excited cobbett to radicalism. very different views were suggested to malthus. the revolutionary doctrine was represented in england by the writings of godwin, whose _political justice_ appeared in and _enquirer_ in . these books naturally afforded topics for discussion between malthus and his father. the usual relations between senior and junior were inverted; the elder malthus, as became a follower of rousseau, was an enthusiast; and the younger took the part of suggesting doubts and difficulties. he resolved to put down his arguments upon paper, in order to clear his mind; and the result was the _essay upon population_, of which the first edition appeared anonymously in . the argument upon which malthus relied was already prepared for him. the dreams of the revolutionary enthusiasts supposed either a neglect of the actual conditions of human life or a belief that those conditions could be radically altered by the proposed political changes. the cooler reasoner was entitled to remind them that they were living upon solid earth, not in dreamland. the difficulty of realising utopia may be presented in various ways. malthus took a point which had been noticed by godwin. in the conclusion of his _political justice_,[ ] while taking a final glance at the coming millennium, godwin refers to a difficulty suggested by robert wallace. wallace had[ ] said that all the evils under which mankind suffers might be removed by a community of property, were it not that such a state of things would lead to an 'excessive population.' godwin makes light of the difficulty. he thinks that there is some 'principle in human society by means of which everything tends to find its own level and proceed in the most auspicious way, when least interfered with by the mode of regulation.' anyhow, there is plenty of room on the earth, at present. population may increase for 'myriads of centuries.' mind, as franklin has said, may become 'omnipotent over matter';[ ] life may be indefinitely prolonged; our remote descendants who have filled the earth 'will probably cease to propagate';[ ] they will not have the trouble of making a fresh start at every generation; and in those days there will be 'no war, no crimes, no administration of justice'; and moreover, 'no disease, anguish, melancholy, or resentment.' briefly, we shall be like the angels, only without the needless addition of a supreme ruler. similar ideas were expressed in condorcet's famous _tableau historique des progrès de l'esprit humain_,[ ] written while he was in daily fear of death by the guillotine, and so giving the most striking instance on record of the invincibility of an idealist conviction under the hardest pressure of facts. the argument of malthus is a product of the whole previous course of speculation. the question of population had occupied the french economists. the profound social evils of france gave the starting-point of their speculations; and one of the gravest symptoms had been the decay of population under the last years of louis xiv. their great aim was to meet this evil by encouraging agriculture. it could not escape the notice of the simplest observer that if you would have more mouths you must provide more food, unless, as some pious people assumed, that task might be left to providence. quesnay had laid it down as one of his axioms that the statesman should aim at providing sustenance before aiming simply at stimulating population. it follows, according to gulliver's famous maxim, that the man who makes two blades of grass grow where one grew before deserves better of his country than the 'whole race of politicians put together.' other writers, in developing this thesis, had dwelt upon the elasticity of population. the elder mirabeau, for example, published his _ami des hommes ou traité de la population_ in . he observes that, given the means of subsistence, men will multiply like rats in a barn.[ ] the great axiom, he says,[ ] is 'la mesure de la subsistance est celle de la population.' cultivate your fields, and you will raise men. mirabeau replies to hume's essay upon the 'populousness of ancient nations' ( ), of which wallace's first treatise was a criticism. the problem discussed by hume and wallace had been comparatively academical; but by malthus's time the question had taken a more practical shape. the sentimentalists denounced luxury as leading to a decay of the population. their prevailing doctrine is embodied in goldsmith's famous passage in the _deserted village_ ( ): 'ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, where wealth accumulates and men decay.' the poetical version only reflected the serious belief of radical politicians. although, as we are now aware, the population was in fact increasing rapidly, the belief prevailed among political writers that it was actually declining. trustworthy statistics did not exist. in john potter, son of the archbishop, proposed to the house of commons a plan for a census. a violent discussion arose,[ ] in the course of which it was pointed out that the plan would inevitably lead to the adoption of the 'canvas frock and wooden shoes.' englishmen would lose their liberty, become french slaves, and, when counted, would no doubt be taxed and forcibly enlisted. the bill passed the house of commons in spite of such reasoning, but was thrown out by the house of lords. till the first census was taken in --a period at which the absolute necessity of such knowledge had become obvious--the most elementary facts remained uncertain. was population increasing or decreasing? that surely might be ascertainable. richard price ( - ) was not only a distinguished moralist and a leading politician, but perhaps the best known writer of his time upon statistical questions. he had the credit of suggesting pitt's sinking fund,[ ] and spoke with the highest authority upon facts and figures. price argued in [ ] that the population of england had diminished by one-fourth since the revolution of . a sharp controversy followed upon the few ascertainable data. the vagueness of the results shows curiously how much economists had to argue in the dark. malthus observes in his first edition that he had been convinced by reading price that population was restrained by 'vice and misery,' as results, not of political institutions, but of 'our own creation.'[ ] this gives the essential point of difference. mirabeau had declared that the population of all europe was decaying. hume's essay, which he criticises, had been in answer to a similar statement of montesquieu. price had learned that other countries were increasing in number, though england, he held, was still declining. what, then, was the cause? the cause, replied both price and mirabeau, was 'luxury,' to which price adds the specially english evils of the 'engrossment of farms' and the enclosure of open fields. price had to admit that the english towns had increased; but this was an additional evil. the towns increased simply by draining the country; and in the towns themselves the deaths exceeded the births. the great cities were the graves of mankind. this opinion was strongly held, too, by arthur young, who ridiculed the general fear of depopulation, and declared that if money were provided, you could always get labour, but who looked upon the towns as destructive cancers in the body politic. the prevalence of this view explains malthus's position. to attribute depopulation to luxury was to say that it was caused by the inequality of property. the rich man wasted the substance of the country, became demoralised himself, and both corrupted and plundered his neighbours. the return to a 'state of nature,' in rousseau's phrase, meant the return to a state of things in which this misappropriation should become impossible. the whole industry of the nation would then be devoted to supporting millions of honest, simple peasants and labourers, whereas it now went to increasing the splendour of the great at the expense of the poor. price enlarges upon this theme, which was, in fact, the contemporary version of the later formula that the rich are growing richer and the poor poorer. the immediate effect of equalising property, then, would be an increase of population. it was the natural retort, adopted by malthus, that such an increase would soon make everybody poor, instead of making every one comfortable. population, the french economists had said, follows subsistence. will it not multiply indefinitely? the rapid growth of population in america was noticed by price and godwin; and the theory had been long before expanded by franklin, in a paper which malthus quotes in his later editions. 'there is no bound,' said franklin in ,[ ] 'to the prolific nature of plants and animals but what is made by their crowding and interfering with each other's means of subsistence.' the whole earth, he infers, might be overspread with fennel, for example, or, if empty of men, replenished in a few ages with englishmen. there were supposed to be already one million of englishmen in north america. if they doubled once in twenty-five years, they would in a century exceed the number of englishmen at home. this is identical with mirabeau's principle of the multiplying of rats in a barn. population treads closely on the heels of subsistence. work out your figures and see the results.[ ] malthus's essay in the first edition was mainly an application of this retort, and though the logic was effective as against godwin, he made no elaborate appeal to facts. malthus soon came to see that a more precise application was desirable. it was clearly desirable to know whether population was or was not actually increasing, and under what conditions. i have spoken of the contemporary labours of sinclair, young, sir f. eden, and others. to collect statistics was plainly one of the essential conditions of settling the controversy. malthus in travelled on the continent to gather information, and visited sweden, norway, russia, and germany. the peace of amiens enabled him in to visit france and switzerland. he inquired everywhere into the condition of the people, collected such statistical knowledge as was then possible, and returned to digest it into a elaborate treatise. meanwhile, the condition of england was giving a fresh significance to the argument. the first edition had been published at the critical time when the poor-law was being relaxed, and disastrous results were following war and famine. the old complaint that the poor-law was causing depopulation was being changed for the complaint that it was stimulating pauperism. the first edition already discussed this subject, which was occupying all serious thinkers; it was now to receive a fuller treatment. the second edition, greatly altered, appeared in , and made malthus a man of authority. his merits were recognised by his appointment in to the professorship of history and political economy at the newly founded east india college at haileybury. there he remained till the end of his life, which was placid, uneventful, and happy. he made a happy marriage in ; and his calm temperament enabled him to bear an amount of abuse which might have broken the health of a more irritable man. cobbett's epithet, 'parson malthus,' strikes the keynote. he was pictured as a christian priest denouncing charity, and proclaiming the necessity of vice and misery. he had the ill luck to be the centre upon which the antipathies of jacobin and anti-jacobin converged. cobbett's language was rougher than southey's; but the poet-laureate and the author of 'two-penny trash' were equally vehement in sentiment. malthus, on the other hand, was accepted by the political economists, both whig and utilitarian. horner and mackintosh, lights of the whigs, were his warm friends as well as his disciples. he became intimate with ricardo, and he was one of the original members of the political economy club. he took abuse imperturbably; was never vexed 'after the first fortnight' by the most unfair attack; and went on developing his theories, lecturing his students, and improving later editions of his treatise. malthus died on rd december . ii. the ratios the doctrine marks a critical point in political economy. malthus's opponents, as mr. bonar remarks,[ ] attacked him alternately for propounding a truism and for maintaining a paradox. a 'truism' is not useless so long as its truth is not admitted. it would be the greatest of achievements to enunciate a law self-evident as soon as formulated, and yet previously ignored or denied. was this the case of malthus? or did he really startle the world by clothing a commonplace in paradox, and then explain away the paradox till nothing but the commonplace was left? malthus laid down in his first edition a proposition which continued to be worried by all his assailants. population, he said, when unchecked, increases in the geometrical ratio; the means of subsistence increase only in an arithmetical ratio. geometrical ratios were just then in fashion.[ ] price had appealed to their wonderful ways in his arguments about the sinking fund; and had pointed out that a penny put out to per cent. compound interest at the birth of christ would, in the days of pitt, have been worth some millions of globes of solid gold, each as big as the earth. both price and malthus lay down a proposition which can easily be verified by the multiplication-table. if, as malthus said, population doubles in twenty-five years, the number in two centuries would be to the present number as to , and in three as to . if, meanwhile, the quantity of subsistence increased in 'arithmetical progression,' the multipliers for it would be only and . it follows that, in the year , two hundred and fifty-six persons will have to live upon what now supports nine. so far, the case is clear. but how does the argument apply to facts? for obvious reasons, price's penny could not become even one solid planet of gold. malthus's population is also clearly impossible. that is just his case. the population of british north america was actually, when he wrote, multiplying at the assigned rate. what he pointed out was that such a rate must somehow be stopped; and his question was, how precisely will it be stopped? the first proposition, he says[ ] (that is, that population increased geometrically), 'i considered as proved the moment that the american increase was related; and the second as soon as enunciated.' to say that a population increases geometrically, in fact, is simply to say that it increases at a fixed rate. the arithmetical increase corresponds to a statement which malthus, at any rate, might regard as undeniable; namely, that in a country already fully occupied, the possibility of increasing produce is restricted within much narrower limits. in a 'new country,' as in the american colonies, the increase of food might proceed as rapidly as the increase of population. improved methods of cultivation, or the virtual addition of vast tracts of fertile territory by improved means of communication, may of course add indefinitely to the resources of a population. but malthus was contemplating a state of things in which the actual conditions limited the people to an extraction of greater supplies from a strictly limited area. whether malthus assumed too easily that this represented the normal case may be questionable. at any rate, it was not only possible but actual in the england of the time. his problem was very much to the purpose. his aim was to trace the way in which the population of a limited region is prevented from increasing geometrically. if the descendants of englishmen increase at a certain rate in america, why do they not increase equally in england? that, it must be admitted, is a fair scientific problem. finding that two races of similar origin, and presumably like qualities, increase at different rates, we have to investigate the causes of the difference. malthus answered the problem in the simplest and most consistent way in his first edition. what are the checks? the ultimate check would clearly be starvation. a population might multiply till it had not food. but before this limit is actually reached, it will suffer in various ways from scarcity. briefly, the checks may be distinguished into the positive, that is, actual distress, and the preventive, or 'foresight.' we shall actually suffer unless we are restrained by the anticipation of suffering. as a fact, however, he thinks that men are but little influenced by the prudence which foresees sufferings. they go on multiplying till the consequences are realised. you may be confined in a room, to use one of his illustrations,[ ] though the walls do not touch you; but human beings are seldom satisfied till they have actually knocked their heads against the wall. he sums up his argument in the first edition in three propositions.[ ] population is limited by the means of subsistence; that is obvious; population invariably increases when the means of subsistence are increased; that is shown by experience to be practically true; and therefore, finally, the proportion is maintained by 'misery and vice.' that is the main conclusion which not unnaturally startled the world. malthus always adhered in some sense to the main doctrine, though he stated explicitly some reserves already implicitly involved. a writer must not be surprised if popular readers remember the unguarded and dogmatic utterances which give piquancy to a theory, and overlook the latent qualifications which, when fully expressed, make it approximate to a commonplace. the political bearing of his reasoning is significant. the application of godwin's theories of equality would necessarily, as he urges, stimulate an excessive population. to meet the consequent evils, two measures would be obviously necessary; private property must be instituted in order to stimulate prudence; and marriage must be instituted to make men responsible for the increase of the population. these institutions are necessary, and they make equality impossible. weak, then, as foresight may be with most men, the essential social institutions have been developed by the necessity of enabling foresight to exercise some influence; and thus indirectly societies have in fact grown in wealth and numbers through arrangements which have by one and the same action strengthened prudence and created inequality. although this is clearly implied, the main impression produced upon malthus's readers was that he held 'vice and misery' to be essential to society; nay, that in some sense he regarded them as blessings. he was accused, as he tells us,[ ] of objecting to vaccination, because it tended to prevent deaths from small-pox, and has to protest against some one who had declared his principles to be favourable to the slave trade.[ ] he was represented, that is, as holding depopulation to be good in itself. these perversions were grotesque, but partly explain the horror with which malthus was constantly regarded; and we must consider what made them plausible. i must first notice the maturer form of his doctrine. in the second edition he turns to account the result of his later reading, his personal observations, and the statistical results which were beginning to accumulate. the remodelled book opens with a survey of the observed action of the checks; and it concludes with a discussion of the 'moral restraint' which is now added to 'vice and misery.' although considerable fragments of the old treatise remained to the last, the whole book was altered both in style and character. the style certainly suffers, for malthus was not a master of the literary art; he inserts his additions with little care for the general effect. he tones down some of the more vivid phrases which had given offence, though he does not retract the substance. a famous passage[ ] in the second edition, in which he speaks of 'nature's mighty feast,' where, unluckily, the 'table is already full,' and therefore unbidden guests are left to starve, was suppressed in the later editions. yet the principle that no man has a claim to subsistence as of right remains unaltered. the omission injures the literary effect without altering the logic; and i think that, where the argument is amended, the new element is scarcely worked into the old so as to gain thorough consistency. malthus's survey of different countries showed how various are the 'checks' by which population is limited in various countries. we take a glance at all nations through all epochs of history. in the south sea we find a delicious climate and a fertile soil, where population is mainly limited by vice, infanticide, and war; and where, in spite of these influences, the population multiplies at intervals till it is killed off by famine. in china, a vast and fertile territory, inhabited by an industrious race, in which agriculture has always been encouraged, marriage stimulated, and property widely diffused, has facilitated the production of a vast population in the most abject state of poverty, driven to expose children by want, and liable at intervals to destructive famines. in modern europe, the checks appear in the most various forms; in switzerland and norway a frugal population in small villages sometimes instinctively understands the principle of population, and exhibits the 'moral restraint,' while in england the poor-laws are producing a mass of hopeless and inert pauperism. consideration of these various cases, and a comparison of such records as are obtainable of the old savage races, of the classical states of antiquity, of the northern barbarians and of the modern european nations, suggests a natural doubt. malthus abundantly proves what can hardly be denied, that population has everywhere been found to press upon the means of subsistence, and that vice and misery are painfully abundant. but does he establish or abandon his main proposition? he now asserts the 'tendency' of population to outrun the means of subsistence. yet he holds unequivocally that the increase of population has been accompanied by an increased comfort; that want has diminished although population has increased; and that the 'preventive' check is stronger than of old in proportion to the positive check. scotland, he says,[ ] is 'still overpeopled, but not so much as when it contained fewer inhabitants.' many nations, as he points out in general terms, have been most prosperous when most populous.[ ] they could export food when crowded, and have ceased to import it when thinned. this, indeed, expresses his permanent views, though the facts were often alleged by his critics as a disproof of them. was not the disproof real? does not a real evasion lurk under the phrase 'tendency'? you may say that the earth has a tendency to fall into the sun, and another 'tendency' to move away from the sun. but it would be absurd to argue that we were therefore in danger of being burnt or of being frozen. to explain the law of a vital process, we may have to analyse it, and therefore to regard it as due to conflicting forces; but the forces do not really exist separately, and in considering the whole concrete phenomenon we must take them as mutually implied. a man has a 'tendency' to grow too fat; and another 'tendency' to grow too thin. that surely means that on the whole he has a 'tendency' to preserve the desirable mean. the phrase, then, can only have a distinct meaning when the conflicting forces represent two independent or really separable forces. to use an illustration given by malthus, we might say that a man had a 'tendency' to grow upwards; but was restrained by a weight on his head. the man has the 'tendency,' because we may regard the weight as a separable accident. when both forces are of the essence, the separate 'tendencies' correspond merely to our way of analysing the fact. but if one can be properly regarded as relatively accidental, the 'tendency' means the way in which the other will manifest itself in actual cases. in , senior put this point to malthus.[ ] what, he asked, do you understand by a 'tendency' when you admit that the tendency is normally overbalanced by others? malthus explains his meaning to be that every nation suffers from evils 'specifically arising from the pressure of population against food.' the wages of the labourer in old countries have never been sufficient to enable him to maintain a large family at ease. there is overcrowding, we may say, in england now as there was in england at the conquest; though food has increased in a greater proportion than population; and the pressure has therefore taken a milder form. this, again, is proved by the fact that, whenever a relaxation of the pressure has occurred, when plagues have diminished population, or improvements in agriculture increased their supply of food, the gap has been at once filled up. the people have not taken advantage of the temporary relaxation of the check to preserve the new equilibrium, but have taken out the improvement by a multiplication of numbers. the statement then appears to be that at any given time the population is in excess. men would be better off if they were less numerous. but, on the other hand, the tendency to multiply does not represent a constant force, an irresistible instinct which will always bring men down to the same level, but something which, in fact, may vary materially. malthus admits, in fact, that the 'elasticity' is continually changing; and therefore repudiates the interpretation which seemed to make all improvement hopeless. why, then, distinguish the 'check' as something apart from the instinct? if, in any case, we accept this explanation, does not the theory become a 'truism,' or at least a commonplace, inoffensive but hardly instructive? does it amount to more than the obvious statement that prudence and foresight are desirable and are unfortunately scarce? iii. moral restraint the change in the theory of 'checks' raises another important question. malthus now introduced a modification upon which his supporters laid great stress. in the new version the 'checks' which proportion population to means of subsistence are not simply 'vice and misery,' but 'moral restraint, vice, and misery.'[ ] how, precisely, does this modify the theory? how are the different 'checks' related? what especially is meant by 'moral' in this connection? malthus takes his ethical philosophy pretty much for granted, but is clearly a utilitarian according to the version of paley.[ ] he agrees with paley that 'virtue evidently consists in educing from the materials which the creator has placed under our guidance the greatest sum of human happiness.'[ ] he adds to this that our 'natural impulses are, abstractedly considered, good, and only to be distinguished by their consequences.' hunger, he says, as bentham had said, is the same in itself, whether it leads to stealing a loaf or to eating your own loaf. he agrees with godwin that morality means the 'calculation of consequences,'[ ] or, as he says with paley, implies the discovery of the will of god by observing the effect of actions upon happiness. reason then regulates certain innate and practically unalterable instincts by enabling us to foretell their consequences. the reasonable man is influenced not simply by the immediate gratification, but by a forecast of all the results which it will entail. in these matters malthus was entirely at one with the utilitarians proper, and seems to regard their doctrine as self-evident. he notices briefly one logical difficulty thus introduced. the 'checks' are vice, misery, and moral restraint. but why distinguish vice from misery? is not conduct vicious which causes misery,[ ] and precisely because it causes misery? he replies that to omit 'vice' would confuse our language. vicious conduct may cause happiness in particular cases; though its general tendency would be pernicious. the answer is not very clear; and malthus, i think, would have been more logical if he had stuck to his first theory, and regarded vice as simply one form of imprudence. misery, that is, or the fear of misery, and the indulgence in conduct which produces misery are the 'checks' which limit population; and the whole problem is to make the ultimate sanction more operative upon the immediate conduct. man becomes more virtuous simply as he becomes more prudent, and is therefore governed in his conduct by recognising the wider and more remote series of consequences. there is, indeed, the essential difference that the virtuous man acts (on whatever motives) from a regard to the 'greatest happiness of the greatest number,' and not simply from self-regard. still the ultimate and decisive criterion is the tendency of conduct to produce misery; and if malthus had carried this through as rigorously as bentham, he would have been more consistent. the 'moral check' would then have been simply a department of the prudential; including prudence for others as well as for ourselves. one reason for the change is obvious. his assumption enables him to avoid coming into conflict with the accepted morality of the time. on his exposition 'vice' occasionally seems not to be productive of misery but an alternative to misery; and yet something bad in itself. is this consistent with his utilitarianism? the vices of the south sea islanders, according to him, made famine less necessary; and, if they gave pleasure at the moment, were they not on the whole beneficial? malthus again reckons among vices practices which limit the population without causing 'misery' directly.[ ] could he logically call them vicious? he wishes to avoid the imputation of sanctioning such practices, and therefore condemns them by his moral check; but it would be hard to prove that he was consistent in condemning them. or, again, there is another familiar difficulty. the catholic church encourages marriage as a remedy for vice; and thereby stimulates both population and poverty. how would malthus solve the problem: is it better to encourage chastity and a superabundance of people, or to restrict marriage at the cost of increasing temptation to vice? he seems to evade the point by saying that he recommends both chastity and abstinence from marriage. by 'moral restraint,' as he explains, he means 'restraint from marriage from prudential motives, with a conduct strictly moral during the period of this restraint.' 'i have never,' he adds, 'intentionally deviated from this sense.'[ ] a man, that is, should postpone taking a wife, and should not console himself by taking a mistress. he is to refrain from increasing the illegitimate as well as from increasing the legitimate population. it is not surprising that malthus admits that this check has 'in past ages operated with inconsiderable force.'[ ] in fact malthus, as a thoroughly respectable and decent clergyman, manages by talking about the 'moral restraint' rather to evade than to answer some awkward problems of conduct; but at the cost of some inconsequence. but another result of this mode of patching up his argument is more important. the 'vices of mankind,' he says in an unusually rhetorical summary of his historical inquiry,[ ] 'are active and able ministers of depopulation. they are the precursors in the great army of destruction, and often finish the dreadful work themselves. but should they fail in the war of extermination, sickly seasons, epidemics, pestilence, and plague advance in terrific array, and sweep off their thousands and ten thousands. should success still be incomplete, gigantic inevitable famine stalks in the rear, and at one mighty blow levels the population with the food of the world.' the life of the race, then, is a struggle with misery; its expansion is constantly forcing it upon this array of evils; and in proportion to the elasticity is the severity of the evils which follow. this is not only a 'gloomy view,' but again seems to suggest that 'vice' is an alternative to 'misery.' vices are bad, it would seem, but at least they obviate the necessity for disease and famine. malthus probably suppressed the passage because he thought it liable to this interpretation. it indicates, however, a real awkwardness, if not something more, in his exposition. he here speaks as if there was room for a fixed number of guests at his banquet. whatever, therefore, keeps the population to that limit must be so far good. if he had considered his 'moral check' more thoroughly, he might have seen that this does not correspond to his real meaning. the 'moral' and the prudential checks are not really to be contrasted as alternative, but co-operative. every population, vicious or virtuous, must of course proportion its numbers to its means of support. that gives the prudential check. but the moral check operates by altering the character of the population itself. from the purely economic point of view, vice is bad because it lowers efficiency. a lazy, drunken, and profligate people would starve where an industrious, sober, and honest people would thrive. the check of vice thus brings the check of misery into play at an earlier stage. it limits by lowering the vitality and substituting degeneration for progress. the check, therefore, is essentially mischievous. though it does not make the fields barren, it lowers the power of cultivation. malthus had recognised this when he pointed out, as we have seen, that emergence from the savage state meant the institution of marriage and property and, we may infer, the correlative virtues of chastity, industry, and honesty. if men can form large societies, and millions can be supported where once a few thousands were at starvation point, it is due to the civilisation which at every stage implies 'moral restraint' in a wider sense than malthus used the phrase. an increase of population by such means was, of course, to be desired. if malthus emphasises this inadequately, it is partly, no doubt, because the utilitarian view of morality tended to emphasise the external consequences rather than the alteration of the man himself. yet the wider and sounder view is logically implied in his reasoning--so much so that he might have expressed his real aim more clearly if he had altered the order of his argument. he might have consistently taken the same line as earlier writers and declared that he desired, above all things, the increase of population. he would have had indeed to explain that he desired the increase of a sound and virtuous population; and that hasty and imprudent increase led to misery and to a demoralisation which would ultimately limit numbers in the worst way. we shall see directly how nearly he accepts this view. meanwhile, by insisting upon the need of limitation, he was led to speak often as if limitation by any means was good and the one thing needful, and the polemic against godwin in the first edition had given prominence to this side of the question. had he put his views in a different shape, he would perhaps have been so edifying that he would have been disregarded. he certainly avoided that risk, and had whatever advantage is gained by stating sound doctrine paradoxically. we shall, i think, appreciate his real position better by considering his approximation to the theory which, as we know, was suggested to darwin by a perusal of malthus.[ ] there is a closer resemblance than appears at first. the first edition concludes by two chapters afterwards omitted, giving the philosophical application of his theory. he there says that the 'world is a mighty process of god not for the trial but for the creation and formation of the mind.'[ ] it is not, as butler thought, a place of 'probation,' but a scene in which the higher qualities are gradually developed. godwin had quoted franklin's view that 'mind' would become 'omnipotent over matter.' malthus holds that, as he puts it, 'god is making matter into mind.' the difference is that malthus regards evil in general not as a sort of accident of which we can get rid by reason; but as the essential stimulus which becomes the efficient cause of intellectual activity. the evils from which men suffer raise savage tribes from their indolence, and by degrees give rise to the growth of civilisation. the argument, though these chapters were dropped by malthus, was taken up by j. b. sumner, to whom he refers in later editions.[ ] it is, in fact, an imperfect way of stating a theory of evolution. this appears in his opening chapters upon the 'moral restraint.'[ ] he explains that moral and physical evils are 'instruments employed by the deity' to admonish us against such conduct as is destructive of happiness. diseases are indications that we have broken a law of nature. the plague of london was properly interpreted by our ancestors as a hint to improve the sanitary conditions of the town. similarly, we have to consider the consequences of obeying our instincts. the desire of food and necessaries is the most powerful of these instincts, and next to it the passion between the sexes. they are both good, for they are both natural; but they have to be properly correlated. to 'virtuous love' in particular we owe the 'sunny spots' in our lives, where the imagination loves to bask. desire of necessaries gives us the stimulus of the comfortable fireside; and love adds the wife and children, without whom the fireside would lose half its charm. now, as a rule, the sexual passion is apt to be in excess. the final cause of this excess is itself obvious. we cannot but conceive that it is an object of 'the creator that the earth should be replenished.'[ ] to secure that object, it is necessary that 'there should be a tendency in the population to increase faster than food.' if the two instincts were differently balanced, men would be content though the population of a fertile region were limited to the most trifling numbers. hence the instinct has mercifully been made so powerful as to stimulate population, and thus indirectly and eventually to produce a population at once larger and more comfortable. on the one hand, it is of the very utmost importance to the happiness of mankind that they should not increase too fast,[ ] but, on the other hand, if the passion were weakened, the motives which make a man industrious and capable of progress would be diminished also. it would, of course, be simpler to omit the 'teleology'; to say that sanitary regulations are made necessary by the plague, not that the plague is divinely appointed to encourage sanitary regulations. malthus is at the point of view of paley which becomes darwinism when inverted; but the conclusion is much the same. he reaches elsewhere, in fact, a more precise view of the value of the 'moral restraint.' in a chapter devoted for once to an ideal state of things,[ ] he shows how a race thoroughly imbued with that doctrine would reconcile the demands of the two instincts. population would in that case increase, but, instead of beginning by an increase, it would begin by providing the means of supporting. no man would become a father until he had seen his way to provide for a family. the instinct which leads to increasing the population would thus be intrinsically as powerful as it now is; but when regulated by prudence it would impel mankind to begin at the right end. food would be ready before mouths to eat it. iv. social remedies this final solution appears in malthus's proposed remedies for the evils of the time. malthus[ ] declares that 'an increase of population when it follows in its natural order is both a great positive good in itself, and absolutely necessary' to an increase of wealth. this natural order falls in, as he observes, with the view to which mirabeau had been converted, that 'revenue was the source of population,' and not population of revenue.[ ] malthus holds specifically that, 'in the course of some centuries,' the population of england might be doubled or trebled, and yet every man be 'much better fed and clothed than he is at present.'[ ] he parts company with paley, who had considered the ideal state to be 'that of a laborious frugal people ministering to the demands of an opulent luxurious nation.'[ ] that, says malthus, is 'not an inviting prospect.' nothing but a conviction of absolute necessity could reconcile us to the 'thought of ten millions of people condemned to incessant toil, and to the privation of everything but absolute necessaries, in order to minister to the excessive luxuries of the other million.' but he denies that any such necessity exists. he wishes precisely to see luxury spread among the poorer classes. a desire for such luxury is the best of all checks to population, and one of the best means of raising the standard. it would, in fact, contribute to his 'moral restraint.' so, too, he heartily condemns the hypocrisy of the rich, who professed a benevolent desire to better the poor, and yet complained of high wages.[ ] if, he says elsewhere,[ ] a country can 'only be rich by running a successful race for low wages, i should be disposed to say, perish such riches!' no one, in fact, could see more distinctly than malthus the demoralising influence of poverty, and the surpassing importance of raising the people from the terrible gulf of pauperism. he refers to colquhoun's account of the twenty thousand people who rose every morning in london without knowing how they were to be supported; and observes that 'when indigence does not produce overt acts of vice, it palsies every virtue.'[ ] the temptations to which the poor man is exposed, and the sense of injustice due to an ignorance of the true cause of misery, tend to 'sour the disposition, to harden the heart, and deaden the moral sense.' unfortunately, the means which have been adopted to lessen the evil have tended to increase it. in the first place, there was the master-evil of the poor-laws. malthus points out the demoralising effects of these laws in chapters full of admirable common sense, which he was unfortunately able to enforce by fresh illustrations in successive editions. he attends simply to the stimulus to population. he thinks that if the laws had never existed, the poor would now have been much better off.[ ] if the laws had been fully carried out, every labourer might have been certain that all his children would be supported, or, in other words, every check to population would have been removed.[ ] happily, the becoming pride of the english peasantry was not quite extinct; and the poor-law had to some extent counteracted itself, or taken away with one hand what it gave with the other, by placing the burthen upon the parishes.[ ] thus landlords have been more disposed to pull down than to build cottages, and marriage has been checked. on the whole, however, malthus could see in the poor-laws nothing but a vast agency for demoralising the poor, tempered by a system of petty tyrannical interference. he proposes, therefore, that the poor-law should be abolished. notice should be given that no children born after a certain day should be entitled to parish help; and, as he quaintly suggests, the clergyman might explain to every couple, after publishing the banns, the immorality of reckless marriage, and the reasons for abolishing a system which had been proved to frustrate the intentions of the founders.[ ] private charity, he thinks, would meet the distress which might afterwards arise, though humanity imperiously requires that it should be 'sparingly administered.' upon this duty he writes a sensible chapter.[ ] to his negative proposals malthus adds a few of the positive kind. he is strongly in favour of a national system of education, and speaks with contempt of the 'illiberal and feeble' arguments opposed to it. the schools, he observes, might confer 'an almost incalculable benefit' upon society, if they taught 'a few of the simplest principles of political economy.'[ ] he had been disheartened by the prejudices of the ignorant labourer, and felt the incompatibility of a free government with such ignorance. a real education, such as was given in scotland, would make the poor not, as alarmists had suggested, more inflammable, but better able to detect the sophistry of demagogues.[ ] he is, of course, in favour of savings banks,[ ] and approves friendly societies, though he is strongly opposed to making them compulsory, as they would then be the poor-law in a new form.[ ] the value of every improvement turns upon its effect in encouraging the 'moral restraint.' malthus's ultimate criterion is always, will the measure make people averse to premature marriage? he reaches the apparently inconsistent result that it might be desirable to make an allowance for every child beyond six.[ ] but this is on the hypothesis that the 'moral restraint' has come to be so habitual that no man marries until he has a fair prospect of maintaining a family of six. if this were the practical code, the allowance in cases where the expectation was disappointed would not act as an encouragement to marriage, but as a relief under a burthen which could not have been anticipated. thus all malthus's teaching may be said to converge upon this practical point. add to the ten commandments the new law, 'thou shalt not marry until there is a fair prospect of supporting six children.' then population will increase, but sufficient means for subsistence will always be provided beforehand. we shall make sure that there is a provision for additional numbers before, not after, we add to our numbers. food first and population afterwards gives the rule; thus we achieve the good end without the incidental evils. malthus's views of the appropriate remedy for social evils undoubtedly show an imperfect appreciation of the great problems involved. reckless propagation is an evil; but malthus regards it as an evil which can be isolated and suppressed by simply adding a new article to the moral code. he is dealing with a central problem of human nature and social order. any modification of the sexual instincts or of the constitution of the family involves a profound modification of the whole social order and of the dominant religious and moral creeds. malthus tacitly assumes that conduct is determined by the play of two instincts, unalterable in themselves, but capable of modification in their results by a more extensive view of consequences. to change men's ruling motives in regard to the most important part of their lives is to alter their whole aims and conceptions of the world, and of happiness in every other relation. it supposes, therefore, not a mere addition of knowledge, but a transformation of character and an altered view of all the theories which have been embodied in religious and ethical philosophy. he overlooks, too, considerations which would be essential to a complete statement. a population which is too prudent may suffer itself to be crowded out by more prolific races in the general struggle for existence; and cases may be suggested such as that of the american colonies, in which an increase of numbers might be actually an advantage by facilitating a more efficient organisation of labour. the absence of a distinct appreciation of such difficulties gives to his speculation that one-sided character which alienated his more sentimental contemporaries. it was natural enough in a man who was constantly confronted by the terrible development of pauperism in england, and was too much tempted to assume that the tendency to reckless propagation was not only a very grave evil, but the ultimate source of every evil. the doctrine taken up in this unqualified fashion by some of his disciples, and preached by them with the utmost fervour as the one secret of prosperity, shocked both the conservative and orthodox whose prejudices were trampled upon, and such radicals as inherited godwin's or condorcet's theory of perfectibility. harsh and one-sided as it might be, however, we may still hold that it was of value, not only in regard to the most pressing difficulty of the day, but also as calling attention to a vitally important condition of social welfare. the question, however, recurs whether, when the doctrine is so qualified as to be admissible, it does not also become a mere truism. an answer to this question should begin by recognising one specific resemblance between his speculations and darwin's. facts, which appear from an older point of view to be proofs of a miraculous interposition, become with malthus, as with darwin, the normal results of admitted conditions. godwin had admitted that there was some 'principle which kept population on a level with subsistence.' 'the sole question is,' says malthus,[ ] 'what is this principle? is it some obscure and occult cause? a mysterious interference of heaven,' inflicting barrenness at certain periods? or 'a cause open to our researches and within our view?' other writers had had recourse to the miraculous. one of malthus's early authorities was süssmilch, who had published his _göttliche ordnung_ in , to show how providence had taken care that the trees should not grow into the sky. the antediluvians had been made long-lived in order that they might have large families and people an empty earth, while life was divinely shortened as the world filled up. süssmilch, however, regarded population as still in need of stimulus. kings might help providence. a new trajan would deserve to be called the father of his people, if he increased the marriage-rate. malthus replies that the statistics which the worthy man himself produced showed conclusively that the marriages depended upon the deaths. the births fill up the vacancies, and the prince who increased the population before vacancies arose would simply increase the rate of mortality.[ ] if you want to increase your birth-rate without absolutely producing famine, as he remarks afterwards,[ ] make your towns unhealthy, and encourage settlement by marshes. you might thus double the mortality, and we might all marry prematurely without being absolutely starved. his own aim is not to secure the greatest number of births, but to be sure that the greatest number of those born may be supported.[ ] the ingenious m. muret, again, had found a swiss parish in which the mean life was the highest and the fecundity smallest known. he piously conjectures that it may be a law of god that 'the force of life in each country should be in the inverse ratio of its fecundity.' he needs not betake himself to a miracle, says malthus.[ ] the case is simply that in a small and healthy village, where people had become aware of the importance of the 'preventive check,' the young people put off marriage till there was room for them, and consequently both lowered the birth-rate and raised the average duration of life. nothing, says malthus very forcibly, has caused more errors than the confusion between 'relative and positive, and between cause and effect.'[ ] he is here answering the argument that because the poor who had cows were the most industrious, the way to make them industrious was to give them cows. malthus thinks it more probable that industry got the cow than that the cow produced industry. this is a trifling instance of a very general truth. people had been content to notice the deaths caused by war and disease, and to infer at once that what caused death must diminish population. malthus shows the necessity of observing other collateral results. the gap may be made so great as to diminish population; but it may be compensated by a more rapid reproduction; or, the rapidity of reproduction may itself be the cause of the disease; so that to remove one kind of mortality may be on some occasion to introduce others. the stream is dammed on one breach to flow more strongly through other outlets.[ ] this is, i conceive, to say simply that malthus was introducing a really scientific method. the facts taken in the true order became at once intelligible instead of suggesting mysterious and irregular interferences. earlier writers had been content to single out one particular set of phenomena without attending to its place in the more general and complex processes, of which they formed an integral part. infanticide, as hume had pointed out, might tend to increase population.[ ] in prospect, it might encourage people to have babies; and when babies came, natural affection might prevent the actual carrying out of the intention. to judge of the actual effect, we have to consider the whole of the concrete case. it may be carried out, as apparently in the south sea islands, so generally as to limit population; or it may be, as in china, an indication that the pressure is so great that a number of infants become superfluous. its suppression might, in the one case, lead to an increase of the population; in the other, to the increase of other forms of mortality. malthus's investigations illustrate the necessity of referring every particular process to its place in the whole system, of noting how any given change might set up a set of actions and reactions in virtue of the general elasticity of population, and thus of constantly referring at every step to the general conditions of human life. he succeeded in making many points clear, and of showing how hastily many inferences had been drawn. he explained, for example, why the revolutionary wars had not diminished the population of france, in spite of the great number of deaths,[ ] and thus gave an example of a sound method of inquiry which has exercised a great influence upon later observers. malthus was constantly misunderstood and misrepresented, and his opponents often allege as fatal objections to his doctrine the very facts by which it was really supported. but we may, i think, say, that since his writing no serious economical writer has adopted the old hasty guesses, or has ventured to propose a theory without regard to the principles of which he first brought out the full significance. v. political application this i take to indicate one real and permanent value of malthus's writings. he introduced a new method of approaching the great social problems. the value of the method may remain, however inaccurate may be the assumptions of facts. the 'tendency,' if interpreted to mean that people are always multiplying too rapidly, may be a figment. if it is taken as calling attention to one essential factor in the case, it is a most important guide to investigation. this brings out another vital point. the bearing of the doctrine upon the political as well as upon the economical views of the utilitarians is of conspicuous importance. malthus's starting-point, as we have seen, was the opposition to the doctrine of 'perfectibility.' hard facts, which godwin and condorcet had neglected, were fatal to their dreams. you have, urged malthus, neglected certain undeniable truths as to the unalterable qualities of human nature, and, therefore, your theories will not work. the revolutionists had opposed an ideal 'state of nature' to the actual arrangements of society. they imagined that the 'state of nature' represented the desirable consummation, and that the constitution of the 'natural' order could be determined from certain abstract principles. the equality of man, and the absolute rights which could be inferred by a kind of mathematical process, supplied the necessary dogmatic basis. the antithesis to the state of nature was the artificial state, marked by inequality, and manifesting its spirit by luxury. kings, priests, and nobles had somehow established this unnatural order; and to sweep them away summarily was the way of bringing the natural order into full activity. the ideal system was already potentially in existence, and would become actual when men's minds were once cleared from superstition, and the political made to correspond to the natural rights of man. to this malthus had replied, as we have seen, that social inequality was not a mere arbitrary product of fraud and force, but an expedient necessary to restrain the primitive instincts of mankind. he thus coincides with bentham's preference of 'security' to 'equality,' and illustrates the real significance of that doctrine. property and marriage, though they involve inequality, were institutions of essential importance. godwin had pushed his theories to absolute anarchy; to the destruction of all law, for law in general represented coercion or an interference with the state of nature. malthus virtually asserted that the metaphysical doctrine was inapplicable because, men being what they are, these conclusions were incompatible with even the first stages of social progress. this means, again, that for the metaphysical method malthus is substituting a scientific method. instead of regarding all government as a kind of mysterious intervention from without, which has somehow introduced a fatal discord into the natural order, he inquires what are the facts; how law has been evolved; and for what reason. his answer is, in brief, that law, order, and inequality have been absolutely necessary in order to limit tendencies which would otherwise keep men in a state of hopeless poverty and depression. this gives the 'differentia' of the utilitarian considered as one species of the genus 'radical.' malthus's criticism of paine is significant.[ ] he agrees with paine that the cause of popular risings is 'want of happiness.' but paine, he remarks, was 'in many important points totally ignorant of the structure of society'; and has fallen into the error of attributing all want of happiness to government. consequently, paine advocates a plan for distributing taxes among the poorest classes, which would aggravate the evils a hundredfold. he fully admits with paine that man has rights. the true line of answer would be to show what those rights are. to give this answer is not malthus's present business; but there is one right, at any rate, which a man does not and cannot possess: namely, the 'right to subsistence when his labour will not fairly purchase it.' he does not possess it because he cannot possess it; to try to secure it is to try to 'reverse the laws of nature,' and therefore to produce cruel suffering by practising an 'inhuman deceit.' the abbé raynal had said that a man had a right to subsist 'before all social laws.' man had the same right, replied malthus, as he had to live a hundred or a thousand years. he may live, _if he can_ without interfering with others. social laws have, in fact, enlarged the power of subsistence; but neither before nor after their institution could an unlimited number subsist. briefly, the question of fact comes before the question of right, and the fault of the revolutionary theorists was to settle the right without reference to the possibility of making the right correspond to the fact. hence malthus draws his most emphatic political moral. the admission that all evil is due to government is the way to tyranny. make men believe that government is the one cause of misery, and they will inevitably throw the whole responsibility upon their rulers; seek for redress by cures which aggravate the disease; and strengthen the hands of those who prefer even despotism to anarchy. this, he intimates, is the explanation of the repressive measures in which the country-gentlemen had supported pitt. the people had fancied that by destroying government they would make bread cheap; government was forced to be tyrannical in order to resist revolution; while its supporters were led to 'give up some of the most valuable privileges of englishmen.'[ ] it is then of vital importance to settle what is and what is not to be set down to government. malthus, in fact, holds that the real evils are due to underlying causes which cannot be directly removed, though they may be diminished or increased, by legislators. government can do something by giving security to property, and by making laws which will raise the self-respect of the lower classes. but the effect of such laws must be slow and gradual; and the error which has most contributed to that delay in the progress of freedom, which is 'so disheartening to every liberal mind,'[ ] is the confusion as to the true causes of misery. thus, as he has already urged, professed economists could still believe, so long after the publication of adam smith's work, that it was 'in the power of the justices of the peace or even of the omnipotence of parliament to alter by a _fiat_ the whole circumstances of the country.'[ ] yet men who saw the absurdity of trying to fix the price of provisions were ready to propose to fix the rate of wages. they did not see that one term of the proportion implied the other. malthus's whole criticism of the poor-law, already noticed, is a commentary upon this text. it is connected with a general theory of human nature. the author of nature, he says, has wisely made 'the passion of self-love beyond expression stronger than the passion of benevolence.'[ ] he means, as he explains, that every man has to pursue his own welfare and that of his family as his primary object. benevolence, of course, is the 'source of our purest and most refined pleasures,' and so forth; but it should come in as a supplement to self-love. therefore we must never admit that men have a strict right to relief. that is to injure the very essential social force. 'hard as it may seem in individual instances, dependent poverty ought to be held disgraceful.'[ ] the spirit of independence or self-help is the one thing necessary. 'the desire of bettering our condition and the fear of making it worse, like the _vis medicatrix_ in physics, is the _vis medicatrix naturae_ in politics, and is continually counteracting the disorders arising from narrow human institutions.'[ ] it is only because the poor-laws have not quite destroyed it, that they have not quite ruined the country. the pith of malthus's teaching is fairly expressed in his last letter to senior.[ ] he holds that the improvement in the condition of the great mass of the labouring classes should be considered as the main interest of society. to improve their condition, it is essential to impress them with the conviction that they can do much more for themselves than others can do for them, and that the _only_ source of permanent improvement is the improvement of their moral and religious habits. what government can do, therefore, is to maintain such institutions as may strengthen the _vis medicatrix_, or 'desire to better our condition,' which poor-laws had directly tended to weaken. he maintains in his letter to senior, that this desire is 'perfectly feeble' compared with the tendency of the population to increase, and operates in a very slight degree upon the great mass of the labouring class.[ ] still, he holds that on the whole the 'preventive checks' have become stronger relatively to the positive,[ ] and, at any rate, all proposals must be judged by their tendency to strengthen the preventive. malthus was not a thoroughgoing supporter of the 'do-nothing' doctrine. he approved of a national system of education, and of the early factory acts, though only as applied to infant labour. so, as we shall see, did all the utilitarians. the 'individualism,' however, is not less decided; and leads him to speak as though the elasticity of population were not merely an essential factor in the social problem, but the sole principle from which all solutions must be deduced. he is thus led, as i have tried to show, to a narrow interpretation of his 'moral check.' he is apt to take 'vice' simply as a product of excessive pressure, and, in his general phrases at least, to overlook its reciprocal tendency to cause pressure. the 'moral check' is only preventive or negative, not a positive cause of superior vigour. a similar defect appears in his theory of the _vis medicatrix_. he was, i hold, perfectly right in emphasising the importance of individual responsibility. no reform can be permanent which does not raise the morality of the individual. his insistence upon this truth was of the highest importance, and it is to be wished that its importance might be more fully recognised to-day. the one-sidedness appears in his proposal to abolish the poor-law simply. that became the most conspicuous and widely accepted doctrine. all men of 'sense,' said sydney smith--certainly a qualified representative of the class--in , agree, first, that the poor-law must be abolished; and secondly, that it must be abolished very gradually.[ ] that is really to assume that by refusing to help people at all, you will force them to help themselves. there is another alternative, namely, that they may, as malthus himself often recognises, become demoralised by excessive poverty. to do simply nothing may lead to degeneration instead of increased energy. the possibility of an improved law, which might act as a moral discipline instead of a simply corrupting agency, is simply left out of account; and the tendency to stimulate reckless population is regarded not only as one probable consequence, but as the very essence of all poor-laws. upon malthus's assumptions, the statement that sound political and social theories must be based upon systematic inquiry into facts, meant that the individual was the ultimate unalterable unit, whose interest in his own welfare gave the one fulcrum for all possible changes. the ideal 'state of nature' was a fiction. the true basis of our inquiries is the actual man known to us by observation. the main fault of this being was the excess of the instinct of multiplication, and the way to improve him was to show how it might conflict with the instinct of self-preservation. in this shape the doctrine expressed the most characteristic tendency of the utilitarians, and divided them from the socialists or believers in abstract rights of man. vi. rent here, then, we are at a central point of the utilitarian creed. the expansive force of population is, in a sense, the great motive power which moulds the whole social structure; or, rather, it forces together the independent units, and welds them into an aggregate. the influence of this doctrine upon other economical speculations is of the highest importance. one critical stage in the process is marked by the enunciation of the theory of rent, which was to become another essential article of the true faith. the introduction of this doctrine is characteristic, and marks the point at which ricardo superseded malthus as chief expositor of the doctrine. malthus's views were first fully given in his _inquiry into rent_, the second of three pamphlets which he published during the corn-law controversy of - .[ ] the opinions now stated had, he says, been formed in the course of his lecturing at haileybury; and he made them public on account of their bearing upon the most absorbing questions of the time. the connection of the theory with malthus's speculations and with the contemporary difficulties is indeed obvious. the landlord had clearly one of the reserved seats at the banquet of nature. he was the most obvious embodiment of 'security' as opposed to equality. malthus, again, had been influenced by the french economists and their theory of the 'surplus fund,' provided by agriculture. according to them, as he says,[ ] this fund or rent constitutes the whole national wealth. in his first edition he had defended the economists against some of adam smith's criticisms; and though he altered his views and thought that they had been led into preposterous errors, he retained a certain sympathy for them. agriculture has still a certain 'pre-eminence.' god has bestowed upon the soil the 'inestimable quality of being able to maintain more persons than are necessary to work it.'[ ] it has the special virtue that the supply of necessaries generates the demand. make more luxuries and the price may fall; but grow more food and there will be more people to eat it. this, however, seems to be only another way of stating an unpleasant fact. the blessing of 'fertility' counteracts itself. as he argues in the essay,[ ] an equal division of land might produce such an increase of population as would exhaust any conceivable increase of food. these views--not, i think, very clear or consistently worked out--lead apparently to the conclusion that the fertility is indeed a blessing, but on condition of being confined to a few. the result, in any case, is the orthodox theory of rent. the labourer gets less than he would if the products of the soil were equally distributed. both wages and profits must fall as more is left to rent, and that this actually happens, he says, with unusual positiveness, is an 'incontrovertible truth.'[ ] the fall enables the less fertile land to be cultivated, and gives an excess of produce on the more fertile. 'this excess is rent.'[ ] he proceeds to expound his doctrine by comparing land to a set of machines for making corn.[ ] if, in manufacture, a new machine is introduced every one adopts it. in agriculture the worst machines have still to be used; and those who have the best and sell at the same price, can appropriate the surplus advantage. this, he declares, is a law 'as invariable as the action of the principle of gravity.'[ ] yet smith and others have overlooked a 'principle of the highest importance'[ ] and have failed to see that the price of corn, as of other things, must conform to the cost of production. the same doctrine was expounded in the same year by sir edward west;[ ] and, as it seems to me, more clearly and simply. west, like malthus, says that he has to announce a principle overlooked by adam smith. this is briefly that 'each equal additional quantity of work bestowed on agriculture yields an actually diminished return.' he holds that profits fall as wealth increases, but he denies adam smith's view that this is a simple result of increased competition.[ ] competition would equalise, but would not lower profits, for 'the productive powers of manufactures are constantly increasing.' in agriculture the law is the opposite one of diminishing returns. hence the admitted fall of profits shows that the necessity of taking inferior soils into cultivation is the true cause of the fall. such coincidences as that between malthus and west are common enough, for very obvious reasons. in this case, i think, there is less room for surprise than usual. the writer generally credited with the discovery of the rent doctrine is james anderson, who had stated it as early as .[ ] the statement, however, did not attract attention until at the time of west and malthus it was forced upon observers by the most conspicuous facts of the day. adam smith and other economists had, as malthus notices, observed what is obvious enough, that rent in some way represented a 'net produce'--a something which remained after paying the costs of production. so much was obvious to any common-sense observer. in a curious paper of december ,[ ] cobbett points out that the landlords will always keep the profits of farmers down to the average rate of equally agreeable businesses. this granted, it is a short though important step to the theory of rent. the english system had, in fact, spontaneously analysed the problem. the landlord, farmer, and labourer represented the three interests which might elsewhere be combined. prices raised by war and famine had led to the enclosure of wastes and the breaking up of pastures. the 'margin of cultivation' was thus illustrated by facts. farmers were complaining that they could not make a profit if prices were lowered. the landed classes were profiting by a rise of price raised, according to a familiar law, in greater proportion than the deficiency of the harvest. facts of this kind were, one must suppose, familiar to every land-agent; and to discover the law of rent, it was only necessary for malthus and west to put them in their natural order. the egg had only to be put on its end, though that, as we know, is often a difficult task. when the feat was accomplished consequences followed which were fully developed by ricardo. footnotes: [ ] mr. james bonar's _malthus and his work_ ( ) gives an admirable account of malthus. the chief original authorities are a life by bishop otter, prefixed to a second edition of the _political economy_ ( ), and an article by empson, malthus's colleague, in the _edinburgh review_ for january . [ ] _political justice_ ( rd edition, ), ii. bk. viii. chap. ix., p. . [ ] wallace wrote in answer to hume, _a dissertation on the numbers of mankind in ancient and modern times_ ( ), and _various prospects of mankind_, and _nature and providence_ ( ). godwin refers to the last. [ ] _political justice_, ii. . [ ] _ibid._ ii. . [ ] first published in , after the first edition, as godwin remarks, of the _political justice_. [ ] _ami des hommes_ (reprint of ), p. . [ ] _ami des hommes_, p. . [ ] see the curious debate in _parl. hist._ xiv. - . [ ] the seventh edition of price's _observations on reversionary payments_, etc. ( ), contains a correspondence with pitt (i. , etc.). the editor, w. morgan, accuses pitt of adopting price's plans without due acknowledgment and afterwards spoiling them. [ ] _essay on population_, p. . in _observations_, ii. , he estimates the diminution at a million and a half. other books referring to the same controversy are howlett's _examination of dr. price's essay_ ( ); _letter to lord carlisle_, by william eden ( - ), first lord auckland; william wales's _enquiry into present state of population_, etc. ( ); and geo. chalmers's _estimate of the comparative strength of great britain_ ( and several later editions). [ ] _essay_ (first edition), p. . [ ] _memoirs_, etc. ( ), ii. . [ ] so sir james stewart, whose light was extinguished by adam smith, begins his _enquiry into the principles of political economy_ ( ) by discussing the question of population, and compares the 'generative faculty' to a spring loaded with a weight, and exerting itself in proportion to the diminution of resistance (_works_, , i. ). he compares population to 'rabbits in a warren.' joseph townsend, in his _journey through spain_ ( ), to whom malthus refers, had discussed the supposed decay of the spanish population, and illustrates his principles by a geometric progression: see ii. - , - . eden, in his book on the poor (i. ), quotes a tract attributed to sir matthew hale for the statement that the poor increase on 'geometrical progression.' [ ] _malthus and his work_, p. . [ ] voltaire says in the _dictionnaire philosophique_ (art. 'population'): 'on ne propage point en progression géométrique. tous les calculs qu'on a faits sur cette prétendue multiplication sont des chimères absurdes.' they had been used to reconcile the story of the deluge with the admitted population of the world soon afterwards. [ ] _essay_ ( ), ii _n._ i cite from this, the last edition published in malthus's lifetime, unless otherwise stated. [ ] _essay_, ii. (bk. iii. ch. xiv.). [ ] _ibid._ ( ), p. . [ ] _essay_, ii. (appendix). [ ] _essay_, ii. (appendix). [ ] _ibid._ (second edition), p. . the passage is given in full in _malthus and his work_, p. . [ ] _essay_, i. (bk. ii. ch. x.). eden had made the same remark. [ ] _ibid._ ii. (bk. iii. ch. xiv.). [ ] correspondence in senior's _three essays on population_ ( ). [ ] _essay_, i. (bk. i. ch. ii.). [ ] mr. bonar thinks (_malthus and his work_, p. ) that malthus followed paley's predecessor, abraham tucker, rather than paley. the difference is not for my purpose important. in any case, malthus's references are to paley. [ ] _essay_, ii. (bk. iv. ch. i.). [ ] _essay_ (first edition), p. . [ ] _ibid._ i. _n._ (bk. i. ch. ii.). [ ] see _e.g._ his remarks upon condorcet in _essay_, ii. (bk. iii. ch. i.); and owen in _ibid._ ii. (bk. iii ch. ii.). [ ] _essay_, i. _n._ (bk. i. ch. ii.); and see _ibid._ (edit. of ) ii. . [ ] _ibid._ ( ) ii. . [ ] _ibid._ ( ) ii. (bk. ii. ch. ii.). (omitted in later editions.) [ ] mr. a. r. wallace, darwin's fellow-discoverer of the doctrine, also learned it from malthus. see clodd's _pioneers of evolution_. malthus uses the phrase 'struggle for existence' in relation to a fight between two savage tribes in the first edition of his _essay_, p. . in replying to condorcet, malthus speaks (_essay_, ii. , bk. iii. ch. i.) of the possible improvement of living organisms. he argues that, though a plant may be improved, it cannot be indefinitely improved by cultivation. a carnation could not be made as large as a tulip. it has been said that this implies a condemnation by anticipation of theories of the development of species. this is hardly correct. malthus simply urges against condorcet that our inability to fix limits precisely does not imply that there are no limits. this, it would seem, must be admitted on all hands. evolution implies definite though not precisely definable limits. life may be lengthened, but not made immortal. [ ] _essay_ (first edition), . [ ] _ibid._ _n._ (bk. iii. ch. iii.) [ ] _essay_, ii. - (bk. iv. ch. i. and ii.). sumner's _treatise on the records of the creation, and on the moral attributes of the creator: with particular reference to the jewish history and the consistency of the principle of population with the wisdom and goodness of the creator_ ( ), had gained the second burnett prize. it went through many editions; and shows how cuvier confirms genesis, and malthus proves that the world was intended to involve a competition favourable to the industrious and sober. sumner's view of malthus is given in part ii., chaps, v. and vi. in previous chapters he has supported malthus's attack on godwin and condorcet. [ ] _essay_, ii. (bk. iv. ch. i.). [ ] _essay_, ii (bk. iv. ch. i.). [ ] _ibid._ (bk. iv. ch. ii.). [ ] _essay_, (bk. iii. ch. iv.). [ ] _ibid._ ii. (bk. iii. ch. xiv.). [ ] _ibid._ ii. (bk. iv. ch. iv.). [ ] _ibid._ ii. (bk. iv. ch. xiii.). malthus expresses a hope that paley had modified his views upon population, and refers to a passage in the _natural theology_. [ ] _essay_, ii. (bk. iv. ch. iv.). [ ] _political economy_ ( ), p. . [ ] _essay_, ii. (bk. iv. ch. iv.). [ ] _ibid._ ii. (bk. iii. ch. vi.). [ ] _ibid._ ii. (bk. iii. ch. vi.). [ ] _essay_, ii. (bk. iii. ch. vi.). [ ] _ibid._ ii. (bk. iv. ch. viii.). [ ] _ibid._ ii. (bk. iv. ch. x.). [ ] _ibid._ ii. (bk. iv. ch. ix.). [ ] _essay_, ii. (bk. iv. ch. ix.). [ ] _ibid._ ii. (bk. iv. ch. xii.). [ ] _ibid._ ii. (bk. iv. ch. xi.). [ ] _ibid._ ii. (bk. iv. ch. xiii.). [ ] _essay of _ (bk. iii. ch. ii., and vol. ii. p. ). the phrases quoted are toned down in later editions. [ ] _essay_, i. (bk. ii. ch. iv.). [ ] _ibid._ ii. (bk. iv. ch. v.). [ ] _ibid._ ii. (bk. iv. ch. xiii.). [ ] _ibid._ i. (bk. ii. ch. v.). [ ] _essay_, ii. (bk. iv. ch. xiii.). [ ] _ibid._ ii. (bk. iv. ch. v.). [ ] _essay_, i. (bk. i. ch. v.). [ ] _ibid._ (bk. ii. ch. vi.). [ ] _essay_, ii. (bk. iv. ch. vi.). [ ] _essay_, ii. (bk. iv. ch. v.). [ ] _ibid._ ii. (bk. iv. ch. vi.). [ ] _ibid._ ii. (bk. iii. ch. v.). [ ] _essay_, ii. (appendix). [ ] _ibid._ ii. (bk. iii. ch. vi.). [ ] _ibid._ ii. (bk. iii. ch. vi.). [ ] senior's _three lectures_, p. . [ ] senior's _three lectures_, p. . [ ] _essay_, i. (bk. ii. ch. xiii.). [ ] smith's _works_ ( ), i. . [ ] _observations on the effects of the corn-laws, ; inquiry into the nature and progress of rent, _; and _the grounds of an opinion on the policy of restricting the importation of foreign corn_, intended as an appendix to the _observations on the corn-laws_, . [ ] _inquiry into rent_, p. . [ ] _ibid._ p. . [ ] _essay_, ii. (bk. iii. ch. ii.). [ ] _inquiry into rent_, p. . [ ] _ibid._ p. . [ ] _ibid._ p. . [ ] _inquiry into rent_, p. . [ ] _ibid._ p. . [ ] _essay on the application of capital to land, by a fellow of university college, oxford, ._ [ ] _essay_, p. . [ ] _in an inquiry into the nature of the corn-laws_, and again ( ) in _observations on agriculture_, etc., vol. v. - . [ ] _political works_, i. , etc. in this paper, i may add, cobbett, not yet a radical, accepts malthus's view of the tendency of the human species to multiply more quickly than its support. he does not mention malthus, but speaks of the belief as universally admitted, and afterwards illustrates it amusingly by saying that, in his ploughboy days, he used to wonder that there was always just enough hay for the horses and enough horses for the hay. chapter v ricardo i. ricardo's starting-point david ricardo,[ ] born th april , was the son of a dutch jew who had settled in england, and made money upon the stock exchange. ricardo had a desultory education, and was employed in business from his boyhood. he abandoned his father's creed, and married an englishwoman soon after reaching his majority. he set up for himself in business, and, at a time when financial transactions upon an unprecedented scale were giving great opportunities for speculators, he made a large fortune, and about bought an estate at gatcombe park, gloucestershire. he withdrew soon afterwards from business, and in became member of parliament. his death on th september cut short a political career from which his perhaps too sanguine friends anticipated great results. his influence in his own department of inquiry had been, meanwhile, of the greatest importance. he had shown in his youth some inclination for scientific pursuits; he established a laboratory, and became a member of scientific societies. the perusal of adam smith's _wealth of nations_ in gave him an interest in the application of scientific methods to the questions with which he was most conversant. accepting adam smith as the leading authority, he proceeded to think out for himself certain doctrines, which appeared to him to have been insufficiently recognised by his teacher. the first result of his speculations was a pamphlet published in upon the depreciation of the currency. upon that topic he spoke as an expert, and his main doctrines were accepted by the famous bullion committee. ricardo thus became a recognised authority on one great set of problems of the highest immediate interest. malthus's _inquiry into rent_ suggested another pamphlet; and in , encouraged by the warm pressure of his friend, james mill, he published his chief book, the _principles of political economy and taxation_. this became the economic bible of the utilitarians. the task of a commentator or interpreter is, for various reasons, a difficult one. there is a certain analogy between ricardo and a very different writer, bishop butler. each of them produced a great effect by a short treatise, and in each case the book owed very little to the ordinary literary graces. ricardo's want of literary training, or his natural difficulty of utterance, made his style still worse than butler's; but, like butler, he commands our respect by his obvious sincerity and earnestness. he is content when he has so expressed his argument that it can be seized by an attentive reader. he is incapable of, or indifferent to, clear and orderly exposition of principles. the logic is there, if you will take the trouble to look for it. perhaps we ought to be flattered by this tacit reliance upon our patience. 'you,' ricardo, like butler, seems to say to us, 'are anxious for truth: you do not care for ornament, and may be trusted to work out the full application of my principles.' in another respect the two are alike. butler's argument has impressed many readers as a demolition of his own case. it provokes revolt instead of adhesion. ricardo, an orthodox economist, laid down principles which were adopted by socialists to upset his own assumptions. such a god as you worship, said butler's opponents, is an unjust being, and therefore worse than no god. such a system as you describe, said ricardo's opponents, is an embodiment of injustice, and therefore to be radically destroyed. admitting the logic, the argument may be read as a _reductio ad absurdum_ in both cases. ricardo has involved himself in certain special difficulties. in the first place, he presupposes familiarity with adam smith. the _principles_ is a running comment upon some of smith's theories, and no attempt is made to reduce them to systematic order. he starts by laying down propositions, the proof of which comes afterwards, and is then rather intimated than expressly given. he adopts the terminology which smith had accepted from popular use,[ ] and often applies it in a special significance, which is at least liable to be misunderstood by his readers, or forgotten by himself. it is difficult, again, to feel sure whether some of his statements are to be taken as positive assertions of fact, or merely as convenient assumptions for the purposes of his argument. ricardo himself, as appears in his letters, was painfully aware of his own awkwardness of expression, and upon that point alone all his critics seem to be in tolerable agreement. happily, it will be enough for my purpose if i can lay down his essential premises without following him to the remoter deductions. ricardo's pamphlet upon malthus ( ) gives a starting-point. ricardo cordially adopts malthus's theory of rent, but declares that it is fatal to some of malthus's conclusions. malthus, we have seen, wished to regard rent as in some sense a gift of providence--a positive blessing due to the fertility of the soil. ricardo maintains, on the contrary, that 'the interest of the landlord is necessarily opposed to the interest of every other class in the community.'[ ] the landlord is prosperous when corn is scarce and dear; all other persons when it is plentiful and cheap. this follows upon malthus's own showing. as men are forced to have recourse to inferior soils, the landlord obtains a larger share of the whole produce; and, moreover, since corn also becomes more valuable, will have a larger share of a more valuable product. the question apparently in dispute--whether we should be glad that some land is better than the worst, or sorry because all is not equal to the best--seems rather idle. the real question, however, is whether rent, being a blessing, should be kept up by protection,[ ] or, being a curse, should be brought down by competition? what is the real working of the system? set the trade free, says ricardo, and the capital will be withdrawn from the poor land and employed upon manufactures, to be exchanged for the corn of other countries.[ ] the change must correspond to a more advantageous distribution of capital, or it would not be adopted. the principle involved in this last proposition is, he adds, one of the 'best established in the science of political economy, and by no one is more readily admitted than by mr. malthus.' to enforce protection would be, on malthus's illustration, to compel us to use the 'worst machines, when, at a less expense, we could hire the very best from our neighbours.'[ ] briefly, then, the landlord's interest is opposed to the national interest, because it enforces a worse distribution of capital. he compels us to get corn from his worst land, instead of getting it indirectly, but in greater quantity, from our spinning-jennies. for ricardo, as for malthus, the ultimate driving force is the pressure of population. the mass of mankind is always struggling to obtain food, and is able to multiply so rapidly as to exhaust any conceivable increase of supplies. the landlord class alone profits. the greater the struggle for supply the greater will be the share of the whole produce which must be surrendered to it. beyond this, however, lies the further problem which specially occupied ricardo. how will the resulting strain affect the relations of the two remaining classes, the labourers and the capitalists? the ultimate evil of protection is the bad distribution of capital. but capital always acts by employing labour. the farmer's capital does not act by itself, but by enabling his men to work. hence, to understand the working of the industrial machinery, we have to settle the relation of wages and profits. ricardo states this emphatically in his preface. rent, profit, and wages, he says, represent the three parts into which the whole produce of the earth is divided. 'to determine the laws which regulate this distribution is the principal problem in political economy'; and one, he adds, which has been left in obscurity by previous writers.[ ] his investigations are especially directed by the purpose thus defined. he was the first writer who fairly brought under distinct consideration what he held, with reason, to be the most important branch of economical inquiry. there was clearly a gap in the economic doctrine represented by the _wealth of nations_. adam smith was primarily concerned with the theory of the 'market.' he assumes the existence of the social arrangement which is indicated by that phrase. the market implies a constitution of industrial agencies such that, within it, only one price is possible for a given commodity, or, rather, such that a difference of price cannot be permanent. according to the accepted illustration, the sea is not absolutely level, but it is always tending to a level.[ ] a permanent elevation at one point is impossible. the agency by which this levelling or equilibrating process is carried out is competition, involving what smith called the 'higgling of the market.' the momentary fluctuation, again, supposes the action of 'supply and demand,' which, as they vary, raise and depress prices. to illustrate the working of this machinery, to show how previous writers had been content to notice a particular change without following out the collateral results, and had thus been led into fallacies such as that of the 'mercantile system,' was smith's primary task. beyond or beneath these questions lie difficulties, which smith, though not blind to their existence, treated in a vacillating and inconsistent fashion. variations of supply and demand cause fluctuations in the price; but what finally determines the point to which the fluctuating prices must gravitate? we follow the process by which one wave propagates another; but there is still the question, what ultimately fixes the normal level? upon this point ricardo could find no definite statement in his teacher. 'supply and demand' was a sacred phrase which would always give a verbal answer, or indicate the immediate cause of variations on the surface. beneath the surface there must be certain forces at work which settle why a quarter of corn 'gravitates' to a certain price; why the landlord can get just so many quarters of corn for the use of his fields; and why the produce, which is due jointly to the labourer and the farmer, is divided in a certain fixed proportion. to settle such points it is necessary to answer the problem of distribution, for the play of the industrial forces is directed by the constitution of the classes which co-operate in the result. ricardo saw in malthus's doctrines of rent and of population a new mode of approaching the problem. what was wanted, in the first place, was to systematise the logic adopted by his predecessors. rent, it was clear, could not be both a cause and an effect of price, though at different points of his treatise smith had apparently accepted each view of the relation. we must first settle which is cause and which effect; and then bring our whole system into the corresponding order. for the facts, ricardo is content to trust mainly to others. the true title of his work should be that which his commentator, de quincey, afterwards adopted, the _logic of political economy_. this aim gives a partial explanation of the characteristic for which ricardo is most generally criticised. he is accused of being abstract in the sense of neglecting facts. he does not deny the charge. 'if i am too theoretical (which i really believe to be the case) you,' he says to malthus, 'i think, are too practical.'[ ] if malthus is more guided than ricardo by a reference to facts, he has of course an advantage. but so far as malthus or adam smith theorised--and, of course, their statement of facts involved a theory--they were at least bound to be consistent. it is one thing to recognise the existence of facts which your theory will not explain, and to admit that it therefore requires modification. it is quite another thing to explain each set of facts in turn by theories which contradict each other. that is not to be historical but to be muddleheaded. malthus and smith, as it seemed to ricardo, had occasionally given explanations which, when set side by side, destroyed each other. he was therefore clearly justified in the attempt to exhibit these logical inconsistencies and to supply a theory which should be in harmony with itself. he was so far neither more nor less 'theoretical' than his predecessors, but simply more impressed by the necessity of having at least a consistent theory. there was never a time at which logic in such matters was more wanted, or its importance more completely disregarded. rash and ignorant theorists were plunging into intricate problems and propounding abstract solutions. the enormous taxation made necessary by the war suggested at every point questions as to the true incidence of the taxes. who really gained or suffered by the protection of corn? were the landlords, the farmers, or the labourers directly interested? could they shift the burthen upon other shoulders or not? what, again, it was of the highest importance to know, was the true 'incidence' of tithes, of a land-tax, of the poor-laws, of an income-tax, and of all the multitudinous indirect taxes from which the national income was derived? the most varying views were held and eagerly defended. who really paid? that question interested everybody, and occupies a large part of ricardo's book. the popular answers involved innumerable inconsistencies, and were supported by arguments which only required to be confronted in order to be confuted. ricardo's aim was to substitute a clear and consistent theory for this tangle of perplexed sophistry. in that sense his aim was in the highest degree 'practical,' although he left to others the detailed application of his doctrines to the actual facts of the day. ii. the distribution problem the rent doctrine gives one essential datum. a clear comprehension of rent is, as he was persuaded, 'of the utmost importance to political economy.'[ ] the importance is that it enables him to separate one of the primary sources of revenue from the others. it is as though, in the familiar illustration, we were considering the conditions of equilibrium of a fluid; and we now see that one part may be considered as a mere overflow, resulting from (not determining) the other conditions. the primary assumption in the case of the market is the level of price. when we clearly distinguish rent on one side from profits and wages on the other, we see that we may also assume a level of profits. there cannot, as ricardo constantly says, 'be two rates of profit,' that is, at the same time and in the same country. but so long as rent was lumped with other sources of revenue it was impossible to see, what malthus and west had now made clear, that in agriculture, as in manufactures, the profits of the producer must conform to the principle. given their theory, it follows that the power of land to yield a great revenue does not imply a varying rate of profit or a special bounty of nature bestowed upon agriculture. it means simply that, since the corn from the good and bad land sells at the same price, there is a surplus on the good. but as that surplus constitutes rent, the farmer's rate of profit will still be uniform. thus we have got rid of one complication, and we are left with a comparatively simple issue. we have to consider the problem, what determines the distribution as between the capitalist and the labourer? that is the vital question for ricardo. ricardo's theory, in the first place, is a modification of adam smith's. he accepts smith's statement that wages are determined by the 'supply and demand of labourers,' and by the 'price of commodities on which their wages are expended.'[ ] the appeal to 'supply and demand' implies that the rate of wages depends upon unchangeable economic conditions. he endorses[ ] malthus's statement about the absurdity of considering 'wages' as something which may be fixed by his majesty's 'justices of the peace,' and infers with malthus that wages should be left to find their 'natural level.' but what precisely is this 'natural level?' if the justice of the peace cannot fix the rate of wages, what does fix them? supply and demand? what, then, is precisely meant in this case by the supply and demand? the 'supply' of labour, we may suppose, is fixed by the actual labouring population at a given time. the 'demand,' again, is in some way clearly related to 'capital.' as smith again had said,[ ] the demand for labour increases with the 'increase of revenue and "stock," and cannot possibly increase without it.' ricardo agrees that 'population regulates itself by the funds which are to employ it, and therefore always increases or diminishes with the increase or diminution of capital.'[ ] it was indeed a commonplace that the increase of capital was necessary to an increase of population, as it is obvious enough that population must be limited by the means of subsistence accumulated. smith, for example, goes on to insist upon this in one of the passages which partly anticipates malthus.[ ] but this does not enable us to separate profit from wages, or solve ricardo's problem. when we speak of supply and demand as determining the price of a commodity, we generally have in mind two distinct though related processes. one set of people is growing corn, and another working coal mines. each industry, therefore, has a separate existence, though each may be partly dependent upon the other. but this is not true of labour and capital. they are not products of different countries or processes. they are inseparable constituents of a single process. labour cannot be maintained without capital, nor can capital produce without labour. capital, according to ricardo's definition, is the 'part of the wealth of a country which is employed in production, and consists of food, clothing, raw materials, machinery, etc., necessary to give effect to labour.'[ ] that part, then, of capital which is applied to the support of the labourer--his food, clothing, and so forth--is identical with wages. to say that, if it increases, his wages increase is to be simply tautologous. if, on the other hand, we include the machinery and raw materials, it becomes difficult to say in what sense 'capital' can be taken as a demand for labour. ricardo tells malthus that an accumulation of profit does not, as malthus had said, necessarily raise wages[ ]; and he ultimately decided, much to the scandal of his disciple, m'culloch, that an increase of 'fixed capital' or machinery might be actually prejudicial, under certain circumstances, to the labourer. the belief of the labouring class that machinery often injures them is not, he expressly says, 'founded on prejudice and error, but is conformable to the correct principles of political economy.'[ ] the word 'capital,' indeed, was used with a vagueness which covered some of the most besetting fallacies of the whole doctrine. ricardo himself sometimes speaks as though he had in mind merely the supply of labourers' necessaries, though he regularly uses it in a wider sense. the generalities, therefore, about supply and demand, take us little further. from these difficulties ricardo escapes by another method. malthus's theory of population gives him what he requires. the 'natural price of labour' (as distinguished from its 'market price') is, as he asserts, 'that price which is necessary to enable the labourers, one with another, to subsist and perpetuate their race without either increase or diminution.'[ ] this is the true 'natural price,' about which the 'market price' oscillates. an increase of capital may raise wages for a time above the natural price, but an increase of population will bring back the previous rate. ricardo warns us, indeed, that this natural price of labour is not to be regarded as something 'absolutely fixed and constant.'[ ] it varies in different times and countries, and even in the same country at different times. an english cottager now possesses what would once have been luxuries. ricardo admits again[ ] that the wages of different classes of labourers may be different, although he does not consider that this fact affects his argument. we may allow for it by considering the skilled labourer as or - / labourers rolled into one. the assumption enables him to get out of a vicious circle. he is seeking to discover the proportions in which produce will be divided between the two classes, and which co-operate in the production. the 'demand and supply' principle may show that an increase of capital will tend to increase wages, but even that tendency, as he carefully points out, can only be admitted subject to certain important reservations. in any case, if it explains temporary fluctuations, it will not ascertain the point round which the fluctuations take place. but the two variables, wages and profit, are clearly connected, and if we can once assume that one of these variables is fixed by an independent law, we may explain in what way the other will be fixed. having got rid of 'rent,' the remaining produce has to be divided between wages and profit. if the produce be fixed, the greater the share of the labourer the less will be the share of the capitalist, and _vice versa_. but the labourer's share again is determined by the consideration that it must be such as to enable him to keep up the population. the capitalist will get the surplus produce after allowing to the labourer the share so determined. everything turns ultimately upon this 'natural price'--the constant which underlies all the variations. one other point is implied. the population is limited, as we see, by the necessity of raising supplies of food from inferior soils. moreover, this is the sole limit. a different view had been taken which greatly exercised the orthodox economists. it was generally admitted that in the progress of society the rate of profit declined. adam smith explained this by arguing that, as capital increased, the competition of capitalists lowered the rate. to this it was replied (as by west) that though competition equalised profits, it could not fix the rate of profit. the simple increase of capital does not prove that it will be less profitably employed. the economists had constantly to argue against the terrible possibility of a general 'glut.' the condition of things at the peace had suggested this alarm. the mischief was ascribed to 'over-production' and not to misdirected production. the best cure for our evils, as some people thought, would be to burn all the goods in stock. on this version of the argument, it would seem that an increase of wealth might be equivalent to an increase of poverty. to confute the doctrine in this form, it was only necessary to have a more intelligent conception of the true nature of exchange. as james mill had argued in his pamphlet against spence, every increase of supply is also an increase of demand. the more there is to sell, the more there is to buy. the error involved in the theory of a 'glut' is the confusion between a temporary dislocation of the machinery of exchange, which can and will be remedied by a new direction of industry, and the impossible case of an excess of wealth in general.[ ] malthus never quite cleared his mind of this error, and ricardo had to argue the point with him. abundance of capital cannot by itself, he says, 'make capital less in demand.' the 'demand for capital is infinite.'[ ] the decline in the rate of profit, therefore, depends upon another cause. 'if, with every accumulation of profit, we could tack a piece of fresh fertile land to our island, profits would never fall.'[ ] fertile land, however, is limited. we have to resort to inferior soil, and therefore to employ capital at a less advantage. in the _principles_ he enforces the same doctrine with the help of say, who had shown 'most satisfactorily' that any amount of capital might be employed.[ ] if, in short, labour and capital were always equally efficient, there would be no limit to the amount producible. if the supply of food and raw materials can be multiplied, wealth can be multiplied to any amount. the admitted tendency of profits to fall must therefore be explained simply and solely by the growing difficulty of producing the food and the raw material. ricardo's doctrine, then, is malthus carried out more logically. take a nation in a state of industrial equilibrium. the produce of the worst soil just supports the labourer, and leaves a profit to the capitalist. the labourer gets just enough to keep up his numbers to the standard; the capitalist just enough profit to induce him to keep up the capital which supports the labourer. since there can be only one rate of wages and only one rate of profit, this fixes the shares into which the whole produce of the nation is divided, after leaving to the landlord the surplus produce of the more fertile soils. accepting this scheme as a starting-point, we get a method for calculating the results of any changes. we can see how a tax imposed upon rents or profits or wages will affect the classes which are thus related; how improvements in cultivation or machinery, or a new demand for our manufactures, will act, assuming the conditions implied in this industrial organisation; how, in short, any disturbance of the balance will work, so as to produce a new equilibrium. ricardo exerts all his ingenuity in working out the problem which, with the help of a few assumptions, becomes mathematical. the arithmetical illustrations which he employed for the purpose became a nuisance in the hands of his disciples. they are very useful as checks to general statements, but lend themselves so easily to the tacit introduction of erroneous assumptions as often to give a totally false air of precision to the results. happily i need not follow him into that region, and may omit any consideration of the logical value of his deductions. i must be content to say that, so far as he is right, his system gives an economic calculus for working out the ultimate result of assigned economic changes. the pivot of the whole construction is the 'margin of cultivation'--the point at which the food for a pressing population is raised at the greatest disadvantages. 'profits,' as he says,[ ] 'depend on high and low wages; wages on the price of necessaries; and the price of necessaries chiefly on the price of food, because all other requisites may be increased almost without limit.' ricardo takes the actual constitution of society for granted. the threefold division into landowners, capitalists, and labourers is assumed as ultimate. for him that is as much a final fact as to a chemist it is a final fact that air and water are composed of certain elements. each class represents certain economic categories. the landlord sits still and absorbs the overflow of wealth created by others. the labourer acts a very important but in one respect a purely passive part. his whole means of subsistence are provided by the capitalist, and advanced to him in the shape of wages. his share in the process is confined to multiplying up to a fixed standard. the capitalist is the really active agent. the labourer is simply one of the implements used in production. his wages are part of the capitalist's 'costs of production.' the capitalist virtually raises labourers, one may say, so long as raising them is profitable, just as he raises horses for his farm. ricardo, in fact, points out that in some cases it may be for the farmer's interest to substitute horses for men.[ ] if it be essential to any product that there should be a certain number of labourers or a certain number of horses, that number will be produced. but when the expense becomes excessive, and in the case of labourers that happens as worse soils have to be broken up for food, the check is provided through its effect upon the accumulation of capital. that, therefore, becomes the essential point. the whole aim of the legislator should be to give facilities for the accumulation of capital, and the way to do that is to abstain from all interference with the free play of the industrial forces. the test, for example, of the goodness of a tax--or rather of its comparative freedom from the evils of every tax--is that it should permit of accumulation by interfering as little as possible with the tendency of the capital to distribute itself in the most efficient way. iii. value and labour to solve the distribution problem, then, it is necessary to get behind the mere fluctuations of the market, and to consider what are the ultimate forces by which the market is itself governed. what effect has this upon the theory of the market itself? this leads to a famous doctrine. according to his disciple, m'culloch, ricardo's great merit was that he 'laid down the fundamental theorem of the science of value.' he thus cleared up what had before been an 'impenetrable mystery,' and showed the true relations of profit, wages, and prices.[ ] ricardo's theory of value, again, was a starting-point of the chief modern socialist theories. it marked, as has been said,[ ] the point at which the doctrine of the rights of man changes from a purely political to an economical theory. ricardo remarks in his first chapter that the vagueness of theories of value has been the most fertile source of economic errors. he admitted to the end of his life that he had not fully cleared up the difficulty. modern economists have refuted and revised and discussed, and, let us hope, now made everything quite plain. they have certainly shown that some of ricardo's puzzles implied confusions singular in so keen a thinker. that may serve as a warning against dogmatism. boys in the next generation will probably be asked by examiners to expose the palpable fallacies of what to us seem to be demonstrable truths. at any rate, i must try to indicate the critical point as briefly as possible. the word 'value,' in the first place, has varying meanings, which give an opportunity for writers of text-books to exhibit their powers of lucid exposition. the value of a thing in one sense is what it will fetch; the quantity of some other thing for which it is actually exchanged in the market. in that sense, as ricardo incidentally observes,[ ] the word becomes meaningless unless you can say what is the other thing. it is self-contradictory to speak as if a thing by itself could have a constant or any value. value, however, may take a different sense. it is the economic equivalent of the 'utility' of bentham's 'felicific calculus.' it means the 'lot of pleasure' which causes a thing to be desirable. if we could tell how many units of utility it contained we could infer the rate of exchange for other things. the value of anything 'in use' will correspond to the number of units of utility which it contains; and things which have the same quantity of 'utilities' will have the same 'exchangeable value.' ricardo can thus consider the old problem of finding 'an invariable measure of value.' he points out the difficulty of finding any particular thing which will serve the purpose, inasmuch as the relations of everything to everything else are constantly varying. he therefore proposes to make use of an imaginary measure. if gold were always produced under exactly the same circumstances, with the same labour and the same capital, it would serve approximately for a standard. accordingly he gives notice that, for the purposes of his book, he will assume this to be the case, and money to be 'invariable in value.'[ ] we can thus, on the one hand, compare values at different periods. a thing has the same value at all times which at all times requires 'the same sacrifice of toil and labour to produce it.'[ ] the 'sacrifice' measures the 'utility,' and we may assume that the same labour corresponds in all ages to the same psychological unit. but, on the other hand, at any given period things will exchange in proportion to the labour of producing them. this follows at once from ricardo's postulates. given the single rate of wages and profits, and assuming the capital employed to be in the same proportion, things must exchange in proportion to the quantity of labour employed; for if i got the same value by employing one labourer as you get by employing two, my profits would be higher. ricardo, indeed, has to allow for many complexities arising from the fact that very different quantities of capital are required in different industries; but the general principle is given by the simplest case. hence we have a measure of value, applicable at any given time and in comparing different times. it implies, again, what m'culloch sums up as the 'fundamental theorem,' that the value of 'freely produced commodities' depends on the quantity of labour required for their 'production.' what is made by two men is worth twice what is made by one man. that gives what m'culloch calls the 'clue to the labyrinth.' the doctrine leads to a puzzle. if i can measure the 'sacrifice,' can i measure the 'utility' which it gains? the 'utility' of an ounce of gold is not something 'objective' like its physical qualities, but varies with the varying wants of the employer. iron or coal may be used for an infinite variety of purposes and the utility will be different in each. the thing may derive part of its 'utility' from its relation to other things. the utility of my food is not really separate from the utility of my hat; for unless i eat i cannot wear hats. my desire for any object, again, is modified by all my other desires, and even if i could isolate a 'desire' as a psychological unit, it would not give me a fixed measure. twice the article does not give twice the utility; a double stimulus may only add a small pleasure or convert it into agony. these and other difficulties imply the hopelessness of searching for this chimerical unit of 'utility' when considered as a separate thing. it shifts and escapes from our hands directly we grasp it. ricardo discusses some of these points in his interesting chapter on 'value and riches.' gold, he says, may cost two thousand times more than iron, but it is certainly not two thousand times as useful.[ ] suppose, again, that some invention enables you to make more luxuries by the same labour, you increase wealth but not value. there will be, say, twice as many hats, but each hat may have half its former value. there will be more things to enjoy, but they will only exchange for the same quantity of other things. that is, he says, the amount of 'riches' varies, while the amount of value is fixed. this, according to him, proves that value does not vary with 'utility.' 'utility,' as he declares in his first chapter, is 'absolutely essential to value,' but it is 'not the measure of exchangeable value.'[ ] a solution of these puzzles may be sought in any modern text-book. ricardo escapes by an apparently paradoxical conclusion. he is undertaking an impossible problem when he starts from the buyers' desire of an 'utility.' therefore he turns from the buyers to the sellers. the seller has apparently a measurable and definable motive--the desire to make so much per cent. on his capital.[ ] ricardo, unfortunately, speaks as though the two parties to the bargain somehow represented mutually exclusive processes. 'supply and demand' determine the value of 'monopolised articles,' but the cost of other articles depends _not_ 'on the state of demand and supply,' _but_ 'on the increased or diminished cost of their production.'[ ] why 'not' and 'but'? if supply and demand corresponds to the whole play of motives which determines the bargain, this is like saying, according to the old illustration, that we must attribute the whole effect of a pair of scissors to one blade and not to the other. his view leads to the apparent confusion of taking for the cause of value not our desire for a thing, but the sacrifice we must make to attain it. bentham[ ] said, for example, that ricardo confused 'cost' with 'value.' the denial that utility must in some sense or other determine value perplexes an intelligible and consistent meaning. it is clearly true, upon his postulates, that the value of goods, other than 'monopolised,' must conform to the cost of production. he speaks as if he confounded a necessary condition with an 'efficient cause,' and as if one of two correlative processes could be explained without the other. but the fact that there is a conformity, however brought about, was enough for his purpose. the demand of buyers, he would say, determines the particular direction of production: it settles whether hats should be made of silk or beaver; whether we should grow corn or spin cotton. but the ultimate force is the capitalist's desire for profit. so long as he can raise labourers' necessaries by employing part of his capital, he can employ the labour as he chooses. he can always produce wealth; all the wealth produced can be exchanged, and the demand always be equal to the supply, since the demand is merely the other side of the supply. the buyer's tastes decide how the capital shall be applied, but does not settle how much wealth there shall be, only what particular forms it shall take. somehow or other it must always adjust itself so that the value of each particular kind shall correspond to the 'cost of production.' the cost of production includes the tools and the raw materials, which are themselves products of previous labour. all capital itself is ultimately the product of labour, and thus, as ricardo incidentally says, may be regarded as 'accumulated labour.'[ ] this phrase sums up the doctrine which underlies his theory of value and indicates its connection with the theory of distribution. ricardo had perceived that the supply and demand formula which would serve sufficiently in problems of exchange, or the fluctuations of market-price, could not be made to solve the more fundamental problem of distribution. we must look beneath the superficial phenomena and ask what is the nature of the structure itself: what is the driving force or the mainspring which works the whole mechanism. we seem, indeed, to be inquiring into the very origin of industrial organisation. the foundation of a sound doctrine comes from adam smith. smith had said that in a primitive society the only rule would be that things should exchange in proportion to the labour of getting them. if it cost twice as much labour to kill a beaver as to kill a deer, one beaver would be worth two deer. in accepting this bit of what smith's commentator, dugald stewart,[ ] calls 'theoretical' or 'conjectural' history, ricardo did not mean to state a historical fact. he was not thinking of actual choctaws or cherokees. the beaver was exchanged for the deer about the time when the primitive man signed the 'social contract.' he is a hypothetical person used for purposes of illustration and simplification. ricardo is not really dealing with the question of origins; but he is not the less implying a theory of structure. it did not matter that the 'social contract' was historically a figment; it would serve equally well to explain government. it did not matter that actual savages may have exchanged beavers and deer by the help of clubs instead of competition in the market. the industrial fabric is what would have been had it been thus built up. it can be constructed from base to summit by the application of his formula. as in the imaginary state of deer and beaver, we have a number of independent persons making their bargains upon this principle of the equivalence of labour; and that principle is supposed to be carried out so that the most remote processes of the industrial machinery can be analysed into results of this principle. this gives a sufficient clue to the whole labyrinth of modern industry, and there is no need of considering the extinct forms of social structure, which we know to have existed, and under which the whole system of distribution took place under entirely different conditions.[ ] a great change has taken place since the time of the deer and beaver: the capitalist has been developed, and has become the motive power. the labourer's part is passive; and the 'value' is fixed by the bargaining between the proprietors of 'accumulated labour,' forced by competition to make equal profits, instead of being fixed by the equitable bargain between the two hunters exchanging the products of their individual labour. essentially, however, the principle is the same. in the last as in the first stage of society, things are exchanged in proportion to the labour necessary to produce them. now it is plain enough that such a doctrine cannot lead to a complete solution of the problem of distribution. it would be a palpably inadequate account of historical processes which have determined the actual relation of classes. the industrial mechanism has been developed as a part of the whole social evolution; and, however important the economic forces, they have been inextricably blended with all the other forces by which a society is built up. for the same reason, ricardo's theorem would be inadequate 'sociologically,' or as a formula which would enable us to predict the future distribution of wealth. it omits essential factors in the process, and therefore supposes forces to act automatically and invariably which will in fact be profoundly modified in societies differently organised and composed of individuals differing in character. the very fundamental assumptions as to the elasticity of population, and the accumulation of capital as wages and profits fluctuate, are clearly not absolute truths. an increase of the capitalist's share, for example, at the expense of wages, may lead to the lowered efficiency of the labourer; and, instead of the compensating process supposed to result from the stimulus to accumulation, the actual result may be a general degeneration of the industry. or, again, the capacity of labourers to combine both depends and reacts upon their intelligence and moral character, and will profoundly modify the results of the general competition.[ ] such remarks, now familiar enough, are enough to suggest that a full explanation of the economic phenomena would require reference to considerations which lie beyond the proper sphere of the economist. yet the economist may urge that he is making a fair and perhaps necessary abstraction. he may consider the forces to be constant, although he may be fully aware that the assumption requires to be corrected when his formulæ are applied to facts. he may consider what is the play at any given time of the operations of the market, though the market organisation is itself dependent upon the larger organisation of which it is a product. he does not profess to deal in 'sociology,' but 'pure political economy.' in that more limited sphere he may accept ricardo's postulates. the rate of wages is fixed at any given moment by the 'labour market.' that is the immediate organ through which the adjustment is effected. wages rise and fall like the price of commodities, when for any reason the number of hirers or the number of purchasers varies. the 'supply and demand' formula, however, could not, as ricardo saw, be summarily identified with labour and capital. we must go behind the immediate phenomena to consider how they are regulated by the ultimate moving power. then, with the help of the theories of population and rent, we find that the wages are one product of the whole industrial process. we must look beyond the immediate market fluctuation to the effect upon the capitalists who constitute the market. the world is conceived as one great market, in which the motives of the capitalist supply the motive power; and the share which goes to the labourer is an incidental or collateral result of the working of the whole machinery. now, though the sociologist would say that this is quite inadequate for his purpose, and that we must consider the whole social structure, he may also admit that the scheme has a validity in its own sphere. it describes the actual working of the mechanism at any given time; and it may be that in ricardo's time it gave an approximate account of the facts. to make it complete, it requires to be set, so to speak, in a more general framework of theory; and we may then see that it cannot give a complete solution. still, as a consistent scheme which corresponds to the immediate phenomena, it helps us to understand the play of the industrial forces which immediately regulate the market. ricardo's position suggested a different line of reply. the doctrines that capital is 'accumulated labour' and that all value is in proportion to the labour fell in with the socialist theory. if value is created by labour, ought not 'labour' to possess what it makes? the right to the whole produce of labour seemed to be a natural conclusion. ricardo might answer that when i buy your labour, it becomes mine. i may consider myself to have acquired the rights of the real creator of the wealth, and to embody all the labourers, whose 'accumulated labour' is capital. still, there is a difficulty. the beaver and deer case has an awkward ethical aspect. to say that they are exchanged at such a rate seems to mean that they ought to be exchanged at the rate. this again implies the principle that a man has a right to what he has caught; that is, to the whole fruits of his labour. james mill, as we have seen, starts his political treatise by assuming this as obvious.[ ] he did not consider the possible inferences; for it is certainly a daring assumption that the principle is carried out by the economic system. according to ricardo rent is paid to men who don't labour at all. the fundholder was a weight upon all industry, and as dead a weight as the landlord. the capitalist, ricardo's social mainspring, required at least cross-examination. he represents 'accumulated labour' in some fashion, but it is not plain that the slice which he takes out of the whole cake is proportioned accurately to his personal labour. the right and the fact which coincided in the deer and beaver period have somehow come to diverge. here, then, we are at a point common to the two opposing schools. both are absolute 'individualists' in different senses. society is built up, and all industrial relations determined, by the competition of a multitude of independent atoms, each aiming at self-preservation. malthus's principle applies this to the great mass of mankind. systematically worked out, it has led to ricardo's identification of value with quantities of labour. keeping simply to the matter of fact, it shows how a small minority have managed to get advantages in the struggle, and to raise themselves upon the shoulders of the struggling mass. malthus shows that the resulting inequality prevents the struggle from lowering every one to starvation point. but the advantage was not obvious to the struggling mass which exemplified the struggle for existence. if equality meant not the initial facts but the permanent right, society was built upon injustice. apply the political doctrine of rights of man to the economic right to wealth, and you have the socialist doctrine of right to the whole produce of labour. it is true that it is exceedingly difficult to say what each man has created when he is really part of a complex machinery; but that is a problem to which socialists could apply their ingenuity. the real answer of the political economists was that although the existing order implied great inequalities of wealth it was yet essential to industrial progress, and therefore to an improvement in the general standard of comfort. this, however, was the less evident the more they insisted upon the individual interest. the net result seemed to be that by accident or inheritance, possibly by fraud or force, a small number of persons have got a much larger share of wealth than their rivals. ricardo may expound the science accurately; and, if so, we have to ask, what are the right ethical conclusions? for the present, the utilitarians seem to have considered this question as superfluous. they were content to take the existing order for granted; and the question remains how far their conclusions upon that assumption could be really satisfactory. iv. the classical political economy. ricardo had worked out the main outlines of the 'classical political economy': the system which to his disciples appeared to be as clear, consistent, and demonstrable as euclid; and which was denounced by their opponents as mechanical, materialistic, fatalistic, and degrading. after triumphing for a season, it has been of late years often treated with contempt, and sometimes banished to the limbo of extinct logomachies. it is condemned as 'abstract.' of all delusions on the subject, replies a very able and severe critic,[ ] there is none greater than the belief that it was 'wholly abstract and unpractical.' its merits lay in its treatment of certain special questions of the day; while in the purely scientific questions it was hopelessly confused and inconsistent. undoubtedly, as i have tried to point out, malthus and ricardo were reasoning upon the contemporary state of things. the doctrine started from observation of facts; it was too 'abstract' so far as it neglected elements in the concrete realities which were really relevant to the conclusions. one cause of confusion was the necessity of starting from the classification implied in ordinary phrases. it is exemplified by the vague use of such words as 'capital,' 'value,' 'supply and demand.' definitions, as is often remarked,[ ] come at the end of an investigation, though they are placed at the beginning of an exposition. when the primary conceptions to be used were still so shifting and contradictory as is implied in the controversies of the day, it is no wonder that the formulæ should be wanting in scientific precision. until we have determined what is meant by 'force' we cannot have a complete science of dynamics. the economists imagined that they had reached the goal before they had got rid of ambiguities hidden in the accepted terminology. meanwhile it will be enough if i try to consider broadly what was the nature of the body of statements which thus claimed to be an elaborated science. ricardo's purpose was to frame a calculus, to give a method of reasoning which will enable us to clinch our economic reasoning. we are to be sure that we have followed out the whole cycle of cause and effect. capitalists, landowners, labourers form parts of a rounded system, implying reciprocal actions and reactions. the imposition of a tax or a tariff implies certain changes in existing relations: that change involves other changes; and to trace out the total effect, we must understand what are the ultimate conditions of equilibrium, or what are the processes by which the system will adjust itself to the new conditions. to describe, again, the play of a number of reciprocal forces, we have to find what mathematicians call an 'independent variable': some one element in the changes on which all other changes will depend. that element, roughly speaking, ultimately comes out to be 'labour.' the simplicity of the system gave an impression both of clearness and certainty, which was transferred from the reasoning to the premises. the facts seemed to be established, because they were necessary to the system. the first step to an estimate of the value of the doctrine would be to draw up a statement of the 'postulates' implied. among them, we should have such formulæ as the single rate of profits and wages; which imply the 'transferability' of labour and capital, or the flow of either element to the best-paid employment. we should have again the malthusian doctrine of the multiplication of labour up to a certain standard; and the fact that scarcity means dearness and plenty cheapness. these doctrines at least are taken for granted; and it may perhaps be said that they are approximations which only require qualifications, though sometimes very important qualifications, to hold good of the society actually contemplated. they were true enough to give the really conclusive answer to many popular fallacies. the type of sophistry which ricardo specially assailed was that which results from neglecting the necessary implications of certain changes. the arguments for the old 'mercantile theory'--for 'protection' of industry, for the poor-law, for resisting the introduction of machinery, the fear of 'gluts' and all manner of doctrines about the currency--were really exposed by the economists upon the right grounds. it was absurd to suppose that by simply expanding the currency, or by making industry less efficient, or forcing it to the least profitable employments, you were increasing the national wealth; or to overlook the demoralising effects of a right to support because you resolved only to see the immediate benefits of charity to individuals. it is true, no doubt, that in some cases there might be other arguments, and that the economists were apt to take a narrow view of the facts. yet they decisively exploded many bad arguments, and by the right method of enforcing the necessity of tracing out the whole series of results. it was partly to their success in confuting absurd doctrines that their confidence was due; though the confidence was excessive when it was transferred to the axioms from which they professed to start. a doctrine may be true enough to expose an error, and yet not capable of yielding definite and precise conclusions. if i know that nothing can come out of nothing, i am on the way to a great scientific principle and able to confute some palpable fallacies; but i am still a very long way from understanding the principle of the 'conservation of energy.' the truth that scarcity meant dearness was apparently well known to joseph in egypt, and applied very skilfully for his purpose. economists have framed a 'theory of value' which explains more precisely the way in which this is brought about. a clear statement may be valuable to psychologists; but for most purposes of political economy joseph's knowledge is quite sufficient. it is the doctrine which is really used in practice whatever may be its ultimate justification. the postulates, however, were taken by the economists to represent something more than approximate statements of the fact. they imply certain propositions which might be regarded as axioms. men desire wealth and prefer their own interests. the whole theory might then be regarded as a direct deduction from the axioms. it thus seemed to have a kind of mathematical certainty. when facts failed to conform to the theory the difficulty could be met by speaking, as malthus spoke, of 'tendencies,' or by appealing to the analogy of 'friction' in mechanics. the excuse might be perfectly valid in some cases, but it often sanctioned a serious error. it was assumed that the formula was still absolutely true of something, and that the check or friction was a really separable and accidental interference. thus it became easy to discard, as irrelevant, objections which really applied to the principle itself, and to exaggerate the conformity between fact and theory. the economic categories are supposed to state the essential facts, and the qualifications necessary to make them accurate were apt to slip out of sight. ricardo,[ ] to mention a familiar instance, carefully points out that the 'economic rent,' which clearly represents an important economic category, is not to be confounded, as in 'popular' use, with the payments actually made, which often include much that is really profit. the distinction, however, was constantly forgotten, and the abstract formula summarily applied to the concrete fact. the economists had constructed a kind of automaton which fairly represented the actual working of the machinery. but then, each element of their construction came to represent a particular formula, and to represent nothing else. the landlord is simply the receiver of surplus value; the capitalist the one man who saves, and who saves in proportion to profit; and the labourer simply the embodiment of malthus's multiplying tendency. then the postulates as to the ebb and flow of capital and labour are supposed to work automatically and instantaneously. ricardo argues that a tax upon wages will fall, not, as buchanan thought, upon the labourer, nor, as adam smith thought, upon rent, but upon profits; and his reason is apparently that if wages were 'lowered the requisite population would not be kept up.'[ ] the labourer is able to multiply or diminish so rapidly that he always conforms at once to the required standard. this would seem to neglect the consideration that, after all, some time is required to alter the numbers of a population, and that other changes of a totally different character may be meanwhile set up by rises and falls of wages. ricardo, as his letters show,[ ] was well aware of the necessity of making allowance for such considerations in applying his theorems. he simplified the exposition by laying them down too absolutely; and the doctrine, taken without qualification, gives the 'economic man,' who must be postulated to make the doctrine work smoothly. the labourer is a kind of constant unit--absolutely fixed in his efficiency, his wants, and so forth; and the same at one period as at another, except so far as he may become more prudent, and therefore fix his 'natural price' a little higher. an 'iron law' must follow when you have invented an iron unit. in short, when society is represented by this hypothetical mechanism, where each man is an embodiment of the required formula, the theory becomes imperfect so far as society is made up of living beings, varying, though gradually, in their whole character and attributes, and forming part of an organised society incomparably too complex in its structure to be adequately represented by the three distinct classes, each of which is merely a formula embodied in an individual man. the general rules may be very nearly true in a great many cases, especially on the stock-exchange; but before applying them to give either a history or a true account of the actual working of concrete institutions, a much closer approximation must be made to the actual data. i need not enlarge, however, upon a topic which has been so often expounded. i think that at present the tendency is rather to do injustice to the common-sense embodied in this system, to the soundness of its aims, and to its value in many practical and immediate questions, than to overestimate its claim to scientific accuracy. that claim may be said to have become obsolete. one point, however, remains. the holders of such a doctrine must, it is said, have been without the bowels of compassion. ricardo, as critics observe with undeniable truth, was a jew and a member of the stock-exchange. now jews, in spite of shylock's assertions, and certainly jewish stockbrokers, are naturally without human feeling. if you prick them, they only bleed banknotes. they are fitted to be capitalists, who think of wages as an item in an account, and of the labourer as part of the tools used in business. ricardo, however, was not a mere money-dealer, nor even a walking treatise. he was a kindly, liberal man, desirous to be, as he no doubt believed himself to be, in sympathy with the leaders of political and scientific thought, and fully sharing their aspirations. no doubt he, like his friends, was more conspicuous for coolness of head than for impulsive philanthropy. like them, he was on his guard against 'sentimentalism' and 'vague generalities,' and thought that a hasty benevolence was apt to aggravate the evils which it attacked. the utilitarians naturally translated all aspirations into logical dogmas; but some people who despised them as hard-hearted really took much less pains to give effect to their own benevolent impulses. now ricardo, in this matter, was at one with james mill and bentham, and especially malthus.[ ] the essential doctrine of malthus was that the poor could be made less poor by an improved standard of prudence. in writing to malthus, ricardo incidentally remarks upon the possibility of raising the condition of the poor by 'good education' and the inculcation of foresight in the great matter of marriage.[ ] incidental references in the _principles_ are in the same strain. he accepts malthus's view of the poor-laws, and hopes that, by encouraging foresight, we may by degrees approach 'a sounder and more healthful state.'[ ] he repudiates emphatically a suggestion of say that one of his arguments implies 'indifference to the happiness' of the masses,[ ] and holds that 'the friends of humanity' should encourage the poor to raise their standard of comfort and enjoyment. the labourers, as he elsewhere incidentally observes, are 'by far the most important class in society.'[ ] how should they not be if the greatest happiness of the greatest number be the legitimate aim of all legislation? it is true that in his argument ricardo constantly assumes that his 'natural price' will also be the real price of labour. the assumption that the labourers' wages tend to a minimum is a base for his general arguments. the inconsistency, if there be one, is easily intelligible. ricardo agreed with malthus that, though the standard might be raised, and though a rise was the only way to improvement, the chances of such a rise were not encouraging. improved wages, as he says,[ ] might enable the labourer to live more comfortably if only he would not multiply. but 'so great are the delights of domestic society, that in practice it is invariably found that an increase of population follows an amended condition of the labourer,' and thus the advantage is lost as soon as gained. i have tried to show what was the logical convenience of the assumption. ricardo, who has always to state an argument at the cost of an intellectual contortion, is content to lay down a rule without introducing troublesome qualifications and reserves. yet he probably held that his postulate was a close approximation to the facts. looking at the actual state of things at the worst time of the poor-law, and seeing how small were the prospects of stirring the languid mind of the pauper to greater forethought, he thought that he might assume the constancy of an element which varied so slowly. the indifference of the ricardo school generally to historical inquiry had led them no doubt to assume such constancy too easily. malthus, who had more leaning to history, had himself called attention to many cases in which the 'prudential check' operated more strongly than it did among the english poor. probably ricardo was in this, as in other cases, too hasty in assuming facts convenient for his argument. the poor man's character can, it is clear, be only known empirically; and, in fact, ricardo simply appeals to experience. he thinks that, as a fact, men always do multiply in excess. but he does not deny that better education might change their character in this respect. indeed, as i have said, an even excessive faith in the possible modification of character by education was one of the utilitarian tenets. if ricardo had said broadly that a necessary condition of the improvement of the poor was a change of the average character, i think that he would have been saying what was perfectly true and very much to the purpose both then and now. the objection to his version of a most salutary doctrine is that it is stated in too narrow terms. the ultimate unit, the human being, is indeed supposed to be capable of great modification, but it is solely through increasing his foresight as to the effects of multiplication that the change is supposed to be attainable. the moral thus drawn implied a very limited view of the true nature and influence of great social processes, and in practice came too often to limiting possible improvement to the one condition of letting things alone. let a man starve if he will not work, and he will work. that, as a sole remedy, may be insufficient; though, even in that shape, it is a doctrine more likely to be overlooked than overvalued. and meanwhile the acquiescence in the painful doctrine that, as a matter of fact, labourers would always multiply to starvation point, was calculated to produce revolt against the whole system. macaulay's doctrine that the utilitarians had made political economy unpopular was so far true that the average person resented the unpleasant doctrines thus obtruded upon him in their most unpleasant shape; and, if he was told that they were embodied logic, revolted against logic itself. v. the ricardians it will be quite sufficient to speak briefly of the minor prophets who expounded the classical doctrine; sometimes falling into fallacies, against which ricardo's logical instinct had warned him; and sometimes perhaps unconsciously revealing errors which really lurked in his premises. when ricardo died, james mill told m'culloch that they were 'the two and only genuine disciples' of their common friend.[ ] mill wrote what he intended for a schoolbook of political economy.[ ] brief, pithy, and vigorous, it purports to give the essential principles in their logical order; but, as his son remarks,[ ] had only a passing importance. m'culloch took a more important place by his writings in the _edinburgh review_ and elsewhere, and by his lectures at edinburgh and at london. he was one of the first professors of the new university. his _principles of political economy_[ ] became a text-book, to be finally superseded by john stuart mill. other works statistical and bibliographical showed great industry, and have still their value. he was so much the typical economist of the day that he has been identified with carlyle's _m'crowdy_, the apostle of the dismal science.[ ] he writes, however, with enough vivacity and fervour of belief in his creed to redeem him from the charge of absolute dulness. an abler thinker was colonel (robert) torrens ( - ).[ ] he had served with distinction in the war; but retired on half-pay, and was drawn by some natural idiosyncrasy into the dry paths of economic discussion. he was already confuting the french economists in ; and was writing upon the bank-charter act and the ten hours' bill in . torrens held himself, apparently with justice, to be rather an independent ally than a disciple of ricardo. his chief works were an essay upon the 'external corn-trade' ( )[ ] and an 'essay on the production of wealth' ( ). ricardo pronounced his arguments upon the corn-trade to be 'unanswered and unanswerable,'[ ] and he himself claimed to be an independent discoverer of the true theory of rent.[ ] he was certainly a man of considerable acuteness and originality. in these writings we find the most sanguine expressions of the belief that political economy was not only a potential, but on the verge of becoming an actual, science. torrens observes that all sciences have to pass through a period of controversy; but thinks that economists are emerging from this stage, and rapidly approaching unanimity. in twenty years, says this hopeful prophet, there will scarcely exist a 'doubt of its' (political economy's) 'fundamental principles.'[ ] torrens thinks that ricardo has generalised too much, and malthus too little; but proposes, with proper professions of modesty, to take the true _via media_, and weld the sound principles into a harmonious whole by a due combination of observation and theory. the science, he thinks, is 'analogous to the mixed mathematics.'[ ] as from the laws of motion we can deduce the theory of dynamics, so from certain simple axioms about human nature we can deduce the science of political economy. m'culloch, at starting, insists in edifying terms upon the necessity of a careful and comprehensive induction, and of the study of industrial phenomena in different times and places, and under varying institutions.[ ] this, however, does not prevent him from adopting the same methods of reasoning. 'induction' soon does its office, and supplies a few simple principles, from which we may make a leap to our conclusions by a rapid, deductive process. the problems appear to be too simple to require long preliminary investigations of fact. torrens speaks of proving by 'strictly demonstrative evidence' or of 'proceeding to demonstrate' by strict analysis.[ ] this is generally the preface to one of those characteristic arithmetical illustrations to which ricardo's practice gave a sanction. we are always starting an imaginary capitalist with so many quarters of corn and suits of clothes, which he can transmute into any kind of product, and taking for granted that he represents a typical case. this gives a certain mathematical air to the reasoning, and too often hides from the reasoner that he may be begging the question in more ways than one by the arrangement of his imaginary case. one of the offenders in this kind was nassau senior ( - ), a man of remarkable good sense, and fully aware of the necessity of caution in applying his theories to facts. he was the first professor of political economy at oxford ( - ), and his treatise[ ] lays down the general assumption of his orthodox contemporaries clearly and briefly. the science, he tells us, is deducible from four elementary propositions: the first of which asserts that every 'man desires to obtain additional wealth with as little sacrifice as possible'; while the others state the first principles embodied in malthus's theory of population, and in the laws corresponding to the increasing facility of manufacturing and the decreasing facility of agricultural industry.[ ] as these propositions include no reference to the particular institutions or historical development of the social structure, they virtually imply that a science might be constructed equally applicable in all times and places; and that, having obtained them, we need not trouble ourselves any further with inductions. hence it follows that we can at once get from the abstract 'man' to the industrial order. we may, it would seem, abstract from history in general. this corresponds to the postulate explicitly stated by m'culloch. 'a state,' he tells us, 'is nothing more than an aggregate of individuals': men, that is, who 'inhabit a certain tract of country.'[ ] he infers that 'whatever is most advantageous to them' (the individuals) 'is most advantageous to the state.' self-interest, therefore, the individual's desire of adding to his 'fortune,' is the mainspring or _causa causans_ of all improvement.[ ] this is, of course, part of the familiar system, which applies equally in ethics and politics. m'culloch is simply generalising adam smith's congenial doctrine that statesmen are guilty of absurd presumption when they try to interfere with a man's management of his own property.[ ] this theory, again, is expressed by the familiar maxim _pas trop gouverner_, which is common to the whole school, and often accepted explicitly.[ ] it will be quite enough to notice one or two characteristic results. the most important concern the relation between the labourer and the capitalist. malthus gives the starting-point. torrens, for example, says that the 'real wages of labour have a constant tendency to settle down' to the amount rendered necessary by 'custom and climate' in order to keep up his numbers.[ ] mill observes in his terse way that the capitalist in the present state of society 'is as much the owner of the labour' as the manufacturer who operates with slaves. the only 'difference is in the mode of purchasing.'[ ] one buys a man's whole labour; the other his labour for a day. the rate of wages can therefore be raised, like the price of slaves, only by limiting the supply. hence the 'grand practical problem is to find the means of limiting the number of births.'[ ] m'culloch is equally clear, and infers that every scheme 'not bottomed on' the principle of proportioning labour to capital must be 'completely nugatory and ineffectual.'[ ] the doctrine common to the whole school led m'culloch to conclusions which became afterwards notorious enough to require a word of notice. torrens, like ricardo, speaks of capital as 'accumulated labour,' but makes a great point of observing that, although this is true, the case is radically changed in a developed state of society. the value of things no longer depends upon the labour, but upon the amount of capital employed in their production.[ ] this, indeed, may seem to be the most natural way of stating the accepted principle. m'culloch replies that the change makes no difference in the principle,[ ] inasmuch as capital being 'accumulated labour,' value is still proportioned to labour, though in a transubstantiated shape. m'culloch supposed that by carrying out this principle systematically he was simplifying ricardo and bringing the whole science into unity. all questions, whether of value in exchange, or of the rate of wages, can then be reduced to comparing the simple unit called labour. both mill and m'culloch regard capital as a kind of labour, so that things may be produced by capital alone, 'without the co-operation of any immediate labour'[ ]--a result which can hardly be realised with the discovery of a perpetual motion. so, again, the value of a joint product is the 'sum' of these two values.[ ] all value, therefore, can be regarded as proportioned to labour in one of its two states. m'culloch advanced to an unfortunate conclusion, which excited some ridicule. though ricardo and torrens[ ] rejected it, it was accepted by mill in his second edition.[ ] wine kept in a cask might increase in value. could that value be ascribed to 'additional labour actually laid out'? m'culloch gallantly asserted that it could, though 'labour' certainly has to be interpreted in a non-natural sense.[ ] not only is capital labour, but fermentation is labour, or how can we say that all value is proportioned to labour? this is only worth notice as a pathetic illustration of the misfortunes of a theorist ridden by a dogma of his own creation. another conclusion is more important. the 'real value' of anything is measured by the labour required to produce it. nothing 'again is more obvious' than that equal labour implies the 'same sacrifice' in all states of society.[ ] it might seem to follow that the value of anything was measured by the labour which it would command. this doctrine, however, though maintained by malthus, was, according to m'culloch, a pestilent heresy, first exploded by ricardo's sagacity.[ ] things exchange, as he explains, in proportion to the labour which produces them, but the share given to the labourer may vary widely. the labourer, he says, 'gives a constant, but receives a variable quantity in its stead.' he makes the same sacrifice when he works for a day, but may get for it what he produces in ten hours, or only in one. in every case, however, he gets less than he produces, for the excess 'constitutes profits.'[ ] the capitalist must get his interest, that is, the wages of the accumulated labour. here we come again to the socialist position, only that the socialist infers that the labourer is always cheated by the capitalist, and does not consider that the machine can ask for 'wages' on the pretext that it is accumulated labour. what, however, determines the share actually received? after all, as a machine is not actually a labourer, and its work not a separable product, we cannot easily see how much wages it is entitled to receive. m'culloch follows the accepted argument. 'no proposition,' he says, 'can be better established than that the market rate of wages ... is exclusively determined by the proportion between capital and population.'[ ] we have ultimately here, as elsewhere, 'the grand principle to which we must always come at last,' namely, 'the cost of production.'[ ] wages must correspond to the cost of raising the labourer. this leads to a formula, which afterwards became famous. in a pamphlet[ ] devoted to the question, he repeats the statement that wages depend upon the proportion between population and capital; and then, as if the phrase were identical, substitutes that portion of capital which is required for the labourer's consumption. this is generally cited as the first statement of the 'wage-fund' theory, to which i shall have to return. i need not pursue these illustrations of the awkward results of excessive zeal in a disciple. it is worth noticing, however, that m'culloch's practical conclusions are not so rigid as might be inferred. his abstract doctrines do not give his true theory, so much as what he erroneously took to be his theory. the rules with which he works are approximately true under certain conditions, and he unconsciously assumes the conditions to be negligible, and the rules therefore absolute. it must be added that he does not apply his conclusions so rigidly as might be expected. by the help of 'friction,' or the admission that the ride is only true in nineteen cases out of twenty, he can make allowance for many deviations from rigid orthodoxy. he holds, for example, that government interference is often necessary. he wishes in particular for the establishment of a 'good system of public education.'[ ] he seems to have become more sentimental in later years. in the edition of he approves the factory acts, remarking that the last then passed 'may not, in some respects, have gone far enough.'[ ] he approves a provision for the 'impotent poor,' on the principle of the elizabethan act, though he disapproves the centralising tendency of the new poor-law. though he is a good malthusian,[ ] and holds the instinct of population to be a 'constant quantity,'[ ] he does not believe in the impossibility of improvement. the 'necessary' rate of wages fixes only a minimum: an increase of population has been accompanied by an increase of comfort.[ ] wages rise if the standard of life be raised, and a rise of wages tends to raise the standard. he cordially denounces the benevolent persons who held that better wages only meant more dissipation. better wages are really the great spur to industry and improvement.[ ] extreme poverty causes apathy; and the worst of evils is the sluggishness which induces men to submit to reductions of wages. a sense of comfort will raise foresight; and the _vis medicatrix_ should be allowed to act upon every rank of society. he is no doubt an individualist, as looking to the removal of restrictions, such as the conspiracy laws,[ ] rather than to a positive action of the government; but it is worth notice that this typical economist is far from accepting some of the doctrines attributed to the school in general. the classical school blundered when it supposed that the rules which it formulated could be made absolute. to give them that character, it was necessary to make false assumptions as to the ultimate constitution of society; and the fallacy became clear when the formulæ were supposed to give a real history or to give first principles, from which all industrial relations could be deduced. meanwhile, the formulæ, as they really expressed conditional truths, might be very useful so long as, in point of fact, the conditions existed, and were very effective in disposing of many fallacies. the best illustration would probably be given by the writings of thomas tooke ( - ),[ ] one of the founders of the political economy club. the _history of prices_ is an admirable explanation of phenomena which had given rise to the wildest theories. the many oscillations of trade and finance during the great struggle, the distress which had followed the peace, had bewildered hasty reasoners. some people, of course, found consolation in attributing everything to the mysterious action of the currency; others declared that the war-expenditure had supplied manufacturers and agriculturists with a demand for their wares, apparently not the less advantageous because the payment came out of their own pockets.[ ] tooke very patiently and thoroughly explodes these explanations, and traces the fluctuations of price to such causes as the effect of the seasons and the varying events of the war which opened or closed the channels of commerce. the explanation in general seems to be thoroughly sound and conclusive, and falls in, as far as it goes, with the principles of his allies. he shows, for example, very clearly what were the conditions under which the orthodox theory of rent was really applicable; how bad seasons brought gain instead of loss to the 'agricultural interest,' that is, as tooke explains, to the landlord and farmer; how by a rise of price out of proportion to the diminution of supply, the farmer made large profits; how rents rose, enclosure bills increased, and inferior land was brought under the plough. the landlord's interest was for the time clearly opposed to that of all other classes, however inadequate the doctrine might become when made absolute by a hasty generalisation. i need not dwell upon the free-trade argument which made the popular reputation of the economists. it is enough to note briefly that the error as to the sphere of applicability of the doctrine did not prevent many of the practical conclusions from being of the highest value. footnotes: [ ] a life of ricardo by m'culloch is prefixed to his _works_. i cite the edition of . ricardo's letters to malthus were published by mr. bonar in ; his letters to m'culloch, edited by mr. hollander for the american economic association, in ; and his letters to h. trower, edited by mr. bonar and mr. hollander, have just appeared ( ). [ ] he remarks upon this difficulty in the case of smith's treatment of rent, and gives a definition to which he scarcely adheres.--_works_, p. ('principles,' ch. ii., ). [ ] _works_, p. . ricardo, it should be said, complained when malthus interpreted him to mean that this opposition of interests was permanent and absolute. [ ] malthus admits the general principle of free trade, but supports some degree of protection to corn, mainly upon political grounds. he holds, however, with adam smith, that 'no equal quantity of productive labour employed in manufactures could ever occasion so great a reproduction as in agriculture' (_grounds of an opinion, etc._, p. )--a relic of the 'physiocrat' doctrine. [ ] _works_, p. . [ ] _ibid._ p. . [ ] see also _letters to malthus_, p. . [ ] 'your modern political economists say that it is a principle in their science that all things find their level; which i deny, and say, on the contrary, that it is the true principle that all things are finding their level, like water in a storm.'--coleridge's _table-talk_, th may . [ ] _letters to malthus_, p. ; and see the frequently quoted passage where he complains that malthus has taken his book as more 'practical' than he had intended it to be, and speaks of his method of imagining 'strong cases.'--_ibid._ p. . [ ] _works_, p. _n._ (ch. ii.). [ ] _works_, p. (ch. v.), and p. (ch. xvi.), where he quotes from the _wealth of nations_ (m'culloch), p. (bk. v. ch. ii. art. ). [ ] _works_, p. . [ ] _wealth of nations_ (m'culloch), p. (bk. i. ch. viii.). [ ] _works_, p. (ch. ii.). [ ] _wealth of nations_ (m'culloch), p. . [ ] _works_, p. (ch. v.). [ ] _letters to malthus_, p. . [ ] _works_, p. (ch. xxxi., added in third edition, ). [ ] _ibid._ p. (ch. v.). [ ] _ibid._ p. . [ ] _ibid._ p. (ch. i. sec. ii.). [ ] there is, indeed, a difficulty which i happily need not discuss. undoubtedly the doctrine of gluts was absurd. there is, of course, no limit to the amount of wealth which can be used or exchanged. but there certainly seems to be a great difficulty in effecting such a readjustment of the industrial system as is implied in increased production of wealth; and the disposition to save may at a given time be greater than the power of finding profitable channels for employing wealth. this involves economical questions beyond my ability to answer, and happily not here relevant. [ ] _letters to malthus_, p. . [ ] _ibid._ p. . [ ] _works_, p. (ch. xxi.). [ ] _works_, p. (ch. vi.). [ ] _works_, p. (ch. xxxi.). [ ] ricardo, _works_, p. xxiv. [ ] menger's _das recht auf den vollen arbeitsertrag_ ( ), p. . [ ] _works_, p. (ch. xxviii.). [ ] _works_, pp. , . [ ] _ibid._ p. . [ ] _works_, p. (ch. xx.). [ ] _ibid._ p. . [ ] so he tells malthus (_letters_, pp. , ) that the buyer has 'the least to do in the world' with the regulation of prices. it is all the competition of the sellers. 'demand' influences price for the moment, but 'supply follows close upon its heels, and takes up the regulation of price.' [ ] _works_, p. . [ ] bentham's _works_, x. . [ ] _works_, p. (ch. xxxii.). [ ] stewart's _works_, x. . [ ] see bagehot's remarks upon j. s. mill's version of this doctrine in _economic studies_: chapter on 'cost of production.' [ ] another illustration of the need of such considerations is given, as has been pointed out, in adam smith's famous chapter upon the variation in the rate of wages. he assumes that the highest wages will be paid for the least agreeable employments, whereas, in fact, the least agreeable are generally the worst paid. his doctrine, that is, is only true upon a tacit assumption as to the character and position of the labourer, which must be revised before the rule can be applied. [ ] j. s. mill, too, in his _political economy_ makes the foundation of private property 'the right of producers to what they themselves have produced.' (bk. ii. ch. ii. § .) [ ] mr. edwin cannan, in _production and distribution_ ( ), p. . [ ] a definition, says burke in his essay on the 'sublime and beautiful' (introduction) 'seems rather to follow than to precede our inquiry, of which it ought to be considered as the result.' [ ] _works_, p. (chap. ii.). rent is there defined as the sum paid for the original and indestructible powers of the soil. [ ] _works_, p. (chap. xvii.). he admits (_ibid._ p. _n._) that the labourer may have a little more than what is absolutely necessary, and that his inference is therefore 'expressed too strongly.' [ ] see _letters to m'culloch_, p. xxi. [ ] 'the assaults upon malthus's "great work,"' he says (_works_, p. , ch. xxxii.), 'have only served to prove its strength.' [ ] _letters to malthus_, p. . [ ] _works_, p. (ch. v.). [ ] _ibid._ p. _n._ (ch. xxvi.). [ ] _ibid._ p. (ch. xxxii.). [ ] _works_, p. (ch. xxii.). [ ] bain's _james mill_, p. . [ ] editions in , , and . [ ] _autobiography_, p. . [ ] the first edition, an expanded version of an article in the _encyclopædia britannica_, appeared in . [ ] _latter-day pamphlets_ (new downing street). m'crowdy is obviously a type, not an individual. [ ] see mr. hewin's life of him in _dictionary of national biography_. [ ] fourth edition in . [ ] ricardo's _works_, p. _n._ [ ] _external corn-trade_, preface to fourth edition. j. s. mill observes in his chapter upon 'international trade' that torrens was the earliest expounder of the doctrine afterwards worked out by ricardo and mill himself. for ricardo's opinion of torrens, see _letters to trower_, p. . [ ] _production of wealth_ (preface). [ ] _production of wealth_ (preface). [ ] _political economy_ ( ), p. . [ ] _external corn-trade_, pp. xviii, , ; _production of wealth_, p. . [ ] originally in the _encyclopædia metropolitana_, . [ ] senior's _political economy_ ( ), p. . [ ] _ibid._ ( ), pp. , - . [ ] senior's _political economy_ ( ), p. . [ ] _ibid._ p. . m'culloch admits the possibility that a man may judge his own interests wrongly, but thinks that this will not happen in one case out of twenty (_ibid._ p. ). [ ] see torrens's _production of wealth_, p. ; and m'culloch's _political economy_ ( ), p. , where he admits some exceptions. [ ] _external corn-trade_, p. , etc. [ ] _political economy_ (second edition), pp. , . [ ] _ibid._ p. . [ ] _political economy_ ( ), p. . [ ] _production of wealth_, p. , etc. [ ] _political economy_ ( ), p. . [ ] mill's _political economy_ (second edition), p. ; m'culloch's _political economy_ ( ), pp. - . [ ] m'culloch's _political economy_, p. . [ ] preface to _external corn-trade_. [ ] _ibid._ p. . [ ] _political economy_ ( ), pp. - . this argument disappears in later editions. [ ] _ibid._ p. . [ ] _political economy_, p. . de quincey makes a great point of this doctrine, of which it is not worth while to examine the meaning. [ ] _political economy_, p. _n._ [ ] _ibid._ p. . [ ] _ibid._ p. . [ ] 'essay upon the circumstances which determine the rate of wages' ( ), p. . this was written for constable's _miscellany_, and is mainly repetition from the _political economy_. it was republished, with alterations, in . [ ] _political economy_, pp. - . [ ] _ibid._ ( ), p. . and see his remarks on the unfavourable side of the factory system, p. _seq._ [ ] 'wherever two persons have the means of subsisting,' as he quaintly observes, 'a marriage invariably takes place' (_political economy_, p. ). [ ] _political economy_, p. . [ ] _political economy_, p. . [ ] _ibid._ pp. - . [ ] see pamphlet on the rate of wages, pp. - . [ ] tooke's _thoughts and details on the high and low prices of the last thirty years_ appeared in (second edition ). this was rewritten and embodied in the _history of prices_, the first two volumes of which appeared in . four later volumes appeared in , , and . [ ] the popular view is given by southey. the radicals, he says in , desire war because they expect it to lead to revolution. 'in this they are greatly deceived, for it would restore agricultural prosperity, and give a new spur to our manufactures' (_selections from southey's letters_, iii. . see also _life and correspondence_, iv. , ). chapter vi economic heretics i. the malthusian controversy the economic theory became triumphant. expounded from new university chairs, summarised in text-books for schools, advocated in the press, and applied by an energetic party to some of the most important political discussions of the day, it claimed the adhesion of all enlightened persons. it enjoyed the prestige of a scientific doctrine, and the most popular retort seemed to be an involuntary concession of its claims. when opponents appealed from 'theorists' to practical men, the utilitarians scornfully set them down as virtually appealing from reason to prejudice. no rival theory held the field. if malthus and ricardo differed, it was a difference between men who accepted the same first principles. they both professed to interpret adam smith as the true prophet, and represented different shades of opinion rather than diverging sects. there were, however, symptoms of opposition, which, at the time, might be set down as simple reluctance to listen to disagreeable truths. in reality, they were indications of a dissatisfaction which was to become of more importance and to lead in time to a more decided revolt. i must indicate some of them, though the expressions of dissent were so various and confused that it is not very easy to reduce them to order. malthus's doctrine was really at the base of the whole theory, though it must be admitted that neither malthus himself nor his opponents were clear as to what his doctrine really was. his assailants often attacked theories which he disavowed, or asserted principles which he claimed as his own.[ ] i mention only to set aside some respectable and wearisome gentlemen such as ingram, jarrold, weyland, and grahame, who considered malthus chiefly as impugning the wisdom of providence. they quote the divine law, 'increase and multiply'; think that malthus regards vice and misery as blessings, and prove that population does not 'tend' to increase too rapidly. jarrold apparently accepts the doctrine which malthus attributes to süssmilch, that lives have been shortened since the days of the patriarchs, and the reproductive forces diminished as the world has grown fuller. grahame believes in a providential 'ordeal,' constituted by infant mortality, which is not, like war and vice, due to human corruption, but a beneficent regulating force which correlates fertility with the state of society. this might be taken by malthus as merely amounting to another version of his checks. such books, in fact, simply show, what does not require to be further emphasised, that malthus had put his version of the struggle for existence into a form which seemed scandalous to the average orthodox person. the vagueness of malthus himself and the confused argument of such opponents makes it doubtful whether they are really answering his theories or reducing them to a less repulsive form of statement. in other directions, the malthusian doctrine roused keen feeling on both sides, and the line taken by different parties is significant. malthus had appeared as an antagonist of the revolutionary party. he had laid down what he took to be an insuperable obstacle to the realisation of their dreams. yet his views were adopted and extended by those who called themselves thorough radicals. as, in our days, darwinism has been claimed as supporting both individualist and socialistic conclusions, the theory of his predecessor, malthus, might be applied in a radical or a conservative sense. in point of fact, malthus was at once adopted by the whigs, as represented by the _edinburgh review_. they were followers of adam smith and dugald stewart; they piqued themselves, and, as even james mill admitted, with justice, upon economic orthodoxy. they were at the same time predisposed to a theory which condemned the revolutionary utopias. it provided them with an effective weapon against the agitators whom they especially dreaded. the tories might be a little restrained by orthodox qualms. in southey was permitted to make an onslaught upon malthus in the _quarterly_;[ ] but more complimentary allusions followed, and five years later the essay was elaborately defended in an able article.[ ] an apology was even insinuated for the previous assault, though the blame was thrown upon malthus for putting his doctrines in an offensive shape. a reference to owen suggests that the alarm excited by socialism had suggested the need of some sound political economy. another controversy which was being carried on at intervals indicates the line of cleavage between the capitalist and the landed interest. james mill's early pamphlet, _commerce defended_ ( ), and torrens's pamphlet, _economists refuted_, were suggested by this discussion. although the war was partly in defence of british trade, its vicissitudes produced various commercial crises; and the patriotic tories were anxious to show that we could thrive even if our trade was shut out from the continent. the trading classes maintained that they really supplied the sinews of war, and had a right to some control of the policy. the controversy about the orders in council and berlin decrees emphasised these disputes, and called some attention to the questions involved in the old controversy between the 'mercantile' and the 'agricultural' systems. a grotesque exaggeration of one theory was given by mill's opponent, william spence[ ] ( - ), in his _britain independent of commerce_, which went through several editions in , and refurbished or perverted the doctrine of the french economists. the argument, at least, shows what fallacies then needed confutation by the orthodox. in the preface to his collected tracts, spence observes that the high price of corn was the cause of 'all our wealth and prosperity during the war.' the causes of the high price ('assisted,' he admits, 'by occasional bad seasons') were the 'national debt, in other words, taxation,' which raised the price, first, of necessaries, and then of luxuries (thus, he says, 'neutralising its otherwise injurious effects'), and the virtual monopoly by the agriculturist of the home market.[ ] all our wealth, that is, was produced by taxation aided by famine, or, in brief, by the landowner's power of squeezing more out of the poor. foreign trade, according to spence, is altogether superfluous. its effect is summed up by the statement that we give hardware to america, and, in return, get only 'the vile weed, tobacco.'[ ] spence's writings only show the effect of strong prejudices on a weak brain. a similar sentiment dictated a more noteworthy argument to a much abler writer, whose relation to malthus is significant--thomas chalmers ( - ),[ ] probably best remembered at present for his leadership of the great disruption of . he had a reputation for eloquence and philosophic ability not fully intelligible at the present day. his appearance was uncouth, and his written style is often clumsy. he gave an impression at times of indolence and of timidity. yet his superficial qualities concealed an ardent temperament and cordial affections. under a sufficient stimulus he could blaze out in stirring speech and vigorous action. his intellectual training was limited. he had, we are told, been much influenced in his youth by the french philosophers of the time, and had appeared on the side of the more freethinking party in the famous leslie controversy. soon afterwards, however, he was converted to 'evangelical' views. he still accepted thomas brown as a great metaphysician,[ ] but thought that in moral questions brown's deistical optimism required to be corrected by an infusion of butler's theory of conscience. he could adapt butler's _analogy_, and write an edifying bridgewater treatise. i need only say, however, that, though his philosophy was not very profound, he had an enthusiasm which enables him at times to write forcibly and impressively. chalmers was from to minister of kilmany, fifeshire, and his attention had already been drawn to the question of pauperism. he took part in the spence controversy, by an essay upon the _extent and stability of national resources_.[ ] in this he expounds a doctrine which is afterwards given in his _political economy in connection with the moral state and moral aspects of society_.[ ] the main purpose of his early book is the patriotic. it is meant, like spence's pamphlet, to prove that napoleon could do us no vital injury. should he succeed, he would only lop off superfluous branches, not hew down the main trunk. chalmers's argument to show the ease with which a country may recover the effects of a disastrous war is highly praised by j. s. mill[ ] as the first sound explanation of the facts. chalmers's position, however, is radically different from the position of either james or j. s. mill. essentially it is the development of the french economists' theory, though chalmers is rather unwilling to admit his affinity to a discredited school.[ ] he has reached some of their conclusions, he admits, but by a different path.[ ] he coincides, in this respect, with malthus, who was equally impressed by the importance of 'subsistence,' or of the food-supply of the labourer. the great bulk of the food required must be raised within our own borders. as chalmers says, in , the total importation of corn, even in the two famine years, and , taken together, had only provided food for five weeks,[ ] and could normally represent a mere fringe or superfluous addition to our resources. his main argument is simple. the economists have fallen into a fatal error. a manufacturer, he observes, only makes his own article.[ ] the economists somehow imagine that he also supports himself. you see a prosperous 'shawl-making village.' you infer that its ruin would cause the destitution of so many families. it would only mean the loss of so many shawls. the food which supports the shawl-makers would still be produced, and would be only diverted to support makers of some other luxury.[ ] there would be a temporary injury to individuals, but no permanent weakening of national resources. hence we have his division of the population. the agriculturists, and those who make the 'second necessaries' (the cottages, ploughs, and so forth, required by the agriculturist), create the great wealth of the country. besides these we have the 'disposable' population, which is employed in making luxuries for the landowners, and, finally, the 'redundant' or what he calls in his later book the 'excrescent' or 'superinduced' population,[ ] which is really supported by foreign trade. commerce, then, is merely 'the efflorescence of our agriculture.'[ ] were it annihilated this instant, we should still retain our whole disposable population. the effect of war is simply to find a different employment for this part of the nation. napoleon, he says, is 'emptying our shops and filling our battalions.'[ ] all the 'redundant' population might be supported by simply diminishing the number of our cart-horses.[ ] similarly, the destruction of the commerce of france 'created her armies.' it only transferred men from trade to war, and 'millions of artisans' were 'transformed into soldiers.'[ ] pitt was really strengthening when he supposed himself to be ruining his enemy. 'excrescence' and 'efflorescence' are chalmers's equivalent for the 'sterility' of the french economists. the backbone of all industry is agriculture, and the manufacturers simply employed by the landowner for such purposes as he pleases. whether he uses them to make his luxuries or to fight his battles, the real resources of the nation remain untouched. the ricardians insist upon the vital importance of 'capital.' the one economic end of the statesmen, as the capitalist class naturally thinks, should be to give every facility for its accumulation, and consequently for allowing it to distribute itself in the most efficient way. chalmers, on the contrary, argues that we may easily have too much capital. he was a firm believer in gluts. he admits that the extension of commerce was of great good at the end of the feudal period, but not as the 'efficient cause' of wealth, only as 'unlocking the capabilities of the soil.'[ ] this change produced the illusion that commerce has a 'creative virtue,' whereas its absolute dependence upon agriculture is a truth of capital importance in political economy. more malthusian than malthus, chalmers argues that the case of capital is strictly parallel to the case of population.[ ] money may be redundant as much as men, and the real causes of every economic calamity are the 'over-speculation of capitalists,' and the 'over-population of the community at large.'[ ] in this question, however, chalmers gets into difficulties, which show so hopeless a confusion between 'capital,' income, and money, that i need not attempt to unravel his meaning.[ ] anyhow, he is led to approve the french doctrine of the single tax. ultimately, he thinks, all taxes fall upon rent.[ ] agriculture fills the great reservoir from which all the subsidiary channels are filled. whether the stream be tapped at the source or further down makes no difference. hence he infers that, as the landlords necessarily pay the taxes, they should pay them openly. by an odd coincidence, he would tax rents like mill, though upon opposite grounds. he holds that the interest of the landowners is not opposed to, but identical with, the interest of all classes. politically, as well as economically, they should be supreme. they are, 'naturally and properly, the lords of the ascendant,' and, as he oddly complains in the year of the reform bill, not 'sufficiently represented in parliament.'[ ] a 'splendid aristocracy' is, he thinks, a necessary part of the social edifice;[ ] the law of primogeniture is necessary to support them; and the division of land will cause the decay of france. the aristocracy are wanted to keep up a high standard of civilisation and promote philosophy, science, and art.[ ] the british aristocracy in the reign of george iv. scarcely realised this ideal, and would hardly have perceived that to place all the taxes upon their shoulders would be to give them a blessing in disguise. according to chalmers, however, an established church represents an essential part of the upper classes, and is required to promote a high standard of life among the poor.[ ] in connection with this, he writes a really forcible chapter criticising the economical distinction of productive and unproductive labour, and shows at least that the direct creation of material wealth is not a sufficient criterion of the utility of a class. chalmers's arguments are of interest mainly from their bearing upon his practical application of the malthusian problem. his interest in the problem of pauperism had been stimulated by his residence in glasgow, where from to he had been actively engaged in parochial duties. in he had set up an organised system of charity in a poor district, which both reduced the expenditure and improved the condition of the poor. the experiment, though dropped some years later, became famous, and in later years chalmers successfully started a similar plan in edinburgh. it was this experience which gave shape to his malthusian theories. he was, that is, a malthusian in the sense of believing that the great problem was essentially the problem of raising the self-respect and spirit of independence of the poor. the great evil which confronted him in glasgow was the mischief connected with the growth of the factory system. he saw, as he thought, the development of wealth leading to the degradation of the labourer. the great social phenomenon was the tendency to degeneration, the gradual dissolution of an organism, and corruption destroying the vital forces. on the one hand, this spectacle led him, as it led others, to look back fondly to the good old times of homely food and primitive habits, to the peasantry as represented in burns's _cotter's saturday night_ or scott's _heart of midlothian_, when the poor man was part of a social, political, and ecclesiastical order, disciplined, trained, and self-respecting, not a loose waif and stray in a chaotic welter of separate atoms. these were the facts which really suggested his theory of the 'excrescent' population, produced by the over-speculation of capitalists. the paupers of glasgow were 'excrescent,' and the 'gluts' were visible in the commercial crises which had thrown numbers of poor weavers out of employment and degraded them into permanent paupers. the facts were before his eyes, if the generalisation was hasty and crude. he held, on the other hand, that indiscriminate charity, and still more the establishment by poor-laws of a legal right to support, was stimulating the evil. the poor-law had worked incalculable mischiefs in england,[ ] and he struggled vigorously, though unavailingly, to resist its introduction into scotland. chalmers, however, did not accept the theory ascribed to the utilitarians, that the remedy for the evils was simply to leave things alone. he gives his theory in an article upon the connection between the extension of the church and the extinction of pauperism. he defends malthus against the 'execrations' of sentimentalism. malthus, he thinks, would not suppress but change the direction of beneficence. a vast expenditure has only stimulated pauperism. the true course is not to diminish the rates but to make them 'flow into the wholesome channel of maintaining an extended system of moral and religious instruction.'[ ] in other words, suppress workhouses but build schools and churches; organise charity and substitute a systematic individual inspection for reckless and indiscriminate almsgiving. then you will get to the root of the mischief. the church, supported from the land, is to become the great civilising agent. chalmers, accordingly, was an ardent advocate of a church establishment. he became the leader of the free church movement not as objecting to an establishment on principle, but because he thought that the actual legal fetters of the scottish establishment made it impossible to carry out an effective reorganisation and therefore unable to discharge its true functions. here chalmers's economical theories are crossed by various political and ecclesiastical questions with which i am not concerned. his peculiarities as an economist bring out, i think, an important point. he shows how malthus's views might be interpreted by a man who, instead of sharing, was entirely opposed to the ordinary capitalist prejudices. it would be idle to ask which was the more logical development of malthus. when two systems are full of doubtful assumptions of fact and questionable logic and vague primary conceptions, that question becomes hardly intelligible. we can only note the various turns given to the argument by the preconceived prejudices of the disputants. by most of them the malthusian view was interpreted as implying the capitalist as distinguished from the landowning point of view. to southey as to chalmers the great evil of the day was the growth of the disorganised populace under the factory system. the difference is that while chalmers enthusiastically adopted malthus's theory as indicating the true remedy for the evil, southey regards it with horror as declaring the evil to be irremediable. chalmers, a shrewd scot actively engaged in parochial work, had his attention fixed upon the reckless improvidence of the 'excrescent' population, and welcomed a doctrine which laid stress upon the necessity of raising the standard of prudence and morality. he recognised and pointed out with great force the inadequacy of such palliatives as emigration, home-colonisation, and so forth.[ ] southey, an ardent and impulsive man of letters, with no practical experience of the difficulties of social reform, has no patience for such inquiries. his remedy, in all cases, was a 'paternal government' vigorously regulating society; and malthus appears to him to be simply an opponent of all such action. southey had begun the attack in by an article in the _annual review_ (edited by a. aikin) for which the leading hints were given by coleridge, then with southey at keswick.[ ] in his letters and his later articles he never mentions malthus without abhorrence.[ ] malthus, according to his article in the _annual review_, regards 'vice' and 'misery' as desirable; thinks that the 'gratification of lust' is a 'physical necessity'; and attributes to the 'physical constitution of our nature' what should be ascribed to the 'existing system of society.' malthus, that is, is a fatalist, a materialist, and an anarchist. his only remedy is to abolish the poor-rates, and starve the poor into celibacy. the folly and wickedness of the book have provoked him, he admits, to contemptuous indignation; and malthus may be a good man personally. still, the 'farthing candle' of malthus's fame as a political philosopher must soon go out. so in the _quarterly review_ southey attributes the social evils to the disintegrating effect of the manufacturing system, of which adam smith was the 'tedious and hard-hearted' prophet. the excellent malthus indeed becomes the 'hard-hearted' almost as hooker was the 'judicious.' this sufficiently represents the view of the sentimental tory. malthus, transformed into a monster, deserves the 'execrations' noticed by chalmers. there is a thorough coincidence between this view and that of the sentimental radicals. southey observes that malthus (as interpreted by him) does not really answer godwin. malthus argues that 'perfectibility' gives an impossible end because equality would lead to vice and misery. but why should we not suppose with godwin a change of character which would imply prudence and chastity? men as they are may be incapable of equality because they have brutal passions. but men as they are to be may cease to be brutal and become capable of equality. this, indeed, represents a serious criticism. what malthus was really concerned to prove was that the social state and the corresponding character suppose each other; and that real improvement supposes that the individual must somehow acquire the instincts appropriate to an improved state. the difference between him and his opponents was that he emphasised the mischief of legislation, such as that embodied in the poor-law, which contemplated a forcible change, destroying poverty without raising the poor man's character. such a rise required a long and difficult elaboration, and he therefore dwells mainly upon the folly of the legislative, unsupported by the moral, remedy. to godwin, on the other hand, who professed an unlimited faith in the power of reason, this difficulty was comparatively unimportant. remove political inequalities and men will spontaneously become virtuous and prudent. godwin accordingly, when answering dr. parr and mackintosh,[ ] in , welcomed malthus's first version of the essay. he declares it to be as 'unquestionable an addition to the theory of political economy' as has been made by any writer for a century past; and 'admits the ratios to their full extent.'[ ] in this philosophical spirit he proceeds to draw some rather startling conclusions. he hopes that, as mankind improves, such practices as infanticide will not be necessary; but he remarks that it would be happier for a child to perish in infancy than to spend seventy years in vice and misery.[ ] he refers to the inhabitants of ceylon as a precedent for encouraging other practices restrictive of population. in short, though he hopes that such measures may be needless, he does not shrink from admitting their possible necessity. so far, then, godwin and malthus might form an alliance. equality might be the goal of both; and both might admit the necessity of change in character as well as in the political framework; only that malthus would lay more stress upon the evil of legislative changes outrunning or independent of moral change. here, however, arose the real offence. malthus had insisted upon the necessity of self-help. he had ridiculed the pretensions of government to fix the rate of wages; and had shown how the poor-laws defeated their own objects. this was the really offensive ground to the political radicals. they had been in the habit of tracing all evils to the selfishness and rapacity of the rulers; pensions, sinecures, public debts, huge armies, profligate luxuries of all kinds, were the fruits of bad government and the true causes of poverty. kings and priests were the harpies who had settled upon mankind, and were ruining their happiness. malthus, they thought, was insinuating a base apology for rulers when he attributed the evil to the character of the subjects instead of attributing it to the wickedness of their rulers. he was as bad as the old tory, johnson,[ ] exclaiming:-- 'how small of all that human hearts endure that part which kings and laws can cause or cure!' he was, they held, telling the tyrants that it was not their fault if the poor were miserable. the essay was thus an apology for the heartlessness of the rich. this view was set forth by hazlitt in an attack upon malthus in .[ ] it appears again in the _enquiry_ by g. ensor ( - )--a vivacious though rather long-winded irishman, who was known both to o'connell and to bentham.[ ] godwin himself was roused by the appearance of the fifth edition of malthus's _essay_ to write a reply, which appeared in . he was helped by david booth ( - ),[ ] a man of some mathematical and statistical knowledge. hazlitt's performance is sufficiently significant of the general tendency. hazlitt had been an enthusiastic admirer of godwin, and retained as much of the enthusiasm as his wayward prejudices would allow. he was through life what may be called a sentimental radical, so far as radicalism was compatible with an ardent worship of napoleon. to him napoleon meant the enemy of pitt and liverpool and castlereagh and the holy alliance. hazlitt could forgive any policy which meant the humiliation of the men whom he most heartily hated. his attack upon malthus was such as might satisfy even cobbett, whose capacity for hatred, and especially for this particular object of hatred, was equal to hazlitt's. the personal rancour of which hazlitt was unfortunately capable leads to monstrous imputations. not only does malthus's essay show the 'little low rankling malice of a parish beadle ... disguised in the garb of philosophy,' and bury 'false logic' under 'a heap of garbled calculations,'[ ] and so forth; but he founds insinuations upon malthus's argument as to the constancy of the sexual passion. malthus, he fully believes, has none of the ordinary passions, anger, pride, avarice, or the like, but declares that he must be a slave to an 'amorous complexion,' and believe all other men to be made 'of the same combustible materials.'[ ] this foul blow is too characteristic of hazlitt's usual method; but indicates also the tone which could be taken by contemporary journalism. the more serious argument is really that the second version of malthus is an answer to his first. briefly, the 'moral check' which came in only as a kind of afterthought is a normal part of the process by which population is kept within limits, and prevents the monstrous results of the 'geometrical ratio.' hazlitt, after insisting upon this, admits that there is nothing in 'the general principles here stated that mr. malthus is at present disposed to deny, or that he has not himself expressly insisted upon in some part or other of his various works.'[ ] he only argues that malthus's concessions are made at the cost of self-contradiction. why then, it may be asked, should not hazlitt take the position of an improver and harmoniser of the doctrine rather than of a fierce opponent? the answer has been already implied. he regards malthus as an apologist for an unjust inequality. malthus, he says, in classifying the evils of life, has 'allotted to the poor all the misery, and to the rich as much vice as they please.'[ ] the check of starvation will keep down the numbers of the poor; and the check of luxury and profligacy will restrain the multiplication of the rich. 'the poor are to make a formal surrender of their right to provoke charity or parish assistance that the rich may be able to lay out all their money on their vices.'[ ] the misery of the lower orders is the result of the power of the upper. a man born into a world where he is not wanted has no right, said malthus, to a share of the food. that might be true if the poor were a set of lazy supernumeraries living on the industrious. but the truth is that the poor man does the work, and is forced to put up in return with a part of the produce of his labour.[ ] the poor-laws recognise the principle that those who get all from the labour of others should provide from their superfluities for the necessities of those in want.[ ] the 'grinding necessity' of which malthus had spoken does not raise but lower the standard; and a system of equality would lessen instead of increasing the pressure. malthus, again, has proposed that parents should be responsible for their children. that is, says hazlitt, malthus would leave children to starvation, though he professes to disapprove infanticide. he would 'extinguish every spark of humanity ... towards the children of others' on pretence of preserving the 'ties of parental affection.' malthus tries to argue that the 'iniquity of government' is not the cause of poverty. that belief, he says, has generated discontent and revolution. that is, says hazlitt, the way to prevent revolutions and produce reforms is to persuade people that all the evils which government may inflict are their own fault. government is to do as much mischief as it pleases, without being answerable for it.[ ] the poor-laws, as hazlitt admits, are bad, but do not show the root of the evil. the evils are really due to increasing tyranny, dependence, indolence, and unhappiness due to other causes. pauperism has increased because the government and the rich have had their way in everything. they have squandered our revenues, multiplied sinecures and pensions, doubled salaries, given monopolies and encouraged jobs, and depressed the poor and industrious. the 'poor create their own fund,' and the necessity for it has arisen from the exorbitant demands made by the rich.[ ] malthus is a blifil,[ ] hypocritically insinuating arguments in favour of tyranny under pretence of benevolence. hazlitt's writing, although showing the passions of a bitter partisan, hits some of malthus's rather cloudy argumentation. his successor, ensor, representing the same view, finds an appropriate topic in the wrongs of ireland. irish poverty, he holds, is plainly due not to over-population but to under-government,[ ] meaning, we must suppose, misgovernment. but the same cause explains other cases. the 'people are poor and are growing poorer,'[ ] and there is no mystery about it. the expense of a court, the waste of the profits and money in the house of commons, facts which are in striking contrast to the republican virtues of the united states, are enough to account for everything; and malthus's whole aim is to 'calumniate the people.' godwin in takes up the same taunts. malthus ought, he thinks, to welcome war, famine, pestilence, and the gallows.[ ] he has taught the poor that they have no claim to relief, and the rich that, by indulging in vice, they are conferring a benefit upon the country. the poor-laws admit a right, and he taunts malthus for proposing to abolish it, and refusing food to a poor man on the ground that he had notice not to come into the world two years before he was born.[ ] godwin, whose earlier atheism had been superseded by a vague deism, now thinks with cobbett that the poor were supported by the piety of the mediæval clergy, who fed the hungry and clothed the naked from their vast revenues, while dooming themselves to spare living.[ ] he appeals to the authority of the christian religion, which indeed might be a fair _argumentum ad hominem_ against 'parson malthus.' he declares that nature takes more care of her work than such irreverent authors suppose, and 'does not ask our aid to keep down the excess of population.'[ ] in fact, he doubts whether population increases at all. malthus's whole theory, he says, rests upon the case of america; and with the help of mr. booth and some very unsatisfactory statistics, he tries to prove that the increase shown in the american census has been entirely due to immigration. malthus safely declined to take any notice of a production which in fact shows that godwin had lost his early vigour. the sound utilitarian, francis place, took up the challenge, and exploded some of godwin's statistics. he shows his radicalism by admitting that malthus, to whose general benevolence he does justice, had not spoken of the poor as one sprung like himself from the poor would naturally do; and he accepts modes of limiting the population from which malthus himself had shrunk. for improvement, he looks chiefly to the abolition of restrictive laws. ii. socialism the arguments of hazlitt and his allies bring us back to the socialist position. although it was represented by no writer of much literary position, owen was becoming conspicuous, and some of his sympathisers were already laying down principles more familiar to-day. already, in the days of the six acts, the government was alarmed by certain 'spencean philanthropists.' according to place they were a very feeble sect, numbering only about fifty, and perfectly harmless. their prophet was a poor man called thomas spence ( - ),[ ] who had started as a schoolmaster, and in read a paper at newcastle before a 'philosophical society.'[ ] he proposed that the land in every village should belong to all the inhabitants--a proposal which mr. hyndman regards as a prophecy of more thoroughgoing schemes of land nationalisation. spence drifted to london, picked up a precarious living, partly by selling books of a revolutionary kind, and died in , leaving, it seems, a few proselytes. a writer of higher literary capacity was charles hall, a physician at tavistock, who in published a book on _the effects of civilisation_.[ ] the effects of civilisation, he holds, are simply pernicious. landed property originated in violence, and has caused all social evils. a great landlord consumes unproductively as much as would keep eight thousand people.[ ] he gets everything from the labour of the poor; while they are forced to starvation wages by the raising of rents. trade and manufactures are equally mischievous. india gets nothing but jewellery from europe, and europe nothing but muslin from india, while so much less food is produced in either country.[ ] manufactures generally are a cause and sign of the poverty of nations.[ ] such sporadic protests against the inequalities of wealth may be taken as parts of that 'ancient tale of wrong' which has in all ages been steaming up from the suffering world, and provoking a smile from epicurean deities. as owenism advanced, the argument took a more distinct form. mill[ ] mentions william thompson of cork as a 'very estimable man,' who was the 'principal champion' of the owenites in their debates with the benthamites. he published in a book upon the distribution of wealth.[ ] it is wordy, and is apt to remain in the region of 'vague generalities' just at the points where specific statements would be welcome. but besides the merit of obvious sincerity and good feeling, it has the interest of showing very clearly the relation between the opposing schools. thompson had a common ground with the utilitarians, though they undoubtedly would consider his logic to be loose and overridden by sentimentalism. in the first place, he heartily admired bentham: 'the most profound and celebrated writer on legislation in this or any other country.'[ ] he accepts the 'greatest happiness principle' as applicable to the social problem. he argues for equality upon bentham's ground. take a penny from a poor man to give it to the rich man, and the poor man clearly loses far more happiness than the rich man gains. with bentham, too, he admits the importance of 'security,' and agrees that it is not always compatible with equality. a man should have the fruits of his labour; and therefore the man who labours most should have most. but, unlike bentham, he regards equality as more important than security. to him the main consideration is the monstrous mass of evil resulting from vast accumulations of wealth in a few hands. in the next place, he adapts to his own purpose the ricardian theory of value. all value whatever, he argues, is created by labour. the labourer, he infers, should have the value which he creates. as things are, the labourer parts with most of it to the capitalist or the owner of rents. the capitalist claims a right to the whole additional production due to the employment of capital. the labourer, on the other hand, may claim a right to the whole additional production, after replacing the wear and tear and allowing to the capitalist enough to support him in equal comfort with the productive labourers.[ ] thompson holds that while either system would be compatible with 'security,' the labourer's demand is sanctioned by 'equality.' in point of fact, neither system has been fully carried out; but the labourer's view would tend to prevail with the spread of knowledge and justice. while thus anticipating later socialism, he differs on a significant point. thompson insists upon the importance of 'voluntary exchange' as one of his first principles. no one is to be forced to take what he does not himself think a fair equivalent for his labour. here, again, he would coincide with the utilitarians. they, not less than he, were for free trade and the abolition of every kind of monopoly. but that view may lead by itself to the simple adoption of the do-nothing principle, or, as modern socialists would say, to the more effectual plunder of the poor. the modern socialist infers that the means of production must be in some way nationalised. thompson does not contemplate such a consummation. he denounces, like all the radicals of the day, monopolies and conspiracy laws. sinecures and standing armies and state churches are the strongholds of tyranny and superstition. the 'hereditary possession of wealth' is one of the master-evils, and with sinecures will disappear the systems of entails and unequal distribution of inheritance.[ ] such institutions have encouraged the use of fraud and force, and indirectly degraded the labourer into a helpless position. he would sweep them all away, and with them all disqualifications imposed upon women.[ ] this once done, it will be necessary to establish a universal and thoroughgoing system of education. then the poor man, freed from the shackles of superstition and despotism, will be able to obtain his rights as knowledge and justice spread through the whole community. the desire to accumulate for selfish purposes will itself disappear. the labourer will get all that he creates; the aggregate wealth will be enormously multiplied, though universally diffused; and the form taken by the new society will, as he argues at great length, be that of voluntary co-operative associations upon owen's principles. the economists would, of course, reject the theory that the capitalists should have no profits; but, in spite of this, they might agree to a great extent with thompson's aspirations. thompson, however, holds the true socialist sentiment of aversion to malthus. he denies energetically what he takes to be the malthusian doctrine: that increased comfort will always produce increased numbers.[ ] this has been the 'grand scarecrow to frighten away all attempts at social improvement.' thompson accordingly asserts that increased comfort always causes increased prudence ultimately; and looks forward to a stationary state in which the births will just balance the deaths. i need not inquire here which theory puts the cart before the horse. the opposition possibly admits of reconciliation; but here i only remark once more how malthus stood for the appeal to hard facts which always provoked the utopians as much as it corresponded to the stern utilitarian view. another writer, thomas hodgskin, honorary secretary of the birkbeck institution, who published a tract called _labour defended against the claims of capital, or the unproductiveness of capital proved_ ( ), and afterwards gave some popular lectures on political economy, has been noticed as anticipating socialist ideas. he can see, he says, why something should go to the maker of a road and something be paid by the person who gets the benefit of it. but he does not see why the road itself should have anything.[ ] hodgskin writes without bitterness, if without much logic. it is not for me to say whether modern socialists are well advised in admitting that these crude suggestions were anticipations of their own ideas. the most natural inference would be that vague guesses about the wickedness of the rich have been in all ages current among the poor, and now and then take more pretentious form. most men want very naturally to get as much and to work as little as they can, and call their desire a first principle of justice. perhaps, however, it is fairer to notice in how many points there was unconscious agreement; and how by converting very excellent maxims into absolute dogmas, from which a whole system was deducible, the theories appeared to be mutually contradictory, and, taken separately, became absurd. the palpable and admitted evil was the growth of pauperism and demoralisation of the labourer. the remedy, according to the utilitarians, is to raise the sense of individual responsibility, to make a man dependent upon his own exertions, and to give him security that he will enjoy their fruit. let government give education on one hand and security on the other, and equality will follow in due time. the sentimental radical naturally replies that leaving a man to starve does not necessarily make him industrious; that, in point of fact, great and growing inequality of wealth has resulted; and that the rights of man should be applied not only to political privilege, but to the possession of property. the utilitarians have left out justice by putting equality in the background. justice, as bentham replied, has no meaning till you have settled by experience what laws will produce happiness; and your absolute equality would destroy the very mainspring of social improvement. meanwhile the conservative thinks that both parties are really fostering the evils by making individualism supreme, and that organisation is necessary to improvement; while one set of radicals would perpetuate a mere blind struggle for existence, and the other enable the lowest class to enforce a dead level of ignorance and stupidity. they therefore call upon government to become paternal and active, and to teach not only morality but religion; and upon the aristocracy to discharge its functions worthily, in order to stamp out social evils and prevent a servile insurrection. but how was the actual government of george iv. and sidmouth and eldon to be converted to a sense of its duties? on each side appeal is made to a sweeping and absolute principle, and amazingly complex and difficult questions of fact are taken for granted. the utilitarians were so far right that they appealed to experience, as, in fact, such questions have to be settled by the slow co-operation of many minds in many generations. unfortunately the utilitarians had, as we have seen, a very inadequate conception of what experience really meant, and were fully as rash and dogmatic as their opponents. i must now try to consider what were the intellectual conceptions implied by their mode of treating these problems. footnotes: [ ] the discussions of population most frequently mentioned are:--w. godwin, _thoughts occasioned by dr. parr's spital sermon_, etc., ; r. southey, in (aikin's) _annual review for _, pp. - ; thomas jarrold, _dissertations on man_, etc., ; w. hazlitt, _reply to the essay on population_, ; a. ingram, _disquisitions on population_, ; john weyland, _principles of population_, etc., ; james grahame, _inquiry into the principle of population_, ; george ensor, _inquiry concerning the population of nations_, ; w. godwin, _on population_, ; francis place, _principles of population_, ; david booth, _letter to the rev. t. r. malthus_, ; m. t. sadler, _law of population_, ; a. alison, _principles of population_, ; t. doubleday, _true law of population_, . [ ] _quarterly review_, dec. (reprinted in southey's _moral and political essays_, ). [ ] _quarterly review_, july , by (archbishop) sumner, malthus's commentator in the _records of creation_. ricardo's _letters to trower_, p. . [ ] _spence's tracts on political economy_ were collected with a preface in . spence is better known as an entomologist, and collaborated with william kirby. [ ] _tracts_ ( ), p. xiii. [ ] _ibid._ p. . [ ] chalmers's _works_ were published in twenty-five volumes in - . [ ] chalmers's _works_, i. . [ ] this essay is not in his collected _works_, though in vol. xxi. it is promised for the next volume. [ ] _works_, xix. and xx. [ ] mill's _political economy_, bk. i. ch. v. § and . see chalmers, xix. . [ ] _national resources_ (appendix). [ ] _works_, xix. . [ ] _ibid._ xix. , . [ ] _national resources_, p. . [ ] _works_, xix. . [ ] _works_, xix. . [ ] _ibid._ xix. . [ ] _national resources_, p. . [ ] _ibid._ p. . [ ] _works_, xix. . [ ] _works_, xix. . [ ] _ibid._ xix. - . [ ] _ibid._ xix. . [ ] see _ibid._ xix. . j. s. mill speaks of chalmers's speculations with a respect which it is difficult to understand. [ ] chalmers holds that the ricardian doctrine of rent inverts the true order. fertile lands do not pay rent because poor lands are brought into cultivation, but poor lands are cultivated because fertile lands pay rent. he apparently wishes, like malthus, to regard rent as a blessing, not a curse. the point is not worth arguing. see _works_, xix. . [ ] _works_, xix. - . [ ] _ibid._ xix. . [ ] _ibid._ xix. . [ ] _ibid._ xix. . [ ] _works_, xx. , . [ ] _ibid._ xx. . [ ] _works_, xix. . [ ] the copy of malthus's second edition with coleridge's notes used by southey is in the british museum. [ ] see southey's _political_. [ ] _thoughts occasioned by dr. parr's spital sermon._ a copy annotated by coleridge is in the british museum. [ ] _thoughts_, etc., pp. , , . [ ] _ibid._ p. . [ ] lines added to goldsmith's _traveller_. [ ] _reply to the essay on population_, etc., . the book was anonymous. the first three letters had appeared in cobbett's _register_. two others with an appendix are added. [ ] bentham's _works_, x. , ; and _dictionary of national biography_. [ ] see _dictionary of national biography_. [ ] hazlitt's _reply_, p. . [ ] _ibid._ pp. - . [ ] _ibid._ p. . [ ] _reply_, p. . [ ] _ibid._ p. . [ ] _ibid._ p. . [ ] _ibid._ p. . [ ] _reply_, p. . [ ] _ibid._ pp. - . [ ] _ibid._ p. . [ ] ensor's _enquiry_, p. . [ ] _ibid._ p. . [ ] _godwin on population_, p. . [ ] _ibid._ p. . [ ] _ibid._ p. . [ ] godwin, p. . [ ] see account of him reprinted from mackenzie's _history of newcastle_ and _dictionary of national biography_. [ ] reprinted by mr. hyndman in , with a preface. [ ] see _dictionary of national biography_. hall's book was reprinted by j. m. morgan in the 'phoenix library,' . see anton menger's _das recht auf den vollen arbeitsertrag_ (second edition, ), for notices of hall, thompson, and others. [ ] _effects of civilisation_ ( ), p. . [ ] _ibid._ p. . [ ] _ibid._ p. . [ ] _autobiography_, p. . see holyoake's _history of co-operation_, i. , , - , , for some interesting notices of thompson. menger (_recht auf den vollen arbeitsertrag_, p. _n._) holds that thompson not only anticipated but inspired marx: rodbertus, he says, drew chiefly upon st. simon and proudhon. [ ] _an inquiry into the principles of the distribution of wealth most conducive to human happiness; applied to the newly proposed system of voluntary equality of wealth._-- . [ ] _distribution of wealth_, p. . [ ] _distribution of wealth_, p. , etc. [ ] _ibid._ p. . [ ] he wrote, as j. s. mill observes, an _appeal_ [ ] against james mill's views on this matter--a fact which no doubt commended him to the son. [ ] _distribution of wealth_, pp. , , etc. [ ] _labour defended_, p. . chapter vii psychology i. thomas brown the politicians and economists, of whom i have spoken, took first principles for granted. the intellectual temperament, which made certain methods congenial to them, would no doubt have led them to an analogous position in philosophy. bentham had touched upon philosophical points in a summary way, and james mill, as we shall see, gave a more explicit statement. but such men as ricardo and malthus had no systematic philosophy, though a certain philosophy was congenial to their methods. desire to reach a solid groundwork of fact, hearty aversion to mere word-juggling, and to effeminate sentimentalism, respect for science and indifference to, if not contempt for, poetry, resolution to approve no laws or institutions which could not be supported on plain grounds of utility, and to accept no theory which could not be firmly based on verifiable experience, imply moral and intellectual tendencies, in which we may perhaps say that the utilitarians represent some of the strongest and most valuable qualities of the national character. taking these qualities for granted, let us consider how the ultimate problems presented themselves to the school thus distinguished. i have already observed that the scottish philosophy, taught by reid and dugald stewart, represented the only approach to a living philosophical system in these islands at the beginning of the century. it held this position for a long period. mill, who had heard dugald stewart's lectures, knew nothing of german thought. he was well read in french philosophers, and in harmony with one leading sect. the so-called _idéologues_,[ ] who regarded condillac as representing the true line of intellectual progress, were in france the analogues of the english utilitarians. destutt de tracy and cabanis were their most conspicuous leaders in this generation. the philosophy of reid and stewart crossed the channel, and supplied the first assailants of the _idéologues_ with their controversial weapons. thus, until the german influence came to modify the whole controversy, the vital issue seemed to lie between the doctrine of reid or 'intuitionism' on the one hand, and the purely 'experiential' school on the other, whether, as in france, it followed condillac, or, as in england, looked back chiefly to hartley. both sections traced their intellectual ancestry to locke and hobbes, with some reference to bacon, and, by the french writers, to descartes. stewart, again, as i have said, was the accepted whig philosopher. it is true that the whig sat habitually in the seat of gallio. jeffrey, whether he fully realised the fact or not, was at bottom a sceptic in philosophy as in politics. john allen, the prophet of holland house, was a thorough sceptic, and says[ ] that horner, one of stewart's personal admirers, was really a follower of hume. the whigs were inclined to shaftesbury's doctrine that sensible men had all one religion, and that sensible men never said what it was. those who had a more definite and avowable creed were content to follow stewart's amiable philosophising. brougham professed, let us hope, sincerely, to be an orthodox theist, and explained the argument from design in a commentary upon paley. sydney smith expounded reid and stewart in lectures which showed at least that he was still a wit when talking 'philosophy' at the royal institution; and, though he hated 'enthusiasm' in dissenters, evangelicals, and tractarians, and kept religion strictly in its place--a place well outside of practical politics--managed to preach a wholesome, commonplace morality in terms of christian theology. the difference between the whig and the radical temper showed itself in philosophical as in political questions. the radical prided himself on being logical and thoroughgoing, while the whig loved compromise, and thought that logic was very apt to be a nuisance. the systematic reticence which the utilitarians held to be necessary prevented this contrast from showing itself distinctly on the surface. the utilitarians, however, though they avoided such outspoken scepticism as would startle the public, indicated quite sufficiently to the initiated their essential position. it implied what they fully recognised in private conversation--a complete abandonment of theology. they left the obvious inferences to be drawn by others. in philosophy they could speak out in a well-founded confidence that few people were able to draw inferences. i will begin by considering the doctrine against which they protested; for the antagonism reveals, i think, the key to their position. when stewart was obliged by infirmity to retire from the active discharge of his duties, he was succeeded by thomas brown ( - ). brown had shown early precocity, and at the age of fifteen had attracted stewart's notice by some remarks on a psychological point. he published at twenty a criticism of darwin's _zoonomia_, and he became one of the _edinburgh review_ circle. when the _review_ was started he contributed an article upon kant. in those happy days it was so far from necessary to prepare oneself for such a task by studying a library of commentators that the young reviewer could frankly admit his whole knowledge to be derived from villers' _philosophie de kant_ ( ).[ ] soon afterwards he took an important share in a once famous controversy. john leslie, just elected to the mathematical chair at edinburgh, was accused of having written favourably of hume's theory of causation. whigs and tories took this up as a party question,[ ] and brown undertook to explain in a pamphlet what hume's theory was, and to show that it did not lead to atheism. leslie's friends triumphed, though it does not appear how far brown's arguments contributed to their success. the pamphlet was rewritten and enlarged, and a third edition of gives a full exposition of his theory. brown had meanwhile become stewart's leading disciple, and in was elected to be his colleague. brown held the position, doing all the active duties, until his premature death in . brown, according to his biographer, wrote his lectures immediately before delivery, and completed them during his first two years of office. his theories, as well as his words, were often, according to the same authority, extemporised. brown found that he could not improve what he had written under 'very powerful excitement.' moreover, he had an unlucky belief that he was a poet. from till he brought out yearly what he supposed to be a poem. these productions, the _paradise of coquets_ and the rest, are in the old-fashioned taste, and have long passed into oblivion. the lectures, published posthumously, became a text-book for students, and reached a nineteenth edition in . their faults, considered as philosophical treatises, are palpable. they have the wordiness of hasty composition, and the discursive rhetoric intended to catch the attention of an indolent audience. brown does not see that he is insulting his hearers when he apologises for introducing logic into lectures upon metaphysics, and indemnifies them by quotations from akenside and the _essay on man_. brown, however, showed great acuteness and originality. he made deviations, and took pains to mark his deviations, from reid, though he spoke more guardedly of his own friend, stewart. stewart, who had strongly supported brown's election, was shocked when, on the publication of the lectures, he came to discover that his colleague had been preaching heresy, and wrote with obvious annoyance of brown's hastiness and dangerous concessions to the enemy.[ ] brown, however, impressed his contemporaries by his ability. sydney smith is probably reporting the current judgment of his own circle when he says[ ] that in metaphysics stewart was a 'humbug' compared with brown. i certainly think that stewart, whom i should be sorry to call a humbug, shows less vigour and subtlety. brown, at any rate, impressed both the mills, and his relation to them is significant. brown's essay upon causation indicates this relation. in this, indeed, there is little, if any, divergence from stewart, though he attacks reid with considerable asperity. he urges that reid, while really agreeing with hume, affected to answer him under cover of merely verbal distinctions.[ ] the main point is simple. hume had asserted that all events seem to be 'entirely loose and separate,' or, in other words, 'conjoined but never connected.' yet he points out that, in fact, when we have found two events to be 'conjoined,' we call one cause and the other effect, and assume a 'necessary connection' between them. he then asks, what is the origin of this belief, and what, therefore, is the logical warrant for its validity? brown entirely accepts hume's statement of the facts. the real meaning of our statements is evaded by appealing to the conception of 'power.' when the loadstone (in his favourite illustration) attracts the iron, we say it has a 'power' of attracting iron. but to speak thus of a power is simply to describe the same facts in other words. we assert this, and nothing more than this, that when the loadstone comes near the iron, each moves towards the other. 'power' is a word which only covers a statement of 'invariable antecedence.' brown traces the various confusions which have obscured the true nature of this belief. he insists especially that we can no more discover power in mental than in physical sequences. the will had been supposed to be the type of causal power; but volition, according to brown, reveals simply another succession of desires and bodily actions. the hypothesis of 'power' has been really the source of 'illusion.' the tendency to personify leads us to convert metaphor into fact, to invent a subject of this imaginary 'power,' and thus to create a mythology of beings to carry on the processes of nature. in other words, brown here follows hume or even anticipates comte. as j. s. mill remarks,[ ] this erroneous identification of 'power' with 'will' gives the 'psychological rationale of comte's great historical generalisation'; and, so far, brown, as a follower of hume, is clearly on the way to positivism. the world, then, is a vast aggregate of 'loose' phenomena. a contemplation of things reveals no reason for one order rather than another. you may look at your loadstone as long as you please, but you will find no reason for its attracting iron. you may indeed interpolate a number of minute intervening sequences, and the process often suggests a vague something more than sequence; but this is a mere illusion.[ ] could we, in fact, see all the minute changes in bodies we should actually perceive that cause means nothing but 'the immediate invariable antecedence of an event.'[ ] brown especially argues against the attempts of d'alembert and euler to deduce the first laws of motion from the principle of 'sufficient reason.'[ ] that, as he argues in detail, is merely begging the question, by introducing the principle of causation under an alias. what, then, is the principle? we believe, he says,[ ] that 'every event must have a cause,' and that circumstances exactly 'similar must have results exactly similar.' this belief, though applicable to all events, does not give us the 'slightest aid' to determining, independently of experience, any particular event. we observe that b follows a, but, for all we can say, it might as well follow any other letter of the alphabet. yet we are entitled to say in general that it does uniformly follow some particular letter. the metaphor which describes cause and effect as a 'bond' tying a and b together is perfectly appropriate if taken to express the bare fact of sequence;[ ] but we fall into error if we fancy there is really any bond whatever beside the events themselves. the belief, then, in causation has precisely the same import according to hume and brown; and both agree that it is not produced by 'reasoning.' the proposition 'b has once succeeded a,' or 'has succeeded a a thousand times,' is entirely different from the proposition 'b will for ever succeed a.'[ ] no process of logical inference can extract one from the other. shall we, then, give up a belief in causation? the belief in any case exists as a fact. hume explains it by custom or association. brown argues, and i think with much force, that hume's explanation is insufficient. association may explain (if it does more than restate) the fact that one 'idea' calls up another idea, but such association may and often does occur without suggesting any belief. the belief, too, precedes the association. we begin by believing too much, not too little, and assume a necessary connection of many phenomena which we afterwards find to be independent. the true answer is therefore different. there are three sources of belief, 'perception,' 'reasoning,' and 'intuition.'[ ] now, we cannot 'perceive' anything but a present coincidence; neither can we establish a connection by any process of 'reasoning,' and therefore the belief must be an 'intuition.' this, accordingly, is brown's conclusion. 'there are principles,' he says, 'independent of reasoning, in the mind which save it from the occasional follies of all our ratiocinations';[ ] or rather, as he explains, which underlie all reasoning. the difference, then, between hume and brown (and, as brown argues, between hume and reid's real doctrine) is not as to the import, but as to the origin, of the belief. it is an 'intuition' simply because it cannot be further analysed. it does not allow us to pass a single step beyond experience; it merely authorises us to interpret experience. we can discover any actual law of connection between phenomena only by observing that they occur in succession. we cannot get beyond or behind the facts--and therefore intuitionism in this sense is not opposed to empiricism, but a warrant for empirical conclusions. an 'intuition,' briefly, is an unanalysable belief. brown asserts that a certain element of thought has not been explained, and assumes it to be therefore inexplicable or ultimate. brown's account of causation had a great influence upon both the mills, and especially affected the teaching of the younger mill. another point is important. reid, as i have said, had specially prided himself upon his supposed overthrow of berkeley's idealism. he was considered to have shown, in spite of sceptics, that the common belief in an external world was reasonable. brown in his lectures ridiculed reid's claim. this 'mighty achievement,' the 'supposed overthrow of a great system,' was 'nothing more than the proof that certain phrases are metaphorical, which were intended by their authors to be understood _only_ as metaphors.'[ ] the theory was dead before reid slew it, though the phrases were still used as a mere 'relic,' or survival of an obsolete doctrine.[ ] the impossibility of constructing extension out of our sensations is the _experimentum crucis_ upon which reid was ready to stake his case. if the attempt at such a construction could succeed, he would 'lay his hand upon his mouth' and give up the argument.[ ] brown takes up the challenge thus thrown out. he holds that our knowledge of an external world is derived from a source which reid overlooked. he modifies the scottish psychology by introducing the muscular senses. his theory is that the infant which has learned to move discovers that on some occasions its movements are modified by a sense of 'impeded effort.'[ ] the sudden interruption to a well-known series excites in its mind the notion of 'a cause which is not in itself.' this is the source of our belief in an external world. that belief is essentially the belief in some cause which we know to be other than our own mental constitution or the series of 'internal' phenomena, and of which we can know nothing else. it is enough to indicate a theory which has been elaborated by later psychologists, and plays a great part (for example) in the theories of mill, bain, and mr. herbert spencer. it shows the real tendency of brown's speculations. in the first place, it must be noticed that the theory itself had been already emphatically stated by destutt de tracy. hamilton accuses brown of plagiarism.[ ] whether his accusation be justifiable or not, it is certainly true that brown had in some way reached the same principles which had been already set forth by a leading 'ideologist.' brown, that is, though the official exponent of the scottish philosophy, was in this philosophical tenet at one with the school which they regarded as materialistic or sceptical. the path by which he reaches his conclusions is also characteristic. brown has reversed the interpretation of reid's _experimentum crucis_. i will give up my case, says reid, if you can make the external world out of sensations. that, replies brown, is precisely what we can do. how from sensations do we get what berkeley called 'outness'? we get it, says brown, from the sense of resistance or 'impeded effort.' that reveals to us the fact that there is something independent of ourselves, and the belief in such a something is precisely what we mean, and all that we mean, by the belief in an external world. consistently with this, brown rejects reid's distinction between the primary and secondary qualities. the distinction corresponds no doubt to some real differences, but there is no difference of the kind suggested by reid. 'all [the qualities] are relative and equally relative--our perception of extension and resistance as much as our perception of fragrance and bitterness.'[ ] we ascribe the sensations to 'external objects,' but the objects are only known by the 'medium' of our sensations. in other words, the whole world may be regarded as a set of sensations, whether of sight, smell, touch, or resistance to muscular movement, accompanied by the belief that they are caused by something not ourselves, and of which something we can only say that it is not ourselves. once more, the analysis of the process by which the belief is generated is significant. from resistance, or the sensation produced when something 'resists our attempts to grasp it,' we get the 'outness.' then perception is 'nothing more than the association of this complex notion with our other sensations--the notion of something extended and resisting, suggested by these sensations, when the suggestions themselves have previously arisen, and suggested in the same manner and on the same principle as any other associate feeling suggests any other associate feeling.'[ ] the odour or colour of a rose recalls the sensation of touching and of resistance to our grasp. thus we regard the whole group of sensations as due to the external cause which produces the sensation of resistance. brown seems to hesitate a little as to whether he shall appeal to an 'intuition' or to 'association,' but 'as i rather think,' he says, the belief is founded 'on associations as powerful as intuition.'[ ] whatever, then, may be the origin of the belief--'intuition' or 'association'--it is clear that it can give us no knowledge except such as is derived from sensations. moreover, brown is thus led, as in the doctrine of causation, to accept a really sceptical position. he declares that he is in this respect at one with both reid and hume. they both accept two propositions: first, that we cannot 'by mere reasoning' prove the existence of an external world; secondly, that it is 'absolutely impossible for us not to believe' in its existence. hume, he says, pronounces the first proposition in a 'loud tone of voice' and 'whispers' the second. reid, conversely, passes over the first rapidly and 'dwells on the second with a tone of confidence.'[ ] brown accepts both statements. he has already said that there is no argument against berkeley's denial of matter any more than against the 'infinite divisibility of matter.' but he adds, it is 'physically impossible' for us to admit the conclusion, at least without 'an instant dissent from a momentary logical admission.'[ ] this, indeed, is but a version of hume's familiar statement that berkeley's arguments admit of no reply and produce no conviction. another essential doctrine of the mills, the 'association' theory, is treated differently by brown. brown, as we have seen, both in his theory of causation and in his theory of our belief in an external world, speaks of principles in the mind which somehow override 'ratiocination.' in the first case, he speaks of 'intuition,' but in the other, as i have said, he seems to prefer association. the difference is remarkable because the belief in an external world is upon his showing simply a case of causation. it means essentially the reference of our sensations as to an external cause. now, in the argument upon causation, he has insisted upon the insufficiency of association to generate the belief; and he would have found it difficult to meet his own arguments if applied to the belief in an external world. yet it does not seem to occur to him that there is any difficulty in explaining this belief in an external world as a case of what mill called 'indissoluble association.' brown, as mill thought, was not sufficiently aware of the power of this principle, and the difference between them is marked by this divergence. brown had a great deal to say about association, though he chose generally to substitute the word 'suggestion,' previously familiar to reid and berkeley.[ ] he considers it, however, mainly in another relation. he proposes to trace the order in which 'trains' of ideas succeed each other in our minds. he does not dwell upon the influence of association in producing belief. his question is not primarily as to the logic, but as to the actual succession of our thoughts. he explains that he uses the word 'suggestion' in order to avoid the hypothesis that the sequence of two ideas necessarily implies a previous state of mind in which they were brought together; and endeavours to explain various cases (as, for example, association by 'contrast' as well as by 'likeness' or 'continuity') by a more 'subtile' analysis.[ ] he then works out an elaborate theory of 'simple' and 'relative' suggestion. simple 'suggestion'[ ] corresponds mainly to ordinary association, as when a friend's name or his book calls up the thought of the man himself. 'relative suggestion' arises when two or more objects are perceived and suggest various relations of likeness and so forth.[ ] this provides a scheme for working out the whole doctrine of the sequences of ideas so far as the sequences depend upon the mind itself and not upon external causes. it thus leads to problems of abstraction and generalisation and to his whole theory of what he calls the 'intellectual states.' he again closely coincides with the french ideologists. he starts by examining locke and condillac. he of course professes to hold that condillac's version of locke is illegitimate, and ridicules the famous formula _penser c'est sentir_. he is, however, equally unwilling to admit reid's 'variety of powers.'[ ] in fact, his criticism of condillac shows more affinity than contrast. condillac erred, he says, in holding that thoughts are 'transformed sensations.' this was a false simplification into which he considers condillac to have been led partly by the ambiguity of the word _sentir_.[ ] condillac applied to the mind the theory, true in 'the chemistry of the material chemists,' that the 'compounds are the elements themselves.'[ ] he errs when he infers from the analogy that a feeling which arises out of others can be resolved into them. 'love and hate' and other emotions are fundamentally different from the sensations by which they are occasioned, not mere 'transformations' of those sensations. we, on the other hand (that is to say, reid and stewart), have erred by excessive amplification. instead of identifying different things, we have admitted a superfluous number of 'ultimate principles.' the result is that besides the original sensations, we have to consider a number of feelings, which, while essentially different, are 'suggested' or caused by them. these are parts of the whole intellectual construction, and, though not transformed sensations, are still 'feelings' arising in consequence of the sensations. they are parts of the 'trains' or sequences of 'ideas.' it is accordingly characteristic of brown that he habitually describes an intellectual process as a 'feeling.' the statement of a mathematical proportion, for example, is a case of 'relative suggestion.' when we consider two numbers together we have a '_feeling_ of the relation of proportion.'[ ] the 'profoundest reasonings' are 'nothing more than a continued analysis of our thought,' by which we resolve the 'complex _feelings_ of our minds' into the simpler conceptions out of which they were constructed.[ ] in other words, brown, it would seem, really accepts the _penser c'est sentir_, only that he regards the _sentir_ as including separate classes of feeling, which cannot be regarded as simple 'transformations' of sensation. they are 'states of the mind' caused by, that is, invariably following upon, the simpler states, and, of course, combining in an endless variety of different forms. reasoning is nothing more than a series of relative 'suggestions of which the separate subjects are felt by us to be mutually related.'[ ] hence, too, arises his theory of generalisation. he is, he says, not a 'nominalist' but a 'conceptualist,' and here, for once, agrees with reid as against stewart.[ ] the 'general term,' according to him, expresses the 'feeling or general notion of resemblance,' which arises upon a contemplation of two objects. 'in nature,' as he observes elsewhere,[ ] 'there are no classes,' but the observation of a number of particular cases and a certain feeling to which we give a name. here, again, brown's view coincides with that of his french contemporaries. we may then say briefly that brown carries out in his own fashion the conception of psychology which makes it an inductive science parallel to the physical sciences, and to be pursued by the same methods. we have to do with 'feelings' instead of atoms, and with mental instead of 'material' chemistry. our sole method is still an analysis such as guides us in unravelling complex physical phenomena. we have, indeed, to admit certain first truths--the belief in our own identity is one of them--which are necessary to our very existence, although the assertion of such principles was carried to an extravagant and ridiculous length 'by reid and some of his friends.' when, however, we come to ask what these principles are, it must be admitted that they are very innocent. they are not dangerous things, like 'innate ideas,' capable of leading us to a transcendental world, but simply assertions that we are warranted in trusting our sensations and applying a thoroughly inductive and empirical method. they are the cement which joins the feelings, and which, as mill thought, could be supplanted by 'indissoluble associations.' the indefinite power thus attributed to association became, as we shall see, mill's most characteristic doctrine. meanwhile, i will only mention one inference which illustrates brown's philosophical tendencies. stewart had spoken doubtfully of the ontological argument for theology. brown throws it over altogether. he does not even change it into an 'intuition.' he has always, he says, regarded it as 'absolutely void of force' unless it tacitly assumes the 'physical argument.' nay, it is one proof of the force of this physical argument that it has saved us from doubts which would be rather strengthened than weakened by the 'metaphysical arguments.'[ ] the 'physical argument' means the argument from design, which thus becomes the sole support of theology. hamilton naturally regards brown as a mere sceptic in disguise. his theory of perception destroys his theory of personal identity. he has refused to accept our intuitive belief in one case, and cannot appeal to it in the other. he leaves no room for 'liberty of will,' and advances 'no argument in support of this condition of our moral being.'[ ] indeed, as stewart complained, brown, by identifying 'will' and 'desire,' has got rid of the will altogether. it is only natural that a man who is making a scientific study of the laws of human nature should find no room for an assertion that within a certain sphere there are no laws. a physiologist might as well admit that some vital processes are uncaused. brown thus illustrates the gravitation of the 'common-sense' philosophy to pure empiricism. he was the last in the genuine line of scottish common-sense philosophers. when after what may be called the unphilosophical interregnum which followed brown's death, hamilton became professor, the scottish tradition was blended with the very different theories derived from kant. upon brown's version, the scottish philosophy had virtually declared itself bankrupt. the substance of his teaching was that of the very school which his predecessors had attempted to confute, carefully as the fact might be hidden by dexterous rhetoric and manipulation of technical terms. he agrees with hume's premises, and adopts the method of condillac. this was perceived by his most remarkable hearer. carlyle went to edinburgh at the end of . brown, 'an eloquent, acute little gentleman, full of enthusiasm about simple suggestions, relative, etc.,' was 'utterly unprofitable' to him, disspiriting 'as the autumn winds among withered leaves.'[ ] in _signs of the times_ ( ) carlyle gave his view of the scottish philosophy generally. they had, he says, started from the 'mechanical' premises suggested by hume. 'they let loose instinct as an indiscriminatory bandog to guard them against (his) conclusions': 'they tugged lustily at the logical chain by which hume was so coldly towing them and the world into bottomless abysses of atheism and fatalism. but the chain somehow snapped between them, and the issue has been that nobody now cares about either--any more than about hartley's, darwin's, or priestley's contemporaneous doings in england.'[ ] the judgment goes to the root of the matter. the method of reid inevitably led to this result. consider the philosophy as based upon, if not identical with, an inductive science of psychology, and the end is clear. you may study and analyse the phenomena as carefully as you please; and may, as the scottish professors did, produce, if not a scientific psychology, yet a mass of acute prolegomena to a science. but the analysis can only reveal the actual combinations, chemical or mechanical, of thought. the ultimate principles which the teachers profess to discover are simply provisional; products not yet analysed, but not therefore incapable of analysis. it was very desirable to point them out: an insistence upon the insufficiency of hume's or condillac's theories was a most valuable service; but it was valuable precisely because every indication of such an unresolved element was a challenge to the next comer to resolve it by closer analysis. and thus, in fact, the intuitions, which had played so great a part with reid, come in brown's hands to be so clearly limited to the materials given by sensation or experience that any show of 'philosophy,' meaning an independent theory of the universe, was an illusory combination of fine phrases.[ ] ii. james mill's 'analysis' james mill's _analysis of the phenomena of the human mind_ is on the one hand an exposition of the principles implied in bentham's writings, and, on the other hand, a statement of the position from which the younger mill started. j. s. mill discussed the book with his father during its composition, and in he published a new edition, with elaborate notes by himself, george grote, professor bain, and andrew findlater.[ ] the commentary is of great importance in defining the relation between the two successors to the throne of bentham. mill's _analysis_, though not widely read, made a deep impression upon mill's own disciples. it is terse, trenchant, and uncompromising. it reminds us in point of style of the french writers, with whom he sympathised, rather than of the english predecessors, to whom much of the substance was owing. the discursive rhetoric of brown or stewart is replaced by good, hard, sinewy logic. the writer is plainly in earnest. if over confident, he has no petty vanity, and at least believes every word that he says. certain limitations are at once obvious. mill, as a publicist, a historian, and a busy official, had not had much time to spare for purely philosophic reading. he was not a professor in want of a system, but an energetic man of business, wishing to strike at the root of the superstitions to which his political opponents appealed for support. he had heard of kant, and seen what 'the poor man would be at.' later german systems, had he heard of them, would have been summarily rejected by him as so much transcendental moonshine. the problem of philosophy was, he held, a very simple one, if attacked in a straightforward, scientific method. mill, like his scottish rivals, applies 'baconian' principles. the inductive method, which had already been so fruitful in the physical sciences, will be equally effective in philosophy, and ever since locke, philosophy had meant psychology. the 'philosophy of the mind' and the philosophy of the body may be treated as co-ordinate and investigated by similar methods. in the physical sciences we come ultimately to the laws of movement of their constituent atoms. in the moral sciences we come in the same way to the study of 'ideas.' the questions, how do ideas originate? and how are they combined so as to form the actual state of consciousness? are therefore the general problems to be solved. hume had definitely proposed the problem. hartley had worked out the theory of association of ideas which hume had already compared[ ] to the universal principle of gravitation in the physical world; and had endeavoured to show how this might be connected with physiological principles. hartley's followers had been content to dwell upon the power of association. abraham tucker, priestley, erasmus darwin, and belsham represented this tendency, and were the normal antagonists of reid and stewart. in france the 'ideologists' mainly followed condillac, and apparently knew nothing of hartley. mill, as his son testifies, had been profoundly influenced by hartley's treatise--the 'really master-production,' as he esteemed it, 'in the philosophy of mind.'[ ] hartley's work, as the younger mill thought, and the elder apparently agreed, was very superior to the 'merely verbal generalisation of condillac.' james mill, however, admired condillac and his successors. in his article upon education, mill traces the association theory to hobbes, locke, and hume, the last of whom, he says, was succeeded by the two 'more sober-minded' philosophers, condillac and hartley; while he especially praises erasmus darwin, helvétius, and cabanis. mill, therefore, may be regarded as an independent ally of the ideologists whose influence upon brown has been already noticed. mill had not read brown's _lectures_ when he began his _analysis_, and after reading them thought brown 'but poorly read in the doctrine of association.'[ ] he had, however, read the essay upon causation, which he rather oddly describes as 'one of the most valuable contributions to science for which we are indebted to the last generation.'[ ] he accepted brown's view _minus_ the 'intuition.' the pith of mill's book is thus determined. his aim is to give a complete analysis of mental phenomena, and therefore to resolve those phenomena into their primitive constituent atoms. here we have at once a tacit assumption which governs his method. philosophy, speaking roughly, is by some people supposed to start from truths, and thus to be in some way an evolution of logic. according to mill it must start from facts, and therefore from something not given by logic. to state clearly, indeed, the relation between truth and fact may suggest very intricate problems. mill, at any rate, must find a basis in fact, and for him the ultimate facts must be feelings. the reality at least of a feeling is undeniable. the _penser c'est sentir_, or the doctrine that all 'ideas' are transformed sensations is his starting-point. the word 'feeling,' according to him, includes every 'phenomenon of the mind.' 'think,' he says elsewhere,[ ] does not include all our experience, but 'there is nothing to which we could not extend the term "i feel."' he proceeds to infer that our experience is either a knowledge of the feelings separately, or 'a knowledge of the order in which they follow each other; and this is all.' we may add that the knowledge is the feeling. reid, kant, and the germans have indeed tried to show that there are feelings not derived from the sensations, but this, as hartley and condillac have shown, is a mistake. this is his first principle in a nutshell, and must give a clue to the various applications. the next step is familiar. hume had distinguished impressions and ideas. 'ideas' are copies of previous 'impressions.' it is for psychology to say what are the laws by which they are related to their originals. the ultimate origin cannot be explained by psychology alone. impressions are caused by the outward world acting in some way upon the mind; and the psychologist can only classify the various modes in which they present themselves. mill therefore begins by the usual account of the five senses, through which comes all knowledge of the external world. he adds to reid's list muscular sensations, and those derived from the internal organs, to which last cabanis in particular had called attention. so far he is following the steps of his predecessors. he is, he says, simply asserting an 'indisputable' fact.[ ] we have sensations and we have ideas, which are 'copies of sensations.' we may then consider how far these facts will enable us to explain the whole series of mental phenomena. 'ideation,' which he suggests as a new word--the process by which a continuous series of thoughts goes on in our minds--is the general phenomenon to be considered. without, as yet, pronouncing that sensations and copies of sensations will turn out to form the whole contents of our consciousness, he tries to show for what part of those contents they will account. here we come to the doctrine which for him and his school gave the key to all psychological problems. it was james mill's real merit, according to his son, that he carried the principle of association of ideas further than it had been carried by hartley or other predecessors.[ ] the importance of the doctrine, indeed, is implied in the very statement of the problem. if it be true, or so far as it is true, that our consciousness reveals to us simply a series of 'sensations' and 'ideas,' the question must be how they are combined. 'thought succeeds thought, idea follows idea incessantly,'[ ] says mill; and this phrase assumes 'thoughts' and 'ideas' to be separable atoms. how, then, do they come to coalesce into an apparently continuous stream? the mind is a stream of 'ideas.' if the stream is composed of drops, we must, of course, consider the drops as composing the stream. the question is, what laws can we assign which will determine the process of composition? the phrase 'association' admittedly expresses some general and very familiar truths. innumerable connections may be established when there is no assignable ground of connection in the ideas themselves other than the fact of a previous contact. one idea not only calls up the other, but in some way generates a belief in an independent connection. we hear thunder, for example, and think of lightning. the two ideas are entirely distinct and separate, for they are due to different senses. yet we not only think of lightning when we hear thunder, but we have no doubt that there is a causal connection. we believe in this connection, again, though no further explanation can be given of the fact. thunder and lightning have occurred together, and we infer that they will, and even must, occur together. when we examine our whole structure of belief, we find such 'arbitrary' associations pervade it in every direction. language itself is learned simply by association. there is no connection whatever between the sound of the word 'man' and the 'ideas' which the word excites, beyond the fact that the sound has been previously heard when the ideas were excited. here, then, is a phenomenon to be explained or generalised. we have in countless cases a certain connection established for which no further reason can be assigned than the fact of its previous occurrence. on such a ground, we believe that fire burns, that bread is wholesome, that stones fall; and but for such beliefs could know nothing of the outside world. 'contingent' truth, therefore, or truth derived from mere contact, pervades, if it does not constitute, the whole fabric of our whole knowledge. to prove that all our knowledge is derived from experience is, according to mill, to prove that in some sense or other association of ideas lies at the base of all intellectual processes. when locke introduced a chapter upon 'association of ideas' into the fourth edition of his essay, he treated it as the exceptional case. some ideas had a connection traceable by reason; others were only connected by 'chance and custom.' association does not explain reasoning, only the deviations from reasoning. but with hume and hartley the relation is inverted. the principle, instead of being an exceptional case, is simply the universal rule from which logical connection may be deduced as a special case. the facts upon which mill relied, and the account of them which he gave, require notice and embodiment in any sound psychology. in some shape or other they form the starting-point of all later systems. mill's vigorous application of his principle, worked out with imperfect appreciation and with many oversights, had therefrom, at least, the merit of preparing the ground for a more scientific method. in any case, however, his conclusions, so far as sound, must be placed in a different framework of theory. it becomes necessary to dwell chiefly upon the curious defects of his theory, if taken as he wished it to be taken, for an ultimate scientific statement. the fact that there is a synthesis and an analysis is expressed by 'association.' but what more can we say? what are the 'laws' of association? unless some rule can be given, we shall get nothing that can be called a theory. one idea is not suggested by the other through any logical process. they are still 'conjoined' but not 'connected.' the connection, therefore, must be given by something different from the ideas themselves. now the order of the original 'sensations' depends upon the 'objects of nature,' and is therefore left to 'physical philosophy.'[ ] they occur, however, either in 'synchronous' or in 'successive' order. then 'ideas' spring up in the order of 'sensations,' and this is the 'general law of association of ideas.'[ ] the synchronous sensations produce synchronous ideas and the successive sensations successive ideas. finally, the strength of the association between the ideas depends upon 'the vividness of the associated feelings, and the frequency of the association.'[ ] hume had said that association depended upon three principles, 'contiguity in time and place,' 'causation,' and 'resemblance.' contiguity in time corresponds to the successive, and contiguity in place to the synchronous, order. causation, as brown had finally proved,[ ] means simply antecedence and consequence. 'resemblance' remains and is, as mill afterwards says,[ ] a most important principle; but in an unlucky moment he is half inclined to reduce even 'resemblance' to 'contiguity.'[ ] resemblance is, he even suggests, merely 'a case of frequency,' because we generally see like things together. when we see one tree or sheep, we generally see several trees or sheep. j. s. mill mildly remarks upon this quaint suggestion as the 'least successful simplification' in the book. he argues the point gravely. sheep, it is clear, are not seen to be like because they often compose a flock, but are considered to be a flock because they are seen to be like. to do james mill justice, he drops the argument as soon as he has struck it out. it is only worth notice as showing his aim. 'likeness' seems to imply a relation dependent on the ideas themselves; not purely external and arbitrary. if we could get rid of likeness, all association would ultimately be 'contiguity.' 'the fundamental law of association,' as he says elsewhere,[ ] 'is that when two things have been frequently found together, we never perceive or think of the one without thinking of the other.' the two ideas are associated as two balls are associated when they are in the same box. so far as they are themselves concerned, they might be separated without any alteration in their own properties. what, then, corresponds to the 'box'? association depends upon relations of time and space. things are associated by occurring in succession or together; the red colour of a rose is in the same place with the shape of the leaf; the scent is perceived at the same time with the colour. the thunder follows the lightning. what, then, he might ask, are 'time' and 'space'? are they 'ideas' or 'sensations' or qualities of the objects? or, in any case, as supplying the ultimate principle of association, do they not require investigation? before coming to that problem, however, we have to settle other knotty points. we must clear away illusions which seem to introduce something more than association. elements of thought not at first sight expressible simply in terms of sensations and ideas must be analysed to show that they are only disguises for different combinations of the facts. reasoning, according to most logicians, supposes, first, concepts, and therefore some process of classification of the objects of thought; and, secondly, some process of combining these concepts to bring out hitherto unknown truths. what, then, is the meaning of the general or abstract symbols employed in the process? mill's provision of raw materials consists so far of sensations and ideas, which are worked up so as to form 'clusters' (the word is taken from hartley) and 'trains.' this corresponds to synchronous and successive associations. how does the logical terminology express these 'clusters' and 'trains'? mill answers by a theory of 'naming.' language fulfils two purposes; it is required in order to make our ideas known to others; and in order to fix our own ideas. ideas are fluctuating, transitory, and 'come into the mind unbidden.' we must catch and make a note of these shifting crowds of impalpable entities. we therefore put marks upon the simple sensations or upon the 'clusters.' we ticket them as a tradesman tickets bundles of goods in his warehouse, and can refer to them for our own purposes or those of others. as the number of objects to be marked is enormous, as there are countless ideas and clusters and clusters of clusters of endless variety to be arranged in various ways, one main object of naming is economy. a single word has to be used to mark a great number of individuals. this will account for such general names as are represented by noun-substantives: man, horse, dog, and so forth. mill then proceeds, with the help of horne tooke, to explain the other grammatical forms. an adjective is another kind of noun marking a cross division. verbs, again, are adjectives marking other sets of facts, and enabling us to get rid of the necessity of using a new mark for every individual or conceivable combination into clusters. j. s. mill remarks that this omits the special function of verbs--their 'employment in predication.'[ ] james mill, however, has his own view of 'predication.' 'man' is a mark of john, peter, thomas, and the rest. when i say 'john is a man,' i mean that 'man is another mark to that idea of which john is a mark.'[ ] i am then able to make a statement which will apply to all the individuals, and save the trouble of repeating the assertion about each. 'predication,' therefore, is simply a substitution of one name for another. so, for example, arithmetic is simply naming. what i call two and two, i also call four. the series of thoughts in this case is merely 'a series of names applicable to the same thing and meaning the same thing.'[ ] this doctrine, as j. s. mill remarks, is derived from hobbes, whom leibniz in consequence called _plus quam nominalis_.[ ] my belief that two and two make four explains why i give the same name to certain numbers; but the giving the name does not explain the belief. meanwhile, if a class name be simply the mark which is put upon a bundle of things, we have got rid of a puzzle. mill triumphs over the unfortunate realists who held that a class meant a mysterious entity, existing somewhere apart from all the individuals in which it is embodied. there is really nothing mysterious; a name is first the mark of an individual, the individual corresponding to a 'cluster' or a set of 'simple ideas, concreted into a complex idea.'[ ] then the name and the complex idea are associated reciprocally; each 'calls up' the other. the complex idea is 'associated' with other resembling ideas. the name becomes a talisman calling up the ideas of an indefinite number of resembling individuals, and the name applied to one in the first instance becomes a mark which calls up all, or, as he says, is the 'name of the whole combination.' classification, therefore, 'is merely a process of naming, and is all resolvable into association.'[ ] the peculiarity of this theory, as his commentators again remark, is that it expressly omits any reference to abstraction. the class simply means the aggregate of resembling individuals without any selection of the common attributes which are, in j. s. mill's phrase, 'connoted' by the class-name. abstraction, as james mill explains, is a subsidiary process, corresponding to the 'formation of _sub-species_.'[ ] mill has now shown how the various forms of language correspond to ideas, formed into clusters of various orders by the principle of association. the next step will naturally be to show how these clusters are connected in the process of reasoning. here the difficulty about predication recurs. j. s. mill[ ] remarks that his father's theory of predication consistently omits 'the element belief.' when i say, 'john is a man,' i make an affirmation or assert a belief. i do not simply mean to call up in the mind of my hearer a certain 'cluster' or two coincident clusters of ideas, but to convey knowledge of truths. the omission of reference to belief is certainly no trifle. mill has classified the various ideas and combinations of ideas which are used in judgment, but the process of judgment itself seems to have slipped out of account. he may have given us, or be able to give us, a reasoned catalogue of the contents of our minds, but has not explained how the mind itself acts. it is a mere passive recipient of ideas, or rather itself a cluster of ideas cohering in various ways, without energy of its own. one idea, as he tells us, calls up another 'by its own associating power.'[ ] ideas are things which somehow stick together and revive each other, without reference to the mind in which they exist or which they compose. this explains his frequent insistence upon one assertion. as we approach the question of judgment he finds it essential. 'having a sensation and having a feeling,' he says, 'are not two things.' to 'feel an idea and be conscious of that feeling are not two things; the feeling and the consciousness are but two names for the same thing.'[ ] so, again, 'to have a sensation and to believe that we have it, are not distinguishable things.'[ ] locke's reflection thus becomes nothing but simple consciousness, and having a feeling is the same as attending to it.[ ] the point is essential. it amounts to saying that we can speak of a thought as though it were simply a thing. thus belief not only depends upon, but actually _is_ association. 'it is not easy,' he says, 'to treat of memory, belief, and judgment separately.'[ ] as j. s. mill naturally asks, 'how is it possible to treat of belief without including in it memory and judgment?' memory is a case of belief, and judgment an 'act of belief.'[ ] to james mill, however, it appears that as these different functions all involve association, they may be resolved into varying applications of that universal power. memory involves 'an idea of my present self' and an 'idea of my past self,' and to remember is to 'run over the intervening states of consciousness called up by association.'[ ] belief involves association at every step. the belief in external objects is, as 'all men admit' ... 'wholly resolvable into association.'[ ] 'that a cause means and can mean nothing to the human mind but constant antecedence' (and therefore 'inseparable association,' as he thinks) 'is no longer a point in dispute.'[ ] association, it is true, may produce wrong as well as right beliefs; right beliefs when 'in conformity with the connections of things,'[ ] and wrong beliefs when not in conformity. in both cases the belief is produced by 'custom,' though, happily, the right custom is by far the commonest. the 'strength of the association follows the frequency.' the crow flies east as well as west; but the stone always falls downwards.[ ] hence i form an 'inseparable association' corresponding to a belief in gravitation, but have no particular belief about the direction of a crow's flight. this gives the doctrine of 'indissoluble association'--the pivot of the whole scheme--the doctrine, says j. s. mill, which, 'if it can be proved, is the greatest of all the triumphs of the association philosophy.'[ ] the younger mill always insisted upon the vast importance of the principle; but he here admits a difficulty. in a long note[ ] upon james mill's chapter on 'belief,' conspicuous for his usual candour, he confesses the inadequacy of his father's view. the comment indicates the point of divergence and yet shows curiously the ground common to both. james mill's theory states facts in some sense undeniable. our 'ideas' cohere and combine to form a tissue: an imagery or series of pictures which form the content and are somehow the ground of our beliefs. the process of formation clearly involves 'association.' the scent of the rose is associated with the colour: both with the visible form and so forth. but is this process the same thing as believing, or have we to explain the belief by some mental activity different from, however closely connected with, the imagination, or in his phrase the 'ideation'? here j. s. mill finds a difficulty. the statement, 'i believe that thunder will follow lightning,' is something more than the statement, 'the sight suggests or calls up the sound.' the mental picture considered by itself may be described as a fact, without considering what belief, or whether any belief, is implied. j. s. mill therefore makes a distinction intended to clear up his father's confusion. there is a difference, he says, between remembering 'a real fact' and remembering a 'thought.'[ ] he illustrates this by the difference between the idea of lafayette and the idea of falstaff. lafayette was real, and had been seen by the rememberer. falstaff is a figment who, having never existed, can never have been seen. yet the idea of falstaff may be quite as vivid as the idea of lafayette. what, then, is the difference between the two states of mind? one, says j. s. mill, is a belief about 'real facts'; the other about 'thoughts.' this, he observes, corresponds to james mill's distinction between a 'sensation' and an 'idea,'[ ] a difference which he had admitted to be 'primordial.' then, says j. s. mill, we may as well admit that there is an 'element' in the remembrance of a real fact not implied in the remembrance of a thought and not dependent on any difference in the 'ideas' themselves. it, too, may be taken as 'primordial,' or incapable of further analysis. this doctrine becomes important in some of mill's logical speculations,[ ] and is connected with his whole theory of belief in an external world. it has an uncomfortable likeness to reid's 'common-sense' view, and even to the hated 'intuitionism'; and mill deserves the more credit for his candour. meanwhile it seems clear that the criticism implies an important confusion. the line of distinction is drawn in the wrong place. so far as the simple 'imagination' is concerned, there may be no question of belief or disbelief. the picture of falstaff or of lafayette, a horse or a centaur, arises equally, and is put together, let us suppose, by simple association. but as soon as i think about either i believe or disbelieve, and equally whether i judge the object to be a thought or to be a 'real fact,' whether i say that i could have seen lafayette, or that i could not have seen falstaff. it is not a question between reality or unreality, but between two classes of reality. a dream is a real dream, just as a man is a real man. the question is simply where or how it exists, not whether it exists. the picture is, in one case, put together by my mind; in the other, due to a stimulus from without; but it exists in both cases; and belief is equally present whether i put it in one class of reality or the other: as we form a judgment equally when we pronounce a man to be lying, and when we pronounce him to be speaking the truth. j. s. mill seems to suppose that association can explain the imagination of a centaur or a falstaff, but cannot explain the belief in a horse or lafayette. the imagination or 'ideation,' he should have said, accounts in both cases for the mere contents of the thought; but in neither case can it by itself explain the judgment as to 'reality.' that is to say, james mill may have described accurately a part of the process by which the mental picture is constructed, but has omitted to explain the action of the mind itself. belief, we may agree, is a 'primordial' or ultimate faculty; but we must not interpret it as belief in a 'real fact' as distinguished from belief in 'a thought': that is a secondary and incidental distinction. this confusion, as i have said, apparently prevents j. s. mill from seeing how deeply his very frank admissions cut into the very structure of his father's system. he has, as i have said, remarked upon the singular absence of any reference to 'belief,' 'abstraction,' and so forth; but he scarcely observes how much is implied by the omission. his criticism should have gone further. james mill has not only omitted a faculty which enables us to distinguish between 'thoughts' and 'things,' images of fancy and pictures of reality, but also the faculty which is equally present whenever we properly think instead of simply seeing images passively; and equally whether we refer an image to fact or fancy. his 'analysis of the mind' seems to get rid of the mind itself. the omission becomes important at the next step. 'under the modest title of an explanation of the meaning of several names,' says his son, james mill discusses 'some of the deepest and most intricate questions in all metaphysics.' a treatise on chemistry might almost as well be 'described as an explanation of the names, air, water, potass, sulphuric acid, and so forth.'[ ] why does the chapter come in this place and in this peculiar form? probably because james mill was partly conscious of the inadequacy of his previous chapters. the problems which he has been considering could not be adequately treated by regarding ideas as 'things' bound together by association. what, after all, is a proposition? what is meant by 'true' or 'false,' as distinguished from real and unreal? if an association actually _is_ a truth, what is the difference between right and wrong associations? both are facts, and the very words 'right' and 'wrong,' that is, true and false, apply not to facts but to propositions.[ ] the judgment is tested in some way by correspondence to the 'order of nature,' or of our sensations and ideas. what precisely is meant by this order? so far as we have gone, it seems as if ideas might be combined in any order whatever, and the most various beliefs generated in different minds. perhaps, however, the principle of association itself may reveal something as to the possible modes of coalescence. mill makes contiguity an ultimate ground of association; and contiguity implies that things have certain relations expressible in terms of space and time and so forth. these primitive relations now come up for consideration, and should enable us to say more precisely what kind of order is possible. in fact, mill now endeavours to analyse the meanings of such words as relation in general, time, space, number, likeness, personal identity and others. the effect of his analysis is that the principles, whatever they may be, which might be supposed to underlie association appear to be products of association. he begins by asking what is the meaning of 'relative terms.' their peculiarity is that they 'always exist in pairs,' such as 'father and son,' 'high and low,' 'right and left.' 'if it is asked, why do we give names in pairs? the general answer immediately suggests itself; it is because the things named present themselves in pairs, that is, are joined by association.'[ ] j. s. mill thinks that no part of the _analysis_ is more valuable than the 'simple explanation' which follows. there is no 'mystical bond called a relation' between two things, but 'a very simple peculiarity in the concrete fact' marked by the names. in 'ordinary names of objects, the fact connoted by a name ... concerns one object only'; in the case of relative names, 'the fact connoted concerns two objects, and cannot be understood without thinking of them both.' a 'fact concerning an object' is a curiously awkward expression; but one point is clear. if the two objects concerned are the same, whether considered apart or together, the 'relation' must be something more than the facts, and therefore requires to be specified. if they are, in fact, one thing, or parts of a continuous process, we must ask how they come to be distinguished, and what ground there is for speaking of association. james mill, by considering the problem as a mere question of 'names,' seems to intimate that the relation is a mere figment. in fact, as j. s. mill perceives, the 'explanations' become nugatory. they simply repeat the thing to be explained. he begins with 'resemblance.' to feel two things to be alike is, he says, the same thing as to have the two feelings. he means to say, apparently, that when there are two 'ideas' there is not also a third idea of 'likeness.' that would be what bentham called a 'fictitious entity.' but this cannot 'explain' the likeness of the ideas. 'their being alike,' as his son interprets, 'is nothing but their being felt to be alike--which does not help us.'[ ] so 'antecedence and consequence' are 'explained' by saying that one of two feelings calls up the other; or, as the son again remarks, antecedence is explained by antecedence, and succession by succession. antecedence and consequence, like likeness and unlikeness, must therefore, according to j. s. mill, be 'postulated as universal conditions of nature, inherent in all our feelings whether of external or internal consciousness.'[ ] in other words, apparently, time is an ultimate form of thought. time and space, generally, as james mill thinks, are the 'abstract names' respectively of successive and simultaneous order, which become 'indissolubly associated with the idea of every object.'[ ] space, of course, is said to be a product of touch and muscular sensations, and the problem as to how these varying sensations and these alone give rise to apparently necessary and invariable beliefs is not taken into consideration. mill is here dealing with the questions which kant attempted to answer by showing how the mind imposes its forms upon sense-given materials, forms them into concepts, and combines the concepts into judgments and reasoning. mill evades the mysterious and transcendental at the cost of omitting reason altogether. he represents the result of accepting one horn of a dilemma, which presses upon philosophies of loftier pretensions. those who accept the other horn speak of a 'fact' as though it were a truth, and argue as though the world could be spun out of pure logic, or a tissue be made of relations without any things to be related. mill, with scarcely a glance at such doctrines, tries systematically to speak of a truth as if it were a fact. the world for him is made up of ideas sticking together; and nothing else exists. the relation is the fact; belief is the association; consciousness and reflection, considered apart, are nothing but the sensations, ideas, clusters, and trains. the attempt to base all truth upon experience, to bring philosophy into harmony with science was, as i hold, perfectly right. only, upon these assumptions it could not be carried out. mill had the merit which is implied even by an unsuccessful attempt to hold by fact. he raises a number of interesting questions; and i think that it is more remarkable that so many of his observations have still an interest for psychologists than that so much is obviously wrong. mill, it may be said, took an essay upon association for a treatise upon psychology in general. he was writing what might be one important chapter in such a treatise, and supposes that he has written the whole, and can deduce 'philosophy' from it, if, indeed, any philosophy can be said to remain. meanwhile, i may observe, that by pushing his principles to extremes, even his 'association' doctrine is endangered. his _analysis_ seems to destroy even the elements which are needed to give the simplest laws of association. it is rather difficult to say what is meant by the 'contiguity,' 'sequence,' and 'resemblance,' which are the only conditions specified, and which he seems to explain not as the conditions but as the product of association. j. s. mill perceived that something was wanting which he afterwards tried to supply. i will just indicate one or two points, which may show what problems the father bequeathed to the son. james mill, at one place, discusses the odd problem 'how it happens that all trains of thought are not the same.'[ ] the more obvious question is, on his hypothesis, how it happens that any two people have the same beliefs, since the beliefs are made of the most varying materials. if, again, two ideas when associated remain distinct, we have hume's difficulty. whatever is distinguishable, he argued, is separable. if two ideas simply lie side by side, as is apparently implied by 'contiguity,' so that each can be taken apart without change, why should we suppose that they will never exist apart, or, indeed, that they should ever again come together? the contiguity does not depend upon them, but upon some inscrutable collocation, of which we can only say that it exists now. this is the problem which greatly occupied j. s. mill. the 'indissoluble' or 'inseparable' association, which became the grand arcanum of the school, while intended to answer some of these difficulties, raises others. mill seems to insist upon splitting a unit into parts in order that it may be again brought together by association. so j. s. mill, in an admiring note, confirms his father's explanation ('one of the most important thought in the whole treatise') of the infinity of space.[ ] we think space infinite because we always 'associate' position with extension. surely space is extension; and to think of one without the other implies a contradiction. we think space infinite, because we think of a space as only limited by other space, and therefore indefinitely extensible. there is no 'association,' simply repetition. elsewhere we have the problem, how does one association exclude another? only, as j. s. mill replies, when one idea includes the idea of the absence of the others.[ ] we cannot combine the ideas of a plane and a convex surface. why? because we have never had both sets of sensations together. the 'commencement' of one set has always been 'simultaneous with the cessation of another set,' as, for instance, when we bend a flat sheet of paper. the difficulty seems to be that one fact cannot be contradictory of another, since contradiction only applies to assertions. when i say that a is above b, however, i surely assert that b is below a; and i cannot make both assertions about a and b at the same time without a contradiction. to explain this by an association of simultaneous and successive sensations seems to be a curiously roundabout way of 'explaining.' every assertion is also a denial; and, if i am entitled to say anything, i am enabled without any help from association to deny its contradictory. on mill's showing, the assertion and the denial of its contradiction, instead of being identical, are taken to be two beliefs accidentally associated. finally, i need only make one remark upon the fundamental difficulty. it is hard to conceive of mere loose 'ideas' going about in the universe at large and sticking accidentally to others. after all, the human being is in true sense also an organised whole, and his constitution must be taken into account in discovering the laws of 'ideation.' this is the point of view to which mill, in his anxiety to get rid of everything that had a savour of _a priori_ knowledge about it, remains comparatively blind. it implies a remarkable omission. mill's great teacher, hartley, had appealed to physiology in a necessarily crude fashion. he had therefore an organism: a brain or a nervous system which could react upon the external world and modify and combine sensations. mill's ideas would have more apparent connection if they could be made to correspond to 'vibratiuncles' or physical processes of some kind. but this part of hartley's hypothesis had been dropped: and all reality is therefore reduced to the whirl of vagrant and accidentally cohering ideas in brains and clusters. his one main aim is to get rid of everything that can be called mystical and to trace all mental processes to 'experience,' as he understands experience--to show that we are never entitled to assert that two ideas may not be joined in any way whatever. the general tendency of the 'association philosophy' is sufficiently clear. it may be best appreciated by comparing it to the method of the physical sciences, which it was intended to rival. the physicist explains the 'laws of nature' by regarding a phenomenon as due to the varying arrangements of an indefinite multitude of uniform atoms. i need not ask whether these atoms are to be regarded as realities, even the sole realities, or, on the other hand, as a kind of logical scaffolding removable when the laws are ascertained. in any case, the assumption is necessary and most fruitful in the search for accurate and quantitative formulæ. mill virtually assumes that the same thing can be done by breaking up the stream of consciousness into the ideas which correspond to the primitive atoms. what precisely these atoms may be, how the constantly varying flow of thought can be resolved into constituent fractions, is not easy to see. the physicist at least supposes his atoms to have definite space relations, but there is nothing clearly corresponding to space in the 'ideas.' they are capable of nothing but co-existence, sequence, and likeness; but the attempt to explain the meaning of those words ends in nothing but repeating them. one result is the curious combination of the absolute and the indefinitely variable. we get absolute statements because the ultimate constituents are taken to be absolutely constant. we have indefinite variability because they may be collocated in any conceivable or inconceivable way. this becomes evident when we have to do with organisms of any kind: with characters or societies an organism varies, but varies along definite lines. but, on mill's showing, the organic relations correspond to the indefinitely variable. education is omnipotent; state constitutions can be manufactured at will, and produce indefinite consequences. and yet he can lay down laws of absolute validity, because he seems to be deducing them from one or two formulæ corresponding to the essential and invariable properties of the ultimate unit--whether man or ideas. from this follows, too, the tendency to speak as if human desires corresponded to some definite measurable things, such as utility in ethics, value in political economy, and self-interest in politics. this point appears in the application of mill's theories to the moral sciences. iii. james mill's ethics james mill in his ethical doctrine follows bentham with little variation; but he shows very clearly what was the psychology which bentham virtually assumed. i may pass very briefly over mill's theory of conduct[ ] in general. the 'phenomena of thought,' he says, may be divided into the 'intellectual' and the 'active' powers. hitherto he has considered 'sensations' and 'ideas' merely as existing; he will now consider them as 'exciting to action.'[ ] the phenomena consist in both cases of sensations and ideas, combined into 'clusters,' and formed into trains 'according to the sense laws.' we have now to consider the ideas as active, and 'to demonstrate the simple laws into which the phenomena of human life, so numerous and apparently so diversified, may all be easily resolved.' a desire is an 'idea' of a pleasant sensation; an 'aversion' an idea of painful sensation. the idea and the sensation are not two things, but two names for the same thing. desire, again, has a 'tacit reference to future time' when applied to a given case. we associate these pains and pleasures with the causes; and in the important case our own actions are the causes. thus the association produces the motive, and the readiness to obey the motive is, as bentham says, the 'disposition.' then, following hartley, mill explains the will. bodily actions are muscular contractions, which are slowly co-ordinated by habit--association, of course, acting at every stage of the process. now, it is a plain fact that muscular contractions follow 'ideas.' it is easy, then, to see how the 'idea of a pleasure should excite the idea of the action which is the cause of it; and how, when the idea exists, the action should follow.'[ ] an 'end' is a pleasure desired, and gives the 'motive.' when we start from the motive and get the pleasure the same association is called 'will.' 'free-will' is of course nonsense. we have a full account of the human mechanism, and can see that it is throughout worked by association, admitting the primary fact of experience that the idea causes the muscular contraction. this, and the ethical conclusions which follow, substantially coincide with bentham's doctrine, or supply the first principles from which bentham might be deduced. a fuller exposition of the ethics is given in the _fragment on mackintosh_. mackintosh, in , wrote a dissertation upon 'ethical philosophy,' for the _encyclopædia britannica_.[ ] the book stirred mill's 'indignation against an evil-doer.'[ ] he wrote a _fragment on mackintosh_, which was suppressed for a time in consequence of his antagonist's death in , but published in the year of his own death, .[ ] according to professor bain, the book was softened in consequence of remonstrances from bickersteth. it would be curious to see the previous version. professor bain says that there are 'thousands' of books which contain 'far worse severities of language.' i confess that i cannot remember quite 'a thousand.' it is at least difficult to imagine more unmitigated expressions of contempt and aversion. mackintosh, says mill, uses 'macaroni phrases,' 'tawdry talk,' 'gabble'; he gets 'beyond drivelling' into something more like 'raving'; he 'deluges' us with 'unspeakable nonsense.' 'good god!' sums up the comment which can be made upon one sentence.[ ] sir james, he declares, 'has got into an intellectual state so thoroughly depraved that i doubt whether a parallel to it is possible to be found.'[ ] there is scarcely a mention of mackintosh without an insult. a partial explanation of mill's wrath may be suggested by the chapter upon bentham. mackintosh there accused the utilitarians generally of 'wantonly wounding the most respectable feelings of mankind'; of 'clinging to opinions because they are obnoxious'; of taking themselves to be a 'chosen few,' despising the multitude, and retorting the dislike which their arrogance has provoked by using still more exasperating language.[ ] he suggested that they should do more justice to 'the romillys and the broughams,' who had been the real and judicious reformers; and he illustrated the errors of bentham by especial reference to mill's arguments upon government and education. there had long been an antipathy. mackintosh, said mill in , 'lives but for london display; _parler et faire parler de lui_ in certain circles is his heaven.'[ ] mackintosh would have been most at home in a professorial chair. he was, indeed, professor at haileybury from to , and spoken of as a probable successor to brown at edinburgh. but he could never decidedly concentrate himself upon one main purpose. habits of procrastination and carelessness about money caused embarrassment which forced him to write hastily. his love of society interfered with study, and his study was spread over an impossible range of subjects. his great abilities, wasted by these infirmities, were seconded by very wide learning. macaulay describes the impression which he made at holland house.[ ] he passed among his friends as the profound philosopher; the man of universal knowledge of history; of ripe and most impartial judgment in politics; the oracle to whom all men might appeal with confidence, though a little too apt to find out that all sides were in the right. when he went to india he took with him some of the scholastic writers and the works of kant and fichte, then known to few englishmen. one of macaulay's experiences at holland house was a vision of mackintosh verifying a quotation from aquinas.[ ] it must have been delightful. the ethical 'dissertation,' however, had to be shortened by omitting all reference to german philosophy, and the account of the schoolmen is cursory. it is easy to see why the suave and amiable mackintosh appeared to mill to be a 'dandy' philosopher, an unctuous spinner of platitudes to impose upon the frequenters of holland house, and hopelessly confused in the attempt to make compromises between contradictory theories. it is equally easy to see why to mackintosh the thoroughgoing and strenuous mill appeared to be a one-sided fanatic, blind to the merits of all systems outside the narrow limits of benthamism, and making even philanthropy hateful. had mackintosh lived to read mill's _fragment_, he would certainly have thought it a proof that the utilitarians were as dogmatic and acrid as he had ever asserted. mackintosh's position in ethics explains mill's antagonism. neither aquinas nor kant nor fichte influenced him. his doctrine is the natural outcome of the scottish philosophy. hutcheson had both invented bentham's sacred formula, and taught the 'moral sense' theory which bentham attacked. to study the morality from the point of view of 'inductive psychology' is to study the moral faculty, and to reject the purely 'intellectual' system. to assign the position of the moral faculty in the psychological system is to show its utility. on the other hand, it was the very aim of the school to avoid the sceptical conclusions of hume in philosophy, and in ethics to avoid the complete identification of morality with utility. there must be a distinction between the judgments, 'this is right,' and 'this is useful'; even 'useful to men in general.' hence, on the one hand, morality is immediately dictated by a special sense or faculty, and yet its dictates coincide with the dictates of utility. i have spoken of this view as represented by dugald stewart; and brown had, according to his custom, moved a step further by diminishing the list of original first principles, and making 'virtue' simply equivalent to 'feelings' of approval and disapproval.[ ] virtue, he said, is useful; the utility 'accompanies our moral approbation; but the perception of that utility does not constitute our moral approbation, nor is it necessarily presupposed by it.'[ ] he compares the coincidence between virtue and utility to leibniz's pre-established harmony.[ ] the position is familiar. the adaptation of an organism to its conditions may be taken either as an explanation of its development or as a proof of a creative purpose. mackintosh takes nearly the same position. ethical inquiries, he says, relate to 'two perfectly distinct subjects.' we have the problem of the 'criterion' (what is the distinction between right and wrong?) and the problem of the 'moral sentiments' (what are the feelings produced by the contemplation of right and wrong?). in treating of the feelings, again, we must avoid the confusion caused in the older philosophy by the reduction of 'feeling' to 'thought.'[ ] reason and sensation are distinct though inseparably combined; and hence, he argues, it is a fallacy to speak with clarke as if reason could by itself be a motive. an argument to influence conduct must always be in the last resort an appeal to a 'feeling.'[ ] it is idle to tell a man that conduct is infamous unless he _feels_ infamy to be painful. we have then to ask what are the feelings which prompt to morality. so far as the criterion is concerned, mackintosh fully agrees with hume, whose theory that 'general utility constitutes a general ground of moral distinctions can never be impugned until some example can be produced of a virtue generally pernicious or a vice generally beneficial.'[ ] hume, however, overlooks the 'rightful supremacy of the moral faculty over every other principle of human action.' mackintosh thought that his best service, as he told macvey napier,[ ] had been his 'endeavour to slip in a foundation under butler's doctrine of the supremacy of the conscience, which he left baseless.' to slip in a foundation is a very delicate operation in logical as in material architecture; and the new foundation seems here to be in danger of inverting the edifice. the 'supremacy of conscience'[ ] means with him that the 'moral sentiments' form a separate class. they are the feelings with which we contemplate voluntary actions in general, and therefore those aroused by the character and conduct of the agent. mackintosh thus takes an æsthetic view of morality. we have a 'moral taste' or perception of beauty. the same qualities which make a horse beautiful make him also swift and safe, but we perceive the beauty without thinking of the utility, or rather when we do not think of it. so we admire a hero or martyr for the beauty of his character without reference to his services to us.[ ] this moral taste, though not identical with the conscience, becomes 'absorbed into it.' the conscience differs from the 'moral taste' because it acts upon the will. but its supremacy seems to be this quality which it shares with or derives from the taste--its immediate and spontaneous operation. it is, he seems to mean, a direct perception of beauty in character applied to the regulation of conduct. virtue corresponds to an instinctive and so far ultimate appreciation of beauty of character. mackintosh insists upon this intrinsic charm of virtue in the language which struck mill as simply foppish affectation. the pleasure of 'benevolence' itself, says mackintosh, is infinitely superior to the pleasures to which it may lead. could it become 'lasting and intense,' it would convert the heart into a heaven.[ ] to love virtue, you must love it 'for its own sake.'[ ] the delights of being virtuous (as he interprets the phrase) are greater than any delight from the consequences of virtue. and he holds up as a model fletcher of saltoun, who would 'lose his life to serve his country, but would not do a base thing to save it.'[ ] how, then, is this view to be reconciled with the unreserved admission of 'utility' as the 'criterion' of right and wrong? one answer is that mackintosh fully accepts hartley's doctrine of association. he even criticises previous philosophers for not pushing it far enough. he says that association, instead of merely combining a 'thought' and a 'feeling,' 'forms them into a new compound, in which the properties of the component parts are no longer discoverable, and which may itself become a substantive principle of human virtue.'[ ] the question of origin, therefore, is different from the question of nature. he follows hartley in tracing the development of various desires, and in showing how the 'secondary desires' are gradually formed from the primitive by transference to different objects.[ ] we must start from feelings which lie beneath any intellectual process, and thus the judgment of utility is from the first secondary. we arrive at the higher feelings which are 'as independent as if they were underived,'[ ] and yet, as happiness has been involved at every stage as an end of each desire, it is no wonder that the ultimate result should be to make the general happiness the end. the coincidence, then, of the criterion with the end of the moral sentiments is 'not arbitrary,' but arises necessarily from 'the laws of human nature and the circumstances in which mankind are placed.'[ ] hence we reach the doctrine which 'has escaped hartley as well as every other philosopher.'[ ] that doctrine is that the moral faculty is one; it is compound, indeed, in its origin; but becomes an independent unit, which can no longer be resolved even in thought into its constituent elements. the doctrine approximates, it would seem, to mill's; but was all the more unpalatable to him on that account. the agreement implies plagiarism, and the difference hopeless stupidity. to mill bentham was the legitimate development of hartley, while to mackintosh bentham was the plausible perverter of hartley. mill regarded mackintosh as a sophist, whose aim was to mislead honest utilitarians into the paths of orthodoxy, and who also ignored the merits of mill himself. 'it was mr. mill,' he says, 'who first made known the great importance of the principle of the indissoluble association';[ ] 'mr. mill' who had taken up hartley's speculations and 'prosecuted the inquiry to its end';[ ] 'mr. mill' who explained affections and motives and dispositions;[ ] and 'mr. mill' who had cleared up mistakes about classification which 'had done more to perpetuate darkness on the subject of mind than any other cause, perhaps than all other causes taken together.'[ ] sir james blundered because he had not read mill's book, as he pretended to have done. mill does not say all this from vanity; he is simply stating an obvious matter of fact. mill's polemic against the moral sense theory, even against a moral sense produced by association, reveals the really critical points of the true utilitarian doctrine. mill would cut down the moral sense root and branch. the 'moral sense' means a 'particular faculty' necessary to discern right and wrong. but no particular faculty is necessary to discern 'utility.'[ ] hence the distinction between the 'criterion' and the 'moral sentiments' is absurd. the utility is not the 'criterion' of the morality but itself constitutes the morality. to say that conduct is right, according to the utilitarians, is the same thing as to say that it produces happiness. if the moral sense orders conduct opposed to the criterion, it is so far bad. if it never orders such conduct, it is superfluous. happiness, as with bentham, is a definite thing--a currency of solid bullion; and 'virtue' means nothing except as calculated in this currency. mill, again, like bentham, regards the 'utility' principle as giving the sole 'objective' test. the complaint that it sanctions 'expediency' is a simple fallacy. if you do not love virtue 'for its own sake,' said mackintosh, you will break a general law wherever the law produces a balance of painful consequences. mill replies with great vigour.[ ] all general rules, it is true, imply exceptions, but only when they conflict with the supreme rule. 'there is no exception to a rule of morality,' says mill, 'but what is made by a rule of morality.'[ ] there are numerous cases in which the particular laws conflict; and one law must then be broken. the question which to break must then be decided by the same unequivocal test, 'utility.' if a rule for increasing utility diminishes utility in a given case, it must be broken in that case. mackintosh's fletcher of saltoun illustrates the point.[ ] what is the 'base' thing which fletcher would not do to save his country? would he not be the basest of men if he did not save his country at any cost? to destroy half a population and reduce the other half to misery has been thought a sacrifice not too great for such an end. would not mackintosh himself allow fletcher, when intrusted with an important fortress, to sacrifice the lives and properties of innocent people in defence of his position?[ ] what, then, does the love of virtue 'for its own sake' come to? if you refuse to save your country, because you think the means base, your morality is mischievous, that is, immoral. if, on the other hand, you admit that the means cease to be base, the supposed supremacy is an empty brag. the doctrine is then verbally maintained, but interpreted so as to conform to the criterion of utility. in other words, mackintosh cannot reconcile his admission of utility as a 'criterion' with his support of a moral sense entitled to override the criterion. mackintosh's moral sense is meant to distinguish the moral motive from 'expediency.' to this, again, mill has a very forcible answer. a man is blameable who makes exceptions to laws in his own private interest. but if a man consistently and invariably acted for the 'greatest happiness of the greatest number,' and paid no more attention to his own happiness than to other people's, he would certainly have a very lofty and inflexible test, assuming--as we must allow mill to assume--that we can calculate the effect of conduct upon happiness at large. again, upon the assumption that 'moral' is equivalent to 'felicific,' we get a general rule entitled to override any individual tastes or fancies, such as mill supposes to be meant by the 'moral sense.' the rule is derived from the interests of all, and gives an ultimate 'objective criterion.' j. s. mill, describing his father's system, observes that the teaching of such a man was not likely to err on 'the side of laxity or indulgence.'[ ] it certainly did not. and, in fact, his criterion, however obtained, had in his eyes the certainty of a scientific law. this or that is right as surely as this or that food is wholesome. my taste has nothing to do with it. and, moreover, the criterion certainly gives a moral ground. if i know that any conduct will produce more happiness than misery that is a moral reason for adopting it. a 'moral sense' which should be radically inconsistent with that criterion, which should order me to inflict suffering as suffering, or without some ulterior reason, would be certainly at fault. mackintosh indeed would have agreed to this, though, if mill was right, at the expense of consistency. mill, however, deduces from his criterion doctrines which involve a remarkable paradox. the mode in which he is led to them is characteristic of the whole method. mill, like bentham, puts morality upon the same plane with law. conduct is influenced either by the 'community in its conjunct capacity'--that is, by law; or by 'individuals in their individual capacity'--that is, by morality.[ ] the sanction of one, we may infer, is force; of the other, approval and disapproval. with this we must take another benthamite doctrine, of which i have already spoken.[ ] 'mr. bentham demonstrated,' says mill, 'that the morality of an act does not depend upon the motive,' and, further, that it 'is altogether dependent on the intention.'[ ] upon this he constantly insists. mackintosh's view that virtue depends upon motive will be 'scorned by every man who has any knowledge of the philosophy of the human mind.... the virtue does not depend upon the motive. there is no bad motive. every motive is the desire of good; to the agent himself or to some one else.'[ ] he gives an analysis of action to put the point beyond doubt. action supposes a 'motive,' a 'volition,' and an 'external act' or muscular contraction. so far there is nothing moral. but then an act has consequences, good or bad, to human beings, which constitute its utility. to make it moral, the agent must anticipate 'beneficial consequences,' and must have no reason to anticipate a balance of evil consequences. intention means the calculation of consequences, and without that calculation there can be no morality.[ ] hence the morality is equivalent to a 'conviction of the general utility' of the action.[ ] 'all this,' he concludes, 'is settled by universal consent. it is vain, therefore, to think of disputing it.' one may, however, ask what it means. i have already observed that the view of the non-moral character of motive was a natural corollary from the purely legal point of view. i must now consider the results of applying it unreservedly in the inappropriate sphere of ethics. in the first place, the denial of any moral quality in motive seems to be inconsistent with mill's own principles. the utilitarian, according to him, holds that the moral law is essentially the statement that certain conduct produces general happiness. if, then, we ask, who is a good man? we first reply that he is a man whose conduct produces happiness. another conclusion is obviously necessary, and is implied in mill's statement that the 'intention' is essential to morality. the man, that is, must foresee that his conduct will produce happiness. the 'calculation' is precisely what makes an action moral as well as accidentally useful. in other words, the man is good to whom the knowledge that an act will produce happiness is the same thing as a command to perform the act. the 'intention' could not affect conduct without the corresponding motive, and mill can at times recognise the obvious consequence. the 'physical law' (meaning the law enforced by physical coercion), he says incidentally, has 'extrinsic' sanctions;[ ] the moral law is different, because it sanctions good actions for their goodness. 'moral approval' must therefore include approval of character. a man, to be moral, must be one who does useful things simply because they are useful. he must then, it would seem, be at least benevolent. the same thing is implied by the doctrine of 'intention' or 'calculation.' an action may be useful or the reverse without being moral when the consequences are unknown to the agent. to make it moral he must know the consequences--for otherwise he is merely acting at random; and the foreseen consequences constitute the 'intention.' to this mill adds that he must have taken into account the consequences which 'might have been foreseen.'[ ] otherwise we should have to excuse a man because he had neglected to calculate, whereas to calculate is the very essence of virtue. a man who fired a gun down a crowded street would not be excusable because he had not thought of the result. he 'ought' to have thought of it. the question of moral approval of any given action turns upon these questions. did a man foresee evil consequences and disregard them? he is then cruel. did he neglect to consider them? he is then culpably careless, though not actually malignant. were the consequences altogether beyond the powers of reasonable calculation? then he may be blameless. the whole moral question, therefore, depends upon the character indicated; that is, upon the motives which induce a man to calculate consequences and which determine his conduct when the calculation is made. the truth is, i think, and it is characteristic of mill's modes of analysis, that he is making an impossible abstraction. he is separating parts of a single process and treating them as independent. if actions are bad because they have bad consequences, motives are bad because they are causes of bad actions. you cannot suppress the effect without suppressing the cause, and therefore the cause of the cause. mill relies chiefly upon one argument. the same conduct will produce the same consequences whatever the motives. that is undeniable. it is the same to me whether i am burnt because the persecutor loves my soul or because he hates me as a rebel to his authority. but when is conduct 'the same'? if we classify acts as the legislator has to classify them by 'external' or 'objective' relations, we put together the man who is honest solely from fear of the gallows and the man who is honest from hatred of stealing. so long as both act alike, the 'consequences' to their neighbours are alike. neither is legally punishable. but if acts are classified by their motives, one is a rogue and the other virtuous; and it is only then that the question of morality properly arises. in that case, it is idle to separate the question of motive and consequences, because the character determines the motive and therefore the action. nobody should have seen this more clearly than mill as a good 'determinist.' conduct and character are related as the convex and concave of the curve; conduct is simply the manifestation of character, and to separate them is absurd. why did he not see this? for reasons, i think, which illustrate his whole method. from a scientific point of view, the ethical problem raises the wide questions, what are the moral sentiments? and, what functions do they discharge in regard to the society or to its individual members? we might hold that morality is justified by 'utility' in the sense that the moral rules and the character which they indicate are essential to the welfare of the race or its individual constituents. but to mill this proposition is interpreted as identical with the proposition that conduct must be estimated by its 'consequences.' we are to consider not the action itself, but its effects; and the effects are clearly independent of the motive when once the action has been done. we may therefore get a calculus of 'utility': general rules stating what actions will be useful considered abstractedly from their motives. the method, again, might be plausible if we could further assume that all men were the same and differed only in external circumstances. that is the point of view to which mill, like bentham, is always more or less consciously inclining. the moral and the positive law are equally enforced by 'sanctions'; by something not dependent upon the man himself, and which he is inclined to suppose will operate equally upon all men. such language could be justifiable only of an average and uniform 'man,' a kind of constant unit, whose varying behaviour must always be explained by difference in circumstance. we have sufficiently seen the results elsewhere, and in this ethical doctrine they are especially manifest. mackintosh recognised the fact that morality is essentially a function of character. mill cannot fully admit that, because he virtually assumes all character to be the same. regarding morality as something co-ordinate with law, he does not perceive that the very possibility of law implies the moral instincts, which correspond to the constitution of character, and belong to a sphere underlying, not on the same plane with, the legislative sphere. they are the source of all order; not themselves the product of the order. it is impossible to deduce them, therefore, from the organisation which presupposes them. now, in one direction, mill's theory leads, as his son remarked, not to laxity but to excessive strictness. the 'criterion' is laid down absolutely. the 'moral sense' is rejected because it means an autocratic faculty, entitled to override the criterion by its own authority. to appeal to 'motives' is to allow the individual to make his own feeling the ultimate test of right and wrong. if we follow mill in this we are not really assuming the moral neutrality of motive or the indifference, but an impossible profession of character. men are not governed by abstract principles but by their passions and affections. the emotions, as mackintosh rightly said, cannot be resolved into the mere logic. utility may give the true criterion of morality, but it does not follow that the perception of utility is implied in moral conduct. the motives are good which in fact produce useful conduct, though the agent does not contemplate the abstract principle. it is impossible that men should be moved simply by a desire for the 'greatest happiness of the greatest number.' what does and always must guide men is their personal relation to the little circle which they actually influence. the good man is the man so constituted that he will spontaneously fulfil his duties. the moral law, that is, will be also the law of his character and conduct. the mother is good because she loves her child, not because she sees that care of her child is dictated by the general maxim of utility. the 'utility' of character means the fitness of the agent to be an efficient member of the social structure to which he belongs. in particular cases this may lead to such problems as that of fletcher of saltoun. his sense of honour and his general benevolence, though both useful, might come into collision; and the most difficult of all questions of casuistry arise from such conflicts between private and public affections. mill is justified in holding that a sense of honour cannot give an ultimate and autocratic decision. under some pretext or other, we shall have to ask the utilitarian question whether on the whole it may not be causing more misery than the virtuous action is worth. but that only means that the character must be so balanced as to give due weight to each motive; not that we can abstract from character altogether, as though human beings could be mere colourless and uniform atoms, embodying abstract formulæ. mill is following bentham, and only brings out more clearly the psychological assumptions. a man, he says, acts from the 'same motive' whether he steals five shillings or earns it by a day's labour. the motive, in this sense, regards only one consequence, whereas the 'intention' regards all. the 'motive,' that is, is only one of the motives or a part of the character, and this way of speaking is one of the awkward results of turning 'motives' into 'things.' the obvious answer is that which mill himself makes to mackintosh. mackintosh and butler, he thinks, personify particular 'appetites.'[ ] it is not really the 'conscience' which decides, but the man. that is quite true, and similarly it is the whole man who steals or works, not the 'personified' motive; and it is accordingly from the whole character that we judge. we have to consider the relation of the love of five shillings to the other qualities of industry and honesty. the same view appears in mill's characteristic dislike of 'sentimentalism.' wishing to attack mackintosh's rhetoric about the delight of virtuous feeling, he for once quotes a novel to illustrate this point. when parson adams defined charity as a 'generous disposition to relieve the distressed,' peter pounce approved; 'it is, as you say, a disposition, and does not so much consist in the act as in the disposition to do it.'[ ] when, therefore, mackintosh says that he finds it difficult to separate the virtue from the act, mill replies that nothing is easier. the virtue is 'in the act and its consequences'; the feeling a mere removable addition. apparently he would hold that the good samaritan and the pharisee had the same feeling, though it prompted one to relieve the sufferer and the other to relieve himself of the sight of the sufferer. they had, of course, a feeling in common, but a feeling which produced diametrically opposite effects, because entering into totally different combinations. if mill's doctrine leads to an impossible strictness in one direction, it leads to less edifying results in another. we have omitted 'motive' and come to the critical question, how, after all, is the moral code to be enforced? by overlooking this question and declaring 'motive' to be irrelevant, we get the paradox already accepted by bentham. his definition of virtue is action for the good of others as well as of ourselves. in what way is the existence of such action to be reconciled with this doctrine? what are the motives which make men count the happiness of others to be equally valuable with their own? or, in the utilitarian language, what is the 'sanction' of morality? after all bentham's insistence upon the 'self-preference principle' and mill's account of selfishness in his political theory, we are suddenly told that morality means a lofty and rigid code in which the happiness of all is the one end. here again mill is entangled by the characteristic difficulty of his psychology. to analyse is to divide objects into separate units. when he has to do with complex objects and relations apparently reciprocal, he is forced to represent them by a simple sequence. the two factors are not mutually dependent but distinct things somehow connected in time. one result is his account of 'ends' or 'motives' (the two, as he observes, are synonymous).[ ] the end is something to be gained by the act, the 'association' of which with the act constitutes a 'desire.' this, we have seen, always refers to the future.[ ] in acting, then, i am always guided by calculations of future pleasures or pains. i believe this to be one of the most unfortunate because one of the most plausible of utilitarian fallacies. if we are determined by pains and pleasures, it is in one sense as contradictory to speak of our being determined by future pains and pleasures as to speak of our being nourished to-day by to-morrow's dinner. the 'future pleasure' does not exist; the anticipated pleasure acts by making the present action pleasant; and we then move (as it is said) along the line of least resistance. certain conduct is intrinsically pleasurable or painful, and the future pleasure only acts through the present foretaste. when, however, we regard the pleasure as future and as somehow a separable thing, we can only express these undeniable facts by accepting a purely egoistic conclusion. we are, of course, moved by our own feelings, as we breathe with our own lungs and digest with our own stomachs. but when we accept the doctrine of 'ends' this harmless and self-evident truth is perverted into the statement that our 'end' must be our own pleasure; that we cannot be really or directly unselfish. the analysis, indeed, is so defective that it can hardly be applied intelligibly. hume observes that no man would rest his foot indifferently upon a stool or a gouty toe. the action itself of giving pain would be painful, and cannot be plausibly resolved into an anticipation of an 'end.' this, again, is conspicuously true of all the truly social emotions. not only the conscience, but the sense of shame or honour, or pride and vanity act powerfully and instantaneously as present motives without necessary reference to any future results. the knowledge that i am giving pain or causing future pain is intrinsically and immediately painful to the normal human being, and the supposed 'analysis' is throughout a fiction. mill, however, like bentham, takes it for granted, but perceives more clearly than bentham the difficulty to which it leads. how, from a theory of pure selfishness, are we to get a morality of general benevolence? the answer is given by the universal 'association.' we are governed, he holds, by our own emotions; our end is our own pleasure, and we have to consider how this end dictates a desire for general happiness. he expounds with great vigour the process by which the love of friends, children and parents and country may be gradually developed through the association of our pleasures with the fellow-creatures who caused them. j. s. mill regards his exposition as 'almost perfect,'[ ] and says that it shows how the 'acquired sentiments'--the moral sentiments and so forth--may be gradually developed; may become 'more intense and powerful than any of the elements out of which they may have been formed, and may also in their maturity be perfectly disinterested.' james mill declares that the analysis does not affect the reality of the sentiments analysed. gratitude remains gratitude, and generosity generosity, just as a white ray remains white after newton had decomposed it into rays of different colours.[ ] here once more we have the great principle of indissoluble association or mental chemistry. granting that the emotions so generated may be real, we may still ask whether the analysis be sufficient. james mill's account of the way in which they are generated leaves a doubt. morality is first impressed upon us by authority. our parents praise and blame, reward and punish. thus are formed associations of praise and blame with certain actions. then, we form further associations with the causes of praise and blame and thus acquire the sentiments of 'praiseworthiness' and 'blameworthiness.' the sensibility to praise and blame generally forms the 'popular sanction,' and this, when praiseworthiness is concerned, becomes the moral sanction.[ ] here we see that morality is regarded as somehow the product of a 'sanction'; that is, of the action of praise and blame with their usual consequences upon the individual. his sensibility causes him through association to acquire the habits which generally bring praise and blame; and ultimately these qualities become attractive for their own sake. the difficulty is to see where the line is crossed which divides truly moral or altruistic conduct from mere prudence. admitting that association may impel us to conduct which involves self-sacrifice, we may still ask whether such conduct is reasonable. association produces belief in error as well as in truth. if i love a man because he is useful and continue to love him when he can no longer be useful, am i not misguided? if i wear a ragged coat, because it was once smart, my conduct is easily explained as a particular kind of folly. if i am good to my old mother when she can no longer nurse me, am i not guilty of a similar folly? in short, a man who inferred from mill's principles that he would never do good without being paid for it, would be hardly inconsistent. your associations, mill would say, are indissoluble. he might answer, i will try--it is surely not so hard to dissolve a tie of gratitude! granting, in short, that mill gives an account of such virtue as may be made of enlightened self-interest, he does not succeed in making intelligible the conduct which alone deserves the name of virtuous. the theory always halts at the point where something more is required than an external sanction, and supposes a change of character as well as a wider calculation of personal interest. the imperfection of this theory may be taken for granted. it has been exposed by innumerable critics. it is more important to observe one cause of the imperfection. mill's argument contains an element of real worth. it may be held to represent fairly the historical development of morals. that morality is first conceived as an external law deriving its sanctity from authority; that it is directed against obviously hurtful conduct; and that it thus serves as a protection under which the more genuine moral sentiments can develop themselves, i believe to be in full accordance with sound theories of ethics. but mill was throughout hampered by the absence of any theory of evolution. he had to represent a series of changes as taking place in the individual which can only be conceived as the product of a long and complex social change. he is forced to represent the growth of morality as an accretion of new 'ends' due to association, not as an intrinsic development of the character itself. he has to make morality out of atomic sensations and ideas collected in clusters and trains without any distinct reference to the organic constitution of the individual or of society, and as somehow or other deducible from the isolated human being, who remains a constant, though he collects into groups governed by external sanctions. he sees that morality is formed somehow or other, but he cannot show that it is either reasonable or an essential fact of human nature. here, again, we shall see what problem was set to his son. finally, if mill did not explain ethical theory satisfactorily, it must be added in common justice that he was himself an excellent example of the qualities for which he tried to account. a life of devotion to public objects and a conscientious discharge of private duties is just the phenomenon for which a cluster of 'ideas' and 'associations' seems to be an inadequate account. how, it might have been asked, do you explain james mill? his main purpose, too, was to lay down a rule of duty, almost mathematically ascertainable, and not to be disturbed by any sentimentalism, mysticism, or rhetorical foppery. if, in the attempt to free his hearers from such elements, he ran the risk of reducing morality to a lower level and made it appear as unamiable as sound morality can appear, it must be admitted that in this respect too his theories reflected his personal character. footnotes: [ ] for an account of these writers and their relation to the pre-revolutionary schools, see _les idéologues_ by f. picavet ( ). [ ] macvey napier's _correspondence_, p. . [ ] charles françois dominique de villers ( - ) was a french officer, who emigrated in , and took refuge at lübeck. he became profoundly interested in german life and literature, and endeavoured to introduce a knowledge of german speculation to his countrymen. his chief books were this exposition of kant and an essay upon the _reformation of luther_ ( ), which went through several editions, and was translated by james mill in . an interesting account of villers is in the _biographie universelle_. [ ] see cockburn's _memorials_ for a good notice of this. [ ] stewart's _works_, iv. . [ ] lady holland's _life of smith_, ii. . [ ] _inquiry into the relations of cause and effect_ (third edition), pp. , , and part iv. sec. . [ ] _examination of hamilton_ (fourth edition), p. . [ ] _cause and effect_, pp. - . [ ] _cause and effect_, p. . [ ] _ibid._ p. _seq._ [ ] _ibid._ p. . [ ] _ibid._ p. . [ ] _ibid._ p. . [ ] _cause and effect_, p. . [ ] _cause and effect_, p. . brown thinks that we can logically disprove the existence of motion by the hare and tortoise argument, and should therefore disregard logic. [ ] brown's _lectures_, ( ), p. , lect. xxvi. [ ] lecture xxv. this question as to whether brown had or had not grossly misrepresented reid and other philosophers, led to an entangled argument, in which mill defended brown against hamilton. i will not ask whether reid was a 'natural realist' or a 'cosmothetic idealist,' or what descartes or arnauld thought about the question. [ ] reid's _works_, p. . [ ] _lectures_, pp. , - . [ ] _dissertations_, p. . compare brown's twenty-fourth lecture with tracy's _idéologie_, ch. vii., and the account of the way in which the infant learns from resistance to infer a cause, and make of the cause _un être qui n'est pas moi_. the resemblance is certainly close. brown was familiar with french literature, and shows it by many quotations, though he does not, i think, refer to tracy. brown, it must be noticed, did not himself publish his lectures, and a professor is not bound to give all his sources in popular lectures. an explanation would have been due in a treatise. picavet quotes rhétoré's _philosophie de thomas brown_ (a book which i have not seen) for the statement that brown's lectures often read like a translation of laromiguière, with whom brown was 'perhaps' acquainted. as, however, the _leçons_, to which reference is apparently made, did not appear till and , when brown's lectures were already written, this seems to be impossible. the coincidence, which to me seems to be exaggerated by the statement, is explicable by a common relation to previous writers. [ ] _lectures_, p. (lect. xxvi.). [ ] _lectures_, p. (lect. xxv.). [ ] _ibid._ p. (lect. xxiv.). [ ] _lectures_, p. (ch. xxviii.). brown made the same remark to mackintosh in . (mackintosh's _ethical philosophy_, , _n._) [ ] _ibid._ p. (lect. xxiv.). [ ] see hamilton's note to reid's _works_, p. . [ ] _lectures_, p. (lect. xl.). [ ] _ibid._ (lect. xxxiii. and following). [ ] _ibid._ p. - (lect. xxxiii.). the phrase is revived by professor stout in his _analytic psychology_. [ ] _lectures_, p. (lect. xxxiii.). [ ] this is one of the coincidences with laromiguière (_leçons_ ( ), i. ). [ ] _lectures_, p. . [ ] _lectures_, p. (lect. xlviii.). [ ] _ibid._ p. . [ ] _lectures_, p. (lect. li.). see lect. xi. for a general explanation. the mind is nothing but a 'series of feelings'; and to say that 'i am conscious of feeling' is simply to say 'i feel.' the same phrase often occurs in james mill. [ ] _ibid._ p. (lect. xlvi.). [ ] _ibid._ p. (lect. lxxiv.). [ ] _lectures_, p. (lect. xciii.). [ ] _dissertations_, p. . [ ] froude's _carlyle_, p. . [ ] _miscellanies_ ( ), ii. . see, too, _miscellanies_, i. , on german literature, where he thinks that the germans attacked the centre instead of the outworks of hume's citadel. carlyle speaks with marked respect of dugald stewart, who, if he knew what he was about, would agree with kant. [ ] in caroline fox's _memories of old friends_ (second edition), ii. , is a letter from j. s. mill, expressing a very high opinion of brown, whom he had just been re-reading ( ) with a view to the logic. brown's 'analysis in his early lectures of the amount of what we can learn of the phenomena of the world seems to me perfect, and his mode of inquiry into the mind is strictly founded upon that analysis.' [ ] i quote from this edition. andrew findlater ( - ), a scottish schoolmaster, and editor of chambers's _cyclopædia_, was a philologist (_dictionary of national biography_), and his notes chiefly concern mill's adaptations of horne tooke. [ ] _treatise_ (bk. i. pt. i. sec. iv.). [ ] j. s. mill's _autobiography_, p. . [ ] _fragment on mackintosh_, p. . [ ] _analysis_, ii. . 'odd,' because brown was six years younger than mill. [ ] 'education,' p. . [ ] _analysis_, i. . [ ] _analysis_, i. xvii. [ ] _ibid._ i. . [ ] _analysis_, i. . [ ] _ibid._ i. . [ ] _ibid._ i. . [ ] _analysis_, ii. . [ ] _ibid._ i. . [ ] _ibid._ i. . [ ] _ibid._ i. . [ ] _analysis_, i. _n._ [ ] _ibid._ i. . [ ] _analysis_, i. . [ ] _ibid._ i. _n._ [ ] _ibid._ i. . [ ] _ibid._ i. . [ ] _ibid._ i. . [ ] _analysis_, i. _n._, _n._ [ ] _ibid._ ii. . [ ] _ibid._ i. - . [ ] _analysis_, i. . [ ] _e.g._ _ibid._ ii. . [ ] _ibid._ i. . [ ] _ibid._ i. _n._ [ ] _ibid._ i. . [ ] _ibid._ i. . [ ] _ibid._ i. . [ ] _ibid._ i. . [ ] _analysis_, i. . [ ] _ibid._ i. . [ ] _ibid._ i. - . [ ] _analysis_, i. . [ ] _ibid._ i. , . [ ] see especially his account of definition, _logic_, bk. i. ch. viii., and the problem about the serpent and the dragon. [ ] _analysis_, ii. . [ ] this point puzzles destutt de tracy. all error, he says, arises in judgments: 'cependant les jugements, les perceptions de rapports, en tant que perceptions que nous avons actuellement, sont aussi certaines et aussi réelles que toutes les autres.'--_Éléments d'idéologie_ ( ), iii. . [ ] _analysis_, ii. , . [ ] _analysis_, ii. _n._ [ ] _analysis_, ii. _n._ [ ] _ibid._ ii. - . [ ] _analysis_, ii. - . [ ] _analysis_, ii. _n._ [ ] _ibid._ i. _n._ [ ] professor bain points out that mill is occasionally confused by his ignorance of the triple division, intellect, feelings: and will, introduced in the next generation.--_analysis_, ii. _n._ [ ] _analysis_, ii. - . [ ] _analysis_, ii. . [ ] also privately printed in . later editions, edited by whewell, appeared in , , . i quote the last. see m. napier's _correspondence_, pp. - , for the composition. [ ] mill's _fragment_ (preface). [ ] see bain's _james mill_, pp. , - . [ ] _fragment_, pp. , , , , , . [ ] _ibid._ p. . [ ] _ethical philosophy_ ( ), pp. , . [ ] m. napier's _correspondence_, p. . [ ] _essay on sir j. mackintosh._ [ ] _essay on lord holland._ [ ] _lectures_, p. (lect. lxxv.). [ ] _ibid._ p. (lect. lxxvii.). [ ] _ibid._ p. (lect. lxxviii.). [ ] _ethical philosophy_ (hobbes), pp. - . [ ] _ibid._ p. . [ ] _ibid._ p. . [ ] _ibid._ p. . [ ] _ibid._ p. . [ ] _ethical philosophy_, pp. , . [ ] _ibid._ p. . [ ] _ibid._ p. . [ ] _ibid._ p. . [ ] _ethical philosophy_ p. . [ ] _ibid._ p. . [ ] _ibid._ p. . [ ] _ibid._ p. . [ ] _ibid._ p. . [ ] _fragment_, p. . [ ] _ibid._ p. . [ ] _ibid._ p. . [ ] _fragment_, p. . mackintosh quotes mill's _analysis_ at p. . it had only just appeared. [ ] _fragment_, p. . [ ] _fragment_, p. , etc. [ ] _ibid._ p. . [ ] _ibid._ pp. , . [ ] cf. newman's _apologia_. 'the catholic church holds it better for the sun and moon to drop from heaven, for the earth to fail, and for all the millions on it to die of starvation in extremest agony, so far as temporal affliction goes, than that one soul,--i will not say should be lost, but should commit one single venial sin, tell one wilful untruth, or should steal one poor farthing without excuse.' i should steal the farthing and assume the 'excuse.' i confess that i would not only lie, but should think lying right under the supposed circumstances. [ ] _autobiography_, p. . [ ] _fragment_, p. . [ ] vol. i. p. . [ ] _fragment_, p. . [ ] _fragment_, pp. - . [ ] _ibid._ p. . [ ] _ibid._ pp. - . [ ] _fragment_, p. . [ ] _ibid._ p. . [ ] _analysis_, p. . [ ] _fragment_, p. . [ ] _fragment_, p. . [ ] at one point, as j. s. mill notes, he speaks of an 'unsatisfied desire' as a motive, which seems to indicate a present feeling; but this is not his usual view.--_analysis_, ii. , _n._ [ ] _analysis_, ii. _n._ mill adds that though his father explains the 'intellectual,' he does not explain the 'animal' element in the affections. this, however, is irrelevant for my purpose. [ ] _fragment_, pp. - . [ ] _analysis_, ii. - ; _fragment_, pp. - . note mill's interpretation of this theory of 'praiseworthiness.'--_analysis_, ii. _n._ chapter viii religion i. philip beauchamp the application of mill's _analysis_ to the views of orthodox theologians required, one might have supposed, as little interpretation as a slap in the face. but a respectable philosopher may lay down what premises he pleases if he does not avowedly draw his conclusions. mill could argue in perfect safety against the foundations of theology, while richard carlile was being sent to gaol again and again for attacking the superstructure. the utilitarians thought themselves justified in taking advantage of the illogicality of mankind. whether it was that the ruling powers had no philosophical principles themselves, or that they did not see what inferences would follow, or that they thought that the average person was incapable of drawing inferences, they drew the line at this point. you may openly maintain doctrines inconsistent with all theology, but you must not point out the inconsistency. the utilitarians contented themselves with sapping the fort instead of risking an open assault. if its defenders were blind to the obvious consequences of the procedure, so much the better. in private, there was obviously no want of plain speaking. in bentham's mss. the christian religion is nicknamed 'jug' as the short for 'juggernaut.' he and his friends were as anxious as voltaire to crush the 'infamous,' but they would do it by indirect means. they argued resolutely for more freedom; and samuel bailey's essay upon the formation of opinions--a vigorous argument on behalf of the widest possible toleration--was enthusiastically praised by james mill in the _westminster review_. for the present they carefully abstained from the direct avowal of obnoxious opinions, which were still legally punishable, and which would undoubtedly excite the strongest hostility. bentham, as we have seen, had ventured, though anonymously, to assail the church catechism and to cross-examine st. paul. one remarkable manifesto gave a fuller utterance to his opinions. a book called _the analysis of the influence of natural religion on the temporal happiness of mankind_, by 'philip beauchamp,' appeared in . the publisher was richard carlile, who was then 'safe in dorchester gaol.' no legal notice was taken of 'philip beauchamp.' the reason may have been that the book excited very little attention in general. yet it is probably as forcible an attack as has often been written upon the popular theology. the name of 'philip beauchamp' covered a combination of bentham and george grote.[ ] the book, therefore, represents the view of representative utilitarians of the first and third generation, and clearly expressed the real opinions of the whole party. in his posthumous essays j. s. mill speaks of it as the only explicit discussion known to him of the question of the utility, as distinguished from the question of the truth, of religion. obviously, it was desirable to apply the universal test to religious belief, and this very pithy and condensed statement shows the result. a short summary may indicate the essence of the argument. it is only necessary to observe that the phrase 'natural religion' is part of the disguise. it enables the author to avoid an explicit attack upon revelation; but it is superabundantly obvious that the word 'natural' is superfluous. revelation is really a fiction, and all religions are 'natural.' a religion is called a 'superstition,' as 'philip beauchamp' remarks at starting, when its results are thought to be bad; and allowed to be a religion only when they are thought to be good.[ ] that device covers the familiar fallacy of distinguishing between uses and abuses, and, upon that pretence, omitting to take bad consequences into account. we must avoid it by defining religion and then tracing all the consequences, good or bad. religion is accordingly taken to mean the belief in the existence of 'an almighty being, by whom pains and pleasures will be dispensed to mankind during an infinite and future state of existence.' the definition is already characteristic. 'religion' may be used in a far wider sense, corresponding to a philosophy of the universe, whether that philosophy does or does not include this particular doctrine. but 'philip beauchamp's' assumption is convenient because it gives a rational reasoning to the problem of utility. religion is taken to be something adventitious or superimposed upon other beliefs, and we can therefore intelligibly ask whether it does good or harm. taking this definition for granted, let us consider the results. the first point is that we are of necessity in absolute ignorance as to a posthumous state. now, fear is from our earliest infancy the 'never-failing companion and offspring of ignorance.' knowledge alone can rescue us from perpetual suffering, because all security depends upon knowledge. pain, moreover, is far more 'pungent' and distinct than pleasure. 'want and pain are natural; satisfaction and pleasure artificial and invented.' pain, therefore, as the strongest, will dictate our anticipations. the hope of immortality is by the orthodox described as a blessing; but the truth, deducible from these principles of human nature and verified by experience, is that natural religion, instead of soothing apprehensions, adds fresh grounds of apprehension. a revelation, as 'philip beauchamp' admits, might conceivably dispel our fears; but he would obviously say that the religion which is taken to be revealed gives a far more vivid picture of hell than of heaven.[ ] in the next place, it is 'obvious at first sight' that natural religion can properly give 'no rule of guidance.' it refers us to a region of 'desperate and unfathomable' darkness.[ ] but it nevertheless indirectly suggests a pernicious rule. it rests entirely upon conjectures as to the character of the invisible being who apportions pain or pleasure for inscrutable reasons. will this being be expected to approve useful or pernicious conduct? from men's language we might suppose that he is thought to be purely benevolent. yet from their dogmas it would seem that he is a capricious tyrant. how are we to explain the discrepancy? the discrepancy is the infallible result of the circumstances already stated.[ ] the deity has limitless power, and therefore is the natural object of our instinctive fears. the character of the deity is absolutely incomprehensible, and incomprehensibility in human affairs is identical with caprice and insanity.[ ] the ends and the means of the deity are alike beyond our knowledge; and the extremes both of wisdom and of folly are equally unaccountable. now, we praise or blame human beings in order to affect their conduct towards us, to attract favours or repel injuries. a tyrant possessed of unlimited power considers that by simple abstinence from injury he deserves boundless gratitude. the weak will only dare to praise, and the strong will only blame. the slave-owner never praises and the slave never blames, because one can use the lash while the other is subject to the lash. if, then, we regard the invisible being as a capricious despot, and, moreover, as a despot who knows every word we utter, we shall never speak of him without the highest eulogy, just because we attribute to him the most arbitrary tyranny. hence, the invisible despot will specially favour the priests whose lives are devoted to supporting his authority, and, next to priests, those who, by the practice of ceremonies painful or useless to themselves, show that their sole aim is to give him pleasure. he will specially detest the atheists, and, next to atheists, all who venture to disregard his arbitrary laws. a human judge may be benevolent, because he is responsible to the community. they give and can take away his power. but the invisible and irresponsible ruler will have no motives for benevolence, and approve conduct pernicious to men because it is the best proof of a complete subservience to himself.[ ] in spite of this, it has been generally asserted that religion supplies a motive, and the only adequate motive, to moral conduct. but the decay of religion would leave the sources of pain and pleasure unchanged. to say, then, that the conduct prescribed by religion would disappear if the religious motives were removed is virtually to admit that it produces no 'temporal benefit.' otherwise, the motives for practising such conduct would not be affected. in fact, morality is the same in all countries, though the injunctions of religion are various and contradictory. if religion ordered only what is useful, it would coincide with human laws, and be at worst superfluous. as a fact, it condemns the most harmless pleasures, such as the worst of human legislators have never sought to suppress. people have become tolerant, that is, they have refused to enforce religious observances, precisely because they have seen that such observances cannot be represented as conducive to temporal happiness. duty, again, may be divided into duty to god and duty to man. our 'duty to god' is a 'deduction from the pleasures of the individual without at all benefiting the species.' it must therefore be taken as a tax paid for the efficacy supposed to be communicated to the other branch--the 'duty to man.'[ ] does religion, then, stimulate our obedience to the code of duty to man? 'philip beauchamp' admits for once that, in certain cases, it '_might possibly_' be useful. it might affect 'secret crimes,' that is, crimes where the offender is undiscoverable. that, however, is a trifle. these cases, he thinks, would be 'uncommonly rare' under a well-conceived system. the extent of evil in this life would therefore be trifling were superhuman inducements entirely effaced from the human bosom, and if 'human institutions were ameliorated according to the progress of philosophy.'[ ] on the other hand, the imaginary punishments are singularly defective in the qualities upon which bentham had insisted in human legislation. they are remote and uncertain, and to make up for this are represented as boundless in intensity and durability. for that reason, they precisely reverse the admitted principle that punishment should be so devised as to produce the greatest possible effect by the smallest infliction of pain. supernatural sanctions are supposed to maximise pain with a minimum of effect. the fear of hell rarely produces any effect till a man is dying, and then inflicts great suffering, though it has been totally inefficient as a preventive at the time of temptation. the influence of supernatural penalties is therefore in 'an inverse ratio to the demand for it.'[ ] in reality, the efficacy of the sanctions is due to their dependence upon public opinion. our real motive for acting rightly is our desire for the praise of our fellows and our interest in their good conduct. we conceal this motive even from ourselves, because we wish to have the credit of serving the deity exclusively. this is confirmed by the familiar instances of a conflict between public opinion and religious sanctions. duelling, fornication, and perjury are forbidden by the divine law, but the prohibition is ineffectual whenever the real sentiment of mankind is opposed to it. the divine law is set aside as soon as it conflicts with the popular opinion. in exceptional cases, indeed, the credit attached to unreasonable practices leads to fanaticism, asceticism, and even insanity; but superhuman terrors fail at once when they try to curb the action of genuine substantial motives. hence we must admit that they are useless in the case even of 'secret crimes.' religion, in short, prescribes mischievous practices, becomes impotent except for the production of misery, and is really, though not avowedly, dependent on the popular sanction.[ ] we can now classify the evils actually produced. religion injures individuals by prescribing useless and painful practices: fasting, celibacy, voluntary self-torture, and so forth. it suggests vague terrors which often drive the victim to insanity, and it causes remorse for harmless enjoyments.[ ] religion injures society by creating antipathies against unbelievers, and in a less degree against heretics and nonconformists. it perverts public opinion by making innocent actions blameable; by distorting the whole science of morality and sanctioning the heterogeneous dictates of a certain blind and unaccountable impulse called the 'moral instinct or conscience.'[ ] morality becomes a 'mere catalogue of reigning sentiments,' because it has cast away the standard of utility. a special aversion to improvement is generated, because whatever changes our conceptions of the 'sequences of phenomena' is supposed to break the divine 'laws of nature.' 'unnatural' becomes a 'self-justifying' epithet forbidding any proposed change of conduct, which will counteract the 'designs of god.' religion necessarily injures intellectual progress. it disjoins belief from its only safe ground, experience. the very basis, the belief in an inscrutable and arbitrary power, sanctions supernatural or 'extra-experimental' beliefs of all kinds. you reject in the case of miracles all the tests applicable to ordinary instruction, and appeal to trial by ordeal instead of listening to witnesses. instead of taking the trouble to plough and sow, you expect to get a harvest by praying to an inscrutable being. you marry without means, because you hold that god never sends a child without sending food for it to eat. meanwhile you suborn 'unwarranted belief' by making belief a matter of reward and penalty. it is made a duty to dwell upon the arguments upon one side without attending to those upon the other, and 'the weaker the evidence the greater the merit in believing.'[ ] the temper is depraved not only by the antipathies generated, but by the 'fitful and intermittent character' of the inducements to conduct.[ ] the final result of all this is still more serious. it is that religion, besides each separate mischief, 'subsidises a standing army for the perpetuation of all the rest.'[ ] the priest gains power as a 'wonder-worker,' who knows how to propitiate the invisible being, and has a direct interest in 'depraving the intellect,' cherishing superstition, surrounding himself with mysteries, representing the will of the deity as arbitrary and capricious, and forming an organised 'array of human force and fraud.'[ ] the priesthood sets up an infallible head, imposes upon the weak and dying, stimulates antipathy, forms the mass of 'extra-experimental' beliefs into the likeness of a science, and allies itself with the state. heresy becomes a crime. the ruler helps the priests to raise a tax for their own comfort, while they repay him by suppressing all seditious opinions. thus is formed an unholy alliance between the authorities of 'natural religion' and the 'sinister interests of the earth.' the alliance is so complete that it is even more efficient than if it had been openly proclaimed. 'prostration and plunder of the community is indeed the common end of both' (priests and rulers). the only chance of dissension is about the 'partition of the spoil.'[ ] the book is as characteristic of the utilitarians in style as in spirit. it is terse, vigorous reasoning, with no mere rhetorical flourishes. the consequences of the leading principle are deduced without flinching and without reserve. had the authors given their names, they would no doubt have excited antipathies injurious to the propaganda of utilitarianism. they held, for that reason presumably, that they were not bound to point out the ultimate goal of their speculations. no intelligent reader of their other writings could fail to see what that goal must be; but an 'open secret' is still for many purposes a real secret. whatever might be the suspicions of their antagonists, they could only be accused of a tendency. the book amounts to an admission that the suspicions were well founded. utilitarianism, the utilitarians clearly recognised, logically implied the rejection of all theology. religion--on their understanding of the word--must, like everything else, be tested by its utility, and it was shown to be either useless or absolutely pernicious. the aim of the utilitarians was, in brief, to be thoroughly scientific. the man of science must be opposed to the belief in an inscrutable agent of boundless power, interfering at every point with the laws of nature, and a product of the fancy instead of the reason. such a conception, so far as accepted, makes all theory of human conduct impossible, suggests rules conflicting with the supreme rule of utility, and gives authority to every kind of delusion, imposture, and 'sinister interest.' it would, i think, be difficult to mention a more vigorous discussion of the problem stated. as anonymous, it could be ignored instead of answered; and probably such orthodox persons as read it assumed it to be a kind of _reductio ad absurdum_ of the utilitarian creed. it might follow, they could admit, logically from the utilitarian analysis of human nature, but it could only prove that the analysis was fundamentally wrong. yet its real significance is precisely its thorough applicability to the contemporary state of opinion. beauchamp's definition coincides with paley's. the coincidence was inevitable. utilitarians both in ethical and philosophical questions start from the same assumptions as paley, and the paley doctrine gave the pith of the dominant theology. i have observed that the scottish philosophers had abandoned the _a priori_ argument, and laid the whole stress of their theological doctrine upon paley's argument from final causes. the change of base was an inevitable consequence of their whole system. they appealed to experience, to 'baconian' methods, and to 'inductive psychology.' the theory of 'intuitions,' effective where it fell in with admitted beliefs, was idle against an atheist, who denied that he had the intuition. the 'final causes' argument, however, rested upon common ground, and supplied a possible line of defence. the existence of the deity could perhaps be proved empirically, like the existence of the 'watchmaker.' accordingly, this was the argument upon which reliance was really placed by the average theologian of the time. metaphysical or ontological reasoning had been discarded for plain common-sense. the famous _bridgewater treatises_ are the characteristic product of the period. it had occurred to the earl of bridgewater, who died in , that £ from his estate might be judiciously spent in proving the existence of a benevolent creator. the council of the royal society employed eight eminent men of science to carry out this design.[ ] they wrote some interesting manuals of popular science, interspersed with proper theological applications. the arguments were sincere enough, though they now seem to overlook with singular blindness the answer which would be suggested by the 'evolutionist.' the logical result is, in any case, a purely empirical theology. the religion which emerges is not a philosophy or theory of the world in general, but corresponds to a belief in certain matters of fact (or fiction). the existence of the deity is to be proved, like the existence of caesar, by special evidence. the main results are obvious. the logical base of the whole creed is 'natural theology,' and 'natural theology' is simply a branch of science, amenable to the ordinary scientific tests. it is intended to prove the existence of an agent essential to the working of the machinery, as from the movements of a planet we infer the existence of a disturbing planet. the argument from design, in this acceptation, is briefly mentioned by 'philip beauchamp.' it is, he argues, 'completely extra-experimental'; for experience only reveals design in living beings: it supposes a pre-existing chaos which can never be shown to have existed, and the 'omnipotent will' introduced to explain the facts is really no explanation at all, but a collection of meaningless words.[ ] the argument is briefly dismissed as concerning the truth, not the utility, of religion, but one point is sufficiently indicated. the argument from 'design' is always plausible, because it applies reasoning undeniably valid when it is applied within its proper sphere. the inference from a watch to a watchmaker is clearly conclusive. we know sufficiently what is meant by the watchmaker and by 'making.' we therefore reason to a _vera causa_--an agent already known. when the inference is to the action of an inconceivable being performing an inconceivable operation upon inconceivable materials, it really becomes illusory, or amounts to the simple assertion that the phenomenon is inexplicable. therefore, again, it is essentially opposed to science though claiming to be scientific. the action of the creator is supposed to begin where the possibility of knowledge ends. it is just the inexplicable element which suggests the creative agency. conversely, the satisfactory explanation of any phenomenon takes it out of the theological sphere. as soon as the process becomes 'natural' it ceases to demand the supernatural artificer. 'making,' therefore, is contradistinguished from 'growing.' if we see how the eye has come into existence, we have no longer any reason to assume that it was put together mechanically. in other words, 'teleology' of this variety is dispelled by theories of evolution. the hypothesis of interference becomes needless when we see how things came to be by working out perfectly natural processes. as science, therefore, expands, theology recedes. this was to become more evident at a later period. for the present, the teleological argument in the paley form, triumphantly set forth in bridgewater treatises and the like, rested the defence of theology on the proofs of the discontinuity of the universe and the consequent necessity for admitting supernatural interference. science was therefore invoked to place absolute limits on its own progress. but other vital difficulties were already felt. the argument from contrivance naturally implies limitation. the maker of a machine is strictly limited by the properties of the matter upon which he works. the inference might be verbally saved by saying that the maker was 'potentially' omnipotent; but the argument, so far as it goes, is more easily satisfied by the hypothesis of a being of great but still limited powers. the deity so proved, if the proof be valid, is not himself the ground of the universe, the source from which nature itself emanates, as well as the special laws of nature, but a part of the whole system; interfering, guiding, and controlling, but still only one of the powers which contribute to the formation of the whole. hence arise questions which theologians rather evaded than attempted to answer. if with the help of paley we can prove the existence of an invisible being--potentially omnipotent, though always operating as though limited--there would still remain the question as to his attributes. he is skilful, we may grant, but is he benevolent or is he moral? the benevolence could of course be asserted by optimists, if facts were amenable to rhetoric. but a theory which is essentially scientific or empirical, and consistently argues from the effect to the cause, must start from an impartial view of the facts, and must make no presupposition as to the nature of the cause. the cause is known only through the effects, and our judgment of them cannot be modified by simply discovering that they are caused. if, then, contrivance is as manifest in disease as in health, in all the sufferings which afflict mankind as well as in the pleasures which solace him, we must either admit that the creator is not benevolent, or frankly admit that he is not omnipotent and fall into manichæism. nature, we are frequently told, is indifferent if not cruel; and though paley and his followers choose to shut their eyes to ugly facts, it could be only by sacrificing their logic. they were bound to prove from observation that the world was so designed as to secure the 'greatest happiness' before they could logically infer a purely benevolent designer. it was of the very essence of their position that observed facts should be the ultimate basis of the whole theory; and to alter the primary data by virtue of deductions drawn from them could obviously not be logically justifiable. such reflections, though sufficiently obvious, might be too far from practical application to have much immediate effect. but the question of the moral bearing of theology was of more interest; and, here, the coincidence of the utilitarianism with the accepted theology of the day is especially important. the deity regarded as the artificer appears to be far from purely benevolent. in respect to morality, is he not simply indifferent? does he not make men fragile and place them amidst pitfalls? does he not constantly slay the virtuous and save the wicked? how, indeed, from the purely empirical or scientific base, do you deduce any moral attributes whatever? 'natural theology,' as it was called, might reveal a contriver, but could it reveal a judge or a moral guide? here the difficulty of a purely matter-of-fact theology made itself felt on many sides. the remarkable influence of butler upon many minds was partly due to a perception of this omission. butler avowedly appeals to the conscience, and therefore at least recognises god as directly revealed in a moral character. that seemed to supply a gap in the ordinary theology. but in the purely empirical view butler's argument was untenable. it appealed to one of the 'intuitions' which were incompatible with its fundamental assumptions. the compunctions of conscience were facts to be explained by 'association,' not to be regarded as intimations of wrath. butler's view might be inverted. the 'conscience' does, in truth, suggest the divine wrath; but that only means that it suggests the quack remedies upon which 'wonder-working' priests establish their power. instead of proving the truth of the religion, it explains the origin of superstition. to james mill, as we have seen, butler's argument would logically prove not a righteous governor but a cruel creator. theologians, again, of the paley school, were bound in consistency to the empirical or utilitarian view of morality. paley accepted the consequences unreservedly; and if such philosophers as brown and mackintosh persisted in regarding the coincidence between morality and happiness as indicative of a pre-established harmony, not of an identification of morality with the pursuit of general happiness, they still admitted that 'utility' was the 'criterion' of morality. the moral law, that is, coincides in its substance with the law, 'maximise happiness,' and happiness means, as 'philip beauchamp' calls it, 'temporal' happiness--the happiness of actual men living in this world and knowing nothing of any external world. how, then, is the moral law related to theology? to know what is moral, we must appeal to experience and 'utility.' we must discover what makes for happiness, just as in medicine we must discover what makes for health or pleasure, by the ordinary methods of observation. what place is left for any supernatural intervention? the ostensible answer was that though the moral code could be deduced from its utility, the motives by which it was to be enforced required some supernatural agency. the natural man might see what was right, but need not therefore do what was right. here 'philip beauchamp' comes to a direct issue with the theologians. he denies that the supernatural motive will be on the side of morality. when j. s. mill remarked that there had been few discussions of the 'utility' as distinguished from the truth of religion, he scarcely recognises one conspicuous fact. the great argument of divines had always been the absolute necessity of religion to morality; and if morality be understood to mean utility, this is simply an argument from utility. the point, indeed, was often taken for granted; but it certainly represents one of the strongest persuasives, if not one of the strongest reasons. the divines, in fact, asserted that religion was of the highest utility as supplying the motive for moral conduct. what motives, then, can be derived from such knowledge of the deity as is attainable from the 'natural theology' argument? how can we prove from it that he who puts the world together is more favourable to the virtues than to the vices which are its results; or, if more favourable, that he shows any other favour than can be inferred from experience? he has, it is agreed, put men, as bentham had said, under the command of two sovereign masters, pleasure and pain; and has enabled them to calculate consequences, and therefore to seek future pleasure and avoid future pain. that only proves that we can increase our happiness by prudence; but it suggests no additional reasons either for seeking happiness or for altering our estimate of happiness. as 'philip beauchamp' argues, we cannot from the purely empirical ground get any motive for taking into account anything beyond our 'temporal' or secular interests. this, again, was in fact admitted by paley. his mode of escape from the dilemma is familiar. the existence of a supreme artificer is inferred from the interventions in the general order of nature. the existence of a moral ruler, or the fact that the ruler approves morality, is inferred from his interference by the particular manifestations of power which we call miraculous. we know that actions will have other consequences than those which can be inferred from our own experience, because some two thousand years ago a being appeared who could raise the dead and heal the sick. if sufficient evidence of the fact be forthcoming, we are entitled to say upon his authority that the wicked will be damned and the virtuous go to heaven. obedience to the law enforced by these sanctions is obviously prudent, and constitutes the true _differentia_ of moral conduct. virtue, according to the famous definition, is doing good 'for the sake of everlasting happiness.' the downright bluntness with which paley announced these conclusions startled contemporaries, and yet it must be admitted that they were a natural outcome of his position. in short, the theological position of the paley school and the utilitarian position of 'philip beauchamp' start from the common ground of experience. religion means the knowledge of certain facts, which are to be inferred from appropriate evidence. it does not modify the whole system of thought, but simply adds certain corollaries; and the whole question is whether the corollaries are or are not proved by legitimate reasoning. can we discover heaven and hell as we discovered america? can observation of nature reveal to us a supernatural world?' the first difficulty is that the argument for natural theology has to rest upon interference, not upon order, and therefore comes into conflict with the first principles of scientific procedure. the deity is revealed not by the rational but by the arbitrary; and the more the world is explained, the less the proof that he exists, because the narrower the sphere of his action. then, as such a deity, even if proved, is not proved to be benevolent or moral, we have to rely for the moral element upon the evidence of 'miracles,' that is, again, of certain interruptions of order. the scientific tendency more or less embodied in protestantism, so far as it appealed to reason or to 'private judgment,' had, moreover, made it necessary to relegate miracles to a remote period, while denying them at the present. to prove at once that there are no miracles now, and that there were a few miracles two thousand years ago, was really hopeless. in fact, the argument had come to be stated in an artificial form which had no real relation to the facts. if the apostles had been a jury convinced by a careful legal examination of the evidence; if they had pronounced their verdict, in spite of the knowledge that they would be put to death for finding it, there would have been some force in paley's argument. but then they had not. to assume such an origin for any religion implied a total misconception of the facts. paley assumed that the apostles resembled twelve respectable deans of carlisle solemnly declaring, in spite of the most appalling threats, that john wesley had been proved to have risen from the dead. paley might plausibly urge that such an event would require a miracle. but, meanwhile, his argument appeared to rest the whole case for morality and religion upon this narrow and perilous base. we can only know that it is our interest to be moral if we know of heaven and hell; and we only know of heaven and hell if we accept the evidence of miracles, and infer that the worker of miracles had supernatural sources of information. the moral difficulty which emerges is obvious. the paley conception of the deity is, in fact, coincident with bentham's conception of the sovereign. he is simply an invisible sovereign, operating by tremendous sanctions. the sanctions are 'external,' that is to say, pains and pleasures, annexed to conduct by the volition of the sovereign, not intrinsic consequences of the conduct itself. such a conception, thoroughly carried through, makes the relation between religion and morality essentially arbitrary. moreover, if with 'philip beauchamp' we regard the miracle argument as obviously insufficient, and consider what are the attributes really attributed to the sovereign, we must admit that they suggest such a system as he describes rather than the revelation of an all-wise and benevolent ruler. it is true, as 'philip beauchamp' argues, that the system has all the faults of the worst human legislation; that the punishment is made atrociously--indeed infinitely--severe to compensate for its uncertainty and remoteness; and that (as he would clearly add), to prevent it from shocking and stunning the intellect, it is regarded as remissible in consideration of vicarious suffering. if, then, the religion is really what its dogmas declare, it is easier to assume that it represents the cunning of a priesthood operating upon the blind fears and wild imaginations of an inaccessible world; and the ostensible proofs of a divine origin resting upon miraculous proofs are not worth consideration. it professes to be a sanction to all morality, but is forced to construct a mythology which outrages all moral considerations. taken as a serious statement of fact, the anthropomorphism of the vulgar belief was open to the objections which socrates brought against the pagan mythology. the supreme ruler was virtually represented as arbitrary, cruel, and despotic. if we ask the question, whether in point of fact the religion attacked by 'philip beauchamp' fairly represented the religion of the day, we should have, of course, to admit that it was in one sense a gross caricature. if, that is, we asked what were the real roots of the religious zeal of wilberforce and the evangelicals, or of the philanthropists with whom even james mill managed to associate on friendly terms, it would be the height of injustice to assume that they tried to do good simply from fear of hell and hope of heaven, or that their belief in christianity was due to a study of paley's _evidences_. their real motives were far nobler: genuine hatred of injustice and sympathy for suffering, joined to the conviction that the sects to which they belonged were working on the side of justice and happiness; while the creeds which they accepted were somehow congenial to their best feelings, and enabled them to give utterance to their deepest emotions. but when they had to give a ground for that belief they could make no adequate defence. they were better than their ostensible creed, because the connection of their creed with their morality was really arbitrary and traditional. we must always distinguish between the causes of strong convictions and the reasons officially assigned for them. the religious creed, as distinguished from the religious sentiment, was really traditional, and rested upon the simple fact that it was congenial to the general frame of mind. its philosophy meanwhile had become hopelessly incoherent. it wished to be sensible, and admitted in principle the right of 'private judgment' or rationalism so far as consistent with protestantism. the effect had been that in substance it had become utilitarian and empirical; while it had yet insisted upon holding on to the essentially irrational element. the religious tradition was becoming untenable in this sense at the same time as the political tradition. if radicalism in both were to be effectually resisted, some better foundation must be found for conservatism. i should be tempted to say that a critical period was approaching, did i not admit that every period can always be described as critical. in fact, however, thoughtful people, perceiving on the one hand that the foundations of their creed were shaking, and yet holding it to be essential to their happiness, began to take a new position. the 'oxford movement,' started soon afterwards, implied a conviction that the old protestant position was as untenable as the radical asserted. its adherents attempted to find a living and visible body whose supernatural authority might maintain the old dogmatic system. liberal thinkers endeavoured to spiritualise the creed and prove its essential truths by philosophy, independently of the particular historical evidence. the popular tendency was to admit in substance that the dogmas most assailed were in fact immoral: but to put them into the background, or, if necessary, to explain them away. the stress was to be laid not upon miracles, but upon the moral elevation of christianity or the beauty of character of its founder. the 'unsectarian' religion, represented in the most characteristic writings of the next generation, in tennyson and browning, thackeray and dickens, reflects this view. such men detested the coarse and brutalising dogmas which might be expounded as the true 'scheme of salvation' by ignorant preachers seeking to rouse sluggish natures to excitement; but they held to religious conceptions which, as they thought, really underlay these disturbing images, and which, indeed, could hardly be expressed in any more definite form than that of a hope or a general attitude of the whole character. the problem seemed to be whether we shall support a dogmatic system by recognising a living spiritual authority, or frankly accept reason as the sole authority, and, while explaining away the repulsive dogmas, try to retain the real essence of religious belief. ii. contemporary thought if i were writing a general history of opinion, it would be necessary to discuss the views of mill's english contemporaries; to note their attitude in regard to the utilitarian position, and point out how they prepared the way for the later developments of thought. the utilitarians were opposed to a vague sentiment rather than to any definite system. they were a small and a very unpopular sect. they excited antipathy on all sides. as advocating republicanism, they were hardly more disliked by the tories, who directly opposed them, than by the whigs, who might be suspected of complicity. as enthusiastic political economists, they were equally detested by sentimental radicals, socialists, and by all who desired a strong government, whether for the suppression of social evils or the maintenance of social abuses. and now, as suspected of atheism, they were hated by theologians. but though the utilitarians were on all sides condemned and denounced, they were met by no definite and coherent scheme of philosophy. the philosophy of stewart and brown had at least a strong drift in their direction. though 'political economy' was denounced in general terms, all who spoke with authority accepted adam smith. their political opponents generally did not so much oppose their theories as object to theory in general. the utilitarian system might be both imperfect and dogmatic; but it had scarcely to contend with any clear and assignable rival. the dislike of englishmen to any systematic philosophy, whether founded upon the national character or chiefly due to special conditions, was still conspicuous outside of the small utilitarian camp. to discover, therefore, the true position of contemporary opinion, we should have to look elsewhere. instead of seeking for the philosophers who did not exist, we should have to examine the men of letters who expressed the general tendencies. in germany, philosophical theories may be held to represent the true drift of the national mind, and a historian of german thought would inquire into the various systems elaborated by professors of philosophy. he would at least be in no want of materials for definite logical statements. in england, there was no such intellectual movement. there we should have to consider poetry and literature; to read wordsworth and coleridge, scott and byron and shelley, if we would know what men were really thinking and feeling. the difficulty is, of course, that none of these men, unless coleridge be an exception, had any conscious or systematic philosophy. we can only ask, therefore, what they would have said if they had been requested to justify their views by abstract reasoning; and that is a rather conjectural and indefinite enterprise. it lies, fortunately, outside of my field; and it will be enough if i try to suggest one or two sufficiently vague hints. in the first place, the contrast between the utilitarians and their opponents may almost be identified with the contrast between the prosaic and the poetical aspects of the world in general. bentham frankly objected to poetry in general. it proved nothing. the true utilitarian was the man who held on to fact, and to nothing but the barest, most naked and unadorned fact. poetry in general came within the sweep of his denunciations of 'sentimentalism' and 'vague generalities.' it was the 'production of a rude age'; the silly jingling which might be suitable to savages, but was needless for the grown-up man, and was destined to disappear along with the whole rubbish of mythology and superstition in whose service it had been enlisted. there is indeed a natural sympathy between any serious view of life and a distrust of the æsthetic tendencies. theologians of many different types have condemned men for dallying with the merely pleasurable, when they ought to be preoccupied with the great ethical problems or the safety of their souls. james mill had enough of the old puritan in him to sympathise with carlyle's aspiration, 'may the devil fly away with the fine arts!' to such men it was difficult to distinguish between fiction and lying; and if some concession might be made to human weakness, poets and novelists might supply the relaxations and serve to fill up the intervals of life, but must be sternly excluded if they tried to intrude into serious studies. somehow love of the beautiful only interfered with the scientific investigation of hard facts. poets, indeed, may take the side of reform, or may perhaps be naturally expected to take that side. the idealist and the dreamer should be attracted most powerfully by the visions of a better world and the restoration of the golden age. shelley was among the most enthusiastic prophets of the coming era. his words, he hoped, were to be 'the trumpet of a prophecy' to 'unawakened earth.' shelley had sat at the feet of godwin, and represented that vague metaphysical dreaming to which the utilitarians were radically hostile. to the literary critic, shelley's power is the more remarkable because from a flimsy philosophy he span an imaginative tissue of such magical and marvellous beauty. but shelley dwelt in an ethereal region, where ordinary beings found breathing difficult. there facts seemed to dissolve into thin air instead of supplying a solid and substantial base. his idealism meant unreality. his 'trumpet' did not in fact stimulate the mass of mankind, and his fame at this period was confined to a few young gentlemen of literary refinement. the man who had really stirred the world was byron; and if the decline of byron's fame has resulted partly from real defects, it is partly due also to the fact that his poetry was so admirably adapted to his contemporaries. byron at least could see facts as clearly as any utilitarian, though fact coloured by intense passion. he, like the utilitarians, hated solemn platitudes and hypocritical conventions. i have noticed the point at which he came into contact with bentham's disciples. his pathetic death shortly afterwards excited a singularly strong movement of sympathy. 'the news of his death,' said carlyle at the time, 'came upon my heart like a mass of lead; and yet the thought of it sends a painful twinge through all my being, as if i had lost a brother.' at a later time he defines byron as 'a dandy of sorrows and acquainted with grief.'[ ] that hits off one aspect of byronism. byron was the mirabeau of english literature, in so far as he was at once a thorough aristocrat and a strong revolutionist. he had the qualification of a true satirist. his fate was at discord with his character. he was proud of his order, and yet despised its actual leaders. he was ready alternately to boast of his vices and to be conscious that they were degrading. he shocked the respectable world by mocking 'satanically,' as they held, at moral conventions, and yet rather denounced the hypocrisy and the heartlessness of precisians than insulted the real affections. he covered sympathy with human suffering under a mask of misanthropy, and attacked war and oppression in the character of a reckless outlaw. full of the affectation of a 'dandy,' he was yet rousing all europe by a cry of pure sentimentalism. it would be absurd to attribute any definite doctrine to byron. his scepticism in religious matters was merely part of a general revolt against respectability. what he illustrates is the vague but profound revolutionary sentiment which indicated a belief that the world seemed to be out of joint, and a vehement protest against the selfish and stolid conservatism which fancied that the old order could be preserved in all its fossil institutions and corresponding dogmas. what was the philosophy congenial to conservatism? there is, of course, the simple answer, none. toryism was a 'reaction' due to the great struggle of the war and the excesses of the revolution. a 'reaction' is a very convenient phrase. we are like our fathers; then the resemblance is only natural. we differ; then the phrase 'reaction' makes the alteration explain itself. no doubt, however, there was in some sense a reaction. many people changed their minds as the revolutionary movement failed to fulfil their hopes. i need not argue now that such men were not necessarily corrupt renegades. i can only try to indicate the process by which they were led towards certain philosophical doctrines. scott, wordsworth, and coleridge represent it enough for my purpose. when mill was reproaching englishmen for their want of interest in history, he pointed out that thierry, 'the earliest of the three great french historians' (guizot and michelet are the two others), ascribed his interest in his subject to _ivanhoe_.[ ] englishmen read _ivanhoe_ simply for amusement. frenchmen could see that it threw a light upon history, or at least suggested a great historical problem. scott, it is often said, was the first person to teach us that our ancestors were once as much alive as ourselves. scott, indeed, the one english writer whose fame upon the continent could be compared to byron's, had clearly no interest in, or capacity for, abstract speculations. an imaginative power, just falling short of the higher poetical gift, and a masculine common-sense were his most conspicuous faculties. the two qualities were occasionally at issue; his judgment struggled with his prejudices, and he sympathised too keenly with the active leaders and concrete causes to care much for any abstract theory. yet his influence upon thought, though indirect, was remarkable. the vividness of his historical painting--inaccurate, no doubt, and delightfully reckless of dates and facts--stimulated the growing interest in historical inquiries even in england. his influence in one direction is recognised by newman, who was perhaps thinking chiefly of his mediævalism.[ ] but the historical novels are only one side of scott. patriotic to the core, he lived at a time when patriotic feeling was stimulated to the utmost, and when scotland in particular was still a province, and yet in many ways the most vigorous and progressive part of a great empire. he represents patriotism stimulated by contact with cosmopolitan movements. loving every local peculiarity, painting every class from the noble to the peasant, loving the old traditions, and yet sharing the great impulses of the day, scott was able to interest the world at large. while the most faithful portrayer of the special national type, he has too much sense not to be well aware that picturesque cattle-stealers and jacobite chiefs were things of the past; but he loves with his whole heart the institutions rooted in the past and rich in historical associations. he transferred to poetry and fiction the political doctrine of burke. to him, the revolutionary movement was simply a solvent, corroding all the old ties because it sapped the old traditions, and tended to substitute a mob for a nation. the continuity of national life seemed to him the essential condition; and a nation was not a mere aggregate of separate individuals, but an ancient organism, developing on an orderly system--where every man had his rightful place, and the beggar, as he observes in the _antiquary_, was as ready as the noble to rise against foreign invasion. to him, the kings or priests who, to the revolutionist, represented simple despotism, represented part of a rough but manly order, in which many virtues were conspicuous and the governing classes were discharging great functions. though he did not use the phrase, the revolutionary or radical view was hateful to him on account of its 'individualism.' it meant the summary destruction of all that he cherished most warmly in order to carry out theories altogether revolting to his common-sense. the very roots of a sound social order depend upon the traditions and accepted beliefs which bind together clans or families, and assign to every man a satisfactory function in life. the vivid realisation of history goes naturally with a love--excessive or reasonable--of the old order; and scott, though writing carelessly to amuse idle readers, was stimulating the historical conceptions, which, for whatever reason, were most uncongenial to the utilitarian as to all the revolutionists. the more conscious philosophical application is illustrated by wordsworth and coleridge. both of them had shared the truly revolutionary enthusiasm, and both came in time to be classed with the tories. both, as will be seen, had a marked influence upon j. s. mill. wordsworth has written in the _prelude_ one of the most remarkable of intellectual autobiographies. he was to be, though he never quite succeeded in being, a great philosophical poet. he never succeeded, because, in truth, he was not a great philosopher. but no one has more clearly indicated the history of his mental evolution. his sympathy with the revolution was perfectly genuine, but involved a vast misconception. a sturdy, independent youth, thoroughly imbued with the instincts of his northern dalesmen, he had early leaned to a republican sentiment. his dislike of the effete conventionalism of the literary creed blended with his aversion to the political rule of the time. he caught the contagion of revolutionary enthusiasm in france, and was converted by the sight of the 'hunger-bitten' peasant girl--the victim of aristocratic oppression. 'it is against that,' said his friend, 'that we are fighting,' and so far wordsworth was a convert. the revolution, therefore, meant to him the restoration of an idyllic state, in which the homely virtues of the independent peasant should no longer be crushed and deprived of reward by the instruments of selfish despotism. the outbreak of war put his principles at issue with his patriotism. he suffered keenly when called upon to triumph over the calamities of his countrymen. but gradually he came to think that his sympathies were misplaced. the revolution had not altered human nature. the atrocities disturbed him, but for a time he could regard them as a mere accident. as the war went on, he began to perceive that the new power could be as tyrannical and selfish as the old. instead of reconstructing a simple social ideal, it was forming a military despotism. when the french armies put down the simple swiss peasantry, to whom he had been drawn by his home-bred sympathies, he finally gave up the revolutionary cause. he had gone through a mental agony, and his distracted sympathies ultimately determined a change which corresponded to the adoption of a new philosophy. wordsworth, indeed, had little taste for abstract logic. he had imbibed godwin's doctrine, but when acceptance of godwin's conclusions involved a conflict with his strongest affections--the sacrifice not only of his patriotism but of the sympathies which bound him to his fellows--he revolted. godwin represents the extreme of 'individualism,' the absolute dissolution of all social and political bonds. wordsworth escaped, not by discovering a logical defect in the argument, but by yielding to the protest of his emotions. the system, he thought, was fatal to all the affections which had made life dear to him; to the vague 'intimations' which, whatever else they might be, had yet power to give harmony to our existence. by degrees he adopted a new diagnosis of the great political evils. on one side, he sympathised with scott's sense of the fatal effects upon the whole social organism. among his noblest poems are the 'brothers' and 'michael,' to which he specially called the attention of fox. they were intended, he explained, to show the surpassing value of the domestic affections conspicuous among the shepherds and 'statesmen' of the northern dales. he had now come to hold that the principles of godwin and his like were destructive to the most important elements of human welfare. the revolutionists were not simply breaking the fetters of the simple peasant, but destroying the most sacred ties to which the peasant owed whatever dignity or happiness he possessed. revolution, in short, meant anarchy. it meant, therefore, the destruction of all that gives real value to life. it was, as he held, one product of the worship of the 'idol proudly named the "wealth of nations,"'[ ] selfishness and greed replacing the old motives to 'plain living and high thinking.' wordsworth, in short, saw the ugly side of the industrial revolution, the injury done to domestic life by the factory system, or the substitution of a proletariate for a peasantry, and the replacement of the lowest social order by a vast inorganic mob. the contemporary process, which was leading to pauperism and to the evils of the factory system, profoundly affected wordsworth, as well as the impulsive southey; and their frequent denunciations gave colour to the imputations that they were opposed to all progress. certainly they were even morbidly alive to the evil aspects of the political economy of malthus and ricardo, which to them seemed to prescribe insensibility and indifference to most serious and rapidly accumulating evils. meanwhile, wordsworth was also impressed by the underlying philosophical difficulties. the effect of the revolutionary principles was to destroy the religious sentiment, not simply by disproving this or that historical statement, but by making the whole world prosaic and matter-of-fact. his occasional outbursts against the man of science--the 'fingering slave' who would 'peep and botanise upon his mother's grave'--are one version of his feeling. the whole scientific method tended to materialism and atomism; to a breaking up of the world into disconnected atoms, and losing the life in dissecting the machinery. his protest is embodied in the pantheism of the noble lines on tintern abbey, and his method of answering might be divined from the ode on the 'intimations of immortality.' somehow or other the world represents a spiritual and rational unity, not a mere chaos of disconnected atoms and fragments. we 'see into the heart of things' when we trust to our emotions and hold by the instincts, clearly manifested in childhood, but clouded and overwhelmed in our later struggles with the world. the essential thing is the cultivation of our 'moral being,' the careful preservation and assimilation of the stern sense of duty, which alone makes life bearable and gives a meaning to the universe. wordsworth, it is plain, was at the very opposite pole from the utilitarians. he came to consider that their whole method meant the dissolution of all that was most vitally sacred, and to hold that the revolution had attracted his sympathies on false pretences. yet it is obvious that, however great the stimulus which he exerted, and however lofty his highest flights of poetry, he had no distinct theory to offer. his doctrine undoubtedly was congenial to certain philosophical views, but was not itself an articulate philosophy. he appeals to instincts and emotions, not to any definite theory. in a remarkable letter, coleridge told wordsworth why he was disappointed with the _excursion_.[ ] he had hoped that it would be the 'first and only true philosophical poem in existence.' wordsworth was to have started by exposing the 'sandy sophisms of locke,' and after exploding pope's _essay on man_, and showing the vanity of (erasmus) darwin's belief in an 'ourang-outang state,' and explaining the fall of man and the 'scheme of redemption,' to have concluded by 'a grand didactic swell on the identity of a true philosophy with true religion.' he would show how life and intelligence were to be substituted for the 'philosophy of mechanism.' facts would be elevated into theory, theory into laws, and laws into living and intelligent powers--true idealism necessarily perfecting itself in realism, and realism refining itself into idealism.' the programme was a large one. if it represents what coleridge seriously expected from wordsworth, it also suggests that he was unconsciously wandering into an exposition of one of the gigantic but constantly shifting schemes of a comprehensive philosophy, which he was always proposing to execute. to try to speak of coleridge adequately would be hopeless and out of place. i must briefly mention him, because he was undoubtedly the most conspicuous representative of the tendencies opposed to utilitarianism. the young men who found bentham exasperating imbibed draughts of mingled poetry and philosophy from coleridge's monologues at hampstead. carlyle has told us, in a famous chapter of his _life of sterling_, what they went out to see: at once a reed shaken by the wind and a great expounder of transcendental truth. the fact that coleridge exerted a very great influence is undeniable. to define precisely what that influence was is impossible. his writings are a heap of fragments. he contemplated innumerable schemes for great works, and never got within measurable distance of writing any. he poured himself out indefinitely upon the margins of other men's books; and the piety of disciples has collected a mass of these scattered and incoherent jottings, which announce conclusions without giving the premises, or suggest difficulties without attempting to solve them. he seems to have been almost as industrious as bentham in writing; but whereas bentham's fragments could be put together as wholes, coleridge's are essentially distracted hints of views never really elaborated. he was always thinking, but seems always to be making a fresh start at any point that strikes him for the moment. besides all this, there is the painful question of plagiarism. his most coherent exposition (in the _biographia literaria_) is simply appropriated from schelling, though he ascribes the identity to a 'genial coincidence' of thought. i need make no attempt to make out what coleridge really thought for himself, and then to try to put his thoughts together,--and indeed hold the attempt to be impossible. the most remarkable thing is the apparent disproportion between coleridge's definite services to philosophy and the effect which he certainly produced upon some of his ablest contemporaries. that seems to prove that he was really aiming at some important aspect of truth, incapable as he may have been of definitively reaching it. i can only try to give a hint or two as to its general nature. coleridge, in the first place, was essentially a poet, and, moreover, his poetry was of the type most completely divorced from philosophy. nobody could say more emphatically that poetry should not be rhymed logic; and his most impressive poems are simply waking dreams. they are spontaneous incarnations of sensuous imagery, which has no need of morals or definite logical schemes. although he expected wordsworth to transmute philosophy into poetry, he admitted that the achievement would be unprecedented. even in lucretius, he said, what was poetry was not philosophy, and what was philosophy was not poetry. yet coleridge's philosophy was essentially the philosophy of a poet. he had, indeed, great dialectical ingenuity--a faculty which may certainly be allied with the highest imagination, though it may involve certain temptations. a poet who has also a mastery of dialectics becomes a mystic in philosophy. coleridge had, it seems, been attracted by plotinus in his schooldays. at a later period he had been attracted by hartley, berkeley, and priestley. to a brilliant youth, anxious to be in the van of intellectual progress, they represented the most advanced theories. but there could never be a full sympathy between coleridge and the forefathers of english empiricism; and he went to germany partly to study the new philosophy which was beginning to shine--though very feebly and intermittingly--in england. when he had returned he began to read kant and schelling, or rather to mix excursions into their books with the miscellaneous inquiries to which his versatile intellect attracted him. now, it is abundantly clear that coleridge never studied any philosophy systematically. he never acquired a precise acquaintance with the technical language of various schemes, or cared for their precise logical relations to each other. the 'genial coincidence' with schelling, though an unlucky phrase, represents a real fact. he dipped into plotinus or behmen or kant or schelling, or any one who interested him, and did not know whether they were simply embodying ideas already in his own mind, or suggesting new ideas; or, what was probably more accurate, expressing opinions which, in a general way, were congenial to his own way of contemplating the world. his power of stimulating other minds proves sufficiently that he frequently hit upon impressive and suggestive thoughts. he struck out illuminating sparks, but he never diffused any distinct or steady daylight. his favourite position, for example, of the distinction between the reason and the understanding is always coming up and being enforced with the strongest asseverations of its importance. that he had adopted it more or less from kant is obvious, though i imagine it to be also obvious that he did not clearly understand his authority.[ ] to what, precisely, it amounts is also unintelligible to me. somehow or other, it implies that the mind can rise into transcendental regions, and, leaving grovelling utilitarians and the like to the conduct of the understanding in matters of practical expediency, can perceive that the universe is in some way evolved from the pure reason, and the mind capable of ideas which correspond to stages of the evolution. how this leads to the conclusions that the christian doctrines of the logos and the trinity are embodiments of pure philosophy is a problem upon which i need not touch. when we have called coleridge a mystic, with flashes of keen insight into the weakness of the opposite theory, i do not see how we are to get much further, or attribute to him any articulate and definite scheme. hopelessly unsystematic as coleridge may have been, his significance in regard to the utilitarians is noteworthy. it is indicated in a famous article which j. s. mill contributed to the _westminster review_ in march .[ ] mill's concessions to coleridge rather scandalised the faithful; and it is enough to observe here that it marks the apogee of mill's benthamism. influences, of which i shall have to speak, had led him to regard his old creed as imperfect, and to assent to great part of coleridge's doctrine. mill does not discuss the metaphysical or theological views of the opposite school, though he briefly intimates his dissent. but it is interesting to observe how coleridge impressed a disciple of bentham. the 'germano-coleridgian doctrine,' says mill, was a reaction against the philosophy of the eighteenth century: 'ontological,' 'conservative,' 'religious,' 'concrete and historical,' and finally 'poetical,' because the other was 'experimental,' 'innovative,' 'infidel,' 'abstract and metaphysical,' and 'matter-of-fact and prosaic.' yet the two approximate, and each helps to restore the balance and comes a little nearer to a final equilibrium. the error of the french philosophers had been their negative and purely critical tendency. they had thought that it was enough to sweep away superstition, priestcraft, and despotism, and that no constructive process was necessary. they had not perceived the necessity of social discipline, of loyalty to rulers, or of patriotic feeling among the subjects. they had, therefore, entirely failed to recognise the historical value of old creeds and institutions, and had tried to remodel society 'without the binding forces which hold society together.'[ ] hence, too, the _philosophes_ came to despise history; and d'alembert is said to have wished that all record of past events could be blotted out. their theory, in its popular version at least, came to be that states and churches had been got up 'for the sole purpose of picking people's pockets.'[ ] this had become incredible to any intelligent reasoner, and any tory could prove that there was something good in the past. the peculiarity of the 'germano-coleridgian' school was that they saw beyond the immediate controversy. they were the first to inquire with any power into 'the inductive laws of the existence and growth of human society'; the first to recognise the importance of the great constructive principles; and the first to produce not a piece of party advocacy, but 'a philosophy of society in the only form in which it is yet possible, that of a philosophy of history.' hence arose that 'series of great writers and thinkers, from herder to michelet,' who have given to past history an intelligible place in the gradual evolution of humanity.[ ] this very forcible passage is interesting in regard to mill, and shows a very clear perception of some defects in his own philosophy. it also raises an important question. accepting mill's view, it is remarkable that the great error of his own school, which professed to be based upon experience, was the rejection of history; and the great merit of the _a priori_ and 'intuitionist' school was precisely their insistence upon history. to this i shall have to return hereafter. meanwhile, mill proceeds to show how coleridge, by arguing from the 'idea' of church and state, had at least recognised the necessity of showing that political and social institutions must have a sufficient reason, and be justified by something more than mere obstinate prejudice. men like pitt and sir robert peel, if they accepted coleridge's support, would have to alter their whole position. coleridge's defence of his ideal church was at once the severest satire upon the existing body and a proof, as against bentham and adam smith, of the advantages of an endowed class for the cultivation and diffusion of learning. coleridge, moreover, though he objected to the reform bill, showed himself a better reformer than lord john russell. he admitted what the whigs refused to see, the necessity of diminishing the weight of the landowner interest. landowners were not to be ultimate sources of power, but to represent one factor in a reasoned system. in short, by admitting that all social arrangements in some sense were embodiments of reason, he admitted that they must also be made to conform to reason. coleridge and bentham, then, are not really enemies but allies, and they wield powers which are 'opposite poles of one great force of progression.'[ ] the question, however, remains, how the philosophy of each leader is really connected with his practical conclusions. mill's view would apparently be that coleridge somehow managed to correct the errors or fill the gaps of the utilitarian system--a very necessary task, as mill admits--while coleridge would have held that those errors were the inevitable fruit of the whole empirical system of thought. the reason must be restored to its rightful supremacy over the understanding, which had been working its wicked will since the days of locke and eighteenth century. the problem is a wide one. i must be content to remark the inevitable antithesis. whether enemies or allies, the utilitarians and their antagonists were separated by a gulf which could not be bridged for the time. the men of common-sense, who had no philosophy at all, were shocked by the immediate practical applications of utilitarianism, its hostility to the old order which they loved, its apparent helplessness in social questions, its relegation of all progress to the conflict of selfish interests, its indifference to all the virtues associated with patriotism and local ties. by more reflective minds, it was condemned as robbing the world of its poetry, stifling the religious emotions, and even quenching sentiment in general. the few who wished for a philosophy found the root of its errors in the assumptions which reduced the world to a chaos of atoms, outwardly connected and combined into mere dead mechanism. the world, for the poet and the philosopher alike, must be not a congeries of separate things, but in some sense a product of reason. thought, not fact, must be the ultimate reality. unfortunately or otherwise, the poetical sentiment could never get itself translated into philosophical theory. coleridge's random and discursive hints remained mere hints--a suggestion at best for future thought. mill's criticism shows how far they could be assimilated by a singularly candid utilitarian. to him, we see, they represented mainly the truth that his own party, following the general tendency of the eighteenth century, had been led to neglect the vital importance of the constructive elements of society; that they had sacrificed order to progress, and therefore confounded progress with destruction, and failed to perceive the real importance in past times even of the institutions which had become obsolete. social atomism or individualism, therefore, implied a total misconception of what mill calls the 'evolution of humanity.' this marks a critical point. the 'germano-coleridgians' had a theory of evolution. by evolution, indeed, was meant a dialectical evolution; the evolution of 'ideas' or reason, in which each stage of history represents a moment of some vast and transcendental process of thought. evolution, so understood, seemed rightly or wrongly to be mere mysticism or intellectual juggling. it took leave of fact, or managed by some illegitimate process to give to a crude generalisation from experience the appearance of a purely logical deduction. in this shape, therefore, it was really opposed to science, although the time was to come in which evolution would present itself in a scientific form.[ ] meanwhile, the concessions made by j. s. mill were not approved by his fellows, and would have been regarded as little short of treason by the older utilitarians. the two schools, if coleridge's followers could be called a school, regarded each other's doctrines as simply contradictory. in appealing to experience and experience alone, the utilitarians, as their opponents held, had reduced the world to a dead mechanism, destroyed every element of cohesion, made society a struggle of selfish interests, and struck at the very roots of all order, patriotism, poetry, and religion. they retorted that their critics were blind adherents of antiquated prejudice, and sought to cover superstition and despotism either by unprovable dogmatic assertions, or by taking refuge in a cloudy mystical jargon, which really meant nothing. they did not love each other. footnotes: [ ] see _dictionary of national biography_, under 'george grote.' bentham's ms. is in the british museum, and shows, i think, that grote's share in the work was a good deal more than mere editing. i quote from a reprint by truelove ( ). it was also privately reprinted by grote himself in . [ ] cf. hobbes's definition: 'fear of power invisible feigned by the mind, or imagined from tales publicly allowed, [is] religion: not allowed, superstition. and when the power imagined is truly such as we imagine, true religion.'--_works_ (molesworth), iii. . [ ] 'philip beauchamp,' ch. ii. pp. - . [ ] _ibid._ p. . [ ] 'philip beauchamp,' p. . [ ] _ibid._ pp. and . [ ] 'philip beauchamp,' ch. iii. [ ] 'philip beauchamp,' ch. iv. [ ] _ibid._ p. , ch. v. [ ] _ibid._ p. , ch. vi. [ ] 'philip beauchamp,' ch. viii. [ ] _ibid._ part ii. ch. i. [ ] _ibid._ p. , part ii. ch. ii. [ ] 'philip beauchamp,' pp. , . [ ] _ibid._ p. . [ ] _ibid._ p. . [ ] 'philip beauchamp,' p. . [ ] _ibid._ p. . [ ] the writers were chalmers, kidd, whewell, sir charles bell, roget, buckland, kirby, and prout. the essays appeared from to . the versatile brougham shortly afterwards edited paley's _natural theology_. [ ] 'philip beauchamp,' p. . [ ] froude's _carlyle_, i. ; ii. . [ ] mill's _dissertations_, i. ; ii. . [ ] george borrow's vehement dislike of scott as the inventor of puseyism and modern jesuitism of all kinds is characteristic. [ ] _prelude_, bk. xiii. [ ] coleridge's _letters_ ( ), pp. - . [ ] mr. hutchison stirling insists upon this in the _fortnightly review_ for july . he proves, i think, that coleridge's knowledge of the various schemes of german philosophy and of the precise relation of kant, fichte, and schelling was altogether desultory and confused. how far this is important depends upon whether we attach much or little importance to precise combinations of words used by these philosophers. [ ] _dissertations_, i. - . [ ] _ibid._ i. . [ ] _dissertations_, i. . [ ] _ibid._ i. - . [ ] _dissertations_, i. . [ ] coleridge's _hints towards the formation of a more comprehensive theory of life_, edited by s. b. watson, in , is a curious attempt to apply his evolution doctrine to natural science. lewes, in his _letters on comte's philosophy of the sciences_, says that it is a 'shameless plagiarism' from schelling's _erster entwurf_, etc. it seems, as far as i can judge, that coleridge's doctrines about magnetism, reproduction, irritability, sensibility, etc., are, in fact, adapted from schelling. the book was intended, as mr. e. h. coleridge tells me, for a chapter in a work on scrophula, projected by gillman. as coleridge died long before the publication, he cannot be directly responsible for not acknowledging obligations to schelling. unfortunately he cannot claim the benefit of a good character in such matters. anyhow, coleridge's occasional excursions into science can only represent a vague acceptance of the transcendental method represented, as i understand, by oken. * * * * * printed by t. and a. constable, printers to her majesty at the edinburgh university press sartor resartus: the life and opinions of herr teufelsdrockh by thomas carlyle. book i. chapter i. preliminary. considering our present advanced state of culture, and how the torch of science has now been brandished and borne about, with more or less effect, for five thousand years and upwards; how, in these times especially, not only the torch still burns, and perhaps more fiercely than ever, but innumerable rushlights, and sulphur-matches, kindled thereat, are also glancing in every direction, so that not the smallest cranny or dog-hole in nature or art can remain unilluminated,--it might strike the reflective mind with some surprise that hitherto little or nothing of a fundamental character, whether in the way of philosophy or history, has been written on the subject of clothes. our theory of gravitation is as good as perfect: lagrange, it is well known, has proved that the planetary system, on this scheme, will endure forever; laplace, still more cunningly, even guesses that it could not have been made on any other scheme. whereby, at least, our nautical logbooks can be better kept; and water-transport of all kinds has grown more commodious. of geology and geognosy we know enough: what with the labors of our werners and huttons, what with the ardent genius of their disciples, it has come about that now, to many a royal society, the creation of a world is little more mysterious than the cooking of a dumpling; concerning which last, indeed, there have been minds to whom the question, _how the apples were got in_, presented difficulties. why mention our disquisitions on the social contract, on the standard of taste, on the migrations of the herring? then, have we not a doctrine of rent, a theory of value; philosophies of language, of history, of pottery, of apparitions, of intoxicating liquors? man's whole life and environment have been laid open and elucidated; scarcely a fragment or fibre of his soul, body, and possessions, but has been probed, dissected, distilled, desiccated, and scientifically decomposed: our spiritual faculties, of which it appears there are not a few, have their stewarts, cousins, royer collards: every cellular, vascular, muscular tissue glories in its lawrences, majendies, bichats. how, then, comes it, may the reflective mind repeat, that the grand tissue of all tissues, the only real tissue, should have been quite overlooked by science,--the vestural tissue, namely, of woollen or other cloth; which man's soul wears as its outmost wrappage and overall; wherein his whole other tissues are included and screened, his whole faculties work, his whole self lives, moves, and has its being? for if, now and then, some straggling broken-winged thinker has cast an owl's glance into this obscure region, the most have soared over it altogether heedless; regarding clothes as a property, not an accident, as quite natural and spontaneous, like the leaves of trees, like the plumage of birds. in all speculations they have tacitly figured man as _a clothed animal_; whereas he is by nature a _naked animal_; and only in certain circumstances, by purpose and device, masks himself in clothes. shakespeare says, we are creatures that look before and after: the more surprising that we do not look round a little, and see what is passing under our very eyes. but here, as in so many other cases, germany, learned, indefatigable, deep-thinking germany comes to our aid. it is, after all, a blessing that, in these revolutionary times, there should be one country where abstract thought can still take shelter; that while the din and frenzy of catholic emancipations, and rotten boroughs, and revolts of paris, deafen every french and every english ear, the german can stand peaceful on his scientific watch-tower; and, to the raging, struggling multitude here and elsewhere, solemnly, from hour to hour, with preparatory blast of cow-horn, emit his _horet ihr herren und lasset's euch sagen_; in other words, tell the universe, which so often forgets that fact, what o'clock it really is. not unfrequently the germans have been blamed for an unprofitable diligence; as if they struck into devious courses, where nothing was to be had but the toil of a rough journey; as if, forsaking the gold-mines of finance and that political slaughter of fat oxen whereby a man himself grows fat, they were apt to run goose-hunting into regions of bilberries and crowberries, and be swallowed up at last in remote peat-bogs. of that unwise science, which, as our humorist expresses it, "by geometric scale doth take the size of pots of ale;" still more, of that altogether misdirected industry, which is seen vigorously thrashing mere straw, there can nothing defensive be said. in so far as the germans are chargeable with such, let them take the consequence. nevertheless be it remarked, that even a russian steppe has tumult and gold ornaments; also many a scene that looks desert and rock-bound from the distance, will unfold itself, when visited, into rare valleys. nay, in any case, would criticism erect not only finger-posts and turnpikes, but spiked gates and impassable barriers, for the mind of man? it is written, "many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased." surely the plain rule is, let each considerate person have his way, and see what it will lead to. for not this man and that man, but all men make up mankind, and their united tasks the task of mankind. how often have we seen some such adventurous, and perhaps much-censured wanderer light on some out-lying, neglected, yet vitally momentous province; the hidden treasures of which he first discovered, and kept proclaiming till the general eye and effort were directed thither, and the conquest was completed;--thereby, in these his seemingly so aimless rambles, planting new standards, founding new habitable colonies, in the immeasurable circumambient realm of nothingness and night! wise man was he who counselled that speculation should have free course, and look fearlessly towards all the thirty-two points of the compass, whithersoever and howsoever it listed. perhaps it is proof of the stunted condition in which pure science, especially pure moral science, languishes among us english; and how our mercantile greatness, and invaluable constitution, impressing a political or other immediately practical tendency on all english culture and endeavor, cramps the free flight of thought,--that this, not philosophy of clothes, but recognition even that we have no such philosophy, stands here for the first time published in our language. what english intellect could have chosen such a topic, or by chance stumbled on it? but for that same unshackled, and even sequestered condition of the german learned, which permits and induces them to fish in all manner of waters, with all manner of nets, it seems probable enough, this abtruse inquiry might, in spite of the results it leads to, have continued dormant for indefinite periods. the editor of these sheets, though otherwise boasting himself a man of confirmed speculative habits, and perhaps discursive enough, is free to confess, that never, till these last months, did the above very plain considerations, on our total want of a philosophy of clothes, occur to him; and then, by quite foreign suggestion. by the arrival, namely, of a new book from professor teufelsdrockh of weissnichtwo; treating expressly of this subject, and in a style which, whether understood or not, could not even by the blindest be overlooked. in the present editor's way of thought, this remarkable treatise, with its doctrines, whether as judicially acceded to, or judicially denied, has not remained without effect. "_die kleider, ihr werden und wirken_ (clothes, their origin and influence): _von diog. teufelsdrockh, j. u. d. etc. stillschweigen und cognie. weissnichtwo_, . "here," says the _weissnichtwo'sche anzeiger_, "comes a volume of that extensive, close-printed, close-meditated sort, which, be it spoken with pride, is seen only in germany, perhaps only in weissnichtwo. issuing from the hitherto irreproachable firm of stillschweigen and company, with every external furtherance, it is of such internal quality as to set neglect at defiance.... a work," concludes the well-nigh enthusiastic reviewer, "interesting alike to the antiquary, the historian, and the philosophic thinker; a masterpiece of boldness, lynx-eyed acuteness, and rugged independent germanism and philanthropy (_derber kerndeutschheit und menschenliebe_); which will not, assuredly, pass current without opposition in high places; but must and will exalt the almost new name of teufelsdrockh to the first ranks of philosophy, in our german temple of honor." mindful of old friendship, the distinguished professor, in this the first blaze of his fame, which however does not dazzle him, sends hither a presentation-copy of his book; with compliments and encomiums which modesty forbids the present editor to rehearse; yet without indicated wish or hope of any kind, except what may be implied in the concluding phrase: _mochte es_ (this remarkable treatise) _auch im brittischen boden gedeihen_! chapter ii. editorial difficulties. if for a speculative man, "whose seedfield," in the sublime words of the poet, "is time," no conquest is important but that of new ideas, then might the arrival of professor teufelsdrockh's book be marked with chalk in the editor's calendar. it is indeed an "extensive volume," of boundless, almost formless contents, a very sea of thought; neither calm nor clear, if you will; yet wherein the toughest pearl-diver may dive to his utmost depth, and return not only with sea-wreck but with true orients. directly on the first perusal, almost on the first deliberate inspection, it became apparent that here a quite new branch of philosophy, leading to as yet undescried ulterior results, was disclosed; farther, what seemed scarcely less interesting, a quite new human individuality, an almost unexampled personal character, that, namely, of professor teufelsdrockh the discloser. of both which novelties, as far as might be possible, we resolved to master the significance. but as man is emphatically a proselytizing creature, no sooner was such mastery even fairly attempted, than the new question arose: how might this acquired good be imparted to others, perhaps in equal need thereof; how could the philosophy of clothes, and the author of such philosophy, be brought home, in any measure, to the business and bosoms of our own english nation? for if new-got gold is said to burn the pockets till it be cast forth into circulation, much more may new truth. here, however, difficulties occurred. the first thought naturally was to publish article after article on this remarkable volume, in such widely circulating critical journals as the editor might stand connected with, or by money or love procure access to. but, on the other hand, was it not clear that such matter as must here be revealed, and treated of, might endanger the circulation of any journal extant? if, indeed, all party-divisions in the state could have been abolished, whig, tory, and radical, embracing in discrepant union; and all the journals of the nation could have been jumbled into one journal, and the philosophy of clothes poured forth in incessant torrents therefrom, the attempt had seemed possible. but, alas, what vehicle of that sort have we, except _fraser's magazine_? a vehicle all strewed (figuratively speaking) with the maddest waterloo-crackers, exploding distractively and destructively, wheresoever the mystified passenger stands or sits; nay, in any case, understood to be, of late years, a vehicle full to overflowing, and inexorably shut! besides, to state the philosophy of clothes without the philosopher, the ideas of teufelsdrockh without something of his personality, was it not to insure both of entire misapprehension? now for biography, had it been otherwise admissible, there were no adequate documents, no hope of obtaining such, but rather, owing to circumstances, a special despair. thus did the editor see himself, for the while, shut out from all public utterance of these extraordinary doctrines, and constrained to revolve them, not without disquietude, in the dark depths of his own mind. so had it lasted for some months; and now the volume on clothes, read and again read, was in several points becoming lucid and lucent; the personality of its author more and more surprising, but, in spite of all that memory and conjecture could do, more and more enigmatic; whereby the old disquietude seemed fast settling into fixed discontent,--when altogether unexpectedly arrives a letter from herr hofrath heuschrecke, our professor's chief friend and associate in weissnichtwo, with whom we had not previously corresponded. the hofrath, after much quite extraneous matter, began dilating largely on the "agitation and attention" which the philosophy of clothes was exciting in its own german republic of letters; on the deep significance and tendency of his friend's volume; and then, at length, with great circumlocution, hinted at the practicability of conveying "some knowledge of it, and of him, to england, and through england to the distant west:" a work on professor teufelsdrockh "were undoubtedly welcome to the _family_, the _national_, or any other of those patriotic _libraries_, at present the glory of british literature;" might work revolutions in thought; and so forth;--in conclusion, intimating not obscurely, that should the present editor feel disposed to undertake a biography of teufelsdrockh, he, hofrath heuschrecke, had it in his power to furnish the requisite documents. as in some chemical mixture, that has stood long evaporating, but would not crystallize, instantly when the wire or other fixed substance is introduced, crystallization commences, and rapidly proceeds till the whole is finished, so was it with the editor's mind and this offer of heuschrecke's. form rose out of void solution and discontinuity; like united itself with like in definite arrangement: and soon either in actual vision and possession, or in fixed reasonable hope, the image of the whole enterprise had shaped itself, so to speak, into a solid mass. cautiously yet courageously, through the twopenny post, application to the famed redoubtable oliver yorke was now made: an interview, interviews with that singular man have taken place; with more of assurance on our side, with less of satire (at least of open satire) on his, than we anticipated; for the rest, with such issue as is now visible. as to those same "patriotic _libraries_," the hofrath's counsel could only be viewed with silent amazement; but with his offer of documents we joyfully and almost instantaneously closed. thus, too, in the sure expectation of these, we already see our task begun; and this our _sartor resartus_, which is properly a "life and opinions of herr teufelsdrockh," hourly advancing. of our fitness for the enterprise, to which we have such title and vocation, it were perhaps uninteresting to say more. let the british reader study and enjoy, in simplicity of heart, what is here presented him, and with whatever metaphysical acumen and talent for meditation he is possessed of. let him strive to keep a free, open sense; cleared from the mists of prejudice, above all from the paralysis of cant; and directed rather to the book itself than to the editor of the book. who or what such editor may be, must remain conjectural, and even insignificant: [*] it is a voice publishing tidings of the philosophy of clothes; undoubtedly a spirit addressing spirits: whoso hath ears, let him hear. * with us even he still communicates in some sort of mask, or muffler; and, we have reason to think, under a feigned name!--o. y. on one other point the editor thinks it needful to give warning: namely, that he is animated with a true though perhaps a feeble attachment to the institutions of our ancestors; and minded to defend these, according to ability, at all hazards; nay, it was partly with a view to such defence that he engaged in this undertaking. to stem, or if that be impossible, profitably to divert the current of innovation, such a volume as teufelsdrockh's, if cunningly planted down, were no despicable pile, or floodgate, in the logical wear. for the rest, be it nowise apprehended, that any personal connection of ours with teufelsdrockh, heuschrecke or this philosophy of clothes, can pervert our judgment, or sway us to extenuate or exaggerate. powerless, we venture to promise, are those private compliments themselves. grateful they may well be; as generous illusions of friendship; as fair mementos of bygone unions, of those nights and suppers of the gods, when, lapped in the symphonies and harmonies of philosophic eloquence, though with baser accompaniments, the present editor revelled in that feast of reason, never since vouchsafed him in so full measure! but what then? _amicus plato, magis amica veritas_; teufelsdrockh is our friend, truth is our divinity. in our historical and critical capacity, we hope we are strangers to all the world; have feud or favor with no one,--save indeed the devil, with whom, as with the prince of lies and darkness, we do at all times wage internecine war. this assurance, at an epoch when puffery and quackery have reached a height unexampled in the annals of mankind, and even english editors, like chinese shopkeepers, must write on their door-lintels _no cheating here_,--we thought it good to premise. chapter iii. reminiscences. to the author's private circle the appearance of this singular work on clothes must have occasioned little less surprise than it has to the rest of the world. for ourselves, at least, few things have been more unexpected. professor teufelsdrockh, at the period of our acquaintance with him, seemed to lead a quite still and self-contained life: a man devoted to the higher philosophies, indeed; yet more likely, if he published at all, to publish a refutation of hegel and bardili, both of whom, strangely enough, he included under a common ban; than to descend, as he has here done, into the angry noisy forum, with an argument that cannot but exasperate and divide. not, that we can remember, was the philosophy of clothes once touched upon between us. if through the high, silent, meditative transcendentalism of our friend we detected any practical tendency whatever, it was at most political, and towards a certain prospective, and for the present quite speculative, radicalism; as indeed some correspondence, on his part, with herr oken of jena was now and then suspected; though his special contributions to the _isis_ could never be more than surmised at. but, at all events, nothing moral, still less anything didactico-religious, was looked for from him. well do we recollect the last words he spoke in our hearing; which indeed, with the night they were uttered in, are to be forever remembered. lifting his huge tumbler of _gukguk_, [*] and for a moment lowering his tobacco-pipe, he stood up in full coffee-house (it was _zur grunen gans_, the largest in weissnichtwo, where all the virtuosity, and nearly all the intellect of the place assembled of an evening); and there, with low, soul-stirring tone, and the look truly of an angel, though whether of a white or of a black one might be dubious, proposed this toast: _die sache der armen in gottes und teufels namen_ (the cause of the poor, in heaven's name and--'s)! one full shout, breaking the leaden silence; then a gurgle of innumerable emptying bumpers, again followed by universal cheering, returned him loud acclaim. it was the finale of the night: resuming their pipes; in the highest enthusiasm, amid volumes of tobacco-smoke; triumphant, cloud-capt without and within, the assembly broke up, each to his thoughtful pillow. _bleibt doch ein echter spass_- _und galgen-vogel_, said several; meaning thereby that, one day, he would probably be hanged for his democratic sentiments. _wo steckt doch der schalk_? added they, looking round: but teufelsdrockh had retired by private alleys, and the compiler of these pages beheld him no more. * gukguk is unhappily only an academical-beer. in such scenes has it been our lot to live with this philosopher, such estimate to form of his purposes and powers. and yet, thou brave teufelsdrockh, who could tell what lurked in thee? under those thick locks of thine, so long and lank, overlapping roof-wise the gravest face we ever in this world saw, there dwelt a most busy brain. in thy eyes too, deep under their shaggy brows, and looking out so still and dreamy, have we not noticed gleams of an ethereal or else a diabolic fire, and half fancied that their stillness was but the rest of infinite motion, the _sleep_ of a spinning-top? thy little figure, there as, in loose ill-brushed threadbare habiliments, thou sattest, amid litter and lumber, whole days, to "think and smoke tobacco," held in it a mighty heart. the secrets of man's life were laid open to thee; thou sawest into the mystery of the universe, farther than another; thou hadst _in petto_ thy remarkable volume on clothes. nay, was there not in that clear logically founded transcendentalism of thine; still more, in thy meek, silent, deep-seated sansculottism, combined with a true princely courtesy of inward nature, the visible rudiments of such speculation? but great men are too often unknown, or what is worse, misknown. already, when we dreamed not of it, the warp of thy remarkable volume lay on the loom; and silently, mysterious shuttles were putting in the woof. how the hofrath heuschrecke is to furnish biographical data, in this case, may be a curious question; the answer of which, however, is happily not our concern, but his. to us it appeared, after repeated trial, that in weissnichtwo, from the archives or memories of the best-informed classes, no biography of teufelsdrockh was to be gathered; not so much as a false one. he was a stranger there, wafted thither by what is called the course of circumstances; concerning whose parentage, birthplace, prospects, or pursuits, curiosity had indeed made inquiries, but satisfied herself with the most indistinct replies. for himself, he was a man so still and altogether unparticipating, that to question him even afar off on such particulars was a thing of more than usual delicacy: besides, in his sly way, he had ever some quaint turn, not without its satirical edge, wherewith to divert such intrusions, and deter you from the like. wits spoke of him secretly as if he were a kind of melchizedek, without father or mother of any kind; sometimes, with reference to his great historic and statistic knowledge, and the vivid way he had of expressing himself like an eye-witness of distant transactions and scenes, they called him the _ewige jude_, everlasting, or as we say, wandering jew. to the most, indeed, he had become not so much a man as a thing; which thing doubtless they were accustomed to see, and with satisfaction; but no more thought of accounting for than for the fabrication of their daily _allgemeine zeitung_, or the domestic habits of the sun. both were there and welcome; the world enjoyed what good was in them, and thought no more of the matter. the man teufelsdrockh passed and repassed, in his little circle, as one of those originals and nondescripts, more frequent in german universities than elsewhere; of whom, though you see them alive, and feel certain enough that they must have a history, no history seems to be discoverable; or only such as men give of mountain rocks and antediluvian ruins: that they have been created by unknown agencies, are in a state of gradual decay, and for the present reflect light and resist pressure; that is, are visible and tangible objects in this phantasm world, where so much other mystery is. it was to be remarked that though, by title and diploma, _professor der allerley-wissenschaft_, or as we should say in english, "professor of things in general," he had never delivered any course; perhaps never been incited thereto by any public furtherance or requisition. to all appearance, the enlightened government of weissnichtwo, in founding their new university, imagined they had done enough, if "in times like ours," as the half-official program expressed it, "when all things are, rapidly or slowly, resolving themselves into chaos, a professorship of this kind had been established; whereby, as occasion called, the task of bodying somewhat forth again from such chaos might be, even slightly, facilitated." that actual lectures should be held, and public classes for the "science of things in general," they doubtless considered premature; on which ground too they had only established the professorship, nowise endowed it; so that teufelsdrockh, "recommended by the highest names," had been promoted thereby to a name merely. great, among the more enlightened classes, was the admiration of this new professorship: how an enlightened government had seen into the want of the age (_zeitbedurfniss_); how at length, instead of denial and destruction, we were to have a science of affirmation and reconstruction; and germany and weissnichtwo were where they should be, in the vanguard of the world. considerable also was the wonder at the new professor, dropt opportunely enough into the nascent university; so able to lecture, should occasion call; so ready to hold his peace for indefinite periods, should an enlightened government consider that occasion did not call. but such admiration and such wonder, being followed by no act to keep them living, could last only nine days; and, long before our visit to that scene, had quite died away. the more cunning heads thought it was all an expiring clutch at popularity, on the part of a minister, whom domestic embarrassments, court intrigues, old age, and dropsy soon afterwards finally drove from the helm. as for teufelsdrockh, except by his nightly appearances at the _grune gans_, weissnichtwo saw little of him, felt little of him. here, over his tumbler of gukguk, he sat reading journals; sometimes contemplatively looking into the clouds of his tobacco-pipe, without other visible employment: always, from his mild ways, an agreeable phenomenon there; more especially when he opened his lips for speech; on which occasions the whole coffee-house would hush itself into silence, as if sure to hear something noteworthy. nay, perhaps to hear a whole series and river of the most memorable utterances; such as, when once thawed, he would for hours indulge in, with fit audience: and the more memorable, as issuing from a head apparently not more interested in them, not more conscious of them, than is the sculptured stone head of some public fountain, which through its brass mouth-tube emits water to the worthy and the unworthy; careless whether it be for cooking victuals or quenching conflagrations; indeed, maintains the same earnest assiduous look, whether any water be flowing or not. to the editor of these sheets, as to a young enthusiastic englishman, however unworthy, teufelsdrockh opened himself perhaps more than to the most. pity only that we could not then half guess his importance, and scrutinize him with due power of vision! we enjoyed, what not three men weissnichtwo could boast of, a certain degree of access to the professor's private domicile. it was the attic floor of the highest house in the wahngasse; and might truly be called the pinnacle of weissnichtwo, for it rose sheer up above the contiguous roofs, themselves rising from elevated ground. moreover, with its windows it looked towards all the four _orte_ or as the scotch say, and we ought to say, _airts_: the sitting room itself commanded three; another came to view in the _schlafgemach_ (bedroom) at the opposite end; to say nothing of the kitchen, which offered two, as it were, _duplicates_, showing nothing new. so that it was in fact the speculum or watch-tower of teufelsdrockh; wherefrom, sitting at ease he might see the whole life-circulation of that considerable city; the streets and lanes of which, with all their doing and driving (_thun und treiben_), were for the most part visible there. "i look down into all that wasp-nest or bee-hive," we have heard him say, "and witness their wax-laying and honey-making, and poison-brewing, and choking by sulphur. from the palace esplanade, where music plays while serene highness is pleased to eat his victuals, down to the low lane, where in her door-sill the aged widow, knitting for a thin livelihood sits to feel the afternoon sun, i see it all; for, except schlosskirche weather-cock, no biped stands so high. couriers arrive bestrapped and bebooted, bearing joy and sorrow bagged up in pouches of leather: there, top-laden, and with four swift horses, rolls in the country baron and his household; here, on timber-leg, the lamed soldier hops painfully along, begging alms: a thousand carriages, and wains, cars, come tumbling in with food, with young rusticity, and other raw produce, inanimate or animate, and go tumbling out again with produce manufactured. that living flood, pouring through these streets, of all qualities and ages, knowest thou whence it is coming, whither it is going? _aus der ewigkeit, zu der ewigkeit hin_: from eternity, onwards to eternity! these are apparitions: what else? are they not souls rendered visible: in bodies, that took shape and will lose it, melting into air? their solid pavement is a picture of the sense; they walk on the bosom of nothing, blank time is behind them and before them. or fanciest thou, the red and yellow clothes-screen yonder, with spurs on its heels and feather in its crown, is but of to-day, without a yesterday or a to-morrow; and had not rather its ancestor alive when hengst and horsa overran thy island? friend, thou seest here a living link in that tissue of history, which inweaves all being: watch well, or it will be past thee, and seen no more." "_ach, mein lieber_!" said he once, at midnight, when we had returned from the coffee-house in rather earnest talk, "it is a true sublimity to dwell here. these fringes of lamplight, struggling up through smoke and thousand-fold exhalation, some fathoms into the ancient reign of night, what thinks bootes of them, as he leads his hunting-dogs over the zenith in their leash of sidereal fire? that stifled hum of midnight, when traffic has lain down to rest; and the chariot-wheels of vanity, still rolling here and there through distant streets, are bearing her to halls roofed in, and lighted to the due pitch for her; and only vice and misery, to prowl or to moan like nightbirds, are abroad: that hum, i say, like the stertorous, unquiet slumber of sick life, is heard in heaven! oh, under that hideous coverlet of vapors, and putrefactions, and unimaginable gases, what a fermenting-vat lies simmering and hid! the joyful and the sorrowful are there; men are dying there, men are being born; men are praying,--on the other side of a brick partition, men are cursing; and around them all is the vast, void night. the proud grandee still lingers in his perfumed saloons, or reposes within damask curtains; wretchedness cowers into buckle-beds, or shivers hunger-stricken into its lair of straw: in obscure cellars, _rouge-et-noir_ languidly emits its voice-of-destiny to haggard hungry villains; while councillors of state sit plotting, and playing their high chess-game, whereof the pawns are men. the lover whispers his mistress that the coach is ready; and she, full of hope and fear, glides down, to fly with him over the borders: the thief, still more silently, sets to his picklocks and crowbars, or lurks in wait till the watchmen first snore in their boxes. gay mansions, with supper-rooms and dancing-rooms, are full of light and music and high-swelling hearts; but, in the condemned cells, the pulse of life beats tremulous and faint, and bloodshot eyes look out through the darkness, which is around and within, for the light of a stern last morning. six men are to be hanged on the morrow: comes no hammering from the _rabenstein_?--their gallows must even now be o' building. upwards of five hundred thousand two-legged animals without feathers lie round us, in horizontal position; their heads all in nightcaps, and full of the foolishest dreams. riot cries aloud, and staggers and swaggers in his rank dens of shame; and the mother, with streaming hair, kneels over her pallid dying infant, whose cracked lips only her tears now moisten.--all these heaped and huddled together, with nothing but a little carpentry and masonry between them;--crammed in, like salted fish in their barrel;--or weltering, shall i say, like an egyptian pitcher of tamed vipers, each struggling to get its _head above_ the others: _such_ work goes on under that smoke-counterpane!--but i, _mein werther_, sit above it all; i am alone with the stars." we looked in his face to see whether, in the utterance of such extraordinary night-thoughts, no feeling might be traced there; but with the light we had, which indeed was only a single tallow-light, and far enough from the window, nothing save that old calmness and fixedness was visible. these were the professor's talking seasons: most commonly he spoke in mere monosyllables, or sat altogether silent and smoked; while the visitor had liberty either to say what he listed, receiving for answer an occasional grunt; or to look round for a space, and then take himself away. it was a strange apartment; full of books and tattered papers, and miscellaneous shreds of all conceivable substances, "united in a common element of dust." books lay on tables, and below tables; here fluttered a sheet of manuscript, there a torn handkerchief, or nightcap hastily thrown aside; ink-bottles alternated with bread-crusts, coffee-pots, tobacco-boxes, periodical literature, and blucher boots. old lieschen (lisekin, 'liza), who was his bed-maker and stove-lighter, his washer and wringer, cook, errand-maid, and general lion's-provider, and for the rest a very orderly creature, had no sovereign authority in this last citadel of teufelsdrockh; only some once in the month she half-forcibly made her way thither, with broom and duster, and (teufelsdrockh hastily saving his manuscripts) effected a partial clearance, a jail-delivery of such lumber as was not literary. these were her _erdbeben_ (earthquakes), which teufelsdrockh dreaded worse than the pestilence; nevertheless, to such length he had been forced to comply. glad would he have been to sit here philosophizing forever, or till the litter, by accumulation, drove him out of doors: but lieschen was his right-arm, and spoon, and necessary of life, and would not be flatly gainsayed. we can still remember the ancient woman; so silent that some thought her dumb; deaf also you would often have supposed her; for teufelsdrockh, and teufelsdrockh only, would she serve or give heed to; and with him she seemed to communicate chiefly by signs; if it were not rather by some secret divination that she guessed all his wants, and supplied them. assiduous old dame! she scoured, and sorted, and swept, in her kitchen, with the least possible violence to the ear; yet all was tight and right there: hot and black came the coffee ever at the due moment; and the speechless lieschen herself looked out on you, from under her clean white coif with its lappets, through her clean withered face and wrinkles, with a look of helpful intelligence, almost of benevolence. few strangers, as above hinted, had admittance hither: the only one we ever saw there, ourselves excepted, was the hofrath heuschrecke, already known, by name and expectation, to the readers of these pages. to us, at that period, herr heuschrecke seemed one of those purse-mouthed, crane-necked, clean-brushed, pacific individuals, perhaps sufficiently distinguished in society by this fact, that, in dry weather or in wet, "they never appear without their umbrella." had we not known with what "little wisdom" the world is governed; and how, in germany as elsewhere, the ninety-and-nine public men can for most part be but mute train-bearers to the hundredth, perhaps but stalking-horses and willing or unwilling dupes,--it might have seemed wonderful how herr heuschrecke should be named a _rath_, or councillor, and counsellor, even in weissnichtwo. what counsel to any man, or to any woman, could this particular hofrath give; in whose loose, zigzag figure; in whose thin visage, as it went jerking to and fro, in minute incessant fluctuation,--you traced rather confusion worse confounded; at most, timidity and physical cold? some indeed said withal, he was "the very spirit of love embodied:" blue earnest eyes, full of sadness and kindness; purse ever open, and so forth; the whole of which, we shall now hope, for many reasons, was not quite groundless. nevertheless friend teufelsdrockh's outline, who indeed handled the burin like few in these cases, was probably the best: _er hat gemuth und geist, hat wenigstens gehabt, doch ohne organ, ohne schicksals-gunst; ist gegenwartig aber halb-zerruttet, halb-erstarrt_, "he has heart and talent, at least has had such, yet without fit mode of utterance, or favor of fortune; and so is now half-cracked, half-congealed."--what the hofrath shall think of this when he sees it, readers may wonder; we, safe in the stronghold of historical fidelity, are careless. the main point, doubtless, for us all, is his love of teufelsdrockh, which indeed was also by far the most decisive feature of heuschrecke himself. we are enabled to assert that he hung on the professor with the fondness of a boswell for his johnson. and perhaps with the like return; for teufelsdrockh treated his gaunt admirer with little outward regard, as some half-rational or altogether irrational friend, and at best loved him out of gratitude and by habit. on the other hand, it was curious to observe with what reverent kindness, and a sort of fatherly protection, our hofrath, being the elder, richer, and as he fondly imagined far more practically influential of the two, looked and tended on his little sage, whom he seemed to consider as a living oracle. let but teufelsdrockh open his mouth, heuschrecke's also unpuckered itself into a free doorway, besides his being all eye and all ear, so that nothing might be lost: and then, at every pause in the harangue, he gurgled out his pursy chuckle of a cough-laugh (for the machinery of laughter took some time to get in motion, and seemed crank and slack), or else his twanging nasal, _bravo! das glaub' ich_; in either case, by way of heartiest approval. in short, if teufelsdrockh was dalai-lama, of which, except perhaps in his self-seclusion, and godlike indifference, there was no symptom, then might heuschrecke pass for his chief talapoin, to whom no dough-pill he could knead and publish was other than medicinal and sacred. in such environment, social, domestic, physical, did teufelsdrockh, at the time of our acquaintance, and most likely does he still, live and meditate. here, perched up in his high wahngasse watch-tower, and often, in solitude, outwatching the bear, it was that the indomitable inquirer fought all his battles with dulness and darkness; here, in all probability, that he wrote this surprising volume on _clothes_. additional particulars: of his age, which was of that standing middle sort you could only guess at; of his wide surtout; the color of his trousers, fashion of his broad-brimmed steeple-hat, and so forth, we might report, but do not. the wisest truly is, in these times, the greatest; so that an enlightened curiosity leaving kings and such like to rest very much on their own basis, turns more and more to the philosophic class: nevertheless, what reader expects that, with all our writing and reporting, teufelsdrockh could be brought home to him, till once the documents arrive? his life, fortunes, and bodily presence, are as yet hidden from us, or matter only of faint conjecture. but, on the other hand, does not his soul lie enclosed in this remarkable volume, much more truly than pedro garcia's did in the buried bag of doubloons? to the soul of diogenes teufelsdrockh, to his opinions, namely, on the "origin and influence of clothes," we for the present gladly return. chapter iv. characteristics. it were a piece of vain flattery to pretend that this work on clothes entirely contents us; that it is not, like all works of genius, like the very sun, which, though the highest published creation, or work of genius, has nevertheless black spots and troubled nebulosities amid its effulgence,--a mixture of insight, inspiration, with dulness, double-vision, and even utter blindness. without committing ourselves to those enthusiastic praises and prophesyings of the _weissnichtwo'sche anzeiger_, we admitted that the book had in a high degree excited us to self-activity, which is the best effect of any book; that it had even operated changes in our way of thought; nay, that it promised to prove, as it were, the opening of a new mine-shaft, wherein the whole world of speculation might henceforth dig to unknown depths. more specially may it now be declared that professor teufelsdrockh's acquirements, patience of research, philosophic and even poetic vigor, are here made indisputably manifest; and unhappily no less his prolixity and tortuosity and manifold ineptitude; that, on the whole, as in opening new mine-shafts is not unreasonable, there is much rubbish in his book, though likewise specimens of almost invaluable ore. a paramount popularity in england we cannot promise him. apart from the choice of such a topic as clothes, too often the manner of treating it betokens in the author a rusticity and academic seclusion, unblamable, indeed inevitable in a german, but fatal to his success with our public. of good society teufelsdrockh appears to have seen little, or has mostly forgotten what he saw. he speaks out with a strange plainness; calls many things by their mere dictionary names. to him the upholsterer is no pontiff, neither is any drawing-room a temple, were it never so begilt and overhung: "a whole immensity of brussels carpets, and pier-glasses, and ormolu," as he himself expresses it, "cannot hide from me that such drawing-room is simply a section of infinite space, where so many god-created souls do for the time meet together." to teufelsdrockh the highest duchess is respectable, is venerable; but nowise for her pearl bracelets and malines laces: in his eyes, the star of a lord is little less and little more than the broad button of birmingham spelter in a clown's smock; "each is an implement," he says, "in its kind; a tag for _hooking-together_; and, for the rest, was dug from the earth, and hammered on a stithy before smith's fingers." thus does the professor look in men's faces with a strange impartiality, a strange scientific freedom; like a man unversed in the higher circles, like a man dropped thither from the moon. rightly considered, it is in this peculiarity, running through his whole system of thought, that all these shortcomings, over-shootings, and multiform perversities, take rise: if indeed they have not a second source, also natural enough, in his transcendental philosophies, and humor of looking at all matter and material things as spirit; whereby truly his case were but the more hopeless, the more lamentable. to the thinkers of this nation, however, of which class it is firmly believed there are individuals yet extant, we can safely recommend the work: nay, who knows but among the fashionable ranks too, if it be true, as teufelsdrockh maintains, that "within the most starched cravat there passes a windpipe and weasand, and under the thickliest embroidered waistcoat beats a heart,"--the force of that rapt earnestness may be felt, and here and there an arrow of the soul pierce through? in our wild seer, shaggy, unkempt, like a baptist living on locusts and wild honey, there is an untutored energy, a silent, as it were unconscious, strength, which, except in the higher walks of literature, must be rare. many a deep glance, and often with unspeakable precision, has he cast into mysterious nature, and the still more mysterious life of man. wonderful it is with what cutting words, now and then, he severs asunder the confusion; sheers down, were it furlongs deep; into the true centre of the matter; and there not only hits the nail on the head, but with crushing force smites it home, and buries it.--on the other hand, let us be free to admit, he is the most unequal writer breathing. often after some such feat, he will play truant for long pages, and go dawdling and dreaming, and mumbling and maundering the merest commonplaces, as if he were asleep with eyes open, which indeed he is. of his boundless learning, and how all reading and literature in most known tongues, from _sanchoniathon_ to _dr. lingard_, from your oriental _shasters_, and _talmuds_, and _korans_, with cassini's _siamese fables_, and laplace's _mecanique celeste_, down to _robinson crusoe_ and the _belfast town and country almanack_, are familiar to him,--we shall say nothing: for unexampled as it is with us, to the germans such universality of study passes without wonder, as a thing commendable, indeed, but natural, indispensable, and there of course. a man that devotes his life to learning, shall he not be learned? in respect of style our author manifests the same genial capability, marred too often by the same rudeness, inequality, and apparent want of intercourse with the higher classes. occasionally, as above hinted, we find consummate vigor, a true inspiration; his burning thoughts step forth in fit burning words, like so many full-formed minervas, issuing amid flame and splendor from jove's head; a rich, idiomatic diction, picturesque allusions, fiery poetic emphasis, or quaint tricksy turns; all the graces and terrors of a wild imagination, wedded to the clearest intellect, alternate in beautiful vicissitude. were it not that sheer sleeping and soporific passages; circumlocutions, repetitions, touches even of pure doting jargon, so often intervene! on the whole, professor teufelsdrockh, is not a cultivated writer. of his sentences perhaps not more than nine-tenths stand straight on their legs; the remainder are in quite angular attitudes, buttressed up by props (of parentheses and dashes), and ever with this or the other tagrag hanging from them; a few even sprawl out helplessly on all sides, quite broken-backed and dismembered. nevertheless, in almost his very worst moods, there lies in him a singular attraction. a wild tone pervades the whole utterance of the man, like its keynote and regulator; now screwing itself aloft as into the song of spirits, or else the shrill mockery of fiends; now sinking in cadences, not without melodious heartiness, though sometimes abrupt enough, into the common pitch, when we hear it only as a monotonous hum; of which hum the true character is extremely difficult to fix. up to this hour we have never fully satisfied ourselves whether it is a tone and hum of real humor, which we reckon among the very highest qualities of genius, or some echo of mere insanity and inanity, which doubtless ranks below the very lowest. under a like difficulty, in spite even of our personal intercourse, do we still lie with regard to the professor's moral feeling. gleams of an ethereal love burst forth from him, soft wailings of infinite pity; he could clasp the whole universe into his bosom, and keep it warm; it seems as if under that rude exterior there dwelt a very seraph. then again he is so sly and still, so imperturbably saturnine; shows such indifference, malign coolness towards all that men strive after; and ever with some half-visible wrinkle of a bitter sardonic humor, if indeed it be not mere stolid callousness,--that you look on him almost with a shudder, as on some incarnate mephistopheles, to whom this great terrestrial and celestial round, after all, were but some huge foolish whirligig, where kings and beggars, and angels and demons, and stars and street-sweepings, were chaotically whirled, in which only children could take interest. his look, as we mentioned, is probably the gravest ever seen: yet it is not of that cast-iron gravity frequent enough among our own chancery suitors; but rather the gravity as of some silent, high-encircled mountain-pool, perhaps the crater of an extinct volcano; into whose black deeps you fear to gaze: those eyes, those lights that sparkle in it, may indeed be reflexes of the heavenly stars, but perhaps also glances from the region of nether fire. certainly a most involved, self-secluded, altogether enigmatic nature, this of teufelsdrockh! here, however, we gladly recall to mind that once we saw him _laugh_; once only, perhaps it was the first and last time in his life; but then such a peal of laughter, enough to have awakened the seven sleepers! it was of jean paul's doing: some single billow in that vast world-mahlstrom of humor, with its heaven-kissing coruscations, which is now, alas, all congealed in the frost of death! the large-bodied poet and the small, both large enough in soul, sat talking miscellaneously together, the present editor being privileged to listen; and now paul, in his serious way, was giving one of those inimitable "extra-harangues;" and, as it chanced, on the proposal for a _cast-metal king_: gradually a light kindled in our professor's eyes and face, a beaming, mantling, loveliest light; through those murky features, a radiant ever-young apollo looked; and he burst forth like the neighing of all tattersall's,--tears streaming down his cheeks, pipe held aloft, foot clutched into the air,--loud, long-continuing, uncontrollable; a laugh not of the face and diaphragm only, but of the whole man from head to heel. the present editor, who laughed indeed, yet with measure, began to fear all was not right: however, teufelsdrockh, composed himself, and sank into his old stillness; on his inscrutable countenance there was, if anything, a slight look of shame; and richter himself could not rouse him again. readers who have any tincture of psychology know how much is to be inferred from this; and that no man who has once heartily and wholly laughed can be altogether irreclaimably bad. how much lies in laughter: the cipher-key, wherewith we decipher the whole man! some men wear an everlasting barren simper; in the smile of others lies a cold glitter as of ice: the fewest are able to laugh, what can be called laughing, but only sniff and titter and snigger from the throat outwards; or at best, produce some whiffling husky cachinnation, as if they were laughing through wool: of none such comes good. the man who cannot laugh is not only fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils; but his whole life is already a treason and a stratagem. considered as an author, herr teufelsdrockh has one scarcely pardonable fault, doubtless his worst: an almost total want of arrangement. in this remarkable volume, it is true, his adherence to the mere course of time produces, through the narrative portions, a certain show of outward method; but of true logical method and sequence there is too little. apart from its multifarious sections and subdivisions, the work naturally falls into two parts; a historical-descriptive, and a philosophical-speculative: but falls, unhappily, by no firm line of demarcation; in that labyrinthic combination, each part overlaps, and indents, and indeed runs quite through the other. many sections are of a debatable rubric, or even quite nondescript and unnamable; whereby the book not only loses in accessibility, but too often distresses us like some mad banquet, wherein all courses had been confounded, and fish and flesh, soup and solid, oyster-sauce, lettuces, rhine-wine and french mustard, were hurled into one huge tureen or trough, and the hungry public invited to help itself. to bring what order we can out of this chaos shall be part of our endeavor. chapter v. the world in clothes. "as montesquieu wrote a _spirit of laws_," observes our professor, "so could i write a _spirit of clothes_; thus, with an _esprit des lois_, properly an _esprit de coutumes_, we should have an _esprit de costumes_. for neither in tailoring nor in legislating does man proceed by mere accident, but the hand is ever guided on by mysterious operations of the mind. in all his modes, and habilatory endeavors, an architectural idea will be found lurking; his body and the cloth are the site and materials whereon and whereby his beautified edifice, of a person, is to be built. whether he flow gracefully out in folded mantles, based on light sandals; tower up in high headgear, from amid peaks, spangles and bell-girdles; swell out in starched ruffs, buckram stuffings, and monstrous tuberosities; or girth himself into separate sections, and front the world an agglomeration of four limbs,--will depend on the nature of such architectural idea: whether grecian, gothic, later gothic, or altogether modern, and parisian or anglo-dandiacal. again, what meaning lies in color! from the soberest drab to the high-flaming scarlet, spiritual idiosyncrasies unfold themselves in choice of color: if the cut betoken intellect and talent, so does the color betoken temper and heart. in all which, among nations as among individuals, there is an incessant, indubitable, though infinitely complex working of cause and effect: every snip of the scissors has been regulated and prescribed by ever-active influences, which doubtless to intelligences of a superior order are neither invisible nor illegible. "for such superior intelligences a cause-and-effect philosophy of clothes, as of laws, were probably a comfortable winter-evening entertainment: nevertheless, for inferior intelligences, like men, such philosophies have always seemed to me uninstructive enough. nay, what is your montesquieu himself but a clever infant spelling letters from a hieroglyphical prophetic book, the lexicon of which lies in eternity, in heaven?--let any cause-and-effect philosopher explain, not why i wear such and such a garment, obey such and such a law; but even why i am _here_, to wear and obey anything!--much, therefore, if not the whole, of that same _spirit of clothes_ i shall suppress, as hypothetical, ineffectual, and even impertinent: naked facts, and deductions drawn therefrom in quite another than that omniscient style, are my humbler and proper province." acting on which prudent restriction, teufelsdrockh, has nevertheless contrived to take in a well-nigh boundless extent of field; at least, the boundaries too often lie quite beyond our horizon. selection being indispensable, we shall here glance over his first part only in the most cursory manner. this first part is, no doubt, distinguished by omnivorous learning, and utmost patience and fairness: at the same time, in its results and delineations, it is much more likely to interest the compilers of some _library_ of general, entertaining, useful, or even useless knowledge than the miscellaneous readers of these pages. was it this part of the book which heuschrecke had in view, when he recommended us to that joint-stock vehicle of publication, "at present the glory of british literature"? if so, the library editors are welcome to dig in it for their own behoof. to the first chapter, which turns on paradise and fig-leaves, and leads us into interminable disquisitions of a mythological, metaphorical, cabalistico-sartorial and quite antediluvian cast, we shall content ourselves with giving an unconcerned approval. still less have we to do with "lilis, adam's first wife, whom, according to the talmudists, he had before eve, and who bore him, in that wedlock, the whole progeny of aerial, aquatic, and terrestrial devils,"--very needlessly, we think. on this portion of the work, with its profound glances into the _adam-kadmon_, or primeval element, here strangely brought into relation with the _nifl_ and _muspel_ (darkness and light) of the antique north, it may be enough to say, that its correctness of deduction, and depth of talmudic and rabbinical lore have filled perhaps not the worst hebraist in britain with something like astonishment. but, quitting this twilight region, teufelsdrockh hastens from the tower of babel, to follow the dispersion of mankind over the whole habitable and habilable globe. walking by the light of oriental, pelasgic, scandinavian, egyptian, otaheitean, ancient and modern researches of every conceivable kind, he strives to give us in compressed shape (as the nurnbergers give an _orbis pictus_) an _orbis vestitus_; or view of the costumes of all mankind, in all countries, in all times. it is here that to the antiquarian, to the historian, we can triumphantly say: fall to! here is learning: an irregular treasury, if you will; but inexhaustible as the hoard of king nibelung, which twelve wagons in twelve days, at the rate of three journeys a day, could not carry off. sheepskin cloaks and wampum belts; phylacteries, stoles, albs; chlamydes, togas, chinese silks, afghaun shawls, trunk-hose, leather breeches, celtic hilibegs (though breeches, as the name _gallia braccata_ indicates, are the more ancient), hussar cloaks, vandyke tippets, ruffs, fardingales, are brought vividly before us,--even the kilmarnock nightcap is not forgotten. for most part, too, we must admit that the learning, heterogeneous as it is, and tumbled down quite pell-mell, is true concentrated and purified learning, the drossy parts smelted out and thrown aside. philosophical reflections intervene, and sometimes touching pictures of human life. of this sort the following has surprised us. the first purpose of clothes, as our professor imagines, was not warmth or decency, but ornament. "miserable indeed," says he, "was the condition of the aboriginal savage, glaring fiercely from under his fleece of hair, which with the beard reached down to his loins, and hung round him like a matted cloak; the rest of his body sheeted in its thick natural fell. he loitered in the sunny glades of the forest, living on wild-fruits; or, as the ancient caledonian, squatted himself in morasses, lurking for his bestial or human prey; without implements, without arms, save the ball of heavy flint, to which, that his sole possession and defence might not be lost, he had attached a long cord of plaited thongs; thereby recovering as well as hurling it with deadly unerring skill. nevertheless, the pains of hunger and revenge once satisfied, his next care was not comfort but decoration (_putz_). warmth he found in the toils of the chase; or amid dried leaves, in his hollow tree, in his bark shed, or natural grotto: but for decoration he must have clothes. nay, among wild people, we find tattooing and painting even prior to clothes. the first spiritual want of a barbarous man is decoration, as indeed we still see among the barbarous classes in civilized countries. "reader, the heaven-inspired melodious singer; loftiest serene highness; nay thy own amber-locked, snow-and-rosebloom maiden, worthy to glide sylph-like almost on air, whom thou lovest, worshippest as a divine presence, which, indeed, symbolically taken, she is,--has descended, like thyself, from that same hair-mantled, flint-hurling aboriginal anthropophagus! out of the eater cometh forth meat; out of the strong cometh forth sweetness. what changes are wrought, not by time, yet in time! for not mankind only, but all that mankind does or beholds, is in continual growth, re-genesis and self-perfecting vitality. cast forth thy act, thy word, into the ever-living, ever-working universe: it is a seed-grain that cannot die; unnoticed to-day (says one), it will be found flourishing as a banyan-grove (perhaps, alas, as a hemlock-forest!) after a thousand years. "he who first shortened the labor of copyists by device of _movable types_ was disbanding hired armies, and cashiering most kings and senates, and creating a whole new democratic world: he had invented the art of printing. the first ground handful of nitre, sulphur, and charcoal drove monk schwartz's pestle through the ceiling: what will the last do? achieve the final undisputed prostration of force under thought, of animal courage under spiritual. a simple invention it was in the old-world grazier,--sick of lugging his slow ox about the country till he got it bartered for corn or oil,--to take a piece of leather, and thereon scratch or stamp the mere figure of an ox (or _pecus_); put it in his pocket, and call it _pecunia_, money. yet hereby did barter grow sale, the leather money is now golden and paper, and all miracles have been out-miracled: for there are rothschilds and english national debts; and whoso has sixpence is sovereign (to the length of sixpence) over all men; commands cooks to feed him, philosophers to teach him, kings to mount guard over him,--to the length of sixpence.--clothes too, which began in foolishest love of ornament, what have they not become! increased security and pleasurable heat soon followed: but what of these? shame, divine shame (_schaam_, modesty), as yet a stranger to the anthropophagous bosom, arose there mysteriously under clothes; a mystic grove-encircled shrine for the holy in man. clothes gave us individuality, distinctions, social polity; clothes have made men of us; they are threatening to make clothes-screens of us. "but, on the whole," continues our eloquent professor, "man is a tool-using animal (_handthierendes thier_). weak in himself, and of small stature, he stands on a basis, at most for the flattest-soled, of some half-square foot, insecurely enough; has to straddle out his legs, lest the very wind supplant him. feeblest of bipeds! three quintals are a crushing load for him; the steer of the meadow tosses him aloft, like a waste rag. nevertheless he can use tools; can devise tools: with these the granite mountain melts into light dust before him; he kneads glowing iron, as if it were soft paste; seas are his smooth highway, winds and fire his unwearying steeds. nowhere do you find him without tools; without tools he is nothing, with tools he is all." here may we not, for a moment, interrupt the stream of oratory with a remark, that this definition of the tool-using animal appears to us, of all that animal-sort, considerably the precisest and best? man is called a laughing animal: but do not the apes also laugh, or attempt to do it; and is the manliest man the greatest and oftenest laugher? teufelsdrockh himself, as we said, laughed only once. still less do we make of that other french definition of the cooking animal; which, indeed, for rigorous scientific purposes, is as good as useless. can a tartar be said to cook, when he only readies his steak by riding on it? again, what cookery does the greenlander use, beyond stowing up his whale-blubber, as a marmot, in the like case, might do? or how would monsieur ude prosper among those orinoco indians who, according to humboldt, lodge in crow-nests, on the branches of trees; and, for half the year, have no victuals but pipe-clay, the whole country being under water? but, on the other hand, show us the human being, of any period or climate, without his tools: those very caledonians, as we saw, had their flint-ball, and thong to it, such as no brute has or can have. "man is a tool-using animal," concludes teufelsdrockh, in his abrupt way; "of which truth clothes are but one example: and surely if we consider the interval between the first wooden dibble fashioned by man, and those liverpool steam-carriages, or the british house of commons, we shall note what progress he has made. he digs up certain black stones from the bosom of the earth, and says to them, _transport me and this luggage at the rate of file-and-thirty miles an hour_; and they do it: he collects, apparently by lot, six hundred and fifty-eight miscellaneous individuals, and says to them, _make this nation toil for us, bleed for us, hunger and, sorrow and sin for us_; and they do it." chapter vi. aprons. one of the most unsatisfactory sections in the whole volume is that on _aprons_. what though stout old gao, the persian blacksmith, "whose apron, now indeed hidden under jewels, because raised in revolt which proved successful, is still the royal standard of that country;" what though john knox's daughter, "who threatened sovereign majesty that she would catch her husband's head in her apron, rather than he should lie and be a bishop;" what though the landgravine elizabeth, with many other apron worthies,--figure here? an idle wire-drawing spirit, sometimes even a tone of levity, approaching to conventional satire, is too clearly discernible. what, for example, are we to make of such sentences as the following? "aprons are defences; against injury to cleanliness, to safety, to modesty, sometimes to roguery. from the thin slip of notched silk (as it were, the emblem and beatified ghost of an apron), which some highest-bred housewife, sitting at nurnberg work-boxes and toy-boxes, has gracefully fastened on; to the thick-tanned hide, girt round him with thongs, wherein the builder builds, and at evening sticks his trowel; or to those jingling sheet-iron aprons, wherein your otherwise half-naked vulcans hammer and smelt in their smelt-furnace,--is there not range enough in the fashion and uses of this vestment? how much has been concealed, how much has been defended in aprons! nay, rightly considered, what is your whole military and police establishment, charged at uncalculated millions, but a huge scarlet-colored, iron-fastened apron, wherein society works (uneasily enough); guarding itself from some soil and stithy-sparks, in this devil's-smithy (_teufels-schmiede_) of a world? but of all aprons the most puzzling to me hitherto has been the episcopal or cassock. wherein consists the usefulness of this apron? the overseer (_episcopus_) of souls, i notice, has tucked in the corner of it, as if his day's work were done: what does he shadow forth thereby?" &c. &c. or again, has it often been the lot of our readers to read such stuff as we shall now quote? "i consider those printed paper aprons, worn by the parisian cooks, as a new vent, though a slight one, for typography; therefore as an encouragement to modern literature, and deserving of approval: nor is it without satisfaction that i hear of a celebrated london firm having in view to introduce the same fashion, with important extensions, in england."--we who are on the spot hear of no such thing; and indeed have reason to be thankful that hitherto there are other vents for our literature, exuberant as it is.--teufelsdrockh continues: "if such supply of printed paper should rise so far as to choke up the highways and public thoroughfares, new means must of necessity be had recourse to. in a world existing by industry, we grudge to employ fire as a destroying element, and not as a creating one. however, heaven is omnipotent, and will find us an outlet. in the mean while, is it not beautiful to see five million quintals of rags picked annually from the laystall; and annually, after being macerated, hot-pressed, printed on, and sold,--returned thither; filling so many hungry mouths by the way? thus is the laystall, especially with its rags or clothes-rubbish, the grand electric battery, and fountain-of-motion, from which and to which the social activities (like vitreous and resinous electricities) circulate, in larger or smaller circles, through the mighty, billowy, storm-tost chaos of life, which they keep alive!"--such passages fill us, who love the man, and partly esteem him, with a very mixed feeling. farther down we meet with this: "the journalists are now the true kings and clergy: henceforth historians, unless they are fools, must write not of bourbon dynasties, and tudors and hapsburgs; but of stamped broad-sheet dynasties, and quite new successive names, according as this or the other able editor, or combination of able editors, gains the world's ear. of the british newspaper press, perhaps the most important of all, and wonderful enough in its secret constitution and procedure, a valuable descriptive history already exists, in that language, under the title of _satan's invisible world displayed_; which, however, by search in all the weissnichtwo libraries, i have not yet succeeded in procuring (_vermochte night aufzutreiben_)." thus does the good homer not only nod, but snore. thus does teufelsdrockh, wandering in regions where he had little business, confound the old authentic presbyterian witchfinder with a new, spurious, imaginary historian of the _brittische journalistik_; and so stumble on perhaps the most egregious blunder in modern literature! chapter vii. miscellaneous-historical. happier is our professor, and more purely scientific and historic, when he reaches the middle ages in europe, and down to the end of the seventeenth century; the true era of extravagance in costume. it is here that the antiquary and student of modes comes upon his richest harvest. fantastic garbs, beggaring all fancy of a teniers or a callot, succeed each other, like monster devouring monster in a dream. the whole too in brief authentic strokes, and touched not seldom with that breath of genius which makes even old raiment live. indeed, so learned, precise, graphical, and every way interesting have we found these chapters, that it may be thrown out as a pertinent question for parties concerned, whether or not a good english translation thereof might henceforth be profitably incorporated with mr. merrick's valuable work _on ancient armor_? take, by way of example, the following sketch; as authority for which paulinus's _zeitkurzende lust_ (ii. ) is, with seeming confidence, referred to: "did we behold the german fashionable dress of the fifteenth century, we might smile; as perhaps those bygone germans, were they to rise again, and see our haberdashery, would cross themselves, and invoke the virgin. but happily no bygone german, or man, rises again; thus the present is not needlessly trammelled with the past; and only grows out of it, like a tree, whose roots are not intertangled with its branches, but lie peaceably underground. nay it is very mournful, yet not useless, to see and know, how the greatest and dearest, in a short while, would find his place quite filled up here, and no room for him; the very napoleon, the very byron, in some seven years, has become obsolete, and were now a foreigner to his europe. thus is the law of progress secured; and in clothes, as in all other external things whatsoever, no fashion will continue. "of the military classes in those old times, whose buff-belts, complicated chains and gorgets, huge churn-boots, and other riding and fighting gear have been bepainted in modern romance, till the whole has acquired somewhat of a sign-post character,--i shall here say nothing: the civil and pacific classes, less touched upon, are wonderful enough for us. "rich men, i find, have _teusinke_ [a perhaps untranslatable article]; also a silver girdle, whereat hang little bells; so that when a man walks, it is with continual jingling. some few, of musical turn, have a whole chime of bells (_glockenspiel_) fastened there; which, especially in sudden whirls, and the other accidents of walking, has a grateful effect. observe too how fond they are of peaks, and gothic-arch intersections. the male world wears peaked caps, an ell long, which hang bobbing over the side (_schief_): their shoes are peaked in front, also to the length of an ell, and laced on the side with tags; even the wooden shoes have their ell-long noses: some also clap bells on the peak. further, according to my authority, the men have breeches without seat (_ohne gesass_): these they fasten peakwise to their shirts; and the long round doublet must overlap them. "rich maidens, again, flit abroad in gowns scolloped out behind and before, so that back and breast are almost bare. wives of quality, on the other hand, have train-gowns four or five ells in length; which trains there are boys to carry. brave cleopatras, sailing in their silk-cloth galley, with a cupid for steersman! consider their welts, a handbreadth thick, which waver round them by way of hem; the long flood of silver buttons, or rather silver shells, from throat to shoe, wherewith these same welt-gowns are buttoned. the maidens have bound silver snoods about their hair, with gold spangles, and pendent flames (_flammen_), that is, sparkling hair-drops: but of their mother's head-gear who shall speak? neither in love of grace is comfort forgotten. in winter weather you behold the whole fair creation (that can afford it) in long mantles, with skirts wide below, and, for hem, not one but two sufficient hand-broad welts; all ending atop in a thick well-starched ruff, some twenty inches broad: these are their ruff-mantles (_kragenmantel_). "as yet among the womankind hoop-petticoats are not; but the men have doublets of fustian, under which lie multiple ruffs of cloth, pasted together with batter (_mit teig zusammengekleistert_), which create protuberance enough. thus do the two sexes vie with each other in the art of decoration; and as usual the stronger carries it." our professor, whether he have humor himself or not, manifests a certain feeling of the ludicrous, a sly observance of it which, could emotion of any kind be confidently predicated of so still a man, we might call a real love. none of those bell-girdles, bushel-breeches, counted shoes, or other the like phenomena, of which the history of dress offers so many, escape him: more especially the mischances, or striking adventures, incident to the wearers of such, are noticed with due fidelity. sir walter raleigh's fine mantle, which he spread in the mud under queen elizabeth's feet, appears to provoke little enthusiasm in him; he merely asks, whether at that period the maiden queen "was red-painted on the nose, and white-painted on the cheeks, as her tire-women, when from spleen and wrinkles she would no longer look in any glass, were wont to serve her"? we can answer that sir walter knew well what he was doing, and had the maiden queen been stuffed parchment dyed in verdigris, would have done the same. thus too, treating of those enormous habiliments, that were not only slashed and gallooned, but artificially swollen out on the broader parts of the body, by introduction of bran,--our professor fails not to comment on that luckless courtier, who having seated himself on a chair with some projecting nail on it, and therefrom rising, to pay his _devoir_ on the entrance of majesty, instantaneously emitted several pecks of dry wheat-dust: and stood there diminished to a spindle, his galloons and slashes dangling sorrowful and flabby round him. whereupon the professor publishes this reflection:-- "by what strange chances do we live in history? erostratus by a torch; milo by a bullock; henry darnley, an unfledged booby and bustard, by his limbs; most kings and queens by being born under such and such a bed-tester; boileau despreaux (according to helvetius) by the peck of a turkey; and this ill-starred individual by a rent in his breeches,--for no memoirist of kaiser otto's court omits him. vain was the prayer of themistocles for a talent of forgetting: my friends, yield cheerfully to destiny, and read since it is written."--has teufelsdrockh, to be put in mind that, nearly related to the impossible talent of forgetting, stands that talent of silence, which even travelling englishmen manifest? "the simplest costume," observes our professor, "which i anywhere find alluded to in history, is that used as regimental, by bolivar's cavalry, in the late colombian wars. a square blanket, twelve feet in diagonal, is provided (some were wont to cut off the corners, and make it circular): in the centre a slit is effected eighteen inches long; through this the mother-naked trooper introduces his head and neck; and so rides shielded from all weather, and in battle from many strokes (for he rolls it about his left arm); and not only dressed, but harnessed and draperied." with which picture of a state of nature, affecting by its singularity, and old-roman contempt of the superfluous, we shall quit this part of our subject. chapter viii. the world out of clothes. if in the descriptive-historical portion of this volume, teufelsdrockh, discussing merely the _werden_ (origin and successive improvement) of clothes, has astonished many a reader, much more will he in the speculative-philosophical portion, which treats of their _wirken_, or influences. it is here that the present editor first feels the pressure of his task; for here properly the higher and new philosophy of clothes commences: all untried, almost inconceivable region, or chaos; in venturing upon which, how difficult, yet how unspeakably important is it to know what course, of survey and conquest, is the true one; where the footing is firm substance and will bear us, where it is hollow, or mere cloud, and may engulf us! teufelsdrockh undertakes no less than to expound the moral, political, even religious influences of clothes; he undertakes to make manifest, in its thousand-fold bearings, this grand proposition, that man's earthly interests "are all hooked and buttoned together, and held up, by clothes." he says in so many words, "society is founded upon cloth;" and again, "society sails through the infinitude on cloth, as on a faust's mantle, or rather like the sheet of clean and unclean beasts in the apostle's dream; and without such sheet or mantle, would sink to endless depths, or mount to inane limbos, and in either case be no more." by what chains, or indeed infinitely complected tissues, of meditation this grand theorem is here unfolded, and innumerable practical corollaries are drawn therefrom, it were perhaps a mad ambition to attempt exhibiting. our professor's method is not, in any case, that of common school logic, where the truths all stand in a row, each holding by the skirts of the other; but at best that of practical reason' proceeding by large intuition over whole systematic groups and kingdoms; whereby, we might say, a noble complexity, almost like that of nature, reigns in his philosophy, or spiritual picture of nature: a mighty maze, yet, as faith whispers, not without a plan. nay we complained above, that a certain ignoble complexity, what we must call mere confusion, was also discernible. often, also, we have to exclaim: would to heaven those same biographical documents were come! for it seems as if the demonstration lay much in the author's individuality; as if it were not argument that had taught him, but experience. at present it is only in local glimpses, and by significant fragments, picked often at wide-enough intervals from the original volume, and carefully collated, that we can hope to impart some outline or foreshadow of this doctrine. readers of any intelligence are once more invited to favor us with their most concentrated attention: let these, after intense consideration, and not till then, pronounce, whether on the utmost verge of our actual horizon there is not a looming as of land; a promise of new fortunate islands, perhaps whole undiscovered americas, for such as have canvas to sail thither?--as exordium to the whole, stand here the following long citation:-- "with men of a speculative turn," writes teufelsdrockh, "there come seasons, meditative, sweet, yet awful hours, when in wonder and fear you ask yourself that unanswerable question: who am i; the thing that can say 'i' (_das wesen das sich ich nennt_)? the world, with its loud trafficking, retires into the distance; and, through the paper-hangings, and stonewalls, and thick-plied tissues of commerce and polity, and all the living and lifeless integuments (of society and a body), wherewith your existence sits surrounded,--the sight reaches forth into the void deep, and you are alone with the universe, and silently commune with it, as one mysterious presence with another. "who am i; what is this me? a voice, a motion, an appearance;--some embodied, visualized idea in the eternal mind? _cogito, ergo sum_. alas, poor cogitator, this takes us but a little way. sure enough, i am; and lately was not: but whence? how? whereto? the answer lies around, written in all colors and motions, uttered in all tones of jubilee and wail, in thousand-figured, thousand-voiced, harmonious nature: but where is the cunning eye and ear to whom that god-written apocalypse will yield articulate meaning? we sit as in a boundless phantasmagoria and dream-grotto; boundless, for the faintest star, the remotest century, lies not even nearer the verge thereof: sounds and many-colored visions flit round our sense; but him, the unslumbering, whose work both dream and dreamer are, we see not; except in rare half-waking moments, suspect not. creation, says one, lies before us, like a glorious rainbow; but the sun that made it lies behind us, hidden from us. then, in that strange dream, how we clutch at shadows as if they were substances; and sleep deepest while fancying ourselves most awake! which of your philosophical systems is other than a dream-theorem; a net quotient, confidently given out, where divisor and dividend are both unknown? what are all your national wars, with their moscow retreats, and sanguinary hate-filled revolutions, but the somnambulism of uneasy sleepers? this dreaming, this somnambulism is what we on earth call life; wherein the most indeed undoubtingly wander, as if they knew right hand from left; yet they only are wise who know that they know nothing. "pity that all metaphysics had hitherto proved so inexpressibly unproductive! the secret of man's being is still like the sphinx's secret: a riddle that he cannot rede; and for ignorance of which he suffers death, the worst death, a spiritual. what are your axioms, and categories, and systems, and aphorisms? words, words. high air-castles are cunningly built of words, the words well bedded also in good logic-mortar; wherein, however, no knowledge will come to lodge. _the whole is greater than the part_: how exceedingly true! _nature abhors a vacuum_: how exceedingly false and calumnious! again, _nothing can act but where it is_: with all my heart; only, where is it? be not the slave of words: is not the distant, the dead, while i love it, and long for it, and mourn for it, here, in the genuine sense, as truly as the floor i stand on? but that same where, with its brother when, are from the first the master-colors of our dream-grotto; say rather, the canvas (the warp and woof thereof) whereon all our dreams and life-visions are painted. nevertheless, has not a deeper meditation taught certain of every climate and age, that the where and when, so mysteriously inseparable from all our thoughts, are but superficial terrestrial adhesions to thought; that the seer may discern them where they mount up out of the celestial everywhere and forever: have not all nations conceived their god as omnipresent and eternal; as existing in a universal here, an everlasting now? think well, thou too wilt find that space is but a mode of our human sense, so likewise time; there _is_ no space and no time: we are--we know not what;--light-sparkles floating in the ether of deity! "so that this so solid-seeming world, after all, were but an air-image, our me the only reality: and nature, with its thousand-fold production and destruction, but the reflex of our own inward force, the 'phantasy of our dream;' or what the earth-spirit in _faust_ names it, _the living visible garment of god_:-- "'in being's floods, in action's storm, i walk and work, above, beneath, work and weave in endless motion! birth and death, an infinite ocean; a seizing and giving the fire of living: 'tis thus at the roaring loom of time i ply, and weave for god the garment thou seest him by.' of twenty millions that have read and spouted this thunder-speech of the _erdgeist_, are there yet twenty units of us that have learned the meaning thereof? "it was in some such mood, when wearied and fordone with these high speculations, that i first came upon the question of clothes. strange enough, it strikes me, is this same fact of there being tailors and tailored. the horse i ride has his own whole fell: strip him of the girths and flaps and extraneous tags i have fastened round him, and the noble creature is his own sempster and weaver and spinner; nay his own boot-maker, jeweller, and man-milliner; he bounds free through the valleys, with a perennial rain-proof court-suit on his body; wherein warmth and easiness of fit have reached perfection; nay, the graces also have been considered, and frills and fringes, with gay variety of color, featly appended, and ever in the right place, are not wanting. while i--good heaven!--have thatched myself over with the dead fleeces of sheep, the bark of vegetables, the entrails of worms, the hides of oxen or seals, the felt of furred beasts; and walk abroad a moving rag-screen, overheaped with shreds and tatters raked from the charnel-house of nature, where they would have rotted, to rot on me more slowly! day after day, i must thatch myself anew; day after day, this despicable thatch must lose some film of its thickness; some film of it, frayed away by tear and wear, must be brushed off into the ashpit, into the laystall; till by degrees the whole has been brushed thither, and i, the dust-making, patent rat-grinder, get new material to grind down. o subter-brutish! vile! most vile! for have not i too a compact all-enclosing skin, whiter or dingier? am i a botched mass of tailors' and cobblers' shreds, then; or a tightly articulated, homogeneous little figure, automatic, nay alive? "strange enough how creatures of the human-kind shut their eyes to plainest facts; and by the mere inertia of oblivion and stupidity, live at ease in the midst of wonders and terrors. but indeed man is, and was always, a blockhead and dullard; much readier to feel and digest, than to think and consider. prejudice, which he pretends to hate, is his absolute lawgiver; mere use-and-wont everywhere leads him by the nose; thus let but a rising of the sun, let but a creation of the world happen _twice_, and it ceases to be marvellous, to be noteworthy, or noticeable. perhaps not once in a lifetime does it occur to your ordinary biped, of any country or generation, be he gold-mantled prince or russet-jerkined peasant, that his vestments and his self are not one and indivisible; that _he_ is naked, without vestments, till he buy or steal such, and by forethought sew and button them. "for my own part, these considerations, of our clothes-thatch, and how, reaching inwards even to our heart of hearts, it tailorizes and demoralizes us, fill me with a certain horror at myself and mankind; almost as one feels at those dutch cows, which, during the wet season, you see grazing deliberately with jackets and petticoats (of striped sacking), in the meadows of gouda. nevertheless there is something great in the moment when a man first strips himself of adventitious wrappages; and sees indeed that he is naked, and, as swift has it, 'a forked straddling animal with bandy legs;' yet also a spirit, and unutterable mystery of mysteries." chapter ix. adamitism. let no courteous reader take offence at the opinions broached in the conclusion of the last chapter. the editor himself, on first glancing over that singular passage, was inclined to exclaim: what, have we got not only a sansculottist, but an enemy to clothes in the abstract? a new adamite, in this century, which flatters itself that it is the nineteenth, and destructive both to superstition and enthusiasm? consider, thou foolish teufelsdrockh, what benefits unspeakable all ages and sexes derive from clothes. for example, when thou thyself, a watery, pulpy, slobbery freshman and new-comer in this planet, sattest muling and puking in thy nurse's arms; sucking thy coral, and looking forth into the world in the blankest manner, what hadst thou been without thy blankets, and bibs, and other nameless hulls? a terror to thyself and mankind! or hast thou forgotten the day when thou first receivedst breeches, and thy long clothes became short? the village where thou livedst was all apprised of the fact; and neighbor after neighbor kissed thy pudding-cheek, and gave thee, as handsel, silver or copper coins, on that the first gala-day of thy existence. again, wert not thou, at one period of life, a buck, or blood, or macaroni, or incroyable, or dandy, or by whatever name, according to year and place, such phenomenon is distinguished? in that one word lie included mysterious volumes. nay, now when the reign of folly is over, or altered, and thy clothes are not for triumph but for defence, hast thou always worn them perforce, and as a consequence of man's fall; never rejoiced in them as in a warm movable house, a body round thy body, wherein that strange thee of thine sat snug, defying all variations of climate? girt with thick double-milled kerseys; half buried under shawls and broadbrims, and overalls and mudboots, thy very fingers cased in doeskin and mittens, thou hast bestrode that "horse i ride;" and, though it were in wild winter, dashed through the world, glorying in it as if thou wert its lord. in vain did the sleet beat round thy temples; it lighted only on thy impenetrable, felted or woven, case of wool. in vain did the winds howl,--forests sounding and creaking, deep calling unto deep,--and the storms heap themselves together into one huge arctic whirlpool: thou flewest through the middle thereof, striking fire from the highway; wild music hummed in thy ears, thou too wert as a "sailor of the air;" the wreck of matter and the crash of worlds was thy element and propitiously wafting tide. without clothes, without bit or saddle, what hadst thou been; what had thy fleet quadruped been?--nature is good, but she is not the best: here truly was the victory of art over nature. a thunderbolt indeed might have pierced thee; all short of this thou couldst defy. or, cries the courteous reader, has your teufelsdrockh forgotten what he said lately about "aboriginal savages," and their "condition miserable indeed"? would he have all this unsaid; and us betake ourselves again to the "matted cloak," and go sheeted in a "thick natural fell"? nowise, courteous reader! the professor knows full well what he is saying; and both thou and we, in our haste, do him wrong. if clothes, in these times, "so tailorize and demoralize us," have they no redeeming value; can they not be altered to serve better; must they of necessity be thrown to the dogs? the truth is, teufelsdrockh, though a sansculottist, is no adamite; and much perhaps as he might wish to go forth before this degenerate age "as a sign," would nowise wish to do it, as those old adamites did, in a state of nakedness. the utility of clothes is altogether apparent to him: nay perhaps he has an insight into their more recondite, and almost mystic qualities, what we might call the omnipotent virtue of clothes, such as was never before vouchsafed to any man. for example:-- "you see two individuals," he writes, "one dressed in fine red, the other in coarse threadbare blue: red says to blue, 'be hanged and anatomized;' blue hears with a shudder, and (o wonder of wonders!) marches sorrowfully to the gallows; is there noosed up, vibrates his hour, and the surgeons dissect him, and fit his bones into a skeleton for medical purposes. how is this; or what make ye of your _nothing can act but where it is_? red has no physical hold of blue, no _clutch_ of him, is nowise in _contact_ with him: neither are those ministering sheriffs and lord-lieutenants and hangmen and tipstaves so related to commanding red, that he can tug them hither and thither; but each stands distinct within his own skin. nevertheless, as it is spoken, so is it done: the articulated word sets all hands in action; and rope and improved-drop perform their work. "thinking reader, the reason seems to me twofold: first, that _man is a spirit_, and bound by invisible bonds to _all men_; secondly, that _he wears clothes_, which are the visible emblems of that fact. has not your red hanging-individual a horsehair wig, squirrel-skins, and a plush-gown; whereby all mortals know that he is a judge?--society, which the more i think of it astonishes me the more, is founded upon cloth. "often in my atrabiliar moods, when i read of pompous ceremonials, frankfort coronations, royal drawing-rooms, levees, couchees; and how the ushers and macers and pursuivants are all in waiting; how duke this is presented by archduke that, and colonel a by general b, and innumerable bishops, admirals, and miscellaneous functionaries, are advancing gallantly to the anointed presence; and i strive, in my remote privacy, to form a clear picture of that solemnity,--on a sudden, as by some enchanter's wand, the--shall i speak it?--the clothes fly off the whole dramatic corps; and dukes, grandees, bishops, generals, anointed presence itself, every mother's son of them, stand straddling there, not a shirt on them; and i know not whether to laugh or weep. this physical or psychical infirmity, in which perhaps i am not singular, i have, after hesitation, thought right to publish, for the solace of those afflicted with the like." would to heaven, say we, thou hadst thought right to keep it secret! who is there now that can read the five columns of presentations in his morning newspaper without a shudder? hypochondriac men, and all men are to a certain extent hypochondriac, should be more gently treated. with what readiness our fancy, in this shattered state of the nerves, follows out the consequences which teufelsdrockh, with a devilish coolness, goes on to draw:-- "what would majesty do, could such an accident befall in reality; should the buttons all simultaneously start, and the solid wool evaporate, in very deed, as here in dream? _ach gott_! how each skulks into the nearest hiding-place; their high state tragedy (_haupt- und staats-action_) becomes a pickleherring-farce to weep at, which is the worst kind of farce; _the tables_ (according to horace), and with them, the whole fabric of government, legislation, property, police, and civilized society, _are dissolved_, in wails and howls." lives the man that can figure a naked duke of windlestraw addressing a naked house of lords? imagination, choked as in mephitic air, recoils on itself, and will not forward with the picture. the woolsack, the ministerial, the opposition benches--_infandum! infandum_! and yet why is the thing impossible? was not every soul, or rather every body, of these guardians of our liberties, naked, or nearly so, last night; "a forked radish with a head fantastically carved"? and why might he not, did our stern fate so order it, walk out to st. stephen's, as well as into bed, in that no-fashion; and there, with other similar radishes, hold a bed of justice? "solace of those afflicted with the like!" unhappy teufelsdrockh, had man ever such a "physical or psychical infirmity" before? and now how many, perhaps, may thy unparalleled confession (which we, even to the sounder british world, and goaded on by critical and biographical duty, grudge to reimpart) incurably infect therewith! art thou the malignest of sansculottists, or only the maddest? "it will remain to be examined," adds the inexorable teufelsdrockh, "in how far the scarecrow, as a clothed person, is not also entitled to benefit of clergy, and english trial by jury: nay perhaps, considering his high function (for is not he too a defender of property, and sovereign armed with the _terrors_ of the law?), to a certain royal immunity and inviolability; which, however, misers and the meaner class of persons are not always voluntarily disposed to grant him." "o my friends, we are [in yorick sterne's words] but as 'turkeys driven, with a stick and red clout, to the market:' or if some drivers, as they do in norfolk, take a dried bladder and put peas in it, the rattle thereof terrifies the boldest!" chapter x. pure reason. it must now be apparent enough that our professor, as above hinted, is a speculative radical, and of the very darkest tinge; acknowledging, for most part, in the solemnities and paraphernalia of civilized life, which we make so much of, nothing but so many cloth-rags, turkey-poles, and "bladders with dried peas." to linger among such speculations, longer than mere science requires, a discerning public can have no wish. for our purposes the simple fact that such a _naked world_ is possible, nay actually exists (under the clothed one), will be sufficient. much, therefore, we omit about "kings wrestling naked on the green with carmen," and the kings being thrown: "dissect them with scalpels," says teufelsdrockh; "the same viscera, tissues, livers, lights, and other life-tackle, are there: examine their spiritual mechanism; the same great need, great greed, and little faculty; nay ten to one but the carman, who understands draught-cattle, the rimming of wheels, something of the laws of unstable and stable equilibrium, with other branches of wagon-science, and has actually put forth his hand and operated on nature, is the more cunningly gifted of the two. whence, then, their so unspeakable difference? from clothes." much also we shall omit about confusion of ranks, and joan and my lady, and how it would be everywhere "hail fellow well met," and chaos were come again: all which to any one that has once fairly pictured out the grand mother-idea, _society in a state of nakedness_, will spontaneously suggest itself. should some sceptical individual still entertain doubts whether in a world without clothes, the smallest politeness, polity, or even police, could exist, let him turn to the original volume, and view there the boundless serbonian bog of sansculottism, stretching sour and pestilential: over which we have lightly flown; where not only whole armies but whole nations might sink! if indeed the following argument, in its brief riveting emphasis, be not of itself incontrovertible and final:-- "are we opossums; have we natural pouches, like the kangaroo? or how, without clothes, could we possess the master-organ, soul's seat, and true pineal gland of the body social: i mean, a purse?" nevertheless it is impossible to hate professor teufelsdrockh; at worst, one knows not whether to hate or to love him. for though, in looking at the fair tapestry of human life, with its royal and even sacred figures, he dwells not on the obverse alone, but here chiefly on the reverse; and indeed turns out the rough seams, tatters, and manifold thrums of that unsightly wrong-side, with an almost diabolic patience and indifference, which must have sunk him in the estimation of most readers,--there is that within which unspeakably distinguishes him from all other past and present sansculottists. the grand unparalleled peculiarity of teufelsdrockh is, that with all this descendentalism, he combines a transcendentalism, no less superlative; whereby if on the one hand he degrade man below most animals, except those jacketed gouda cows, he, on the other, exalts him beyond the visible heavens, almost to an equality with the gods. "to the eye of vulgar logic," says he, "what is man? an omnivorous biped that wears breeches. to the eye of pure reason what is he? a soul, a spirit, and divine apparition. round his mysterious me, there lies, under all those wool-rags, a garment of flesh (or of senses), contextured in the loom of heaven; whereby he is revealed to his like, and dwells with them in union and division; and sees and fashions for himself a universe, with azure starry spaces, and long thousands of years. deep-hidden is he under that strange garment; amid sounds and colors and forms, as it were, swathed in, and inextricably over-shrouded: yet it is sky-woven, and worthy of a god. stands he not thereby in the centre of immensities, in the conflux of eternities? he feels; power has been given him to know, to believe; nay does not the spirit of love, free in its celestial primeval brightness, even here, though but for moments, look through? well said saint chrysostom, with his lips of gold, 'the true shekinah is man:' where else is the god's-presence manifested not to our eyes only, but to our hearts, as in our fellow-man?" in such passages, unhappily too rare, the high platonic mysticism of our author, which is perhaps the fundamental element of his nature, bursts forth, as it were, in full flood: and, through all the vapor and tarnish of what is often so perverse, so mean in his exterior and environment, we seem to look into a whole inward sea of light and love;--though, alas, the grim coppery clouds soon roll together again, and hide it from view. such tendency to mysticism is everywhere traceable in this man; and indeed, to attentive readers, must have been long ago apparent. nothing that he sees but has more than a common meaning, but has two meanings: thus, if in the highest imperial sceptre and charlemagne-mantle, as well as in the poorest ox-goad and gypsy-blanket, he finds prose, decay, contemptibility; there is in each sort poetry also, and a reverend worth. for matter, were it never so despicable, is spirit, the manifestation of spirit: were it never so honorable, can it be more? the thing visible, nay the thing imagined, the thing in any way conceived as visible, what is it but a garment, a clothing of the higher, celestial invisible, "unimaginable formless, dark with excess of bright"? under which point of view the following passage, so strange in purport, so strange in phrase, seems characteristic enough:-- "the beginning of all wisdom is to look fixedly on clothes, or even with armed eyesight, till they become _transparent_. 'the philosopher,' says the wisest of this age, 'must station himself in the middle:' how true! the philosopher is he to whom the highest has descended, and the lowest has mounted up; who is the equal and kindly brother of all. "shall we tremble before clothwebs and cobwebs, whether woven in arkwright looms, or by the silent arachnes that weave unrestingly in our imagination? or, on the other hand, what is there that we cannot love; since all was created by god? "happy he who can look through the clothes of a man (the woollen, and fleshly, and official bank-paper and state-paper clothes) into the man himself; and discern, it may be, in this or the other dread potentate, a more or less incompetent digestive-apparatus; yet also an inscrutable venerable mystery, in the meanest tinker that sees with eyes!" for the rest, as is natural to a man of this kind, he deals much in the feeling of wonder; insists on the necessity and high worth of universal wonder; which he holds to be the only reasonable temper for the denizen of so singular a planet as ours. "wonder," says he, "is the basis of worship: the reign of wonder is perennial, indestructible in man; only at certain stages (as the present), it is, for some short season, a reign _in partibus infidelium_." that progress of science, which is to destroy wonder, and in its stead substitute mensuration and numeration, finds small favor with teufelsdrockh, much as he otherwise venerates these two latter processes. "shall your science," exclaims he, "proceed in the small chink-lighted, or even oil-lighted, underground workshop of logic alone; and man's mind become an arithmetical mill, whereof memory is the hopper, and mere tables of sines and tangents, codification, and treatises of what you call political economy, are the meal? and what is that science, which the scientific head alone, were it screwed off, and (like the doctor's in the arabian tale) set in a basin to keep it alive, could prosecute without shadow of a heart,--but one other of the mechanical and menial handicrafts, for which the scientific head (having a soul in it) is too noble an organ? i mean that thought without reverence is barren, perhaps poisonous; at best, dies like cookery with the day that called it forth; does not live, like sowing, in successive tilths and wider-spreading harvests, bringing food and plenteous increase to all time." in such wise does teufelsdrockh deal hits, harder or softer, according to ability; yet ever, as we would fain persuade ourselves, with charitable intent. above all, that class of "logic-choppers, and treble-pipe scoffers, and professed enemies to wonder; who, in these days, so numerously patrol as night-constables about the mechanics' institute of science, and cackle, like true old-roman geese and goslings round their capitol, on any alarm, or on none; nay who often, as illuminated sceptics, walk abroad into peaceable society, in full daylight, with rattle and lantern, and insist on guiding you and guarding you therewith, though the sun is shining, and the street populous with mere justice-loving men:" that whole class is inexpressibly wearisome to him. hear with what uncommon animation he perorates:-- "the man who cannot wonder, who does not habitually wonder (and worship), were he president of innumerable royal societies, and carried the whole _mecanique celeste_ and _hegel's philosophy_, and the epitome of all laboratories and observatories with their results, in his single head,--is but a pair of spectacles behind which there is no eye. let those who have eyes look through him, then he may be useful. "thou wilt have no mystery and mysticism; wilt walk through thy world by the sunshine of what thou callest truth, or even by the hand-lamp of what i call attorney-logic; and 'explain' all, 'account' for all, or believe nothing of it? nay, thou wilt attempt laughter; whoso recognizes the unfathomable, all-pervading domain of mystery, which is everywhere under our feet and among our hands; to whom the universe is an oracle and temple, as well as a kitchen and cattle-stall,--he shall be a delirious mystic; to him thou, with sniffing charity, wilt protrusively proffer thy hand-lamp, and shriek, as one injured, when he kicks his foot through it?--_armer teufel_! doth not thy cow calve, doth not thy bull gender? thou thyself, wert thou not born, wilt thou not die? 'explain' me all this, or do one of two things: retire into private places with thy foolish cackle; or, what were better, give it up, and weep, not that the reign of wonder is done, and god's world all disembellished and prosaic, but that thou hitherto art a dilettante and sand-blind pedant." chapter xi. prospective. the philosophy of clothes is now to all readers, as we predicted it would do, unfolding itself into new boundless expansions, of a cloud-capt, almost chimerical aspect, yet not without azure loomings in the far distance, and streaks as of an elysian brightness; the highly questionable purport and promise of which it is becoming more and more important for us to ascertain. is that a real elysian brightness, cries many a timid wayfarer, or the reflex of pandemonian lava? is it of a truth leading us into beatific asphodel meadows, or the yellow-burning marl of a hell-on-earth? our professor, like other mystics, whether delirious or inspired, gives an editor enough to do. ever higher and dizzier are the heights he leads us to; more piercing, all-comprehending, all-confounding are his views and glances. for example, this of nature being not an aggregate but a whole:-- "well sang the hebrew psalmist: 'if i take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the universe, god is there.' thou thyself, o cultivated reader, who too probably art no psalmist, but a prosaist, knowing god only by tradition, knowest thou any corner of the world where at least force is not? the drop which thou shakest from thy wet hand, rests not where it falls, but to-morrow thou findest it swept away; already on the wings of the north-wind, it is nearing the tropic of cancer. how came it to evaporate, and not lie motionless? thinkest thou there is aught motionless; without force, and utterly dead? "as i rode through the schwarzwald, i said to myself: that little fire which glows star-like across the dark-growing (_nachtende_) moor, where the sooty smith bends over his anvil, and thou hopest to replace thy lost horse-shoe,--is it a detached, separated speck, cut off from the whole universe; or indissolubly joined to the whole? thou fool, that smithy-fire was (primarily) kindled at the sun; is fed by air that circulates from before noah's deluge, from beyond the dog-star; therein, with iron force, and coal force, and the far stranger force of man, are cunning affinities and battles and victories of force brought about; it is a little ganglion, or nervous centre, in the great vital system of immensity. call it, if thou wilt, an unconscious altar, kindled on the bosom of the all; whose iron sacrifice, whose iron smoke and influence reach quite through the all; whose dingy priest, not by word, yet by brain and sinew, preaches forth the mystery of force; nay preaches forth (exoterically enough) one little textlet from the gospel of freedom, the gospel of man's force, commanding, and one day to be all-commanding. "detached, separated! i say there is no such separation: nothing hitherto was ever stranded, cast aside; but all, were it only a withered leaf, works together with all; is borne forward on the bottomless, shoreless flood of action, and lives through perpetual metamorphoses. the withered leaf is not dead and lost, there are forces in it and around it, though working in inverse order; else how could it rot? despise not the rag from which man makes paper, or the litter from which the earth makes corn. rightly viewed no meanest object is insignificant; all objects are as windows, through which the philosophic eye looks into infinitude itself." again, leaving that wondrous schwarzwald smithy-altar, what vacant, high-sailing air-ships are these, and whither will they sail with us? "all visible things are emblems; what thou seest is not there on its own account; strictly taken, is not there at all: matter exists only spiritually, and to represent some idea, and _body_ it forth. hence clothes, as despicable as we think them, are so unspeakably significant. clothes, from the king's mantle downwards, are emblematic, not of want only, but of a manifold cunning victory over want. on the other hand, all emblematic things are properly clothes, thought-woven or hand-woven: must not the imagination weave garments, visible bodies, wherein the else invisible creations and inspirations of our reason are, like spirits, revealed, and first become all-powerful; the rather if, as we often see, the hand too aid her, and (by wool clothes or otherwise) reveal such even to the outward eye? "men are properly said to be clothed with authority, clothed with beauty, with curses, and the like. nay, if you consider it, what is man himself, and his whole terrestrial life, but an emblem; a clothing or visible garment for that divine me of his, cast hither, like a light-particle, down from heaven? thus is he said also to be clothed with a body. "language is called the garment of thought: however, it should rather be, language is the flesh-garment, the body, of thought. i said that imagination wove this flesh-garment; and does not she? metaphors are her stuff: examine language; what, if you except some few primitive elements (of natural sound), what is it all but metaphors, recognized as such, or no longer recognized; still fluid and florid, or now solid-grown and colorless? if those same primitive elements are the osseous fixtures in the flesh-garment, language,--then are metaphors its muscles and tissues and living integuments. an unmetaphorical style you shall in vain seek for: is not your very _attention_ a _stretching-to_? the difference lies here: some styles are lean, adust, wiry, the muscle itself seems osseous; some are even quite pallid, hunger-bitten and dead-looking; while others again glow in the flush of health and vigorous self-growth, sometimes (as in my own case) not without an apoplectic tendency. moreover, there are sham metaphors, which overhanging that same thought's-body (best naked), and deceptively bedizening, or bolstering it out, may be called its false stuffings, superfluous show-cloaks (_putz-mantel_), and tawdry woollen rags: whereof he that runs and reads may gather whole hampers,--and burn them." than which paragraph on metaphors did the reader ever chance to see a more surprisingly metaphorical? however, that is not our chief grievance; the professor continues:-- "why multiply instances? it is written, the heavens and the earth shall fade away like a vesture; which indeed they are: the time-vesture of the eternal. whatsoever sensibly exists, whatsoever represents spirit to spirit, is properly a clothing, a suit of raiment, put on for a season, and to be laid off. thus in this one pregnant subject of clothes, rightly understood, is included all that men have thought, dreamed, done, and been: the whole external universe and what it holds is but clothing; and the essence of all science lies in the philosophy of clothes." towards these dim infinitely expanded regions, close-bordering on the impalpable inane, it is not without apprehension, and perpetual difficulties, that the editor sees himself journeying and struggling. till lately a cheerful daystar of hope hung before him, in the expected aid of hofrath heuschrecke; which daystar, however, melts now, not into the red of morning, but into a vague, gray half-light, uncertain whether dawn of day or dusk of utter darkness. for the last week, these so-called biographical documents are in his hand. by the kindness of a scottish hamburg merchant, whose name, known to the whole mercantile world, he must not mention; but whose honorable courtesy, now and often before spontaneously manifested to him, a mere literary stranger, he cannot soon forget,--the bulky weissnichtwo packet, with all its custom-house seals, foreign hieroglyphs, and miscellaneous tokens of travel, arrived here in perfect safety, and free of cost. the reader shall now fancy with what hot haste it was broken up, with what breathless expectation glanced over; and, alas, with what unquiet disappointment it has, since then, been often thrown down, and again taken up. hofrath heuschrecke, in a too long-winded letter, full of compliments, weissnichtwo politics, dinners, dining repartees, and other ephemeral trivialities, proceeds to remind us of what we knew well already: that however it may be with metaphysics, and other abstract science originating in the head (_verstand_) alone, no life-philosophy (_lebensphilosophie_), such as this of clothes pretends to be, which originates equally in the character (_gemuth_), and equally speaks thereto, can attain its significance till the character itself is known and seen; "till the author's view of the world (_weltansicht_), and how he actively and passively came by such view, are clear: in short till a biography of him has been philosophico-poetically written, and philosophico-poetically read.... nay," adds he, "were the speculative scientific truth even known, you still, in this inquiring age, ask yourself, whence came it, and why, and how?--and rest not, till, if no better may be, fancy have shaped out an answer; and either in the authentic lineaments of fact, or the forged ones of fiction, a complete picture and genetical history of the man and his spiritual endeavor lies before you. but why," says the hofrath, and indeed say we, "do i dilate on the uses of our teufelsdrockh's biography? the great herr minister von goethe has penetratingly remarked that man is properly the _only_ object that interests man:' thus i too have noted, that in weissnichtwo our whole conversation is little or nothing else but biography or autobiography; ever humano-anecdotical (_menschlich-anekdotisch_). biography is by nature the most universally profitable, universally pleasant of all things: especially biography of distinguished individuals. "by this time, _mein verehrtester_ (my most esteemed)," continues he, with an eloquence which, unless the words be purloined from teufelsdrockh, or some trick of his, as we suspect, is well-nigh unaccountable, "by this time you are fairly plunged (_vertieft_) in that mighty forest of clothes-philosophy; and looking round, as all readers do, with astonishment enough. such portions and passages as you have already mastered, and brought to paper, could not but awaken a strange curiosity touching the mind they issued from; the perhaps unparalleled psychical mechanism, which manufactured such matter, and emitted it to the light of day. had teufelsdrockh also a father and mother; did he, at one time, wear drivel-bibs, and live on spoon-meat? did he ever, in rapture and tears, clasp a friend's bosom to his; looks he also wistfully into the long burial-aisle of the past, where only winds, and their low harsh moan, give inarticulate answer? has he fought duels;--good heaven! how did he comport himself when in love? by what singular stair-steps, in short, and subterranean passages, and sloughs of despair, and steep pisgah hills, has he reached this wonderful prophetic hebron (a true old-clothes jewry) where he now dwells? "to all these natural questions the voice of public history is as yet silent. certain only that he has been, and is, a pilgrim, and traveller from a far country; more or less footsore and travel-soiled; has parted with road-companions; fallen among thieves, been poisoned by bad cookery, blistered with bug-bites; nevertheless, at every stage (for they have let him pass), has had the bill to discharge. but the whole particulars of his route, his weather-observations, the picturesque sketches he took, though all regularly jotted down (in indelible sympathetic-ink by an invisible interior penman), are these nowhere forthcoming? perhaps quite lost: one other leaf of that mighty volume (of human memory) left to fly abroad, unprinted, unpublished, unbound up, as waste paper; and to rot, the sport of rainy winds? "no, _verehrtester herr herausgeber_, in no wise! i here, by the unexampled favor you stand in with our sage, send not a biography only, but an autobiography: at least the materials for such; wherefrom, if i misreckon not, your perspicacity will draw fullest insight: and so the whole philosophy and philosopher of clothes will stand clear to the wondering eyes of england, nay thence, through america, through hindostan, and the antipodal new holland, finally conquer (_einnehmen_) great part of this terrestrial planet!" and now let the sympathizing reader judge of our feeling when, in place of this same autobiography with "fullest insight," we find--six considerable paper-bags, carefully sealed, and marked successively, in gilt china-ink, with the symbols of the six southern zodiacal signs, beginning at libra; in the inside of which sealed bags lie miscellaneous masses of sheets, and oftener shreds and snips, written in professor teufelsdrockh's scarce legible _cursiv-schrift_; and treating of all imaginable things under the zodiac and above it, but of his own personal history only at rare intervals, and then in the most enigmatic manner. whole fascicles there are, wherein the professor, or, as he here, speaking in the third person, calls himself, "the wanderer," is not once named. then again, amidst what seems to be a metaphysico-theological disquisition, "detached thoughts on the steam-engine," or, "the continued possibility of prophecy," we shall meet with some quite private, not unimportant biographical fact. on certain sheets stand dreams, authentic or not, while the circumjacent waking actions are omitted. anecdotes, oftenest without date of place or time, fly loosely on separate slips, like sibylline leaves. interspersed also are long purely autobiographical delineations; yet without connection, without recognizable coherence; so unimportant, so superfluously minute, they almost remind us of "p.p. clerk of this parish." thus does famine of intelligence alternate with waste. selection, order, appears to be unknown to the professor. in all bags the same imbroglio; only perhaps in the bag _capricorn_, and those near it, the confusion a little worse confounded. close by a rather eloquent oration, "on receiving the doctor's-hat," lie wash-bills, marked _bezahlt_ (settled). his travels are indicated by the street-advertisements of the various cities he has visited; of which street-advertisements, in most living tongues, here is perhaps the completest collection extant. so that if the clothes-volume itself was too like a chaos, we have now instead of the solar luminary that should still it, the airy limbo which by intermixture will farther volatilize and discompose it! as we shall perhaps see it our duty ultimately to deposit these six paper-bags in the british museum, farther description, and all vituperation of them, may be spared. biography or autobiography of teufelsdrockh there is, clearly enough, none to be gleaned here: at most some sketchy, shadowy fugitive likeness of him may, by unheard-of efforts, partly of intellect, partly of imagination, on the side of editor and of reader, rise up between them. only as a gaseous-chaotic appendix to that aqueous-chaotic volume can the contents of the six bags hover round us, and portions thereof be incorporated with our delineation of it. daily and nightly does the editor sit (with green spectacles) deciphering these unimaginable documents from their perplexed _cursiv-schrift_; collating them with the almost equally unimaginable volume, which stands in legible print. over such a universal medley of high and low, of hot, cold, moist and dry, is he here struggling (by union of like with like, which is method) to build a firm bridge for british travellers. never perhaps since our first bridge-builders, sin and death, built that stupendous arch from hell-gate to the earth, did any pontifex, or pontiff, undertake such a task as the present editor. for in this arch too, leading, as we humbly presume, far otherwards than that grand primeval one, the materials are to be fished up from the weltering deep, and down from the simmering air, here one mass, there another, and cunningly cemented, while the elements boil beneath: nor is there any supernatural force to do it with; but simply the diligence and feeble thinking faculty of an english editor, endeavoring to evolve printed creation out of a german printed and written chaos, wherein, as he shoots to and fro in it, gathering, clutching, piecing the why to the far-distant wherefore, his whole faculty and self are like to be swallowed up. patiently, under these incessant toils and agitations, does the editor, dismissing all anger, see his otherwise robust health declining; some fraction of his allotted natural sleep nightly leaving him, and little but an inflamed nervous-system to be looked for. what is the use of health, or of life, if not to do some work therewith? and what work nobler than transplanting foreign thought into the barren domestic soil; except indeed planting thought of your own, which the fewest are privileged to do? wild as it looks, this philosophy of clothes, can we ever reach its real meaning, promises to reveal new-coming eras, the first dim rudiments and already-budding germs of a nobler era, in universal history. is not such a prize worth some striving? forward with us, courageous reader; be it towards failure, or towards success! the latter thou sharest with us; the former also is not all our own. book ii. chapter i. genesis. in a psychological point of view, it is perhaps questionable whether from birth and genealogy, how closely scrutinized soever, much insight is to be gained. nevertheless, as in every phenomenon the beginning remains always the most notable moment; so, with regard to any great man, we rest not till, for our scientific profit or not, the whole circumstances of his first appearance in this planet, and what manner of public entry he made, are with utmost completeness rendered manifest. to the genesis of our clothes-philosopher, then, be this first chapter consecrated. unhappily, indeed, he seems to be of quite obscure extraction; uncertain, we might almost say, whether of any: so that this genesis of his can properly be nothing but an exodus (or transit out of invisibility into visibility); whereof the preliminary portion is nowhere forthcoming. "in the village of entepfuhl," thus writes he, in the bag _libra_, on various papers, which we arrange with difficulty, "dwelt andreas futteral and his wife; childless, in still seclusion, and cheerful though now verging towards old age. andreas had been grenadier sergeant, and even regimental schoolmaster under frederick the great; but now, quitting the halbert and ferule for the spade and pruning-hook, cultivated a little orchard, on the produce of which he, cincinnatus-like, lived not without dignity. fruits, the peach, the apple, the grape, with other varieties came in their season; all which andreas knew how to sell: on evenings he smoked largely, or read (as beseemed a regimental schoolmaster), and talked to neighbors that would listen about the victory of rossbach; and how fritz the only (_der einzige_) had once with his own royal lips spoken to him, had been pleased to say, when andreas as camp-sentinel demanded the pass-word, '_schweig hund_ (peace, hound)!' before any of his staff-adjutants could answer. '_das nenn' ich mir einen konig_, there is what i call a king,' would andreas exclaim: 'but the smoke of kunersdorf was still smarting his eyes.' "gretchen, the housewife, won like desdemona by the deeds rather than the looks of her now veteran othello, lived not in altogether military subordination; for, as andreas said, 'the womankind will not drill (_wer kann die weiberchen dressiren_):' nevertheless she at heart loved him both for valor and wisdom; to her a prussian grenadier sergeant and regiment's schoolmaster was little other than a cicero and cid: what you see, yet cannot see over, is as good as infinite. nay, was not andreas in very deed a man of order, courage, downrightness (_geradheit_); that understood busching's _geography_, had been in the victory of rossbach, and left for dead in the camisade of hochkirch? the good gretchen, for all her fretting, watched over him and hovered round him as only a true house-mother can: assiduously she cooked and sewed and scoured for him; so that not only his old regimental sword and grenadier-cap, but the whole habitation and environment, where on pegs of honor they hung, looked ever trim and gay: a roomy painted cottage, embowered in fruit-trees and forest-trees, evergreens and honeysuckles; rising many-colored from amid shaven grass-plots, flowers struggling in through the very windows; under its long projecting eaves nothing but garden-tools in methodic piles (to screen them from rain), and seats where, especially on summer nights, a king might have wished to sit and smoke, and call it his. such a bauergut (copyhold) had gretchen given her veteran; whose sinewy arms, and long-disused gardening talent, had made it what you saw. "into this umbrageous man's-nest, one meek yellow evening or dusk, when the sun, hidden indeed from terrestrial entepfuhl, did nevertheless journey visible and radiant along the celestial balance (_libra_), it was that a stranger of reverend aspect entered; and, with grave salutation, stood before the two rather astonished housemates. he was close-muffled in a wide mantle; which without farther parley unfolding, he deposited therefrom what seemed some basket, overhung with green persian silk; saying only: _ihr lieben leute, hier bringe ein unschatzbares verleihen; nehmt es in aller acht, sorgfaltigst benutzt es: mit hohem lohn, oder wohl mit schweren zinsen, wird's einst zuruckgefordert_. 'good christian people, here lies for you an invaluable loan; take all heed thereof, in all carefulness employ it: with high recompense, or else with heavy penalty, will it one day be required back.' uttering which singular words, in a clear, bell-like, forever memorable tone, the stranger gracefully withdrew; and before andreas or his wife, gazing in expectant wonder, had time to fashion either question or answer, was clean gone. neither out of doors could aught of him be seen or heard; he had vanished in the thickets, in the dusk; the orchard-gate stood quietly closed: the stranger was gone once and always. so sudden had the whole transaction been, in the autumn stillness and twilight, so gentle, noiseless, that the futterals could have fancied it all a trick of imagination, or some visit from an authentic spirit. only that the green-silk basket, such as neither imagination nor authentic spirits are wont to carry, still stood visible and tangible on their little parlor-table. towards this the astonished couple, now with lit candle, hastily turned their attention. lifting the green veil, to see what invaluable it hid, they descried there, amid down and rich white wrappages, no pitt diamond or hapsburg regalia, but, in the softest sleep, a little red-colored infant! beside it, lay a roll of gold friedrichs, the exact amount of which was never publicly known; also a _taufschein_ (baptismal certificate), wherein unfortunately nothing but the name was decipherable, other document or indication none whatever. "to wonder and conjecture was unavailing, then and always thenceforth. nowhere in entepfuhl, on the morrow or next day, did tidings transpire of any such figure as the stranger; nor could the traveller, who had passed through the neighboring town in coach-and-four, be connected with this apparition, except in the way of gratuitous surmise. meanwhile, for andreas and his wife, the grand practical problem was: what to do with this little sleeping red-colored infant? amid amazements and curiosities, which had to die away without external satisfying, they resolved, as in such circumstances charitable prudent people needs must, on nursing it, though with spoon-meat, into whiteness, and if possible into manhood. the heavens smiled on their endeavor: thus has that same mysterious individual ever since had a status for himself in this visible universe, some modicum of victual and lodging and parade-ground; and now expanded in bulk, faculty and knowledge of good and evil, he, as herr diogenes teufelsdrockh, professes or is ready to profess, perhaps not altogether without effect, in the new university of weissnichtwo, the new science of things in general." our philosopher declares here, as indeed we should think he well might, that these facts, first communicated, by the good gretchen futteral, in his twelfth year, "produced on the boyish heart and fancy a quite indelible impression. who this reverend personage," he says, "that glided into the orchard cottage when the sun was in libra, and then, as on spirit's wings, glided out again, might be? an inexpressible desire, full of love and of sadness, has often since struggled within me to shape an answer. ever, in my distresses and my loneliness, has fantasy turned, full of longing (_sehnsuchtsvoll_), to that unknown father, who perhaps far from me, perhaps near, either way invisible, might have taken me to his paternal bosom, there to lie screened from many a woe. thou beloved father, dost thou still, shut out from me only by thin penetrable curtains of earthly space, wend to and fro among the crowd of the living? or art thou hidden by those far thicker curtains of the everlasting night, or rather of the everlasting day, through which my mortal eye and outstretched arms need not strive to reach? alas, i know not, and in vain vex myself to know. more than once, heart-deluded, have i taken for thee this and the other noble-looking stranger; and approached him wistfully, with infinite regard; but he too had to repel me, he too was not thou. "and yet, o man born of woman," cries the autobiographer, with one of his sudden whirls, "wherein is my case peculiar? hadst thou, any more than i, a father whom thou knowest? the andreas and gretchen, or the adam and eve, who led thee into life, and for a time suckled and pap-fed thee there, whom thou namest father and mother; these were, like mine, but thy nursing-father and nursing-mother: thy true beginning and father is in heaven, whom with the bodily eye thou shalt never behold, but only with the spiritual.... "the little green veil," adds he, among much similar moralizing, and embroiled discoursing, "i yet keep; still more inseparably the name, diogenes teufelsdrockh. from the veil can nothing be inferred: a piece of now quite faded persian silk, like thousands of others. on the name i have many times meditated and conjectured; but neither in this lay there any clew. that it was my unknown father's name i must hesitate to believe. to no purpose have i searched through all the herald's books, in and without the german empire, and through all manner of subscriber-lists (_pranumeranten_), militia-rolls, and other name-catalogues; extraordinary names as we have in germany, the name teufelsdrockh, except as appended to my own person, nowhere occurs. again, what may the unchristian rather than christian 'diogenes' mean? did that reverend basket-bearer intend, by such designation, to shadow forth my future destiny, or his own present malign humor? perhaps the latter, perhaps both. thou ill-starred parent, who like an ostrich hadst to leave thy ill-starred offspring to be hatched into self-support by the mere sky-influences of chance, can thy pilgrimage have been a smooth one? beset by misfortune thou doubtless hast been; or indeed by the worst figure of misfortune, by misconduct. often have i fancied how, in thy hard life-battle, thou wert shot at, and slung at, wounded, hand-fettered, hamstrung, browbeaten and bedevilled by the time-spirit (_zeitgeist_) in thyself and others, till the good soul first given thee was seered into grim rage, and thou hadst nothing for it but to leave in me an indignant appeal to the future, and living speaking protest against the devil, as that same spirit not of the time only, but of time itself, is well named! which appeal and protest, may i now modestly add, was not perhaps quite lost in air. "for indeed, as walter shandy often insisted, there is much, nay almost all, in names. the name is the earliest garment you wrap round the earth-visiting me; to which it thenceforth cleaves, more tenaciously (for there are names that have lasted nigh thirty centuries) than the very skin. and now from without, what mystic influences does it not send inwards, even to the centre; especially in those plastic first-times, when the whole soul is yet infantine, soft, and the invisible seedgrain will grow to be an all overshadowing tree! names? could i unfold the influence of names, which are the most important of all clothings, i were a second greater trismegistus. not only all common speech, but science, poetry itself is no other, if thou consider it, than a right _naming_. adam's first task was giving names to natural appearances: what is ours still but a continuation of the same; be the appearances exotic-vegetable, organic, mechanic, stars, or starry movements (as in science); or (as in poetry) passions, virtues, calamities, god-attributes, gods?--in a very plain sense the proverb says, _call one a thief, and he will steal_; in an almost similar sense may we not perhaps say, _call one diogenes teufelsdrockh, and he will open the philosophy of clothes_?" "meanwhile the incipient diogenes, like others, all ignorant of his why, his how or whereabout, was opening his eyes to the kind light; sprawling out his ten fingers and toes; listening, tasting, feeling; in a word, by all his five senses, still more by his sixth sense of hunger, and a whole infinitude of inward, spiritual, half-awakened senses, endeavoring daily to acquire for himself some knowledge of this strange universe where he had arrived, be his task therein what it might. infinite was his progress; thus in some fifteen months, he could perform the miracle of--speech! to breed a fresh soul, is it not like brooding a fresh (celestial) egg; wherein as yet all is formless, powerless; yet by degrees organic elements and fibres shoot through the watery albumen; and out of vague sensation grows thought, grows fantasy and force, and we have philosophies, dynasties, nay poetries and religions! "young diogenes, or rather young gneschen, for by such diminutive had they in their fondness named him, travelled forward to those high consummations, by quick yet easy stages. the futterals, to avoid vain talk, and moreover keep the roll of gold friedrichs safe, gave out that he was a grandnephew; the orphan of some sister's daughter, suddenly deceased, in andreas's distant prussian birthland; of whom, as of her indigent sorrowing widower, little enough was known at entepfuhl. heedless of all which, the nursling took to his spoon-meat, and throve. i have heard him noted as a still infant, that kept his mind much to himself; above all, that seldom or never cried. he already felt that time was precious; that he had other work cut out for him than whimpering." such, after utmost painful search and collation among these miscellaneous paper-masses, is all the notice we can gather of herr teufelsdrockh's genealogy. more imperfect, more enigmatic it can seem to few readers than to us. the professor, in whom truly we more and more discern a certain satirical turn, and deep under-currents of roguish whim, for the present stands pledged in honor, so we will not doubt him: but seems it not conceivable that, by the "good gretchen futteral," or some other perhaps interested party, he has himself been deceived? should these sheets, translated or not, ever reach the entepfuhl circulating library, some cultivated native of that district might feel called to afford explanation. nay, since books, like invisible scouts, permeate the whole habitable globe, and timbuctoo itself is not safe from british literature, may not some copy find out even the mysterious basket-bearing stranger, who in a state of extreme senility perhaps still exists; and gently force even him to disclose himself; to claim openly a son, in whom any father may feel pride? chapter ii. idyllic. "happy season of childhood!" exclaims teufelsdrockh: "kind nature, that art to all a bountiful mother; that visitest the poor man's hut with auroral radiance; and for thy nursling hast provided a soft swathing of love and infinite hope, wherein he waxes and slumbers, danced round (_umgaukelt_) by sweetest dreams! if the paternal cottage still shuts us in, its roof still screens us; with a father we have as yet a prophet, priest and king, and an obedience that makes us free. the young spirit has awakened out of eternity, and knows not what we mean by time; as yet time is no fast-hurrying stream, but a sportful sunlit ocean; years to the child are as ages: ah! the secret of vicissitude, of that slower or quicker decay and ceaseless down-rushing of the universal world-fabric, from the granite mountain to the man or day-moth, is yet unknown; and in a motionless universe, we taste, what afterwards in this quick-whirling universe is forever denied us, the balm of rest. sleep on, thou fair child, for thy long rough journey is at hand! a little while, and thou too shalt sleep no more, but thy very dreams shall be mimic battles; thou too, with old arnauld, wilt have to say in stern patience: 'rest? rest? shall i not have all eternity to rest in?' celestial nepenthe! though a pyrrhus conquer empires, and an alexander sack the world, he finds thee not; and thou hast once fallen gently, of thy own accord, on the eyelids, on the heart of every mother's child. for as yet, sleep and waking are one: the fair life-garden rustles infinite around, and everywhere is dewy fragrance, and the budding of hope; which budding, if in youth, too frost-nipt, it grow to flowers, will in manhood yield no fruit, but a prickly, bitter-rinded stone-fruit, of which the fewest can find the kernel." in such rose-colored light does our professor, as poets are wont, look back on his childhood; the historical details of which (to say nothing of much other vague oratorical matter) he accordingly dwells on with an almost wearisome minuteness. we hear of entepfuhl standing "in trustful derangement" among the woody slopes; the paternal orchard flanking it as extreme outpost from below; the little kuhbach gushing kindly by, among beech-rows, through river after river, into the donau, into the black sea, into the atmosphere and universe; and how "the brave old linden," stretching like a parasol of twenty ells in radius, overtopping all other rows and clumps, towered up from the central _agora_ and _campus martius_ of the village, like its sacred tree; and how the old men sat talking under its shadow (gneschen often greedily listening), and the wearied laborers reclined, and the unwearied children sported, and the young men and maidens often danced to flute-music. "glorious summer twilights," cries teufelsdrockh, "when the sun, like a proud conqueror and imperial taskmaster, turned his back, with his gold-purple emblazonry, and all his fireclad bodyguard (of prismatic colors); and the tired brickmakers of this clay earth might steal a little frolic, and those few meek stars would not tell of them!" then we have long details of the _weinlesen_ (vintage), the harvest-home, christmas, and so forth; with a whole cycle of the entepfuhl children's-games, differing apparently by mere superficial shades from those of other countries. concerning all which, we shall here, for obvious reasons, say nothing. what cares the world for our as yet miniature philosopher's achievements under that "brave old linden "? or even where is the use of such practical reflections as the following? "in all the sports of children, were it only in their wanton breakages and defacements, you shall discern a creative instinct (_schaffenden trieb_): the mankin feels that he is a born man, that his vocation is to work. the choicest present you can make him is a tool; be it knife or pen-gun, for construction or for destruction; either way it is for work, for change. in gregarious sports of skill or strength, the boy trains himself to co-operation, for war or peace, as governor or governed: the little maid again, provident of her domestic destiny, takes with preference to dolls." perhaps, however, we may give this anecdote, considering who it is that relates it: "my first short-clothes were of yellow serge; or rather, i should say, my first short-cloth, for the vesture was one and indivisible, reaching from neck to ankle, a mere body with four limbs: of which fashion how little could i then divine the architectural, how much less the moral significance!" more graceful is the following little picture: "on fine evenings i was wont to carry forth my supper (bread-crumb boiled in milk), and eat it out-of-doors. on the coping of the orchard-wall, which i could reach by climbing, or still more easily if father andreas would set up the pruning-ladder, my porringer was placed: there, many a sunset, have i, looking at the distant western mountains, consumed, not without relish, my evening meal. those hues of gold and azure, that hush of world's expectation as day died, were still a hebrew speech for me; nevertheless i was looking at the fair illuminated letters, and had an eye for their gilding." with "the little one's friendship for cattle and poultry" we shall not much intermeddle. it may be that hereby he acquired a "certain deeper sympathy with animated nature:" but when, we would ask, saw any man, in a collection of biographical documents, such a piece as this: "impressive enough (_bedeutungsvoll_) was it to hear, in early morning, the swineherd's horn; and know that so many hungry happy quadrupeds were, on all sides, starting in hot haste to join him, for breakfast on the heath. or to see them at eventide, all marching in again, with short squeak, almost in military order; and each, topographically correct, trotting off in succession to the right or left, through its own lane, to its own dwelling; till old kunz, at the village-head, now left alone, blew his last blast, and retired for the night. we are wont to love the hog chiefly in the form of ham; yet did not these bristly thick-skinned beings here manifest intelligence, perhaps humor of character; at any rate, a touching, trustful submissiveness to man,--who, were he but a swineherd, in darned gabardine, and leather breeches more resembling slate or discolored-tin breeches, is still the hierarch of this lower world?" it is maintained, by helvetius and his set, that an infant of genius is quite the same as any other infant, only that certain surprisingly favorable influences accompany him through life, especially through childhood, and expand him, while others lie close-folded and continue dunces. herein, say they, consists the whole difference between an inspired prophet and a double-barrelled game-preserver: the inner man of the one has been fostered into generous development; that of the other, crushed down perhaps by vigor of animal digestion, and the like, has exuded and evaporated, or at best sleeps now irresuscitably stagnant at the bottom of his stomach. "with which opinion," cries teufelsdrockh, "i should as soon agree as with this other, that an acorn might, by favorable or unfavorable influences of soil and climate, be nursed into a cabbage, or the cabbage-seed into an oak. "nevertheless," continues he, "i too acknowledge the all-but omnipotence of early culture and nurture: hereby we have either a doddered dwarf bush, or a high-towering, wide-shadowing tree; either a sick yellow cabbage, or an edible luxuriant green one. of a truth, it is the duty of all men, especially of all philosophers, to note down with accuracy the characteristic circumstances of their education, what furthered, what hindered, what in any way modified it: to which duty, nowadays so pressing for many a german autobiographer, i also zealously address myself."--thou rogue! is it by short clothes of yellow serge, and swineherd horns, that an infant of genius is educated? and yet, as usual, it ever remains doubtful whether he is laughing in his sleeve at these autobiographical times of ours, or writing from the abundance of his own fond ineptitude. for he continues: "if among the ever-streaming currents of sights, hearings, feelings for pain or pleasure, whereby, as in a magic hall, young gneschen went about environed, i might venture to select and specify, perhaps these following were also of the number: "doubtless, as childish sports call forth intellect, activity, so the young creature's imagination was stirred up, and a historical tendency given him by the narrative habits of father andreas; who, with his battle-reminiscences, and gray austere yet hearty patriarchal aspect, could not but appear another ulysses and 'much-enduring man.' eagerly i hung upon his tales, when listening neighbors enlivened the hearth; from these perils and these travels, wild and far almost as hades itself, a dim world of adventure expanded itself within me. incalculable also was the knowledge i acquired in standing by the old men under the linden-tree: the whole of immensity was yet new to me; and had not these reverend seniors, talkative enough, been employed in partial surveys thereof for nigh fourscore years? with amazement i began to discover that entepfuhl stood in the middle of a country, of a world; that there was such a thing as history, as biography to which i also, one day, by hand and tongue, might contribute. "in a like sense worked the _postwagen_ (stage-coach), which, slow-rolling under its mountains of men and luggage, wended through our village: northwards, truly, in the dead of night; yet southwards visibly at eventide. not till my eighth year did i reflect that this postwagen could be other than some terrestrial moon, rising and setting by mere law of nature, like the heavenly one; that it came on made highways, from far cities towards far cities; weaving them like a monstrous shuttle into closer and closer union. it was then that, independently of schiller's _wilhelm tell_, i made this not quite insignificant reflection (so true also in spiritual things): _any road, this simple entepfuhl road, will lead you to the end of the world_! "why mention our swallows, which, out of far africa, as i learned, threading their way over seas and mountains, corporate cities and belligerent nations, yearly found themselves with the month of may, snug-lodged in our cottage lobby? the hospitable father (for cleanliness' sake) had fixed a little bracket plumb under their nest: there they built, and caught flies, and twittered, and bred; and all, i chiefly, from the heart loved them. bright, nimble creatures, who taught you the mason-craft; nay, stranger still, gave you a masonic incorporation, almost social police? for if, by ill chance, and when time pressed, your house fell, have i not seen five neighborly helpers appear next day; and swashing to and fro, with animated, loud, long-drawn chirpings, and activity almost super-hirundine, complete it again before nightfall? "but undoubtedly the grand summary of entepfuhl child's culture, where as in a funnel its manifold influences were concentrated and simultaneously poured down on us, was the annual cattle-fair. here, assembling from all the four winds, came the elements of an unspeakable hurry-burly. nut-brown maids and nut-brown men, all clear-washed, loud-laughing, bedizened and beribanded; who came for dancing, for treating, and if possible, for happiness. topbooted graziers from the north; swiss brokers, italian drovers, also topbooted, from the south; these with their subalterns in leather jerkins, leather skull-caps, and long ox-goads; shouting in half-articulate speech, amid the inarticulate barking and bellowing. apart stood potters from far saxony, with their crockery in fair rows; nurnberg pedlers, in booths that to me seemed richer than ormuz bazaars; showmen from the lago maggiore; detachments of the _wiener schub_ (offscourings of vienna) vociferously superintending games of chance. ballad-singers brayed, auctioneers grew hoarse; cheap new wine (_heuriger_) flowed like water, still worse confounding the confusion; and high over all, vaulted, in ground-and-lofty tumbling, a particolored merry-andrew, like the genius of the place and of life itself. "thus encircled by the mystery of existence; under the deep heavenly firmament; waited on by the four golden seasons, with their vicissitudes of contribution, for even grim winter brought its skating-matches and shooting-matches, its snow-storms and christmas-carols,--did the child sit and learn. these things were the alphabet, whereby in aftertime he was to syllable and partly read the grand volume of the world: what matters it whether such alphabet be in large gilt letters or in small ungilt ones, so you have an eye to read it? for gneschen, eager to learn, the very act of looking thereon was a blessedness that gilded all: his existence was a bright, soft element of joy; out of which, as in prospero's island, wonder after wonder bodied itself forth, to teach by charming. "nevertheless, i were but a vain dreamer to say, that even then my felicity was perfect. i had, once for all, come down from heaven into the earth. among the rainbow colors that glowed on my horizon, lay even in childhood a dark ring of care, as yet no thicker than a thread, and often quite overshone; yet always it reappeared, nay ever waxing broader and broader; till in after-years it almost overshadowed my whole canopy, and threatened to engulf me in final night. it was the ring of necessity whereby we are all begirt; happy he for whom a kind heavenly sun brightens it into a ring of duty, and plays round it with beautiful prismatic diffractions; yet ever, as basis and as bourn for our whole being, it is there. "for the first few years of our terrestrial apprenticeship, we have not much work to do; but, boarded and lodged gratis, are set down mostly to look about us over the workshop, and see others work, till we have understood the tools a little, and can handle this and that. if good passivity alone, and not good passivity and good activity together, were the thing wanted, then was my early position favorable beyond the most. in all that respects openness of sense, affectionate temper, ingenuous curiosity, and the fostering of these, what more could i have wished? on the other side, however, things went not so well. my active power (_thatkraft_) was unfavorably hemmed in; of which misfortune how many traces yet abide with me! in an orderly house, where the litter of children's sports is hateful enough, your training is too stoical; rather to bear and forbear than to make and do. i was forbid much: wishes in any measure bold i had to renounce; everywhere a strait bond of obedience inflexibly held me down. thus already freewill often came in painful collision with necessity; so that my tears flowed, and at seasons the child itself might taste that root of bitterness, wherewith the whole fruitage of our life is mingled and tempered. "in which habituation to obedience, truly, it was beyond measure safer to err by excess than by defect. obedience is our universal duty and destiny; wherein whoso will not bend must break: too early and too thoroughly we cannot be trained to know that would, in this world of ours, is as mere zero to should, and for most part as the smallest of fractions even to shall. hereby was laid for me the basis of worldly discretion, nay of morality itself. let me not quarrel with my upbringing. it was rigorous, too frugal, compressively secluded, every way unscientific: yet in that very strictness and domestic solitude might there not lie the root of deeper earnestness, of the stem from which all noble fruit must grow? above all, how unskilful soever, it was loving, it was well-meant, honest; whereby every deficiency was helped. my kind mother, for as such i must ever love the good gretchen, did me one altogether invaluable service: she taught me, less indeed by word than by act and daily reverent look and habitude, her own simple version of the christian faith. andreas too attended church; yet more like a parade-duty, for which he in the other world expected pay with arrears,--as, i trust, he has received; but my mother, with a true woman's heart, and fine though uncultivated sense, was in the strictest acceptation religious. how indestructibly the good grows, and propagates itself, even among the weedy entanglements of evil! the highest whom i knew on earth i here saw bowed down, with awe unspeakable, before a higher in heaven: such things, especially in infancy, reach inwards to the very core of your being; mysteriously does a holy of holies build itself into visibility in the mysterious deeps; and reverence, the divinest in man, springs forth undying from its mean envelopment of fear. wouldst thou rather be a peasant's son that knew, were it never so rudely, there was a god in heaven and in man; or a duke's son that only knew there were two-and-thirty quarters on the family-coach?" to which last question we must answer: beware, o teufelsdrockh, of spiritual pride! chapter iii. pedagogy. hitherto we see young gneschen, in his indivisible case of yellow serge, borne forward mostly on the arms of kind nature alone; seated, indeed, and much to his mind, in the terrestrial workshop, but (except his soft hazel eyes, which we doubt not already gleamed with a still intelligence) called upon for little voluntary movement there. hitherto, accordingly, his aspect is rather generic, that of an incipient philosopher and poet in the abstract; perhaps it would puzzle herr heuschrecke himself to say wherein the special doctrine of clothes is as yet foreshadowed or betokened. for with gneschen, as with others, the man may indeed stand pictured in the boy (at least all the pigments are there); yet only some half of the man stands in the child, or young boy, namely, his passive endowment, not his active. the more impatient are we to discover what figure he cuts in this latter capacity; how, when, to use his own words, "he understands the tools a little, and can handle this or that," he will proceed to handle it. here, however, may be the place to state that, in much of our philosopher's history, there is something of an almost hindoo character: nay perhaps in that so well-fostered and every way excellent "passivity" of his, which, with no free development of the antagonist activity, distinguished his childhood, we may detect the rudiments of much that, in after days, and still in these present days, astonishes the world. for the shallow-sighted, teufelsdrockh is oftenest a man without activity of any kind, a no-man; for the deep-sighted, again, a man with activity almost superabundant, yet so spiritual, close-hidden, enigmatic, that no mortal can foresee its explosions, or even when it has exploded, so much as ascertain its significance. a dangerous, difficult temper for the modern european; above all, disadvantageous in the hero of a biography! now as heretofore it will behoove the editor of these pages, were it never so unsuccessfully, to do his endeavor. among the earliest tools of any complicacy which a man, especially a man of letters, gets to handle, are his class-books. on this portion of his history, teufelsdrockh looks down professedly as indifferent. reading he "cannot remember ever to have learned;" so perhaps had it by nature. he says generally: "of the insignificant portion of my education, which depended on schools, there need almost no notice be taken. i learned what others learn; and kept it stored by in a corner of my head, seeing as yet no manner of use in it. my schoolmaster, a down-bent, broken-hearted, underfoot martyr, as others of that guild are, did little for me, except discover that he could do little: he, good soul, pronounced me a genius, fit for the learned professions; and that i must be sent to the gymnasium, and one day to the university. meanwhile, what printed thing soever i could meet with i read. my very copper pocket-money i laid out on stall-literature; which, as it accumulated, i with my own hands sewed into volumes. by this means was the young head furnished with a considerable miscellany of things and shadows of things: history in authentic fragments lay mingled with fabulous chimeras, wherein also was reality; and the whole not as dead stuff, but as living pabulum, tolerably nutritive for a mind as yet so peptic." that the entepfuhl schoolmaster judged well, we now know. indeed, already in the youthful gneschen, with all his outward stillness, there may have been manifest an inward vivacity that promised much; symptoms of a spirit singularly open, thoughtful, almost poetical. thus, to say nothing of his suppers on the orchard-wall, and other phenomena of that earlier period, have many readers of these pages stumbled, in their twelfth year, on such reflections as the following? "it struck me much, as i sat by the kuhbach, one silent noontide, and watched it flowing, gurgling, to think how this same streamlet had flowed and gurgled, through all changes of weather and of fortune, from beyond the earliest date of history. yes, probably on the morning when joshua forded jordan; even as at the mid-day when caesar, doubtless with difficulty, swam the nile, yet kept his _commentaries_ dry,--this little kuhbach, assiduous as tiber, eurotas or siloa, was murmuring on across the wilderness, as yet unnamed, unseen: here, too, as in the euphrates and the ganges, is a vein or veinlet of the grand world-circulation of waters, which, with its atmospheric arteries, has lasted and lasts simply with the world. thou fool! nature alone is antique, and the oldest art a mushroom; that idle crag thou sittest on is six thousand years of age." in which little thought, as in a little fountain, may there not lie the beginning of those well-nigh unutterable meditations on the grandeur and mystery of time, and its relation to eternity, which play such a part in this philosophy of clothes? over his gymnasic and academic years the professor by no means lingers so lyrical and joyful as over his childhood. green sunny tracts there are still; but intersected by bitter rivulets of tears, here and there stagnating into sour marshes of discontent. "with my first view of the hinterschlag gymnasium," writes he, "my evil days began. well do i still remember the red sunny whitsuntide morning, when, trotting full of hope by the side of father andreas, i entered the main street of the place, and saw its steeple-clock (then striking eight) and _schuldthurm_ (jail), and the aproned or disaproned burghers moving in to breakfast: a little dog, in mad terror, was rushing past; for some human imps had tied a tin kettle to its tail; thus did the agonized creature, loud-jingling, career through the whole length of the borough, and become notable enough. fit emblem of many a conquering hero, to whom fate (wedding fantasy to sense, as it often elsewhere does) has malignantly appended a tin kettle of ambition, to chase him on; which the faster he runs, urges him the faster, the more loudly and more foolishly! fit emblem also of much that awaited myself, in that mischievous den; as in the world, whereof it was a portion and epitome! "alas, the kind beech-rows of entepfuhl were hidden in the distance: i was among strangers, harshly, at best indifferently, disposed towards me; the young heart felt, for the first time, quite orphaned and alone." his school-fellows, as is usual, persecuted him: "they were boys," he says, "mostly rude boys, and obeyed the impulse of rude nature, which bids the deer-herd fall upon any stricken hart, the duck-flock put to death any broken-winged brother or sister, and on all hands the strong tyrannize over the weak." he admits that though "perhaps in an unusual degree morally courageous," he succeeded ill in battle, and would fain have avoided it; a result, as would appear, owing less to his small personal stature (for in passionate seasons he was "incredibly nimble"), than to his "virtuous principles:" "if it was disgraceful to be beaten," says he, "it was only a shade less disgraceful to have so much as fought; thus was i drawn two ways at once, and in this important element of school-history, the war-element, had little but sorrow." on the whole, that same excellent "passivity," so notable in teufelsdrockh's childhood, is here visibly enough again getting nourishment. "he wept often; indeed to such a degree that he was nicknamed _der weinende_ (the tearful), which epithet, till towards his thirteenth year, was indeed not quite unmerited. only at rare intervals did the young soul burst forth into fire-eyed rage, and, with a stormfulness (_ungestum_) under which the boldest quailed, assert that he too had rights of man, or at least of mankin." in all which, who does not discern a fine flower-tree and cinnamon-tree (of genius) nigh choked among pumpkins, reed-grass and ignoble shrubs; and forced if it would live, to struggle upwards only, and not outwards; into a _height_ quite sickly, and disproportioned to its _breadth_? we find, moreover, that his greek and latin were "mechanically" taught; hebrew scarce even mechanically; much else which they called history, cosmography, philosophy, and so forth, no better than not at all. so that, except inasmuch as nature was still busy; and he himself "went about, as was of old his wont, among the craftsmen's workshops, there learning many things;" and farther lighted on some small store of curious reading, in hans wachtel the cooper's house, where he lodged,--his time, it would appear, was utterly wasted. which facts the professor has not yet learned to look upon with any contentment. indeed, throughout the whole of this bag _scorpio_, where we now are, and often in the following bag, he shows himself unusually animated on the matter of education, and not without some touch of what we might presume to be anger. "my teachers," says he, "were hide-bound pedants, without knowledge of man's nature, or of boy's; or of aught save their lexicons and quarterly account-books. innumerable dead vocables (no dead language, for they themselves knew no language) they crammed into us, and called it fostering the growth of mind. how can an inanimate, mechanical gerund-grinder, the like of whom will, in a subsequent century, be manufactured at nurnberg out of wood and leather, foster the growth of anything; much more of mind, which grows, not like a vegetable (by having its roots littered with etymological compost), but like a spirit, by mysterious contact of spirit; thought kindling itself at the fire of living thought? how shall _he_ give kindling, in whose own inward man there is no live coal, but all is burnt out to a dead grammatical cinder? the hinterschlag professors knew syntax enough; and of the human soul thus much: that it had a faculty called memory, and could be acted on through the muscular integument by appliance of birch-rods. "alas, so is it everywhere, so will it ever be; till the hod-man is discharged, or reduced to hod-bearing; and an architect is hired, and on all hands fitly encouraged: till communities and individuals discover, not without surprise, that fashioning the souls of a generation by knowledge can rank on a level with blowing their bodies to pieces by gunpowder; that with generals and field-marshals for killing, there should be world-honored dignitaries, and were it possible, true god-ordained priests, for teaching. but as yet, though the soldier wears openly, and even parades, his butchering-tool, nowhere, far as i have travelled, did the schoolmaster make show of his instructing-tool: nay, were he to walk abroad with birch girt on thigh, as if he therefrom expected honor, would there not, among the idler class, perhaps a certain levity be excited?" in the third year of this gymnasic period, father andreas seems to have died: the young scholar, otherwise so maltreated, saw himself for the first time clad outwardly in sables, and inwardly in quite inexpressible melancholy. "the dark bottomless abyss, that lies under our feet, had yawned open; the pale kingdoms of death, with all their innumerable silent nations and generations, stood before him; the inexorable word, never! now first showed its meaning. my mother wept, and her sorrow got vent; but in my heart there lay a whole lake of tears, pent up in silent desolation. nevertheless the unworn spirit is strong; life is so healthful that it even finds nourishment in death: these stern experiences, planted down by memory in my imagination, rose there to a whole cypress-forest, sad but beautiful; waving, with not unmelodious sighs, in dark luxuriance, in the hottest sunshine, through long years of youth:--as in manhood also it does, and will do; for i have now pitched my tent under a cypress-tree; the tomb is now my inexpugnable fortress, ever close by the gate of which i look upon the hostile armaments, and pains and penalties of tyrannous life placidly enough, and listen to its loudest threatenings with a still smile. o ye loved ones, that already sleep in the noiseless bed of rest, whom in life i could only weep for and never help; and ye, who wide-scattered still toil lonely in the monster-bearing desert, dyeing the flinty ground with your blood,--yet a little while, and we shall all meet there, and our mother's bosom will screen us all; and oppression's harness, and sorrow's fire-whip, and all the gehenna bailiffs that patrol and inhabit ever-vexed time, cannot thenceforth harm us any more!" close by which rather beautiful apostrophe, lies a labored character of the deceased andreas futteral; of his natural ability, his deserts in life (as prussian sergeant); with long historical inquiries into the genealogy of the futteral family, here traced back as far as henry the fowler: the whole of which we pass over, not without astonishment. it only concerns us to add, that now was the time when mother gretchen revealed to her foster-son that he was not at all of this kindred; or indeed of any kindred, having come into historical existence in the way already known to us. "thus was i doubly orphaned," says he; "bereft not only of possession, but even of remembrance. sorrow and wonder, here suddenly united, could not but produce abundant fruit. such a disclosure, in such a season, struck its roots through my whole nature: ever till the years of mature manhood, it mingled with my whole thoughts, was as the stem whereon all my day-dreams and night-dreams grew. a certain poetic elevation, yet also a corresponding civic depression, it naturally imparted: _i was like no other_; in which fixed idea, leading sometimes to highest, and oftener to frightfullest results, may there not lie the first spring of tendencies, which in my life have become remarkable enough? as in birth, so in action, speculation, and social position, my fellows are perhaps not numerous." in the bag _sagittarius_, as we at length discover, teufelsdrockh has become a university man; though how, when, or of what quality, will nowhere disclose itself with the smallest certainty. few things, in the way of confusion and capricious indistinctness, can now surprise our readers; not even the total want of dates, almost without parallel in a biographical work. so enigmatic, so chaotic we have always found, and must always look to find, these scattered leaves. in _sagittarius_, however, teufelsdrockh begins to show himself even more than usually sibylline: fragments of all sorts: scraps of regular memoir, college-exercises, programs, professional testimoniums, milkscores, torn billets, sometimes to appearance of an amatory cast; all blown together as if by merest chance, henceforth bewilder the sane historian. to combine any picture of these university, and the subsequent, years; much more, to decipher therein any illustrative primordial elements of the clothes-philosophy, becomes such a problem as the reader may imagine. so much we can see; darkly, as through the foliage of some wavering thicket: a youth of no common endowment, who has passed happily through childhood, less happily yet still vigorously through boyhood, now at length perfect in "dead vocables," and set down, as he hopes, by the living fountain, there to superadd ideas and capabilities. from such fountain he draws, diligently, thirstily, yet never or seldom with his whole heart, for the water nowise suits his palate; discouragements, entanglements, aberrations are discoverable or supposable. nor perhaps are even pecuniary distresses wanting; for "the good gretchen, who in spite of advices from not disinterested relatives has sent him hither, must after a time withdraw her willing but too feeble hand." nevertheless in an atmosphere of poverty and manifold chagrin, the humor of that young soul, what character is in him, first decisively reveals itself; and, like strong sunshine in weeping skies, gives out variety of colors, some of which are prismatic. thus, with the aid of time and of what time brings, has the stripling diogenes teufelsdrockh waxed into manly stature; and into so questionable an aspect, that we ask with new eagerness, how he specially came by it, and regret anew that there is no more explicit answer. certain of the intelligible and partially significant fragments, which are few in number, shall be extracted from that limbo of a paper-bag, and presented with the usual preparation. as if, in the bag _scorpio_, teufelsdrockh had not already expectorated his antipedagogic spleen; as if, from the name _sagittarius_, he had thought himself called upon to shoot arrows, we here again fall in with such matter as this: "the university where i was educated still stands vivid enough in my remembrance, and i know its name well; which name, however, i, from tenderness to existing interests and persons, shall in nowise divulge. it is my painful duty to say that, out of england and spain, ours was the worst of all hitherto discovered universities. this is indeed a time when right education is, as nearly as may be, impossible: however, in degrees of wrongness there is no limit: nay, i can conceive a worse system than that of the nameless itself; as poisoned victual may be worse than absolute hunger. "it is written, when the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch: wherefore, in such circumstances, may it not sometimes be safer, if both leader and led simply--sit still? had you, anywhere in crim tartary, walled in a square enclosure; furnished it with a small, ill-chosen library; and then turned loose into it eleven hundred christian striplings, to tumble about as they listed, from three to seven years: certain persons, under the title of professors, being stationed at the gates, to declare aloud that it was a university, and exact considerable admission-fees,--you had, not indeed in mechanical structure, yet in spirit and result, some imperfect resemblance of our high seminary. i say, imperfect; for if our mechanical structure was quite other, so neither was our result altogether the same: unhappily, we were not in crim tartary, but in a corrupt european city, full of smoke and sin; moreover, in the middle of a public, which, without far costlier apparatus than that of the square enclosure, and declaration aloud, you could not be sure of gulling. "gullible, however, by fit apparatus, all publics are; and gulled, with the most surprising profit. towards anything like a _statistics of imposture_, indeed, little as yet has been done: with a strange indifference, our economists, nigh buried under tables for minor branches of industry, have altogether overlooked the grand all-overtopping hypocrisy branch; as if our whole arts of puffery, of quackery, priestcraft, kingcraft, and the innumerable other crafts and mysteries of that genus, had not ranked in productive industry at all! can any one, for example, so much as say, what moneys, in literature and shoeblacking, are realized by actual instruction and actual jet polish; what by fictitious-persuasive proclamation of such; specifying, in distinct items, the distributions, circulations, disbursements, incomings of said moneys, with the smallest approach to accuracy? but to ask, how far, in all the several infinitely complected departments of social business, in government, education, in manual, commercial, intellectual fabrication of every sort, man's want is supplied by true ware; how far by the mere appearance of true ware:--in other words, to what extent, by what methods, with what effects, in various times and countries, deception takes the place of wages of performance: here truly is an inquiry big with results for the future time, but to which hitherto only the vaguest answer can be given. if for the present, in our europe, we estimate the ratio of ware to appearance of ware so high even as at one to a hundred (which, considering the wages of a pope, russian autocrat, or english game-preserver, is probably not far from the mark),--what almost prodigious saving may there not be anticipated, as the _statistics of imposture_ advances, and so the manufacturing of shams (that of realities rising into clearer and clearer distinction therefrom) gradually declines, and at length becomes all but wholly unnecessary! "this for the coming golden ages. what i had to remark, for the present brazen one, is, that in several provinces, as in education, polity, religion, where so much is wanted and indispensable, and so little can as yet be furnished, probably imposture is of sanative, anodyne nature, and man's gullibility not his worst blessing. suppose your sinews of war quite broken; i mean your military chest insolvent, forage all but exhausted; and that the whole army is about to mutiny, disband, and cut your and each other's throat,--then were it not well could you, as if by miracle, pay them in any sort of fairy-money, feed them on coagulated water, or mere imagination of meat; whereby, till the real supply came up, they might be kept together and quiet? such perhaps was the aim of nature, who does nothing without aim, in furnishing her favorite, man, with this his so omnipotent or rather omnipatient talent of being gulled. "how beautifully it works, with a little mechanism; nay, almost makes mechanism for itself! these professors in the nameless lived with ease, with safety, by a mere reputation, constructed in past times, and then too with no great effort, by quite another class of persons. which reputation, like a strong brisk-going undershot wheel, sunk into the general current, bade fair, with only a little annual re-painting on their part, to hold long together, and of its own accord assiduously grind for them. happy that it was so, for the millers! they themselves needed not to work; their attempts at working, at what they called educating, now when i look back on it, fill me with a certain mute admiration. "besides all this, we boasted ourselves a rational university; in the highest degree hostile to mysticism; thus was the young vacant mind furnished with much talk about progress of the species, dark ages, prejudice, and the like; so that all were quickly enough blown out into a state of windy argumentativeness; whereby the better sort had soon to end in sick, impotent scepticism; the worser sort explode (_crepiren_) in finished self-conceit, and to all spiritual intents become dead.--but this too is portion of mankind's lot. if our era is the era of unbelief, why murmur under it; is there not a better coming, nay come? as in long-drawn systole and long-drawn diastole, must the period of faith alternate with the period of denial; must the vernal growth, the summer luxuriance of all opinions, spiritual representations and creations, be followed by, and again follow, the autumnal decay, the winter dissolution. for man lives in time, has his whole earthly being, endeavor and destiny shaped for him by time: only in the transitory time-symbol is the ever-motionless eternity we stand on made manifest. and yet, in such winter-seasons of denial, it is for the nobler-minded perhaps a comparative misery to have been born, and to be awake and work; and for the duller a felicity, if, like hibernating animals, safe-lodged in some salamanca university or sybaris city, or other superstitious or voluptuous castle of indolence, they can slumber through, in stupid dreams, and only awaken when the loud-roaring hailstorms have all alone their work, and to our prayers and martyrdoms the new spring has been vouchsafed." that in the environment, here mysteriously enough shadowed forth, teufelsdrockh must have felt ill at ease, cannot be doubtful. "the hungry young," he says, "looked up to their spiritual nurses; and, for food, were bidden eat the east-wind. what vain jargon of controversial metaphysic, etymology, and mechanical manipulation falsely named science, was current there, i indeed learned, better perhaps than the most. among eleven hundred christian youths, there will not be wanting some eleven eager to learn. by collision with such, a certain warmth, a certain polish was communicated; by instinct and happy accident, i took less to rioting (_renommiren_), than to thinking and reading, which latter also i was free to do. nay from the chaos of that library, i succeeded in fishing up more books perhaps than had been known to the very keepers thereof. the foundation of a literary life was hereby laid: i learned, on my own strength, to read fluently in almost all cultivated languages, on almost all subjects and sciences; farther, as man is ever the prime object to man, already it was my favorite employment to read character in speculation, and from the writing to construe the writer. a certain groundplan of human nature and life began to fashion itself in me; wondrous enough, now when i look back on it; for my whole universe, physical and spiritual, was as yet a machine! however, such a conscious, recognized groundplan, the truest i had, _was_ beginning to be there, and by additional experiments might be corrected and indefinitely extended." thus from poverty does the strong educe nobler wealth; thus in the destitution of the wild desert does our young ishmael acquire for himself the highest of all possessions, that of self-help. nevertheless a desert this was, waste, and howling with savage monsters. teufelsdrockh gives us long details of his "fever-paroxysms of doubt;" his inquiries concerning miracles, and the evidences of religious faith; and how "in the silent night-watches, still darker in his heart than over sky and earth, he has cast himself before the all-seeing, and with audible prayers cried vehemently for light, for deliverance from death and the grave. not till after long years, and unspeakable agonies, did the believing heart surrender; sink into spell-bound sleep, under the nightmare, unbelief; and, in this hag-ridden dream, mistake god's fair living world for a pallid, vacant hades and extinct pandemonium. but through such purgatory pain," continues he, "it is appointed us to pass; first must the dead letter of religion own itself dead, and drop piecemeal into dust, if the living spirit of religion, freed from this its charnel-house, is to arise on us, new-born of heaven, and with new healing under its wings." to which purgatory pains, seemingly severe enough, if we add a liberal measure of earthly distresses, want of practical guidance, want of sympathy, want of money, want of hope; and all this in the fervid season of youth, so exaggerated in imagining, so boundless in desires, yet here so poor in means,--do we not see a strong incipient spirit oppressed and overloaded from without and from within; the fire of genius struggling up among fuel-wood of the greenest, and as yet with more of bitter vapor than of clear flame? from various fragments of letters and other documentary scraps, it is to be inferred that teufelsdrockh, isolated, shy, retiring as he was, had not altogether escaped notice: certain established men are aware of his existence; and, if stretching out no helpful hand, have at least their eyes on him. he appears, though in dreary enough humor, to be addressing himself to the profession of law;--whereof, indeed, the world has since seen him a public graduate. but omitting these broken, unsatisfactory thrums of economical relation, let us present rather the following small thread of moral relation; and therewith, the reader for himself weaving it in at the right place, conclude our dim arras-picture of these university years. "here also it was that i formed acquaintance with herr towgood, or, as it is perhaps better written, herr toughgut; a young person of quality (_von adel_), from the interior parts of england. he stood connected, by blood and hospitality, with the counts von zahdarm, in this quarter of germany; to which noble family i likewise was, by his means, with all friendliness, brought near. towgood had a fair talent, unspeakably ill-cultivated; with considerable humor of character: and, bating his total ignorance, for he knew nothing except boxing and a little grammar, showed less of that aristocratic impassivity, and silent fury, than for most part belongs to travellers of his nation. to him i owe my first practical knowledge of the english and their ways; perhaps also something of the partiality with which i have ever since regarded that singular people. towgood was not without an eye, could he have come at any light. invited doubtless by the presence of the zahdarm family, he had travelled hither, in the almost frantic hope of perfecting his studies; he, whose studies had as yet been those of infancy, hither to a university where so much as the notion of perfection, not to say the effort after it, no longer existed! often we would condole over the hard destiny of the young in this era: how, after all our toil, we were to be turned out into the world, with beards on our chins indeed, but with few other attributes of manhood; no existing thing that we were trained to act on, nothing that we could so much as believe. 'how has our head on the outside a polished hat,' would towgood exclaim, 'and in the inside vacancy, or a froth of vocables and attorney-logic! at a small cost men are educated to make leather into shoes; but at a great cost, what am i educated to make? by heaven, brother! what i have already eaten and worn, as i came thus far, would endow a considerable hospital of incurables.'--'man, indeed,' i would answer, 'has a digestive faculty, which must be kept working, were it even partly by stealth. but as for our miseducation, make not bad worse; waste not the time yet ours, in trampling on thistles because they have yielded us no figs. _frisch zu, bruder_! here are books, and we have brains to read them; here is a whole earth and a whole heaven, and we have eyes to look on them: _frisch zu_!' "often also our talk was gay; not without brilliancy, and even fire. we looked out on life, with its strange scaffolding, where all at once harlequins dance, and men are beheaded and quartered: motley, not unterrific was the aspect; but we looked on it like brave youths. for myself, these were perhaps my most genial hours. towards this young warm-hearted, strong-headed and wrong-headed herr towgood i was even near experiencing the now obsolete sentiment of friendship. yes, foolish heathen that i was, i felt that, under certain conditions, i could have loved this man, and taken him to my bosom, and been his brother once and always. by degrees, however, i understood the new time, and its wants. if man's _soul_ is indeed, as in the finnish language, and utilitarian philosophy, a kind of _stomach_, what else is the true meaning of spiritual union but an eating together? thus we, instead of friends, are dinner-guests; and here as elsewhere have cast away chimeras." so ends, abruptly as is usual, and enigmatically, this little incipient romance. what henceforth becomes of the brave herr towgood, or toughgut? he has dived under, in the autobiographical chaos, and swims we see not where. does any reader "in the interior parts of england" know of such a man? chapter iv. getting under way. "thus nevertheless," writes our autobiographer, apparently as quitting college, "was there realized somewhat; namely, i, diogenes teufelsdrockh: a visible temporary figure (_zeitbild_), occupying some cubic feet of space, and containing within it forces both physical and spiritual; hopes, passions, thoughts; the whole wondrous furniture, in more or less perfection, belonging to that mystery, a man. capabilities there were in me to give battle, in some small degree, against the great empire of darkness: does not the very ditcher and delver, with his spade, extinguish many a thistle and puddle; and so leave a little order, where he found the opposite? nay your very day-moth has capabilities in this kind; and ever organizes something (into its own body, if no otherwise), which was before inorganic; and of mute dead air makes living music, though only of the faintest, by humming. "how much more, one whose capabilities are spiritual; who has learned, or begun learning, the grand thaumaturgic art of thought! thaumaturgic i name it; for hitherto all miracles have been wrought thereby, and henceforth innumerable will be wrought; whereof we, even in these days, witness some. of the poet's and prophet's inspired message, and how it makes and unmakes whole worlds, i shall forbear mention: but cannot the dullest hear steam-engines clanking around him? has he not seen the scottish brass-smith's idea (and this but a mechanical one) travelling on fire-wings round the cape, and across two oceans; and stronger than any other enchanter's familiar, on all hands unweariedly fetching and carrying: at home, not only weaving cloth; but rapidly enough overturning the whole old system of society; and, for feudalism and preservation of the game, preparing us, by indirect but sure methods, industrialism and the government of the wisest? truly a thinking man is the worst enemy the prince of darkness can have; every time such a one announces himself, i doubt not, there runs a shudder through the nether empire; and new emissaries are trained, with new tactics, to, if possible, entrap him, and hoodwink and handcuff him. "with such high vocation had i too, as denizen of the universe, been called. unhappy it is, however, that though born to the amplest sovereignty, in this way, with no less than sovereign right of peace and war against the time-prince (_zeitfurst_), or devil, and all his dominions, your coronation-ceremony costs such trouble, your sceptre is so difficult to get at, or even to get eye on!" by which last wire-drawn similitude does teufelsdrockh mean no more than that young men find obstacles in what we call "getting under way"? "not what i have," continues he, "but what i do is my kingdom. to each is given a certain inward talent, a certain outward environment of fortune; to each, by wisest combination of these two, a certain maximum of capability. but the hardest problem were ever this first: to find by study of yourself, and of the ground you stand on, what your combined inward and outward capability specially is. for, alas, our young soul is all budding with capabilities, and we see not yet which is the main and true one. always too the new man is in a new time, under new conditions; his course can be the _fac-simile_ of no prior one, but is by its nature original. and then how seldom will the outward capability fit the inward: though talented wonderfully enough, we are poor, unfriended, dyspeptical, bashful; nay what is worse than all, we are foolish. thus, in a whole imbroglio of capabilities, we go stupidly groping about, to grope which is ours, and often clutch the wrong one: in this mad work must several years of our small term be spent, till the purblind youth, by practice, acquire notions of distance, and become a seeing man. nay, many so spend their whole term, and in ever-new expectation, ever-new disappointment, shift from enterprise to enterprise, and from side to side: till at length, as exasperated striplings of threescore-and-ten, they shift into their last enterprise, that of getting buried. "such, since the most of us are too ophthalmic, would be the general fate; were it not that one thing saves us: our hunger. for on this ground, as the prompt nature of hunger is well known, must a prompt choice be made: hence have we, with wise foresight, indentures and apprenticeships for our irrational young; whereby, in due season, the vague universality of a man shall find himself ready-moulded into a specific craftsman; and so thenceforth work, with much or with little waste of capability as it may be; yet not with the worst waste, that of time. nay even in matters spiritual, since the spiritual artist too is born blind, and does not, like certain other creatures, receive sight in nine days, but far later, sometimes never,--is it not well that there should be what we call professions, or bread-studies (_brodzwecke_), preappointed us? here, circling like the gin-horse, for whom partial or total blindness is no evil, the bread-artist can travel contentedly round and round, still fancying that it is forward and forward; and realize much: for himself victual; for the world an additional horse's power in the grand corn-mill or hemp-mill of economic society. for me too had such a leading-string been provided; only that it proved a neck-halter, and had nigh throttled me, till i broke it off. then, in the words of ancient pistol, did the world generally become mine oyster, which i, by strength or cunning, was to open, as i would and could. almost had i deceased (_fast war ich umgekommen_), so obstinately did it continue shut." we see here, significantly foreshadowed, the spirit of much that was to befall our autobiographer; the historical embodiment of which, as it painfully takes shape in his life, lies scattered, in dim disastrous details, through this bag _pisces_, and those that follow. a young man of high talent, and high though still temper, like a young mettled colt, "breaks off his neck-halter," and bounds forth, from his peculiar manger, into the wide world; which, alas, he finds all rigorously fenced in. richest clover-fields tempt his eye; but to him they are forbidden pasture: either pining in progressive starvation, he must stand; or, in mad exasperation, must rush to and fro, leaping against sheer stone-walls, which he cannot leap over, which only lacerate and lame him; till at last, after thousand attempts and endurances, he, as if by miracle, clears his way; not indeed into luxuriant and luxurious clover, yet into a certain bosky wilderness where existence is still possible, and freedom, though waited on by scarcity, is not without sweetness. in a word, teufelsdrockh having thrown up his legal profession, finds himself without landmark of outward guidance; whereby his previous want of decided belief, or inward guidance, is frightfully aggravated. necessity urges him on; time will not stop, neither can he, a son of time; wild passions without solacement, wild faculties without employment, ever vex and agitate him. he too must enact that stern monodrama, _no object and no rest_; must front its successive destinies, work through to its catastrophe, and deduce therefrom what moral he can. yet let us be just to him, let us admit that his "neck-halter" sat nowise easy on him; that he was in some degree forced to break it off. if we look at the young man's civic position, in this nameless capital, as he emerges from its nameless university, we can discern well that it was far from enviable. his first law-examination he has come through triumphantly; and can even boast that the _examen rigorosum_ need not have frightened him: but though he is hereby "an _auscultator_ of respectability," what avails it? there is next to no employment to be had. neither, for a youth without connections, is the process of expectation very hopeful in itself; nor for one of his disposition much cheered from without. "my fellow auscultators," he says, "were auscultators: they dressed, and digested, and talked articulate words; other vitality showed they almost none. small speculation in those eyes, that they did glare withal! sense neither for the high nor for the deep, nor for aught human or divine, save only for the faintest scent of coming preferment." in which words, indicating a total estrangement on the part of teufelsdrockh may there not also lurk traces of a bitterness as from wounded vanity? doubtless these prosaic auscultators may have sniffed at him, with his strange ways; and tried to hate, and what was much more impossible, to despise him. friendly communion, in any case, there could not be: already has the young teufelsdrockh left the other young geese; and swims apart, though as yet uncertain whether he himself is cygnet or gosling. perhaps, too, what little employment he had was performed ill, at best unpleasantly. "great practical method and expertness" he may brag of; but is there not also great practical pride, though deep-hidden, only the deeper-seated? so shy a man can never have been popular. we figure to ourselves, how in those days he may have played strange freaks with his independence, and so forth: do not his own words betoken as much? "like a very young person, i imagined it was with work alone, and not also with folly and sin, in myself and others, that i had been appointed to struggle." be this as it may, his progress from the passive auscultatorship, towards any active assessorship, is evidently of the slowest. by degrees, those same established men, once partially inclined to patronize him, seem to withdraw their countenance, and give him up as "a man of genius" against which procedure he, in these papers, loudly protests. "as if," says he, "the higher did not presuppose the lower; as if he who can fly into heaven, could not also walk post if he resolved on it! but the world is an old woman, and mistakes any gilt farthing for a gold coin; whereby being often cheated, she will thenceforth trust nothing but the common copper." how our winged sky-messenger, unaccepted as a terrestrial runner, contrived, in the mean while, to keep himself from flying skyward without return, is not too clear from these documents. good old gretchen seems to have vanished from the scene, perhaps from the earth; other horn of plenty, or even of parsimony, nowhere flows for him; so that "the prompt nature of hunger being well known," we are not without our anxiety. from private tuition, in never so many languages and sciences, the aid derivable is small; neither, to use his own words, "does the young adventurer hitherto suspect in himself any literary gift; but at best earns bread-and-water wages, by his wide faculty of translation. nevertheless," continues he, "that i subsisted is clear, for you find me even now alive." which fact, however, except upon the principle of our true-hearted, kind old proverb, that "there is always life for a living one," we must profess ourselves unable to explain. certain landlords' bills, and other economic documents, bearing the mark of settlement, indicate that he was not without money; but, like an independent hearth-holder, if not house-holder, paid his way. here also occur, among many others, two little mutilated notes, which perhaps throw light on his condition. the first has now no date, or writer's name, but a huge blot; and runs to this effect: "the (_inkblot_), tied down by previous promise, cannot, except by best wishes, forward the herr teufelsdrockh's views on the assessorship in question; and sees himself under the cruel necessity of forbearing, for the present, what were otherwise his duty and joy, to assist in opening the career for a man of genius, on whom far higher triumphs are yet waiting." the other is on gilt paper; and interests us like a sort of epistolary mummy now dead, yet which once lived and beneficently worked. we give it in the original: "_herr teufelsdrockh wird von der frau grafinn, auf donnerstag, zum aesthetischen thee schonstens eingeladen_." thus, in answer to a cry for solid pudding, whereof there is the most urgent need, comes, epigrammatically enough, the invitation to a wash of quite fluid _aesthetic tea_! how teufelsdrockh, now at actual hand-grips with destiny herself, may have comported himself among these musical and literary dilettanti of both sexes, like a hungry lion invited to a feast of chickenweed, we can only conjecture. perhaps in expressive silence, and abstinence: otherwise if the lion, in such case, is to feast at all, it cannot be on the chickenweed, but only on the chickens. for the rest, as this frau grafinn dates from the _zahdarm house_, she can be no other than the countess and mistress of the same; whose intellectual tendencies, and good-will to teufelsdrockh, whether on the footing of herr towgood, or on his own footing, are hereby manifest. that some sort of relation, indeed, continued, for a time, to connect our autobiographer, though perhaps feebly enough, with this noble house, we have elsewhere express evidence. doubtless, if he expected patronage, it was in vain; enough for him if he here obtained occasional glimpses of the great world, from which we at one time fancied him to have been always excluded. "the zahdarms," says he, "lived in the soft, sumptuous garniture of aristocracy; whereto literature and art, attracted and attached from without, were to serve as the handsomest fringing. it was to the _gnadigen frau_ (her ladyship) that this latter improvement was due: assiduously she gathered, dexterously she fitted on, what fringing was to be had; lace or cobweb, as the place yielded." was teufelsdrockh also a fringe, of lace or cobweb; or promising to be such? "with his _excellenz_ (the count)," continues he, "i have more than once had the honor to converse; chiefly on general affairs, and the aspect of the world, which he, though now past middle life, viewed in no unfavorable light; finding indeed, except the outrooting of journalism (_die auszurottende journalistik_), little to desiderate therein. on some points, as his _excellenz_ was not uncholeric, i found it more pleasant to keep silence. besides, his occupation being that of owning land, there might be faculties enough, which, as superfluous for such use, were little developed in him." that to teufelsdrockh the aspect of the world was nowise so faultless, and many things besides "the outrooting of journalism" might have seemed improvements, we can readily conjecture. with nothing but a barren auscultatorship from without, and so many mutinous thoughts and wishes from within, his position was no easy one. "the universe," he says, "was as a mighty sphinx-riddle, which i knew so little of, yet must rede, or be devoured. in red streaks of unspeakable grandeur, yet also in the blackness of darkness, was life, to my too-unfurnished thought, unfolding itself. a strange contradiction lay in me; and i as yet knew not the solution of it; knew not that spiritual music can spring only from discords set in harmony; that but for evil there were no good, as victory is only possible by battle." "i have heard affirmed (surely in jest)," observes he elsewhere, "by not unphilanthropic persons, that it were a real increase of human happiness, could all young men from the age of nineteen be covered under barrels, or rendered otherwise invisible; and there left to follow their lawful studies and callings, till they emerged, sadder and wiser, at the age of twenty-five. with which suggestion, at least as considered in the light of a practical scheme, i need scarcely say that i nowise coincide. nevertheless it is plausibly urged that, as young ladies (_madchen_) are, to mankind, precisely the most delightful in those years; so young gentlemen (_bubchen_) do then attain their maximum of detestability. such gawks (_gecken_) are they, and foolish peacocks, and yet with such a vulturous hunger for self-indulgence; so obstinate, obstreperous, vain-glorious; in all senses, so froward and so forward. no mortal's endeavor or attainment will, in the smallest, content the as yet unendeavoring, unattaining young gentleman; but he could make it all infinitely better, were it worthy of him. life everywhere is the most manageable matter, simple as a question in the rule-of-three: multiply your second and third term together, divide the product by the first, and your quotient will be the answer,--which you are but an ass if you cannot come at. the booby has not yet found out, by any trial, that, do what one will, there is ever a cursed fraction, oftenest a decimal repeater, and no net integer quotient so much as to be thought of." in which passage does not there lie an implied confession that teufelsdrockh himself, besides his outward obstructions, had an inward, still greater, to contend with; namely, a certain temporary, youthful, yet still afflictive derangement of head? alas, on the former side alone, his case was hard enough. "it continues ever true," says he, "that saturn, or chronos, or what we call time, devours all his children: only by incessant running, by incessant working, may you (for some threescore-and-ten years) escape him; and you too he devours at last. can any sovereign, or holy alliance of sovereigns, bid time stand still; even in thought, shake themselves free of time? our whole terrestrial being is based on time, and built of time; it is wholly a movement, a time-impulse; time is the author of it, the material of it. hence also our whole duty, which is to move, to work,--in the right direction. are not our bodies and our souls in continual movement, whether we will or not; in a continual waste, requiring a continual repair? utmost satisfaction of our whole outward and inward wants were but satisfaction for a space of time; thus, whatso we have done, is done, and for us annihilated, and ever must we go and do anew. o time-spirit, how hast thou environed and imprisoned us, and sunk us so deep in thy troublous dim time-element, that only in lucid moments can so much as glimpses of our upper azure home be revealed to us! me, however, as a son of time, unhappier than some others, was time threatening to eat quite prematurely; for, strive as i might, there was no good running, so obstructed was the path, so gyved were the feet." that is to say, we presume, speaking in the dialect of this lower world, that teufelsdrockh's whole duty and necessity was, like other men's, "to work,--in the right direction," and that no work was to be had; whereby he became wretched enough. as was natural: with haggard scarcity threatening him in the distance; and so vehement a soul languishing in restless inaction, and forced thereby, like sir hudibras's sword by rust, "to eat into itself, for lack of something else to hew and hack;" but on the whole, that same "excellent passivity," as it has all along done, is here again vigorously flourishing; in which circumstance may we not trace the beginnings of much that now characterizes our professor and perhaps, in faint rudiments, the origin of the clothes-philosophy itself? already the attitude he has assumed towards the world is too defensive; not, as would have been desirable, a bold attitude of attack. "so far hitherto," he says, "as i had mingled with mankind, i was notable, if for anything, for a certain stillness of manner, which, as my friends often rebukingly declared, did but ill express the keen ardor of my feelings. i, in truth, regarded men with an excess both of love and of fear. the mystery of a person, indeed, is ever divine to him that has a sense for the godlike. often, notwithstanding, was i blamed, and by half-strangers hated, for my so-called hardness (_harte_), my indifferentism towards men; and the seemingly ironic tone i had adopted, as my favorite dialect in conversation. alas, the panoply of sarcasm was but as a buckram case, wherein i had striven to envelop myself; that so my own poor person might live safe there, and in all friendliness, being no longer exasperated by wounds. sarcasm i now see to be, in general, the language of the devil; for which reason i have long since as good as renounced it. but how many individuals did i, in those days, provoke into some degree of hostility thereby! an ironic man, with his sly stillness, and ambuscading ways, more especially an ironic young man, from whom it is least expected, may be viewed as a pest to society. have we not seen persons of weight and name coming forward, with gentlest indifference, to tread such a one out of sight, as an insignificancy and worm, start ceiling-high (_balkenhock_), and thence fall shattered and supine, to be borne home on shutters, not without indignation, when he proved electric and a torpedo!" alas, how can a man with this devilishness of temper make way for himself in life; where the first problem, as teufelsdrockh too admits, is "to unite yourself with some one, and with somewhat (_sich anzuschliessen_)"? division, not union, is written on most part of his procedure. let us add too that, in no great length of time, the only important connection he had ever succeeded in forming, his connection with the zahdarm family, seems to have been paralyzed, for all practical uses, by the death of the "not uncholeric" old count. this fact stands recorded, quite incidentally, in a certain _discourse on epitaphs_, huddled into the present bag, among so much else; of which essay the learning and curious penetration are more to be approved of than the spirit. his grand principle is, that lapidary inscriptions, of what sort soever, should be historical rather than lyrical. "by request of that worthy nobleman's survivors," says he, "i undertook to compose his epitaph; and not unmindful of my own rules, produced the following; which however, for an alleged defect of latinity, a defect never yet fully visible to myself, still remains unengraven;"--wherein, we may predict, there is more than the latinity that will surprise an english reader: hic jacet philippus zaehdarm, cognomine magnus, zaehdarmi comes, ex imperii concilio, velleris aurei, periscelidis, necnon vulturis nigri eques. qui dum sub luna agebat, quinquies mille perdices plumbo confecit: varii cibi centumpondia millies centena millia, per se, perque servos quadrupedes bipedesve, haud sine tumult devolvens, in stercus palam convertit. nunc a labore requiescentem opera sequuntur. si monumentum quaeris, fimetum adspice. primum in orbe dejecit [_sub dato_]; postremum [_sub dato_]. chapter v. romance. "for long years," writes teufelsdrockh, "had the poor hebrew, in this egypt of an auscultatorship, painfully toiled, baking bricks without stubble, before ever the question once struck him with entire force: for what?--_beym himmel_! for food and warmth! and are food and warmth nowhere else, in the whole wide universe, discoverable?--come of it what might, i resolved to try." thus then are we to see him in a new independent capacity, though perhaps far from an improved one. teufelsdrockh is now a man without profession. quitting the common fleet of herring-busses and whalers, where indeed his leeward, laggard condition was painful enough, he desperately steers off, on a course of his own, by sextant and compass of his own. unhappy teufelsdrockh! though neither fleet, nor traffic, nor commodores pleased thee, still was it not _a fleet_, sailing in prescribed track, for fixed objects; above all, in combination, wherein, by mutual guidance, by all manner of loans and borrowings, each could manifoldly aid the other? how wilt thou sail in unknown seas; and for thyself find that shorter northwest passage to thy fair spice-country of a nowhere?--a solitary rover, on such a voyage, with such nautical tactics, will meet with adventures. nay, as we forthwith discover, a certain calypso-island detains him at the very outset; and as it were falsifies and oversets his whole reckoning. "if in youth," writes he once, "the universe is majestically unveiling, and everywhere heaven revealing itself on earth, nowhere to the young man does this heaven on earth so immediately reveal itself as in the young maiden. strangely enough, in this strange life of ours, it has been so appointed. on the whole, as i have often said, a person (_personlichkeit_) is ever holy to us; a certain orthodox anthropomorphism connects my _me_ with all _thees_ in bonds of love: but it is in this approximation of the like and unlike, that such heavenly attraction, as between negative and positive, first burns out into a flame. is the pitifullest mortal person, think you, indifferent to us? is it not rather our heartfelt wish to be made one with him; to unite him to us, by gratitude, by admiration, even by fear; or failing all these, unite ourselves to him? but how much more, in this case of the like-unlike! here is conceded us the higher mystic possibility of such a union, the highest in our earth; thus, in the conducting medium of fantasy, flames forth that fire-development of the universal spiritual electricity, which, as unfolded between man and woman, we first emphatically denominate love. "in every well-conditioned stripling, as i conjecture, there already blooms a certain prospective paradise, cheered by some fairest eve; nor, in the stately vistas, and flowerage and foliage of that garden, is a tree of knowledge, beautiful and awful in the midst thereof, wanting. perhaps too the whole is but the lovelier, if cherubim and a flaming sword divide it from all footsteps of men; and grant him, the imaginative stripling, only the view, not the entrance. happy season of virtuous youth, when shame is still an impassable celestial barrier; and the sacred air-cities of hope have not shrunk into the mean clay-hamlets of reality; and man, by his nature, is yet infinite and free! "as for our young forlorn," continues teufelsdrockh evidently meaning himself, "in his secluded way of life, and with his glowing fantasy, the more fiery that it burnt under cover, as in a reverberating furnace, his feeling towards the queens of this earth was, and indeed is, altogether unspeakable. a visible divinity dwelt in them; to our young friend all women were holy, were heavenly. as yet he but saw them flitting past, in their many-colored angel-plumage; or hovering mute and inaccessible on the outskirts of _aesthetic tea_: all of air they were, all soul and form; so lovely, like mysterious priestesses, in whose hand was the invisible jacob's-ladder, whereby man might mount into very heaven. that he, our poor friend, should ever win for himself one of these gracefuls (_holden_)--_ach gott_! how could he hope it; should he not have died under it? there was a certain delirious vertigo in the thought. "thus was the young man, if all-sceptical of demons and angels such as the vulgar had once believed in, nevertheless not unvisited by hosts of true sky-born, who visibly and audibly hovered round him wheresoever he went; and they had that religious worship in his thought, though as yet it was by their mere earthly and trivial name that he named them. but now, if on a soul so circumstanced, some actual air-maiden, incorporated into tangibility and reality, should cast any electric glance of kind eyes, saying thereby, 'thou too mayest love and be loved;' and so kindle him,--good heaven, what a volcanic, earthquake-bringing, all-consuming fire were probably kindled!" such a fire, it afterwards appears, did actually burst forth, with explosions more or less vesuvian, in the inner man of herr diogenes; as indeed how could it fail? a nature, which, in his own figurative style, we might say, had now not a little carbonized tinder, of irritability; with so much nitre of latent passion, and sulphurous humor enough; the whole lying in such hot neighborhood, close by "a reverberating furnace of fantasy:" have we not here the components of driest gunpowder, ready, on occasion of the smallest spark, to blaze up? neither, in this our life-element, are sparks anywhere wanting. without doubt, some angel, whereof so many hovered round, would one day, leaving "the outskirts of _aesthetic tea_," flit higher; and, by electric promethean glance, kindle no despicable firework. happy, if it indeed proved a firework, and flamed off rocket-wise, in successive beautiful bursts of splendor, each growing naturally from the other, through the several stages of a happy youthful love; till the whole were safely burnt out; and the young soul relieved with little damage! happy, if it did not rather prove a conflagration and mad explosion; painfully lacerating the heart itself; nay perhaps bursting the heart in pieces (which were death); or at best, bursting the thin walls of your "reverberating furnace," so that it rage thenceforth all unchecked among the contiguous combustibles (which were madness): till of the so fair and manifold internal world of our diogenes, there remained nothing, or only the "crater of an extinct volcano"! from multifarious documents in this bag _capricornus_, and in the adjacent ones on both sides thereof, it becomes manifest that our philosopher, as stoical and cynical as he now looks, was heartily and even frantically in love: here therefore may our old doubts whether his heart were of stone or of flesh give way. he loved once; not wisely but too well. and once only: for as your congreve needs a new case or wrappage for every new rocket, so each human heart can properly exhibit but one love, if even one; the "first love which is infinite" can be followed by no second like unto it. in more recent years, accordingly, the editor of these sheets was led to regard teufelsdrockh as a man not only who would never wed, but who would never even flirt; whom the grand-climacteric itself, and _st. martin's summer_ of incipient dotage, would crown with no new myrtle-garland. to the professor, women are henceforth pieces of art; of celestial art, indeed, which celestial pieces he glories to survey in galleries, but has lost thought of purchasing. psychological readers are not without curiosity to see how teufelsdrockh in this for him unexampled predicament, demeans himself; with what specialties of successive configuration, splendor and color, his firework blazes off. small, as usual, is the satisfaction that such can meet with here. from amid these confused masses of eulogy and elegy, with their mad petrarchan and werterean ware lying madly scattered among all sorts of quite extraneous matter, not so much as the fair one's name can be deciphered. for, without doubt, the title _blumine_, whereby she is here designated, and which means simply goddess of flowers, must be fictitious. was her real name flora, then? but what was her surname, or had she none? of what station in life was she; of what parentage, fortune, aspect? specially, by what pre-established harmony of occurrences did the lover and the loved meet one another in so wide a world; how did they behave in such meeting? to all which questions, not unessential in a biographic work, mere conjecture must for most part return answer. "it was appointed," says our philosopher, "that the high celestial orbit of blumine should intersect the low sublunary one of our forlorn; that he, looking in her empyrean eyes, should fancy the upper sphere of light was come down into this nether sphere of shadows; and finding himself mistaken, make noise enough." we seem to gather that she was young, hazel-eyed, beautiful, and some one's cousin; high-born, and of high spirit; but unhappily dependent and insolvent; living, perhaps, on the not too gracious bounty of moneyed relatives. but how came "the wanderer" into her circle? was it by the humid vehicle of _aesthetic tea_, or by the arid one of mere business? was it on the hand of herr towgood; or of the gnadige frau, who, as an ornamental artist, might sometimes like to promote flirtation, especially for young cynical nondescripts? to all appearance, it was chiefly by accident, and the grace of nature. "thou fair waldschloss," writes our autobiographer, "what stranger ever saw thee, were it even an absolved auscultator, officially bearing in his pocket the last _relatio ex actis_ he would ever write, but must have paused to wonder! noble mansion! there stoodest thou, in deep mountain amphitheatre, on umbrageous lawns, in thy serene solitude; stately, massive, all of granite; glittering in the western sunbeams, like a palace of el dorado, overlaid with precious metal. beautiful rose up, in wavy curvature, the slope of thy guardian hills; of the greenest was their sward, embossed with its dark-brown frets of crag, or spotted by some spreading solitary tree and its shadow. to the unconscious wayfarer thou wert also as an ammon's temple, in the libyan waste; where, for joy and woe, the tablet of his destiny lay written. well might he pause and gaze; in that glance of his were prophecy and nameless forebodings." but now let us conjecture that the so presentient auscultator has handed in his _relatio ex actis_; been invited to a glass of rhine-wine; and so, instead of returning dispirited and athirst to his dusty town-home, is ushered into the garden-house, where sit the choicest party of dames and cavaliers: if not engaged in aesthetic tea, yet in trustful evening conversation, and perhaps musical coffee, for we hear of "harps and pure voices making the stillness live." scarcely, it would seem, is the garden-house inferior in respectability to the noble mansion itself. "embowered amid rich foliage, rose-clusters, and the hues and odors of thousand flowers, here sat that brave company; in front, from the wide-opened doors, fair outlook over blossom and bush, over grove and velvet green, stretching, undulating onwards to the remote mountain peaks: so bright, so mild, and everywhere the melody of birds and happy creatures: it was all as if man had stolen a shelter from the suit in the bosom-vesture of summer herself. how came it that the wanderer advanced thither with such forecasting heart (_ahndungsvoll_), by the side of his gay host? did he feel that to these soft influences his hard bosom ought to be shut; that here, once more, fate had it in view to try him; to mock him, and see whether there were humor in him? "next moment he finds himself presented to the party; and especially by name to--blumine! peculiar among all dames and damosels glanced blumine, there in her modesty, like a star among earthly lights. noblest maiden! whom he bent to, in body and in soul; yet scarcely dared look at, for the presence filled him with painful yet sweetest embarrassment. "blumine's was a name well known to him; far and wide was the fair one heard of, for her gifts, her graces, her caprices: from all which vague colorings of rumor, from the censures no less than from the praises, had our friend painted for himself a certain imperious queen of hearts, and blooming warm earth-angel, much more enchanting than your mere white heaven-angels of women, in whose placid veins circulates too little naphtha-fire. herself also he had seen in public places; that light yet so stately form; those dark tresses, shading a face where smiles and sunlight played over earnest deeps: but all this he had seen only as a magic vision, for him inaccessible, almost without reality. her sphere was too far from his; how should she ever think of him; o heaven! how should they so much as once meet together? and now that rose-goddess sits in the same circle with him; the light of _her_ eyes has smiled on him; if he speak, she will hear it! nay, who knows, since the heavenly sun looks into lowest valleys, but blumine herself might have aforetime noted the so unnotable; perhaps, from his very gainsayers, as he had from hers, gathered wonder, gathered favor for him? was the attraction, the agitation mutual, then; pole and pole trembling towards contact, when once brought into neighborhood? say rather, heart swelling in presence of the queen of hearts; like the sea swelling when once near its moon! with the wanderer it was even so: as in heavenward gravitation, suddenly as at the touch of a seraph's wand, his whole soul is roused from its deepest recesses; and all that was painful and that was blissful there, dim images, vague feelings of a whole past and a whole future, are heaving in unquiet eddies within him. "often, in far less agitating scenes, had our still friend shrunk forcibly together; and shrouded up his tremors and flutterings, of what sort soever, in a safe cover of silence, and perhaps of seeming stolidity. how was it, then, that here, when trembling to the core of his heart, he did not sink into swoons, but rose into strength, into fearlessness and clearness? it was his guiding genius (_damon_) that inspired him; he must go forth and meet his destiny. show thyself now, whispered it, or be forever hid. thus sometimes it is even when your anxiety becomes transcendental, that the soul first feels herself able to transcend it; that she rises above it, in fiery victory; and borne on new-found wings of victory, moves so calmly, even because so rapidly, so irresistibly. always must the wanderer remember, with a certain satisfaction and surprise, how in this case he sat not silent but struck adroitly into the stream of conversation; which thenceforth, to speak with an apparent not a real vanity, he may say that he continued to lead. surely, in those hours, a certain inspiration was imparted him, such inspiration as is still possible in our late era. the self-secluded unfolds himself in noble thoughts, in free, glowing words; his soul is as one sea of light, the peculiar home of truth and intellect; wherein also fantasy bodies forth form after form, radiant with all prismatic hues." it appears, in this otherwise so happy meeting, there talked one "philisitine;" who even now, to the general weariness, was dominantly pouring forth philistinism (_philistriositaten_.); little witting what hero was here entering to demolish him! we omit the series of socratic, or rather diogenic utterances, not unhappy in their way, whereby the monster, "persuaded into silence," seems soon after to have withdrawn for the night. "of which dialectic marauder," writes our hero, "the discomfiture was visibly felt as a benefit by most: but what were all applauses to the glad smile, threatening every moment to become a laugh, wherewith blumine herself repaid the victor? he ventured to address her she answered with attention: nay what if there were a slight tremor in that silver voice; what if the red glow of evening were hiding a transient blush! "the conversation took a higher tone, one fine thought called forth another: it was one of those rare seasons, when the soul expands with full freedom, and man feels himself brought near to man. gayly in light, graceful abandonment, the friendly talk played round that circle; for the burden was rolled from every heart; the barriers of ceremony, which are indeed the laws of polite living, had melted as into vapor; and the poor claims of _me_ and _thee_, no longer parted by rigid fences, now flowed softly into one another; and life lay all harmonious, many-tinted, like some fair royal champaign, the sovereign and owner of which were love only. such music springs from kind hearts, in a kind environment of place and time. and yet as the light grew more aerial on the mountaintops, and the shadows fell longer over the valley, some faint tone of sadness may have breathed through the heart; and, in whispers more or less audible, reminded every one that as this bright day was drawing towards its close, so likewise must the day of man's existence decline into dust and darkness; and with all its sick toilings, and joyful and mournful noises, sink in the still eternity. "to our friend the hours seemed moments; holy was he and happy: the words from those sweetest lips came over him like dew on thirsty grass; all better feelings in his soul seemed to whisper, it is good for us to be here. at parting, the blumine's hand was in his: in the balmy twilight, with the kind stars above them, he spoke something of meeting again, which was not contradicted; he pressed gently those small soft fingers, and it seemed as if they were not hastily, not angrily withdrawn." poor teufelsdrockh! it is clear to demonstration thou art smit: the queen of hearts would see a "man of genius" also sigh for her; and there, by art-magic, in that preternatural hour, has she bound and spell-bound thee. "love is not altogether a delirium," says he elsewhere; "yet has it many points in common therewith. i call it rather a discerning of the infinite in the finite, of the idea made real; which discerning again may be either true or false, either seraphic or demoniac, inspiration or insanity. but in the former case too, as in common madness, it is fantasy that superadds itself to sight; on the so petty domain of the actual plants its archimedes-lever, whereby to move at will the infinite spiritual. fantasy i might call the true heaven-gate and hell-gate of man: his sensuous life is but the small temporary stage (_zeitbuhne_), whereon thick-streaming influences from both these far yet near regions meet visibly, and act tragedy and melodrama. sense can support herself handsomely, in most countries, for some eighteenpence a day; but for fantasy planets and solar-systems will not suffice. witness your pyrrhus conquering the world, yet drinking no better red wine than he had before." alas! witness also your diogenes, flame-clad, scaling the upper heaven, and verging towards insanity, for prize of a "high-souled brunette," as if the earth held but one and not several of these! he says that, in town, they met again: "day after day, like his heart's sun, the blooming blumine shone on him. ah! a little while ago, and he was yet in all darkness: him what graceful (_holde_) would ever love? disbelieving all things, the poor youth had never learned to believe in himself. withdrawn, in proud timidity, within his own fastnesses; solitary from men, yet baited by night-spectres enough, he saw himself, with a sad indignation, constrained to renounce the fairest hopes of existence. and now, o now! 'she looks on thee,' cried he: 'she the fairest, noblest; do not her dark eyes tell thee, thou art not despised? the heaven's-messenger! all heaven's blessings be hers!' thus did soft melodies flow through his heart; tones of an infinite gratitude; sweetest intimations that he also was a man, that for him also unutterable joys had been provided. "in free speech, earnest or gay, amid lambent glances, laughter, tears, and often with the inarticulate mystic speech of music: such was the element they now lived in; in such a many-tinted, radiant aurora, and by this fairest of orient light-bringers must our friend be blandished, and the new apocalypse of nature enrolled to him. fairest blumine! and, even as a star, all fire and humid softness, a very light-ray incarnate! was there so much as a fault, a 'caprice,' he could have dispensed with? was she not to him in very deed a morning-star; did not her presence bring with it airs from heaven? as from aeolian harps in the breath of dawn, as from the memnon's statue struck by the rosy finger of aurora, unearthly music was around him, and lapped him into untried balmy rest. pale doubt fled away to the distance; life bloomed up with happiness and hope. the past, then, was all a haggard dream; he had been in the garden of eden, then, and could not discern it! but lo now! the black walls of his prison melt away; the captive is alive, is free. if he loved his disenchantress? _ach gott_! his whole heart and soul and life were hers, but never had he named it love: existence was all a feeling, not yet shaped into a thought." nevertheless, into a thought, nay into an action, it must be shaped; for neither disenchanter nor disenchantress, mere "children of time," can abide by feeling alone. the professor knows not, to this day, "how in her soft, fervid bosom the lovely found determination, even on hest of necessity, to cut asunder these so blissful bonds." he even appears surprised at the "duenna cousin," whoever she may have been, "in whose meagre hunger-bitten philosophy, the religion of young hearts was, from the first, faintly approved of." we, even at such distance, can explain it without necromancy. let the philosopher answer this one question: what figure, at that period, was a mrs. teufelsdrockh likely to make in polished society? could she have driven so much as a brass-bound gig, or even a simple iron-spring one? thou foolish "absolved auscultator," before whom lies no prospect of capital, will any yet known "religion of young hearts" keep the human kitchen warm? pshaw! thy divine blumine, when she "resigned herself to wed some richer," shows more philosophy, though but "a woman of genius," than thou, a pretended man. our readers have witnessed the origin of this love-mania, and with what royal splendor it waxes, and rises. let no one ask us to unfold the glories of its dominant state; much less the horrors of its almost instantaneous dissolution. how from such inorganic masses, henceforth madder than ever, as lie in these bags, can even fragments of a living delineation be organized? besides, of what profit were it? we view, with a lively pleasure, the gay silk montgolfier start from the ground, and shoot upwards, cleaving the liquid deeps, till it dwindle to a luminous star: but what is there to look longer on, when once, by natural elasticity, or accident of fire, it has exploded? a hapless air-navigator, plunging, amid torn parachutes, sand-bags, and confused wreck, fast enough into the jaws of the devil! suffice it to know that teufelsdrockh rose into the highest regions of the empyrean, by a natural parabolic track, and returned thence in a quick perpendicular one. for the rest, let any feeling reader, who has been unhappy enough to do the like, paint it out for himself: considering only that if he, for his perhaps comparatively insignificant mistress, underwent such agonies and frenzies, what must teufelsdrockh's have been, with a fire-heart, and for a nonpareil blumine! we glance merely at the final scene:-- "one morning, he found his morning-star all dimmed and dusky-red; the fair creature was silent, absent, she seemed to have been weeping. alas, no longer a morning-star, but a troublous skyey portent, announcing that the doomsday had dawned! she said, in a tremulous voice, they were to meet no more." the thunder-struck air-sailor is not wanting to himself in this dread hour: but what avails it? we omit the passionate expostulations, entreaties, indignations, since all was vain, and not even an explanation was conceded him; and hasten to the catastrophe. "'farewell, then, madam!' said he, not without sternness, for his stung pride helped him. she put her hand in his, she looked in his face, tears started to her eyes; in wild audacity he clasped her to his bosom; their lips were joined, their two souls, like two dew-drops, rushed into one,--for the first time and for the last!" thus was teufelsdrockh made immortal by a kiss. and then? why, then--"thick curtains of night rushed over his soul, as rose the immeasurable crash of doom; and through the ruins as of a shivered universe was he falling, falling, towards the abyss." chapter vi. sorrows of teufelsdrockh. we have long felt that, with a man like our professor, matters must often be expected to take a course of their own; that in so multiplex, intricate a nature, there might be channels, both for admitting and emitting, such as the psychologist had seldom noted; in short, that on no grand occasion and convulsion, neither in the joy-storm nor in the woe-storm could you predict his demeanor. to our less philosophical readers, for example, it is now clear that the so passionate teufelsdrockh precipitated through "a shivered universe" in this extraordinary way, has only one of three things which he can next do: establish himself in bedlam; begin writing satanic poetry; or blow out his brains. in the progress towards any of which consummations, do not such readers anticipate extravagance enough; breast-beating, brow-beating (against walls), lion-bellowings of blasphemy and the like, stampings, smitings, breakages of furniture, if not arson itself? nowise so does teufelsdrockh deport him. he quietly lifts his _pilgerstab_ (pilgrim-staff), "old business being soon wound up;" and begins a perambulation and circumambulation of the terraqueous globe! curious it is, indeed, how with such vivacity of conception, such intensity of feeling, above all, with these unconscionable habits of exaggeration in speech, he combines that wonderful stillness of his, that stoicism in external procedure. thus, if his sudden bereavement, in this matter of the flower-goddess, is talked of as a real doomsday and dissolution of nature, in which light doubtless it partly appeared to himself, his own nature is nowise dissolved thereby; but rather is compressed closer. for once, as we might say, a blumine by magic appliances has unlocked that shut heart of his, and its hidden things rush out tumultuous, boundless, like genii enfranchised from their glass vial: but no sooner are your magic appliances withdrawn, than the strange casket of a heart springs to again; and perhaps there is now no key extant that will open it; for a teufelsdrockh as we remarked, will not love a second time. singular diogenes! no sooner has that heart-rending occurrence fairly taken place, than he affects to regard it as a thing natural, of which there is nothing more to be said. "one highest hope, seemingly legible in the eyes of an angel, had recalled him as out of death-shadows into celestial life: but a gleam of tophet passed over the face of his angel; he was rapt away in whirlwinds, and heard the laughter of demons. it was a calenture," adds he, "whereby the youth saw green paradise-groves in the waste ocean-waters: a lying vision, yet not wholly a lie, for _he_ saw it." but what things soever passed in him, when he ceased to see it; what ragings and despairings soever teufelsdrockh's soul was the scene of, he has the goodness to conceal under a quite opaque cover of silence. we know it well; the first mad paroxysm past, our brave gneschen collected his dismembered philosophies, and buttoned himself together; he was meek, silent, or spoke of the weather and the journals: only by a transient knitting of those shaggy brows, by some deep flash of those eyes, glancing one knew not whether with tear-dew or with fierce fire,--might you have guessed what a gehenna was within: that a whole satanic school were spouting, though inaudibly, there. to consume your own choler, as some chimneys consume their own smoke; to keep a whole satanic school spouting, if it must spout, inaudibly, is a negative yet no slight virtue, nor one of the commonest in these times. nevertheless, we will not take upon us to say, that in the strange measure he fell upon, there was not a touch of latent insanity; whereof indeed the actual condition of these documents in _capricornus_ and _aquarius is_ no bad emblem. his so unlimited wanderings, toilsome enough, are without assigned or perhaps assignable aim; internal unrest seems his sole guidance; he wanders, wanders, as if that curse of the prophet had fallen on him, and he were "made like unto a wheel." doubtless, too, the chaotic nature of these paper-bags aggravates our obscurity. quite without note of preparation, for example, we come upon the following slip: "a peculiar feeling it is that will rise in the traveller, when turning some hill-range in his desert road, he descries lying far below, embosomed among its groves and green natural bulwarks, and all diminished to a toy-box, the fair town, where so many souls, as it were seen and yet unseen, are driving their multifarious traffic. its white steeple is then truly a starward-pointing finger; the canopy of blue smoke seems like a sort of lifebreath: for always, of its own unity, the soul gives unity to whatsoever it looks on with love; thus does the little dwelling-place of men, in itself a congeries of houses and huts, become for us an individual, almost a person. but what thousand other thoughts unite thereto, if the place has to ourselves been the arena of joyous or mournful experiences; if perhaps the cradle we were rocked in still stands there, if our loving ones still dwell there, if our buried ones there slumber!" does teufelsdrockh as the wounded eagle is said to make for its own eyrie, and indeed military deserters, and all hunted outcast creatures, turn as if by instinct in the direction of their birthland,--fly first, in this extremity, towards his native entepfuhl; but reflecting that there no help awaits him, take only one wistful look from the distance, and then wend elsewhither? little happier seems to be his next flight: into the wilds of nature; as if in her mother-bosom he would seek healing. so at least we incline to interpret the following notice, separated from the former by some considerable space, wherein, however, is nothing noteworthy:-- "mountains were not new to him; but rarely are mountains seen in such combined majesty and grace as here. the rocks are of that sort called primitive by the mineralogists, which always arrange themselves in masses of a rugged, gigantic character; which ruggedness, however, is here tempered by a singular airiness of form, and softness of environment: in a climate favorable to vegetation, the gray cliff, itself covered with lichens, shoots up through a garment of foliage or verdure; and white, bright cottages, tree-shaded, cluster round the everlasting granite. in fine vicissitude, beauty alternates with grandeur: you ride through stony hollows, along strait passes, traversed by torrents, overhung by high walls of rock; now winding amid broken shaggy chasms, and huge fragments; now suddenly emerging into some emerald valley, where the streamlet collects itself into a lake, and man has again found a fair dwelling, and it seems as if peace had established herself in the bosom of strength. "to peace, however, in this vortex of existence, can the son of time not pretend: still less if some spectre haunt him from the past; and the future is wholly a stygian darkness, spectre-bearing. reasonably might the wanderer exclaim to himself: are not the gates of this world's happiness inexorably shut against thee; hast thou a hope that is not mad? nevertheless, one may still murmur audibly, or in the original greek if that suit thee better: 'whoso can look on death will start at no shadows.' "from such meditations is the wanderer's attention called outwards; for now the valley closes in abruptly, intersected by a huge mountain mass, the stony water-worn ascent of which is not to be accomplished on horseback. arrived aloft, he finds himself again lifted into the evening sunset light; and cannot but pause, and gaze round him, some moments there. an upland irregular expanse of wold, where valleys in complex branchings are suddenly or slowly arranging their descent towards every quarter of the sky. the mountain-ranges are beneath your feet, and folded together: only the loftier summits look down here and there as on a second plain; lakes also lie clear and earnest in their solitude. no trace of man now visible; unless indeed it were he who fashioned that little visible link of highway, here, as would seem, scaling the inaccessible, to unite province with province. but sunwards, lo you! how it towers sheer up, a world of mountains, the diadem and centre of the mountain region! a hundred and a hundred savage peaks, in the last light of day; all glowing, of gold and amethyst, like giant spirits of the wilderness; there in their silence, in their solitude, even as on the night when noah's deluge first dried! beautiful, nay solemn, was the sudden aspect to our wanderer. he gazed over those stupendous masses with wonder, almost with longing desire; never till this hour had he known nature, that she was one, that she was his mother and divine. and as the ruddy glow was fading into clearness in the sky, and the sun had now departed, a murmur of eternity and immensity, of death and of life, stole through his soul; and he felt as if death and life were one, as if the earth were not dead, as if the spirit of the earth had its throne in that splendor, and his own spirit were therewith holding communion. "the spell was broken by a sound of carriage-wheels. emerging from the hidden northward, to sink soon into the hidden southward, came a gay barouche-and-four: it was open; servants and postilions wore wedding favors: that happy pair, then, had found each other, it was their marriage evening! few moments brought them near: _du himmel_! it was herr towgood and--blumine! with slight unrecognizing salutation they passed me; plunged down amid the neighboring thickets, onwards, to heaven, and to england; and i, in my friend richter's words, _i remained alone, behind them, with the night_." were it not cruel in these circumstances, here might be the place to insert an observation, gleaned long ago from the great _clothes-volume_, where it stands with quite other intent: "some time before small-pox was extirpated," says the professor, "there came a new malady of the spiritual sort on europe: i mean the epidemic, now endemical, of view-hunting. poets of old date, being privileged with senses, had also enjoyed external nature; but chiefly as we enjoy the crystal cup which holds good or bad liquor for us; that is to say, in silence, or with slight incidental commentary: never, as i compute, till after the _sorrows of werter_, was there man found who would say: come let us make a description! having drunk the liquor, come let us eat the glass! of which endemic the jenner is unhappily still to seek." too true! we reckon it more important to remark that the professor's wanderings, so far as his stoical and cynical envelopment admits us to clear insight, here first take their permanent character, fatuous or not. that basilisk-glance of the barouche-and-four seems to have withered up what little remnant of a purpose may have still lurked in him: life has become wholly a dark labyrinth; wherein, through long years, our friend, flying from spectres, has to stumble about at random, and naturally with more haste than progress. foolish were it in us to attempt following him, even from afar, in this extraordinary world-pilgrimage of his; the simplest record of which, were clear record possible, would fill volumes. hopeless is the obscurity, unspeakable the confusion. he glides from country to country, from condition to condition; vanishing and reappearing, no man can calculate how or where. through all quarters of the world he wanders, and apparently through all circles of society. if in any scene, perhaps difficult to fix geographically, he settles for a time, and forms connections, be sure he will snap them abruptly asunder. let him sink out of sight as private scholar (_privatsirender_), living by the grace of god in some european capital, you may next find him as hadjee in the neighborhood of mecca. it is an inexplicable phantasmagoria, capricious, quick-changing; as if our traveller, instead of limbs and highways, had transported himself by some wishing-carpet, or fortunatus' hat. the whole, too, imparted emblematically, in dim multifarious tokens (as that collection of street-advertisements); with only some touch of direct historical notice sparingly interspersed: little light-islets in the world of haze! so that, from this point, the professor is more of an enigma than ever. in figurative language, we might say he becomes, not indeed a spirit, yet spiritualized, vaporized. fact unparalleled in biography: the river of his history, which we have traced from its tiniest fountains, and hoped to see flow onward, with increasing current, into the ocean, here dashes itself over that terrific lover's leap; and, as a mad-foaming cataract, flies wholly into tumultuous clouds of spray! low down it indeed collects again into pools and plashes; yet only at a great distance, and with difficulty, if at all, into a general stream. to cast a glance into certain of those pools and plashes, and trace whither they run, must, for a chapter or two, form the limit of our endeavor. for which end doubtless those direct historical notices, where they can be met with, are the best. nevertheless, of this sort too there occurs much, which, with our present light, it were questionable to emit. teufelsdrockh vibrating everywhere between the highest and the lowest levels, comes into contact with public history itself. for example, those conversations and relations with illustrious persons, as sultan mahmoud, the emperor napoleon, and others, are they not as yet rather of a diplomatic character than of a biographic? the editor, appreciating the sacredness of crowned heads, nay perhaps suspecting the possible trickeries of a clothes-philosopher, will eschew this province for the present; a new time may bring new insight and a different duty. if we ask now, not indeed with what ulterior purpose, for there was none, yet with what immediate outlooks; at all events, in what mood of mind, the professor undertook and prosecuted this world-pilgrimage,--the answer is more distinct than favorable. "a nameless unrest," says he, "urged me forward; to which the outward motion was some momentary lying solace. whither should i go? my loadstars were blotted out; in that canopy of grim fire shone no star. yet forward must i; the ground burnt under me; there was no rest for the sole of my foot. i was alone, alone! ever too the strong inward longing shaped phantasms for itself: towards these, one after the other, must i fruitlessly wander. a feeling i had, that for my fever-thirst there was and must be somewhere a healing fountain. to many fondly imagined fountains, the saints' wells of these days, did i pilgrim; to great men, to great cities, to great events: but found there no healing. in strange countries, as in the well-known; in savage deserts, as in the press of corrupt civilization, it was ever the same: how could your wanderer escape from--_his own shadow_? nevertheless still forward! i felt as if in great haste; to do i saw not what. from the depths of my own heart, it called to me, forwards! the winds and the streams, and all nature sounded to me, forwards! _ach gott_, i was even, once for all, a son of time." from which is it not clear that the internal satanic school was still active enough? he says elsewhere: "the _enchiridion of epictetus_ i had ever with me, often as my sole rational companion; and regret to mention that the nourishment it yielded was trifling." thou foolish teufelsdrockh how could it else? hadst thou not greek enough to understand thus much: _the end of man is an action, and not a thought_, though it were the noblest? "how i lived?" writes he once: "friend, hast thou considered the 'rugged all-nourishing earth,' as sophocles well names her; how she feeds the sparrow on the house-top, much more her darling, man? while thou stirrest and livest, thou hast a probability of victual. my breakfast of tea has been cooked by a tartar woman, with water of the amur, who wiped her earthen kettle with a horse-tail. i have roasted wild eggs in the sand of sahara; i have awakened in paris _estrapades_ and vienna _malzleins_, with no prospect of breakfast beyond elemental liquid. that i had my living to seek saved me from dying,--by suicide. in our busy europe, is there not an everlasting demand for intellect, in the chemical, mechanical, political, religious, educational, commercial departments? in pagan countries, cannot one write fetishes? living! little knowest thou what alchemy is in an inventive soul; how, as with its little finger, it can create provision enough for the body (of a philosopher); and then, as with both hands, create quite other than provision; namely, spectres to torment itself withal." poor teufelsdrockh! flying with hunger always parallel to him; and a whole infernal chase in his rear; so that the countenance of hunger is comparatively a friend's! thus must he, in the temper of ancient cain, or of the modern wandering jew,--save only that he feels himself not guilty and but suffering the pains of guilt,--wend to and fro with aimless speed. thus must he, over the whole surface of the earth (by footprints), write his _sorrows of teufelsdrockh_; even as the great goethe, in passionate words, had to write his _sorrows of werter_, before the spirit freed herself, and he could become a man. vain truly is the hope of your swiftest runner to escape "from his own shadow"! nevertheless, in these sick days, when the born of heaven first descries himself (about the age of twenty) in a world such as ours, richer than usual in two things, in truths grown obsolete, and trades grown obsolete,--what can the fool think but that it is all a den of lies, wherein whoso will not speak lies and act lies, must stand idle and despair? whereby it happens that, for your nobler minds, the publishing of some such work of art, in one or the other dialect, becomes almost a necessity. for what is it properly but an altercation with the devil, before you begin honestly fighting him? your byron publishes his _sorrows of lord george_, in verse and in prose, and copiously otherwise: your bonaparte represents his _sorrows of napoleon_ opera, in an all-too stupendous style; with music of cannon-volleys, and murder-shrieks of a world; his stage-lights are the fires of conflagration; his rhyme and recitative are the tramp of embattled hosts and the sound of falling cities.--happier is he who, like our clothes-philosopher, can write such matter, since it must be written, on the insensible earth, with his shoe-soles only; and also survive the writing thereof! chapter vii. the everlasting no. under the strange nebulous envelopment, wherein our professor has now shrouded himself, no doubt but his spiritual nature is nevertheless progressive, and growing: for how can the "son of time," in any case, stand still? we behold him, through those dim years, in a state of crisis, of transition: his mad pilgrimings, and general solution into aimless discontinuity, what is all this but a mad fermentation; wherefrom the fiercer it is, the clearer product will one day evolve itself? such transitions are ever full of pain: thus the eagle when he moults is sickly; and, to attain his new beak, must harshly dash off the old one upon rocks. what stoicism soever our wanderer, in his individual acts and motions, may affect, it is clear that there is a hot fever of anarchy and misery raging within; coruscations of which flash out: as, indeed, how could there be other? have we not seen him disappointed, bemocked of destiny, through long years? all that the young heart might desire and pray for has been denied; nay, as in the last worst instance, offered and then snatched away. ever an "excellent passivity;" but of useful, reasonable activity, essential to the former as food to hunger, nothing granted: till at length, in this wild pilgrimage, he must forcibly seize for himself an activity, though useless, unreasonable. alas, his cup of bitterness, which had been filling drop by drop, ever since that first "ruddy morning" in the hinterschlag gymnasium, was at the very lip; and then with that poison-drop, of the towgood-and-blumine business, it runs over, and even hisses over in a deluge of foam. he himself says once, with more justness than originality: "men is, properly speaking, based upon hope, he has no other possession but hope; this world of his is emphatically the place of hope." what, then, was our professor's possession? we see him, for the present, quite shut out from hope; looking not into the golden orient, but vaguely all round into a dim copper firmament, pregnant with earthquake and tornado. alas, shut out from hope, in a deeper sense than we yet dream of! for, as he wanders wearisomely through this world, he has now lost all tidings of another and higher. full of religion, or at least of religiosity, as our friend has since exhibited himself, he hides not that, in those days, he was wholly irreligious: "doubt had darkened into unbelief," says he; "shade after shade goes grimly over your soul, till you have the fixed, starless, tartarean black." to such readers as have reflected, what can be called reflecting, on man's life, and happily discovered, in contradiction to much profit-and-loss philosophy, speculative and practical, that soul is not synonymous with stomach; who understand, therefore, in our friend's words, "that, for man's well-being, faith is properly the one thing needful; how, with it, martyrs, otherwise weak, can cheerfully endure the shame and the cross; and without it, worldlings puke up their sick existence, by suicide, in the midst of luxury:" to such it will be clear that, for a pure moral nature, the loss of his religious belief was the loss of everything. unhappy young man! all wounds, the crush of long-continued destitution, the stab of false friendship and of false love, all wounds in thy so genial heart, would have healed again, had not its life-warmth been withdrawn. well might he exclaim, in his wild way: "is there no god, then; but at best an absentee god, sitting idle, ever since the first sabbath, at the outside of his universe, and _see_ing it go? has the word duty no meaning; is what we call duty no divine messenger and guide, but a false earthly phantasm, made up of desire and fear, of emanations from the gallows and from doctor graham's celestial-bed? happiness of an approving conscience! did not paul of tarsus, whom admiring men have since named saint, feel that _he_ was 'the chief of sinners;' and nero of rome, jocund in spirit (_wohlgemuth_), spend much of his time in fiddling? foolish wordmonger and motive-grinder, who in thy logic-mill hast an earthly mechanism for the godlike itself, and wouldst fain grind me out virtue from the husks of pleasure,--i tell thee, nay! to the unregenerate prometheus vinctus of a man, it is ever the bitterest aggravation of his wretchedness that he is conscious of virtue, that he feels himself the victim not of suffering only, but of injustice. what then? is the heroic inspiration we name virtue but some passion; some bubble of the blood, bubbling in the direction others _profit_ by? i know not: only this i know, if what thou namest happiness be our true aim, then are we all astray. with stupidity and sound digestion man may front much. but what, in these dull unimaginative days, are the terrors of conscience to the diseases of the liver! not on morality, but on cookery, let us build our stronghold: there brandishing our frying-pan, as censer, let us offer sweet incense to the devil, and live at ease on the fat things he has provided for his elect!" thus has the bewildered wanderer to stand, as so many have done, shouting question after question into the sibyl-cave of destiny, and receive no answer but an echo. it is all a grim desert, this once-fair world of his; wherein is heard only the howling of wild beasts, or the shrieks of despairing, hate-filled men; and no pillar of cloud by day, and no pillar of fire by night, any longer guides the pilgrim. to such length has the spirit of inquiry carried him. "but what boots it (_was thut's_)?" cries he: "it is but the common lot in this era. not having come to spiritual majority prior to the _siecle de louis quinze_, and not being born purely a loghead (_dummkopf_ ), thou hadst no other outlook. the whole world is, like thee, sold to unbelief; their old temples of the godhead, which for long have not been rain-proof, crumble down; and men ask now: where is the godhead; our eyes never saw him?" pitiful enough were it, for all these wild utterances, to call our diogenes wicked. unprofitable servants as we all are, perhaps at no era of his life was he more decisively the servant of goodness, the servant of god, than even now when doubting god's existence. "one circumstance i note," says he: "after all the nameless woe that inquiry, which for me, what it is not always, was genuine love of truth, had wrought me! i nevertheless still loved truth, and would bate no jot of my allegiance to her. 'truth!' i cried, 'though the heavens crush me for following her: no falsehood! though a whole celestial lubberland were the price of apostasy.' in conduct it was the same. had a divine messenger from the clouds, or miraculous handwriting on the wall, convincingly proclaimed to me _this thou shalt do_, with what passionate readiness, as i often thought, would i have done it, had it been leaping into the infernal fire. thus, in spite of all motive-grinders, and mechanical profit-and-loss philosophies, with the sick ophthalmia and hallucination they had brought on, was the infinite nature of duty still dimly present to me: living without god in the world, of god's light i was not utterly bereft; if my as yet sealed eyes, with their unspeakable longing, could nowhere see him, nevertheless in my heart he was present, and his heaven-written law still stood legible and sacred there." meanwhile, under all these tribulations, and temporal and spiritual destitutions, what must the wanderer, in his silent soul, have endured! "the painfullest feeling," writes he, "is that of your own feebleness (_unkraft_); ever, as the english milton says, to be weak is the true misery. and yet of your strength there is and can be no clear feeling, save by what you have prospered in, by what you have done. between vague wavering capability and fixed indubitable performance, what a difference! a certain inarticulate self-consciousness dwells dimly in us; which only our works can render articulate and decisively discernible. our works are the mirror wherein the spirit first sees its natural lineaments. hence, too, the folly of that impossible precept, _know thyself_; till it be translated into this partially possible one, _know what thou canst work at_. "but for me, so strangely unprosperous had i been, the net-result of my workings amounted as yet simply to--nothing. how then could i believe in my strength, when there was as yet no mirror to see it in? ever did this agitating, yet, as i now perceive, quite frivolous question, remain to me insoluble: hast thou a certain faculty, a certain worth, such even as the most have not; or art thou the completest dullard of these modern times? alas, the fearful unbelief is unbelief in yourself; and how could i believe? had not my first, last faith in myself, when even to me the heavens seemed laid open, and i dared to love, been all too cruelly belied? the speculative mystery of life grew ever more mysterious to me: neither in the practical mystery had i made the slightest progress, but been everywhere buffeted, foiled, and contemptuously cast out. a feeble unit in the middle of a threatening infinitude, i seemed to have nothing given me but eyes, whereby to discern my own wretchedness. invisible yet impenetrable walls, as of enchantment, divided me from all living: was there, in the wide world, any true bosom i could press trustfully to mine? o heaven, no, there was none! i kept a lock upon my lips: why should i speak much with that shifting variety of so-called friends, in whose withered, vain and too-hungry souls friendship was but an incredible tradition? in such cases, your resource is to talk little, and that little mostly from the newspapers. now when i look back, it was a strange isolation i then lived in. the men and women around me, even speaking with me, were but figures; i had, practically, forgotten that they were alive, that they were not merely automatic. in the midst of their crowded streets and assemblages, i walked solitary; and (except as it was my own heart, not another's, that i kept devouring) savage also, as the tiger in his jungle. some comfort it would have been, could i, like a faust, have fancied myself tempted and tormented of the devil; for a hell, as i imagine, without life, though only diabolic life, were more frightful: but in our age of down-pulling and disbelief, the very devil has been pulled down, you cannot so much as believe in a devil. to me the universe was all void of life, of purpose, of volition, even of hostility: it was one huge, dead, immeasurable steam-engine, rolling on, in its dead indifference, to grind me limb from limb. oh, the vast, gloomy, solitary golgotha, and mill of death! why was the living banished thither companionless, conscious? why, if there is no devil; nay, unless the devil is your god?" a prey incessantly to such corrosions, might not, moreover, as the worst aggravation to them, the iron constitution even of a teufelsdrockh threaten to fail? we conjecture that he has known sickness; and, in spite of his locomotive habits, perhaps sickness of the chronic sort. hear this, for example: "how beautiful to die of broken-heart, on paper! quite another thing in practice; every window of your feeling, even of your intellect, as it were, begrimed and mud-bespattered, so that no pure ray can enter; a whole drug-shop in your inwards; the fordone soul drowning slowly in quagmires of disgust!" putting all which external and internal miseries together, may we not find in the following sentences, quite in our professor's still vein, significance enough? "from suicide a certain after-shine (_nachschein_) of christianity withheld me: perhaps also a certain indolence of character; for, was not that a remedy i had at any time within reach? often, however, was there a question present to me: should some one now, at the turning of that corner, blow thee suddenly out of space, into the other world, or other no-world, by pistol-shot,--how were it? on which ground, too, i have often, in sea-storms and sieged cities and other death-scenes, exhibited an imperturbability, which passed, falsely enough, for courage." "so had it lasted," concludes the wanderer, "so had it lasted, as in bitter protracted death-agony, through long years. the heart within me, unvisited by any heavenly dew-drop, was smouldering in sulphurous, slow-consuming fire. almost since earliest memory i had shed no tear; or once only when i, murmuring half-audibly, recited faust's death-song, that wild _selig der den er im siegesglanze findet_ (happy whom _he_ finds in battle's splendor), and thought that of this last friend even i was not forsaken, that destiny itself could not doom me not to die. having no hope, neither had i any definite fear, were it of man or of devil: nay, i often felt as if it might be solacing, could the arch-devil himself, though in tartarean terrors, but rise to me, that i might tell him a little of my mind. and yet, strangely enough, i lived in a continual, indefinite, pining fear; tremulous, pusillanimous, apprehensive of i knew not what: it seemed as if all things in the heavens above and the earth beneath would hurt me; as if the heavens and the earth were but boundless jaws of a devouring monster, wherein i, palpitating, waited to be devoured. "full of such humor, and perhaps the miserablest man in the whole french capital or suburbs, was i, one sultry dog-day, after much perambulation, toiling along the dirty little _rue saint-thomas de l'enfer_, among civic rubbish enough, in a close atmosphere, and over pavements hot as nebuchadnezzar's furnace; whereby doubtless my spirits were little cheered; when, all at once, there rose a thought in me, and i asked myself: 'what _art_ thou afraid of? wherefore, like a coward, dost thou forever pip and whimper, and go cowering and trembling? despicable biped! what is the sum-total of the worst that lies before thee? death? well, death; and say the pangs of tophet too, and all that the devil and man may, will or can do against thee! hast thou not a heart; canst thou not suffer whatsoever it be; and, as a child of freedom, though outcast, trample tophet itself under thy feet, while it consumes thee? let it come, then; i will meet it and defy it!' and as i so thought, there rushed like a stream of fire over my whole soul; and i shook base fear away from me forever. i was strong, of unknown strength; a spirit, almost a god. ever from that time, the temper of my misery was changed: not fear or whining sorrow was it, but indignation and grim fire-eyed defiance. "thus had the everlasting no (_das ewige nein_) pealed authoritatively through all the recesses of my being, of my me; and then was it that my whole me stood up, in native god-created majesty, and with emphasis recorded its protest. such a protest, the most important transaction in life, may that same indignation and defiance, in a psychological point of view, be fitly called. the everlasting no had said: 'behold, thou art fatherless, outcast, and the universe is mine (the devil's);' to which my whole me now made answer: '_i_ am not thine, but free, and forever hate thee!' "it is from this hour that i incline to date my spiritual new-birth, or baphometic fire-baptism; perhaps i directly thereupon began to be a man." chapter viii. centre of indifference. though, after this "baphometic fire-baptism" of his, our wanderer signifies that his unrest was but increased; as, indeed, "indignation and defiance," especially against things in general, are not the most peaceable inmates; yet can the psychologist surmise that it was no longer a quite hopeless unrest; that henceforth it had at least a fixed centre to revolve round. for the fire-baptized soul, long so scathed and thunder-riven, here feels its own freedom, which feeling is its baphometic baptism: the citadel of its whole kingdom it has thus gained by assault, and will keep inexpugnable; outwards from which the remaining dominions, not indeed without hard battling, will doubtless by degrees be conquered and pacificated. under another figure, we might say, if in that great moment, in the _rue saint-thomas de l'enfer_, the old inward satanic school was not yet thrown out of doors, it received peremptory judicial notice to quit;--whereby, for the rest, its howl-chantings, ernulphus-cursings, and rebellious gnashings of teeth, might, in the mean while, become only the more tumultuous, and difficult to keep secret. accordingly, if we scrutinize these pilgrimings well, there is perhaps discernible henceforth a certain incipient method in their madness. not wholly as a spectre does teufelsdrockh now storm through the world; at worst as a spectra-fighting man, nay who will one day be a spectre-queller. if pilgriming restlessly to so many "saints' wells," and ever without quenching of his thirst, he nevertheless finds little secular wells, whereby from time to time some alleviation is ministered. in a word, he is now, if not ceasing, yet intermitting to "eat his own heart;" and clutches round him outwardly on the not-me for wholesomer food. does not the following glimpse exhibit him in a much more natural state? "towns also and cities, especially the ancient, i failed not to look upon with interest. how beautiful to see thereby, as through a long vista, into the remote time; to have, as it were, an actual section of almost the earliest past brought safe into the present, and set before your eyes! there, in that old city, was a live ember of culinary fire put down, say only two thousand years ago; and there, burning more or less triumphantly, with such fuel as the region yielded, it has burnt, and still burns, and thou thyself seest the very smoke thereof. ah! and the far more mysterious live ember of vital fire was then also put down there; and still miraculously burns and spreads; and the smoke and ashes thereof (in these judgment-halls and churchyards), and its bellows-engines (in these churches), thou still seest; and its flame, looking out from every kind countenance, and every hateful one, still warms thee or scorches thee. "of man's activity and attainment the chief results are aeriform, mystic, and preserved in tradition only: such are his forms of government, with the authority they rest on; his customs, or fashions both of cloth-habits and of soul-habits; much more his collective stock of handicrafts, the whole faculty he has acquired of manipulating nature: all these things, as indispensable and priceless as they are, cannot in any way be fixed under lock and key, but must flit, spirit-like, on impalpable vehicles, from father to son; if you demand sight of them, they are nowhere to be met with. visible ploughmen and hammermen there have been, ever from cain and tubal-cain downwards: but where does your accumulated agricultural, metallurgic, and other manufacturing skill lie warehoused? it transmits itself on the atmospheric air, on the sun's rays (by hearing and by vision); it is a thing aeriform, impalpable, of quite spiritual sort. in like manner, ask me not, where are the laws; where is the government? in vain wilt thou go to schonbrunn, to downing street, to the palais bourbon; thou findest nothing there but brick or stone houses, and some bundles of papers tied with tape. where, then, is that same cunningly devised almighty government of theirs to be laid hands on? everywhere, yet nowhere: seen only in its works, this too is a thing aeriform, invisible; or if you will, mystic and miraculous. so spiritual (_geistig_) is our whole daily life: all that we do springs out of mystery, spirit, invisible force; only like a little cloud-image, or armida's palace, air-built, does the actual body itself forth from the great mystic deep. "visible and tangible products of the past, again, i reckon up to the extent of three: cities, with their cabinets and arsenals; then tilled fields, to either or to both of which divisions roads with their bridges may belong; and thirdly--books. in which third truly, the last invented, lies a worth far surpassing that of the two others. wondrous indeed is the virtue of a true book. not like a dead city of stones, yearly crumbling, yearly needing repair; more like a tilled field, but then a spiritual field: like a spiritual tree, let me rather say, it stands from year to year, and from age to age (we have books that already number some hundred and fifty human ages); and yearly comes its new produce of leaves (commentaries, deductions, philosophical, political systems; or were it only sermons, pamphlets, journalistic essays), every one of which is talismanic and thaumaturgic, for it can persuade men. o thou who art able to write a book, which once in the two centuries or oftener there is a man gifted to do, envy not him whom they name city-builder, and inexpressibly pity him whom they name conqueror or city-burner! thou too art a conqueror and victor; but of the true sort, namely over the devil: thou too hast built what will outlast all marble and metal, and be a wonder-bringing city of the mind, a temple and seminary and prophetic mount, whereto all kindreds of the earth will pilgrim.--fool! why journeyest thou wearisomely, in thy antiquarian fervor, to gaze on the stone pyramids of geeza, or the clay ones of sacchara? these stand there, as i can tell thee, idle and inert, looking over the desert, foolishly enough, for the last three thousand years: but canst thou not open thy hebrew bible, then, or even luther's version thereof?" no less satisfactory is his sudden appearance not in battle, yet on some battle-field; which, we soon gather, must be that of wagram; so that here, for once, is a certain approximation to distinctness of date. omitting much, let us impart what follows:-- "horrible enough! a whole marchfeld strewed with shell-splinters, cannon-shot, ruined tumbrils, and dead men and horses; stragglers still remaining not so much as buried. and those red mould heaps; ay, there lie the shells of men, out of which all the life and virtue has been blown; and now are they swept together, and crammed down out of sight, like blown egg-shells!--did nature, when she bade the donau bring down his mould-cargoes from the carinthian and carpathian heights, and spread them out here into the softest, richest level,--intend thee, o marchfeld, for a corn-bearing nursery, whereon her children might be nursed; or for a cockpit, wherein they might the more commodiously be throttled and tattered? were thy three broad highways, meeting here from the ends of europe, made for ammunition-wagons, then? were thy wagrams and stillfrieds but so many ready-built casemates, wherein the house of hapsburg might batter with artillery, and with artillery be battered? konig ottokar, amid yonder hillocks, dies under rodolf's truncheon; here kaiser franz falls a-swoon under napoleon's: within which five centuries, to omit the others, how has thy breast, fair plain, been defaced and defiled! the greensward is torn up and trampled down; man's fond care of it, his fruit-trees, hedge-rows, and pleasant dwellings, blown away with gunpowder; and the kind seedfield lies a desolate, hideous place of skulls.--nevertheless, nature is at work; neither shall these powder-devilkins with their utmost devilry gainsay her: but all that gore and carnage will be shrouded in, absorbed into manure; and next year the marchfeld will be green, nay greener. thrifty unwearied nature, ever out of our great waste educing some little profit of thy own,--how dost thou, from the very carcass of the killer, bring life for the living! "what, speaking in quite unofficial language, is the net purport and upshot of war? to my own knowledge, for example, there dwell and toil, in the british village of dumdrudge, usually some five hundred souls. from these, by certain 'natural enemies' of the french, there are successively selected, during the french war, say thirty able-bodied men; dumdrudge, at her own expense, has suckled and nursed them: she has, not without difficulty and sorrow, fed them up to manhood, and even trained them to crafts, so that one can weave, another build, another hammer, and the weakest can stand under thirty stone avoirdupois. nevertheless, amid much weeping and swearing, they are selected; all dressed in red; and shipped away, at the public charges, some two thousand miles, or say only to the south of spain; and fed there till wanted. and now to that same spot, in the south of spain, are thirty similar french artisans, from a french dumdrudge, in like manner wending: till at length, after infinite effort, the two parties come into actual juxtaposition; and thirty stands fronting thirty, each with a gun in his hand. straightaway the word 'fire!' is given; and they blow the souls out of one another; and in place of sixty brisk useful craftsmen, the world has sixty dead carcasses, which it must bury, and anew shed tears for. had these men any quarrel? busy as the devil is, not the smallest! they lived far enough apart; were the entirest strangers; nay, in so wide a universe, there was even, unconsciously, by commerce, some mutual helpfulness between them. how then? simpleton! their governors had fallen out; and instead of shooting one another, had the cunning to make these poor blockheads shoot.--alas, so is it in deutschland, and hitherto in all other lands; still as of old, 'what devilry soever kings do, the greeks must pay the piper!'--in that fiction of the english smollett, it is true, the final cessation of war is perhaps prophetically shadowed forth; where the two natural enemies, in person, take each a tobacco-pipe, filled with brimstone; light the same, and smoke in one another's faces, till the weaker gives in: but from such predicted peace-era, what blood-filled trenches, and contentious centuries, may still divide us!" thus can the professor, at least in lucid intervals, look away from his own sorrows, over the many-colored world, and pertinently enough note what is passing there. we may remark, indeed, that for the matter of spiritual culture, if for nothing else, perhaps few periods of his life were richer than this. internally, there is the most momentous instructive course of practical philosophy, with experiments, going on; towards the right comprehension of which his peripatetic habits, favorable to meditation, might help him rather than hinder. externally, again, as he wanders to and fro, there are, if for the longing heart little substance, yet for the seeing eye sights enough in these so boundless travels of his, granting that the satanic school was even partially kept down, what an incredible knowledge of our planet, and its inhabitants and their works, that is to say, of all knowable things, might not teufelsdrockh acquire! "i have read in most public libraries," says he, "including those of constantinople and samarcand: in most colleges, except the chinese mandarin ones, i have studied, or seen that there was no studying. unknown languages have i oftenest gathered from their natural repertory, the air, by my organ of hearing; statistics, geographics, topographics came, through the eye, almost of their own accord. the ways of man, how he seeks food, and warmth, and protection for himself, in most regions, are ocularly known to me. like the great hadrian, i meted out much of the terraqueous globe with a pair of compasses that belonged to myself only. "of great scenes why speak? three summer days, i lingered reflecting, and even composing (_dichtete_), by the pine-chasms of vaucluse; and in that clear lakelet moistened my bread. i have sat under the palm-trees of tadmor; smoked a pipe among the ruins of babylon. the great wall of china i have seen; and can testify that it is of gray brick, coped and covered with granite, and shows only second-rate masonry.--great events, also, have not i witnessed? kings sweated down (_ausgemergelt_) into berlin-and-milan customhouse-officers; the world well won, and the world well lost; oftener than once a hundred thousand individuals shot (by each other) in one day. all kindreds and peoples and nations dashed together, and shifted and shovelled into heaps, that they might ferment there, and in time unite. the birth-pangs of democracy, wherewith convulsed europe was groaning in cries that reached heaven, could not escape me. "for great men i have ever had the warmest predilection; and can perhaps boast that few such in this era have wholly escaped me. great men are the inspired (speaking and acting) texts of that divine book of revelations, whereof a chapter is completed from epoch to epoch, and by some named history; to which inspired texts your numerous talented men, and your innumerable untalented men, are the better or worse exegetic commentaries, and wagon-load of too-stupid, heretical or orthodox, weekly sermons. for my study, the inspired texts themselves! thus did not i, in very early days, having disguised me as tavern-waiter, stand behind the field-chairs, under that shady tree at treisnitz by the jena highway; waiting upon the great schiller and greater goethe; and hearing what i have not forgotten. for--" --but at this point the editor recalls his principle of caution, some time ago laid down, and must suppress much. let not the sacredness of laurelled, still more, of crowned heads, be tampered with. should we, at a future day, find circumstances altered, and the time come for publication, then may these glimpses into the privacy of the illustrious be conceded; which for the present were little better than treacherous, perhaps traitorous eavesdroppings. of lord byron, therefore, of pope pius, emperor tarakwang, and the "white water-roses" (chinese carbonari) with their mysteries, no notice here! of napoleon himself we shall only, glancing from afar, remark that teufelsdrockh's relation to him seems to have been of very varied character. at first we find our poor professor on the point of being shot as a spy; then taken into private conversation, even pinched on the ear, yet presented with no money; at last indignantly dismissed, almost thrown out of doors, as an "ideologist." "he himself," says the professor, "was among the completest ideologists, at least ideopraxists: in the idea (_in der idee_) he lived, moved and fought. the man was a divine missionary, though unconscious of it; and preached, through the cannon's throat, that great doctrine, _la carriere ouverte aux talens_ (the tools to him that can handle them), which is our ultimate political evangel, wherein alone can liberty lie. madly enough he preached, it is true, as enthusiasts and first missionaries are wont, with imperfect utterance, amid much frothy rant; yet as articulately perhaps as the case admitted. or call him, if you will, an american backwoodsman, who had to fell unpenetrated forests, and battle with innumerable wolves, and did not entirely forbear strong liquor, rioting, and even theft; whom, notwithstanding, the peaceful sower will follow, and, as he cuts the boundless harvest, bless." more legitimate and decisively authentic is teufelsdrockh's appearance and emergence (we know not well whence) in the solitude of the north cape, on that june midnight. he has a "light-blue spanish cloak" hanging round him, as his "most commodious, principal, indeed sole upper-garment;" and stands there, on the world-promontory, looking over the infinite brine, like a little blue belfry (as we figure), now motionless indeed, yet ready, if stirred, to ring quaintest changes. "silence as of death," writes he; "for midnight, even in the arctic latitudes, has its character: nothing but the granite cliffs ruddy-tinged, the peaceable gurgle of that slow-heaving polar ocean, over which in the utmost north the great sun hangs low and lazy, as if he too were slumbering. yet is his cloud-couch wrought of crimson and cloth-of-gold; yet does his light stream over the mirror of waters, like a tremulous fire-pillar, shooting downwards to the abyss, and hide itself under my feet. in such moments, solitude also is invaluable; for who would speak, or be looked on, when behind him lies all europe and africa, fast asleep, except the watchmen; and before him the silent immensity, and palace of the eternal, whereof our sun is but a porch-lamp? "nevertheless, in this solemn moment comes a man, or monster, scrambling from among the rock-hollows; and, shaggy, huge as the hyperborean bear, hails me in russian speech: most probably, therefore, a russian smuggler. with courteous brevity, i signify my indifference to contraband trade, my humane intentions, yet strong wish to be private. in vain: the monster, counting doubtless on his superior stature, and minded to make sport for himself, or perhaps profit, were it with murder, continues to advance; ever assailing me with his importunate train-oil breath; and now has advanced, till we stand both on the verge of the rock, the deep sea rippling greedily down below. what argument will avail? on the thick hyperborean, cherubic reasoning, seraphic eloquence were lost. prepared for such extremity, i, deftly enough, whisk aside one step; draw out, from my interior reservoirs, a sufficient birmingham horse-pistol, and say, 'be so obliging as retire, friend (_er ziehe sich zuruck, freund_), and with promptitude!' this logic even the hyperborean understands: fast enough, with apologetic, petitionary growl, he sidles off; and, except for suicidal as well as homicidal purposes, need not return. "such i hold to be the genuine use of gunpowder: that it makes all men alike tall. nay, if thou be cooler, cleverer than i, if thou have more _mind_, though all but no _body_ whatever, then canst thou kill me first, and art the taller. hereby, at last, is the goliath powerless, and the david resistless; savage animalism is nothing, inventive spiritualism is all. "with respect to duels, indeed, i have my own ideas. few things, in this so surprising world, strike me with more surprise. two little visual spectra of men, hovering with insecure enough cohesion in the midst of the unfathomable, and to dissolve therein, at any rate, very soon,--make pause at the distance of twelve paces asunder; whirl round; and, simultaneously by the cunningest mechanism, explode one another into dissolution; and off-hand become air, and non-extant! deuce on it (_verdammt_), the little spitfires!--nay, i think with old hugo von trimberg: 'god must needs laugh outright, could such a thing be, to see his wondrous manikins here below.'" but amid these specialties, let us not forget the great generality, which is our chief quest here: how prospered the inner man of teufelsdrockh, under so much outward shifting! does legion still lurk in him, though repressed; or has he exorcised that devil's brood? we can answer that the symptoms continue promising. experience is the grand spiritual doctor; and with him teufelsdrockh has now been long a patient, swallowing many a bitter bolus. unless our poor friend belong to the numerous class of incurables, which seems not likely, some cure will doubtless be effected. we should rather say that legion, or the satanic school, was now pretty well extirpated and cast out, but next to nothing introduced in its room; whereby the heart remains, for the while, in a quiet but no comfortable state. "at length, after so much roasting," thus writes our autobiographer, "i was what you might name calcined. pray only that it be not rather, as is the more frequent issue, reduced to a _caput-mortuum_! but in any case, by mere dint of practice, i had grown familiar with many things. wretchedness was still wretched; but i could now partly see through it, and despise it. which highest mortal, in this inane existence, had i not found a shadow-hunter, or shadow-hunted; and, when i looked through his brave garnitures, miserable enough? thy wishes have all been sniffed aside, thought i: but what, had they even been all granted! did not the boy alexander weep because he had not two planets to conquer; or a whole solar system; or after that, a whole universe? _ach gott_, when i gazed into these stars, have they not looked down on me as if with pity, from their serene spaces; like eyes glistening with heavenly tears over the little lot of man! thousands of human generations, all as noisy as our own, have been swallowed up of time, and there remains no wreck of them any more; and arcturus and orion and sirius and the pleiades are still shining in their courses, clear and young, as when the shepherd first noted them in the plain of shinar. pshaw! what is this paltry little dog-cage of an earth; what art thou that sittest whining there? thou art still nothing, nobody: true; but who, then, is something, somebody? for thee the family of man has no use; it rejects thee; thou art wholly as a dissevered limb: so be it; perhaps it is better so!" too-heavy-laden teufelsdrockh! yet surely his bands are loosening; one day he will hurl the burden far from him, and bound forth free and with a second youth. "this," says our professor, "was the centre of indifference i had now reached; through which whoso travels from the negative pole to the positive must necessarily pass." chapter ix. the everlasting yea. "temptations in the wilderness!" exclaims teufelsdrockh, "have we not all to be tried with such? not so easily can the old adam, lodged in us by birth, be dispossessed. our life is compassed round with necessity; yet is the meaning of life itself no other than freedom, than voluntary force: thus have we a warfare; in the beginning, especially, a hard-fought battle. for the god-given mandate, _work thou in well-doing_, lies mysteriously written, in promethean prophetic characters, in our hearts; and leaves us no rest, night or day, till it be deciphered and obeyed; till it burn forth, in our conduct, a visible, acted gospel of freedom. and as the clay-given mandate, _eat thou and be filled_, at the same time persuasively proclaims itself through every nerve,--must not there be a confusion, a contest, before the better influence can become the upper? "to me nothing seems more natural than that the son of man, when such god-given mandate first prophetically stirs within him, and the clay must now be vanquished or vanquish,--should be carried of the spirit into grim solitudes, and there fronting the tempter do grimmest battle with him; defiantly setting him at naught till he yield and fly. name it as we choose: with or without visible devil, whether in the natural desert of rocks and sands, or in the populous moral desert of selfishness and baseness,--to such temptation are we all called. unhappy if we are not! unhappy if we are but half-men, in whom that divine handwriting has never blazed forth, all-subduing, in true sun-splendor; but quivers dubiously amid meaner lights: or smoulders, in dull pain, in darkness, under earthly vapors!--our wilderness is the wide world in an atheistic century; our forty days are long years of suffering and fasting: nevertheless, to these also comes an end. yes, to me also was given, if not victory, yet the consciousness of battle, and the resolve to persevere therein while life or faculty is left. to me also, entangled in the enchanted forests, demon-peopled, doleful of sight and of sound, it was given, after weariest wanderings, to work out my way into the higher sunlit slopes--of that mountain which has no summit, or whose summit is in heaven only!" he says elsewhere, under a less ambitious figure; as figures are, once for all, natural to him: "has not thy life been that of most sufficient men (_tuchtigen manner_) thou hast known in this generation? an outflush of foolish young enthusiasm, like the first fallow-crop, wherein are as many weeds as valuable herbs: this all parched away, under the droughts of practical and spiritual unbelief, as disappointment, in thought and act, often-repeated gave rise to doubt, and doubt gradually settled into denial! if i have had a second-crop, and now see the perennial greensward, and sit under umbrageous cedars, which defy all drought (and doubt); herein too, be the heavens praised, i am not without examples, and even exemplars." so that, for teufelsdrockh, also, there has been a "glorious revolution:" these mad shadow-hunting and shadow-hunted pilgrimings of his were but some purifying "temptation in the wilderness," before his apostolic work (such as it was) could begin; which temptation is now happily over, and the devil once more worsted! was "that high moment in the _rue de l'enfer_," then, properly the turning-point of the battle; when the fiend said, _worship me, or be torn in shreds_; and was answered valiantly with an _apage satana_?--singular teufelsdrockh, would thou hadst told thy singular story in plain words! but it is fruitless to look there, in those paper-bags, for such. nothing but innuendoes, figurative crotchets: a typical shadow, fitfully wavering, prophetico-satiric; no clear logical picture. "how paint to the sensual eye," asks he once, "what passes in the holy-of-holies of man's soul; in what words, known to these profane times, speak even afar-off of the unspeakable?" we ask in turn: why perplex these times, profane as they are, with needless obscurity, by omission and by commission? not mystical only is our professor, but whimsical; and involves himself, now more than ever, in eye-bewildering _chiaroscuro_. successive glimpses, here faithfully imparted, our more gifted readers must endeavor to combine for their own behoof. he says: "the hot harmattan wind had raged itself out; its howl went silent within me; and the long-deafened soul could now hear. i paused in my wild wanderings; and sat me down to wait, and consider; for it was as if the hour of change drew nigh. i seemed to surrender, to renounce utterly, and say: fly, then, false shadows of hope; i will chase you no more, i will believe you no more. and ye too, haggard spectres of fear, i care not for you; ye too are all shadows and a lie. let me rest here: for i am way-weary and life-weary; i will rest here, were it but to die: to die or to live is alike to me; alike insignificant."--and again: "here, then, as i lay in that centre of indifference; cast, doubtless by benignant upper influence, into a healing sleep, the heavy dreams rolled gradually away, and i awoke to a new heaven and a new earth. the first preliminary moral act, annihilation of self (_selbst-todtung_), had been happily accomplished; and my mind's eyes were now unsealed, and its hands ungyved." might we not also conjecture that the following passage refers to his locality, during this same "healing sleep;" that his pilgrim-staff lies cast aside here, on "the high table-land;" and indeed that the repose is already taking wholesome effect on him? if it were not that the tone, in some parts, has more of riancy, even of levity, than we could have expected! however, in teufelsdrockh, there is always the strangest dualism: light dancing, with guitar-music, will be going on in the fore-court, while by fits from within comes the faint whimpering of woe and wail. we transcribe the piece entire. "beautiful it was to sit there, as in my skyey tent, musing and meditating; on the high table-land, in front of the mountains; over me, as roof, the azure dome, and around me, for walls, four azure-flowing curtains,--namely, of the four azure winds, on whose bottom-fringes also i have seen gilding. and then to fancy the fair castles that stood sheltered in these mountain hollows; with their green flower-lawns, and white dames and damosels, lovely enough: or better still, the straw-roofed cottages, wherein stood many a mother baking bread, with her children round her:--all hidden and protectingly folded up in the valley-folds; yet there and alive, as sure as if i beheld them. or to see, as well as fancy, the nine towns and villages, that lay round my mountain-seat, which, in still weather, were wont to speak to me (by their steeple-bells) with metal tongue; and, in almost all weather, proclaimed their vitality by repeated smoke-clouds; whereon, as on a culinary horologe, i might read the hour of the day. for it was the smoke of cookery, as kind housewives at morning, midday, eventide, were boiling their husbands' kettles; and ever a blue pillar rose up into the air, successively or simultaneously, from each of the nine, saying, as plainly as smoke could say: such and such a meal is getting ready here. not uninteresting! for you have the whole borough, with all its love-makings and scandal-mongeries, contentions and contentments, as in miniature, and could cover it all with your hat.--if, in my wide way-farings, i had learned to look into the business of the world in its details, here perhaps was the place for combining it into general propositions, and deducing inferences therefrom. "often also could i see the black tempest marching in anger through the distance: round some schreckhorn, as yet grim-blue, would the eddying vapor gather, and there tumultuously eddy, and flow down like a mad witch's hair; till, after a space, it vanished, and, in the clear sunbeam, your schreckhorn stood smiling grim-white, for the vapor had held snow. how thou fermentest and elaboratest, in thy great fermenting-vat and laboratory of an atmosphere, of a world, o nature!--or what is nature? ha! why do i not name thee god? art not thou the 'living garment of god'? o heavens, is it, in very deed, he, then, that ever speaks through thee; that lives and loves in thee, that lives and loves in me? "fore-shadows, call them rather fore-splendors, of that truth, and beginning of truths, fell mysteriously over my soul. sweeter than dayspring to the shipwrecked in nova zembla; ah, like the mother's voice to her little child that strays bewildered, weeping, in unknown tumults; like soft streamings of celestial music to my too-exasperated heart, came that evangel. the universe is not dead and demoniacal, a charnel-house with spectres; but godlike, and my father's! "with other eyes, too, could i now look upon my fellowman: with an infinite love, an infinite pity. poor, wandering, wayward man! art thou not tried, and beaten with stripes, even as i am? ever, whether thou bear the royal mantle or the beggar's gabardine, art thou not so weary, so heavy-laden; and thy bed of rest is but a grave. o my brother, my brother, why cannot i shelter thee in my bosom, and wipe away all tears from thy eyes!--truly, the din of many-voiced life, which, in this solitude, with the mind's organ, i could hear, was no longer a maddening discord, but a melting one; like inarticulate cries, and sobbings of a dumb creature, which in the ear of heaven are prayers. the poor earth, with her poor joys, was now my needy mother, not my cruel stepdame; man, with his so mad wants and so mean endeavors, had become the dearer to me; and even for his sufferings and his sins, i now first named him brother. thus was i standing in the porch of that '_sanctuary of sorrow_;' by strange, steep ways had i too been guided thither; and ere long its sacred gates would open, and the '_divine depth of sorrow_' lie disclosed to me." the professor says, he here first got eye on the knot that had been strangling him, and straightway could unfasten it, and was free. "a vain interminable controversy," writes he, "touching what is at present called origin of evil, or some such thing, arises in every soul, since the beginning of the world; and in every soul, that would pass from idle suffering into actual endeavoring, must first be put an end to. the most, in our time, have to go content with a simple, incomplete enough suppression of this controversy; to a few some solution of it is indispensable. in every new era, too, such solution comes out in different terms; and ever the solution of the last era has become obsolete, and is found unserviceable. for it is man's nature to change his dialect from century to century; he cannot help it though he would. the authentic _church-catechism_ of our present century has not yet fallen into my hands: meanwhile, for my own private behoof i attempt to elucidate the matter so. man's unhappiness, as i construe, comes of his greatness; it is because there is an infinite in him, which with all his cunning he cannot quite bury under the finite. will the whole finance ministers and upholsterers and confectioners of modern europe undertake, in joint-stock company, to make one shoeblack happy? they cannot accomplish it, above an hour or two: for the shoeblack also has a soul quite other than his stomach; and would require, if you consider it, for his permanent satisfaction and saturation, simply this allotment, no more, and no less: _god's infinite universe altogether to himself_, therein to enjoy infinitely, and fill every wish as fast as it rose. oceans of hochheimer, a throat like that of ophiuchus: speak not of them; to the infinite shoeblack they are as nothing. no sooner is your ocean filled, than he grumbles that it might have been of better vintage. try him with half of a universe, of an omnipotence, he sets to quarrelling with the proprietor of the other half, and declares himself the most maltreated of men.--always there is a black spot in our sunshine: it is even, as i said, the _shadow of ourselves_. "but the whim we have of happiness is somewhat thus. by certain valuations, and averages, of our own striking, we come upon some sort of average terrestrial lot; this we fancy belongs to us by nature, and of indefeasible right. it is simple payment of our wages, of our deserts; requires neither thanks nor complaint; only such _overplus_ as there may be do we account happiness; any _deficit_ again is misery. now consider that we have the valuation of our own deserts ourselves, and what a fund of self-conceit there is in each of us,--do you wonder that the balance should so often dip the wrong way, and many a blockhead cry: see there, what a payment; was ever worthy gentleman so used!--i tell thee, blockhead, it all comes of thy vanity; of what thou _fanciest_ those same deserts of thine to be. fancy that thou deservest to be hanged (as is most likely), thou wilt feel it happiness to be only shot: fancy that thou deservest to be hanged in a hair-halter, it will be a luxury to die in hemp. "so true is it, what i then said, that _the fraction of life can be increased in value not so much by increasing your numerator as by lessening your denominator_. nay, unless my algebra deceive me, _unity_ itself divided by _zero_ will give _infinity_. make thy claim of wages a zero, then; thou hast the world under thy feet. well did the wisest of our time write: 'it is only with renunciation (_entsagen_) that life, properly speaking, can be said to begin.' "i asked myself: what is this that, ever since earliest years, thou hast been fretting and fuming, and lamenting and self-tormenting, on account of? say it in a word: is it not because thou art not happy? because the thou (sweet gentleman) is not sufficiently honored, nourished, soft-bedded, and lovingly cared for? foolish soul! what act of legislature was there that _thou_ shouldst be happy? a little while ago thou hadst no right to _be_ at all. what if thou wert born and predestined not to be happy, but to be unhappy! art thou nothing other than a vulture, then, that fliest through the universe seeking after somewhat to _eat_; and shrieking dolefully because carrion enough is not given thee? close thy _byron_; open thy _goethe_." "_es leuchtet mir ein_, i see a glimpse of it!" cries he elsewhere: "there is in man a higher than love of happiness: he can do without happiness, and instead thereof find blessedness! was it not to preach forth this same higher that sages and martyrs, the poet and the priest, in all times, have spoken and suffered; bearing testimony, through life and through death, of the godlike that is in man, and how in the godlike only has he strength and freedom? which god-inspiredd doctrine art thou also honored to be taught; o heavens! and broken with manifold merciful afflictions, even till thou become contrite and learn it! oh, thank thy destiny for these; thankfully bear what yet remain: thou hadst need of them; the self in thee needed to be annihilated. by benignant fever-paroxysms is life rooting out the deep-seated chronic disease, and triumphs over death. on the roaring billows of time, thou art not engulfed, but borne aloft into the azure of eternity. love not pleasure; love god. this is the everlasting yea, wherein all contradiction is solved: wherein whoso walks and works, it is well with him." and again: "small is it that thou canst trample the earth with its injuries under thy feet, as old greek zeno trained thee: thou canst love the earth while it injures thee, and even because it injures thee; for this a greater than zeno was needed, and he too was sent. knowest thou that '_worship of sorrow_'? the temple thereof, founded some eighteen centuries ago, now lies in ruins, overgrown with jungle, the habitation of doleful creatures: nevertheless, venture forward; in a low crypt, arched out of falling fragments, thou findest the altar still there, and its sacred lamp perennially burning." without pretending to comment on which strange utterances, the editor will only remark, that there lies beside them much of a still more questionable character; unsuited to the general apprehension; nay wherein he himself does not see his way. nebulous disquisitions on religion, yet not without bursts of splendor; on the "perennial continuance of inspiration;" on prophecy; that there are "true priests, as well as baal-priests, in our own day:" with more of the like sort. we select some fractions, by way of finish to this farrago. "cease, my much-respected herr von voltaire," thus apostrophizes the professor: "shut thy sweet voice; for the task appointed thee seems finished. sufficiently hast thou demonstrated this proposition, considerable or otherwise: that the mythus of the christian religion looks not in the eighteenth century as it did in the eighth. alas, were thy six-and-thirty quartos, and the six-and-thirty thousand other quartos and folios, and flying sheets or reams, printed before and since on the same subject, all needed to convince us of so little! but what next? wilt thou help us to embody the divine spirit of that religion in a new mythus, in a new vehicle and vesture, that our souls, otherwise too like perishing, may live? what! thou hast no faculty in that kind? only a torch for burning, no hammer for building? take our thanks, then, and--thyself away. "meanwhile what are antiquated mythuses to me? or is the god present, felt in my own heart, a thing which herr von voltaire will dispute out of me; or dispute into me? to the '_worship of sorrow_' ascribe what origin and genesis thou pleasest, _has_ not that worship originated, and been generated; is it not _here_? feel it in thy heart, and then say whether it is of god! this is belief; all else is opinion,--for which latter whoso will, let him worry and be worried." "neither," observes he elsewhere, "shall ye tear out one another's eyes, struggling over 'plenary inspiration,' and such like: try rather to get a little even partial inspiration, each of you for himself. one bible i know, of whose plenary inspiration doubt is not so much as possible; nay with my own eyes i saw the god's-hand writing it: thereof all other bibles are but leaves,--say, in picture-writing to assist the weaker faculty." or, to give the wearied reader relief, and bring it to an end, let him take the following perhaps more intelligible passage:-- "to me, in this our life," says the professor, "which is an internecine warfare with the time-spirit, other warfare seems questionable. hast thou in any way a contention with thy brother, i advise thee, think well what the meaning thereof is. if thou gauge it to the bottom, it is simply this: 'fellow, see! thou art taking more than thy share of happiness in the world, something from my share: which, by the heavens, thou shalt not; nay i will fight thee rather.'--alas, and the whole lot to be divided is such a beggarly matter, truly a 'feast of shells,' for the substance has been spilled out: not enough to quench one appetite; and the collective human species clutching at them!--can we not, in all such cases, rather say: 'take it, thou too-ravenous individual; take that pitiful additional fraction of a share, which i reckoned mine, but which thou so wantest; take it with a blessing: would to heaven i had enough for thee!'--if fichte's _wissenschaftslehre_ be, 'to a certain extent, applied christianity,' surely to a still greater extent, so is this. we have here not a whole duty of man, yet a half duty, namely the passive half: could we but do it, as we can demonstrate it! "but indeed conviction, were it never so excellent, is worthless till it convert itself into conduct. nay properly conviction is not possible till then; inasmuch as all speculation is by nature endless, formless, a vortex amid vortices, only by a felt indubitable certainty of experience does it find any centre to revolve round, and so fashion itself into a system. most true is it, as a wise man teaches us, that 'doubt of any sort cannot be removed except by action.' on which ground, too, let him who gropes painfully in darkness or uncertain light, and prays vehemently that the dawn may ripen into day, lay this other precept well to heart, which to me was of invaluable service: '_do the duty which lies nearest thee_,' which thou knowest to be a duty! thy second duty will already have become clearer. "may we not say, however, that the hour of spiritual enfranchisement is even this: when your ideal world, wherein the whole man has been dimly struggling and inexpressibly languishing to work, becomes revealed, and thrown open; and you discover, with amazement enough, like the lothario in _wilhelm meister_, that your 'america is here or nowhere'? the situation that has not its duty, its ideal, was never yet occupied by man. yes here, in this poor, miserable, hampered, despicable actual, wherein thou even now standest, here or nowhere is thy ideal: work it out therefrom; and working, believe, live, be free. fool! the ideal is in thyself, the impediment too is in thyself: thy condition is but the stuff thou art to shape that same ideal out of: what matters whether such stuff be of this sort or that, so the form thou give it be heroic, be poetic? o thou that pinest in the imprisonment of the actual, and criest bitterly to the gods for a kingdom wherein to rule and create, know this of a truth: the thing thou seekest is already with thee, 'here or nowhere,' couldst thou only see! "but it is with man's soul as it was with nature: the beginning of creation is--light. till the eye have vision, the whole members are in bonds. divine moment, when over the tempest-tost soul, as once over the wild-weltering chaos, it is spoken: let there be light! ever to the greatest that has felt such moment, is it not miraculous and god-announcing; even as, under simpler figures, to the simplest and least. the mad primeval discord is hushed; the rudely jumbled conflicting elements bind themselves into separate firmaments: deep silent rock-foundations are built beneath; and the skyey vault with its everlasting luminaries above: instead of a dark wasteful chaos, we have a blooming, fertile, heaven-encompassed world. "i too could now say to myself: be no longer a chaos, but a world, or even worldkin. produce! produce! were it but the pitifullest infinitesimal fraction of a product, produce it, in god's name! 'tis the utmost thou hast in thee: out with it, then. up, up! whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy whole might. work while it is called to-day; for the night cometh, wherein no man can work." chapter x. pause. thus have we, as closely and perhaps satisfactorily as, in such circumstances, might be, followed teufelsdrockh, through the various successive states and stages of growth, entanglement, unbelief, and almost reprobation, into a certain clearer state of what he himself seems to consider as conversion. "blame not the word," says he; "rejoice rather that such a word, signifying such a thing, has come to light in our modern era, though hidden from the wisest ancients. the old world knew nothing of conversion; instead of an _ecce homo_, they had only some _choice of hercules_. it was a new-attained progress in the moral development of man: hereby has the highest come home to the bosoms of the most limited; what to plato was but a hallucination, and to socrates a chimera, is now clear and certain to your zinzendorfs, your wesleys, and the poorest of their pietists and methodists." it is here, then, that the spiritual majority of teufelsdrockh commences: we are henceforth to see him "work in well-doing," with the spirit and clear aims of a man. he has discovered that the ideal workshop he so panted for is even this same actual ill-furnished workshop he has so long been stumbling in. he can say to himself: "tools? thou hast no tools? why, there is not a man, or a thing, now alive but has tools. the basest of created animalcules, the spider itself, has a spinning-jenny, and warping-mill, and power-loom within its head: the stupidest of oysters has a papin's-digester, with stone-and-lime house to hold it in: every being that can live can do something: this let him _do_.--tools? hast thou not a brain, furnished, furnishable with some glimmerings of light; and three fingers to hold a pen withal? never since aaron's rod went out of practice, or even before it, was there such a wonder-working tool: greater than all recorded miracles have been performed by pens. for strangely in this so solid-seeming world, which nevertheless is in continual restless flux, it is appointed that _sound_, to appearance the most fleeting, should be the most continuing of all things. the word is well said to be omnipotent in this world; man, thereby divine, can create as by a _fiat_. awake, arise! speak forth what is in thee; what god has given thee, what the devil shall not take away. higher task than that of priesthood was allotted to no man: wert thou but the meanest in that sacred hierarchy, is it not honor enough therein to spend and be spent? "by this art, which whoso will may sacrilegiously degrade into a handicraft," adds teufelsdrockh, "have i thenceforth abidden. writings of mine, not indeed known as mine (for what am i?), have fallen, perhaps not altogether void, into the mighty seedfield of opinion; fruits of my unseen sowing gratifyingly meet me here and there. i thank the heavens that i have now found my calling; wherein, with or without perceptible result, i am minded diligently to persevere. "nay how knowest thou," cries he, "but this and the other pregnant device, now grown to be a world-renowned far-working institution; like a grain of right mustard-seed once cast into the right soil, and now stretching out strong boughs to the four winds, for the birds of the air to lodge in,--may have been properly my doing? some one's doing, it without doubt was; from some idea, in some single head, it did first of all take beginning: why not from some idea in mine?" does teufelsdrockh, here glance at that "society for the conservation of property (_eigenthums-conservirende gesellschaft_)," of which so many ambiguous notices glide spectra-like through these inexpressible paper-bags? "an institution," hints he, "not unsuitable to the wants of the time; as indeed such sudden extension proves: for already can the society number, among its office-bearers or corresponding members, the highest names, if not the highest persons, in germany, england, france; and contributions, both of money and of meditation pour in from all quarters; to, if possible, enlist the remaining integrity of the world, and, defensively and with forethought, marshal it round this palladium." does teufelsdrockh mean, then, to give himself out as the originator of that so notable _eigenthums-conservirende_ ("owndom-conserving") _gesellschaft_; and if so, what, in the devil's name, is it? he again hints: "at a time when the divine commandment, _thou shalt not steal_, wherein truly, if well understood, is comprised the whole hebrew decalogue, with solon's and lycurgrus's constitutions, justinian's pandects, the code napoleon, and all codes, catechisms, divinities, moralities whatsoever, that man has hitherto devised (and enforced with altar-fire and gallows-ropes) for his social guidance: at a time, i say, when this divine commandment has all but faded away from the general remembrance; and, with little disguise, a new opposite commandment, _thou shalt steal_, is everywhere promulgated,--it perhaps behooved, in this universal dotage and deliration, the sound portion of mankind to bestir themselves and rally. when the widest and wildest violations of that divine right of property, the only divine right now extant or conceivable, are sanctioned and recommended by a vicious press, and the world has lived to hear it asserted that _we have no property in our very bodies, but only an accidental possession and life-rent_, what is the issue to be looked for? hangmen and catchpoles may, by their noose-gins and baited fall-traps, keep down the smaller sort of vermin; but what, except perhaps some such universal association, can protect us against whole meat-devouring and man-devouring hosts of boa-constrictors. if, therefore, the more sequestered thinker have wondered, in his privacy, from what hand that perhaps not ill-written _program_ in the public journals, with its high _prize-questions_ and so liberal _prizes_, could have proceeded,--let him now cease such wonder; and, with undivided faculty, betake himself to the _concurrenz_ (competition)." we ask: has this same "perhaps not ill-written _program_," or any other authentic transaction of that property-conserving society, fallen under the eye of the british reader, in any journal foreign or domestic? if so, what are those _prize-questions_; what are the terms of competition, and when and where? no printed newspaper-leaf, no farther light of any sort, to be met with in these paper-bags! or is the whole business one other of those whimsicalities and perverse inexplicabilities, whereby herr teufelsdrockh, meaning much or nothing, is pleased so often to play fast-and-loose with us? here, indeed, at length, must the editor give utterance to a painful suspicion, which, through late chapters, has begun to haunt him; paralyzing any little enthusiasm that might still have rendered his thorny biographical task a labor of love. it is a suspicion grounded perhaps on trifles, yet confirmed almost into certainty by the more and more discernible humoristico-satirical tendency of teufelsdrockh, in whom underground humors and intricate sardonic rogueries, wheel within wheel, defy all reckoning: a suspicion, in one word, that these autobiographical documents are partly a mystification! what if many a so-called fact were little better than a fiction; if here we had no direct camera-obscura picture of the professor's history; but only some more or less fantastic adumbration, symbolically, perhaps significantly enough, shadowing forth the same! our theory begins to be that, in receiving as literally authentic what was but hieroglyphically so, hofrath heuschrecke, whom in that case we scruple not to name hofrath nose-of-wax, was made a fool of, and set adrift to make fools of others. could it be expected, indeed, that a man so known for impenetrable reticence as teufelsdrockh would all at once frankly unlock his private citadel to an english editor and a german hofrath; and not rather deceptively _in_lock both editor and hofrath in the labyrinthic tortuosities and covered-ways of said citadel (having enticed them thither), to see, in his half-devilish way, how the fools would look? of one fool, however, the herr professor will perhaps find himself short. on a small slip, formerly thrown aside as blank, the ink being all but invisible, we lately noticed, and with effort decipher, the following: "what are your historical facts; still more your biographical? wilt thou know a man, above all a mankind, by stringing together bead-rolls of what thou namest facts? the man is the spirit he worked in; not what he did, but what he became. facts are engraved hierograms, for which the fewest have the key. and then how your blockhead (_dummkopf_) studies not their meaning; but simply whether they are well or ill cut, what he calls moral or immoral! still worse is it with your bungler (_pfuscher_): such i have seen reading some rousseau, with pretences of interpretation; and mistaking the ill-cut serpent-of-eternity for a common poisonous reptile." was the professor apprehensive lest an editor, selected as the present boasts himself, might mistake the teufelsdrockh serpent-of-eternity in like manner? for which reason it was to be altered, not without underhand satire, into a plainer symbol? or is this merely one of his half-sophisms, half-truisms, which if he can but set on the back of a figure, he cares not whither it gallop? we say not with certainty; and indeed, so strange is the professor, can never say. if our suspicion be wholly unfounded, let his own questionable ways, not our necessary circumspectness bear the blame. but be this as it will, the somewhat exasperated and indeed exhausted editor determines here to shut these paper-bags for the present. let it suffice that we know of teufelsdrockh, so far, if "not what he did, yet what he became:" the rather, as his character has now taken its ultimate bent, and no new revolution, of importance, is to be looked for. the imprisoned chrysalis is now a winged psyche: and such, wheresoever be its flight, it will continue. to trace by what complex gyrations (flights or involuntary waftings) through the mere external life-element, teufelsdrockh, reaches his university professorship, and the psyche clothes herself in civic titles, without altering her now fixed nature,--would be comparatively an unproductive task, were we even unsuspicious of its being, for us at least, a false and impossible one. his outward biography, therefore, which, at the blumine lover's-leap, we saw churned utterly into spray-vapor, may hover in that condition, for aught that concerns us here. enough that by survey of certain "pools and plashes," we have ascertained its general direction; do we not already know that, by one way and other, it _has_ long since rained down again into a stream; and even now, at weissnichtwo, flows deep and still, fraught with the _philosophy of clothes_, and visible to whoso will cast eye thereon? over much invaluable matter, that lies scattered, like jewels among quarry-rubbish, in those paper-catacombs, we may have occasion to glance back, and somewhat will demand insertion at the right place: meanwhile be our tiresome diggings therein suspended. if now, before reopening the great _clothes-volume_, we ask what our degree of progress, during these ten chapters, has been, towards right understanding of the _clothes-philosophy_, let not our discouragement become total. to speak in that old figure of the hell-gate bridge over chaos, a few flying pontoons have perhaps been added, though as yet they drift straggling on the flood; how far they will reach, when once the chains are straightened and fastened, can, at present, only be matter of conjecture. so much we already calculate: through many a little loophole, we have had glimpses into the internal world of teufelsdrockh; his strange mystic, almost magic diagram of the universe, and how it was gradually drawn, is not henceforth altogether dark to us. those mysterious ideas on time, which merit consideration, and are not wholly unintelligible with such, may by and by prove significant. still more may his somewhat peculiar view of nature, the decisive oneness he ascribes to nature. how all nature and life are but one _garment_, a "living garment," woven and ever a-weaving in the "loom of time;" is not here, indeed, the outline of a whole _clothes-philosophy_; at least the arena it is to work in? remark, too, that the character of the man, nowise without meaning in such a matter, becomes less enigmatic: amid so much tumultuous obscurity, almost like diluted madness, do not a certain indomitable defiance and yet a boundless reverence seem to loom forth, as the two mountain-summits, on whose rock-strata all the rest were based and built? nay further, may we not say that teufelsdrockh's biography, allowing it even, as suspected, only a hieroglyphical truth, exhibits a man, as it were preappointed for clothes-philosophy? to look through the shows of things into things themselves he is led and compelled. the "passivity" given him by birth is fostered by all turns of his fortune. everywhere cast out, like oil out of water, from mingling in any employment, in any public communion, he has no portion but solitude, and a life of meditation. the whole energy of his existence is directed, through long years, on one task: that of enduring pain, if he cannot cure it. thus everywhere do the shows of things oppress him, withstand him, threaten him with fearfullest destruction: only by victoriously penetrating into things themselves can he find peace and a stronghold. but is not this same looking through the shows, or vestures, into the things, even the first preliminary to a _philosophy of clothes_? do we not, in all this, discern some beckonings towards the true higher purport of such a philosophy; and what shape it must assume with such a man, in such an era? perhaps in entering on book third, the courteous reader is not utterly without guess whither he is bound: nor, let us hope, for all the fantastic dream-grottos through which, as is our lot with teufelsdrockh, he must wander, will there be wanting between whiles some twinkling of a steady polar star. book iii. chapter i. incident in modern history. as a wonder-loving and wonder-seeking man, teufelsdrockh, from an early part of this clothes-volume, has more and more exhibited himself. striking it was, amid all his perverse cloudiness, with what force of vision and of heart he pierced into the mystery of the world; recognizing in the highest sensible phenomena, so far as sense went, only fresh or faded raiment; yet ever, under this, a celestial essence thereby rendered visible: and while, on the one hand, he trod the old rags of matter, with their tinsels, into the mire, he on the other everywhere exalted spirit above all earthly principalities and powers, and worshipped it, though under the meanest shapes, with a true platonic mysticism. what the man ultimately purposed by thus casting his greek-fire into the general wardrobe of the universe; what such, more or less complete, rending and burning of garments throughout the whole compass of civilized life and speculation, should lead to; the rather as he was no adamite, in any sense, and could not, like rousseau, recommend either bodily or intellectual nudity, and a return to the savage state: all this our readers are now bent to discover; this is, in fact, properly the gist and purport of professor teufelsdrockh's philosophy of clothes. be it remembered, however, that such purport is here not so much evolved, as detected to lie ready for evolving. we are to guide our british friends into the new gold-country, and show them the mines; nowise to dig out and exhaust its wealth, which indeed remains for all time inexhaustible. once there, let each dig for his own behoof, and enrich himself. neither, in so capricious inexpressible a work as this of the professor's, can our course now more than formerly be straightforward, step by step, but at best leap by leap. significant indications stand out here and there; which for the critical eye, that looks both widely and narrowly, shape themselves into some ground-scheme of a whole: to select these with judgment, so that a leap from one to the other be possible, and (in our old figure) by chaining them together, a passable bridge be effected: this, as heretofore, continues our only method. among such light-spots, the following, floating in much wild matter about _perfectibility_, has seemed worth clutching at:-- "perhaps the most remarkable incident in modern history," says teufelsdrockh, "is not the diet of worms, still less the battle of austerlitz, waterloo, peterloo, or any other battle; but an incident passed carelessly over by most historians, and treated with some degree of ridicule by others: namely, george fox's making to himself a suit of leather. this man, the first of the quakers, and by trade a shoemaker, was one of those, to whom, under ruder or purer form, the divine idea of the universe is pleased to manifest itself; and, across all the hulls of ignorance and earthly degradation, shine through, in unspeakable awfulness, unspeakable beauty, on their souls: who therefore are rightly accounted prophets, god-possessed; or even gods, as in some periods it has chanced. sitting in his stall; working on tanned hides, amid pincers, paste-horns, rosin, swine-bristles, and a nameless flood of rubbish, this youth had, nevertheless, a living spirit belonging to him; also an antique inspired volume, through which, as through a window, it could look upwards, and discern its celestial home. the task of a daily pair of shoes, coupled even with some prospect of victuals, and an honorable mastership in cordwainery, and perhaps the post of thirdborough in his hundred, as the crown of long faithful sewing,--was nowise satisfaction enough to such a mind: but ever amid the boring and hammering came tones from that far country, came splendors and terrors; for this poor cordwainer, as we said, was a man; and the temple of immensity, wherein as man he had been sent to minister, was full of holy mystery to him. "the clergy of the neighborhood, the ordained watchers and interpreters of that same holy mystery, listened with un-affected tedium to his consultations, and advised him, as the solution of such doubts, to 'drink beer, and dance with the girls.' blind leaders of the blind! for what end were their tithes levied and eaten; for what were their shovel-hats scooped out, and their surplices and cassock-aprons girt on; and such a church-repairing, and chaffering, and organing, and other racketing, held over that spot of god's earth,--if man were but a patent digester, and the belly with its adjuncts the grand reality? fox turned from them, with tears and a sacred scorn, back to his leather-parings and his bible. mountains of encumbrance, higher than aetna, had been heaped over that spirit: but it was a spirit, and would not lie buried there. through long days and nights of silent agony, it struggled and wrestled, with a man's force, to be free: how its prison-mountains heaved and swayed tumultuously, as the giant spirit shook them to this hand and that, and emerged into the light of heaven! that leicester shoe-shop, had men known it, was a holier place than any vatican or loretto-shrine.--'so bandaged, and hampered, and hemmed in,' groaned he, 'with thousand requisitions, obligations, straps, tatters, and tagrags, i can neither see nor move: not my own am i, but the world's; and time flies fast, and heaven is high, and hell is deep: man! bethink thee, if thou hast power of thought! why not; what binds me here? want, want!--ha, of what? will all the shoe-wages under the moon ferry me across into that far land of light? only meditation can, and devout prayer to god. i will to the woods: the hollow of a tree will lodge me, wild berries feed me; and for clothes, cannot i stitch myself one perennial suit of leather!' "historical oil-painting," continues teufelsdrockh, "is one of the arts i never practiced; therefore shall i not decide whether this subject were easy of execution on the canvas. yet often has it seemed to me as if such first outflashing of man's freewill, to lighten, more and more into day, the chaotic night that threatened to engulf him in its hindrances and its horrors, were properly the only grandeur there is in history. let some living angelo or rosa, with seeing eye and understanding heart, picture george fox on that morning, when he spreads out his cutting-board for the last time, and cuts cowhides by unwonted patterns, and stitches them together into one continuous all-including case, the farewell service of his awl! stitch away, thou noble fox: every prick of that little instrument is pricking into the heart of slavery, and world-worship, and the mammon-god. thy elbows jerk, as in strong swimmer-strokes, and every stroke is bearing thee across the prison-ditch, within which vanity holds her workhouse and ragfair, into lands of true liberty; were the work done, there is in broad europe one free man, and thou art he! "thus from the lowest depth there is a path to the loftiest height; and for the poor also a gospel has been published. surely if, as d'alembert asserts, my illustrious namesake, diogenes, was the greatest man of antiquity, only that he wanted decency, then by stronger reason is george fox the greatest of the moderns, and greater than diogenes himself: for he too stands on the adamantine basis of his manhood, casting aside all props and shoars; yet not, in half-savage pride, undervaluing the earth; valuing it rather, as a place to yield him warmth and food, he looks heavenward from his earth, and dwells in an element of mercy and worship, with a still strength, such as the cynic's tub did nowise witness. great, truly, was that tub; a temple from which man's dignity and divinity was scornfully preached abroad: but greater is the leather hull, for the same sermon was preached there, and not in scorn but in love." george fox's "perennial suit," with all that it held, has been worn quite into ashes for nigh two centuries: why, in a discussion on the _perfectibility of society_, reproduce it now? not out of blind sectarian partisanship: teufelsdrockh, himself is no quaker; with all his pacific tendencies, did not we see him, in that scene at the north cape, with the archangel smuggler, exhibit fire-arms? for us, aware of his deep sansculottism, there is more meant in this passage than meets the ear. at the same time, who can avoid smiling at the earnestness and boeotian simplicity (if indeed there be not an underhand satire in it), with which that "incident" is here brought forward; and, in the professor's ambiguous way, as clearly perhaps as he durst in weissnichtwo, recommended to imitation! does teufelsdrockh anticipate that, in this age of refinement, any considerable class of the community, by way of testifying against the "mammon-god," and escaping from what he calls "vanity's workhouse and ragfair," where doubtless some of them are toiled and whipped and hoodwinked sufficiently,--will sheathe themselves in close-fitting cases of leather? the idea is ridiculous in the extreme. will majesty lay aside its robes of state, and beauty its frills and train-gowns, for a second skin of tanned hide? by which change huddersfield and manchester, and coventry and paisley, and the fancy-bazaar, were reduced to hungry solitudes; and only day and martin could profit. for neither would teufelsdrockh's mad daydream, here as we presume covertly intended, of levelling society (_levelling_ it indeed with a vengeance, into one huge drowned marsh!), and so attaining the political effects of nudity without its frigorific or other consequences,--be thereby realized. would not the rich man purchase a waterproof suit of russia leather; and the high-born belle step forth in red or azure morocco, lined with shamoy: the black cowhide being left to the drudges and gibeonites of the world; and so all the old distinctions be re-established? or has the professor his own deeper intention; and laughs in his sleeve at our strictures and glosses, which indeed are but a part thereof? chapter ii. church-clothes. not less questionable is his chapter on _church-clothes_, which has the farther distinction of being the shortest in the volume. we here translate it entire:-- "by church-clothes, it need not be premised that i mean infinitely more than cassocks and surplices; and do not at all mean the mere haberdasher sunday clothes that men go to church in. far from it! church-clothes are, in our vocabulary, the forms, the _vestures_, under which men have at various periods embodied and represented for themselves the religious principle; that is to say, invested the divine idea of the world with a sensible and practically active body, so that it might dwell among them as a living and life-giving word. "these are unspeakably the most important of all the vestures and garnitures of human existence. they are first spun and woven, i may say, by that wonder of wonders, society; for it is still only when 'two or three are gathered together,' that religion, spiritually existent, and indeed indestructible, however latent, in each, first outwardly manifests itself (as with 'cloven tongues of fire'), and seeks to be embodied in a visible communion and church militant. mystical, more than magical, is that communing of soul with soul, both looking heavenward: here properly soul first speaks with soul; for only in looking heavenward, take it in what sense you may, not in looking earthward, does what we can call union, mutual love, society, begin to be possible. how true is that of novalis: 'it is certain, my belief gains quite _infinitely_ the moment i can convince another mind thereof'! gaze thou in the face of thy brother, in those eyes where plays the lambent fire of kindness, or in those where rages the lurid conflagration of anger; feel how thy own so quiet soul is straightway involuntarily kindled with the like, and ye blaze and reverberate on each other, till it is all one limitless confluent flame (of embracing love, or of deadly-grappling hate); and then say what miraculous virtue goes out of man into man. but if so, through all the thick-plied hulls of our earthly life; how much more when it is of the divine life we speak, and inmost me is, as it were, brought into contact with inmost me! "thus was it that i said, the church clothes are first spun and woven by society; outward religion originates by society, society becomes possible by religion. nay, perhaps, every conceivable society, past and present, may well be figured as properly and wholly a church, in one or other of these three predicaments: an audibly preaching and prophesying church, which is the best; second, a church that struggles to preach and prophesy, but cannot as yet, till its pentecost come; and third and worst, a church gone dumb with old age, or which only mumbles delirium prior to dissolution. whoso fancies that by church is here meant chapter-houses and cathedrals, or by preaching and prophesying, mere speech and chanting, let him," says the oracular professor, "read on, light of heart (_getrosten muthes_). "but with regard to your church proper, and the church-clothes specially recognized as church-clothes, i remark, fearlessly enough, that without such vestures and sacred tissues society has not existed, and will not exist. for if government is, so to speak, the outward skin of the body politic, holding the whole together and protecting it; and all your craft-guilds, and associations for industry, of hand or of head, are the fleshly clothes, the muscular and osseous tissues (lying _under_ such skin), whereby society stands and works;--then is religion the inmost pericardial and nervous tissue, which ministers life and warm circulation to the whole. without which pericardial tissue the bones and muscles (of industry) were inert, or animated only by a galvanic vitality; the skin would become a shrivelled pelt, or fast-rotting rawhide; and society itself a dead carcass,--deserving to be buried. men were no longer social, but gregarious; which latter state also could not continue, but must gradually issue in universal selfish discord, hatred, savage isolation, and dispersion;--whereby, as we might continue to say, the very dust and dead body of society would have evaporated and become abolished. such, and so all-important, all-sustaining, are the church-clothes to civilized or even to rational men. "meanwhile, in our era of the world, those same church-clothes have gone sorrowfully out-at-elbows; nay, far worse, many of them have become mere hollow shapes, or masks, under which no living figure or spirit any longer dwells; but only spiders and unclean beetles, in horrid accumulation, drive their trade; and the mask still glares on you with its glass eyes, in ghastly affectation of life,--some generation-and-half after religion has quite withdrawn from it, and in unnoticed nooks is weaving for herself new vestures, wherewith to reappear, and bless us, or our sons or grandsons. as a priest, or interpreter of the holy, is the noblest and highest of all men, so is a sham-priest (_schein-priester_) the falsest and basest; neither is it doubtful that his canonicals, were they popes' tiaras, will one day be torn from him, to make bandages for the wounds of mankind; or even to burn into tinder, for general scientific or culinary purposes. "all which, as out of place here, falls to be handled in my second volume, _on the palingenesia, or newbirth of society_; which volume, as treating practically of the wear, destruction, and retexture of spiritual tissues, or garments, forms, properly speaking, the transcendental or ultimate portion of this my work on _clothes_, and is already in a state of forwardness." and herewith, no farther exposition, note, or commentary being added, does teufelsdrockh, and must his editor now, terminate the singular chapter on church-clothes! chapter iii. symbols. probably it will elucidate the drift of these foregoing obscure utterances, if we here insert somewhat of our professor's speculations on _symbols_. to state his whole doctrine, indeed, were beyond our compass: nowhere is he more mysterious, impalpable, than in this of "fantasy being the organ of the godlike;" and how "man thereby, though based, to all seeming, on the small visible, does nevertheless extend down into the infinite deeps of the invisible, of which invisible, indeed, his life is properly the bodying forth." let us, omitting these high transcendental aspects of the matter, study to glean (whether from the paper-bags or the printed volume) what little seems logical and practical, and cunningly arrange it into such degree of coherence as it will assume. by way of proem, take the following not injudicious remarks:-- "the benignant efficacies of concealment," cries our professor, "who shall speak or sing? silence and secrecy! altars might still be raised to them (were this an altar-building time) for universal worship. silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves together; that at length they may emerge, full-formed and majestic, into the daylight of life, which they are thenceforth to rule. not william the silent only, but all the considerable men i have known, and the most undiplomatic and unstrategic of these, forbore to babble of what they were creating and projecting. nay, in thy own mean perplexities, do thou thyself but _hold thy tongue for one day_: on the morrow, how much clearer are thy purposes and duties; what wreck and rubbish have those mute workmen within thee swept away, when intrusive noises were shut out! speech is too often not, as the frenchman defined it, the art of concealing thought; but of quite stifling and suspending thought, so that there is none to conceal. speech too is great, but not the greatest. as the swiss inscription says: _sprechen ist silbern, schweigen ist golden_ (speech is silvern, silence is golden); or as i might rather express it: speech is of time, silence is of eternity. "bees will not work except in darkness; thought will not work except in silence: neither will virtue work except in secrecy. let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth! neither shalt thou prate even to thy own heart of 'those secrets known to all.' is not shame (_schaam_) the soil of all virtue, of all good manners and good morals? like other plants, virtue will not grow unless its root be hidden, buried from the eye of the sun. let the sun shine on it, nay do but look at it privily thyself, the root withers, and no flower will glad thee. o my friends, when we view the fair clustering flowers that overwreathe, for example, the marriage-bower, and encircle man's life with the fragrance and hues of heaven, what hand will not smite the foul plunderer that grubs them up by the roots, and, with grinning, grunting satisfaction, shows us the dung they flourish in! men speak much of the printing press with its newspapers: _du himmel_! what are these to clothes and the tailor's goose? "of kin to the so incalculable influences of concealment, and connected with still greater things, is the wondrous agency of _symbols_. in a symbol there is concealment and yet revelation; here therefore, by silence and by speech acting together, comes a double significance. and if both the speech be itself high, and the silence fit and noble, how expressive will their union be! thus in many a painted device, or simple seal-emblem, the commonest truth stands out to us proclaimed with quite new emphasis. "for it is here that fantasy with her mystic wonderland plays into the small prose domain of sense, and becomes incorporated therewith. in the symbol proper, what we can call a symbol, there is ever, more or less distinctly and directly, some embodiment and revelation of the infinite; the infinite is made to blend itself with the finite, to stand visible, and as it were, attainable there. by symbols, accordingly, is man guided and commanded, made happy, made wretched: he everywhere finds himself encompassed with symbols, recognized as such or not recognized: the universe is but one vast symbol of god; nay if thou wilt have it, what is man himself but a symbol of god; is not all that he does symbolical; a revelation to sense of the mystic god-given force that is in him; a 'gospel of freedom,' which he, the 'messias of nature,' preaches, as he can, by act and word? not a hut he builds but is the visible embodiment of a thought; but bears visible record of invisible things; but is, in the transcendental sense, symbolical as well as real." "man," says the professor elsewhere, in quite antipodal contrast with these high-soaring delineations, which we have here cut short on the verge of the inane, "man is by birth somewhat of an owl. perhaps, too, of all the owleries that ever possessed him, the most owlish, if we consider it, is that of your actually existing motive-millwrights. fantastic tricks enough man has played, in his time; has fancied himself to be most things, down even to an animated heap of glass: but to fancy himself a dead iron-balance for weighing pains and pleasures on, was reserved for this his latter era. there stands he, his universe one huge manger, filled with hay and thistles to be weighed against each other; and looks long-eared enough. alas, poor devil! spectres are appointed to haunt him: one age he is hag-ridden, bewitched; the next, priest-ridden, befooled; in all ages, bedevilled. and now the genius of mechanism smothers him worse than any nightmare did; till the soul is nigh choked out of him, and only a kind of digestive, mechanic life remains. in earth and in heaven he can see nothing but mechanism; has fear for nothing else, hope in nothing else: the world would indeed grind him to pieces; but cannot he fathom the doctrine of motives, and cunningly compute these, and mechanize them to grind the other way? "were he not, as has been said, purblinded by enchantment, you had but to bid him open his eyes and look. in which country, in which time, was it hitherto that man's history, or the history of any man, went on by calculated or calculable 'motives'? what make ye of your christianities, and chivalries, and reformations, and marseillaise hymns, and reigns of terror? nay, has not perhaps the motive-grinder himself been in _love_? did he never stand so much as a contested election? leave him to time, and the medicating virtue of nature." "yes, friends," elsewhere observes the professor, "not our logical, mensurative faculty, but our imaginative one is king over us; i might say, priest and prophet to lead us heavenward; or magician and wizard to lead us hellward. nay, even for the basest sensualist, what is sense but the implement of fantasy; the vessel it drinks out of? ever in the dullest existence there is a sheen either of inspiration or of madness (thou partly hast it in thy choice, which of the two), that gleams in from the circumambient eternity, and colors with its own hues our little islet of time. the understanding is indeed thy window, too clear thou canst not make it; but fantasy is thy eye, with its color-giving retina, healthy or diseased. have not i myself known five hundred living soldiers sabred into crows'-meat for a piece of glazed cotton, which they called their flag; which, had you sold it at any market-cross, would not have brought above three groschen? did not the whole hungarian nation rise, like some tumultuous moon-stirred atlantic, when kaiser joseph pocketed their iron crown; an implement, as was sagaciously observed, in size and commercial value little differing from a horse-shoe? it is in and through _symbols_ that man, consciously or unconsciously, lives, works, and has his being: those ages, moreover, are accounted the noblest which can the best recognize symbolical worth, and prize it the highest. for is not a symbol ever, to him who has eyes for it, some dimmer or clearer revelation of the godlike? "of symbols, however, i remark farther, that they have both an extrinsic and intrinsic value; oftenest the former only. what, for instance, was in that clouted shoe, which the peasants bore aloft with them as ensign in their _bauernkrieg_ (peasants' war)? or in the wallet-and-staff round which the netherland _gueux_, glorying in that nickname of beggars, heroically rallied and prevailed, though against king philip himself? intrinsic significance these had none: only extrinsic; as the accidental standards of multitudes more or less sacredly uniting together; in which union itself, as above noted, there is ever something mystical and borrowing of the godlike. under a like category, too, stand, or stood, the stupidest heraldic coats-of-arms; military banners everywhere; and generally all national or other sectarian costumes and customs: they have no intrinsic, necessary divineness, or even worth; but have acquired an extrinsic one. nevertheless through all these there glimmers something of a divine idea; as through military banners themselves, the divine idea of duty, of heroic daring; in some instances of freedom, of right. nay the highest ensign that men ever met and embraced under, the cross itself, had no meaning save an accidental extrinsic one. "another matter it is, however, when your symbol has intrinsic meaning, and is of itself _fit_ that men should unite round it. let but the godlike manifest itself to sense, let but eternity look, more or less visibly, through the time-figure (_zeitbild_)! then is it fit that men unite there; and worship together before such symbol; and so from day to day, and from age to age, superadd to it new divineness. "of this latter sort are all true works of art: in them (if thou know a work of art from a daub of artifice) wilt thou discern eternity looking through time; the godlike rendered visible. here too may an extrinsic value gradually superadd itself: thus certain _iliads_, and the like, have, in three thousand years, attained quite new significance. but nobler than all in this kind are the lives of heroic god-inspired men; for what other work of art is so divine? in death too, in the death of the just, as the last perfection of a work of art, may we not discern symbolic meaning? in that divinely transfigured sleep, as of victory, resting over the beloved face which now knows thee no more, read (if thou canst for tears) the confluence of time with eternity, and some gleam of the latter peering through. "highest of all symbols are those wherein the artist or poet has risen into prophet, and all men can recognize a present god, and worship the same: i mean religious symbols. various enough have been such religious symbols, what we call _religions_; as men stood in this stage of culture or the other, and could worse or better body forth the godlike: some symbols with a transient intrinsic worth; many with only an extrinsic. if thou ask to what height man has carried it in this manner, look on our divinest symbol: on jesus of nazareth, and his life, and his biography, and what followed therefrom. higher has the human thought not yet reached: this is christianity and christendom; a symbol of quite perennial, infinite character; whose significance will ever demand to be anew inquired into, and anew made manifest. "but, on the whole, as time adds much to the sacredness of symbols, so likewise in his progress he at length defaces, or even desecrates them; and symbols, like all terrestrial garments, wax old. homer's epos has not ceased to be true; yet it is no longer our epos, but shines in the distance, if clearer and clearer, yet also smaller and smaller, like a receding star. it needs a scientific telescope, it needs to be reinterpreted and artificially brought near us, before we can so much as know that it _was_ a sun. so likewise a day comes when the runic thor, with his eddas, must withdraw into dimness; and many an african mumbo-jumbo and indian pawaw be utterly abolished. for all things, even celestial luminaries, much more atmospheric meteors, have their rise, their culmination, their decline. "small is this which thou tellest me, that the royal sceptre is but a piece of gilt wood; that the pyx has become a most foolish box, and truly, as ancient pistol thought, 'of little price.' a right conjurer might i name thee, couldst thou conjure back into these wooden tools the divine virtue they once held. "of this thing, however, be certain: wouldst thou plant for eternity, then plant into the deep infinite faculties of man, his fantasy and heart; wouldst thou plant for year and day, then plant into his shallow superficial faculties, his self-love and arithmetical understanding, what will grow there. a hierarch, therefore, and pontiff of the world will we call him, the poet and inspired maker; who, prometheus-like, can shape new symbols, and bring new fire from heaven to fix it there. such too will not always be wanting; neither perhaps now are. meanwhile, as the average of matters goes, we account him legislator and wise who can so much as tell when a symbol has grown old, and gently remove it. "when, as the last english coronation [*] i was preparing," concludes this wonderful professor, "i read in their newspapers that the 'champion of england,' he who has to offer battle to the universe for his new king, had brought it so far that he could now 'mount his horse with little assistance,' i said to myself: here also we have a symbol well-nigh superannuated. alas, move whithersoever you may, are not the tatters and rags of superannuated worn-out symbols (in this ragfair of a world) dropping off everywhere, to hoodwink, to halter, to tether you; nay, if you shake them not aside, threatening to accumulate, and perhaps produce suffocation?" * that of george iv.--ed. chapter iv. helotage. at this point we determine on adverting shortly, or rather reverting, to a certain tract of hofrath heuschrecke's, entitled _institute for the repression of population_; which lies, dishonorably enough (with torn leaves, and a perceptible smell of aloetic drugs), stuffed into the bag _pisces_. not indeed for the sake of the tract itself, which we admire little; but of the marginal notes, evidently in teufelsdrockh's hand, which rather copiously fringe it. a few of these may be in their right place here. into the hofrath's _institute_, with its extraordinary schemes, and machinery of corresponding boards and the like, we shall not so much as glance. enough for us to understand that heuschrecke is a disciple of malthus; and so zealous for the doctrine, that his zeal almost literally eats him up. a deadly fear of population possesses the hofrath; something like a fixed idea; undoubtedly akin to the more diluted forms of madness. nowhere, in that quarter of his intellectual world, is there light; nothing but a grim shadow of hunger; open mouths opening wider and wider; a world to terminate by the frightfullest consummation: by its too dense inhabitants, famished into delirium, universally eating one another. to make air for himself in which strangulation, choking enough to a benevolent heart, the hofrath founds, or proposes to found, this _institute_ of his, as the best he can do. it is only with our professor's comments thereon that we concern ourselves. first, then, remark that teufelsdrockh, as a speculative radical, has his own notions about human dignity; that the zahdarm palaces and courtesies have not made him forgetful of the futteral cottages. on the blank cover of heuschrecke's tract we find the following indistinctly engrossed:-- "two men i honor, and no third. first, the toilworn craftsman that with earth-made implement laboriously conquers the earth, and makes her man's. venerable to me is the hard hand; crooked, coarse; wherein notwithstanding lies a cunning virtue, indefeasibly royal, as of the sceptre of this planet. venerable too is the rugged face, all weather-tanned, besoiled, with its rude intelligence; for it is the face of a man living manlike. oh, but the more venerable for thy rudeness, and even because we must pity as well as love thee! hardly-entreated brother! for us was thy back so bent, for us were thy straight limbs and fingers so deformed: thou wert our conscript, on whom the lot fell, and fighting our battles wert so marred. for in thee too lay a god-created form, but it was not to be unfolded; encrusted must it stand with the thick adhesions and defacements of labor: and thy body, like thy soul, was not to know freedom. yet toil on, toil on: _thou_ art in thy duty, be out of it who may; thou toilest for the altogether indispensable, for daily bread. "a second man i honor, and still more highly: him who is seen toiling for the spiritually indispensable; not daily bread, but the bread of life. is not he too in his duty; endeavoring towards inward harmony; revealing this, by act or by word, through all his outward endeavors, be they high or low? highest of all, when his outward and his inward endeavor are one: when we can name him artist; not earthly craftsman only, but inspired thinker, who with heaven-made implement conquers heaven for us! if the poor and humble toil that we have food, must not the high and glorious toil for him in return, that he have light, have guidance, freedom, immortality?--these two, in all their degrees, i honor: all else is chaff and dust, which let the wind blow whither it listeth. "unspeakably touching is it, however, when i find both dignities united; and he that must toil outwardly for the lowest of man's wants, is also toiling inwardly for the highest. sublimer in this world know i nothing than a peasant saint, could such now anywhere be met with. such a one will take thee back to nazareth itself; thou wilt see the splendor of heaven spring forth from the humblest depths of earth, like a light shining in great darkness." and again: "it is not because of his toils that i lament for the poor: we must all toil, or steal (howsoever we name our stealing), which is worse; no faithful workman finds his task a pastime. the poor is hungry and athirst; but for him also there is food and drink: he is heavy-laden and weary; but for him also the heavens send sleep, and of the deepest; in his smoky cribs, a clear dewy heaven of rest envelops him; and fitful glitterings of cloud-skirted dreams. but what i do mourn over is, that the lamp of his soul should go out; that no ray of heavenly, or even of earthly knowledge, should visit him; but only, in the haggard darkness, like two spectres, fear and indignation bear him company. alas, while the body stands so broad and brawny, must the soul lie blinded, dwarfed, stupefied, almost annihilated! alas, was this too a breath of god; bestowed in heaven, but on earth never to be unfolded!--that there should one man die ignorant who had capacity for knowledge, this i call a tragedy, were it to happen more than twenty times in the minute, as by some computations it does. the miserable fraction of science which our united mankind, in a wide universe of nescience, has acquired, why is not this, with all diligence, imparted to all?" quite in an opposite strain is the following: "the old spartans had a wiser method; and went out and hunted down their helots, and speared and spitted them, when they grew too numerous. with our improved fashions of hunting, herr hofrath, now after the invention of fire-arms, and standing armies, how much easier were such a hunt! perhaps in the most thickly peopled country, some three days annually might suffice to shoot all the able-bodied paupers that had accumulated within the year. let governments think of this. the expense were trifling: nay the very carcasses would pay it. have them salted and barrelled; could not you victual therewith, if not army and navy, yet richly such infirm paupers, in workhouses and elsewhere, as enlightened charity, dreading no evil of them, might see good to keep alive?" "and yet," writes he farther on, "there must be something wrong. a full-formed horse will, in any market, bring from twenty to as high as two hundred friedrichs d'or: such is his worth to the world. a full-formed man is not only worth nothing to the world, but the world could afford him a round sum would he simply engage to go and hang himself. nevertheless, which of the two was the more cunningly devised article, even as an engine? good heavens! a white european man, standing on his two legs, with his two five-fingered hands at his shackle-bones, and miraculous head on his shoulders, is worth, i should say, from fifty to a hundred horses!" "true, thou gold-hofrath," cries the professor elsewhere: "too crowded indeed! meanwhile, what portion of this inconsiderable terraqueous globe have ye actually tilled and delved, till it will grow no more? how thick stands your population in the pampas and savannas of america; round ancient carthage, and in the interior of africa; on both slopes of the altaic chain, in the central platform of asia; in spain, greece, turkey, crim tartary, the curragh of kildare? one man, in one year, as i have understood it, if you lend him earth, will feed himself and nine others. alas, where now are the hengsts and alarics of our still-glowing, still-expanding europe; who, when their home is grown too narrow, will enlist, and, like fire-pillars, guide onwards those superfluous masses of indomitable living valor; equipped, not now with the battle-axe and war-chariot, but with the steam engine and ploughshare? where are they?--preserving their game!" chapter v. the phoenix. putting which four singular chapters together, and alongside of them numerous hints, and even direct utterances, scattered over these writings of his, we come upon the startling yet not quite unlooked-for conclusion, that teufelsdrockh is one of those who consider society, properly so called, to be as good as extinct; and that only the gregarious feelings, and old inherited habitudes, at this juncture, hold us from dispersion, and universal national, civil, domestic and personal war! he says expressly: "for the last three centuries, above all for the last three quarters of a century, that same pericardial nervous tissue (as we named it) of religion, where lies the life-essence of society, has been smote at and perforated, needfully and needlessly; till now it is quite rent into shreds; and society, long pining, diabetic, consumptive, can be regarded as defunct; for those spasmodic, galvanic sprawlings are not life; neither indeed will they endure, galvanize as you may, beyond two days." "call ye that a society," cries he again, "where there is no longer any social idea extant; not so much as the idea of a common home, but only of a common over-crowded lodging-house? where each, isolated, regardless of his neighbor, turned against his neighbor, clutches what he can get, and cries 'mine!' and calls it peace, because, in the cut-purse and cut-throat scramble, no steel knives, but only a far cunninger sort, can be employed? where friendship, communion, has become an incredible tradition; and your holiest sacramental supper is a smoking tavern dinner, with cook for evangelist? where your priest has no tongue but for plate-licking: and your high guides and governors cannot guide; but on all hands hear it passionately proclaimed: _laissez faire_; leave us alone of _your_ guidance, such light is darker than darkness; eat you your wages, and sleep! "thus, too," continues he, "does an observant eye discern everywhere that saddest spectacle: the poor perishing, like neglected, foundered draught-cattle, of hunger and overwork; the rich, still more wretchedly, of idleness, satiety, and overgrowth. the highest in rank, at length, without honor from the lowest; scarcely, with a little mouth-honor, as from tavern-waiters who expect to put it in the bill. once-sacred symbols fluttering as empty pageants, whereof men grudge even the expense; a world becoming dismantled: in one word, the state fallen speechless, from obesity and apoplexy; the state shrunken into a police-office, straitened to get its pay!" we might ask, are there many "observant eyes," belonging to practical men in england or elsewhere, which have descried these phenomena; or is it only from the mystic elevation of a german _wahngasse_ that such wonders are visible? teufelsdrockh contends that the aspect of a "deceased or expiring society" fronts us everywhere, so that whoso runs may read. "what, for example," says he, "is the universally arrogated virtue, almost the sole remaining catholic virtue, of these days? for some half-century, it has been the thing you name 'independence.' suspicion of 'servility,' of reverence for superiors, the very dog-leech is anxious to disavow. fools! were your superiors worthy to govern, and you worthy to obey, reverence for them were even your only possible freedom. independence, in all kinds, is rebellion; if unjust rebellion, why parade it, and everywhere prescribe it?" but what then? are we returning, as rousseau prayed, to the state of nature? "the soul politic having departed," says teufelsdrockh, "what can follow but that the body politic be decently interred, to avoid putrescence? liberals, economists, utilitarians enough i see marching with its bier, and chanting loud paeans, towards the funeral pile, where, amid wailings from some, and saturnalian revelries from the most, the venerable corpse is to be burnt. or, in plain words, that these men, liberals, utilitarians, or whatsoever they are called, will ultimately carry their point, and dissever and destroy most existing institutions of society, seems a thing which has some time ago ceased to be doubtful. "do we not see a little subdivision of the grand utilitarian armament come to light even in insulated england? a living nucleus, that will attract and grow, does at length appear there also; and under curious phasis; properly as the inconsiderable fag-end, and so far in the rear of the others as to fancy itself the van. our european mechanizers are a sect of boundless diffusion, activity, and co-operative spirit: has not utilitarianism flourished in high places of thought, here among ourselves, and in every european country, at some time or other, within the last fifty years? if now in all countries, except perhaps england, it has ceased to flourish, or indeed to exist, among thinkers, and sunk to journalists and the popular mass,--who sees not that, as hereby it no longer preaches, so the reason is, it now needs no preaching, but is in full universal action, the doctrine everywhere known, and enthusiastically laid to heart? the fit pabulum, in these times, for a certain rugged workshop intellect and heart, nowise without their corresponding workshop strength and ferocity, it requires but to be stated in such scenes to make proselytes enough.--admirably calculated for destroying, only not for rebuilding! it spreads like a sort of dog-madness; till the whole world-kennel will be rabid: then woe to the huntsmen, with or without their whips! they should have given the quadrupeds water," adds he; "the water, namely, of knowledge and of life, while it was yet time." thus, if professor teufelsdrockh can be relied on, we are at this hour in a most critical condition; beleaguered by that boundless "armament of mechanizers" and unbelievers, threatening to strip us bare! "the world," says he, "as it needs must, is under a process of devastation and waste, which, whether by silent assiduous corrosion, or open quicker combustion, as the case chances, will effectually enough annihilate the past forms of society; replace them with what it may. for the present, it is contemplated that when man's whole spiritual interests are once _divested_, these innumerable stript-off garments shall mostly be burnt; but the sounder rags among them be quilted together into one huge irish watch-coat for the defence of the body only!"--this, we think, is but job's-news to the humane reader. "nevertheless," cries teufelsdrockh, "who can hinder it; who is there that can clutch into the wheelspokes of destiny, and say to the spirit of the time: turn back, i command thee?--wiser were it that we yielded to the inevitable and inexorable, and accounted even this the best." nay, might not an attentive editor, drawing his own inferences from what stands written, conjecture that teufelsdrockh, individually had yielded to this same "inevitable and inexorable" heartily enough; and now sat waiting the issue, with his natural diabolico-angelical indifference, if not even placidity? did we not hear him complain that the world was a "huge ragfair," and the "rags and tatters of old symbols" were raining down everywhere, like to drift him in, and suffocate him? what with those "unhunted helots" of his; and the uneven _sic vos non vobis_ pressure and hard-crashing collision he is pleased to discern in existing things; what with the so hateful "empty masks," full of beetles and spiders, yet glaring out on him, from their glass eyes, "with a ghastly affectation of life,"--we feel entitled to conclude him even willing that much should be thrown to the devil, so it were but done gently! safe himself in that "pinnacle of weissnichtwo," he would consent, with a tragic solemnity, that the monster utilitaria, held back, indeed, and moderated by nose-rings, halters, foot-shackles, and every conceivable modification of rope, should go forth to do her work;--to tread down old ruinous palaces and temples with her broad hoof, till the whole were trodden down, that new and better might be built! remarkable in this point of view are the following sentences. "society," says he, "is not dead: that carcass, which you call dead society, is but her mortal coil which she has shuffled off, to assume a nobler; she herself, through perpetual metamorphoses, in fairer and fairer development, has to live till time also merge in eternity. wheresoever two or three living men are gathered together, there is society; or there it will be, with its cunning mechanisms and stupendous structures, overspreading this little globe, and reaching upwards to heaven and downwards to gehenna: for always, under one or the other figure, it has two authentic revelations, of a god and of a devil; the pulpit, namely, and the gallows." indeed, we already heard him speak of "religion, in unnoticed nooks, weaving for herself new vestures;"--teufelsdrockh himself being one of the loom-treadles? elsewhere he quotes without censure that strange aphorism of saint simon's, concerning which and whom so much were to be said: "_l'age d'or, qu'une aveugle tradition a place jusqu'ici dans le passe, est devant nous_; the golden age, which a blind tradition has hitherto placed in the past, is before us."--but listen again:-- "when the phoenix is fanning her funeral pyre, will there not be sparks flying! alas, some millions of men, and among them such as a napoleon, have already been licked into that high-eddying flame, and like moths consumed there. still also have we to fear that incautious beards will get singed. "for the rest, in what year of grace such phoenix-cremation will be completed, you need not ask. the law of perseverance is among the deepest in man: by nature he hates change; seldom will he quit his old house till it has actually fallen about his ears. thus have i seen solemnities linger as ceremonies, sacred symbols as idle pageants, to the extent of three hundred years and more after all life and sacredness had evaporated out of them. and then, finally, what time the phoenix death-birth itself will require, depends on unseen contingencies.--meanwhile, would destiny offer mankind, that after, say two centuries of convulsion and conflagration, more or less vivid, the fire-creation should be accomplished, and we to find ourselves again in a living society, and no longer fighting but working,--were it not perhaps prudent in mankind to strike the bargain?" thus is teufelsdrockh, content that old sick society should be deliberately burnt (alas, with quite other fuel than spice-wood); in the faith that she is a phoenix; and that a new heaven-born young one will rise out of her ashes! we ourselves, restricted to the duty of indicator, shall forbear commentary. meanwhile, will not the judicious reader shake his head, and reproachfully, yet more in sorrow than in anger, say or think: from a _doctor utriusque juris_, titular professor in a university, and man to whom hitherto, for his services, society, bad as she is, has given not only food and raiment (of a kind), but books, tobacco and gukguk, we expected more gratitude to his benefactress; and less of a blind trust in the future which resembles that rather of a philosophical fatalist and enthusiast, than of a solid householder paying scot-and-lot in a christian country. chapter vi. old clothes. as mentioned above, teufelsdrockh, though a sansculottist, is in practice probably the politest man extant: his whole heart and life are penetrated and informed with the spirit of politeness; a noble natural courtesy shines through him, beautifying his vagaries; like sunlight, making a rosyfingered, rainbow-dyed aurora out of mere aqueous clouds; nay brightening london-smoke itself into gold vapor, as from the crucible of an alchemist. hear in what earnest though fantastic wise he expresses himself on this head:-- "shall courtesy be done only to the rich, and only by the rich? in good-breeding, which differs, if at all, from high-breeding, only as it gracefully remembers the rights of others, rather than gracefully insists on its own rights, i discern no special connection with wealth or birth: but rather that it lies in human nature itself, and is due from all men towards all men. of a truth, were your schoolmaster at his post, and worth anything when there, this, with so much else, would be reformed. nay, each man were then also his neighbor's schoolmaster; till at length a rude-visaged, unmannered peasant could no more be met with, than a peasant unacquainted with botanical physiology, or who felt not that the clod he broke was created in heaven. "for whether thou bear a sceptre or a sledge-hammer, art not thou alive; is not this thy brother alive? 'there is but one temple in the world,' says novalis, 'and that temple is the body of man. nothing is holier than this high form. bending before men is a reverence done to this revelation in the flesh. we touch heaven, when we lay our hands on a human body.' "on which ground, i would fain carry it farther than most do; and whereas the english johnson only bowed to every clergyman, or man with a shovel-hat, i would bow to every man with any sort of hat, or with no hat whatever. is not he a temple, then; the visible manifestation and impersonation of the divinity? and yet, alas, such indiscriminate bowing serves not. for there is a devil dwells in man, as well as a divinity; and too often the bow is but pocketed by the _former_. it would go to the pocket of vanity (which is your clearest phasis of the devil, in these times); therefore must we withhold it. "the gladder am i, on the other hand, to do reverence to those shells and outer husks of the body, wherein no devilish passion any longer lodges, but only the pure emblem and effigies of man: i mean, to empty, or even to cast clothes. nay, is it not to clothes that most men do reverence: to the fine frogged broadcloth, nowise to the 'straddling animal with bandy legs' which it holds, and makes a dignitary of? who ever saw any lord my-lorded in tattered blanket fastened with wooden skewer? nevertheless, i say, there is in such worship a shade of hypocrisy, a practical deception: for how often does the body appropriate what was meant for the cloth only! whoso would avoid falsehood, which is the essence of all sin, will perhaps see good to take a different course. that reverence which cannot act without obstruction and perversion when the clothes are full, may have free course when they are empty. even as, for hindoo worshippers, the pagoda is not less sacred than the god; so do i too worship the hollow cloth garment with equal fervor, as when it contained the man: nay, with more, for i now fear no deception, of myself or of others. "did not king _toomtabard_, or, in other words, john baliol, reign long over scotland; the man john baliol being quite gone, and only the 'toom tabard' (empty gown) remaining? what still dignity dwells in a suit of cast clothes! how meekly it bears its honors! no haughty looks, no scornful gesture: silent and serene, it fronts the world; neither demanding worship, nor afraid to miss it. the hat still carries the physiognomy of its head: but the vanity and the stupidity, and goose-speech which was the sign of these two, are gone. the coat-arm is stretched out, but not to strike; the breeches, in modest simplicity, depend at ease, and now at last have a graceful flow; the waistcoat hides no evil passion, no riotous desire; hunger or thirst now dwells not in it. thus all is purged from the grossness of sense, from the carking cares and foul vices of the world; and rides there, on its clothes-horse; as, on a pegasus, might some skyey messenger, or purified apparition, visiting our low earth. "often, while i sojourned in that monstrous tuberosity of civilized life, the capital of england; and meditated, and questioned destiny, under that ink-sea of vapor, black, thick, and multifarious as spartan broth; and was one lone soul amid those grinding millions;--often have i turned into their old-clothes market to worship. with awe-struck heart i walk through that monmouth street, with its empty suits, as through a sanhedrim of stainless ghosts. silent are they, but expressive in their silence: the past witnesses and instruments of woe and joy, of passions, virtues, crimes, and all the fathomless tumult of good and evil in 'the prison men call life.' friends! trust not the heart of that man for whom old clothes are not venerable. watch, too, with reverence, that bearded jewish high-priest, who with hoarse voice, like some angel of doom, summons them from the four winds! on his head, like the pope, he has three hats,--a real triple tiara; on either hand are the similitude of wings, whereon the summoned garments come to alight; and ever, as he slowly cleaves the air, sounds forth his deep fateful note, as if through a trumpet he were proclaiming: 'ghosts of life, come to judgment!' reck not, ye fluttering ghosts: he will purify you in his purgatory, with fire and with water; and, one day, new-created ye shall reappear. oh, let him in whom the flame of devotion is ready to go out, who has never worshipped, and knows not what to worship, pace and repace, with austerest thought, the pavement of monmouth street, and say whether his heart and his eyes still continue dry. if field lane, with its long fluttering rows of yellow handkerchiefs, be a dionysius' ear, where, in stifled jarring hubbub, we hear the indictment which poverty and vice bring against lazy wealth, that it has left them there cast out and trodden under foot of want, darkness and the devil,--then is monmouth street a mirza's hill, where, in motley vision, the whole pageant of existence passes awfully before us; with its wail and jubilee, mad loves and mad hatreds, church-bells and gallows-ropes, farce-tragedy, beast-godhood,--the bedlam of creation!" to most men, as it does to ourselves, all this will seem overcharged. we too have walked through monmouth street; but with little feeling of "devotion:" probably in part because the contemplative process is so fatally broken in upon by the brood of money-changers who nestle in that church, and importune the worshipper with merely secular proposals. whereas teufelsdrockh, might be in that happy middle state, which leaves to the clothes-broker no hope either of sale or of purchase, and so be allowed to linger there without molestation.--something we would have given to see the little philosophical figure, with its steeple-hat and loose flowing skirts, and eyes in a fine frenzy, "pacing and repacing in austerest thought" that foolish street; which to him was a true delphic avenue, and supernatural whispering-gallery, where the "ghosts of life" rounded strange secrets in his ear. o thou philosophic teufelsdrockh, that listenest while others only gabble, and with thy quick tympanum hearest the grass grow! at the same time, is it not strange that, in paper-bag documents destined for an english work, there exists nothing like an authentic diary of this his sojourn in london; and of his meditations among the clothes-shops only the obscurest emblematic shadows? neither, in conversation (for, indeed, he was not a man to pester you with his travels), have we heard him more than allude to the subject. for the rest, however, it cannot be uninteresting that we here find how early the significance of clothes had dawned on the now so distinguished clothes-professor. might we but fancy it to have been even in monmouth street, at the bottom of our own english "ink-sea," that this remarkable volume first took being, and shot forth its salient point in his soul,--as in chaos did the egg of eros, one day to be hatched into a universe! chapter vii. organic filaments. for us, who happen to live while the world-phoenix is burning herself, and burning so slowly that, as teufelsdrockh calculates, it were a handsome bargain would she engage to have done "within two centuries," there seems to lie but an ashy prospect. not altogether so, however, does the professor figure it. "in the living subject," says he, "change is wont to be gradual: thus, while the serpent sheds its old skin, the new is already formed beneath. little knowest thou of the burning of a world-phoenix, who fanciest that she must first burn out, and lie as a dead cinereous heap; and therefrom the young one start up by miracle, and fly heavenward. far otherwise! in that fire-whirlwind, creation and destruction proceed together; ever as the ashes of the old are blown about, do organic filaments of the new mysteriously spin themselves: and amid the rushing and the waving of the whirlwind element come tones of a melodious death-song, which end not but in tones of a more melodious birth-song. nay, look into the fire-whirlwind with thy own eyes, and thou wilt see." let us actually look, then: to poor individuals, who cannot expect to live two centuries, those same organic filaments, mysteriously spinning themselves, will be the best part of the spectacle. first, therefore, this of mankind in general:-- "in vain thou deniest it," says the professor; "thou art my brother. thy very hatred, thy very envy, those foolish lies thou tellest of me in thy splenetic humor: what is all this but an inverted sympathy? were i a steam-engine, wouldst thou take the trouble to tell lies of me? not thou! i should grind all unheeded, whether badly or well. "wondrous truly are the bonds that unite us one and all; whether by the soft binding of love, or the iron chaining of necessity, as we like to choose it. more than once have i said to myself, of some perhaps whimsically strutting figure, such as provokes whimsical thoughts: 'wert thou, my little brotherkin, suddenly covered up within the largest imaginable glass bell,--what a thing it were, not for thyself only, but for the world! post letters, more or fewer, from all the four winds, impinge against thy glass walls, but have to drop unread: neither from within comes there question or response into any post-bag; thy thoughts fall into no friendly ear or heart, thy manufacture into no purchasing hand: thou art no longer a circulating venous-arterial heart, that, taking and giving, circulatest through all space and all time: there has a hole fallen out in the immeasurable, universal world-tissue, which must be darned up again!' "such venous-arterial circulation, of letters, verbal messages, paper and other packages, going out from him and coming in, are a blood-circulation, visible to the eye: but the finer nervous circulation, by which all things, the minutest that he does, minutely influence all men, and the very look of his face blesses or curses whomso it lights on, and so generates ever new blessing or new cursing: all this you cannot see, but only imagine. i say, there is not a red indian, hunting by lake winnipeg, can quarrel with his squaw, but the whole world must smart for it: will not the price of beaver rise? it is a mathematical fact that the casting of this pebble from my hand alters the centre of gravity of the universe. "if now an existing generation of men stand so woven together, not less indissolubly does generation with generation. hast thou ever meditated on that word, tradition: how we inherit not life only, but all the garniture and form of life; and work, and speak, and even think and feel, as our fathers, and primeval grandfathers, from the beginning, have given it us?--who printed thee, for example, this unpretending volume on the philosophy of clothes? not the herren stillschweigen and company; but cadmus of thebes, faust of mentz, and innumerable others whom thou knowest not. had there been no moesogothic ulfila, there had been no english shakspeare, or a different one. simpleton! it was tubal-cain that made thy very tailor's needle, and sewed that court-suit of thine. "yes, truly, if nature is one, and a living indivisible whole, much more is mankind, the image that reflects and creates nature, without which nature were not. as palpable lifestreams in that wondrous individual mankind, among so many life-streams that are not palpable, flow on those main currents of what we call opinion; as preserved in institutions, polities, churches, above all in books. beautiful it is to understand and know that a thought did never yet die; that as thou, the originator thereof, hast gathered it and created it from the whole past, so thou wilt transmit it to the whole future. it is thus that the heroic heart, the seeing eye of the first times, still feels and sees in us of the latest; that the wise man stands ever encompassed, and spiritually embraced, by a cloud of witnesses and brothers; and there is a living, literal _communion of saints_, wide as the world itself, and as the history of the world. "noteworthy also, and serviceable for the progress of this same individual, wilt thou find his subdivision into generations. generations are as the days of toilsome mankind: death and birth are the vesper and the matin bells, that summon mankind to sleep, and to rise refreshed for new advancement. what the father has made, the son can make and enjoy; but has also work of his own appointed him. thus all things wax, and roll onwards; arts, establishments, opinions, nothing is completed, but ever completing. newton has learned to see what kepler saw; but there is also a fresh heaven-derived force in newton; he must mount to still higher points of vision. so too the hebrew lawgiver is, in due time, followed by an apostle of the gentiles. in the business of destruction, as this also is from time to time a necessary work, thou findest a like sequence and perseverance: for luther it was as yet hot enough to stand by that burning of the pope's bull; voltaire could not warm himself at the glimmering ashes, but required quite other fuel. thus likewise, i note, the english whig has, in the second generation, become an english radical; who, in the third again, it is to be hoped, will become an english rebuilder. find mankind where thou wilt, thou findest it in living movement, in progress faster or slower: the phoenix soars aloft, hovers with outstretched wings, filling earth with her music; or, as now, she sinks, and with spheral swan-song immolates herself in flame, that she may soar the higher and sing the clearer." let the friends of social order, in such a disastrous period, lay this to heart, and derive from it any little comfort they can. we subjoin another passage, concerning titles:-- "remark, not without surprise," says teufelsdrockh, "how all high titles of honor come hitherto from fighting. your _herzog_ (duke, _dux_) is leader of armies; your earl (_jarl_) is strong man; your marshal cavalry horse-shoer. a millennium, or reign of peace and wisdom, having from of old been prophesied, and becoming now daily more and more indubitable, may it not be apprehended that such fighting titles will cease to be palatable, and new and higher need to be devised? "the only title wherein i, with confidence, trace eternity is that of king. _konig_ (king), anciently _konning_, means ken-ning (cunning), or which is the same thing, can-ning. ever must the sovereign of mankind be fitly entitled king." "well, also," says he elsewhere, "was it written by theologians: a king rules by divine right. he carries in him an authority from god, or man will never give it him. can i choose my own king? i can choose my own king popinjay, and play what farce or tragedy i may with him: but he who is to be my ruler, whose will is to be higher than my will, was chosen for me in heaven. neither except in such obedience to the heaven-chosen is freedom so much as conceivable." the editor will here admit that, among all the wondrous provinces of teufelsdrockh's spiritual world, there is none he walks in with such astonishment, hesitation, and even pain, as in the political. how, with our english love of ministry and opposition, and that generous conflict of parties, mind warming itself against mind in their mutual wrestle for the public good, by which wrestle, indeed, is our invaluable constitution kept warm and alive; how shall we domesticate ourselves in this spectral necropolis, or rather city both of the dead and of the unborn, where the present seems little other than an inconsiderable film dividing the past and the future? in those dim long-drawn expanses, all is so immeasurable; much so disastrous, ghastly; your very radiances and straggling light-beams have a supernatural character. and then with such an indifference, such a prophetic peacefulness (accounting the inevitably coming as already here, to him all one whether it be distant by centuries or only by days), does he sit;--and live, you would say, rather in any other age than in his own! it is our painful duty to announce, or repeat, that, looking into this man, we discern a deep, silent, slow-burning, inextinguishable radicalism, such as fills us with shuddering admiration. thus, for example, he appears to make little even of the elective franchise; at least so we interpret the following: "satisfy yourselves," he says, "by universal, indubitable experiment, even as ye are now doing or will do, whether freedom, heaven-born and leading heavenward, and so vitally essential for us all, cannot peradventure be mechanically hatched and brought to light in that same ballot-box of yours; or at worst, in some other discoverable or devisable box, edifice, or steam-mechanism. it were a mighty convenience; and beyond all feats of manufacture witnessed hitherto." is teufelsdrockh acquainted with the british constitution, even slightly?--he says, under another figure: "but after all, were the problem, as indeed it now everywhere is, to rebuild your old house from the top downwards (since you must live in it the while), what better, what other, than the representative machine will serve your turn? meanwhile, however, mock me not with the name of free, 'when you have but knit up my chains into ornamental festoons.'"--or what will any member of the peace society make of such an assertion as this: "the lower people everywhere desire war. not so unwisely; there is then a demand for lower people--to be shot!" gladly, therefore, do we emerge from those soul-confusing labyrinths of speculative radicalism, into somewhat clearer regions. here, looking round, as was our hest, for "organic filaments," we ask, may not this, touching "hero-worship," be of the number? it seems of a cheerful character; yet so quaint, so mystical, one knows not what, or how little, may lie under it. our readers shall look with their own eyes:-- "true is it that, in these days, man can do almost all things, only not obey. true likewise that whoso cannot obey cannot be free, still less bear rule; he that is the inferior of nothing, can be the superior of nothing, the equal of nothing. nevertheless, believe not that man has lost his faculty of reverence; that if it slumber in him, it has gone dead. painful for man is that same rebellious independence, when it has become inevitable; only in loving companionship with his fellows does he feel safe; only in reverently bowing down before the higher does he feel himself exalted. "or what if the character of our so troublous era lay even in this: that man had forever cast away fear, which is the lower; but not yet risen into perennial reverence, which is the higher and highest? "meanwhile, observe with joy, so cunningly has nature ordered it, that whatsoever man ought to obey, he cannot but obey. before no faintest revelation of the godlike did he ever stand irreverent; least of all, when the godlike showed itself revealed in his fellow-man. thus is there a true religious loyalty forever rooted in his heart; nay in all ages, even in ours, it manifests itself as a more or less orthodox _hero-worship_. in which fact, that hero-worship exists, has existed, and will forever exist, universally among mankind, mayest thou discern the corner-stone of living rock, whereon all polities for the remotest time may stand secure." do our readers discern any such corner-stone, or even so much as what teufelsdrockh, is looking at? he exclaims, "or hast thou forgotten paris and voltaire? how the aged, withered man, though but a sceptic, mocker, and millinery court-poet, yet because even he seemed the wisest, best, could drag mankind at his chariot-wheels, so that princes coveted a smile from him, and the loveliest of france would have laid their hair beneath his feet! all paris was one vast temple of hero-worship; though their divinity, moreover, was of feature too apish. "but if such things," continues he, "were done in the dry tree, what will be done in the green? if, in the most parched season of man's history, in the most parched spot of europe, when parisian life was at best but a scientific _hortus siccus_, bedizened with some italian gumflowers, such virtue could come out of it; what is to be looked for when life again waves leafy and bloomy, and your hero-divinity shall have nothing apelike, but be wholly human? know that there is in man a quite indestructible reverence for whatsoever holds of heaven, or even plausibly counterfeits such holding. show the dullest clodpoll, show the haughtiest featherhead, that a soul higher than himself is actually here; were his knees stiffened into brass, he must down and worship." organic filaments, of a more authentic sort, mysteriously spinning themselves, some will perhaps discover in the following passage:-- "there is no church, sayest thou? the voice of prophecy has gone dumb? this is even what i dispute: but in any case, hast thou not still preaching enough? a preaching friar settles himself in every village; and builds a pulpit, which he calls newspaper. therefrom he preaches what most momentous doctrine is in him, for man's salvation; and dost not thou listen, and believe? look well, thou seest everywhere a new clergy of the mendicant orders, some barefooted, some almost bare-backed, fashion itself into shape, and teach and preach, zealously enough, for copper alms and the love of god. these break in pieces the ancient idols; and, though themselves too often reprobate, as idol-breakers are wont to be, mark out the sites of new churches, where the true god-ordained, that are to follow, may find audience, and minister. said i not, before the old skin was shed, the new had formed itself beneath it?" perhaps also in the following; wherewith we now hasten to knit up this ravelled sleeve:-- "but there is no religion?" reiterates the professor. "fool! i tell thee, there is. hast thou well considered all that lies in this immeasurable froth-ocean we name literature? fragments of a genuine church-_homiletic_ lie scattered there, which time will assort: nay fractions even of a _liturgy_ could i point out. and knowest thou no prophet, even in the vesture, environment, and dialect of this age? none to whom the godlike had revealed itself, through all meanest and highest forms of the common; and by him been again prophetically revealed: in whose inspired melody, even in these rag-gathering and rag-burning days, man's life again begins, were it but afar off, to be divine? knowest thou none such? i know him, and name him--goethe. "but thou as yet standest in no temple; joinest in no psalm-worship; feelest well that, where there is no ministering priest, the people perish? be of comfort! thou art not alone, if thou have faith. spake we not of a communion of saints, unseen, yet not unreal, accompanying and brother-like embracing thee, so thou be worthy? their heroic sufferings rise up melodiously together to heaven, out of all lands, and out of all times, as a sacred _miserere_; their heroic actions also, as a boundless everlasting psalm of triumph. neither say that thou hast now no symbol of the godlike. is not god's universe a symbol of the godlike; is not immensity a temple; is not man's history, and men's history, a perpetual evangel? listen, and for organ-music thou wilt ever, as of old, hear the morning stars sing together." chapter viii. natural supernaturalism. it is in his stupendous section, headed _natural supernaturalism_, that the professor first becomes a seer; and, after long effort, such as we have witnessed, finally subdues under his feet this refractory clothes-philosophy, and takes victorious possession thereof. phantasms enough he has had to struggle with; "cloth-webs and cob-webs," of imperial mantles, superannuated symbols, and what not: yet still did he courageously pierce through. nay, worst of all, two quite mysterious, world-embracing phantasms, time and space, have ever hovered round him, perplexing and bewildering: but with these also he now resolutely grapples, these also he victoriously rends asunder. in a word, he has looked fixedly on existence, till, one after the other, its earthly hulls and garnitures have all melted away; and now, to his rapt vision, the interior celestial holy-of-holies lies disclosed. here, therefore, properly it is that the philosophy of clothes attains to transcendentalism; this last leap, can we but clear it, takes us safe into the promised land, where _palingenesia_, in all senses, may be considered as beginning. "courage, then!" may our diogenes exclaim, with better right than diogenes the first once did. this stupendous section we, after long painful meditation, have found not to be unintelligible; but, on the contrary, to grow clear, nay radiant, and all-illuminating. let the reader, turning on it what utmost force of speculative intellect is in him, do his part; as we, by judicious selection and adjustment, shall study to do ours:-- "deep has been, and is, the significance of miracles," thus quietly begins the professor; "far deeper perhaps than we imagine. meanwhile, the question of questions were: what specially is a miracle? to that dutch king of siam, an icicle had been a miracle; whoso had carried with him an air-pump, and vial of vitriolic ether, might have worked a miracle. to my horse, again, who unhappily is still more unscientific, do not i work a miracle, and magical '_open sesame_!_'_ every time i please to pay twopence, and open for him an impassable _schlagbaum_, or shut turnpike? "'but is not a real miracle simply a violation of the laws of nature?' ask several. whom i answer by this new question: what are the laws of nature? to me perhaps the rising of one from the dead were no violation of these laws, but a confirmation; were some far deeper law, now first penetrated into, and by spiritual force, even as the rest have all been, brought to bear on us with its material force. "here too may some inquire, not without astonishment: on what ground shall one, that can make iron swim, come and declare that therefore he can teach religion? to us, truly, of the nineteenth century, such declaration were inept enough; which nevertheless to our fathers, of the first century, was full of meaning. "'but is it not the deepest law of nature that she be constant?' cries an illuminated class: 'is not the machine of the universe fixed to move by unalterable rules?' probable enough, good friends: nay i, too, must believe that the god, whom ancient inspired men assert to be 'without variableness or shadow of turning,' does indeed never change; that nature, that the universe, which no one whom it so pleases can be prevented from calling a machine, does move by the most unalterable rules. and now of you, too, i make the old inquiry: what those same unalterable rules, forming the complete statute-book of nature, may possibly be? "they stand written in our works of science, say you; in the accumulated records of man's experience?--was man with his experience present at the creation, then, to see how it all went on? have any deepest scientific individuals yet dived down to the foundations of the universe, and gauged everything there? did the maker take them into his counsel; that they read his ground-plan of the incomprehensible all; and can say, this stands marked therein, and no more than this? alas, not in anywise! these scientific individuals have been nowhere but where we also are; have seen some hand breadths deeper than we see into the deep that is infinite, without bottom as without shore. "laplace's book on the stars, wherein he exhibits that certain planets, with their satellites, gyrate round our worthy sun, at a rate and in a course, which, by greatest good fortune, he and the like of him have succeeded in detecting,--is to me as precious as to another. but is this what thou namest 'mechanism of the heavens,' and 'system of the world;' this, wherein sirius and the pleiades, and all herschel's fifteen thousand suns per minute, being left out, some paltry handful of moons, and inert balls, had been--looked at, nick-named, and marked in the zodiacal way-bill; so that we can now prate of their whereabout; their how, their why, their what, being hid from us, as in the signless inane? "system of nature! to the wisest man, wide as is his vision, nature remains of quite _infinite_ depth, of quite infinite expansion; and all experience thereof limits itself to some few computed centuries and measured square-miles. the course of nature's phases, on this our little fraction of a planet, is partially known to us: but who knows what deeper courses these depend on; what infinitely larger cycle (of causes) our little epicycle revolves on? to the minnow every cranny and pebble, and quality and accident, of its little native creek may have become familiar: but does the minnow understand the ocean tides and periodic currents, the trade-winds, and monsoons, and moon's eclipses; by all which the condition of its little creek is regulated, and may, from time to time (unmiraculously enough), be quite overset and reversed? such a minnow is man; his creek this planet earth; his ocean the immeasurable all; his monsoons and periodic currents the mysterious course of providence through aeons of aeons. "we speak of the volume of nature: and truly a volume it is,--whose author and writer is god. to read it! dost thou, does man, so much as well know the alphabet thereof? with its words, sentences, and grand descriptive pages, poetical and philosophical, spread out through solar systems, and thousands of years, we shall not try thee. it is a volume written in celestial hieroglyphs, in the true sacred-writing; of which even prophets are happy that they can read here a line and there a line. as for your institutes, and academies of science, they strive bravely; and, from amid the thick-crowded, inextricably intertwisted hieroglyphic writing, pick out, by dexterous combination, some letters in the vulgar character, and therefrom put together this and the other economic recipe, of high avail in practice. that nature is more than some boundless volume of such recipes, or huge, well-nigh inexhaustible domestic-cookery book, of which the whole secret will in this manner one day evolve itself, the fewest dream. "custom," continues the professor, "doth make dotards of us all. consider well, thou wilt find that custom is the greatest of weavers; and weaves air-raiment for all the spirits of the universe; whereby indeed these dwell with us visibly, as ministering servants, in our houses and workshops; but their spiritual nature becomes, to the most, forever hidden. philosophy complains that custom has hoodwinked us, from the first; that we do everything by custom, even believe by it; that our very axioms, let us boast of free-thinking as we may, are oftenest simply such beliefs as we have never heard questioned. nay, what is philosophy throughout but a continual battle against custom; an ever-renewed effort to _transcend_ the sphere of blind custom, and so become transcendental? "innumerable are the illusions and legerdemain-tricks of custom: but of all these, perhaps the cleverest is her knack of persuading us that the miraculous, by simple repetition, ceases to be miraculous. true, it is by this means we live; for man must work as well as wonder: and herein is custom so far a kind nurse, guiding him to his true benefit. but she is a fond foolish nurse, or rather we are false foolish nurslings, when, in our resting and reflecting hours, we prolong the same deception. am i to view the stupendous with stupid indifference, because i have seen it twice, or two hundred, or two million times? there is no reason in nature or in art why i should: unless, indeed, i am a mere work-machine, for whom the divine gift of thought were no other than the terrestrial gift of steam is to the steam-engine; a power whereby cotton might be spun, and money and money's worth realized. "notable enough too, here as elsewhere, wilt thou find the potency of names; which indeed are but one kind of such custom-woven, wonder-hiding garments. witchcraft, and all manner of spectre-work, and demonology, we have now named madness, and diseases of the nerves. seldom reflecting that still the new question comes upon us: what is madness, what are nerves? ever, as before, does madness remain a mysterious-terrific, altogether _infernal_ boiling-up of the nether chaotic deep, through this fair-painted vision of creation, which swims thereon, which we name the real. was luther's picture of the devil less a reality, whether it were formed within the bodily eye, or without it? in every the wisest soul lies a whole world of internal madness, an authentic demon-empire; out of which, indeed, his world of wisdom has been creatively built together, and now rests there, as on its dark foundations does a habitable flowery earth rind. "but deepest of all illusory appearances, for hiding wonder, as for many other ends, are your two grand fundamental world-enveloping appearances, space and time. these, as spun and woven for us from before birth itself, to clothe our celestial me for dwelling here, and yet to blind it,--lie all-embracing, as the universal canvas, or warp and woof, whereby all minor illusions, in this phantasm existence, weave and paint themselves. in vain, while here on earth, shall you endeavor to strip them off; you can, at best, but rend them asunder for moments, and look through. "fortunatus had a wishing hat, which when he put on, and wished himself anywhere, behold he was there. by this means had fortunatus triumphed over space, he had annihilated space; for him there was no where, but all was here. were a hatter to establish himself, in the wahngasse of weissnichtwo, and make felts of this sort for all mankind, what a world we should have of it! still stranger, should, on the opposite side of the street, another hatter establish himself; and, as his fellow-craftsman made space-annihilating hats, make time-annihilating! of both would i purchase, were it with my last groschen; but chiefly of this latter. to clap on your felt, and, simply by wishing that you were anywhere, straightway to be _there_! next to clap on your other felt, and, simply by wishing that you were _anywhen_, straightway to be _then_! this were indeed the grander: shooting at will from the fire-creation of the world to its fire-consummation; here historically present in the first century, conversing face to face with paul and seneca; there prophetically in the thirty-first, conversing also face to face with other pauls and senecas, who as yet stand hidden in the depth of that late time! "or thinkest thou it were impossible, unimaginable? is the past annihilated, then, or only past; is the future non-extant, or only future? those mystic faculties of thine, memory and hope, already answer: already through those mystic avenues, thou the earth-blinded summonest both past and future, and communest with them, though as yet darkly, and with mute beckonings. the curtains of yesterday drop down, the curtains of to-morrow roll up; but yesterday and to-morrow both _are_. pierce through the time-element, glance into the eternal. believe what thou findest written in the sanctuaries of man's soul, even as all thinkers, in all ages, have devoutly read it there: that time and space are not god, but creations of god; that with god as it is a universal here, so is it an everlasting now. "and seest thou therein any glimpse of immortality?--o heaven! is the white tomb of our loved one, who died from our arms, and had to be left behind us there, which rises in the distance, like a pale, mournfully receding milestone, to tell how many toilsome uncheered miles we have journeyed on alone,--but a pale spectral illusion! is the lost friend still mysteriously here, even as we are here mysteriously, with god!--know of a truth that only the time-shadows have perished, or are perishable; that the real being of whatever was, and whatever is, and whatever will be, is even now and forever. this, should it unhappily seem new, thou mayest ponder at thy leisure; for the next twenty years, or the next twenty centuries: believe it thou must; understand it thou canst not. "that the thought-forms, space and time, wherein, once for all, we are sent into this earth to live, should condition and determine our whole practical reasonings, conceptions, and imagings or imaginings, seems altogether fit, just, and unavoidable. but that they should, furthermore, usurp such sway over pure spiritual meditation, and blind us to the wonder everywhere lying close on us, seems nowise so. admit space and time to their due rank as forms of thought; nay even, if thou wilt, to their quite undue rank of realities: and consider, then, with thyself how their thin disguises hide from us the brightest god-effulgences! thus, were it not miraculous, could i stretch forth my hand and clutch the sun? yet thou seest me daily stretch forth my hand and therewith clutch many a thing, and swing it hither and thither. art thou a grown baby, then, to fancy that the miracle lies in miles of distance, or in pounds avoirdupois of weight; and not to see that the true inexplicable god-revealing miracle lies in this, that i can stretch forth my hand at all; that i have free force to clutch aught therewith? innumerable other of this sort are the deceptions, and wonder-hiding stupefactions, which space practices on us. "still worse is it with regard to time. your grand anti-magician, and universal wonder-hider, is this same lying time. had we but the time-annihilating hat, to put on for once only, we should see ourselves in a world of miracles, wherein all fabled or authentic thaumaturgy, and feats of magic, were outdone. but unhappily we have not such a hat; and man, poor fool that he is, can seldom and scantily help himself without one. "were it not wonderful, for instance, had orpheus, or amphion, built the walls of thebes by the mere sound of his lyre? yet tell me, who built these walls of weissnichtwo; summoning out all the sandstone rocks, to dance along from the _steinbruch_ (now a huge troglodyte chasm, with frightful green-mantled pools); and shape themselves into doric and ionic pillars, squared ashlar houses and noble streets? was it not the still higher orpheus, or orpheuses, who, in past centuries, by the divine music of wisdom, succeeded in civilizing man? our highest orpheus walked in judea, eighteen hundred years ago: his sphere-melody, flowing in wild native tones, took captive the ravished souls of men; and, being of a truth sphere-melody, still flows and sounds, though now with thousand-fold accompaniments, and rich symphonies, through all our hearts; and modulates, and divinely leads them. is that a wonder, which happens in two hours; and does it cease to be wonderful if happening in two million? not only was thebes built by the music of an orpheus; but without the music of some inspired orpheus was no city ever built, no work that man glories in ever done. "sweep away the illusion of time; glance, if thou have eyes, from the near moving-cause to its far distant mover: the stroke that came transmitted through a whole galaxy of elastic balls, was it less a stroke than if the last ball only had been struck, and sent flying? oh, could i (with the time-annihilating hat) transport thee direct from the beginnings, to the endings, how were thy eyesight unsealed, and thy heart set flaming in the light-sea of celestial wonder! then sawest thou that this fair universe, were it in the meanest province thereof, is in very deed the star-domed city of god; that through every star, through every grass-blade, and most through every living soul, the glory of a present god still beams. but nature, which is the time-vesture of god, and reveals him to the wise, hides him from the foolish. "again, could anything be more miraculous than an actual authentic ghost? the english johnson longed, all his life, to see one; but could not, though he went to cock lane, and thence to the church-vaults, and tapped on coffins. foolish doctor! did he never, with the mind's eye as well as with the body's, look round him into that full tide of human life he so loved; did he never so much as look into himself? the good doctor was a ghost, as actual and authentic as heart could wish; well-nigh a million of ghosts were travelling the streets by his side. once more i say, sweep away the illusion of time; compress the threescore years into three minutes: what else was he, what else are we? are we not spirits, that are shaped into a body, into an appearance; and that fade away again into air and invisibility? this is no metaphor, it is a simple scientific _fact_: we start out of nothingness, take figure, and are apparitions; round us, as round the veriest spectre, is eternity; and to eternity minutes are as years and aeons. come there not tones of love and faith, as from celestial harp-strings, like the song of beatified souls? and again, do not we squeak and gibber (in our discordant, screech-owlish debatings and recriminatings); and glide bodeful, and feeble, and fearful; or uproar (_poltern_), and revel in our mad dance of the dead,--till the scent of the morning air summons us to our still home; and dreamy night becomes awake and day? where now is alexander of macedon: does the steel host, that yelled in fierce battle-shouts at issus and arbela, remain behind him; or have they all vanished utterly, even as perturbed goblins must? napoleon too, and his moscow retreats and austerlitz campaigns! was it all other than the veriest spectre-hunt; which has now, with its howling tumult that made night hideous, flitted away?--ghosts! there are nigh a thousand million walking the earth openly at noontide; some half-hundred have vanished from it, some half-hundred have arisen in it, ere thy watch ticks once. "o heaven, it is mysterious, it is awful to consider that we not only carry each a future ghost within him; but are, in very deed, ghosts! these limbs, whence had we them; this stormy force; this life-blood with its burning passion? they are dust and shadow; a shadow-system gathered round our me: wherein, through some moments or years, the divine essence is to be revealed in the flesh. that warrior on his strong war-horse, fire flashes through his eyes; force dwells in his arm and heart: but warrior and war-horse are a vision; a revealed force, nothing more. stately they tread the earth, as if it were a firm substance: fool! the earth is but a film; it cracks in twain, and warrior and war-horse sink beyond plummet's sounding. plummet's? fantasy herself will not follow them. a little while ago, they were not; a little while, and they are not, their very ashes are not. "so has it been from the beginning, so will it be to the end. generation after generation takes to itself the form of a body; and forth issuing from cimmerian night, on heaven's mission appears. what force and fire is in each he expends: one grinding in the mill of industry; one hunter-like climbing the giddy alpine heights of science; one madly dashed in pieces on the rocks of strife, in war with his fellow:--and then the heaven-sent is recalled; his earthly vesture falls away, and soon even to sense becomes a vanished shadow. thus, like some wild-flaming, wild-thundering train of heaven's artillery, does this mysterious mankind thunder and flame, in long-drawn, quick-succeeding grandeur, through the unknown deep. thus, like a god-created, fire-breathing spirit-host, we emerge from the inane; haste stormfully across the astonished earth; then plunge again into the inane. earth's mountains are levelled, and her seas filled up, in our passage: can the earth, which is but dead and a vision, resist spirits which have reality and are alive? on the hardest adamant some footprint of us is stamped in; the last rear of the host will read traces of the earliest van. but whence?--o heaven whither? sense knows not; faith knows not; only that it is through mystery to mystery, from god and to god. 'we _are such stuff_ as dreams are made of, and our little life is rounded with a sleep!'" chapter ix. circumspective. here, then, arises the so momentous question: have many british readers actually arrived with us at the new promised country; is the philosophy of clothes now at last opening around them? long and adventurous has the journey been: from those outmost vulgar, palpable woollen hulls of man; through his wondrous flesh-garments, and his wondrous social garnitures; inwards to the garments of his very soul's soul, to time and space themselves! and now does the spiritual, eternal essence of man, and of mankind, bared of such wrappages, begin in any measure to reveal itself? can many readers discern, as through a glass darkly, in huge wavering outlines, some primeval rudiments of man's being, what is changeable divided from what is unchangeable? does that earth-spirit's speech in _faust_,-- "'tis thus at the roaring loom of time i ply, and weave for god the garment thou seest him by; " or that other thousand-times repeated speech of the magician, shakespeare,-- "and like the baseless fabric of this vision, the cloud-capt towers, the gorgeous palaces, the solemn temples, the great globe itself, and all which it inherit, shall dissolve; and like this unsubstantial pageant faded, leave not a wrack behind;" begin to have some meaning for us? in a word, do we at length stand safe in the far region of poetic creation and palingenesia, where that phoenix death-birth of human society, and of all human things, appears possible, is seen to be inevitable? along this most insufficient, unheard-of bridge, which the editor, by heaven's blessing, has now seen himself enabled to conclude if not complete, it cannot be his sober calculation, but only his fond hope, that many have travelled without accident. no firm arch, overspanning the impassable with paved highway, could the editor construct; only, as was said, some zigzag series of rafts floating tumultuously thereon. alas, and the leaps from raft to raft were too often of a breakneck character; the darkness, the nature of the element, all was against us! nevertheless, may not here and there one of a thousand, provided with a discursiveness of intellect rare in our day, have cleared the passage, in spite of all? happy few! little band of friends! be welcome, be of courage. by degrees, the eye grows accustomed to its new whereabout; the hand can stretch itself forth to work there: it is in this grand and indeed highest work of palingenesia that ye shall labor, each according to ability. new laborers will arrive; new bridges will be built; nay, may not our own poor rope-and-raft bridge, in your passings and repassings, be mended in many a point, till it grow quite firm, passable even for the halt? meanwhile, of the innumerable multitude that started with us, joyous and full of hope, where now is the innumerable remainder, whom we see no longer by our side? the most have recoiled, and stand gazing afar off, in unsympathetic astonishment, at our career: not a few, pressing forward with more courage, have missed footing, or leaped short; and now swim weltering in the chaos-flood, some towards this shore, some towards that. to these also a helping hand should be held out; at least some word of encouragement be said. or, to speak without metaphor, with which mode of utterance teufelsdrockh unhappily has somewhat infected us,--can it be hidden from the editor that many a british reader sits reading quite bewildered in head, and afflicted rather than instructed by the present work? yes, long ago has many a british reader been, as now, demanding with something like a snarl: whereto does all this lead; or what use is in it? in the way of replenishing thy purse, or otherwise aiding thy digestive faculty, o british reader, it leads to nothing, and there is no use in it; but rather the reverse, for it costs thee somewhat. nevertheless, if through this unpromising horn-gate, teufelsdrockh, and we by means of him, have led thee into the true land of dreams; and through the clothes-screen, as through a magical _pierre-pertuis_, thou lookest, even for moments, into the region of the wonderful, and seest and feelest that thy daily life is girt with wonder, and based on wonder, and thy very blankets and breeches are miracles,--then art thou profited beyond money's worth; and hast a thankfulness towards our professor; nay, perhaps in many a literary tea-circle wilt open thy kind lips, and audibly express that same. nay farther, art not thou too perhaps by this time made aware that all symbols are properly clothes; that all forms whereby spirit manifests itself to sense, whether outwardly or in the imagination, are clothes; and thus not only the parchment magna charta, which a tailor was nigh cutting into measures, but the pomp and authority of law, the sacredness of majesty, and all inferior worships (worth-ships) are properly a vesture and raiment; and the thirty-nine articles themselves are articles of wearing-apparel (for the religious idea)? in which case, must it not also be admitted that this science of clothes is a high one, and may with infinitely deeper study on thy part yield richer fruit: that it takes scientific rank beside codification, and political economy, and the theory of the british constitution; nay rather, from its prophetic height looks down on all these, as on so many weaving-shops and spinning-mills, where the vestures which _it_ has to fashion, and consecrate, and distribute, are, too often by haggard hungry operatives who see no farther than their nose, mechanically woven and spun? but omitting all this, much more all that concerns natural supernaturalism, and indeed whatever has reference to the ulterior or transcendental portion of the science, or bears never so remotely on that promised volume of the _palingenesie der menschlichen gesellschaft_ (newbirth of society),--we humbly suggest that no province of clothes-philosophy, even the lowest, is without its direct value, but that innumerable inferences of a practical nature may be drawn therefrom. to say nothing of those pregnant considerations, ethical, political, symbolical, which crowd on the clothes-philosopher from the very threshold of his science; nothing even of those "architectural ideas," which, as we have seen, lurk at the bottom of all modes, and will one day, better unfolding themselves, lead to important revolutions,--let us glance for a moment, and with the faintest light of clothes-philosophy, on what may be called the habilatory class of our fellow-men. here too overlooking, where so much were to be looked on, the million spinners, weavers, fullers, dyers, washers, and wringers, that puddle and muddle in their dark recesses, to make us clothes, and die that we may live,--let us but turn the reader's attention upon two small divisions of mankind, who, like moths, may be regarded as cloth-animals, creatures that live, move and have their being in cloth: we mean, dandies and tailors. in regard to both which small divisions it may be asserted without scruple, that the public feeling, unenlightened by philosophy, is at fault; and even that the dictates of humanity are violated. as will perhaps abundantly appear to readers of the two following chapters. chapter x. the dandiacal body. first, touching dandies, let us consider, with some scientific strictness, what a dandy specially is. a dandy is a clothes-wearing man, a man whose trade, office and existence consists in the wearing of clothes. every faculty of his soul, spirit, purse and person is heroically consecrated to this one object, the wearing of clothes wisely and well: so that as others dress to live, he lives to dress. the all-importance of clothes, which a german professor, of unequalled learning and acumen, writes his enormous volume to demonstrate, has sprung up in the intellect of the dandy without effort, like an instinct of genius; he is inspired with cloth, a poet of cloth. what teufelsdrockh would call a "divine idea of cloth" is born with him; and this, like other such ideas, will express itself outwardly, or wring his heart asunder with unutterable throes. but, like a generous, creative enthusiast, he fearlessly makes his idea an action; shows himself in peculiar guise to mankind; walks forth, a witness and living martyr to the eternal worth of clothes. we called him a poet: is not his body the (stuffed) parchment-skin whereon he writes, with cunning huddersfield dyes, a sonnet to his mistress' eyebrow? say, rather, an epos, and _clotha virumque cano_, to the whole world, in macaronic verses, which he that runs may read. nay, if you grant, what seems to be admissible, that the dandy has a thinking-principle in him, and some notions of time and space, is there not in this life-devotedness to cloth, in this so willing sacrifice of the immortal to the perishable, something (though in reverse order) of that blending and identification of eternity with time, which, as we have seen, constitutes the prophetic character? and now, for all this perennial martyrdom, and poesy, and even prophecy, what is it that the dandy asks in return? solely, we may say, that you would recognize his existence; would admit him to be a living object; or even failing this, a visual object, or thing that will reflect rays of light. your silver or your gold (beyond what the niggardly law has already secured him) he solicits not; simply the glance of your eyes. understand his mystic significance, or altogether miss and misinterpret it; do but look at him, and he is contented. may we not well cry shame on an ungrateful world, which refuses even this poor boon; which will waste its optic faculty on dried crocodiles, and siamese twins; and over the domestic wonderful wonder of wonders, a live dandy, glance with hasty indifference, and a scarcely concealed contempt! him no zoologist classes among the mammalia, no anatomist dissects with care: when did we see any injected preparation of the dandy in our museums; any specimen of him preserved in spirits! lord herringbone may dress himself in a snuff-brown suit, with snuff-brown shirt and shoes: it skills not; the undiscerning public, occupied with grosser wants, passes by regardless on the other side. the age of curiosity, like that of chivalry, is indeed, properly speaking, gone. yet perhaps only gone to sleep: for here arises the clothes-philosophy to resuscitate, strangely enough, both the one and the other! should sound views of this science come to prevail, the essential nature of the british dandy, and the mystic significance that lies in him, cannot always remain hidden under laughable and lamentable hallucination. the following long extract from professor teufelsdrockh may set the matter, if not in its true light, yet in the way towards such. it is to be regretted, however, that here, as so often elsewhere, the professor's keen philosophic perspicacity is somewhat marred by a certain mixture of almost owlish purblindness, or else of some perverse, ineffectual, ironic tendency; our readers shall judge which:-- "in these distracted times," writes he, "when the religious principle, driven out of most churches, either lies unseen in the hearts of good men, looking and longing and silently working there towards some new revelation; or else wanders homeless over the world, like a disembodied soul seeking its terrestrial organization,--into how many strange shapes, of superstition and fanaticism, does it not tentatively and errantly cast itself! the higher enthusiasm of man's nature is for the while without exponent; yet does it continue indestructible, unweariedly active, and work blindly in the great chaotic deep: thus sect after sect, and church after church, bodies itself forth, and melts again into new metamorphosis. "chiefly is this observable in england, which, as the wealthiest and worst-instructed of european nations, offers precisely the elements (of heat, namely, and of darkness), in which such moon-calves and monstrosities are best generated. among the newer sects of that country, one of the most notable, and closely connected with our present subject, is that of the _dandies_; concerning which, what little information i have been able to procure may fitly stand here. "it is true, certain of the english journalists, men generally without sense for the religious principle, or judgment for its manifestations, speak, in their brief enigmatic notices, as if this were perhaps rather a secular sect, and not a religious one; nevertheless, to the psychologic eye its devotional and even sacrificial character plainly enough reveals itself. whether it belongs to the class of fetish-worships, or of hero-worships or polytheisms, or to what other class, may in the present state of our intelligence remain undecided (_schweben_). a certain touch of manicheism, not indeed in the gnostic shape, is discernible enough; also (for human error walks in a cycle, and reappears at intervals) a not-inconsiderable resemblance to that superstition of the athos monks, who by fasting from all nourishment, and looking intensely for a length of time into their own navels, came to discern therein the true apocalypse of nature, and heaven unveiled. to my own surmise, it appears as if this dandiacal sect were but a new modification, adapted to the new time, of that primeval superstition, _self-worship_; which zerdusht, quangfoutchee, mahomet, and others, strove rather to subordinate and restrain than to eradicate; and which only in the purer forms of religion has been altogether rejected. wherefore, if any one chooses to name it revived ahrimanism, or a new figure of demon-worship, i have, so far as is yet visible, no objection. "for the rest, these people, animated with the zeal of a new sect, display courage and perseverance, and what force there is in man's nature, though never so enslaved. they affect great purity and separatism; distinguish themselves by a particular costume (whereof some notices were given in the earlier part of this volume); likewise, so far as possible, by a particular speech (apparently some broken _lingua-franca_, or english-french); and, on the whole, strive to maintain a true nazarene deportment, and keep themselves unspotted from the world. "they have their temples, whereof the chief, as the jewish temple did, stands in their metropolis; and is named _almack's_, a word of uncertain etymology. they worship principally by night; and have their high-priests and high-priestesses, who, however, do not continue for life. the rites, by some supposed to be of the menadic sort, or perhaps with an eleusinian or cabiric character, are held strictly secret. nor are sacred books wanting to the sect; these they call _fashionable novels_: however, the canon is not completed, and some are canonical and others not. "of such sacred books i, not without expense, procured myself some samples; and in hope of true insight, and with the zeal which beseems an inquirer into clothes, set to interpret and study them. but wholly to no purpose: that tough faculty of reading, for which the world will not refuse me credit, was here for the first time foiled and set at naught. in vain that i summoned my whole energies (_mich weidlich anstrengte_), and did my very utmost; at the end of some short space, i was uniformly seized with not so much what i can call a drumming in my ears, as a kind of infinite, unsufferable, jew's-harping and scrannel-piping there; to which the frightfullest species of magnetic sleep soon supervened. and if i strove to shake this away, and absolutely would not yield, there came a hitherto unfelt sensation, as of _delirium tremens_, and a melting into total deliquium: till at last, by order of the doctor, dreading ruin to my whole intellectual and bodily faculties, and a general breaking up of the constitution, i reluctantly but determinedly forbore. was there some miracle at work here; like those fire-balls, and supernal and infernal prodigies, which, in the case of the jewish mysteries, have also more than once scared back the alien? be this as it may, such failure on my part, after best efforts, must excuse the imperfection of this sketch; altogether incomplete, yet the completest i could give of a sect too singular to be omitted. "loving my own life and senses as i do, no power shall induce me, as a private individual, to open another _fashionable novel_. but luckily, in this dilemma, comes a hand from the clouds; whereby if not victory, deliverance is held out to me. round one of those book-packages, which the _stillschweigen'sche buchhandlung_ is in the habit of importing from england, come, as is usual, various waste printed-sheets (_maculatur-blatter_), by way of interior wrappage: into these the clothes-philosopher, with a certain mahometan reverence even for waste-paper, where curious knowledge will sometimes hover, disdains not to cast his eye. readers may judge of his astonishment when on such a defaced stray-sheet, probably the outcast fraction of some english periodical, such as they name _magazine_, appears something like a dissertation on this very subject of _fashionable novels_! it sets out, indeed, chiefly from a secular point of view; directing itself, not without asperity, against some to me unknown individual named _pelham_, who seems to be a mystagogue, and leading teacher and preacher of the sect; so that, what indeed otherwise was not to be expected in such a fugitive fragmentary sheet, the true secret, the religious physiognomy and physiology of the dandiacal body, is nowise laid fully open there. nevertheless, scattered lights do from time to time sparkle out, whereby i have endeavored to profit. nay, in one passage selected from the prophecies, or mythic theogonies, or whatever they are (for the style seems very mixed) of this mystagogue, i find what appears to be a confession of faith, or whole duty of man, according to the tenets of that sect. which confession or whole duty, therefore, as proceeding from a source so authentic, i shall here arrange under seven distinct articles, and in very abridged shape lay before the german world; therewith taking leave of this matter. observe also, that to avoid possibility of error, i, as far as may be, quote literally from the original:-- articles of faith. ' . coats should have nothing of the triangle about them; at the same time, wrinkles behind should be carefully avoided. ' . the collar is a very important point: it should be low behind, and slightly rolled. ' . no license of fashion can allow a man of delicate taste to adopt the posterial luxuriance of a hottentot. ' . there is safety in a swallow-tail. ' . the good sense of a gentleman is nowhere more finely developed than in his rings. ' . it is permitted to mankind, under certain restrictions, to wear white waistcoats. ' . the trousers must be exceedingly tight across the hips.' "all which propositions i, for the present, content myself with modestly but peremptorily and irrevocably denying. "in strange contrast with this dandiacal body stands another british sect, originally, as i understand, of ireland, where its chief seat still is; but known also in the main island, and indeed everywhere rapidly spreading. as this sect has hitherto emitted no canonical books, it remains to me in the same state of obscurity as the dandiacal, which has published books that the unassisted human faculties are inadequate to read. the members appear to be designated by a considerable diversity of names, according to their various places of establishment: in england they are generally called the _drudge_ sect; also, unphilosophically enough, the _white negroes_; and, chiefly in scorn by those of other communions, the _ragged-beggar_ sect. in scotland, again, i find them entitled _hallanshakers_, or the _stook of duds_ sect; any individual communicant is named _stook of duds_ (that is, shock of rags), in allusion, doubtless, to their professional costume. while in ireland, which, as mentioned, is their grand parent hive, they go by a perplexing multiplicity of designations, such as _bogtrotters, redshanks, ribbonmen, cottiers, peep-of-day boys, babes of the wood, rockites, poor-slaves_: which last, however, seems to be the primary and generic name; whereto, probably enough, the others are only subsidiary species, or slight varieties; or, at most, propagated offsets from the parent stem, whose minute subdivisions, and shades of difference, it were here loss of time to dwell on. enough for us to understand, what seems indubitable, that the original sect is that of the _poor-slaves_; whose doctrines, practices, and fundamental characteristics pervade and animate the whole body, howsoever denominated or outwardly diversified. "the precise speculative tenets of this brotherhood: how the universe, and man, and man's life, picture themselves to the mind of an irish poor-slave; with what feelings and opinions he looks forward on the future, round on the present, back on the past, it were extremely difficult to specify. something monastic there appears to be in their constitution: we find them bound by the two monastic vows, of poverty and obedience; which vows, especially the former, it is said, they observe with great strictness; nay, as i have understood it, they are pledged, and be it by any solemn nazarene ordination or not, irrevocably consecrated thereto, even _before_ birth. that the third monastic vow, of chastity, is rigidly enforced among them, i find no ground to conjecture. "furthermore, they appear to imitate the dandiacal sect in their grand principle of wearing a peculiar costume. of which irish poor-slave costume no description will indeed be found in the present volume; for this reason, that by the imperfect organ of language it did not seem describable. their raiment consists of innumerable skirts, lappets and irregular wings, of all cloths and of all colors; through the labyrinthic intricacies of which their bodies are introduced by some unknown process. it is fastened together by a multiplex combination of buttons, thrums and skewers; to which frequently is added a girdle of leather, of hempen or even of straw rope, round the loins. to straw rope, indeed, they seem partial, and often wear it by way of sandals. in head-dress they affect a certain freedom: hats with partial brim, without crown, or with only a loose, hinged, or valve crown; in the former case, they sometimes invert the hat, and wear it brim uppermost, like a university-cap, with what view is unknown. "the name poor-slaves seems to indicate a slavonic, polish, or russian origin: not so, however, the interior essence and spirit of their superstition, which rather displays a teutonic or druidical character. one might fancy them worshippers of hertha, or the earth: for they dig and affectionately work continually in her bosom; or else, shut up in private oratories, meditate and manipulate the substances derived from her; seldom looking up towards the heavenly luminaries, and then with comparative indifference. like the druids, on the other hand, they live in dark dwellings; often even breaking their glass windows, where they find such, and stuffing them up with pieces of raiment, or other opaque substances, till the fit obscurity is restored. again, like all followers of nature-worship, they are liable to out-breakings of an enthusiasm rising to ferocity; and burn men, if not in wicker idols, yet in sod cottages. "in respect of diet, they have also their observances. all poor-slaves are rhizophagous (or root-eaters); a few are ichthyophagous, and use salted herrings: other animal food they abstain from; except indeed, with perhaps some strange inverted fragment of a brahminical feeling, such animals as die a natural death. their universal sustenance is the root named potato, cooked by fire alone; and generally without condiment or relish of any kind, save an unknown condiment named _point_, into the meaning of which i have vainly inquired; the victual _potatoes-and-point_ not appearing, at least not with specific accuracy of description, in any european cookery-book whatever. for drink, they use, with an almost epigrammatic counterpoise of taste, milk, which is the mildest of liquors, and _potheen_, which is the fiercest. this latter i have tasted, as well as the english _blue-ruin_, and the scotch _whiskey_, analogous fluids used by the sect in those countries: it evidently contains some form of alcohol, in the highest state of concentration, though disguised with acrid oils; and is, on the whole, the most pungent substance known to me,--indeed, a perfect liquid fire. in all their religious solemnities, potheen is said to be an indispensable requisite, and largely consumed. "an irish traveller, of perhaps common veracity, who presents himself under the to me unmeaning title of _the late john bernard_, offers the following sketch of a domestic establishment, the inmates whereof, though such is not stated expressly, appear to have been of that faith. thereby shall my german readers now behold an irish poor-slave, as it were with their own eyes; and even see him at meat. moreover, in the so precious waste-paper sheet above mentioned, i have found some corresponding picture of a dandiacal household, painted by that same dandiacal mystagogue, or theogonist: this also, by way of counterpart and contrast, the world shall look into. "first, therefore, of the poor-slave, who appears likewise to have been a species of innkeeper. i quote from the original: poor-slave household. "'the furniture of this caravansera consisted of a large iron pot, two oaken tables, two benches, two chairs, and a potheen noggin. there was a loft above (attainable by a ladder), upon which the inmates slept; and the space below was divided by a hurdle into two apartments; the one for their cow and pig, the other for themselves and guests. on entering the house we discovered the family, eleven in number, at dinner: the father sitting at the top, the mother at the bottom, the children on each side, of a large oaken board, which was scooped out in the middle, like a trough, to receive the contents of their pot of potatoes. little holes were cut at equal distances to contain salt; and a bowl of milk stood on the table: all the luxuries of meat and beer, bread, knives and dishes were dispensed with.' the poor-slave himself our traveller found, as he says, broad-backed, black-browed, of great personal strength, and mouth from ear to ear. his wife was a sun-browned but well-featured woman; and his young ones, bare and chubby, had the appetite of ravens. of their philosophical or religious tenets or observances, no notice or hint. "but now, secondly, of the dandiacal household; in which, truly, that often-mentioned mystagogue and inspired penman himself has his abode:-- dandiacal household. "'a dressing-room splendidly furnished; violet-colored curtains, chairs and ottomans of the same hue. two full-length mirrors are placed, one on each side of a table, which supports the luxuries of the toilet. several bottles of perfumes, arranged in a peculiar fashion, stand upon a smaller table of mother-of-pearl: opposite to these are placed the appurtenances of lavation richly wrought in frosted silver. a wardrobe of buhl is on the left; the doors of which, being partly open, discover a profusion of clothes; shoes of a singularly small size monopolize the lower shelves. fronting the wardrobe a door ajar gives some slight glimpse of a bath-room. folding-doors in the background.--enter the author,' our theogonist in person, 'obsequiously preceded by a french valet, in white silk jacket and cambric apron.' "such are the two sects which, at this moment, divide the more unsettled portion of the british people; and agitate that ever-vexed country. to the eye of the political seer, their mutual relation, pregnant with the elements of discord and hostility, is far from consoling. these two principles of dandiacal self-worship or demon-worship, and poor-slavish or drudgical earth-worship, or whatever that same drudgism may be, do as yet indeed manifest themselves under distant and nowise considerable shapes: nevertheless, in their roots and subterranean ramifications, they extend through the entire structure of society, and work unweariedly in the secret depths of english national existence; striving to separate and isolate it into two contradictory, uncommunicating masses. "in numbers, and even individual strength, the poor-slaves or drudges, it would seem, are hourly increasing. the dandiacal, again, is by nature no proselytizing sect; but it boasts of great hereditary resources, and is strong by union; whereas the drudges, split into parties, have as yet no rallying-point; or at best only co-operate by means of partial secret affiliations. if, indeed, there were to arise a _communion of drudges_, as there is already a communion of saints, what strangest effects would follow therefrom! dandyism as yet affects to look down on drudgism: but perhaps the hour of trial, when it will be practically seen which ought to look down, and which up, is not so distant. "to me it seems probable that the two sects will one day part england between them; each recruiting itself from the intermediate ranks, till there be none left to enlist on either side. those dandiacal manicheans, with the host of dandyizing christians, will form one body: the drudges, gathering round them whosoever is drudgical, be he christian or infidel pagan; sweeping up likewise all manner of utilitarians, radicals, refractory pot-wallopers, and so forth, into their general mass, will form another. i could liken dandyism and drudgism to two bottomless boiling whirlpools that had broken out on opposite quarters of the firm land: as yet they appear only disquieted, foolishly bubbling wells, which man's art might cover in; yet mark them, their diameter is daily widening: they are hollow cones that boil up from the infinite deep, over which your firm land is but a thin crust or rind! thus daily is the intermediate land crumbling in, daily the empire of the two buchan-bullers extending; till now there is but a foot-plank, a mere film of land between them; this too is washed away: and then--we have the true hell of waters, and noah's deluge is out-deluged! "or better, i might call them two boundless, and indeed unexampled electric machines (turned by the 'machinery of society'), with batteries of opposite quality; drudgism the negative, dandyism the positive; one attracts hourly towards it and appropriates all the positive electricity of the nation (namely, the money thereof); the other is equally busy with the negative (that is to say the hunger), which is equally potent. hitherto you see only partial transient sparkles and sputters: but wait a little, till the entire nation is in an electric state: till your whole vital electricity, no longer healthfully neutral, is cut into two isolated portions of positive and negative (of money and of hunger); and stands there bottled up in two world-batteries! the stirring of a child's finger brings the two together; and then--what then? the earth is but shivered into impalpable smoke by that doom's thunder-peal; the sun misses one of his planets in space, and thenceforth there are no eclipses of the moon.--or better still, i might liken"-- oh, enough, enough of likenings and similitudes; in excess of which, truly, it is hard to say whether teufelsdrockh or ourselves sin the more. we have often blamed him for a habit of wire-drawing and over-refining; from of old we have been familiar with his tendency to mysticism and religiosity, whereby in everything he was still scenting out religion: but never perhaps did these amaurosis-suffusions so cloud and distort his otherwise most piercing vision, as in this of the _dandiacal body_! or was there something of intended satire; is the professor and seer not quite the blinkard he affects to be? of an ordinary mortal we should have decisively answered in the affirmative; but with a teufelsdrockh there ever hovers some shade of doubt. in the mean while, if satire were actually intended, the case is little better. there are not wanting men who will answer: does your professor take us for simpletons? his irony has overshot itself; we see through it, and perhaps through him. chapter xi. tailors. thus, however, has our first practical inference from the clothes-philosophy, that which respects dandies, been sufficiently drawn; and we come now to the second, concerning tailors. on this latter our opinion happily quite coincides with that of teufelsdrockh himself, as expressed in the concluding page of his volume, to whom, therefore, we willingly give place. let him speak his own last words, in his own way:-- "upwards of a century," says he, "must elapse, and still the bleeding fight of freedom be fought, whoso is noblest perishing in the van, and thrones be hurled on altars like pelion on ossa, and the moloch of iniquity have his victims, and the michael of justice his martyrs, before tailors can be admitted to their true prerogatives of manhood, and this last wound of suffering humanity be closed. "if aught in the history of the world's blindness could surprise us, here might we indeed pause and wonder. an idea has gone abroad, and fixed itself down into a wide-spreading rooted error, that tailors are a distinct species in physiology, not men, but fractional parts of a man. call any one a _schneider_ (cutter, tailor), is it not, in our dislocated, hoodwinked, and indeed delirious condition of society, equivalent to defying his perpetual fellest enmity? the epithet _schneidermassig_ (tailor-like) betokens an otherwise unapproachable degree of pusillanimity; we introduce a _tailor's-melancholy_, more opprobrious than any leprosy, into our books of medicine; and fable i know not what of his generating it by living on cabbage. why should i speak of hans sachs (himself a shoemaker, or kind of leather-tailor), with his _schneider mit dem panier_? why of shakspeare, in his _taming of the shrew_, and elsewhere? does it not stand on record that the english queen elizabeth, receiving a deputation of eighteen tailors, addressed them with a 'good morning, gentlemen both!' did not the same virago boast that she had a cavalry regiment, whereof neither horse nor man could be injured; her regiment, namely, of tailors on mares? thus everywhere is the falsehood taken for granted, and acted on as an indisputable fact. "nevertheless, need i put the question to any physiologist, whether it is disputable or not? seems it not at least presumable, that, under his clothes, the tailor has bones and viscera, and other muscles than the sartorius? which function of manhood is the tailor not conjectured to perform? can he not arrest for debt? is he not in most countries a taxpaying animal? "to no reader of this volume can it be doubtful which conviction is mine. nay if the fruit of these long vigils, and almost preternatural inquiries, is not to perish utterly, the world will have approximated towards a higher truth; and the doctrine, which swift, with the keen forecast of genius, dimly anticipated, will stand revealed in clear light: that the tailor is not only a man, but something of a creator or divinity. of franklin it was said, that 'he snatched the thunder from heaven and the sceptre from kings:' but which is greater, i would ask, he that lends, or he that snatches? for, looking away from individual cases, and how a man is by the tailor new-created into a nobleman, and clothed not only with wool but with dignity and a mystic dominion,--is not the fair fabric of society itself, with all its royal mantles and pontifical stoles, whereby, from nakedness and dismemberment, we are organized into polities, into nations, and a whole co-operating mankind, the creation, as has here been often irrefragably evinced, of the tailor alone?--what too are all poets and moral teachers, but a species of metaphorical tailors? touching which high guild the greatest living guild-brother has triumphantly asked us: 'nay if thou wilt have it, who but the poet first made gods for men; brought them down to us; and raised us up to them?' "and this is he, whom sitting downcast, on the hard basis of his shopboard, the world treats with contumely, as the ninth part of a man! look up, thou much-injured one, look up with the kindling eye of hope, and prophetic bodings of a noble better time. too long hast thou sat there, on crossed legs, wearing thy ankle-joints to horn; like some sacred anchorite, or catholic fakir, doing penance, drawing down heaven's richest blessings, for a world that scoffed at thee. be of hope! already streaks of blue peer through our clouds; the thick gloom of ignorance is rolling asunder, and it will be day. mankind will repay with interest their long-accumulated debt: the anchorite that was scoffed at will be worshipped; the fraction will become not an integer only, but a square and cube. with astonishment the world will recognize that the tailor is its hierophant and hierarch, or even its god. "as i stood in the mosque of st. sophia, and looked upon these four-and-twenty tailors, sewing and embroidering that rich cloth, which the sultan sends yearly for the caaba of mecca, i thought within myself: how many other unholies has your covering art made holy, besides this arabian whinstone! "still more touching was it when, turning the corner of a lane, in the scottish town of edinburgh, i came upon a signpost, whereon stood written that such and such a one was 'breeches-maker to his majesty;' and stood painted the effigies of a pair of leather breeches, and between the knees these memorable words, sic itur ad astra. was not this the martyr prison-speech of a tailor sighing indeed in bonds, yet sighing towards deliverance, and prophetically appealing to a better day? a day of justice, when the worth of breeches would be revealed to man, and the scissors become forever venerable. "neither, perhaps, may i now say, has his appeal been altogether in vain. it was in this high moment, when the soul, rent, as it were, and shed asunder, is open to inspiring influence, that i first conceived this work on clothes: the greatest i can ever hope to do; which has already, after long retardations, occupied, and will yet occupy, so large a section of my life; and of which the primary and simpler portion may here find its conclusion." chapter xii. farewell. so have we endeavored, from the enormous, amorphous plum-pudding, more like a scottish haggis, which herr teufelsdrockh had kneaded for his fellow-mortals, to pick out the choicest plums, and present them separately on a cover of our own. a laborious, perhaps a thankless enterprise; in which, however, something of hope has occasionally cheered us, and of which we can now wash our hands not altogether without satisfaction. if hereby, though in barbaric wise, some morsel of spiritual nourishment have been added to the scanty ration of our beloved british world, what nobler recompense could the editor desire? if it prove otherwise, why should he murmur? was not this a task which destiny, in any case, had appointed him; which having now done with, he sees his general day's-work so much the lighter, so much the shorter? of professor teufelsdrockh, it seems impossible to take leave without a mingled feeling of astonishment, gratitude, and disapproval. who will not regret that talents, which might have profited in the higher walks of philosophy, or in art itself, have been so much devoted to a rummaging among lumber-rooms; nay too often to a scraping in kennels, where lost rings and diamond-necklaces are nowise the sole conquests? regret is unavoidable; yet censure were loss of time. to cure him of his mad humors british criticism would essay in vain: enough for her if she can, by vigilance, prevent the spreading of such among ourselves. what a result, should this piebald, entangled, hyper-metaphorical style of writing, not to say of thinking, become general among our literary men! as it might so easily do. thus has not the editor himself, working over teufelsdrockh's german, lost much of his own english purity? even as the smaller whirlpool is sucked into the larger, and made to whirl along with it, so has the lesser mind, in this instance, been forced to become portion of the greater, and, like it, see all things figuratively: which habit time and assiduous effort will be needed to eradicate. nevertheless, wayward as our professor shows himself, is there any reader that can part with him in declared enmity? let us confess, there is that in the wild, much-suffering, much-inflicting man, which almost attaches us. his attitude, we will hope and believe, is that of a man who had said to cant, begone; and to dilettantism, here thou canst not be; and to truth, be thou in place of all to me: a man who had manfully defied the "time-prince," or devil, to his face; nay perhaps, hannibal-like, was mysteriously consecrated from birth to that warfare, and now stood minded to wage the same, by all weapons, in all places, at all times. in such a cause, any soldier, were he but a polack scythe-man, shall be welcome. still the question returns on us: how could a man occasionally of keen insight, not without keen sense of propriety, who had real thoughts to communicate, resolve to emit them in a shape bordering so closely on the absurd? which question he were wiser than the present editor who should satisfactorily answer. our conjecture has sometimes been, that perhaps necessity as well as choice was concerned in it. seems it not conceivable that, in a life like our professor's, where so much bountifully given by nature had in practice failed and misgone, literature also would never rightly prosper: that striving with his characteristic vehemence to paint this and the other picture, and ever without success, he at last desperately dashes his sponge, full of all colors, against the canvas, to try whether it will paint foam? with all his stillness, there were perhaps in teufelsdrockh desperation enough for this. a second conjecture we hazard with even less warranty. it is, that teufelsdrockh, is not without some touch of the universal feeling, a wish to proselytize. how often already have we paused, uncertain whether the basis of this so enigmatic nature were really stoicism and despair, or love and hope only seared into the figure of these! remarkable, moreover, is this saying of his: "how were friendship possible? in mutual devotedness to the good and true: otherwise impossible; except as armed neutrality, or hollow commercial league. a man, be the heavens ever praised, is sufficient for himself; yet were ten men, united in love, capable of being and of doing what ten thousand singly would fail in. infinite is the help man can yield to man." and now in conjunction therewith consider this other: "it is the night of the world, and still long till it be day: we wander amid the glimmer of smoking ruins, and the sun and the stars of heaven are as if blotted out for a season; and two immeasurable phantoms, hypocrisy and atheism, with the ghoul, sensuality, stalk abroad over the earth, and call it theirs: well at ease are the sleepers for whom existence is a shallow dream." but what of the awe-struck wakeful who find it a reality? should not these unite; since even an authentic spectre is not visible to two?--in which case were this enormous clothes-volume properly an enormous pitch-pan, which our teufelsdrockh in his lone watch-tower had kindled, that it might flame far and wide through the night, and many a disconsolately wandering spirit be guided thither to a brother's bosom!--we say as before, with all his malign indifference, who knows what mad hopes this man may harbor? meanwhile there is one fact to be stated here, which harmonizes ill with such conjecture; and, indeed, were teufelsdrockh made like other men, might as good as altogether subvert it. namely, that while the beacon-fire blazed its brightest, the watchman had quitted it; that no pilgrim could now ask him: watchman, what of the night? professor teufelsdrockh, be it known, is no longer visibly present at weissnichtwo, but again to all appearance lost in space! some time ago, the hofrath heuschrecke was pleased to favor us with another copious epistle; wherein much is said about the "population-institute;" much repeated in praise of the paper-bag documents, the hieroglyphic nature of which our hofrath still seems not to have surmised; and, lastly, the strangest occurrence communicated, to us for the first time, in the following paragraph:-- "_ew. wohlgeboren_ will have seen from the public prints, with what affectionate and hitherto fruitless solicitude weissnichtwo regards the disappearance of her sage. might but the united voice of germany prevail on him to return; nay could we but so much as elucidate for ourselves by what mystery he went away! but, alas, old lieschen experiences or affects the profoundest deafness, the profoundest ignorance: in the wahngasse all lies swept, silent, sealed up; the privy council itself can hitherto elicit no answer. "it had been remarked that while the agitating news of those parisian three days flew from mouth to month, and dinned every ear in weissnichtwo, herr teufelsdrockh was not known, at the _gans_ or elsewhere, to have spoken, for a whole week, any syllable except once these three: _es geht an_ (it is beginning). shortly after, as _ew. wohlgeboren_ knows, was the public tranquillity here, as in berlin, threatened by a sedition of the tailors. nor did there want evil-wishers, or perhaps mere desperate alarmists, who asserted that the closing chapter of the clothes-volume was to blame. in this appalling crisis, the serenity of our philosopher was indescribable: nay, perhaps through one humble individual, something thereof might pass into the _rath_ (council) itself, and so contribute to the country's deliverance. the tailors are now entirely pacificated.-- "to neither of these two incidents can i attribute our loss: yet still comes there the shadow of a suspicion out of paris and its politics. for example, when the _saint-simonian society_ transmitted its propositions hither, and the whole _gans_ was one vast cackle of laughter, lamentation and astonishment, our sage sat mute; and at the end of the third evening said merely: 'here also are men who have discovered, not without amazement, that man is still man; of which high, long-forgotten truth you already see them make a false application.' since then, as has been ascertained by examination of the post-director, there passed at least one letter with its answer between the messieurs bazard-enfantin and our professor himself; of what tenor can now only be conjectured. on the fifth night following, he was seen for the last time! "has this invaluable man, so obnoxious to most of the hostile sects that convulse our era, been spirited away by certain of their emissaries; or did he go forth voluntarily to their head-quarters to confer with them, and confront them? reason we have, at least of a negative sort, to believe the lost still living; our widowed heart also whispers that ere long he will himself give a sign. otherwise, indeed, his archives must, one day, be opened by authority; where much, perhaps the _palingenesie_ itself, is thought to be reposited." thus far the hofrath; who vanishes, as is his wont, too like an ignis fatuus, leaving the dark still darker. so that teufelsdrockh's public history were not done, then, or reduced to an even, unromantic tenor; nay, perhaps the better part thereof were only beginning? we stand in a region of conjectures, where substance has melted into shadow, and one cannot be distinguished from the other. may time, which solves or suppresses all problems, throw glad light on this also! our own private conjecture, now amounting almost to certainty, is that, safe-moored in some stillest obscurity, not to lie always still, teufelsdrockh, is actually in london! here, however, can the present editor, with an ambrosial joy as of over-weariness falling into sleep, lay down his pen. well does he know, if human testimony be worth aught, that to innumerable british readers likewise, this is a satisfying consummation; that innumerable british readers consider him, during these current months, but as an uneasy interruption to their ways of thought and digestion; and indicate so much, not without a certain irritancy and even spoken invective. for which, as for other mercies, ought not he to thank the upper powers? to one and all of you, o irritated readers, he, with outstretched arms and open heart, will wave a kind farewell. thou too, miraculous entity, who namest thyself yorke and oliver, and with thy vivacities and genialities, with thy all too irish mirth and madness, and odor of palled punch, makest such strange work, farewell; long as thou canst, _fare-well_! have we not, in the course of eternity, travelled some months of our life-journey in partial sight of one another; have we not existed together, though in a state of quarrel? appendix. this questionable little book was undoubtedly written among the mountain solitudes, in ; but, owing to impediments natural and accidental, could not, for seven years more, appear as a volume in england;--and had at last to clip itself in pieces, and be content to struggle out, bit by bit, in some courageous _magazine_ that offered. whereby now, to certain idly curious readers, and even to myself till i make study, the insignificant but at last irritating question, what its real history and chronology are, is, if not insoluble, considerably involved in haze. to the first english edition, , which an american, or two american had now opened the way for, there was slightingly prefixed, under the title, "_testimonies of authors_," some straggle of real documents, which, now that i find it again, sets the matter into clear light and sequence:--and shall here, for removal of idle stumbling-blocks and nugatory guessings from the path of every reader, be reprinted as it stood. (_author's note, of_ .) testimonies of authors. i. highest class, bookseller's taster. _taster to bookseller_.--"the author of _teufelsdrockh_ is a person of talent; his work displays here and there some felicity of thought and expression, considerable fancy and knowledge: but whether or not it would take with the public seems doubtful. for a _jeu d'esprit_ of that kind it is too long; it would have suited better as an essay or article than as a volume. the author has no great tact; his wit is frequently heavy; and reminds one of the german baron who took to leaping on tables and answered that he was learning to be lively. _is_ the work a translation?" _bookseller to editor_.--"allow me to say that such a writer requires only a little more tact to produce a popular as well as an able work. directly on receiving your permission, i sent your ms. to a gentleman in the highest class of men of letters, and an accomplished german scholar: i now enclose you his opinion, which, you may rely upon it, is a just one; and i have too high an opinion of your good sense to" &c. &c.--_ms. (penes nos), london, th september_, . ii. critic of the sun. "_fraser's magazine_ exhibits the usual brilliancy, and also the" &c. "_sartor resartus_ is what old dennis used to call 'a heap of clotted nonsense,' mixed however, here and there, with passages marked by thought and striking poetic vigor. but what does the writer mean by 'baphometic fire-baptism'? why cannot he lay aside his pedantry, and write so as to make himself generally intelligible? we quote by way of curiosity a sentence from the _sartor resartus_; which may be read either backwards or forwards, for it is equally intelligible either way: indeed, by beginning at the tail, and so working up to the head, we think the reader will stand the fairest chance of getting at its meaning: 'the fire-baptized soul, long so scathed and thunder-riven, here feels its own freedom; which feeling is its baphometic baptism: the citadel of its whole kingdom it has thus gained by assault, and will keep inexpugnable; outwards from which the remaining dominions, not indeed without hard battering, will doubtless by degrees be conquered and pacificated.' here is a"...--_sun newspaper, st april_, . iii. north--american reviewer. ... "after a careful survey of the whole ground, our belief is that no such persons as professors teufelsdrockh or counsellor heuschrecke ever existed; that the six paper-bags, with their china-ink inscriptions and multifarious contents, are a mere figment of the brain; that the 'present editor' is the only person who has ever written upon the philosophy of clothes; and that the _sartor resartus_ is the only treatise that has yet appeared upon that subject;--in short, that the whole account of the origin of the work before us, which the supposed editor relates with so much gravity, and of which we have given a brief abstract, is, in plain english, a _hum_. "without troubling our readers at any great length with our reasons for entertaining these suspicions, we may remark, that the absence of all other information on the subject, except what is contained in the work, is itself a fact of a most significant character. the whole german press, as well as the particular one where the work purports to have been printed, seems to be under the control of _stillschweigen and co. _--silence and company. if the clothes-philosophy and its author are making so great a sensation throughout germany as is pretended, how happens it that the only notice we have of the fact is contained in a few numbers of a monthly magazine published at london! how happens it that no intelligence about the matter has come out directly to this country? we pique ourselves here in new england upon knowing at least as much of what is going on in the literary way in the old dutch mother-land as our brethren of the fast-anchored isle; but thus far we have no tidings whatever of the 'extensive close-printed, close-meditated volume,' which forms the subject of this pretended commentary. again, we would respectfully inquire of the 'present editor' upon what part of the map of germany we are to look for the city of _weissnichtwo_--'know-not-where'--at which place the work is supposed to have been printed, and the author to have resided. it has been our fortune to visit several portions of the german territory, and to examine pretty carefully, at different times and for various purposes, maps of the whole; but we have no recollection of any such place. we suspect that the city of _know-not-where_ might be called, with at least as much propriety, _nobody-knows-where_, and is to be found in the kingdom of _nowhere_. again, the village of _entepfuhl_--'duck-pond'--where the supposed author of the work is said to have passed his youth, and that of _hinterschlag_, where he had his education, are equally foreign to our geography. duck-ponds enough there undoubtedly are in almost every village in germany, as the traveller in that country knows too well to his cost, but any particular village denominated duck-pond is to us altogether _terra incognita_. the names of the personages are not less singular than those of the places. who can refrain from a smile at the yoking together of such a pair of appellatives as diogenes teufelsdrockh? the supposed bearer of this strange title is represented as admitting, in his pretended autobiography, that 'he had searched to no purpose through all the heralds' books in and without the german empire, and through all manner of subscribers'-lists, militia-rolls, and other name-catalogues,' but had nowhere been able to find 'the name teufelsdrockh, except as appended to his own person.' we can readily believe this, and we doubt very much whether any christian parent would think of condemning a son to carry through life the burden of so unpleasant a title. that of counsellor heuschrecke--'grasshopper'--though not offensive, looks much more like a piece of fancy-work than a 'fair business transaction.' the same may be said of _blumine_--'flower-goddess'--the heroine of the fable; and so of the rest. "in short, our private opinion is, as we have remarked, that the whole story of a correspondence with germany, a university of nobody-knows-where, a professor of things in general, a counsellor grasshopper, a flower-goddess blumine, and so forth, has about as much foundation in truth as the late entertaining account of sir john herschel's discoveries in the moon. fictions of this kind are, however, not uncommon, and ought not, perhaps, to be condemned with too much severity; but we are not sure that we can exercise the same indulgence in regard to the attempt, which seems to be made to mislead the public as to the substance of the work before us, and its pretended german original. both purport, as we have seen, to be upon the subject of clothes, or dress. _clothes, their origin and influence_, is the title of the supposed german treatise of professor teufelsdrockh and the rather odd name of _sartor resartus_--the tailor patched--which the present editor has affixed to his pretended commentary, seems to look the same way. but though there is a good deal of remark throughout the work in a half-serious, half-comic style upon dress, it seems to be in reality a treatise upon the great science of things in general, which teufelsdrockh, is supposed to have professed at the university of nobody-knows-where. now, without intending to adopt a too rigid standard of morals, we own that we doubt a little the propriety of offering to the public a treatise on things in general, under the name and in the form of an essay on dress. for ourselves, advanced as we unfortunately are in the journey of life, far beyond the period when dress is practically a matter of interest, we have no hesitation in saying, that the real subject of the work is to us more attractive than the ostensible one. but this is probably not the case with the mass of readers. to the younger portion of the community, which constitutes everywhere the very great majority, the subject of dress is one of intense and paramount importance. an author who treats it appeals, like the poet, to the young men end maddens--_virginibus puerisque_--and calls upon them, by all the motives which habitually operate most strongly upon their feelings, to buy his book. when, after opening their purses for this purpose, they have carried home the work in triumph, expecting to find in it some particular instruction in regard to the tying of their neckcloths, or the cut of their corsets, and meet with nothing better than a dissertation on things in general, they will--to use the mildest term--not be in very good humor. if the last improvements in legislation, which we have made in this country, should have found their way to england, the author, we think, would stand some chance of being _lynched_. whether his object in this piece of _supercherie_ be merely pecuniary profit, or whether he takes a malicious pleasure in quizzing the dandies, we shall not undertake to say. in the latter part of the work, he devotes a separate chapter to this class of persons, from the tenor of which we should be disposed to conclude, that he would consider any mode of divesting them of their property very much in the nature of a spoiling of the egyptians. "the only thing about the work, tending to prove that it is what it purports to be, a commentary on a real german treatise, is the style, which is a sort of babylonish dialect, not destitute, it is true, of richness, vigor, and at times a sort of singular felicity of expression, but very strongly tinged throughout with the peculiar idiom of the german language. this quality in the style, however, may be a mere result of a great familiarity with german literature; and we cannot, therefore, look upon it as in itself decisive, still less as outweighing so much evidence of an opposite character."--_north-american review, no. , october_, . iv. new england editors. "the editors have been induced, by the expressed desire of many persons, to collect the following sheets out of the ephemeral pamphlets [*] in which they first appeared, under the conviction that they contain in themselves the assurance of a longer date. * _fraser's_ (london) _magazine_, - . "the editors have no expectation that this little work will have a sudden and general popularity. they will not undertake, as there is no need, to justify the gay costume in which the author delights to dress his thoughts, or the german idioms with which he has sportively sprinkled his pages. it is his humor to advance the gravest speculations upon the gravest topics in a quaint and burlesque style. if his masquerade offend any of his audience, to that degree that they will not hear what he has to say, it may chance to draw others to listen to his wisdom; and what work of imagination can hope to please all! but we will venture to remark that the distaste excited by these peculiarities in some readers is greatest at first, and is soon forgotten; and that the foreign dress and aspect of the work are quite superficial, and cover a genuine saxon heart. we believe, no book has been published for many years, written in a more sincere style of idiomatic english, or which discovers an equal mastery over all the riches of the language. the author makes ample amends for the occasional eccentricity of his genius, not only by frequent bursts of pure splendor, but by the wit and sense which never fail him. "but what will chiefly commend the book to the discerning reader is the manifest design of the work, which is, a criticism upon the spirit of the age--we had almost said, of the hour--in which we live; exhibiting in the most just and novel light the present aspects of religion, politics, literature, arts, and social life. under all his gayety the writer has an earnest meaning, and discovers an insight into the manifold wants and tendencies of human nature, which is very rare among our popular authors. the philanthropy and the purity of moral sentiment, which inspire the work, will find their way to the heart of every lover of virtue."--_preface to sartor resartus: boston_, , . sunt, fuerunt vel fuere. london, th june, . transcriber's note: all spelling and punctuation was kept as in the printed text. italicized phrases are delimited by _underscores_. footnotes (there are only four) have been placed at the ends of the paragraphs referencing them. transcribed form the george bell and sons edition by david price, email ccx @coventry.ac.uk dickory cronke the dumb philosopher, or, great britain's wonder; containing: i. a faithful and very surprising account how dickory cronke, a tinner's son, in the county of cornwall, was born dumb, and continued so for fifty- eight years; and how, some days before he died, he came to his speech; with memoirs of his life, and the manner of his death. ii. a declaration of his faith and principles in religion; with a collection of select meditations, composed in his retirement. iii. his prophetical observations upon the affairs of europe, more particularly of great britain, from to . the whole extracted from his original papers, and confirmed by unquestionable authority. to which is annexed his elegy, written by a young cornish gentleman, of exeter college in oxford. with an epitaph by another hand. "non quis, sed quid." london: printed for and sold by thomas bickerton, at the crown, in paternoster row. . preface the formality of a preface to this little book might have been very well omitted, if it were not to gratify the curiosity of some inquisitive people, who, i foresee, will be apt to make objections against the reality of the narrative. indeed the public has too often been imposed upon by fictitious stories, and some of a very late date, so that i think myself obliged by the usual respect which is paid to candid and impartial readers, to acquaint them, by way of introduction, with what they are to expect, and what they may depend upon, and yet with this caution too, that it is an indication of ill nature or ill manners, if not both, to pry into a secret that is industriously concealed. however, that there may be nothing wanting on my part, i do hereby assure the reader, that the papers from whence the following sheets were extracted, are now in town, in the custody of a person of unquestionable reputation, who, i will be bold to say, will not only be ready, but proud, to produce them upon a good occasion, and that i think is as much satisfaction as the nature of this case requires. as to the performance, it can signify little now to make an apology upon that account, any farther than this, that if the reader pleases he may take notice that what he has now before him was collected from a large bundle of papers, most of which were writ in shorthand, and very ill-digested. however, this may be relied upon, that though the language is something altered, and now and then a word thrown in to help the expression, yet strict care has been taken to speak the author's mind, and keep as close as possible to the meaning of the original. for the design, i think there is nothing need be said in vindication of that. here is a dumb philosopher introduced to a wicked and degenerate generation, as a proper emblem of virtue and morality; and if the world could be persuaded to look upon him with candour and impartiality, and then to copy after him, the editor has gained his end, and would think himself sufficiently recompensed for his present trouble. part i among the many strange and surprising events that help to fill the accounts of this last century, i know none that merit more an entire credit, or are more fit to be preserved and handed to posterity than those i am now going to lay before the public. dickory cronke, the subject of the following narrative, was born at a little hamlet, near st. columb, in cornwall, on the th of may, , being the day and year in which king charles the second was restored. his parents were of mean extraction, but honest, industrious people, and well beloved in their neighbourhood. his father's chief business was to work at the tin mines; his mother stayed at home to look after the children, of which they had several living at the same time. our dickory was the youngest, and being but a sickly child, had always a double portion of her care and tenderness. it was upwards of three years before it was discovered that he was born dumb, the knowledge of which at first gave his mother great uneasiness, but finding soon after that he had his hearing, and all his other senses to the greatest perfection, her grief began to abate, and she resolved to have him brought up as well as their circumstances and his capacity would permit. as he grew, notwithstanding his want of speech, he every day gave some instance of a ready genius, and a genius much superior to the country children, insomuch that several gentlemen in the neighbourhood took particular notice of him, and would often call him restoration dick, and give him money, &c. when he came to be eight years of age, his mother agreed with a person in the next village, to teach him to read and write, both which, in a very short time, he acquired to such perfection, especially the latter, that he not only taught his own brothers and sisters, but likewise several young men and women in the neighbourhood, which often brought him in small sums, which he always laid out in such necessaries as he stood most in need of. in this state he continued till he was about twenty, and then he began to reflect how scandalous it was for a young man of his age and circumstances to live idle at home, and so resolves to go with his father to the mines, to try if he could get something towards the support of himself and the family; but being of a tender constitution, and often sick, he soon perceived that sort of business was too hard for him, so was forced to return home and continue in his former station; upon which he grew exceeding melancholy, which his mother observing, she comforted him in the best manner she could, telling him that if it should please god to take her away, she had something left in store for him, which would preserve him against public want. this kind assurance from a mother whom he so dearly loved gave him some, though not an entire satisfaction; however, he resolves to acquiesce under it till providence should order something for him more to his content and advantage, which, in a short time happened according to his wish. the manner was thus:-- one mr. owen parry, a welsh gentleman of good repute, coming from bristol to padstow, a little seaport in the county of cornwall, near the place where dickory dwelt, and hearing much of this dumb man's perfections, would needs have him sent for; and finding, by his significant gestures and all outward appearances that he much exceeded the character that the country gave of him, took a mighty liking to him, insomuch that he told him, if he would go with him into pembrokeshire, he would be kind to him, and take care of him as long as he lived. this kind and unexpected offer was so welcome to poor dickory, that without any farther consideration, he got a pen and ink and writ a note, and in a very handsome and submissive manner returned him thanks for his favour, assuring him he would do his best to continue and improve it; and that he would be ready to wait upon him whenever he should be pleased to command. to shorten the account as much as possible, all things were concluded to their mutual satisfaction, and in about a fortnight's time they set forward for wales, where dickory, notwithstanding his dumbness, behaved himself with so much diligence and affability, that he not only gained the love of the family where he lived, but of everybody round him. in this station he continued till the death of his master, which happened about twenty years afterwards; in all which time, as has been confirmed by several of the family, he was never observed to be any ways disguised by drinking, or to be guilty of any of the follies and irregularities incident to servants in gentlemen's houses. on the contrary, when he had any spare time, his constant custom was to retire with some good book into a private place within call, and there employ himself in reading, and then writing down his observations upon what he read. after the death of his master, whose loss afflicted him to the last degree, one mrs. mary mordant, a gentlewoman of great virtue and piety, and a very good fortune, took him into her service, and carried him with her, first to bath, and then to bristol, where, after a lingering distemper, which continued for about four years, she died likewise. upon the loss of his mistress, dickory grew again exceeding melancholy and disconsolate; at length, reflecting that death is but a common debt which all mortals owe to nature, and must be paid sooner or later, he became a little better satisfied, and so determines to get together what he had saved in his service, and then to return to his native country, and there finish his life in privacy and retirement. having been, as has been mentioned, about twenty-four years a servant, and having, in the interim, received two legacies, viz., one of thirty pounds, left him by his master, and another of fifteen pounds by his mistress, and being always very frugal, he had got by him in the whole upwards of sixty pounds. this, thinks he, with prudent management, will be enough to support me as long as i live, and so i'll e'en lay aside all thoughts of future business, and make the best of my way to cornwall, and there find out some safe and solitary retreat, where i may have liberty to meditate and make my melancholy observations upon the several occurrences of human life. this resolution prevailed so far, that no time was let slip to get everything in readiness to go with the first ship. as to his money, he always kept that locked up by him, unless he sometimes lent it to a friend without interest, for he had a mortal hatred to all sorts of usury or extortion. his books, of which he had a considerable quantity, and some of them very good ones, together with his other equipage, he got packed up, that nothing might be wanting against the first opportunity. in a few days he heard of a vessel bound to padstow, the very port he wished to go to, being within four or five miles of the place where he was born. when he came thither, which was in less than a week, his first business was to inquire after the state of his family. it was some time before he could get any information of them, until an old man that knew his father and mother, and remembered they had a son was born dumb, recollected him, and after a great deal of difficulty, made him understand that all his family except his youngest sister were dead, and that she was a widow, and lived at a little town called st. helen's, about ten miles farther in the country. this doleful news, we must imagine, must be extremely shocking, and add a new sting to his former affliction; and here it was that he began to exercise the philosopher, and to demonstrate himself both a wise and a good man. all these things, thinks he, are the will of providence, and must not be disputed; and so he bore up under them with an entire resignation, resolving that, as soon as he could find a place where he might deposit his trunk and boxes with safety, he would go to st. helen's in quest of his sister. how his sister and he met, and how transported they were to see each other after so long an interval, i think is not very material. it is enough for the present purpose that dickory soon recollected his sister, and she him; and after a great many endearing tokens of love and tenderness, he wrote to her, telling her that he believed providence had bestowed on him as much as would support him as long as he lived, and that if she thought proper he would come and spend the remainder of his days with her. the good woman no sooner read his proposal than she accepted it, adding, withal, that she could wish her entertainment was better; but if he would accept of it as it was, she would do her best to make everything easy, and that he should be welcome upon his own terms, to stay with her as long as he pleased. this affair being so happily settled to his full satisfaction, he returns to padstow to fetch the things he had left behind him, and the next day came back to st. helen's, where, according to his own proposal, he continued to the day of his death, which happened upon the th of may, , about the same hour in which he was born. having thus given a short detail of the several periods of his life, extracted chiefly from the papers which he left behind him, i come in the next place to make a few observations how he managed himself and spent his time toward the latter part of it. his constant practice, both winter and summer, was to rise and set with the sun; and if the weather would permit, he never failed to walk in some unfrequented place, for three hours, both morning and evening, and there it is supposed he composed the following meditations. the chief part of his sustenance was milk, with a little bread boiled in it, of which in the morning, after his walk, he would eat the quantity of a pint, and sometimes more. dinners he never eat any; and at night he would only have a pretty large piece of bread, and drink a draught of good spring water; and after this method he lived during the whole time he was at st. helen's. it is observed of him that he never slept out of a bed, nor never lay awake in one; which i take to be an argument, not only of a strong and healthful constitution, but of a mind composed and calm, and entirely free from the ordinary disturbances of human life. he never gave the least signs of complaint or dissatisfaction at anything, unless it was when he heard the tinners swear, or saw them drunk; and then, too, he would get out of the way as soon as he had let them see, by some significant signs, how scandalous and ridiculous they made themselves; and against the next time he met them, would be sure to have a paper ready written, wherein he would represent the folly of drunkenness, and the dangerous consequences that generally attended it. idleness was his utter aversion, and if at any time he had finished the business of the day, and was grown weary of reading and writing, in which he daily spent six hours at least, he would certainly find something either within doors or without, to employ himself. much might be said both with regard to the wise and regular management, and the prudent methods he took to spend his time well towards the declension of his life; but, as his history may perhaps be shortly published at large by a better hand, i shall only observe in the general, that he was a person of great wisdom and sagacity. he understood nature beyond the ordinary capacity, and, if he had had a competency of learning suitable to his genius, neither this nor the former ages would have produced a better philosopher or a greater man. i come next to speak of the manner of his death and the consequences thereof, which are, indeed, very surprising, and, perhaps, not altogether unworthy a general observation. i shall relate them as briefly as i can, and leave every one to believe or disbelieve as he thinks proper. upon the th of may, , according to his usual method, about four in the afternoon, he went out to take his evening walk; but before he could reach the place he intended, he was siezed with an apoplectic fit, which only gave him liberty to sit down under a tree, where, in an instant, he was deprived of all manner of sense and motion, and so he continued, as appears by his own confession afterwards, for more than fourteen hours. his sister, who knew how exact he was in all his methods, finding him stay a considerable time beyond the usual hour, concludes that some misfortune must needs have happened to him, or he would certainly have been at home before. in short, she went immediately to all the places he was wont to frequent, but nothing could be heard or seen of him till the next morning, when a young man, as he was going to work, discovered him, and went home and told his sister that her brother lay in such a place, under a tree, and, as he believed had been robbed and murdered. the poor woman, who had all night been under the most dreadful apprehensions, was now frightened and confounded to the last degree. however, recollecting herself, and finding there was no remedy, she got two or three of her neighbours to bear her company, and so hastened with the young man to the tree, where she found her brother lying in the same posture that he had described. the dismal object at first view startled and surprised everybody present, and filled them full of different notions and conjectures. but some of the company going nearer to him, and finding that he had lost nothing, and that there were no marks of any violence to be discovered about him, they conclude that it must be an apoplectic or some other sudden fit that had surprised him in his walk, upon which his sister and the rest began to feel his hands and face, and observing that he was still warm, and that there were some symptoms of life yet remaining, they conclude that the best way was to carry him home to bed, which was accordingly done with the utmost expedition. when they had got him into the bed, nothing was omitted that they could think of to bring him to himself, but still he continued utterly insensible for about six hours. at the sixth hour's end he began to move a little, and in a very short time was so far recovered, to the great astonishment of everybody about him, that he was able to look up, and to make a sign to his sister to bring him a cup of water. after he had drunk the water he soon perceived that all his faculties were returned to their former stations, and though his strength was very much abated by the length and rigour of the fit, yet his intellects were as strong and vigorous as ever. his sister observing him to look earnestly upon the company, as if he had something extraordinary to communicate to them, fetched him a pen and ink and a sheet of paper, which, after a short pause, he took, and wrote as follows:-- "dear sister, "i have now no need of pen, ink, and paper, to tell you my meaning. i find the strings that bound up my tongue, and hindered me from speaking, are unloosed, and i have words to express myself as freely and distinctly as any other person. from whence this strange and unexpected event should proceed, i must not pretend to say, any farther than this, that it is doubtless the hand of providence that has done it, and in that i ought to acquiesce. pray let me be alone for two or three hours, that i may be at liberty to compose myself, and put my thoughts in the best order i can before i leave them behind me." the poor woman, though extremely startled at what her brother had written, yet took care to conceal it from the neighbours, who, she knew, as well as she, must be mightily surprised at a thing so utterly unexpected. says she, my brother desires to be alone; i believe he may have something in his mind that disturbs him. upon which the neighbours took their leave and returned home, and his sister shut the door, and left him alone to his private contemplations. after the company were withdrawn he fell into a sound sleep, which lasted from two till six, and his sister, being apprehensive of the return of his fit, came to the bedside, and, asking softly if he wanted anything, he turned about to her and spoke to this effect: dear sister, you see me not only recovered out of a terrible fit, but likewise that i have the liberty of speech, a blessing that i have been deprived of almost sixty years, and i am satisfied you are sincerely joyful to find me in the state i now am in; but, alas! it is but a mistaken kindness. these are things but of short duration, and if they were to continue for a hundred years longer, i can't see how i should be anyways the better. i know the world too well to be fond of it, and am fully satisfied that the difference between a long and a short life is insignificant, especially when i consider the accidents and company i am to encounter. do but look seriously and impartially upon the astonishing notion of time and eternity, what an immense deal has run out already, and how infinite it is still in the future; do but seriously and deliberately consider this, and you will find, upon the whole, that three days and three ages of life come much to the same measure and reckoning. as soon as he had ended his discourse upon the vanity and uncertainty of human life, he looked steadfastly upon her. sister, says he, i conjure you not to be disturbed at what i am going to tell you, which you will undoubtedly find to be true in every particular. i perceive my glass is run, and i have now no more to do in this world but to take my leave of it; for to-morrow about this time my speech will be again taken from me, and, in a short time, my fit will return; and the next day, which i understand is the day on which i came into this troublesome world, i shall exchange it for another, where, for the future, i shall for ever be free from all manner of sin and sufferings. the good woman would have made him a reply, but he prevented her by telling her he had no time to hearken to unnecessary complaints or animadversions. i have a great many things in my mind, says he, that require a speedy and serious consideration. the time i have to stay is but short, and i have a great deal of important business to do in it. time and death are both in my view, and seem both to call aloud to me to make no delay. i beg of you, therefore, not to disquiet yourself or me. what must be, must be. the decrees of providence are eternal and unalterable; why, then, should we torment ourselves about that which we cannot remedy? i must confess, my dear sister, i owe you many obligations for your exemplary fondness to me, and do solemnly assure you i shall retain the sense of them to the last moment. all that i have to request of you is, that i may be alone for this night. i have it in my thoughts to leave some short observations behind me, and likewise to discover some things of great weight which have been revealed to me, which may perhaps be of some use hereafter to you and your friends. what credit they may meet with i cannot say, but depend the consequence, according to their respective periods, will account for them, and vindicate them against the supposition of falsity and mere suggestion. upon this, his sister left him till about four in the morning, when coming to his bedside to know if he wanted anything, and how he had rested, he made her this answer; i have been taking a cursory view of my life, and though i find myself exceedingly deficient in several particulars, yet i bless god i cannot find i have any just grounds to suspect my pardon. in short, says he, i have spent this night with more inward pleasure and true satisfaction than ever i spent a night through the whole course of my life. after he had concluded what he had to say upon the satisfaction that attended an innocent and well-spent life, and observed what a mighty consolation it was to persons, not only under the apprehension, but even in the very agonies of death itself, he desired her to bring him his usual cup of water, and then to help him on with his clothes, that he might sit up, and so be in a better posture to take his leave of her and her friends. when she had taken him up, and placed him at a table where he usually sat, he desired her to bring him his box of papers, and after he had collected those he intended should be preserved, he ordered her to bring a candle, that he might see the rest burnt. the good woman seemed at first to oppose the burning of his papers, till he told her they were only useless trifles, some unfinished observations which he had made in his youthful days, and were not fit to be seen by her, or anybody that should come after him. after he had seen his papers burnt, and placed the rest in their proper order, and had likewise settled all his other affairs, which was only fit to be done between himself and his sister, he desired her to call two or three of the most reputable neighbours, not only to be witnesses of his will, but likewise to hear what he had farther to communicate before the return of his fit, which he expected very speedily. his sister, who had beforehand acquainted two or three of her confidants with all that had happened, was very much rejoiced to hear her brother make so unexpected a concession; and accordingly, without any delay or hesitation, went directly into the neighbourhood, and brought home her two select friends, upon whose secrecy and sincerity she knew she might depend upon all accounts. in her absence he felt several symptoms of the approach of his fit, which made him a little uneasy, lest it should entirely seize him before he had perfected his will, but that apprehension was quickly removed by her speedy return. after she had introduced her friends into his chamber, he proceeded to express himself in the following manner; dear sister, you now see your brother upon the brink of eternity; and as the words of dying persons are commonly the most regarded, and make deepest impressions, i cannot suspect but you will suffer the few i am about to say to have always some place in your thoughts, that they may be ready for you to make use of upon any occasion. do not be fond of anything on this side of eternity, or suffer your interest to incline you to break your word, quit your modesty, or to do anything that will not bear the light, and look the world in the face. for be assured of this; the person that values the virtue of his mind and the dignity of his reason, is always easy and well fortified both against death and misfortune, and is perfectly indifferent about the length or shortness of his life. such a one is solicitous about nothing but his own conduct, and for fear he should be deficient in the duties of religion, and the respective functions of reason and prudence. always go the nearest way to work. now, the nearest way through all the business of human life, are the paths of religion and honesty, and keeping those as directly as you can, you avoid all the dangerous precipices that often lie in the road, and sometimes block up the passage entirely. remember that life was but lent at first, and that the remainder is more than you have reason to expect, and consequently ought to be managed with more than ordinary diligence. a wise man spends every day as if it were his last; his hourglass is always in his hand, and he is never guilty of sluggishness or insincerity. he was about to proceed, when a sudden symptom of the return of his fit put him in mind that it was time to get his will witnessed, which was no sooner done but he took it up and gave it to his sister, telling her that though all he had was hers of right, yet he thought it proper, to prevent even a possibility of a dispute, to write down his mind in the nature of a will, wherein i have given you, says he, the little that i have left, except my books and papers, which, as soon as i am dead, i desire may be delivered to mr. anthony barlow, a near relation of my worthy master, mr. owen parry. this mr. anthony barlow was an old contemplative welsh gentleman, who, being under some difficulties in his own country, was forced to come into cornwall and take sanctuary among the tinners. dickory, though he kept himself as retired as possible, happened to meet him one day upon his walks, and presently remembered that he was the very person that used frequently to come to visit his master while he lived in pembrokeshire, and so went to him, and by signs made him understand who he was. the old gentleman, though at first surprised at this unexpected interview, soon recollected that he had formerly seen at mr. parry's a dumb man, whom they used to call the dumb philosopher, so concludes immediately that consequently this must be he. in short, they soon made themselves known to each other; and from that time contracted a strict friendship and a correspondence by letters, which for the future they mutually managed with the greatest exactness and familiarity. but to leave this as a matter not much material, and to return to our narrative. by this time dickory's speech began to falter, which his sister observing, put him in mind that he would do well to make some declaration of his faith and principles of religion, because some reflections had been made upon him upon the account of his neglect, or rather his refusal, to appear at any place of public worship. "dear sister," says he, "you observe very well, and i wish the continuance of my speech for a few moments, that i might make an ample declaration upon that account. but i find that cannot be; my speech is leaving me so fast that i can only tell you that i have always lived, and now die, an unworthy member of the ancient catholic and apostolic church; and as to my faith and principles, i refer you to my papers, which, i hope, will in some measure vindicate me against the reflections you mention." he had hardly finished his discourse to his sister and her two friends, and given some short directions relating to his burial, but his speech left him; and what makes the thing the more remarkable, it went away, in all appearance, without giving him any sort of pain or uneasiness. when he perceived that his speech was entirely vanished, and that he was again in his original state of dumbness, he took his pen as formerly and wrote to his sister, signifying that whereas the sudden loss of his speech had deprived him of the opportunity to speak to her and her friends what he intended, he would leave it for them in writing, and so desired he might not be disturbed till the return of his fit, which he expected in six hours at farthest. according to his desire they all left him, and then, with the greatest resignation imaginable, he wrote down the meditations following: part ii an abstract of his faith, and the principles of his religion &c., which begins thus: dear sister; i thank you for putting me in mind to make a declaration of my faith, and the principles of my religion. i find, as you very well observe, i have been under some reflections upon that account, and therefore i think it highly requisite that i set that matter right in the first place. to begin, therefore, with my faith, in which i intend to be as short and as comprehensive as i can: . i most firmly believe that it was the eternal will of god, and the result of his infinite wisdom, to create a world, and for the glory of his majesty to make several sorts of creatures in order and degree one after another; that is to say, angels, or pure immortal spirits; men, consisting of immortal spirits and matter, having rational and sensitive souls; brutes, having mortal and sensitive souls; and mere vegetatives, such as trees, plants, &c.; and these creatures so made do, as it were, clasp the higher and lower world together. . i believe the holy scriptures, and everything therein contained, to be the pure and essential word of god; and that, according to these sacred writings, man, the lord and prince of the creation, by his disobedience in paradise, forfeited his innocence and the dignity of his nature, and subjected himself and all his posterity to sin and misery. . i believe and am fully and entirely satisfied, that god the father, out of his infinite goodness and compassion to mankind, was pleased to send his only son, the second person in the holy and undivided trinity, to meditate for him, and to procure his redemption and eternal salvation. . i believe that god the son, out of his infinite love, and for the glory of the deity, was pleased voluntarily and freely to descend from heaven, and to take our nature upon him, and to lead an exemplary life of purity, holiness, and perfect obedience, and at last to suffer an ignominious death upon the cross, for the sins of the whole world, and to rise again the third day for our justification. . i believe that the holy ghost out of his infinite goodness was pleased to undertake the office of sanctifying us with his divine grace, and thereby assisting us with faith to believe, will to desire, and power to do all those things that are required of us in this world, in order to entitle us to the blessings of just men made perfect in the world to come. . i believe that these three persons are of equal power, majesty, and duration, and that the godhead of the father, of the son, and of the holy ghost is all one, and that they are equally uncreate, incomprehensible, eternal, and almighty; and that none is greater or less than the other, but that every one hath one and the same divine nature and perfections. these, sister, are the doctrines which have been received and practised by the best men of every age, from the beginning of the christian religion to this day, and it is upon this i ground my faith and hopes of salvation, not doubting but, if my life and practice have been answerable to them, that i shall be quickly translated out of this kingdom of darkness, out of this world of sorrow, vexation and confusion, into that blessed kingdom, where i shall cease to grieve and to suffer, and shall be happy to all eternity. as to my principles in religion, to be as brief as i can, i declare myself to be a member of christ's church, which i take to be a universal society of all christian people, distributed under lawful governors and pastors into particular churches, holding communion with each other in all the essentials of the christian faith, worship, and discipline; and among these i look upon the church of england to be the chief and best constituted. the church of england is doubtless the great bulwark of the ancient catholic or apostolic faith all over the world; a church that has all the spiritual advantages that the nature of a church is capable of. from the doctrine and principles of the church of england, we are taught loyalty to our prince, fidelity to our country, and justice to all mankind; and therefore, as i look upon this to be one of the most excellent branches of the church universal, and stands, as it were, between superstition and hypocrisy, i therefore declare, for the satisfaction of you and your friends, as i have always lived so i now die, a true and sincere, though a most unworthy member of it. and as to my discontinuance of my attendance at the public worship, i refer you to my papers, which i have left with my worthy friend, mr. barlow. and thus, my dear sister, i have given you a short account of my faith, and the principles of my religion. i come, in the next place, to lay before you a few meditations and observations i have at several times collected together, more particularly those since my retirement to st. helen's. meditations and observations relating to the conduct of human life in general. . remember how often you have neglected the great duties of religion and virtue, and slighted the opportunities that providence has put into your hands; and, withal, that you have a set period assigned you for the management of the affairs of human life; and then reflect seriously that, unless you resolve immediately to improve the little remains, the whole must necessarily slip away insensibly, and then you are lost beyond recovery. . let an unaffected gravity, freedom, justice, and sincerity shine through all your actions, and let no fancies and chimeras give the least check to those excellent qualities. this is an easy task, if you will but suppose everything you do to be your last, and if you can keep your passions and appetites from crossing your reason. stand clear of rashness, and have nothing of insincerity or self-love to infect you. . manage all your thoughts and actions with such prudence and circumspection as if you were sensible you were just going to step into the grave. a little thinking will show a man the vanity and uncertainty of all sublunary things, and enable him to examine maturely the manner of dying; which, if duly abstracted from the terror of the idea, will appear nothing more than an unavoidable appendix of life itself, and a pure natural action. . consider that ill-usage from some sort of people is in a manner necessary, and therefore do not be disquieted about it, but rather conclude that you and your enemy are both marching off the stage together, and that in a little time your very memories will be extinguished. . among your principal observations upon human life, let it be always one to take notice what a great deal both of time and ease that man gains who is not troubled with the spirit of curiosity, who lets his neighbours' affairs alone, and confines his inspections to himself, and only takes care of honesty and a good conscience. . if you would live at your ease, and as much as possible be free from the incumbrances of life, manage but a few things at once, and let those, too, be such as are absolutely necessary. by this rule you will draw the bulk of your business into a narrow compass, and have the double pleasure of making your actions good, and few into the bargain. . he that torments himself because things do not happen just as he would have them, is but a sort of ulcer in the world; and he that is selfish, narrow-souled, and sets up for a separate interest, is a kind of voluntary outlaw, and disincorporates himself from mankind. . never think anything below you which reason and your own circumstances require, and never suffer yourself to be deterred by the ill-grounded notions of censure and reproach; but when honesty and conscience prompt you to say or do anything, do it boldly; never balk your resolution or start at the consequence. . if a man does me an injury, what is that to me? it is his own action, and let him account for it. as for me, i am in my proper station, and only doing the business that providence has allotted; and withal, i ought to consider that the best way to revenge, is not to imitate the injury. . when you happen to be ruffled and put out of humour by any cross accident, retire immediately into your reason, and do not suffer your passion to overrule you a moment; for the sooner you recover yourself now, the better you will be able to guard yourself for the future. . do not be like those ill-natured people that, though they do not love to give a good word to their contemporaries, yet are mighty fond of their own commendations. this argues a perverse and unjust temper, and often exposes the authors to scorn and contempt. . if any one convinces you of an error, change your opinion and thank him for it: truth and information are your business, and can never hurt anybody. on the contrary, he that is proud and stubborn, and wilfully continues in a mistake, it is he that receives the mischief. . because you see a thing difficult, do not instantly conclude it to be impossible to master it. diligence and industry are seldom defeated. look, therefore, narrowly into the thing itself, and what you observe proper and practicable in another, conclude likewise within your own power. . the principal business of human life is run through within the short compass of twenty-four hours; and when you have taken a deliberate view of the present age, you have seen as much as if you had begun with the world, the rest being nothing else but an endless round of the same thing over and over again. . bring your will to your fate, and suit your mind to your circumstances. love your friends and forgive your enemies, and do justice to all mankind, and you will be secure to make your passage easy, and enjoy most of the comforts human life is capable to afford you. . when you have a mind to entertain yourself in your retirements, let it be with the good qualifications of your friends and acquaintance. think with pleasure and satisfaction upon the honour and bravery of one, the modesty of another, the generosity of a third, and so on; there being nothing more pleasant and diverting than the lively images and the advantages of those we love and converse with. . as nothing can deprive you of the privileges of your nature, or compel you to act counter to your reason, so nothing can happen to you but what comes from providence, and consists with the interest of the universe. . let people's tongues and actions be what they will, your business is to have honour and honesty in your view. let them rail, revile, censure, and condemn, or make you the subject of their scorn and ridicule, what does it all signify? you have one certain remedy against all their malice and folly, and that is, to live so that nobody shall believe them. . alas, poor mortals! did we rightly consider our own state and condition, we should find it would not be long before we have forgot all the world, and to be even, that all the world will have forgot us likewise. . he that would recommend himself to the public, let him do it by the candour and modesty of his behaviour, and by a generous indifference to external advantages. let him love mankind, and resign to providence, and then his works will follow him, and his good actions will praise him in the gate. . when you hear a discourse, let your understanding, as far as possible, keep pace with it, and lead you forward to those things which fall most within the compass of your own observations. . when vice and treachery shall be rewarded, and virtue and ability slighted and discountenanced; when ministers of state shall rather fear man than god, and to screen themselves run into parties and factions; when noise and clamour, and scandalous reports shall carry everything before them, it is natural to conclude that a nation in such a state of infatuation stands upon the brink of destruction, and without the intervention of some unforeseen accident, must be inevitably ruined. . when a prince is guarded by wise and honest men, and when all public officers are sure to be rewarded if they do well, and punished if they do evil, the consequence is plain; justice and honesty will flourish, and men will be always contriving, not for themselves, but for the honour and interest of their king and country. . wicked men may sometimes go unpunished in this world, but wicked nations never do; because this world is the only place of punishment of wicked nations, though not for private and particular persons. . an administration that is merely founded upon human policy must be always subject to human chance; but that which is founded on the divine wisdom can no more miscarry than the government of heaven. to govern by parties and factions is the advice of an atheist, and sets up a government by the spirit of satan. in such a government the prince can never be secure under the greatest promises, since, as men's interest changes, so will their duty and affections likewise. . it is a very ancient observation, and a very true one, that people generally despise where they flatter, and cringe to those they design to betray; so that truth and ceremony are, and always will be, two distinct things. . when you find your friend in an error, undeceive him with secrecy and civility, and let him see his oversight first by hints and glances; and if you cannot convince him, leave him with respect, and lay the fault upon your own management. . when you are under the greatest vexations, then consider that human life lasts but for a moment; and do not forget but that you are like the rest of the world, and faulty yourself in many instances; and withal, remember that anger and impatience often prove more mischievous than the provocation. . gentleness and good humour are invincible, provided they are without hypocrisy and design; they disarm the most barbarous and savage tempers, and make even malice ashamed of itself. . in all the actions of life let it be your first and principal care to guard against anger on the one hand, and flattery on the other, for they are both unserviceable qualities, and do a great deal of mischief in the government of human life. . when a man turns knave or libertine, and gives way to fear, jealousy, and fits of the spleen; when his mind complains of his fortune, and he quits the station in which providence has placed him, he acts perfectly counter to humanity, deserts his own nature, and, as it were, runs away from himself. . be not heavy in business, disturbed in conversation, nor impertinent in your thoughts. let your judgment be right, your actions friendly, and your mind contented; let them curse you, threaten you, or despise you; let them go on; they can never injure your reason or your virtue, and then all the rest that they can do to you signifies nothing. . the only pleasure of human life is doing the business of the creation; and which way is that to be compassed very easily? most certainly by the practice of general kindness, by rejecting the importunity of our senses, by distinguishing truth from falsehood, and by contemplating the works of the almighty. . be sure to mind that which lies before you, whether it be thought, word, or action; and never postpone an opportunity, or make virtue wait for you till to-morrow. . whatever tends neither to the improvement of your reason nor the benefit of society, think it below you; and when you have done any considerable service to mankind, do not lessen it by your folly in gaping after reputation and requital. . when you find yourself sleepy in a morning, rouse yourself, and consider that you are born to business, and that in doing good in your generation, you answer your character and act like a man; whereas sleep and idleness do but degrade you, and sink you down to a brute. . a mind that has nothing of hope, or fear, or aversion, or desire, to weaken and disturb it, is the most impregnable security. hither we may with safety retire and defy our enemies; and he that sees not this advantage must be extremely ignorant, and he that forgets it unhappy. . do not disturb yourself about the faults of other people, but let everybody's crimes be at their own door. have always this great maxim in your remembrance, that to play the knave is to rebel against religion; all sorts of injustice being no less than high treason against heaven itself. . do not contemn death, but meet it with a decent and religious fortitude, and look upon it as one of those things which providence has ordered. if you want a cordial to make the apprehensions of dying go down a little the more easily, consider what sort of world and what sort of company you will part with. to conclude, do but look seriously into the world, and there you will see multitudes of people preparing for funerals, and mourning for their friends and acquaintances; and look out again a little afterwards, and you will see others doing the very same thing for them. . in short, men are but poor transitory things. to-day they are busy and harassed with the affairs of human life; and to-morrow life itself is taken from them, and they are returned to their original dust and ashes. part iii containing prophetic observations relating to the affairs of europe and of great britain, more particularly from to . . in the latter end of , an eminent old lady shall bring forth five sons at a birth; the youngest shall live and grow up to maturity, but the four eldest shall either die in the nursery, or be all carried off by one sudden and unexpected accident. . about this time a man with a double head shall arrive in britain from the south. one of these heads shall deliver messages of great importance to the governing party, and the other to the party that is opposite to them. the first shall believe the monster, but the last shall discover the impostor, and so happily disengage themselves from a snare that was laid to destroy them and their posterity. after this the two heads shall unite, and the monster shall appear in his proper shape. . in the year , a philosopher from lower germany shall come, first to amsterdam in holland, and afterwards to london. he will bring with him a world of curiosities, and among them a pretended secret for the transmutation of metals. under the umbrage of this mighty secret he shall pass upon the world for some time; but at length he shall be detected, and proved to be nothing but an empiric and a cheat, and so forced to sneak off, and leave the people he has deluded, either to bemoan their loss, or laugh at their own folly. n.b.--this will be the last of his sect that will ever venture in this part of the world upon the same errand. . in this year great endeavours will be used for procuring a general peace, which shall be so near a conclusion that public rejoicings shall be made at the courts of several great potentates upon that account; but just in the critical juncture, a certain neighbouring prince shall come to a violent death, which shall occasion new war and commotion all over europe; but these shall continue but for a short time, and at last terminate in the utter destruction of the first aggressors. . towards the close of this year of mysteries, a person that was born blind shall have his sight restored, and shall see ravens perch upon the heads of traitors, among which the head of a notorious prelate shall stand upon the highest pole. . in the year , there shall be a grand congress, and new overtures of peace offered by most of the principal parties concerned in the war, which shall have so good effect that a cessation of arms shall be agreed upon for six months, which shall be kept inviolable till a certain general, either through treachery or inadvertency, shall begin hostilities before the expiration of the term; upon which the injured prince shall draw his sword, and throw the scabbard into the sea, vowing never to return it till he shall obtain satisfaction for himself, and done justice to all that were oppressed. . at the close of this year, a famous bridge shall be broken down, and the water that runs under it shall be tinctured with the blood of two notorious malefactors, whose unexpected death shall make mighty alterations in the present state of affairs, and put a stop to the ruin of a nation, which must otherwise have been unavoidable. . begins with plots, conspiracies, and intestine commotions in several countries; nor shall great britain itself be free from the calamity. these shall continue till a certain young prince shall take the reins of government into his own hands; and after that, a marriage shall be proposed, and an alliance concluded between two great potentates, who shall join their forces, and endeavour, in good earnest, to set all matters upon a right foundation. . this year several cardinals and prelates shall be publicly censured for heretical principles, and shall narrowly escape from being torn to pieces by the common people, who still look upon them as the grand disturbers of public tranquillity, perfect incendiaries, and the chief promoters of their former, present, and future calamities. . in - there will be many treaties and negociations, and great britain, particularly, will be crowded with foreign ministers and ambassadors from remote princes and states. trade and commerce will begin to flourish and revive, and everything will have a comfortable prospect, until some desperadoes, assisted by a monster with many heads, shall start new difficulties, and put the world again into a flame; but these shall be but of short duration. . before the expiration of , an eagle from the north shall fly directly to the south, and perch upon the palace of a prince, and first unravel the bloody projects and designs of a wicked set of people, and then publicly discover the murder of a great king, and the intended assassination of another greater than he. . in , three princes will be born that will grow up to be men, and inherit the crowns of three of the greatest monarchies in europe. . about this time the pope will die, and after a great many intrigues and struggles, a spanish cardinal shall be elected, who shall decline the dignity, and declare his marriage with a great lady, heiress of one of the chief principalities in italy, which may occasion new troubles in europe, if not timely prevented. . in , new troubles shall break out in the north, occasioned by the sudden death of a certain prince, and the avarice and ambition of another. poor poland seems to be pointed at; but the princes of the south shall enter into a confederacy to preserve her, and shall at length restore her peace, and prevent the perpetual ruin of her constitution. . great endeavours will be used about this time for a comprehension in religion, supported by crafty and designing men, and a party of mistaken zealots, which they shall artfully draw in to join with them; but as the project is ill-concerted, and will be worse managed, it will come to nothing; and soon afterwards an effectual mode will be taken to prevent the like attempt for the future. . will be a year of inquiry and retrospection. many exorbitant grants will be reassumed, and several persons who thought themselves secure will be called before the senate, and compelled to disgorge what they have unjustly pillaged either from the crown or the public. . about this time a new scaffold will be erected upon the confines of a certain great city, where an old count of a new extraction, that has been of all parties and true to none, will be doomed by his peers to make his first appearance. after this an old lady who has often been exposed to danger and disgrace, and sometimes brought to the very brink of destruction, will be brought to bed of three daughters at once, which they shall call plenty, peace, and union; and these three shall live and grow up together, be the glory of their mother, and the comfort of posterity for many generations. * * * * * this is the substance of what he either writ or extracted from his papers in the interval between the loss of his speech and the return of his fit, which happened exactly at the time he had computed. upon the approach of his fit, he made signs to be put to bed, which was no sooner done but he was seized with extreme agonies, which he bore up under with the greatest steadfastness, and after a severe conflict, that lasted near eight hours, he expired. thus lived and thus died this extraordinary person; a person, though of mean extraction and obscure life, yet when his character comes to be fully and truly known, it will be read with pleasure, profit, and admiration. his perfections at large would be the work of a volume, and inconsistent with the intention of these papers. i will, therefore, only add, for a conclusion, that he was a man of uncommon thought and judgment, and always kept his appetites and inclinations within their just limits. his reason was strong and manly, his understanding sound and active, and his temper so easy, equal, and complaisant, that he never fell out, either with men or accidents. he bore all things with the highest affability, and computed justly upon their value and consequence, and then applied them to their proper uses. a letter from oxford sir, being informed that you speedily intend to publish some memoirs relating to our dumb countryman, dickory cronke, i send you herewith a few lines, in the nature of an elegy, which i leave you to dispose of as you think fit. i knew and admired the man; and if i were capable, his character should be the first thing i would attempt. yours. &c. an elegy, in memory of dickory cronke, the dumb philosopher. vitiis nemo sine nascitur; optimus ille est, qui minimus urgetur.--horace. if virtuous actions emulation raise, then this good man deserves immortal praise. when nature such extensive wisdom lent, she sure designed him for our precedent. such great endowments in a man unknown, declare the blessings were not all his own; but rather granted for a time to show what the wise hand of providence can do. in him we may a bright example see of nature, justice, and morality; a mind not subject to the frowns of fate, but calm and easy in a servile state. he always kept a guard upon his will and feared no harm because he knew no ill. a decent posture and an humble mien, in every action of his life were seen. through all the different stages that he went, he still appeared both wise and diligent: firm to his word, and punctual to his trust, sagacious, frugal, arable, and just. no gainful views his bounded hopes could sway, no wanton thought led his chaste soul astray. in short, his thoughts and actions both declare, nature designed him her philosopher; that all mankind, by his example taught, might learn to live, and manage every thought. oh! could my muse the wondrous subject grace, and, from his youth, his virtuous actions trace; could i in just and equal numbers tell how well he lived, and how devoutly fell, i boldly might your strict attention claim, and bid you learn, and copy out the man. j. p. exeter college, august th, . epitaph the occasion of this epitaph was briefly thus:--a gentleman, who had heard much in commendation of this dumb man, going accidentally to the churchyard where he was buried, and finding his grave without a tombstone, or any manner of memorandum of his death, he pulled out his pencil, and writ as follows:-- pauper ubique jacet. near to this lonely unfrequented place, mixed with the common dust, neglected lies the man that every muse should strive to grace, and all the world should for his virtue prize. stop, gentle passenger, and drop a tear, truth, justice, wisdom, all lie buried here. what, though he wants a monumental stone, the common pomp of every fool or knave, those virtues which through all his actions shone proclaim his worth, and praise him in the grave. his merits will a bright example give, which shall both time and envy too outlive. oh, had i power but equal to my mind, a decent tomb should soon this place adorn, with this inscription: lo, here lies confined a wondrous man, although obscurely born; a man, though dumb, yet he was nature's care, who marked him out her own philosopher. [transcriber's note: between brackets [ ] some fragments are included, which are not present in all editions, mostly commentaries concerning mr. mill's wife and stepdaughter (helen taylor)--an html ed. of this e-text, including index is pending.] autobiography by john stuart mill contents chapter i - childhood and early education chapter ii - moral influences in early youth--my father's character and opinions chapter iii - last stage of education, and first of self-education chapter iv - youthful propagandism--the "westminster review" chapter v - a crisis in my mental history--one stage onward chapter vi - commencement of the most valuable friendship of my life--my father's death--writings and other proceedings up to chapter vii - general view of the remainder of my life.--completion of the "system of logic"--publication of the "principles of political economy" --marriage--retirement from the india house--publication of "liberty" --"considerations on representative government"--civil war in america --examination of sir william hamilton's philosophy--parliamentary life --remainder of my life chapter i childhood and early education it seems proper that i should prefix to the following biographical sketch some mention of the reasons which have made me think it desirable that i should leave behind me such a memorial of so uneventful a life as mine. i do not for a moment imagine that any part of what i have to relate can be interesting to the public as a narrative or as being connected with myself. but i have thought that in an age in which education and its improvement are the subject of more, if not of profounder, study than at any former period of english history, it may be useful that there should be some record of an education which was unusual and remarkable, and which, whatever else it may have done, has proved how much more than is commonly supposed may be taught, and well taught, in those early years which, in the common modes of what is called instruction, are little better than wasted. it has also seemed to me that in an age of transition in opinions, there may be somewhat both of interest and of benefit in noting the successive phases of any mind which was always pressing forward, equally ready to learn and to unlearn either from its own thoughts or from those of others. but a motive which weighs more with me than either of these, is a desire to make acknowledgment of the debts which my intellectual and moral development owes to other persons; some of them of recognised eminence, others less known than they deserve to be, and the one to whom most of all is due, one whom the world had no opportunity of knowing. the reader whom these things do not interest, has only himself to blame if he reads farther, and i do not desire any other indulgence from him than that of bearing in mind that for him these pages were not written. i was born in london, on the th of may, , and was the eldest son of james mill, the author of the _history of british india_. my father, the son of a petty tradesman and (i believe) small farmer, at northwater bridge, in the county of angus, was, when a boy, recommended by his abilities to the notice of sir john stuart, of fettercairn, one of the barons of the exchequer in scotland, and was, in consequence, sent to the university of edinburgh, at the expense of a fund established by lady jane stuart (the wife of sir john stuart) and some other ladies for educating young men for the scottish church. he there went through the usual course of study, and was licensed as a preacher, but never followed the profession; having satisfied himself that he could not believe the doctrines of that or any other church. for a few years he was a private tutor in various families in scotland, among others that of the marquis of tweeddale, but ended by taking up his residence in london, and devoting himself to authorship. nor had he any other means of support until , when he obtained an appointment in the india house. in this period of my father's life there are two things which it is impossible not to be struck with: one of them unfortunately a very common circumstance, the other a most uncommon one. the first is, that in his position, with no resource but the precarious one of writing in periodicals, he married and had a large family; conduct than which nothing could be more opposed, both as a matter of good sense and of duty, to the opinions which, at least at a later period of life, he strenuously upheld. the other circumstance, is the extraordinary energy which was required to lead the life he led, with the disadvantages under which he laboured from the first, and with those which he brought upon himself by his marriage. it would have been no small thing, had he done no more than to support himself and his family during so many years by writing, without ever being in debt, or in any pecuniary difficulty; holding, as he did, opinions, both in politics and in religion, which were more odious to all persons of influence, and to the common run of prosperous englishmen, in that generation than either before or since; and being not only a man whom nothing would have induced to write against his convictions, but one who invariably threw into everything he wrote, as much of his convictions as he thought the circumstances would in any way permit: being, it must also be said, one who never did anything negligently; never undertook any task, literary or other, on which he did not conscientiously bestow all the labour necessary for performing it adequately. but he, with these burdens on him, planned, commenced, and completed, the _history of india_; and this in the course of about ten years, a shorter time than has been occupied (even by writers who had no other employment) in the production of almost any other historical work of equal bulk, and of anything approaching to the same amount of reading and research. and to this is to be added, that during the whole period, a considerable part of almost every day was employed in the instruction of his children: in the case of one of whom, myself, he exerted an amount of labour, care, and perseverance rarely, if ever, employed for a similar purpose, in endeavouring to give, according to his own conception, the highest order of intellectual education. a man who, in his own practice, so vigorously acted up to the principle of losing no time, was likely to adhere to the same rule in the instruction of his pupil. i have no remembrance of the time when i began to learn greek; i have been told that it was when i was three years old. my earliest recollection on the subject, is that of committing to memory what my father termed vocables, being lists of common greek words, with their signification in english, which he wrote out for me on cards. of grammar, until some years later, i learnt no more than the inflections of the nouns and verbs, but, after a course of vocables, proceeded at once to translation; and i faintly remember going through aesop's _fables_, the first greek book which i read. the _anabasis_, which i remember better, was the second. i learnt no latin until my eighth year. at that time i had read, under my father's tuition, a number of greek prose authors, among whom i remember the whole of herodotus, and of xenophon's _cyropaedia_ and _memorials of socrates_; some of the lives of the philosophers by diogenes laertius; part of lucian, and isocrates ad demonicum and ad nicoclem. i also read, in , the first six dialogues (in the common arrangement) of plato, from the euthyphron to the theoctetus inclusive: which last dialogue, i venture to think, would have been better omitted, as it was totally impossible i should understand it. but my father, in all his teaching, demanded of me not only the utmost that i could do, but much that i could by no possibility have done. what he was himself willing to undergo for the sake of my instruction, may be judged from the fact, that i went through the whole process of preparing my greek lessons in the same room and at the same table at which he was writing: and as in those days greek and english lexicons were not, and i could make no more use of a greek and latin lexicon than could be made without having yet begun to learn latin, i was forced to have recourse to him for the meaning of every word which i did not know. this incessant interruption, he, one of the most impatient of men, submitted to, and wrote under that interruption several volumes of his history and all else that he had to write during those years. the only thing besides greek, that i learnt as a lesson in this part of my childhood, was arithmetic: this also my father taught me: it was the task of the evenings, and i well remember its disagreeableness. but the lessons were only a part of the daily instruction i received. much of it consisted in the books i read by myself, and my father's discourses to me, chiefly during our walks. from to the end of we were living in newington green, then an almost rustic neighbourhood. my father's health required considerable and constant exercise, and he walked habitually before breakfast, generally in the green lanes towards hornsey. in these walks i always accompanied him, and with my earliest recollections of green fields and wild flowers, is mingled that of the account i gave him daily of what i had read the day before. to the best of my remembrance, this was a voluntary rather than a prescribed exercise. i made notes on slips of paper while reading, and from these in the morning walks, i told the story to him; for the books were chiefly histories, of which i read in this manner a great number: robertson's histories, hume, gibbon; but my greatest delight, then and for long afterwards, was watson's _philip the second and third_. the heroic defence of the knights of malta against the turks, and of the revolted provinces of the netherlands against spain, excited in me an intense and lasting interest. next to watson, my favourite historical reading was hooke's _history of rome_. of greece i had seen at that time no regular history, except school abridgments and the last two or three volumes of a translation of rollin's _ancient history_, beginning with philip of macedon. but i read with great delight langhorne's translation of plutarch. in english history, beyond the time at which hume leaves off, i remember reading burnet's _history of his own time_, though i cared little for anything in it except the wars and battles; and the historical part of the _annual register_, from the beginning to about , where the volumes my father borrowed for me from mr. bentham left off. i felt a lively interest in frederic of prussia during his difficulties, and in paoli, the corsican patriot; but when i came to the american war, i took my part, like a child as i was (until set right by my father) on the wrong side, because it was called the english side. in these frequent talks about the books i read, he used, as opportunity offered, to give me explanations and ideas respecting civilization, government, morality, mental cultivation, which he required me afterwards to restate to him in my own words. he also made me read, and give him a verbal account of, many books which would not have interested me sufficiently to induce me to read them of myself: among other's millar's _historical view of the english government_, a book of great merit for its time, and which he highly valued; mosheim's _ecclesiastical history_, mccrie's _life of john knox_, and even sewell and rutty's histories of the quakers. he was fond of putting into my hands books which exhibited men of energy and resource in unusual circumstances, struggling against difficulties and overcoming them: of such works i remember beaver's _african memoranda_, and collins's _account of the first settlement of new south wales_. two books which i never wearied of reading were anson's voyages, so delightful to most young persons, and a collection (hawkesworth's, i believe) of _voyages round the world_, in four volumes, beginning with drake and ending with cook and bougainville. of children's books, any more than of playthings, i had scarcely any, except an occasional gift from a relation or acquaintance: among those i had, _robinson crusoe_ was pre-eminent, and continued to delight me through all my boyhood. it was no part, however, of my father's system to exclude books of amusement, though he allowed them very sparingly. of such books he possessed at that time next to none, but he borrowed several for me; those which i remember are the _arabian nights_, cazotte's _arabian tales_, _don quixote_, miss edgeworth's _popular tales_, and a book of some reputation in its day, brooke's _fool of quality_. in my eighth year i commenced learning latin, in conjunction with a younger sister, to whom i taught it as i went on, and who afterwards repeated the lessons to my father; from this time, other sisters and brothers being successively added as pupils, a considerable part of my day's work consisted of this preparatory teaching. it was a part which i greatly disliked; the more so, as i was held responsible for the lessons of my pupils, in almost as full a sense as for my own: i, however, derived from this discipline the great advantage, of learning more thoroughly and retaining more lastingly the things which i was set to teach: perhaps, too, the practice it afforded in explaining difficulties to others, may even at that age have been useful. in other respects, the experience of my boyhood is not favourable to the plan of teaching children by means of one another. the teaching, i am sure, is very inefficient as teaching, and i well know that the relation between teacher and taught is not a good moral discipline to either. i went in this manner through the latin grammar, and a considerable part of cornelius nepos and caesar's commentaries, but afterwards added to the superintendence of these lessons, much longer ones of my own. in the same year in which i began latin, i made my first commencement in the greek poets with the iliad. after i had made some progress in this, my father put pope's translation into my hands. it was the first english verse i had cared to read, and it became one of the books in which for many years i most delighted: i think i must have read it from twenty to thirty times through. i should not have thought it worth while to mention a taste apparently so natural to boyhood, if i had not, as i think, observed that the keen enjoyment of this brilliant specimen of narrative and versification is not so universal with boys, as i should have expected both _a priori_ and from my individual experience. soon after this time i commenced euclid, and somewhat later, algebra, still under my father's tuition. from my eighth to my twelfth year, the latin books which i remember reading were, the _bucolics_ of virgil, and the first six books of the aeneid; all horace, except the epodes; the fables of phaedrus; the first five books of livy (to which from my love of the subject i voluntarily added, in my hours of leisure, the remainder of the first decade); all sallust; a considerable part of ovid's _metamorphoses_; some plays of terence; two or three books of lucretius; several of the orations of cicero, and of his writings on oratory; also his letters to atticus, my father taking the trouble to translate to me from the french the historical explanations in mingault's notes. in greek i read the _iliad_ and _odyssey_ through; one or two plays of sophocles, euripides, and aristophanes, though by these i profited little; all thucydides; the _hellenics_ of xenophon; a great part of demosthenes, aeschines, and lysias; theocritus; anacreon; part of the _anthology_; a little of dionysius; several books of polybius; and lastly aristotle's _rhetoric_, which, as the first expressly scientific treatise on any moral or psychological subject which i had read, and containing many of the best observations of the ancients on human nature and life, my father made me study with peculiar care, and throw the matter of it into synoptic tables. during the same years i learnt elementary geometry and algebra thoroughly, the differential calculus, and other portions of the higher mathematics far from thoroughly: for my father, not having kept up this part of his early acquired knowledge, could not spare time to qualify himself for removing my difficulties, and left me to deal with them, with little other aid than that of books: while i was continually incurring his displeasure by my inability to solve difficult problems for which he did not see that i had not the necessary previous knowledge. as to my private reading, i can only speak of what i remember. history continued to be my strongest predilection, and most of all ancient history. mitford's greece i read continually; my father had put me on my guard against the tory prejudices of this writer, and his perversions of facts for the whitewashing of despots, and blackening of popular institutions. these points he discoursed on, exemplifying them from the greek orators and historians, with such effect that in reading mitford my sympathies were always on the contrary side to those of the author, and i could, to some extent, have argued the point against him: yet this did not diminish the ever new pleasure with which i read the book. roman history, both in my old favourite, hooke, and in ferguson, continued to delight me. a book which, in spite of what is called the dryness of its style, i took great pleasure in, was the _ancient universal history_, through the incessant reading of which, i had my head full of historical details concerning the obscurest ancient people, while about modern history, except detached passages, such as the dutch war of independence, i knew and cared comparatively little. a voluntary exercise, to which throughout my boyhood i was much addicted, was what i called writing histories. i successively composed a roman history, picked out of hooke; and an abridgment of the _ancient universal history_; a history of holland, from my favourite watson and from an anonymous compilation; and in my eleventh and twelfth year i occupied myself with writing what i flattered myself was something serious. this was no less than a history of the roman government, compiled (with the assistance of hooke) from livy and dionysius: of which i wrote as much as would have made an octavo volume, extending to the epoch of the licinian laws. it was, in fact, an account of the struggles between the patricians and plebeians, which now engrossed all the interest in my mind which i had previously felt in the mere wars and conquests of the romans. i discussed all the constitutional points as they arose: though quite ignorant of niebuhr's researches, i, by such lights as my father had given me, vindicated the agrarian laws on the evidence of livy, and upheld, to the best of my ability, the roman democratic party. a few years later, in my contempt of my childish efforts, i destroyed all these papers, not then anticipating that i could ever feel any curiosity about my first attempts at writing and reasoning. my father encouraged me in this useful amusement, though, as i think judiciously, he never asked to see what i wrote; so that i did not feel that in writing it i was accountable to any one, nor had the chilling sensation of being under a critical eye. but though these exercises in history were never a compulsory lesson, there was another kind of composition which was so, namely, writing verses, and it was one of the most disagreeable of my tasks. greek and latin verses i did not write, nor learnt the prosody of those languages. my father, thinking this not worth the time it required, contented himself with making me read aloud to him, and correcting false quantities. i never composed at all in greek, even in prose, and but little in latin. not that my father could be indifferent to the value of this practice, in giving a thorough knowledge of these languages, but because there really was not time for it. the verses i was required to write were english. when i first read pope's homer, i ambitiously attempted to compose something of the same kind, and achieved as much as one book of a continuation of the _iliad_. there, probably, the spontaneous promptings of my poetical ambition would have stopped; but the exercise, begun from choice, was continued by command. conformably to my father's usual practice of explaining to me, as far as possible, the reasons for what he required me to do, he gave me, for this, as i well remember, two reasons highly characteristic of him: one was, that some things could be expressed better and more forcibly in verse than in prose: this, he said, was a real advantage. the other was, that people in general attached more value to verse than it deserved, and the power of writing it, was, on this account, worth acquiring. he generally left me to choose my own subjects, which, as far as i remember, were mostly addresses to some mythological personage or allegorical abstraction; but he made me translate into english verse many of horace's shorter poems: i also remember his giving me thomson's _winter_ to read, and afterwards making me attempt (without book) to write something myself on the same subject. the verses i wrote were, of course, the merest rubbish, nor did i ever attain any facility of versification, but the practice may have been useful in making it easier for me, at a later period, to acquire readiness of expression.[ ] i had read, up to this time, very little english poetry. shakspeare my father had put into my hands, chiefly for the sake of the historical plays, from which, however, i went on to the others. my father never was a great admirer of shakspeare, the english idolatry of whom he used to attack with some severity. he cared little for any english poetry except milton (for whom he had the highest admiration), goldsmith, burns, and gray's _bard_, which he preferred to his elegy: perhaps i may add cowper and beattie. he had some value for spenser, and i remember his reading to me (unlike his usual practice of making me read to him) the first book of the _fairie queene_; but i took little pleasure in it. the poetry of the present century he saw scarcely any merit in, and i hardly became acquainted with any of it till i was grown up to manhood, except the metrical romances of walter scott, which i read at his recommendation and was intensely delighted with; as i always was with animated narrative. dryden's poems were among my father's books, and many of these he made me read, but i never cared for any of them except _alexander's feast_, which, as well as many of the songs in walter scott, i used to sing internally, to a music of my own: to some of the latter, indeed, i went so far as to compose airs, which i still remember. cowper's short poems i read with some pleasure, but never got far into the longer ones; and nothing in the two volumes interested me like the prose account of his three hares. in my thirteenth year i met with campbell's poems, among which _lochiel_, _hohenlinden_, _the exile of erin_, and some others, gave me sensations i had never before experienced from poetry. here, too, i made nothing of the longer poems, except the striking opening of _gertrude of wyoming_, which long kept its place in my feelings as the perfection of pathos. during this part of my childhood, one of my greatest amusements was experimental science; in the theoretical, however, not the practical sense of the word; not trying experiments--a kind of discipline which i have often regretted not having had--nor even seeing, but merely reading about them. i never remember being so wrapt up in any book, as i was in joyce's _scientific dialogues_; and i was rather recalcitrant to my father's criticisms of the bad reasoning respecting the first principles of physics, which abounds in the early part of that work. i devoured treatises on chemistry, especially that of my father's early friend and schoolfellow, dr. thomson, for years before i attended a lecture or saw an experiment. from about the age of twelve, i entered into another and more advanced stage in my course of instruction; in which the main object was no longer the aids and appliances of thought, but the thoughts themselves. this commenced with logic, in which i began at once with the _organon_, and read it to the analytics inclusive, but profited little by the posterior analytics, which belong to a branch of speculation i was not yet ripe for. contemporaneously with the _organon_, my father made me read the whole or parts of several of the latin treatises on the scholastic logic; giving each day to him, in our walks, a minute account of what i had read, and answering his numerous and most searching questions. after this, i went in a similar manner through the _computatio sive logica_ of hobbes, a work of a much higher order of thought than the books of the school logicians, and which he estimated very highly; in my own opinion beyond its merits, great as these are. it was his invariable practice, whatever studies he exacted from me, to make me as far as possible understand and feel the utility of them: and this he deemed peculiarly fitting in the case of the syllogistic logic, the usefulness of which had been impugned by so many writers of authority. i well remember how, and in what particular walk, in the neighbourhood of bagshot heath (where we were on a visit to his old friend mr. wallace, then one of the mathematical professors at sandhurst) he first attempted by questions to make me think on the subject, and frame some conception of what constituted the utility of the syllogistic logic, and when i had failed in this, to make me understand it by explanations. the explanations did not make the matter at all clear to me at the time; but they were not therefore useless; they remained as a nucleus for my observations and reflections to crystallize upon; the import of his general remarks being interpreted to me, by the particular instances which came under my notice afterwards. my own consciousness and experience ultimately led me to appreciate quite as highly as he did, the value of an early practical familiarity with the school logic. i know of nothing, in my education, to which i think myself more indebted for whatever capacity of thinking i have attained. the first intellectual operation in which i arrived at any proficiency, was dissecting a bad argument, and finding in what part the fallacy lay: and though whatever capacity of this sort i attained, was due to the fact that it was an intellectual exercise in which i was most perseveringly drilled by my father, yet it is also true that the school logic, and the mental habits acquired in studying it, were among the principal instruments of this drilling. i am persuaded that nothing, in modern education, tends so much, when properly used, to form exact thinkers, who attach a precise meaning to words and propositions, and are not imposed on by vague, loose, or ambiguous terms. the boasted influence of mathematical studies is nothing to it; for in mathematical processes, none of the real difficulties of correct ratiocination occur. it is also a study peculiarly adapted to an early stage in the education of philosophical students, since it does not presuppose the slow process of acquiring, by experience and reflection, valuable thoughts of their own. they may become capable of disentangling the intricacies of confused and self-contradictory thought, before their own thinking faculties are much advanced; a power which, for want of some such discipline, many otherwise able men altogether lack; and when they have to answer opponents, only endeavour, by such arguments as they can command, to support the opposite conclusion, scarcely even attempting to confute the reasonings of their antagonists; and, therefore, at the utmost, leaving the question, as far as it depends on argument, a balanced one. during this time, the latin and greek books which i continued to read with my father were chiefly such as were worth studying, not for the language merely, but also for the thoughts. this included much of the orators, and especially demosthenes, some of whose principal orations i read several times over, and wrote out, by way of exercise, a full analysis of them. my father's comments on these orations when i read them to him were very instructive to me. he not only drew my attention to the insight they afforded into athenian institutions, and the principles of legislation and government which they often illustrated, but pointed out the skill and art of the orator--how everything important to his purpose was said at the exact moment when he had brought the minds of his audience into the state most fitted to receive it; how he made steal into their minds, gradually and by insinuation, thoughts which, if expressed in a more direct manner, would have roused their opposition. most of these reflections were beyond my capacity of full comprehension at the time; but they left seed behind, which germinated in due season. at this time i also read the whole of tacitus, juvenal, and quintilian. the latter, owing to his obscure style and to the scholastic details of which many parts of his treatise are made up, is little read, and seldom sufficiently appreciated. his book is a kind of encyclopaedia of the thoughts of the ancients on the whole field of education and culture; and i have retained through life many valuable ideas which i can distinctly trace to my reading of him, even at that early age. it was at this period that i read, for the first time, some of the most important dialogues of plato, in particular the _gorgias_, the _protagoras_, and the _republic_. there is no author to whom my father thought himself more indebted for his own mental culture, than plato, or whom he more frequently recommended to young students. i can bear similar testimony in regard to myself. the socratic method, of which the platonic dialogues are the chief example, is unsurpassed as a discipline for correcting the errors, and clearing up the confusions incident to the _intellectus sibi permissus_, the understanding which has made up all its bundles of associations under the guidance of popular phraseology. the close, searching _elenchus_ by which the man of vague generalities is constrained either to express his meaning to himself in definite terms, or to confess that he does not know what he is talking about; the perpetual testing of all general statements by particular instances; the siege in form which is laid to the meaning of large abstract terms, by fixing upon some still larger class-name which includes that and more, and dividing down to the thing sought--marking out its limits and definition by a series of accurately drawn distinctions between it and each of the cognate objects which are successively parted off from it --all this, as an education for precise thinking, is inestimable, and all this, even at that age, took such hold of me that it became part of my own mind. i have felt ever since that the title of platonist belongs by far better right to those who have been nourished in and have endeavoured to practise plato's mode of investigation, than to those who are distinguished only by the adoption of certain dogmatical conclusions, drawn mostly from the least intelligible of his works, and which the character of his mind and writings makes it uncertain whether he himself regarded as anything more than poetic fancies, or philosophic conjectures. in going through plato and demosthenes, since i could now read these authors, as far as the language was concerned, with perfect ease, i was not required to construe them sentence by sentence, but to read them aloud to my father, answering questions when asked: but the particular attention which he paid to elocution (in which his own excellence was remarkable) made this reading aloud to him a most painful task. of all things which he required me to do, there was none which i did so constantly ill, or in which he so perpetually lost his temper with me. he had thought much on the principles of the art of reading, especially the most neglected part of it, the inflections of the voice, or _modulation_, as writers on elocution call it (in contrast with _articulation_ on the one side, and _expression_ on the other), and had reduced it to rules, grounded on the logical analysis of a sentence. these rules he strongly impressed upon me, and took me severely to task for every violation of them: but i even then remarked (though i did not venture to make the remark to him) that though he reproached me when i read a sentence ill, and _told_ me how i ought to have read it, he never by reading it himself, _showed_ me how it ought to be read. a defect running through his otherwise admirable modes of instruction, as it did through all his modes of thought, was that of trusting too much to the intelligibleness of the abstract, when not embodied in the concrete. it was at a much later period of my youth, when practising elocution by myself, or with companions of my own age, that i for the first time understood the object of his rules, and saw the psychological grounds of them. at that time i and others followed out the subject into its ramifications, and could have composed a very useful treatise, grounded on my father's principles. he himself left those principles and rules unwritten. i regret that when my mind was full of the subject, from systematic practice, i did not put them, and our improvements of them, into a formal shape. a book which contributed largely to my education, in the best sense of the term, was my father's _history of india_. it was published in the beginning of . during the year previous, while it was passing through the press, i used to read the proof sheets to him; or rather, i read the manuscript to him while he corrected the proofs. the number of new ideas which i received from this remarkable book, and the impulse and stimulus as well as guidance given to my thoughts by its criticism and disquisitions on society and civilization in the hindoo part, on institutions and the acts of governments in the english part, made my early familiarity with it eminently useful to my subsequent progress. and though i can perceive deficiencies in it now as compared with a perfect standard, i still think it, if not the most, one of the most instructive histories ever written, and one of the books from which most benefit may be derived by a mind in the course of making up its opinions. the preface, among the most characteristic of my father's writings, as well as the richest in materials of thought, gives a picture which may be entirely depended on, of the sentiments and expectations with which he wrote the history. saturated as the book is with the opinions and modes of judgment of a democratic radicalism then regarded as extreme; and treating with a severity, at that time most unusual, the english constitution, the english law, and all parties and classes who possessed any considerable influence in the country; he may have expected reputation, but certainly not advancement in life, from its publication; nor could he have supposed that it would raise up anything but enemies for him in powerful quarters: least of all could he have expected favour from the east india company, to whose commercial privileges he was unqualifiedly hostile, and on the acts of whose government he had made so many severe comments: though, in various parts of his book, he bore a testimony in their favour, which he felt to be their just due, namely, that no government had on the whole given so much proof, to the extent of its lights, of good intention towards its subjects; and that if the acts of any other government had the light of publicity as completely let in upon them, they would, in all probability, still less bear scrutiny. on learning, however, in the spring of , about a year after the publication of the history, that the east india directors desired to strengthen the part of their home establishment which was employed in carrying on the correspondence with india, my father declared himself a candidate for that employment, and, to the credit of the directors, successfully. he was appointed one of the assistants of the examiner of india correspondence; officers whose duty it was to prepare drafts of despatches to india, for consideration by the directors, in the principal departments of administration. in this office, and in that of examiner, which he subsequently attained, the influence which his talents, his reputation, and his decision of character gave him, with superiors who really desired the good government of india, enabled him to a great extent to throw into his drafts of despatches, and to carry through the ordeal of the court of directors and board of control, without having their force much weakened, his real opinions on indian subjects. in his history he had set forth, for the first time, many of the true principles of indian administration: and his despatches, following his history, did more than had ever been done before to promote the improvement of india, and teach indian officials to understand their business. if a selection of them were published, they would, i am convinced, place his character as a practical statesman fully on a level with his eminence as a speculative writer. this new employment of his time caused no relaxation in his attention to my education. it was in this same year, , that he took me through a complete course of political economy. his loved and intimate friend, ricardo, had shortly before published the book which formed so great an epoch in political economy; a book which would never have been published or written, but for the entreaty and strong encouragement of my father; for ricardo, the most modest of men, though firmly convinced of the truth of his doctrines, deemed himself so little capable of doing them justice in exposition and expression, that he shrank from the idea of publicity. the same friendly encouragement induced ricardo, a year or two later, to become a member of the house of commons; where, during the remaining years of his life, unhappily cut short in the full vigour of his intellect, he rendered so much service to his and my father's opinions both on political economy and on other subjects. though ricardo's great work was already in print, no didactic treatise embodying its doctrines, in a manner fit for learners, had yet appeared. my father, therefore, commenced instructing me in the science by a sort of lectures, which he delivered to me in our walks. he expounded each day a portion of the subject, and i gave him next day a written account of it, which he made me rewrite over and over again until it was clear, precise, and tolerably complete. in this manner i went through the whole extent of the science; and the written outline of it which resulted from my daily _compte rendu_, served him afterwards as notes from which to write his _elements of political economy_. after this i read ricardo, giving an account daily of what i read, and discussing, in the best manner i could, the collateral points which offered themselves in our progress. on money, as the most intricate part of the subject, he made me read in the same manner ricardo's admirable pamphlets, written during what was called the bullion controversy; to these succeeded adam smith; and in this reading it was one of my father's main objects to make me apply to smith's more superficial view of political economy, the superior lights of ricardo, and detect what was fallacious in smith's arguments, or erroneous in any of his conclusions. such a mode of instruction was excellently calculated to form a thinker; but it required to be worked by a thinker, as close and vigorous as my father. the path was a thorny one, even to him, and i am sure it was so to me, notwithstanding the strong interest i took in the subject. he was often, and much beyond reason, provoked by my failures in cases where success could not have been expected; but in the main his method was right, and it succeeded. i do not believe that any scientific teaching ever was more thorough, or better fitted for training the faculties, than the mode in which logic and political economy were taught to me by my father. striving, even in an exaggerated degree, to call forth the activity of my faculties, by making me find out everything for myself, he gave his explanations not before, but after, i had felt the full force of the difficulties; and not only gave me an accurate knowledge of these two great subjects, as far as they were then understood, but made me a thinker on both. i thought for myself almost from the first, and occasionally thought differently from him, though for a long time only on minor points, and making his opinion the ultimate standard. at a later period i even occasionally convinced him, and altered his opinion on some points of detail: which i state to his honour, not my own. it at once exemplifies his perfect candour, and the real worth of his method of teaching. at this point concluded what can properly be called my lessons: when i was about fourteen i left england for more than a year; and after my return, though my studies went on under my father's general direction, he was no longer my schoolmaster. i shall therefore pause here, and turn back to matters of a more general nature connected with the part of my life and education included in the preceding reminiscences. in the course of instruction which i have partially retraced, the point most superficially apparent is the great effort to give, during the years of childhood, an amount of knowledge in what are considered the higher branches of education, which is seldom acquired (if acquired at all) until the age of manhood. the result of the experiment shows the ease with which this may be done, and places in a strong light the wretched waste of so many precious years as are spent in acquiring the modicum of latin and greek commonly taught to schoolboys; a waste which has led so many educational reformers to entertain the ill-judged proposal of discarding these languages altogether from general education. if i had been by nature extremely quick of apprehension, or had possessed a very accurate and retentive memory, or were of a remarkably active and energetic character, the trial would not be conclusive; but in all these natural gifts i am rather below than above par; what i could do, could assuredly be done by any boy or girl of average capacity and healthy physical constitution: and if i have accomplished anything, i owe it, among other fortunate circumstances, to the fact that through the early training bestowed on me by my father, i started, i may fairly say, with an advantage of a quarter of a century over my contemporaries. there was one cardinal point in this training, of which i have already given some indication, and which, more than anything else, was the cause of whatever good it effected. most boys or youths who have had much knowledge drilled into them, have their mental capacities not strengthened, but overlaid by it. they are crammed with mere facts, and with the opinions or phrases of other people, and these are accepted as a substitute for the power to form opinions of their own; and thus the sons of eminent fathers, who have spared no pains in their education, so often grow up mere parroters of what they have learnt, incapable of using their minds except in the furrows traced for them. mine, however, was not an education of cram. my father never permitted anything which i learnt to degenerate into a mere exercise of memory. he strove to make the understanding not only go along with every step of the teaching, but, if possible, precede it. anything which could be found out by thinking i never was told, until i had exhausted my efforts to find it out for myself. as far as i can trust my remembrance, i acquitted myself very lamely in this department; my recollection of such matters is almost wholly of failures, hardly ever of success. it is true the failures were often in things in which success, in so early a stage of my progress, was almost impossible. i remember at some time in my thirteenth year, on my happening to use the word idea, he asked me what an idea was; and expressed some displeasure at my ineffectual efforts to define the word: i recollect also his indignation at my using the common expression that something was true in theory but required correction in practice; and how, after making me vainly strive to define the word theory, he explained its meaning, and showed the fallacy of the vulgar form of speech which i had used; leaving me fully persuaded that in being unable to give a correct definition of theory, and in speaking of it as something which might be at variance with practice, i had shown unparalleled ignorance. in this he seems, and perhaps was, very unreasonable; but i think, only in being angry at my failure. a pupil from whom nothing is ever demanded which he cannot do, never does all he can. one of the evils most liable to attend on any sort of early proficiency, and which often fatally blights its promise, my father most anxiously guarded against. this was self-conceit. he kept me, with extreme vigilance, out of the way of hearing myself praised, or of being led to make self-flattering comparisons between myself and others. from his own intercourse with me i could derive none but a very humble opinion of myself; and the standard of comparison he always held up to me, was not what other people did, but what a man could and ought to do. he completely succeeded in preserving me from the sort of influences he so much dreaded. i was not at all aware that my attainments were anything unusual at my age. if i accidentally had my attention drawn to the fact that some other boy knew less than myself--which happened less often than might be imagined--i concluded, not that i knew much, but that he, for some reason or other, knew little, or that his knowledge was of a different kind from mine. my state of mind was not humility, but neither was it arrogance. i never thought of saying to myself, i am, or i can do, so and so. i neither estimated myself highly nor lowly: i did not estimate myself at all. if i thought anything about myself, it was that i was rather backward in my studies, since i always found myself so, in comparison with what my father expected from me. i assert this with confidence, though it was not the impression of various persons who saw me in my childhood. they, as i have since found, thought me greatly and disagreeably self-conceited; probably because i was disputatious, and did not scruple to give direct contradictions to things which i heard said. i suppose i acquired this bad habit from having been encouraged in an unusual degree to talk on matters beyond my age, and with grown persons, while i never had inculcated on me the usual respect for them. my father did not correct this ill-breeding and impertinence, probably from not being aware of it, for i was always too much in awe of him to be otherwise than extremely subdued and quiet in his presence. yet with all this i had no notion of any superiority in myself; and well was it for me that i had not. i remember the very place in hyde park where, in my fourteenth year, on the eve of leaving my father's house for a long absence, he told me that i should find, as i got acquainted with new people, that i had been taught many things which youths of my age did not commonly know; and that many persons would be disposed to talk to me of this, and to compliment me upon it. what other things he said on this topic i remember very imperfectly; but he wound up by saying, that whatever i knew more than others, could not be ascribed to any merit in me, but to the very unusual advantage which had fallen to my lot, of having a father who was able to teach me, and willing to give the necessary trouble and time; that it was no matter of praise to me, if i knew more than those who had not had a similar advantage, but the deepest disgrace to me if i did not. i have a distinct remembrance, that the suggestion thus for the first time made to me, that i knew more than other youths who were considered well educated, was to me a piece of information, to which, as to all other things which my father told me, i gave implicit credence, but which did not at all impress me as a personal matter. i felt no disposition to glorify myself upon the circumstance that there were other persons who did not know what i knew; nor had i ever flattered myself that my acquirements, whatever they might be, were any merit of mine: but, now when my attention was called to the subject, i felt that what my father had said respecting my peculiar advantages was exactly the truth and common sense of the matter, and it fixed my opinion and feeling from that time forward. chapter ii moral influences in early youth. my father's character and opinions in my education, as in that of everyone, the moral influences, which are so much more important than all others, are also the most complicated, and the most difficult to specify with any approach to completeness. without attempting the hopeless task of detailing the circumstances by which, in this respect, my early character may have been shaped, i shall confine myself to a few leading points, which form an indispensable part of any true account of my education. i was brought up from the first without any religious belief, in the ordinary acceptation of the term. my father, educated in the creed of scotch presbyterianism, had by his own studies and reflections been early led to reject not only the belief in revelation, but the foundations of what is commonly called natural religion. i have heard him say, that the turning point of his mind on the subject was reading butler's _analogy_. that work, of which he always continued to speak with respect, kept him, as he said, for some considerable time, a believer in the divine authority of christianity; by proving to him that whatever are the difficulties in believing that the old and new testaments proceed from, or record the acts of, a perfectly wise and good being, the same and still greater difficulties stand in the way of the belief, that a being of such a character can have been the maker of the universe. he considered butler's argument as conclusive against the only opponents for whom it was intended. those who admit an omnipotent as well as perfectly just and benevolent maker and ruler of such a world as this, can say little against christianity but what can, with at least equal force, be retorted against themselves. finding, therefore, no halting place in deism, he remained in a state of perplexity, until, doubtless after many struggles, he yielded to the conviction, that concerning the origin of things nothing whatever can be known. this is the only correct statement of his opinion; for dogmatic atheism he looked upon as absurd; as most of those, whom the world has considered atheists, have always done. these particulars are important, because they show that my father's rejection of all that is called religious belief, was not, as many might suppose, primarily a matter of logic and evidence: the grounds of it were moral, still more than intellectual. he found it impossible to believe that a world so full of evil was the work of an author combining infinite power with perfect goodness and righteousness. his intellect spurned the subtleties by which men attempt to blind themselves to this open contradiction. the sabaean, or manichaean theory of a good and an evil principle, struggling against each other for the government of the universe, he would not have equally condemned; and i have heard him express surprise, that no one revived it in our time. he would have regarded it as a mere hypothesis; but he would have ascribed to it no depraving influence. as it was, his aversion to religion, in the sense usually attached to the term, was of the same kind with that of lucretius: he regarded it with the feelings due not to a mere mental delusion, but to a great moral evil. he looked upon it as the greatest enemy of morality: first, by setting up fictitious excellences--belief in creeds, devotional feelings, and ceremonies, not connected with the good of human-kind--and causing these to be accepted as substitutes for genuine virtues: but above all, by radically vitiating the standard of morals; making it consist in doing the will of a being, on whom it lavishes indeed all the phrases of adulation, but whom in sober truth it depicts as eminently hateful. i have a hundred times heard him say that all ages and nations have represented their gods as wicked, in a constantly increasing progression; that mankind have gone on adding trait after trait till they reached the most perfect conception of wickedness which the human mind can devise, and have called this god, and prostrated themselves before it. this _ne plus ultra_ of wickedness he considered to be embodied in what is commonly presented to mankind as the creed of christianity. think (he used to say) of a being who would make a hell--who would create the human race with the infallible foreknowledge, and therefore with the intention, that the great majority of them were to be consigned to horrible and everlasting torment. the time, i believe, is drawing near when this dreadful conception of an object of worship will be no longer identified with christianity; and when all persons, with any sense of moral good and evil, will look upon it with the same indignation with which my father regarded it. my father was as well aware as anyone that christians do not, in general, undergo the demoralizing consequences which seem inherent in such a creed, in the manner or to the extent which might have been expected from it. the same slovenliness of thought, and subjection of the reason to fears, wishes, and affections, which enable them to accept a theory involving a contradiction in terms, prevents them from perceiving the logical consequences of the theory. such is the facility with which mankind believe at one and the same time things inconsistent with one another, and so few are those who draw from what they receive as truths, any consequences but those recommended to them by their feelings, that multitudes have held the undoubting belief in an omnipotent author of hell, and have nevertheless identified that being with the best conception they were able to form of perfect goodness. their worship was not paid to the demon which such a being as they imagined would really be, but to their own ideal of excellence. the evil is, that such a belief keeps the ideal wretchedly low; and opposes the most obstinate resistance to all thought which has a tendency to raise it higher. believers shrink from every train of ideas which would lead the mind to a clear conception and an elevated standard of excellence, because they feel (even when they do not distinctly see) that such a standard would conflict with many of the dispensations of nature, and with much of what they are accustomed to consider as the christian creed. and thus morality continues a matter of blind tradition, with no consistent principle, nor even any consistent feeling, to guide it. it would have been wholly inconsistent with my father's ideas of duty, to allow me to acquire impressions contrary to his convictions and feelings respecting religion: and he impressed upon me from the first, that the manner in which the world came into existence was a subject on which nothing was known: that the question, "who made me?" cannot be answered, because we have no experience or authentic information from which to answer it; and that any answer only throws the difficulty a step further back, since the question immediately presents itself, "who made god?" he, at the same time, took care that i should be acquainted with what had been thought by mankind on these impenetrable problems. i have mentioned at how early an age he made me a reader of ecclesiastical history; and he taught me to take the strongest interest in the reformation, as the great and decisive contest against priestly tyranny for liberty of thought. i am thus one of the very few examples, in this country, of one who has not thrown off religious belief, but never had it: i grew up in a negative state with regard to it. i looked upon the modern exactly as i did upon the ancient religion, as something which in no way concerned me. it did not seem to me more strange that english people should believe what i did not, than that the men i read of in herodotus should have done so. history had made the variety of opinions among mankind a fact familiar to me, and this was but a prolongation of that fact. this point in my early education had, however, incidentally one bad consequence deserving notice. in giving me an opinion contrary to that of the world, my father thought it necessary to give it as one which could not prudently be avowed to the world. this lesson of keeping my thoughts to myself, at that early age, was attended with some moral disadvantages; though my limited intercourse with strangers, especially such as were likely to speak to me on religion, prevented me from being placed in the alternative of avowal or hypocrisy. i remember two occasions in my boyhood, on which i felt myself in this alternative, and in both cases i avowed my disbelief and defended it. my opponents were boys, considerably older than myself: one of them i certainly staggered at the time, but the subject was never renewed between us: the other who was surprised and somewhat shocked, did his best to convince me for some time, without effect. the great advance in liberty of discussion, which is one of the most important differences between the present time and that of my childhood, has greatly altered the moralities of this question; and i think that few men of my father's intellect and public spirit, holding with such intensity of moral conviction as he did, unpopular opinions on religion, or on any other of the great subjects of thought, would now either practise or inculcate the withholding of them from the world, unless in the cases, becoming fewer every day, in which frankness on these subjects would either risk the loss of means of subsistence, or would amount to exclusion from some sphere of usefulness peculiarly suitable to the capacities of the individual. on religion in particular the time appears to me to have come when it is the duty of all who, being qualified in point of knowledge, have on mature consideration satisfied themselves that the current opinions are not only false but hurtful, to make their dissent known; at least, if they are among those whose station or reputation gives their opinion a chance of being attended to. such an avowal would put an end, at once and for ever, to the vulgar prejudice, that what is called, very improperly, unbelief, is connected with any bad qualities either of mind or heart. the world would be astonished if it knew how great a proportion of its brightest ornaments--of those most distinguished even in popular estimation for wisdom and virtue--are complete sceptics in religion; many of them refraining from avowal, less from personal considerations than from a conscientious, though now in my opinion a most mistaken, apprehension, lest by speaking out what would tend to weaken existing beliefs, and by consequence (as they suppose) existing restraints, they should do harm instead of good. of unbelievers (so called) as well as of believers, there are many species, including almost every variety of moral type. but the best among them, as no one who has had opportunities of really knowing them will hesitate to affirm, are more genuinely religious, in the best sense of the word religion, than those who exclusively arrogate to themselves the title. the liberality of the age, or in other words the weakening of the obstinate prejudice which makes men unable to see what is before their eyes because it is contrary to their expectations, has caused it be very commonly admitted that a deist may be truly religious: but if religion stands for any graces of character and not for mere dogma, the assertion may equally be made of many whose belief is far short of deism. though they may think the proof incomplete that the universe is a work of design, and though they assuredly disbelieve that it can have an author and governor who is _absolute_ in power as well as perfect in goodness, they have that which constitutes the principal worth of all religions whatever, an ideal conception of a perfect being, to which they habitually refer as the guide of their conscience; and this ideal of good is usually far nearer to perfection than the objective deity of those who think themselves obliged to find absolute goodness in the author of a world so crowded with suffering and so deformed by injustice as ours. my father's moral convictions, wholly dissevered from religion, were very much of the character of those of the greek philosophers; and were delivered with the force and decision which characterized all that came from him. even at the very early age at which i read with him the _memorabilia_ of xenophon, i imbibed from that work and from his comments a deep respect for the character of socrates; who stood in my mind as a model of ideal excellence: and i well remember how my father at that time impressed upon me the lesson of the "choice of hercules." at a somewhat later period the lofty moral standard exhibited in the writings of plato operated upon me with great force. my father's moral inculcations were at all times mainly those of the "socratici viri"; justice, temperance (to which he gave a very extended application), veracity, perseverance, readiness to encounter pain and especially labour; regard for the public good; estimation of persons according to their merits, and of things according to their intrinsic usefulness; a life of exertion in contradiction to one of self-indulgent ease and sloth. these and other moralities he conveyed in brief sentences, uttered as occasion arose, of grave exhortation, or stern reprobation and contempt. but though direct moral teaching does much, indirect does more; and the effect my father produced on my character, did not depend solely on what he said or did with that direct object, but also, and still more, on what manner of man he was. in his views of life he partook of the character of the stoic, the epicurean, and the cynic, not in the modern but the ancient sense of the word. in his personal qualities the stoic predominated. his standard of morals was epicurean, inasmuch as it was utilitarian, taking as the exclusive test of right and wrong, the tendency of actions to produce pleasure or pain. but he had (and this was the cynic element) scarcely any belief in pleasure; at least in his later years, of which alone, on this point, i can speak confidently. he was not insensible to pleasures; but he deemed very few of them worth the price which, at least in the present state of society, must be paid for them. the greater number of miscarriages in life he considered to be attributable to the overvaluing of pleasures. accordingly, temperance, in the large sense intended by the greek philosophers --stopping short at the point of moderation in all indulgences--was with him, as with them, almost the central point of educational precept. his inculcations of this virtue fill a large place in my childish remembrances. he thought human life a poor thing at best, after the freshness of youth and of unsatisfied curiosity had gone by. this was a topic on which he did not often speak, especially, it may be supposed, in the presence of young persons: but when he did, it was with an air of settled and profound conviction. he would sometimes say that if life were made what it might be, by good government and good education, it would be worth having: but he never spoke with anything like enthusiasm even of that possibility. he never varied in rating intellectual enjoyments above all others, even in value as pleasures, independently of their ulterior benefits. the pleasures of the benevolent affections he placed high in the scale; and used to say, that he had never known a happy old man, except those who were able to live over again in the pleasures of the young. for passionate emotions of all sorts, and for everything which bas been said or written in exaltation of them, he professed the greatest contempt. he regarded them as a form of madness. "the intense" was with him a bye-word of scornful disapprobation. he regarded as an aberration of the moral standard of modern times, compared with that of the ancients, the great stress laid upon feeling. feelings, as such, he considered to be no proper subjects of praise or blame. right and wrong, good and bad, he regarded as qualities solely of conduct--of acts and omissions; there being no feeling which may not lead, and does not frequently lead, either to good or to bad actions: conscience itself, the very desire to act right, often leading people to act wrong. consistently carrying out the doctrine that the object of praise and blame should be the discouragement of wrong conduct and the encouragement of right, he refused to let his praise or blame be influenced by the motive of the agent. he blamed as severely what he thought a bad action, when the motive was a feeling of duty, as if the agents had been consciously evil doers. he would not have accepted as a plea in mitigation for inquisitors, that they sincerely believed burning heretics to be an obligation of conscience. but though he did not allow honesty of purpose to soften his disapprobation of actions, it had its full effect on his estimation of characters. no one prized conscientiousness and rectitude of intention more highly, or was more incapable of valuing any person in whom he did not feel assurance of it. but he disliked people quite as much for any other deficiency, provided he thought it equally likely to make them act ill. he disliked, for instance, a fanatic in any bad cause, as much as or more than one who adopted the same cause from self-interest, because he thought him even more likely to be practically mischievous. and thus, his aversion to many intellectual errors, or what he regarded as such, partook, in a certain sense, of the character of a moral feeling. all this is merely saying that he, in a degree once common, but now very unusual, threw his feelings into his opinions; which truly it is difficult to understand how anyone who possesses much of both, can fail to do. none but those who do not care about opinions will confound this with intolerance. those who, having opinions which they hold to be immensely important, and their contraries to be prodigiously hurtful, have any deep regard for the general good, will necessarily dislike, as a class and in the abstract, those who think wrong what they think right, and right what they think wrong: though they need not therefore be, nor was my father, insensible to good qualities in an opponent, nor governed in their estimation of individuals by one general presumption, instead of by the whole of their character. i grant that an earnest person, being no more infallible than other men, is liable to dislike people on account of opinions which do not merit dislike; but if he neither himself does them any ill office, nor connives at its being donc by others, he is not intolerant: and the forbearance which flows from a conscientious sense of the importance to mankind of the equal freedom of all opinions, is the only tolerance which is commendable, or, to the highest moral order of minds, possible. it will be admitted, that a man of the opinions, and the character, above described, was likely to leave a strong moral impression on any mind principally formed by him, and that his moral teaching was not likely to err on the side of laxity or indulgence. the element which was chiefly deficient in his moral relation to his children was that of tenderness. i do not believe that this deficiency lay in his own nature. i believe him to have had much more feeling than he habitually showed, and much greater capacities of feeling than were ever developed. he resembled most englishmen in being ashamed of the signs of feeling, and, by the absence of demonstration, starving the feelings themselves. if we consider further that he was in the trying position of sole teacher, and add to this that his temper was constitutionally irritable, it is impossible not to feel true pity for a father who did, and strove to do, so much for his children, who would have so valued their affection, yet who must have been constantly feeling that fear of him was drying it up at its source. this was no longer the case later in life, and with his younger children. they loved him tenderly: and if i cannot say so much of myself, i was always loyally devoted to him. as regards my own education, i hesitate to pronounce whether i was more a loser or gainer by his severity. it was not such as to prevent me from having a happy childhood. and i do not believe that boys can be induced to apply themselves with vigour, and--what is so much more difficult--perseverance, to dry and irksome studies, by the sole force of persuasion and soft words. much must be done, and much must be learnt, by children, for which rigid discipline, and known liability to punishment, are indispensable as means. it is, no doubt, a very laudable effort, in modern teaching, to render as much as possible of what the young are required to learn, easy and interesting to them. but when this principle is pushed to the length of not requiring them to learn anything _but_ what has been made easy and interesting, one of the chief objects of education is sacrificed. i rejoice in the decline of the old brutal and tyrannical system of teaching, which, however, did succeed in enforcing habits of application; but the new, as it seems to me, is training up a race of men who will be incapable of doing anything which is disagreeable to them. i do not, then, believe that fear, as an element in education, can be dispensed with; but i am sure that it ought not to be the main element; and when it predominates so much as to preclude love and confidence on the part of the child to those who should be the unreservedly trusted advisers of after years, and perhaps to seal up the fountains of frank and spontaneous communicativeness in the child's nature, it is an evil for which a large abatement must be made from the benefits, moral and intellectual, which may flow from any other part of the education. during this first period of my life, the habitual frequenters of my father's house were limited to a very few persons, most of them little known to the world, but whom personal worth, and more or less of congeniality with at least his political opinions (not so frequently to be met with then as since), inclined him to cultivate; and his conversations with them i listened to with interest and instruction. my being an habitual inmate of my father's study made me acquainted with the dearest of his friends, david ricardo, who by his benevolent countenance, and kindliness of manner, was very attractive to young persons, and who, after i became a student of political economy, invited me to his house and to walk with him in order to converse on the subject. i was a more frequent visitor (from about or ) to mr. hume, who, born in the same part of scotland as my father, and having been, i rather think, a younger schoolfellow or college companion of his, had on returning from india renewed their youthful acquaintance, and who--coming, like many others, greatly under the influence of my father's intellect and energy of character--was induced partly by that influence to go into parliament, and there adopt the line of conduct which has given him an honourable place in the history of his country. of mr. bentham i saw much more, owing to the close intimacy which existed between him and my father. i do not know how soon after my father's first arrival in england they became acquainted. but my father was the earliest englishman of any great mark, who thoroughly understood, and in the main adopted, bentham's general views of ethics, government and law: and this was a natural foundation for sympathy between them, and made them familiar companions in a period of bentham's life during which he admitted much fewer visitors than was the case subsequently. at this time mr. bentham passed some part of every year at barrow green house, in a beautiful part of the surrey hills, a few miles from godstone, and there i each summer accompanied my father in a long visit. in mr. bentham, my father, and i made an excursion, which included oxford, bath and bristol, exeter, plymouth, and portsmouth. in this journey i saw many things which were instructive to me, and acquired my first taste for natural scenery, in the elementary form of fondness for a "view." in the succeeding winter we moved into a house very near mr. bentham's, which my father rented from him, in queen square, westminster. from to mr. bentham lived during half of each year at ford abbey, in somersetshire (or rather in a part of devonshire surrounded by somersetshire), which intervals i had the advantage of passing at that place. this sojourn was, i think, an important circumstance in my education. nothing contributes more to nourish elevation of sentiments in a people, than the large and free character of their habitations. the middle-age architecture, the baronial hall, and the spacious and lofty rooms, of this fine old place, so unlike the mean and cramped externals of english middle-class life, gave the sentiment of a larger and freer existence, and were to me a sort of poetic cultivation, aided also by the character of the grounds in which the abbey stood; which were _riant_ and secluded, umbrageous, and full of the sound of falling waters. i owed another of the fortunate circumstances in my education, a year's residence in france, to mr. bentham's brother, general sir samuel bentham. i had seen sir samuel bentham and his family at their house near gosport in the course of the tour already mentioned (he being then superintendent of the dockyard at portsmouth), and during a stay of a few days which they made at ford abbey shortly after the peace, before going to live on the continent. in they invited me for a six months' visit to them in the south of france, which their kindness ultimately prolonged to nearly a twelvemonth. sir samuel bentham, though of a character of mind different from that of his illustrious brother, was a man of very considerable attainments and general powers, with a decided genius for mechanical art. his wife, a daughter of the celebrated chemist, dr. fordyce, was a woman of strong will and decided character, much general knowledge, and great practical good sense of the edgeworth kind: she was the ruling spirit of the household, as she deserved, and was well qualified, to be. their family consisted of one son (the eminent botanist) and three daughters, the youngest about two years my senior. i am indebted to them for much and various instruction, and for an almost parental interest in my welfare. when i first joined them, in may, , they occupied the chateau of pompignan (still belonging to a descendant of voltaire's enemy) on the heights overlooking the plain of the garonne between montauban and toulouse. i accompanied them in an excursion to the pyrenees, including a stay of some duration at bagneres de bigorre, a journey to pau, bayonne, and bagneres de luchon, and an ascent of the pic du midi de bigorre. this first introduction to the highest order of mountain scenery made the deepest impression on me, and gave a colour to my tastes through life. in october we proceeded by the beautiful mountain route of castres and st. pons, from toulouse to montpellier, in which last neighbourhood sir samuel had just bought the estate of restincliere, near the foot of the singular mountain of st. loup. during this residence in france i acquired a familiar knowledge of the french language, and acquaintance with the ordinary french literature; i took lessons in various bodily exercises, in none of which, however, i made any proficiency; and at montpellier i attended the excellent winter courses of lectures at the faculte des sciences, those of m. anglada on chemistry, of m. provencal on zoology, and of a very accomplished representative of the eighteenth century metaphysics, m. gergonne, on logic, under the name of philosophy of the sciences. i also went through a course of the higher mathematics under the private tuition of m. lentheric, a professor at the lycee of montpellier. but the greatest, perhaps, of the many advantages which i owed to this episode in my education, was that of having breathed for a whole year, the free and genial atmosphere of continental life. this advantage was not the less real though i could not then estimate, nor even consciously feel it. having so little experience of english life, and the few people i knew being mostly such as had public objects, of a large and personally disinterested kind, at heart, i was ignorant of the low moral tone of what, in england, is called society; the habit of, not indeed professing, but taking for granted in every mode of implication, that conduct is of course always directed towards low and petty objects; the absence of high feelings which manifests itself by sneering depreciation of all demonstrations of them, and by general abstinence (except among a few of the stricter religionists) from professing any high principles of action at all, except in those preordained cases in which such profession is put on as part of the costume and formalities of the occasion. i could not then know or estimate the difference between this manner of existence, and that of a people like the french, whose faults, if equally real, are at all events different; among whom sentiments, which by comparison at least may be called elevated, are the current coin of human intercourse, both in books and in private life; and though often evaporating in profession, are yet kept alive in the nation at large by constant exercise, and stimulated by sympathy, so as to form a living and active part of the existence of great numbers of persons, and to be recognised and understood by all. neither could i then appreciate the general culture of the understanding, which results from the habitual exercise of the feelings, and is thus carried down into the most uneducated classes of several countries on the continent, in a degree not equalled in england among the so-called educated, except where an unusual tenderness of conscience leads to a habitual exercise of the intellect on questions of right and wrong. i did not know the way in which, among the ordinary english, the absence of interest in things of an unselfish kind, except occasionally in a special thing here and there, and the habit of not speaking to others, nor much even to themselves, about the things in which they do feel interest, causes both their feelings and their intellectual faculties to remain undeveloped, or to develop themselves only in some single and very limited direction; reducing them, considered as spiritual beings, to a kind of negative existence. all these things i did not perceive till long afterwards; but i even then felt, though without stating it clearly to myself, the contrast between the frank sociability and amiability of french personal intercourse, and the english mode of existence, in which everybody acts as if everybody else (with few, or no exceptions) was either an enemy or a bore. in france, it is true, the bad as well as the good points, both of individual and of national character, come more to the surface, and break out more fearlessly in ordinary intercourse, than in england: but the general habit of the people is to show, as well as to expect, friendly feeling in every one towards every other, wherever there is not some positive cause for the opposite. in england it is only of the best bred people, in the upper or upper middle ranks, that anything like this can be said. in my way through paris, both going and returning, i passed some time in the house of m. say, the eminent political economist, who was a friend and correspondent of my father, having become acquainted with him on a visit to england a year or two after the peace. he was a man of the later period of the french revolution, a fine specimen of the best kind of french republican, one of those who had never bent the knee to bonaparte though courted by him to do so; a truly upright, brave, and enlightened man. he lived a quiet and studious life, made happy by warm affections, public and private. he was acquainted with many of the chiefs of the liberal party, and i saw various noteworthy persons while staying at this house; among whom i have pleasure in the recollection of having once seen saint-simon, not yet the founder either of a philosophy or a religion, and considered only as a clever original. the chief fruit which i carried away from the society i saw, was a strong and permanent interest in continental liberalism, of which i ever afterwards kept myself _au courant_, as much as of english politics: a thing not at all usual in those days with englishmen, and which had a very salutary influence on my development, keeping me free from the error always prevalent in england--and from which even my father, with all his superiority to prejudice, was not exempt--of judging universal questions by a merely english standard. after passing a few weeks at caen with an old friend of my father's, i returned to england in july, and my education resumed its ordinary course. chapter iii last stage of education, and first of self-education for the first year or two after my visit to france, i continued my old studies, with the addition of some new ones. when i returned, my father was just finishing for the press his _elements of political economy_, and he made me perform an exercise on the manuscript, which mr. bentham practised on all his own writings, making what he called "marginal contents"; a short abstract of every paragraph, to enable the writer more easily to judge of, and improve, the order of the ideas, and the general character of the exposition. soon after, my father put into my hands condillac's _traite des sensations_, and the logical and metaphysical volumes of his _cours d'etudes_; the first (notwithstanding the superficial resemblance between condillac's psychological system and my father's) quite as much for a warning as for an example. i am not sure whether it was in this winter or the next that i first read a history of the french revolution. i learnt with astonishment that the principles of democracy, then apparently in so insignificant and hopeless a minority everywhere in europe, had borne all before them in france thirty years earlier, and had been the creed of the nation. as may be supposed from this, i had previously a very vague idea of that great commotion. i knew only that the french had thrown off the absolute monarchy of louis xiv. and xv., had put the king and queen to death, guillotined many persons, one of whom was lavoisier, and had ultimately fallen under the despotism of bonaparte. from this time, as was natural, the subject took an immense hold of my feelings. it allied itself with all my juvenile aspirations to the character of a democratic champion. what had happened so lately, seemed as if it might easily happen again: and the most transcendent glory i was capable of conceiving, was that of figuring, successful or unsuccessful, as a girondist in an english convention. during the winter of - , mr. john austin, with whom at the time of my visit to france my father had but lately become acquainted, kindly allowed me to read roman law with him. my father, notwithstanding his abhorrence of the chaos of barbarism called english law, had turned his thoughts towards the bar as on the whole less ineligible for me than any other profession: and these readings with mr. austin, who had made bentham's best ideas his own, and added much to them from other sources and from his own mind, were not only a valuable introduction to legal studies, but an important portion of general education. with mr. austin i read heineccius on the institutes, his _roman antiquities_, and part of his exposition of the pandects; to which was added a considerable portion of blackstone. it was at the commencement of these studies that my father, as a needful accompaniment to them, put into my hands bentham's principal speculations, as interpreted to the continent, and indeed to all the world, by dumont, in the _traite de legislation_. the reading of this book was an epoch in my life; one of the turning points in my mental history. my previous education had been, in a certain sense, already a course of benthamism. the benthamic standard of "the greatest happiness" was that which i had always been taught to apply; i was even familiar with an abstract discussion of it, forming an episode in an unpublished dialogue on government, written by my father on the platonic model. yet in the first pages of bentham it burst upon me with all the force of novelty. what thus impressed me was the chapter in which bentham passed judgment on the common modes of reasoning in morals and legislation, deduced from phrases like "law of nature," "right reason," "the moral sense," "natural rectitude," and the like, and characterized them as dogmatism in disguise, imposing its sentiments upon others under cover of sounding expressions which convey no reason for the sentiment, but set up the sentiment as its own reason. it had not struck me before, that bentham's principle put an end to all this. the feeling rushed upon me, that all previous moralists were superseded, and that here indeed was the commencement of a new era in thought. this impression was strengthened by the manner in which bentham put into scientific form the application of the happiness principle to the morality of actions, by analysing the various classes and orders of their consequences. but what struck me at that time most of all, was the classification of offences, which is much more clear, compact, and imposing in dumont's _redaction_ than in the original work of bentham from which it was taken. logic and the dialectics of plato, which had formed so large a part of my previous training, had given me a strong relish for accurate classification. this taste had been strengthened and enlightened by the study of botany, on the principles of what is called the natural method, which i had taken up with great zeal, though only as an amusement, during my stay in france; and when i found scientific classification applied to the great and complex subject of punishable acts, under the guidance of the ethical principle of pleasurable and painful consequences, followed out in the method of detail introduced into these subjects by bentham, i felt taken up to an eminence from which i could survey a vast mental domain, and see stretching out into the distance intellectual results beyond all computation. as i proceeded further, there seemed to be added to this intellectual clearness, the most inspiring prospects of practical improvement in human affairs. to bentham's general view of the construction of a body of law i was not altogether a stranger, having read with attention that admirable compendium, my father's article on jurisprudence: but i had read it with little profit, and scarcely any interest, no doubt from its extremely general and abstract character, and also because it concerned the form more than the substance of the _corpus juris_, the logic rather than the ethics of law. but bentham's subject was legislation, of which jurisprudence is only the formal part: and at every page he seemed to open a clearer and broader conception of what human opinions and institutions ought to be, how they might be made what they ought to be, and how far removed from it they now are. when i laid down the last volume of the _traite_, i had become a different being. the "principle of utility," understood as bentham understood it, and applied in the manner in which he applied it through these three volumes, fell exactly into its place as the keystone which held together the detached and fragmentary component parts of my knowledge and beliefs. it gave unity to my conceptions of things. i now had opinions; a creed, a doctrine, a philosophy; in one among the best senses of the word, a religion; the inculcation and diffusion of which could be made the principal outward purpose of a life. and i had a grand conception laid before me of changes to be effected in the condition of mankind through that doctrine. the _traite de legislation_ wound up with what was to me a most impressive picture of human life as it would be made by such opinions and such laws as were recommended in the treatise. the anticipations of practicable improvement were studiously moderate, deprecating and discountenancing as reveries of vague enthusiasm many things which will one day seem so natural to human beings, that injustice will probably be done to those who once thought them chimerical. but, in my state of mind, this appearance of superiority to illusion added to the effect which bentham's doctrines produced on me, by heightening the impression of mental power, and the vista of improvement which he did open was sufficiently large and brilliant to light up my life, as well as to give a definite shape to my aspirations. after this i read, from time to time, the most important of the other works of bentham which had then seen the light, either as written by himself or as edited by dumont. this was my private reading: while, under my father's direction, my studies were carried into the higher branches of analytic psychology. i now read locke's _essay_, and wrote out an account of it, consisting of a complete abstract of every chapter, with such remarks as occurred to me; which was read by, or (i think) to, my father, and discussed throughout. i performed the same process with _helvetius de l'esprit_, which i read of my own choice. this preparation of abstracts, subject to my father's censorship, was of great service to me, by compelling precision in conceiving and expressing psychological doctrines, whether accepted as truths or only regarded as the opinion of others. after helvetius, my father made me study what he deemed the really master-production in the philosophy of mind, hartley's _observations on man_. this book, though it did not, like the _traite de legislation_, give a new colour to my existence, made a very similar impression on me in regard to its immediate subject. hartley's explanation, incomplete as in many points it is, of the more complex mental phenomena by the law of association, commended itself to me at once as a real analysis, and made me feel by contrast the insufficiency of the merely verbal generalizations of condillac, and even of the instructive gropings and feelings about for psychological explanations, of locke. it was at this very time that my father commenced writing his _analysis_ of the mind, which carried hartley's mode of explaining the mental phenomena to so much greater length and depth. he could only command the concentration of thought necessary for this work, during the complete leisure of his holiday for a month or six weeks annually: and he commenced it in the summer of , in the first holiday he passed at dorking; in which neighbourhood, from that time to the end of his life, with the exception of two years, he lived, as far as his official duties permitted, for six months of every year. he worked at the _analysis_ during several successive vacations, up to the year , when it was published, and allowed me to read the manuscript, portion by portion, as it advanced. the other principal english writers on mental philosophy i read as i felt inclined, particularly berkeley, hume's _essays_, reid, dugald stewart and brown on cause and effect. brown's _lectures_ i did not read until two or three years later, nor at that time had my father himself read them. among the works read in the course of this year, which contributed materially to my development, i owe it to mention a book (written on the foundation of some of bentham's manuscripts and published under the pseudonyme of philip beauchamp) entitled _analysis of the influence of natural religion on the temporal happiness of mankind_. this was an examination not of the truth, but of the usefulness of religious belief, in the most general sense, apart from the peculiarities of any special revelation; which, of all the parts of the discussion concerning religion, is the most important in this age, in which real belief in any religious doctrine is feeble and precarious, but the opinion of its necessity for moral and social purposes almost universal; and when those who reject revelation, very generally take refuge in an optimistic deism, a worship of the order of nature, and the supposed course of providence, at least as full of contradictions, and perverting to the moral sentiments, as any of the forms of christianity, if only it is as completely realized. yet very little, with any claim to a philosophical character, has been written by sceptics against the usefulness of this form of belief. the volume bearing the name of philip beauchamp had this for its special object. having been shown to my father in manuscript, it was put into my hands by him, and i made a marginal analysis of it as i had done of the _elements of political economy_. next to the traite de legislation_, it was one of the books which by the searching character of its analysis produced the greatest effect upon me. on reading it lately after an interval of many years, i find it to have some of the defects as well as the merits of the benthamic modes of thought, and to contain, as i now think, many weak arguments, but with a great overbalance of sound ones, and much good material for a more completely philosophic and conclusive treatment of the subject. i have now, i believe, mentioned all the books which had any considerable effect on my early mental development. from this point i began to carry on my intellectual cultivation by writing still more than by reading. in the summer of i wrote my first argumentative essay. i remember very little about it, except that it was an attack on what i regarded as the aristocratic prejudice, that the rich were, or were likely to be, superior in moral qualities to the poor. my performance was entirely argumentative, without any of the declamation which the subject would admit of, and might be expected to suggest to a young writer. in that department, however, i was, and remained, very inapt. dry argument was the only thing i could, manage, or willingly attempted; though passively i was very susceptible to the effect of all composition, whether in the form of poetry or oratory, which appealed to the feelings on any basis of reason. my father, who knew nothing of this essay until it was finished, was well satisfied, and, as i learnt from others, even pleased with it; but, perhaps from a desire to promote the exercise of other mental faculties than the purely logical, he advised me to make my next exercise in composition one of the oratorical kind; on which suggestion, availing myself of my familiarity with greek history and ideas, and with the athenian orators, i wrote two speeches, one an accusation, the other a defence of pericles, on a supposed impeachment for not marching out to fight the lacedemonians on their invasion of attica. after this i continued to write papers on subjects often very much beyond my capacity, but with great benefit both from the exercise itself, and from the discussions which it led to with my father. i had now also begun to converse, on general subjects, with the instructed men with whom i came in contact: and the opportunities of such contact naturally became more numerous. the two friends of my father from whom i derived most, and with whom i most associated, were mr. grote and mr. john austin. the acquaintance of both with my father was recent, but had ripened rapidly into intimacy. mr. grote was introduced to my father by mr. ricardo, i think in (being then about twenty-five years old), and sought assiduously his society and conversation. already a highly instructed man, he was yet, by the side of my father, a tyro in the great subjects of human opinion; but he rapidly seized on my father's best ideas; and in the department of political opinion he made himself known as early as , by a pamphlet in defence of radical reform, in reply to a celebrated article by sir james mackintosh, then lately published in he _edinburgh review_. mr. grote's father, the banker, was, i believe, a thorough tory, and his mother intensely evangelical; so that for his liberal opinions he was in no way indebted to home influences. but, unlike most persons who have the prospect of being rich by inheritance, he had, though actively engaged in the business of banking, devoted a great portion of time to philosophic studies; and his intimacy with my father did much to decide the character of the next stage in his mental progress. him i often visited, and my conversations with him on political, moral, and philosophical subjects gave me, in addition to much valuable instruction, all the pleasure and benefit of sympathetic communion with a man of the high intellectual and moral eminence which his life and writings have since manifested to the world. mr. austin, who was four or five years older than mr. grote, was the eldest son of a retired miller in suffolk, who had made money by contracts during the war, and who must have been a man of remarkable qualities, as i infer from the fact that all his sons were of more than common ability and all eminently gentlemen. the one with whom we are now concerned, and whose writings on jurisprudence have made him celebrated, was for some time in the army, and served in sicily under lord william bentinck. after the peace he sold his commission and studied for the bar, to which he had been called for some time before my father knew him. he was not, like mr. grote, to any extent, a pupil of my father, but he had attained, by reading and thought, a considerable number of the same opinions, modified by his own very decided individuality of character. he was a man of great intellectual powers, which in conversation appeared at their very best; from the vigour and richness of expression with which, under the excitement of discussion, he was accustomed to maintain some view or other of most general subjects; and from an appearance of not only strong, but deliberate and collected will; mixed with a certain bitterness, partly derived from temperament, and partly from the general cast of his feelings and reflections. the dissatisfaction with life and the world, felt more or less in the present state of society and intellect by every discerning and highly conscientious mind, gave in his case a rather melancholy tinge to the character, very natural to those whose passive moral susceptibilities are more than proportioned to their active energies. for it must be said, that the strength of will of which his manner seemed to give such strong assurance, expended itself principally in manner. with great zeal for human improvement, a strong sense of duty, and capacities and acquirements the extent of which is proved by the writings he has left, he hardly ever completed any intellectual task of magnitude. he had so high a standard of what ought to be done, so exaggerated a sense of deficiencies in his own performances, and was so unable to content himself with the amount of elaboration sufficient for the occasion and the purpose, that he not only spoilt much of his work for ordinary use by overlabouring it, but spent so much time and exertion in superfluous study and thought, that when his task ought to have been completed, he had generally worked himself into an illness, without having half finished what he undertook. from this mental infirmity (of which he is not the sole example among the accomplished and able men whom i have known), combined with liability to frequent attacks of disabling though not dangerous ill-health, he accomplished, through life, little in comparison with what he seemed capable of; but what he did produce is held in the very highest estimation by the most competent judges; and, like coleridge, he might plead as a set-off that he had been to many persons, through his conversation, a source not only of much instruction but of great elevation of character. on me his influence was most salutary. it was moral in the best sense. he took a sincere and kind interest in me, far beyond what could have been expected towards a mere youth from a man of his age, standing, and what seemed austerity of character. there was in his conversation and demeanour a tone of high-mindedness which did not show itself so much, if the quality existed as much, in any of the other persons with whom at that time i associated. my intercourse with him was the more beneficial, owing to his being of a different mental type from all other intellectual men whom i frequented, and he from the first set himself decidedly against the prejudices and narrownesses which are almost sure to be found in a young man formed by a particular mode of thought or a particular social circle. his younger brother, charles austin, of whom at this time and for the next year or two i saw much, had also a great effect on me, though of a very different description. he was but a few years older than myself, and had then just left the university, where he had shone with great _eclat_ as a man of intellect and a brilliant orator and converser. the effect he produced on his cambridge contemporaries deserves to be accounted an historical event; for to it may in part be traced the tendency towards liberalism in general, and the benthamic and politico-economic form of it in particular, which showed itself in a portion of the more active-minded young men of the higher classes from this time to . the union debating society, at that time at the height of its reputation, was an arena where what were then thought extreme opinions, in politics and philosophy, were weekly asserted, face to face with their opposites, before audiences consisting of the _elite_ of the cambridge youth: and though many persons afterwards of more or less note (of whom lord macaulay is the most celebrated) gained their first oratorical laurels in those debates, the really influential mind among these intellectual gladiators was charles austin. he continued, after leaving the university, to be, by his conversation and personal ascendency, a leader among the same class of young men who had been his associates there; and he attached me among others to his car. through him i became acquainted with macaulay, hyde and charles villiers, strutt (now lord belper), romilly (now lord romilly and master of the rolls), and various others who subsequently figured in literature or politics, and among whom i heard discussions on many topics, as yet to a certain degree new to me. the influence of charles austin over me differed from that of the persons i have hitherto mentioned, in being not the influence of a man over a boy, but that of an elder contemporary. it was through him that i first felt myself, not a pupil under teachers, but a man among men. he was the first person of intellect whom i met on a ground of equality, though as yet much his inferior on that common ground. he was a man who never failed to impress greatly those with whom he came in contact, even when their opinions were the very reverse of his. the impression he gave was that of boundless strength, together with talents which, combined with such apparent force of will and character, seemed capable of dominating the world. those who knew him, whether friendly to him or not, always anticipated that he would play a conspicuous part in public life. it is seldom that men produce so great an immediate effect by speech, unless they, in some degree, lay themselves out for it; and he did this in no ordinary degree. he loved to strike, and even to startle. he knew that decision is the greatest element of effect, and he uttered his opinions with all the decision he could throw into them, never so well pleased as when he astonished anyone by their audacity. very unlike his brother, who made war against the narrower interpretations and applications of the principles they both professed, he, on the contrary, presented the benthamic doctrines in the most startling form of which they were susceptible, exaggerating everything in them which tended to consequences offensive to anyone's preconceived feelings. all which, he defended with such verve and vivacity, and carried off by a manner so agreeable as well as forcible, that he always either came off victor, or divided the honours of the field. it is my belief that much of the notion popularly entertained of the tenets and sentiments of what are called benthamites or utilitarians had its origin in paradoxes thrown out by charles austin. it must be said, however, that his example was followed, _haud passibus aequis_, by younger proselytes, and that to _outrer_ whatever was by anybody considered offensive in the doctrines and maxims of benthamism, became at one time the badge of a small coterie of youths. all of these who had anything in them, myself among others, quickly outgrew this boyish vanity; and those who had not, became tired of differing from other people, and gave up both the good and the bad part of the heterodox opinions they had for some time professed. it was in the winter of - that i formed the plan of a little society, to be composed of young men agreeing in fundamental principles--acknowledging utility as their standard in ethics and politics, and a certain number of the principal corollaries drawn from it in the philosophy i had accepted--and meeting once a fortnight to read essays and discuss questions conformably to the premises thus agreed on. the fact would hardly be worth mentioning, but for the circumstance, that the name i gave to the society i had planned was the utilitarian society. it was the first time that anyone had taken the title of utilitarian; and the term made its way into the language, from this humble source. i did not invent the word, but found it in one of galt's novels, the _annals of the parish_, in which the scotch clergyman, of whom the book is a supposed autobiography, is represented as warning his parishioners not to leave the gospel and become utilitarians. with a boy's fondness for a name and a banner i seized on the word, and for some years called myself and others by it as a sectarian appellation; and it came to be occasionally used by some others holding the opinions which it was intended to designate. as those opinions attracted more notice, the term was repeated by strangers and opponents, and got into rather common use just about the time when those who had originally assumed it, laid down that along with other sectarian characteristics. the society so called consisted at first of no more than three members, one of whom, being mr. bentham's amanuensis, obtained for us permission to hold our meetings in his house. the number never, i think, reached ten, and the society was broken up in . it had thus an existence of about three years and a half. the chief effect of it as regards myself, over and above the benefit of practice in oral discussion, was that of bringing me in contact with several young men at that time less advanced than myself, among whom, as they professed the same opinions, i was for some time a sort of leader, and had considerable influence on their mental progress. any young man of education who fell in my way, and whose opinions were not incompatible with those of the society, i endeavoured to press into its service; and some others i probably should never have known, had they not joined it. those of the members who became my intimate companions--no one of whom was in any sense of the word a disciple, but all of them independent thinkers on their own basis--were william eyton tooke, son of the eminent political economist, a young man of singular worth both moral and intellectual, lost to the world by an early death; his friend william ellis, an original thinker in the field of political economy, now honourably known by his apostolic exertions for the improvement of education; george graham, afterwards official assignee of the bankruptcy court, a thinker of originality and power on almost all abstract subjects; and (from the time when he came first to england to study for the bar in or ) a man who has made considerably more noise in the world than any of these, john arthur roebuck. in may, , my professional occupation and status for the next thirty-five years of my life, were decided by my father's obtaining for me an appointment from the east india company, in the office of the examiner of india correspondence, immediately under himself. i was appointed in the usual manner, at the bottom of the list of clerks, to rise, at least in the first instance, by seniority; but with the understanding that i should be employed from the beginning in preparing drafts of despatches, and be thus trained up as a successor to those who then filled the higher departments of the office. my drafts of course required, for some time, much revision from my immediate superiors, but i soon became well acquainted with the business, and by my father's instructions and the general growth of my own powers, i was in a few years qualified to be, and practically was, the chief conductor of the correspondence with india in one of the leading departments, that of the native states. this continued to be my official duty until i was appointed examiner, only two years before the time when the abolition of the east india company as a political body determined my retirement. i do not know any one of the occupations by which a subsistence can now be gained, more suitable than such as this to anyone who, not being in independent circumstances, desires to devote a part of the twenty-four hours to private intellectual pursuits. writing for the press cannot be recommended as a permanent resource to anyone qualified to accomplish anything in the higher departments of literature or thought: not only on account of the uncertainty of this means of livelihood, especially if the writer has a conscience, and will not consent to serve any opinions except his own; but also because the writings by which one can live are not the writings which themselves live, and are never those in which the writer does his best. books destined to form future thinkers take too much time to write, and when written come, in general, too slowly into notice and repute, to be relied on for subsistence. those who have to support themselves by their pen must depend on literary drudgery, or at best on writings addressed to the multitude; and can employ in the pursuits of their own choice, only such time as they can spare from those of necessity; which is generally less than the leisure allowed by office occupations, while the effect on the mind is far more enervating and fatiguing. for my own part i have, through life, found office duties an actual rest from the other mental occupations which i have carried on simultaneously with them. they were sufficiently intellectual not to be a distasteful drudgery, without being such as to cause any strain upon the mental powers of a person used to abstract thought, or to the labour of careful literary composition. the drawbacks, for every mode of life has its drawbacks, were not, however, unfelt by me. i cared little for the loss of the chances of riches and honours held out by some of the professions, particularly the bar, which had been, as i have already said, the profession thought of for me. but i was not indifferent to exclusion from parliament, and public life: and i felt very sensibly the more immediate unpleasantness of confinement to london; the holiday allowed by india house practice not exceeding a month in the year, while my taste was strong for a country life, and my sojourn in france had left behind it an ardent desire of travelling. but though these tastes could not be freely indulged, they were at no time entirely sacrificed. i passed most sundays, throughout the year, in the country, taking long rural walks on that day even when residing in london. the month's holiday was, for a few years, passed at my father's house in the country; afterwards a part or the whole was spent in tours, chiefly pedestrian, with some one or more of the young men who were my chosen companions; and, at a later period, in longer journeys or excursions, alone or with other friends. france, belgium, and rhenish germany were within easy reach of the annual holiday: and two longer absences, one of three, the other of six months, under medical advice, added switzerland, the tyrol, and italy to my list. fortunately, also, both these journeys occurred rather early, so as to give the benefit and charm of the remembrance to a large portion of life. i am disposed to agree with what has been surmised by others, that the opportunity which my official position gave me of learning by personal observation the necessary conditions of the practical conduct of public affairs, has been of considerable value to me as a theoretical reformer of the opinions and institutions of my time. not, indeed, that public business transacted on paper, to take effect on the other side of the globe, was of itself calculated to give much practical knowledge of life. but the occupation accustomed me to see and hear the difficulties of every course, and the means of obviating them, stated and discussed deliberately with a view to execution: it gave me opportunities of perceiving when public measures, and other political facts, did not produce the effects which had been expected of them, and from what causes; above all, it was valuable to me by making me, in this portion of my activity, merely one wheel in a machine, the whole of which had to work together. as a speculative writer, i should have had no one to consult but myself, and should have encountered in my speculations none of the obstacles which would have started up whenever they came to be applied to practice. but as a secretary conducting political correspondence, i could not issue an order, or express an opinion, without satisfying various persons very unlike myself, that the thing was fit to be done. i was thus in a good position for finding out by practice the mode of putting a thought which gives it easiest admittance into minds not prepared for it by habit; while i became practically conversant with the difficulties of moving bodies of men, the necessities of compromise, the art of sacrificing the non-essential to preserve the essential. i learnt how to obtain the best i could, when i could not obtain everything; instead of being indignant or dispirited because i could not have entirely my own way, to be pleased and encouraged when i could have the smallest part of it; and when even that could not be, to bear with complete equanimity the being overruled altogether. i have found, through life, these acquisitions to be of the greatest possible importance for personal happiness, and they are also a very necessary condition for enabling anyone, either as theorist or as practical man, to effect the greatest amount of good compatible with his opportunities. chapter iv youthful propagandism. the "westminster review" the occupation of so much of my time by office work did not relax my attention to my own pursuits, which were never carried on more vigorously. it was about this time that i began to write in newspapers. the first writings of mine which got into print were two letters published towards the end of , in the _traveller_ evening newspaper. the _traveller_ (which afterwards grew into the _globe and traveller_, by the purchase and incorporation of the _globe_) was then the property of the well-known political economist, colonel torrens, and under the editorship of an able man, mr. walter coulson (who, after being an amanuensis of mr. bentham, became a reporter, then an editor, next a barrister and conveyancer, and died counsel to the home office), it had become one of the most important newspaper organs of liberal politics. colonel torrens himself wrote much of the political economy of his paper; and had at this time made an attack upon some opinion of ricardo and my father, to which, at my father's instigation, i attempted an answer, and coulson, out of consideration for my father and goodwill to me, inserted it. there was a reply by torrens, to which i again rejoined. i soon after attempted something considerably more ambitious. the prosecutions of richard carlile and his wife and sister for publications hostile to christianity were then exciting much attention, and nowhere more than among the people i frequented. freedom of discussion even in politics, much more in religion, was at that time far from being, even in theory, the conceded point which it at least seems to be now; and the holders of obnoxious opinions had to be always ready to argue and re-argue for the liberty of expressing them. i wrote a series of five letters, under the signature of wickliffe, going over the whole length and breadth of the question of free publication of all opinions on religion, and offered them to the _morning chronicle_. three of them were published in january and february, ; the other two, containing things too outspoken for that journal, never appeared at all. but a paper which i wrote soon after on the same subject, _a propos_ of a debate in the house of commons, was inserted as a leading article; and during the whole of this year, , a considerable number of my contributions were printed in the _chronicle_ and _traveller_: sometimes notices of books, but oftener letters, commenting on some nonsense talked in parliament, or some defect of the law, or misdoings of the magistracy or the courts of justice. in this last department the _chronicle_ was now rendering signal service. after the death of mr. perry, the editorship and management of the paper had devolved on mr. john black, long a reporter on its establishment; a man of most extensive reading and information, great honesty and simplicity of mind; a particular friend of my father, imbued with many of his and bentham's ideas, which he reproduced in his articles, among other valuable thoughts, with great facility and skill. from this time the _chronicle_ ceased to be the merely whig organ it was before, and during the next ten years became to a considerable extent a vehicle of the opinions of the utilitarian radicals. this was mainly by what black himself wrote, with some assistance from fonblanque, who first showed his eminent qualities as a writer by articles and _jeux d'esprit_ in the _chronicle_. the defects of the law, and of the administration of justice, were the subject on which that paper rendered most service to improvement. up to that time hardly a word had been said, except by bentham and my father, against that most peccant part of english institutions and of their administration. it was the almost universal creed of englishmen, that the law of england, the judicature of england, the unpaid magistracy of england, were models of excellence. i do not go beyond the mark in saying, that after bentham, who supplied the principal materials, the greatest share of the merit of breaking down this wretched superstition belongs to black, as editor of the _morning chronicle_. he kept up an incessant fire against it, exposing the absurdities and vices of the law and the courts of justice, paid and unpaid, until he forced some sense of them into people's minds. on many other questions he became the organ of opinions much in advance of any which had ever before found regular advocacy in the newspaper press. black was a frequent visitor of my father, and mr. grote used to say that he always knew by the monday morning's article whether black had been with my father on the sunday. black was one of the most influential of the many channels through which my father's conversation and personal influence made his opinions tell on the world; cooperating with the effect of his writings in making him a power in the country such as it has rarely been the lot of an individual in a private station to be, through the mere force of intellect and character: and a power which was often acting the most efficiently where it was least seen and suspected. i have already noticed how much of what was done by ricardo, hume, and grote was the result, in part, of his prompting and persuasion. he was the good genius by the side of brougham in most of what he did for the public, either on education, law reform, or any other subject. and his influence flowed in minor streams too numerous to be specified. this influence was now about to receive a great extension by the foundation of the _westminster review_. contrary to what may have been supposed, my father was in no degree a party to setting up the _westminster review_. the need of a radical organ to make head against the _edinburgh_ and _quarterly_ (then in the period of their greatest reputation and influence) had been a topic of conversation between him and mr. bentham many years earlier, and it had been a part of their _chateau en espagne_ that my father should be the editor; but the idea had never assumed any practical shape. in , however, mr. bentham determined to establish the _review_ at his own cost, and offered the editorship to my father, who declined it as incompatible with his india house appointment. it was then entrusted to mr. (now sir john) bowring, at that time a merchant in the city. mr. bowring had been for two or three years previous an assiduous frequenter of mr. bentham, to whom he was recommended by many personal good qualities, by an ardent admiration for bentham, a zealous adoption of many, though not all of his opinions, and, not least, by an extensive acquaintanceship and correspondence with liberals of all countries, which seemed to qualify him for being a powerful agent in spreading bentham's fame and doctrines through all quarters of the world. my father had seen little of bowring, but knew enough of him to have formed a strong opinion, that he was a man of an entirely different type from what my father considered suitable for conducting a political and philosophical review: and he augured so ill of the enterprise that he regretted it altogether, feeling persuaded not only that mr. bentham would lose his money, but that discredit would probably be brought upon radical principles. he could not, however, desert mr. bentham, and he consented to write an article for the first number. as it had been a favourite portion of the scheme formerly talked of, that part of the work should be devoted to reviewing the other reviews, this article of my father's was to be a general criticism of the _edinburgh review_ from its commencement. before writing it he made me read through all the volumes of the _review_, or as much of each as seemed of any importance (which was not so arduous a task in as it would be now), and make notes for him of the articles which i thought he would wish to examine, either on account of their good or their bad qualities. this paper of my father's was the chief cause of the sensation which the _westminster review_ produced at its first appearance, and is, both in conception and in execution, one of the most striking of all his writings. he began by an analysis of the tendencies of periodical literature in general; pointing out, that it cannot, like books, wait for success, but must succeed immediately or not at all, and is hence almost certain to profess and inculcate the opinions already held by the public to which it addresses itself, instead of attempting to rectify or improve those opinions. he next, to characterize the position of the _edinburgh review_ as a political organ, entered into a complete analysis, from the radical point of view, of the british constitution. he held up to notice its thoroughly aristocratic character: the nomination of a majority of the house of commons by a few hundred families; the entire identification of the more independent portion, the county members, with the great landholders; the different classes whom this narrow oligarchy was induced, for convenience, to admit to a share of power; and finally, what he called its two props, the church, and the legal profession. he pointed out the natural tendency of an aristocratic body of this composition, to group itself into two parties, one of them in possession of the executive, the other endeavouring to supplant the former and become the predominant section by the aid of public opinion, without any essential sacrifice of the aristocratical predominance. he described the course likely to be pursued, and the political ground occupied, by an aristocratic party in opposition, coquetting with popular principles for the sake of popular support. he showed how this idea was realized in the conduct of the whig party, and of the _edinburgh review_ as its chief literary organ. he described, as their main characteristic, what he termed "seesaw"; writing alternately on both sides of the question which touched the power or interest of the governing classes; sometimes in different articles, sometimes in different parts of the same article: and illustrated his position by copious specimens. so formidable an attack on the whig party and policy had never before been made; nor had so great a blow ever been struck, in this country, for radicalism; nor was there, i believe, any living person capable of writing that article except my father.[ ] in the meantime the nascent _review_ had formed a junction with another project, of a purely literary periodical, to be edited by mr. henry southern, afterwards a diplomatist, then a literary man by profession. the two editors agreed to unite their corps, and divide the editorship, bowring taking the political, southern the literary department. southern's review was to have been published by longman, and that firm, though part proprietors of the _edinburgh_, were willing to be the publishers of the new journal. but when all the arrangements had been made, and the prospectuses sent out, the longmans saw my father's attack on the _edinburgh_, and drew back. my father was now appealed to for his interest with his own publisher, baldwin, which was exerted with a successful result. and so in april, , amidst anything but hope on my father's part, and that of most of those who afterwards aided in carrying on the _review_, the first number made its appearance. that number was an agreeable surprise to most of us. the average of the articles was of much better quality than had been expected. the literary and artistic department had rested chiefly on mr. bingham, a barrister (subsequently a police magistrate), who had been for some years a frequenter of bentham, was a friend of both the austins, and had adopted with great ardour mr. bentham's philosophical opinions. partly from accident, there were in the first number as many as five articles by bingham; and we were extremely pleased with them. i well remember the mixed feeling i myself had about the _review_; the joy of finding, what we did not at all expect, that it was sufficiently good to be capable of being made a creditable organ of those who held the opinions it professed; and extreme vexation, since it was so good on the whole, at what we thought the blemishes of it. when, however, in addition to our generally favourable opinion of it, we learned that it had an extraordinary large sale for a first number, and found that the appearance of a radical review, with pretensions equal to those of the established organs of parties, had excited much attention, there could be no room for hesitation, and we all became eager in doing everything we could to strengthen and improve it. my father continued to write occasional articles. the _quarterly review_ received its exposure, as a sequel to that of the _edinburgh_. of his other contributions, the most important were an attack on southey's _book of the church_, in the fifth number, and a political article in the twelfth. mr. austin only contributed one paper, but one of great merit, an argument against primogeniture, in reply to an article then lately published in the _edinburgh review_ by mcculloch. grote also was a contributor only once; all the time he could spare being already taken up with his _history of greece_. the article he wrote was on his own subject, and was a very complete exposure and castigation of mitford. bingham and charles austin continued to write for some time; fonblanque was a frequent contributor from the third number. of my particular associates, ellis was a regular writer up to the ninth number; and about the time when he left off, others of the set began; eyton tooke, graham, and roebuck. i was myself the most frequent writer of all, having contributed, from the second number to the eighteenth, thirteen articles; reviews of books on history and political economy, or discussions on special political topics, as corn laws, game laws, law of libel. occasional articles of merit came in from other acquaintances of my father's, and, in time, of mine; and some of mr. bowring's writers turned out well. on the whole, however, the conduct of the review was never satisfactory to any of the persons strongly interested in its principles, with whom i came in contact. hardly ever did a number come out without containing several things extremely offensive to us, either in point of opinion, of taste, or by mere want of ability. the unfavourable judgments passed by my father, grote, the two austins, and others, were re-echoed with exaggeration by us younger people; and as our youthful zeal rendered us by no means backward in making complaints, we led the two editors a sad life. from my knowledge of what i then was, i have no doubt that we were at least as often wrong as right; and i am very certain that if the _review_ had been carried on according to our notions (i mean those of the juniors), it would have been no better, perhaps not even so good as it was. but it is worth noting as a fact in the history of benthamism, that the periodical organ, by which it was best known, was from the first extremely unsatisfactory to those whose opinions on all subjects it was supposed specially to represent. meanwhile, however, the _review_ made considerable noise in the world, and gave a recognised _status_, in the arena of opinion and discussion, to the benthamic type of radicalism, out of all proportion to the number of its adherents, and to the personal merits and abilities, at that time, of most of those who could be reckoned among them. it was a time, as is known, of rapidly rising liberalism. when the fears and animosities accompanying the war with france had been brought to an end, and people had once more a place in their thoughts for home politics, the tide began to set towards reform. the renewed oppression of the continent by the old reigning families, the countenance apparently given by the english government to the conspiracy against liberty called the holy alliance, and the enormous weight of the national debt and taxation occasioned by so long and costly a war, rendered the government and parliament very unpopular. radicalism, under the leadership of the burdetts and cobbetts, had assumed a character and importance which seriously alarmed the administration: and their alarm had scarcely been temporarily assuaged by the celebrated six acts, when the trial of queen caroline roused a still wider and deeper feeling of hatred. though the outward signs of this hatred passed away with its exciting cause, there arose on all sides a spirit which had never shown itself before, of opposition to abuses in detail. mr. hume's persevering scrutiny of the public expenditure, forcing the house of commons to a division on every objectionable item in the estimates, had begun to tell with great force on public opinion, and had extorted many minor retrenchments from an unwilling administration. political economy had asserted itself with great vigour in public affairs, by the petition of the merchants of london for free trade, drawn up in by mr. tooke and presented by mr. alexander baring; and by the noble exertions of ricardo during the few years of his parliamentary life. his writings, following up the impulse given by the bullion controversy, and followed up in their turn by the expositions and comments of my father and mcculloch (whose writings in the _edinburgh review_ during those years were most valuable), had drawn general attention to the subject, making at least partial converts in the cabinet itself; and huskisson, supported by canning, had commenced that gradual demolition of the protective system, which one of their colleagues virtually completed in , though the last vestiges were only swept away by mr. gladstone in . mr. peel, then home secretary, was entering cautiously into the untrodden and peculiarly benthamic path of law reform. at this period, when liberalism seemed to be becoming the tone of the time, when improvement of institutions was preached from the highest places, and a complete change of the constitution of parliament was loudly demanded in the lowest, it is not strange that attention should have been roused by the regular appearance in controversy of what seemed a new school of writers, claiming to be the legislators and theorists of this new tendency. the air of strong conviction with which they wrote, when scarcely anyone else seemed to have an equally strong faith in as definite a creed; the boldness with which they tilted against the very front of both the existing political parties; their uncompromising profession of opposition to many of the generally received opinions, and the suspicion they lay under of holding others still more heterodox than they professed; the talent and verve of at least my father's articles, and the appearance of a corps behind him sufficient to carry on a review; and finally, the fact that the _review_ was bought and read, made the so-called bentham school in philosophy and politics fill a greater place in the public mind than it had held before, or has ever again held since other equally earnest schools of thought have arisen in england. as i was in the headquarters of it, knew of what it was composed, and as one of the most active of its very small number, might say without undue assumption, _quorum pars magna fui_, it belongs to me more than to most others, to give some account of it. this supposed school, then, had no other existence than what was constituted by the fact, that my father's writings and conversation drew round him a certain number of young men who had already imbibed, or who imbibed from him, a greater or smaller portion of his very decided political and philosophical opinions. the notion that bentham was surrounded by a band of disciples who received their opinions from his lips, is a fable to which my father did justice in his "fragment on mackintosh," and which, to all who knew mr. bentham's habits of life and manner of conversation, is simply ridiculous. the influence which bentham exercised was by his writings. through them he has produced, and is producing, effects on the condition of mankind, wider and deeper, no doubt, than any which can be attributed to my father. he is a much greater name in history. but my father exercised a far greater personal ascendency. he _was_ sought for the vigour and instructiveness of his conversation, and did use it largely as an instrument for the diffusion of his opinions. i have never known any man who could do such ample justice to his best thoughts in colloquial discussion. his perfect command over his great mental resources, the terseness and expressiveness of his language and the moral earnestness as well as intellectual force of his delivery, made him one of the most striking of all argumentative conversers: and he was full of anecdote, a hearty laugher, and, when with people whom he liked, a most lively and amusing companion. it was not solely, or even chiefly, in diffusing his merely intellectual convictions that his power showed itself: it was still more through the influence of a quality, of which i have only since learnt to appreciate the extreme rarity: that exalted public spirit, and regard above all things to the good of the whole, which warmed into life and activity every germ of similar virtue that existed in the minds he came in contact with: the desire he made them feel for his approbation, the shame at his disapproval; the moral support which his conversation and his very existence gave to those who were aiming at the same objects, and the encouragement he afforded to the fainthearted or desponding among them, by the firm confidence which (though the reverse of sanguine as to the results to be expected in any one particular case) he always felt in the power of reason, the general progress of improvement, and the good which individuals could do by judicious effort. if was my father's opinions which gave the distinguishing character to the benthamic or utilitarian propagandism of that time. they fell singly, scattered from him, in many directions, but they flowed from him in a continued stream principally in three channels. one was through me, the only mind directly formed by his instructions, and through whom considerable influence was exercised over various young men, who became, in their turn, propagandists. a second was through some of the cambridge contemporaries of charles austin, who, either initiated by him or under the general mental impulse which he gave, had adopted many opinions allied to those of my father, and some of the more considerable of whom afterwards sought my father's acquaintance and frequented his house. among these may be mentioned strutt, afterwards lord belper, and the present lord romilly, with whose eminent father, sir samuel, my father had of old been on terms of friendship. the third channel was that of a younger generation of cambridge undergraduates, contemporary, not with austin, but with eyton tooke, who were drawn to that estimable person by affinity of opinions, and introduced by him to my father: the most notable of these was charles buller. various other persons individually received and transmitted a considerable amount of my father's influence: for example, black (as before mentioned) and fonblanque: most of these, however, we accounted only partial allies; fonblanque, for instance, was always divergent from us on many important points. but indeed there was by no means complete unanimity among any portion of us, nor had any of us adopted implicitly all my father's opinions. for example, although his _essay on government_ was regarded probably by all of us as a masterpiece of political wisdom, our adhesion by no means extended to the paragraph of it in which he maintains that women may, consistently with good government, be excluded from the suffrage, because their interest is the same with that of men. from this doctrine, i, and all those who formed my chosen associates, most positively dissented. it is due to my father to say that he denied having intended to affirm that women _should_ be excluded, any more than men under the age of forty, concerning whom he maintained in the very next paragraph an exactly similar thesis. he was, as he truly said, not discussing whether the suffrage had better be restricted, but only (assuming that it is to be restricted) what is the utmost limit of restriction which does not necessarily involve a sacrifice of the securities for good government. but i thought then, as i have always thought since that the opinion which he acknowledged, no less than that which he disclaimed, is as great an error as any of those against which the _essay_ was directed; that the interest of women is included in that of men exactly as much as the interest of subjects is included in that of kings, and no more; and that every reason which exists for giving the suffrage to anybody, demands that it should not be withheld from women. this was also the general opinion of the younger proselytes; and it is pleasant to be able to say that mr. bentham, on this important point, was wholly on our side. but though none of us, probably, agreed in every respect with my father, his opinions, as i said before, were the principal element which gave its colour and character to the little group of young men who were the first propagators of what was afterwards called "philosophic radicalism." their mode of thinking was not characterized by benthamism in any sense which has relation to bentham as a chief or guide, but rather by a combination of bentham's point of view with that of the modern political economy, and with the hartleian metaphysics. malthus's population principle was quite as much a banner, and point of union among us, as any opinion specially belonging to bentham. this great doctrine, originally brought forward as an argument against the indefinite improvability of human affairs, we took up with ardent zeal in the contrary sense, as indicating the sole means of realizing that improvability by securing full employment at high wages to the whole labouring population through a voluntary restriction of the increase of their numbers. the other leading characteristics of the creed, which we held in common with my father, may be stated as follows: in politics, an almost unbounded confidence in the efficacy of two things: representative government, and complete freedom of discussion. so complete was my father's reliance on the influence of reason over the minds of mankind, whenever it is allowed to reach them, that he felt as if all would be gained if the whole population were taught to read, if all sorts of opinions were allowed to be addressed to them by word and in writing, and if by means of the suffrage they could nominate a legislature to give effect to the opinions they adopted. he thought that when the legislature no longer represented a class interest, it would aim at the general interest, honestly and with adequate wisdom; since the people would be sufficiently under the guidance of educated intelligence, to make in general a good choice of persons to represent them, and having done so, to leave to those whom they had chosen a liberal discretion. accordingly aristocratic rule, the government of the few in any of its shapes, being in his eyes the only thing which stood between mankind and an administration of their affairs by the best wisdom to be found among them, was the object of his sternest disapprobation, and a democratic suffrage the principal article of his political creed, not on the ground of liberty, rights of man, or any of the phrases, more or less significant, by which, up to that time, democracy had usually been defended, but as the most essential of "securities for good government." in this, too, he held fast only to what he deemed essentials; he was comparatively indifferent to monarchical or republican forms--far more so than bentham, to whom a king, in the character of "corrupter-general," appeared necessarily very noxious. next to aristocracy, an established church, or corporation of priests, as being by position the great depravers of religion, and interested in opposing the progress of the human mind, was the object of his greatest detestation; though he disliked no clergyman personally who did not deserve it, and was on terms of sincere friendship with several. in ethics his moral feelings were energetic and rigid on all points which he deemed important to human well being, while he was supremely indifferent in opinion (though his indifference did not show itself in personal conduct) to all those doctrines of the common morality, which he thought had no foundation but in asceticism and priestcraft. he looked forward, for example, to a considerable increase of freedom in the relations between the sexes, though without pretending to define exactly what would be, or ought to be, the precise conditions of that freedom. this opinion was connected in him with no sensuality either of a theoretical or of a practical kind. he anticipated, on the contrary, as one of the beneficial effects of increased freedom, that the imagination would no longer dwell upon the physical relation and its adjuncts, and swell this into one of the principal objects of life; a perversion of the imagination and feelings, which he regarded as one of the deepest seated and most pervading evils in the human mind. in psychology, his fundamental doctrine was the formation of all human character by circumstances, through the universal principle of association, and the consequent unlimited possibility of improving the moral and intellectual condition of mankind by education. of all his doctrines none was more important than this, or needs more to be insisted on; unfortunately there is none which is more contradictory to the prevailing tendencies of speculation, both in his time and since. these various opinions were seized on with youthful fanaticism by the little knot of young men of whom i was one: and we put into them a sectarian spirit, from which, in intention at least, my father was wholly free. what we (or rather a phantom substituted in the place of us) were sometimes, by a ridiculous exaggeration, called by others, namely a "school," some of us for a time really hoped and aspired to be. the french _philosophes_ of the eighteenth century were the examples we sought to imitate, and we hoped to accomplish no less results. no one of the set went to so great excesses in his boyish ambition as i did; which might be shown by many particulars, were it not an useless waste of space and time. all this, however, is properly only the outside of our existence; or, at least, the intellectual part alone, and no more than one side of that. in attempting to penetrate inward, and give any indication of what we were as human beings, i must be understood as speaking only of myself, of whom alone i can speak from sufficient knowledge; and i do not believe that the picture would suit any of my companions without many and great modifications. i conceive that the description so often given of a benthamite, as a mere reasoning machine, though extremely inapplicable to most of those who have been designated by that title, was during two or three years of my life not altogether untrue of me. it was perhaps as applicable to me as it can well be to anyone just entering into life, to whom the common objects of desire must in general have at least the attraction of novelty. there is nothing very extraordinary in this fact: no youth of the age i then was, can be expected to be more than one thing, and this was the thing i happened to be. ambition and desire of distinction i had in abundance; and zeal for what i thought the good of mankind was my strongest sentiment, mixing with and colouring all others. but my zeal was as yet little else, at that period of my life, than zeal for speculative opinions. it had not its root in genuine benevolence, or sympathy with mankind; though these qualities held their due place in my ethical standard. nor was it connected with any high enthusiasm for ideal nobleness. yet of this feeling i was imaginatively very susceptible; but there was at that time an intermission of its natural aliment, poetical culture, while there was a superabundance of the discipline antagonistic to it, that of mere logic and analysis. add to this that, as already mentioned, my father's teachings tended to the undervaluing of feeling. it was not that he was himself cold-hearted or insensible; i believe it was rather from the contrary quality; he thought that feeling could take care of itself; that there was sure to be enough of it if actions were properly cared about. offended by the frequency with which, in ethical and philosophical controversy, feeling is made the ultimate reason and justification of conduct, instead of being itself called on for a justification, while, in practice, actions the effect of which on human happiness is mischievous, are defended as being required by feeling, and the character of a person of feeling obtains a credit for desert, which he thought only due to actions, he had a real impatience of attributing praise to feeling, or of any but the most sparing reference to it, either in the estimation of persons or in the discussion of things. in addition to the influence which this characteristic in him had on me and others, we found all the opinions to which we attached most importance, constantly attacked on the ground of feeling. utility was denounced as cold calculation; political economy as hard-hearted; anti-population doctrines as repulsive to the natural feelings of mankind. we retorted by the word "sentimentality," which, along with "declamation" and "vague generalities," served us as common terms of opprobrium. although we were generally in the right, as against those who were opposed to us, the effect was that the cultivation of feeling (except the feelings of public and private duty) was not in much esteem among us, and had very little place in the thoughts of most of us, myself in particular. what we principally thought of, was to alter people's opinions; to make them believe according to evidence, and know what was their real interest, which when they once knew, they would, we thought, by the instrument of opinion, enforce a regard to it upon one another. while fully recognising the superior excellence of unselfish benevolence and love of justice, we did not expect the regeneration of mankind from any direct action on those sentiments, but from the effect of educated intellect, enlightening the selfish feelings. although this last is prodigiously important as a means of improvement in the hands of those who are themselves impelled by nobler principles of action, i do not believe that any one of the survivors of the benthamites or utilitarians of that day now relies mainly upon it for the general amendment of human conduct. from this neglect both in theory and in practice of the cultivation of feeling, naturally resulted, among other things, an undervaluing of poetry, and of imagination generally, as an element of human nature. it is, or was, part of the popular notion of benthamites, that they are enemies of poetry: this was partly true of bentham himself; he used to say that "all poetry is misrepresentation": but in the sense in which he said it, the same might have been said of all impressive speech; of all representation or inculcation more oratorical in its character than a sum in arithmetic. an article of bingham's in the first number of the _westminster review_, in which he offered as an explanation of something which he disliked in moore, that "mr. moore _is_ a poet, and therefore is _not_ a reasoner," did a good deal to attach the notion of hating poetry to the writers in the _review_. but the truth was that many of us were great readers of poetry; bingham himself had been a writer of it, while as regards me (and the same thing might be said of my father), the correct statement would be, not that i disliked poetry, but that i was theoretically indifferent to it. i disliked any sentiments in poetry which i should have disliked in prose; and that included a great deal. and i was wholly blind to its place in human culture, as a means of educating the feelings. but i was always personally very susceptible to some kinds of it. in the most sectarian period of my benthamism, i happened to look into pope's _essay on man_, and, though every opinion in it was contrary to mine, i well remember how powerfully it acted on my imagination. perhaps at that time poetical composition of any higher type than eloquent discussion in verse, might not have produced a similar effect upon me: at all events i seldom gave it an opportunity. this, however, was a mere passive state. long before i had enlarged in any considerable degree the basis of my intellectual creed, i had obtained, in the natural course of my mental progress, poetic culture of the most valuable kind, by means of reverential admiration for the lives and characters of heroic persons; especially the heroes of philosophy. the same inspiring effect which so many of the benefactors of mankind have left on record that they had experienced from plutarch's _lives_, was produced on me by plato's pictures of socrates, and by some modern biographies, above all by condorcet's _life of turgot_; a book well calculated to rouse the best sort of enthusiasm, since it contains one of the wisest and noblest of lives, delineated by one of the wisest and noblest of men. the heroic virtue of these glorious representatives of the opinions with which i sympathized, deeply affected me, and i perpetually recurred to them as others do to a favourite poet, when needing to be carried up into the more elevated regions of feeling and thought. i may observe by the way that this book cured me of my sectarian follies. the two or three pages beginning "il regardait toute secte comme nuisible," and explaining why turgot always kept himself perfectly distinct from the encyclopedists, sank deeply into my mind. i left off designating myself and others as utilitarians, and by the pronoun "we," or any other collective designation, i ceased to _afficher_ sectarianism. my real inward sectarianism i did not get rid of till later, and much more gradually. about the end of , or beginning of , mr. bentham, having lately got back his papers on evidence from m. dumont (whose _traite des preuves judiciaires_, grounded on them, was then first completed and published), resolved to have them printed in the original, and bethought himself of me as capable of preparing them for the press; in the same manner as his _book of fallacies_ had been recently edited by bingham. i gladly undertook this task, and it occupied nearly all my leisure for about a year, exclusive of the time afterwards spent in seeing the five large volumes through the press. mr. bentham had begun this treatise three time's, at considerable intervals, each time in a different manner, and each time without reference to the preceding: two of the three times he had gone over nearly the whole subject. these three masses of manuscript it was my business to condense into a single treatise, adopting the one last written as the groundwork, and incorporating with it as much of the two others as it had not completely superseded. i had also to unroll such of bentham's involved and parenthetical sentences as seemed to overpass by their complexity the measure of what readers were likely to take the pains to understand. it was further mr. bentham's particular desire that i should, from myself, endeavour to supply any _lacunae_ which he had left; and at his instance i read, for this purpose, the most authoritative treatises on the english law of evidence, and commented on a few of the objectionable points of the english rules, which had escaped bentham's notice. i also replied to the objections which had been made to some of his doctrines by reviewers of dumont's book, and added a few supplementary remarks on some of the more abstract parts of the subject, such as the theory of improbability and impossibility. the controversial part of these editorial additions was written in a more assuming tone than became one so young and inexperienced as i was: but indeed i had never contemplated coming forward in my own person; and as an anonymous editor of bentham i fell into the tone of my author, not thinking it unsuitable to him or to the subject, however it might be so to me. my name as editor was put to the book after it was printed, at mr. bentham's positive desire, which i in vain attempted to persuade him to forego. the time occupied in this editorial work was extremely well employed in respect to my own improvement. the _rationale of judicial evidence_ is one of the richest in matter of all bentham's productions. the theory of evidence being in itself one of the most important of his subjects, and ramifying into most of the others, the book contains, very fully developed, a great proportion of all his best thoughts: while, among more special things, it comprises the most elaborate exposure of the vices and defects of english law, as it then was, which is to be found in his works; not confined to the law of evidence, but including, by way of illustrative episode, the entire procedure or practice of westminster hall. the direct knowledge, therefore, which i obtained from the book, and which was imprinted upon me much more thoroughly than it could have been by mere reading, was itself no small acquisition. but this occupation did for me what might seem less to be expected; it gave a great start to my powers of composition. everything which i wrote subsequently to this editorial employment, was markedly superior to anything that i had written before it. bentham's later style, as the world knows, was heavy and cumbersome, from the excess of a good quality, the love of precision, which made him introduce clause within clause into the heart of every sentence, that the reader might receive into his mind all the modifications and qualifications simultaneously with the main proposition: and the habit grew on him until his sentences became, to those not accustomed to them, most laborious reading. but his earlier style, that of the _fragment on government, plan of a judicial establishment_, etc., is a model of liveliness and ease combined with fulness of matter, scarcely ever surpassed: and of this earlier style there were many striking specimens in the manuscripts on evidence, all of which i endeavoured to preserve. so long a course of this admirable writing had a considerable effect upon my own; and i added to it by the assiduous reading of other writers, both french and english, who combined, in a remarkable degree, ease with force, such as goldsmith, fielding, pascal, voltaire, and courier. through these influences my writing lost the jejuneness of my early compositions; the bones and cartilages began to clothe themselves with flesh, and the style became, at times, lively and almost light. this improvement was first exhibited in a new field. mr. marshall, of leeds, father of the present generation of marshalls, the same who was brought into parliament for yorkshire, when the representation forfeited by grampound was transferred to it, an earnest parliamentary reformer, and a man of large fortune, of which he made a liberal use, had been much struck with bentham's _book of fallacies_; and the thought had occurred to him that it would be useful to publish annually the parliamentary debates, not in the chronological order of hansard, but classified according to subjects, and accompanied by a commentary pointing out the fallacies of the speakers. with this intention, he very naturally addressed himself to the editor of the _book of fallacies_; and bingham, with the assistance of charles austin, undertook the editorship. the work was called _parliamentary history and review_. its sale was not sufficient to keep it in existence, and it only lasted three years. it excited, however, some attention among parliamentary and political people. the best strength of the party was put forth in it; and its execution did them much more credit than that of the _westminster review_ had ever done. bingham and charles austin wrote much in it; as did strutt, romilly, and several other liberal lawyers. my father wrote one article in his best style; the elder austin another. coulson wrote one of great merit. it fell to my lot to lead off the first number by an article on the principal topic of the session (that of ), the catholic association and the catholic disabilities. in the second number i wrote an elaborate essay on the commercial crisis of and the currency debates. in the third i had two articles, one on a minor subject, the other on the reciprocity principle in commerce, _a propos_ of a celebrated diplomatic correspondence between canning and gallatin. these writings were no longer mere reproductions and applications of the doctrines i had been taught; they were original thinking, as far as that name can be applied to old ideas in new forms and connexions: and i do not exceed the truth in saying that there was a maturity, and a well-digested, character about them, which there had not been in any of my previous performances. in execution, therefore, they were not at all juvenile; but their subjects have either gone by, or have been so much better treated since, that they are entirely superseded, and should remain buried in the same oblivion with my contributions to the first dynasty of the _westminster review_. while thus engaged in writing for the public, i did not neglect other modes of self-cultivation. it was at this time that i learnt german; beginning it on the hamiltonian method, for which purpose i and several of my companions formed a class. for several years from this period, our social studies assumed a shape which contributed very much to my mental progress. the idea occurred to us of carrying on, by reading and conversation, a joint study of several of the branches of science which we wished to be masters of. we assembled to the number of a dozen or more. mr. grote lent a room of his house in threadneedle street for the purpose, and his partner, prescott, one of the three original members of the utilitarian society, made one among us. we met two mornings in every week, from half-past eight till ten, at which hour most of us were called off to our daily occupations. our first subject was political economy. we chose some systematic treatise as our text-book; my father's _elements_ being our first choice. one of us read aloud a chapter, or some smaller portion of the book. the discussion was then opened, and anyone who had an objection, or other remark to make, made it. our rule was to discuss thoroughly every point raised, whether great or small, prolonging the discussion until all who took part were satisfied with the conclusion they had individually arrived at; and to follow up every topic of collateral speculation which the chapter or the conversation suggested, never leaving it until we had untied every knot which we found. we repeatedly kept up the discussion of some one point for several weeks, thinking intently on it during the intervals of our meetings, and contriving solutions of the new difficulties which had risen up in the last morning's discussion. when we had finished in this way my father's _elements_, we went in the same manner through ricardo's _principles of political economy_, and bailey's _dissertation on value_. these close and vigorous discussions were not only improving in a high degree to those who took part in them, but brought out new views of some topics of abstract political economy. the theory of international values which i afterwards published, emanated from these conversations, as did also the modified form of ricardo's _theory of profits_, laid down in my _essay on profits and interest_. those among us with whom new speculations chiefly originated, were ellis, graham, and i; though others gave valuable aid to the discussions, especially prescott and roebuck, the one by his knowledge, the other by his dialectical acuteness. the theories of international values and of profits were excogitated and worked out in about equal proportions by myself and graham: and if our original project had been executed, my _essays on some unsettled questions of political economy_ would have been brought out along with some papers of his, under our joint names. but when my exposition came to be written, i found that i had so much over-estimated my agreement with him, and he dissented so much from the most original of the two essays, that on international values, that i was obliged to consider the theory as now exclusively mine, and it came out as such when published many years later. i may mention that among the alterations which my father made in revising his _elements_ for the third edition, several were founded on criticisms elicited by these conversations; and in particular he modified his opinions (though not to the extent of our new speculations) on both the points to which i have adverted. when we had enough of political economy, we took up the syllogistic logic in the same manner, grote now joining us. our first text-book was aldrich, but being disgusted with its superficiality, we reprinted one of the most finished among the many manuals of the school logic, which my father, a great collector of such books, possessed, the _manuductio ad logicam_ of the jesuit du trieu. after finishing this, we took up whately's _logic_, then first republished from the _encyclopedia metropolitana_, and finally the _computatio sive logica_ of hobbes. these books, dealt with in our manner, afforded a high range for original metaphysical speculation: and most of what has been done in the first book of my _system of logic_, to rationalize and correct the principles and distinctions of the school logicians, and to improve the theory of the import of propositions, had its origin in these discussions; graham and i originating most of the novelties, while grote and others furnished an excellent tribunal or test. from this time i formed the project of writing a book on logic, though on a much humbler scale than the one i ultimately executed. having done with logic, we launched into analytic psychology, and having chosen hartley for our text-book, we raised priestley's edition to an extravagant price by searching through london to furnish each of us with a copy. when we had finished hartley, we suspended our meetings; but my father's _analysis of the mind_ being published soon after, we reassembled for the purpose of reading it. with this our exercises ended. i have always dated from these conversations my own real inauguration as an original and independent thinker. it was also through them that i acquired, or very much strengthened, a mental habit to which i attribute all that i have ever done, or ever shall do, in speculation: that of never accepting half-solutions of difficulties as complete; never abandoning a puzzle, but again and again returning to it until it was cleared up; never allowing obscure corners of a subject to remain unexplored, because they did not appear important; never thinking that i perfectly understood any part of a subject until i understood the whole. our doings from to in the way of public speaking, filled a considerable place in my life during those years, and as they had important effects on my development, something ought to be said of them. there was for some time in existence a society of owenites, called the co-operative society, which met for weekly public discussions in chancery lane. in the early part of , accident brought roebuck in contact with several of its members, and led to his attending one or two of the meetings and taking part in the debate in opposition to owenism. some one of us started the notion of going there in a body and having a general battle: and charles austin and some of his friends who did not usually take part in our joint exercises, entered into the project. it was carried out by concert with the principal members of the society, themselves nothing loth, as they naturally preferred a controversy with opponents to a tame discussion among their own body. the question of population was proposed as the subject of debate: charles austin led the case on our side with a brilliant speech, and the fight was kept up by adjournment through five or six weekly meetings before crowded auditories, including along with the members of the society and their friends, many hearers and some speakers from the inns of court. when this debate was ended, another was commenced on the general merits of owen's system: and the contest altogether lasted about three months. it was a _lutte corps a corps_ between owenites and political economists, whom the owenites regarded as their most inveterate opponents: but it was a perfectly friendly dispute. we who represented political economy, had the same objects in view as they had, and took pains to show it; and the principal champion on their side was a very estimable man, with whom i was well acquainted, mr. william thompson, of cork, author of a book on the distribution of wealth, and of an " appeal" in behalf of women against the passage relating to them in my father's _essay on government_. ellis, roebuck, and i took an active part in the debate, and among those from the inns of court who joined in it, i remember charles villiers. the other side obtained also, on the population question, very efficient support from without. the well-known gale jones, then an elderly man, made one of his florid speeches; but the speaker with whom i was most struck, though i dissented from nearly every word he said, was thirlwall, the historian, since bishop of st. david's, then a chancery barrister, unknown except by a high reputation for eloquence acquired at the cambridge union before the era of austin and macaulay. his speech was in answer to one of mine. before he had uttered ten sentences, i set him down as the best speaker i had ever heard, and i have never since heard anyone whom i placed above him. the great interest of these debates predisposed some of those who took part in them, to catch at a suggestion thrown out by mcculloch, the political economist, that a society was wanted in london similar to the speculative society at edinburgh, in which brougham, horner, and others first cultivated public speaking. our experience at the co-operative society seemed to give cause for being sanguine as to the sort of men who might be brought together in london for such a purpose. mcculloch mentioned the matter to several young men of influence, to whom he was then giving private lessons in political economy. some of these entered warmly into the project, particularly george villiers, after earl of clarendon. he and his brothers, hyde and charles, romilly, charles austin and i, with some others, met and agreed on a plan. we determined to meet once a fortnight from november to june, at the freemasons' tavern, and we had soon a fine list of members, containing, along with several members of parliament, nearly all the most noted speakers of the cambridge union and of the oxford united debating society. it is curiously illustrative of the tendencies of the time, that our principal difficulty in recruiting for the society was to find a sufficient number of tory speakers. almost all whom we could press into the service were liberals, of different orders and degrees. besides those already named, we had macaulay, thirlwall, praed, lord howick, samuel wilberforce (afterwards bishop of oxford), charles poulett thomson (afterwards lord sydenham), edward and henry lytton bulwer, fonblanque, and many others whom i cannot now recollect, but who made themselves afterwards more or less conspicuous in public or literary life. nothing could seem more promising. but when the time for action drew near, and it was necessary to fix on a president, and find somebody to open the first debate, none of our celebrities would consent to perform either office. of the many who were pressed on the subject, the only one who could be prevailed on was a man of whom i knew very little, but who had taken high honours at oxford and was said to have acquired a great oratorical reputation there; who some time afterwards became a tory member of parliament. he accordingly was fixed on, both for filling the president's chair and for making the first speech. the important day arrived; the benches were crowded; all our great speakers were present, to judge of, but not to help our efforts. the oxford orator's speech was a complete failure. this threw a damp on the whole concern: the speakers who followed were few, and none of them did their best: the affair was a complete _fiasco_; and the oratorical celebrities we had counted on went away never to return, giving to me at least a lesson in knowledge of the world. this unexpected breakdown altered my whole relation to the project. i had not anticipated taking a prominent part, or speaking much or often, particularly at first, but i now saw that the success of the scheme depended on the new men, and i put my shoulder to the wheel. i opened the second question, and from that time spoke in nearly every debate. it was very uphill work for some time. the three villiers and romilly stuck to us for some time longer, but the patience of all the founders of the society was at last exhausted, except me and roebuck. in the season following, - , things began to mend. we had acquired two excellent tory speakers, hayward and shee (afterwards sergeant shee): the radical side was reinforced by charles buller, cockburn, and others of the second generation of cambridge benthamities; and with their and other occasional aid, and the two tories as well as roebuck and me for regular speakers, almost every debate was a _bataille rangee_ between the "philosophic radicals" and the tory lawyers; until our conflicts were talked about, and several persons of note and consideration came to hear us. this happened still more in the subsequent seasons, and , when the coleridgians, in the persons of maurice and sterling, made their appearance in the society as a second liberal and even radical party, on totally different grounds from benthamism and vehemently opposed to it; bringing into these discussions the general doctrines and modes of thought of the european reaction against the philosophy of the eighteenth century; and adding a third and very important belligerent party to our contests, which were now no bad exponent of the movement of opinion among the most cultivated part of the new generation. our debates were very different from those of common debating societies, for they habitually consisted of the strongest arguments and most philosophic principles which either side was able to produce, thrown often into close and _serre_ confutations of one another. the practice was necessarily very useful to us, and eminently so to me. i never, indeed, acquired real fluency, and had always a bad and ungraceful delivery; but i could make myself listened to: and as i always wrote my speeches when, from the feelings involved, or the nature of the ideas to be developed, expression seemed important, i greatly increased my power of effective writing; acquiring not only an ear for smoothness and rhythm, but a practical sense for _telling_ sentences, and an immediate criterion of their telling property, by their effect on a mixed audience. the society, and the preparation for it, together with the preparation for the morning conversations which were going on simultaneously, occupied the greater part of my leisure; and made me feel it a relief when, in the spring of , i ceased to write for the _westminster_. the _review_ had fallen into difficulties. though the sale of the first number had been very encouraging, the permanent sale had never, i believe, been sufficient to pay the expenses, on the scale on which the _review_ was carried on. those expenses had been considerably, but not sufficiently, reduced. one of the editors, southern, had resigned; and several of the writers, including my father and me, who had been paid like other contributors for our earlier articles, had latterly written without payment. nevertheless, the original funds were nearly or quite exhausted, and if the _review_ was to be continued some new arrangement of its affairs had become indispensable. my father and i had several conferences with bowring on the subject. we were willing to do our utmost for maintaining the _review_ as an organ of our opinions, but not under bowring's editorship: while the impossibility of its any longer supporting a paid editor, afforded a ground on which, without affront to him, we could propose to dispense with his services. we and some of our friends were prepared to carry on the _review_ as unpaid writers, either finding among ourselves an unpaid editor, or sharing the editorship among us. but while this negotiation was proceeding with bowring's apparent acquiescence, he was carrying on another in a different quarter (with colonel perronet thompson), of which we received the first intimation in a letter from bowring as editor, informing us merely that an arrangement had been made, and proposing to us to write for the next number, with promise of payment. we did not dispute bowring's right to bring about, if he could, an arrangement more favourable to himself than the one we had proposed; but we thought the concealment which he had practised towards us, while seemingly entering into our own project, an affront: and even had we not thought so, we were indisposed to expend any more of our time and trouble in attempting to write up the _review_ under his management. accordingly my father excused himself from writing; though two or three years later, on great pressure, he did write one more political article. as for me, i positively refused. and thus ended my connexion with the original _westminster_. the last article which i wrote in it had cost me more labour than any previous; but it was a labour of love, being a defence of the early french revolutionists against the tory misrepresentations of sir walter scott, in the introduction to his _life of napoleon_. the number of books which i read for this purpose, making notes and extracts--even the number i had to buy (for in those days there was no public or subscription library from which books of reference could be taken home)--far exceeded the worth of the immediate object; but i had at that time a half-formed intention of writing a history of the french revolution; and though i never executed it, my collections afterwards were very useful to carlyle for a similar purpose. chapter v crisis in my mental history. one stage onward for some years after this time i wrote very little, and nothing regularly, for publication: and great were the advantages which i derived from the intermission. it was of no common importance to me, at this period, to be able to digest and mature my thoughts for my own mind only, without any immediate call for giving them out in print. had i gone on writing, it would have much disturbed the important transformation in my opinions and character, which took place during those years. the origin of this transformation, or at least the process by which i was prepared for it, can only be explained by turning some distance back. from the winter of , when i first read bentham, and especially from the commencement of the _westminster review_, i had what might truly be called an object in life; to be a reformer of the world. my conception of my own happiness was entirely identified with this object. the personal sympathies i wished for were those of fellow labourers in this enterprise. i endeavoured to pick up as many flowers as i could by the way; but as a serious and permanent personal satisfaction to rest upon, my whole reliance was placed on this; and i was accustomed to felicitate myself on the certainty of a happy life which i enjoyed, through placing my happiness in something durable and distant, in which some progress might be always making, while it could never be exhausted by complete attainment. this did very well for several years, during which the general improvement going on in the world and the idea of myself as engaged with others in struggling to promote it, seemed enough to fill up an interesting and animated existence. but the time came when i awakened from this as from a dream. it was in the autumn of . i was in a dull state of nerves, such as everybody is occasionally liable to; unsusceptible to enjoyment or pleasurable excitement; one of those moods when what is pleasure at other times, becomes insipid or indifferent; the state, i should think, in which converts to methodism usually are, when smitten by their first "conviction of sin." in this frame of mind it occurred to me to put the question directly to myself: "suppose that all your objects in life were realized; that all the changes in institutions and opinions which you are looking forward to, could be completely effected at this very instant: would this be a great joy and happiness to you?" and an irrepressible self-consciousness distinctly answered, "no!" at this my heart sank within me: the whole foundation on which my life was constructed fell down. all my happiness was to have been found in the continual pursuit of this end. the end had ceased to charm, and how could there ever again be any interest in the means? i seemed to have nothing left to live for. at first i hoped that the cloud would pass away of itself; but it did not. a night's sleep, the sovereign remedy for the smaller vexations of life, had no effect on it. i awoke to a renewed consciousness of the woful fact. i carried it with me into all companies, into all occupations. hardly anything had power to cause me even a few minutes' oblivion of it. for some months the cloud seemed to grow thicker and thicker. the lines in coleridge's _dejection_--i was not then acquainted with them--exactly describe my case: "a grief without a pang, void, dark and drear, a drowsy, stifled, unimpassioned grief, which finds no natural outlet or relief in word, or sigh, or tear." in vain i sought relief from my favourite books; those memorials of past nobleness and greatness from which i had always hitherto drawn strength and animation. i read them now without feeling, or with the accustomed feeling minus all its charm; and i became persuaded, that my love of mankind, and of excellence for its own sake, had worn itself out. i sought no comfort by speaking to others of what i felt. if i had loved anyone sufficiently to make confiding my griefs a necessity, i should not have been in the condition i was. i felt, too, that mine was not an interesting, or in any way respectable distress. there was nothing in it to attract sympathy. advice, if i had known where to seek it, would have been most precious. the words of macbeth to the physician often occurred to my thoughts. but there was no one on whom i could build the faintest hope of such assistance. my father, to whom it would have been natural to me to have recourse in any practical difficulties, was the last person to whom, in such a case as this, i looked for help. everything convinced me that he had no knowledge of any such mental state as i was suffering from, and that even if he could be made to understand it, he was not the physician who could heal it. my education, which was wholly his work, had been conducted without any regard to the possibility of its ending in this result; and i saw no use in giving him the pain of thinking that his plans had failed, when the failure was probably irremediable, and, at all events, beyond the power of _his_ remedies. of other friends, i had at that time none to whom i had any hope of making my condition intelligible. it was, however, abundantly intelligible to myself; and the more i dwelt upon it, the more hopeless it appeared. my course of study had led me to believe, that all mental and moral feelings and qualities, whether of a good or of a bad kind, were the results of association; that we love one thing, and hate another, take pleasure in one sort of action or contemplation, and pain in another sort, through the clinging of pleasurable or painful ideas to those things, from the effect of education or of experience. as a corollary from this, i had always heard it maintained by my father, and was myself convinced, that the object of education should be to form the strongest possible associations of the salutary class; associations of pleasure with all things beneficial to the great whole, and of pain with all things hurtful to it. this doctrine appeared inexpugnable; but it now seemed to me, on retrospect, that my teachers had occupied themselves but superficially with the means of forming and keeping up these salutary associations. they seemed to have trusted altogether to the old familiar instruments, praise and blame, reward and punishment. now, i did not doubt that by these means, begun early, and applied unremittingly, intense associations of pain and pleasure, especially of pain, might be created, and might produce desires and aversions capable of lasting undiminished to the end of life. but there must always be something artificial and casual in associations thus produced. the pains and pleasures thus forcibly associated with things, are not connected with them by any natural tie; and it is therefore, i thought, essential to the durability of these associations, that they should have become so intense and inveterate as to be practically indissoluble, before the habitual exercise of the power of analysis had commenced. for i now saw, or thought i saw, what i had always before received with incredulity --that the habit of analysis has a tendency to wear away the feelings: as indeed it has, when no other mental habit is cultivated, and the analysing spirit remains without its natural complements and correctives. the very excellence of analysis (i argued) is that it tends to weaken and undermine whatever is the result of prejudice; that it enables us mentally to separate ideas which have only casually clung together: and no associations whatever could ultimately resist this dissolving force, were it not that we owe to analysis our clearest knowledge of the permanent sequences in nature; the real connexions between things, not dependent on our will and feelings; natural laws, by virtue of which, in many cases, one thing is inseparable from another in fact; which laws, in proportion as they are clearly perceived and imaginatively realized, cause our ideas of things which are always joined together in nature, to cohere more and more closely in our thoughts. analytic habits may thus even strengthen the associations between causes and effects, means and ends, but tend altogether to weaken those which are, to speak familiarly, a _mere_ matter of feeling. they are therefore (i thought) favourable to prudence and clear- sightedness, but a perpetual worm at the root both of the passions and of the virtues; and, above all, fearfully undermine all desires, and all pleasures, which are the effects of association, that is, according to the theory i held, all except the purely physical and organic; of the entire insufficiency of which to make life desirable, no one had a stronger conviction than i had. these were the laws of human nature, by which, as it seemed to me, i had been brought to my present state. all those to whom i looked up, were of opinion that the pleasure of sympathy with human beings, and the feelings which made the good of others, and especially of mankind on a large scale, the object of existence, were the greatest and surest sources of happiness. of the truth of this i was convinced, but to know that a feeling would make me happy if i had it, did not give me the feeling. my education, i thought, had failed to create these feelings in sufficient strength to resist the dissolving influence of analysis, while the whole course of my intellectual cultivation had made precocious and premature analysis the inveterate habit of my mind. i was thus, as i said to myself, left stranded at the commencement of my voyage, with a well-equipped ship and a rudder, but no sail; without any real desire for the ends which i had been so carefully fitted out to work for: no delight in virtue, or the general good, but also just as little in anything else. the fountains of vanity and ambition seemed to have dried up within me, as completely as those of benevolence. i had had (as i reflected) some gratification of vanity at too early an age: i had obtained some distinction and felt myself of some importance, before the desire of distinction and of importance had grown into a passion: and little as it was which i had attained, yet having been attained too early, like all pleasures enjoyed too soon, it had made me _blase_ and indifferent to the pursuit. thus neither selfish nor unselfish pleasures were pleasures to me. and there seemed no power in nature sufficient to begin the formation of my character anew, and create, in a mind now irretrievably analytic, fresh associations of pleasure with any of the objects of human desire. these were the thoughts which mingled with the dry, heavy dejection of the melancholy winter of - . during this time i was not incapable of my usual occupations. i went on with them mechanically, by the mere force of habit. i had been so drilled in a certain sort of mental exercise, that i could still carry it on when all the spirit had gone out of it. i even composed and spoke several speeches at the debating society, how, or with what degree of success, i know not. of four years' continual speaking at that society, this is the only year of which i remember next to nothing. two lines of coleridge, in whom alone of all writers i have found a true description of what i felt, were often in my thoughts, not at this time (for i had never read them), but in a later period of the same mental malady: "work without hope draws nectar in a sieve, and hope without an object cannot live." in all probability my case was by no means so peculiar as i fancied it, and i doubt not that many others have passed through a similar state; but the idiosyncrasies of my education had given to the general phenomenon a special character, which made it seem the natural effect of causes that it was hardly possible for time to remove. i frequently asked myself, if i could, or if i was bound to go on living, when life must be passed in this manner. i generally answered to myself that i did not think i could possibly bear it beyond a year. when, however, not more than half that duration of time had elapsed, a small ray of light broke in upon my gloom. i was reading, accidentally, marmontel's _memoires_, and came to the passage which relates his father's death, the distressed position of the family, and the sudden inspiration by which he, then a mere boy, felt and made them feel that he would be everything to them--would supply the place of all that they had lost. a vivid conception of the scene and its feelings came over me, and i was moved to tears. from this moment my burden grew lighter. the oppression of the thought that all feeling was dead within me was gone. i was no longer hopeless: i was not a stock or a stone. i had still, it seemed, some of the material out of which all worth of character, and all capacity for happiness, are made. relieved from my ever-present sense of irremediable wretchedness, i gradually found that the ordinary incidents of life could again give me some pleasure; that i could again find enjoyment, not intense, but sufficient for cheerfulness, in sunshine and sky, in books, in conversation, in public affairs; and that there was, once more, excitement, though of a moderate, kind, in exerting myself for my opinions, and for the public good. thus the cloud gradually drew off, and i again enjoyed life; and though i had several relapses, some of which lasted many months, i never again was as miserable as i had been. the experiences of this period had two very marked effects on my opinions and character. in the first place, they led me to adopt a theory of life, very unlike that on which i had before i acted, and having much in common with what at that time i certainly had never heard of, the anti-self- consciousness theory of carlyle. i never, indeed, wavered in the conviction that happiness is the test of all rules of conduct, and the end of life. but i now thought that this end was only to be attained by not making it the direct end. those only are happy (i thought) who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness; on the happiness of others, on the improvement of mankind, even on some art or pursuit, followed not as a means, but as itself an ideal end. aiming thus at something else, they find happiness by the way. the enjoyments of life (such was now my theory) are sufficient to make it a pleasant thing, when they are taken _en passant_, without being made a principal object. once make them so, and they are immediately felt to be insufficient. they will not bear a scrutinizing examination. ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so. the only chance is to treat, not happiness, but some end external to it, as the purpose of life. let your self-consciousness, your scrutiny, your self-interrogation, exhaust themselves on that; and if otherwise fortunately circumstanced you will inhale happiness with the air you breathe, without dwelling on it or thinking about it, without either forestalling it in imagination, or putting it to flight by fatal questioning. this theory now became the basis of my philosophy of life. and i still hold to it as the best theory for all those who have but a moderate degree of sensibility and of capacity i for enjoyment; that is, for the great majority of mankind. the other important change which my opinions at this time underwent, was that i, for the first time, gave its proper place, among the prime necessities of human well-being, to the internal culture of the individual. i ceased to attach almost exclusive importance to the ordering of outward circumstances, and the training of the human being for speculation and for action. i had now learnt by experience that the passing susceptibilities needed to be cultivated as well as the active capacities, and required to be nourished and enriched as well as guided. i did not, for an instant, lose sight of, or undervalue, that part of the truth which i had seen before; i never turned recreant to intellectual culture, or ceased to consider the power and practice of analysis as an essential condition both of individual and of social improvement but thought that it had consequences which required to be corrected, by joining other kinds of cultivation with it. the maintenance of a due balance among the faculties now seemed to be of primary importance. the cultivation of the feelings became one of the cardinal points in my ethical and philosophical creed. and my thoughts and inclinations turned in an increasing degree towards whatever seemed capable of being instrumental to that object. i now began to find meaning in the things, which i had read or heard about the importance of poetry and art as instruments of human culture. but it was some time longer before i began to know this by personal experience. the only one of the imaginative arts in which i had from childhood taken great pleasure, was music; the best effect of which (and in this it surpasses perhaps every other art) consists in exciting enthusiasm; in winding up to a high pitch those feelings of an elevated kind which are already in the character, but to which this excitement gives a glow and a fervour, which, though transitory at its utmost height, is precious for sustaining them at other times. this effect of music i had often experienced; but, like all my pleasurable susceptibilities, it was suspended during the gloomy period. i had sought relief again and again from this quarter, but found none. after the tide had turned, and i was in process of recovery, i had been helped forward by music, but in a much less elevated manner. i at this time first became acquainted with weber's _oberon_, and the extreme pleasure which i drew from its delicious melodies did me good by showing me a source of pleasure to which i was as susceptible as ever. the good, however, was much impaired by the thought that the pleasure of music (as is quite true of such pleasure as this was, that of mere tune) fades with familiarity, and requires either to be revived by intermittence, or fed by continual novelty. and it is very characteristic both of my then state, and of the general tone of my mind at this period of my life, that i was seriously tormented by the thought of the exhaustibility of musical combinations. the octave consists only of five tones and two semi-tones, which can be put together in only a limited number of ways, of which but a small proportion are beautiful: most of these, it seemed to me, must have been already discovered, and there could not be room for a long succession of mozarts and webers, to strike out, as these had done, entirely new and surpassingly rich veins of musical beauty. this source of anxiety may, perhaps, be thought to resemble that of the philosophers of laputa, who feared lest the sun should be burnt out. it was, however, connected with the best feature in my character, and the only good point to be found in my very unromantic and in no way honourable distress. for though my dejection, honestly looked at, could not be called other than egotistical, produced by the ruin, as i thought, of my fabric of happiness, yet the destiny of mankind in general was ever in my thoughts, and could not be separated from my own. i felt that the flaw in my life, must be a flaw in life itself; that the question was, whether, if the reformers of society and government could succeed in their objects, and every person in the community were free and in a state of physical comfort, the pleasures of life, being no longer kept up by struggle and privation, would cease to be pleasures. and i felt that unless i could see my way to some better hope than this for human happiness in general, my dejection must continue; but that if i could see such an outlet, i should then look on the world with pleasure; content, as far as i was myself concerned, with any fair share of the general lot. this state of my thoughts and feelings made the fact of my reading wordsworth for the first time (in the autumn of ), an important event of my life. i took up the collection of his poems from curiosity, with no expectation of mental relief from it, though i had before resorted to poetry with that hope. in the worst period of my depression, i had read through the whole of byron (then new to me), to try whether a poet, whose peculiar department was supposed to be that of the intenser feelings, could rouse any feeling in me. as might be expected, i got no good from this reading, but the reverse. the poet's state of mind was too like my own. his was the lament of a man who had worn out all pleasures, and who seemed to think that life, to all who possess the good things of it, must necessarily be the vapid, uninteresting thing which i found it. his harold and manfred had the same burden on them which i had; and i was not in a frame of mind to desire any comfort from the vehement sensual passion of his giaours, or the sullenness of his laras. but while byron was exactly what did not suit my condition, wordsworth was exactly what did. i had looked into the _excursion_ two or three years before, and found little in it; and i should probably have found as little, had i read it at this time. but the miscellaneous poems, in the two-volume edition of (to which little of value was added in the latter part of the author's life), proved to be the precise thing for my mental wants at that particular juncture. in the first place, these poems addressed themselves powerfully to one of the strongest of my pleasurable susceptibilities, the love of rural objects and natural scenery; to which i had been indebted not only for much of the pleasure of my life, but quite recently for relief from one of my longest relapses into depression. in this power of rural beauty over me, there was a foundation laid for taking pleasure in wordsworth's poetry; the more so, as his scenery lies mostly among mountains, which, owing to my early pyrenean excursion, were my ideal of natural beauty. but wordsworth would never have had any great effect on me, if he had merely placed before me beautiful pictures of natural scenery. scott does this still better than wordsworth, and a very second-rate landscape does it more effectually than any poet. what made wordsworth's poems a medicine for my state of mind, was that they expressed, not mere outward beauty, but states of feeling, and of thought coloured by feeling, under the excitement of beauty. they seemed to be the very culture of the feelings, which i was in quest of. in them i seemed to draw from a source of inward joy, of sympathetic and imaginative pleasure, which could be shared in by all human beings; which had no connection with struggle or imperfection, but would be made richer by every improvement in the physical or social condition of mankind. from them i seemed to learn what would be the perennial sources of happiness, when all the greater evils of life shall have been removed. and i felt myself at once better and happier as i came under their influence. there have certainly been, even in our own age, greater poets than wordsworth; but poetry of deeper and loftier feeling could not have done for me at that time what his did. i needed to be made to feel that there was real, permanent happiness in tranquil contemplation. wordsworth taught me this, not only without turning away from, but with a greatly increased interest in, the common feelings and common destiny of human beings. and the delight which these poems gave me, proved that with culture of this sort, there was nothing to dread from the most confirmed habit of analysis. at the conclusion of the poems came the famous ode, falsely called platonic, "intimations of immortality": in which, along with more than his usual sweetness of melody and rhythm, and along with the two passages of grand imagery but bad philosophy so often quoted, i found that he too had had similar experience to mine; that he also had felt that the first freshness of youthful enjoyment of life was not lasting; but that he had sought for compensation, and found it, in the way in which he was now teaching me to find it. the result was that i gradually, but completely, emerged from my habitual depression, and was never again subject to it. i long continued to value wordsworth less according to his intrinsic merits, than by the measure of what he had done for me. compared with the greatest poets, he may be said to be the poet of unpoetical natures, possessed of quiet and contemplative tastes. but unpoetical natures are precisely those which require poetic cultivation. this cultivation wordsworth is much more fitted to give, than poets who are intrinsically far more poets than he. it so fell out that the merits of wordsworth were the occasion of my first public declaration of my new way of thinking, and separation from those of my habitual companions who had not undergone a similar change. the person with whom at that time i was most in the habit of comparing notes on such subjects was roebuck, and i induced him to read wordsworth, in whom he also at first seemed to find much to admire: but i, like most wordsworthians, threw myself into strong antagonism to byron, both as a poet and as to his influence on the character. roebuck, all whose instincts were those of action and struggle, had, on the contrary, a strong relish and great admiration of byron, whose writings he regarded as the poetry of human life, while wordsworth's, according to him, was that of flowers and butterflies. we agreed to have the fight out at our debating society, where we accordingly discussed for two evenings the comparative merits of byron and wordsworth, propounding and illustrating by long recitations our respective theories of poetry: sterling also, in a brilliant speech, putting forward his particular theory. this was the first debate on any weighty subject in which roebuck and i had been on opposite sides. the schism between us widened from this time more and more, though we continued for some years longer to be companions. in the beginning, our chief divergence related to the cultivation of the feelings. roebuck was in many respects very different from the vulgar notion of a benthamite or utilitarian. he was a lover of poetry and of most of the fine arts. he took great pleasure in music, in dramatic performances, especially in painting, and himself drew and designed landscapes with great facility and beauty. but he never could be made to see that these things have any value as aids in the formation of character. personally, instead of being, as benthamites are supposed to be, void of feeling, he had very quick and strong sensibilities. but, like most englishmen who have feelings, he found his feelings stand very much in his way. he was much more susceptible to the painful sympathies than to the pleasurable, and, looking for his happiness elsewhere, he wished that his feelings should be deadened rather than quickened. and, in truth, the english character, and english social circumstances, make it so seldom possible to derive happiness from the exercise of the sympathies, that it is not wonderful if they count for little in an englishman's scheme of life. in most other countries the paramount importance of the sympathies as a constituent of individual happiness is an axiom, taken for granted rather than needing any formal statement; but most english thinkers always seem to regard them as necessary evils, required for keeping men's actions benevolent and compassionate. roebuck was, or appeared to be, this kind of englishman. he saw little good in any cultivation of the feelings, and none at all in cultivating them through the imagination, which he thought was only cultivating illusions. it was in vain i urged on him that the imaginative emotion which an idea, when vividly conceived, excites in us, is not an illusion but a fact, as real as any of the other qualities of objects; and, far from implying anything erroneous and delusive in our mental apprehension of the object, is quite consistent with the most accurate knowledge and most perfect practical recognition of all its physical and intellectual laws and relations. the intensest feeling of the beauty of a cloud lighted by the setting sun, is no hindrance to my knowing that the cloud is vapour of water, subject to all the laws of vapours in a state of suspension; and i am just as likely to allow for, and act on, these physical laws whenever there is occasion to do so, as if i had been incapable of perceiving any distinction between beauty and ugliness. while my intimacy with roebuck diminished, i fell more and more into friendly intercourse with our coleridgian adversaries in the society, frederick maurice and john sterling, both subsequently so well known, the former by his writings, the latter through the biographies by hare and carlyle. of these two friends, maurice was the thinker, sterling the orator, and impassioned expositor of thoughts which, at this period, were almost entirely formed for him by maurice. with maurice i had for some time been acquainted through eyton tooke, who had known him at cambridge, and although my discussions with him were almost always disputes, i had carried away from them much that helped to build up my new fabric of thought, in the same way as i was deriving much from coleridge, and from the writings of goethe and other german authors which i read during these years. i have so deep a respect for maurice's character and purposes, as well as for his great mental gifts, that it is with some unwillingness i say anything which may seem to place him on a less high eminence than i would gladly be able to accord to him. but i have always thought that there was more intellectual power wasted in maurice than in any other of my contemporaries. few of them certainly have had so much to waste. great powers of generalization, rare ingenuity and subtlety, and a wide perception of important and unobvious truths, served him not for putting something better into the place of the worthless heap of received opinions on the great subjects of thought, but for proving to his own mind that the church of england had known everything from the first, and that all the truths on the ground of which the church and orthodoxy have been attacked (many of which he saw as clearly as anyone) are not only consistent with the thirty-nine articles, but are better understood and expressed in those articles than by anyone who rejects them. i have never been able to find any other explanation of this, than by attributing it to that timidity of conscience, combined with original sensitiveness of temperament, which has so often driven highly gifted men into romanism, from the need of a firmer support than they can find in the independent conclusions of their own judgment. any more vulgar kind of timidity no one who knew maurice would ever think of imputing to him, even if he had not given public proof of his freedom from it, by his ultimate collision with some of the opinions commonly regarded as orthodox, and by his noble origination of the christian socialist movement. the nearest parallel to him, in a moral point of view, is coleridge, to whom, in merely intellectual power, apart from poetical genius, i think him decidedly superior. at this time, however, he might be described as a disciple of coleridge, and sterling as a disciple of coleridge and of him. the modifications which were taking place in my old opinions gave me some points of contact with them; and both maurice and sterling were of considerable use to my development. with sterling i soon became very intimate, and was more attached to him than i have ever been to any other man. he was indeed one of the most lovable of men. his frank, cordial, affectionate, and expansive character; a love of truth alike conspicuous in the highest things and the humblest; a generous and ardent nature, which threw itself with impetuosity into the opinions it adopted, but was as eager to do justice to the doctrines and the men it was opposed to, as to make war on what it thought their errors; and an equal devotion to the two cardinal points of liberty and duty, formed a combination of qualities as attractive to me as to all others who knew him as well as i did. with his open mind and heart, he found no difficulty in joining hands with me across the gulf which as yet divided our opinions. he told me how he and others had looked upon me (from hearsay information), as a "made" or manufactured man, having had a certain impress of opinion stamped on me which i could only reproduce; and what a change took place in his feelings when he found, in the discussion on wordsworth and byron, that wordsworth, and all which that name implies, "belonged" to me as much as to him and his friends. the failure of his health soon scattered all his plans of life, and compelled him to live at a distance from london, so that after the first year or two of our acquaintance, we only saw each other at distant intervals. but (as he said himself in one of his letters to carlyle) when we did meet it was like brothers. though he was never, in the full sense of the word, a profound thinker, his openness of mind, and the moral courage in which he greatly surpassed maurice, made him outgrow the dominion which maurice and coleridge had once exercised over his intellect; though he retained to the last a great but discriminating admiration of both, and towards maurice a warm affection. except in that short and transitory phasis of his life, during which he made the mistake of becoming a clergyman, his mind was ever progressive: and the advance he always seemed to have made when i saw him after an interval, made me apply to him what goethe said of schiller, "er hatte eine furchtliche fortschreitung." he and i started from intellectual points almost as wide apart as the poles, but the distance between us was always diminishing: if i made steps towards some of his opinions, he, during his short life, was constantly approximating more and more to several of mine: and if he had lived, and had health and vigour to prosecute his ever assiduous self-culture, there is no knowing how much further this spontaneous assimilation might have proceeded. after i withdrew from attendance on the debating society. i had had enough of speech-making, and was glad to carry on my private studies and meditations without any immediate call for outward assertion of their results. i found the fabric of my old and taught opinions giving way in many fresh places, and i never allowed it to fall to pieces, but was incessantly occupied in weaving it anew. i never, in the course of my transition, was content to remain, for ever so short a time, confused and unsettled. when i had taken in any new idea, i could not rest till i had adjusted its relation to my old opinions, and ascertained exactly how far its effect ought to extend in modifying or superseding them. the conflicts which i had so often had to sustain in defending the theory of government laid down in bentham's and my father's writings, and the acquaintance i had obtained with other schools of political thinking, made me aware of many things which that doctrine, professing to be a theory of government in general, ought to have made room for, and did not. but these things, as yet, remained with me rather as corrections to be made in applying the theory to practice, than as defects in the theory. i felt that politics could not be a science of specific experience; and that the accusations against the benthamic theory of _being_ a theory, of proceeding _a priori_ by way of general reasoning, instead of baconian experiment, showed complete ignorance of bacon's principles, and of the necessary conditions of experimental investigation. at this juncture appeared in the _edinburgh review_, macaulay's famous attack on my father's _essay on government_. this gave me much to think about. i saw that macaulay's conception of the logic of politics was erroneous; that he stood up for the empirical mode of treating political phenomena, against the philosophical; that even in physical science his notions of philosophizing might have recognised kepler, but would have excluded newton and laplace. but i could not help feeling, that though the tone was unbecoming (an error for which the writer, at a later period, made the most ample and honourable amends), there was truth in several of his strictures on my father's treatment of the subject; that my father's premises were really too narrow, and included but a small number of the general truths on which, in politics, the important consequences depend. identity of interest between the governing body and the community at large is not, in any practical sense which can be attached to it, the only thing on which good government depends; neither can this identity of interest be secured by the mere conditions of election. i was not at all satisfied with the mode in which my father met the criticisms of macaulay. he did not, as i thought he ought to have done, justify himself by saying, "i was not writing a scientific treatise on politics, i was writing an argument for parliamentary reform." he treated macaulay's argument as simply irrational; an attack upon the reasoning faculty; an example of the saying of hobbes, that when reason is against a man, a man will be against reason. this made me think that there was really something more fundamentally erroneous in my father's conception of philosophical method, as applicable to politics, than i had hitherto supposed there was. but i did not at first see clearly what the error might be. at last it flashed upon me all at once in the course of other studies. in the early part of i had begun to put on paper the ideas on logic (chiefly on the distinctions among terms, and the import of propositions) which had been suggested and in part worked out in the morning conversations already spoken of. having secured these thoughts from being lost, i pushed on into the other parts of the subject, to try whether i could do anything further towards clearing up the theory of logic generally. i grappled at once with the problem of induction, postponing that of reasoning, on the ground that it is necessary to obtain premises before we can reason from them. now, induction is mainly a process for finding the causes of effects: and in attempting to fathom the mode of tracing causes and effects in physical science, i soon saw that in the more perfect of the sciences, we ascend, by generalization from particulars, to the tendencies of causes considered singly, and then reason downward from those separate tendencies, to the effect of the same causes when combined. i then asked myself, what is the ultimate analysis of this deductive process; the common theory of the syllogism evidently throwing no light upon it. my practice (learnt from hobbes and my father) being to study abstract principles by means of the best concrete instances i could find, the composition of forces, in dynamics, occurred to me as the most complete example of the logical process i was investigating. on examining, accordingly, what the mind does when it applies the principle of the composition of forces, i found that it performs a simple act of addition. it adds the separate effect of the one force to the separate effect of the other, and puts down the sum of these separate effects as the joint effect. but is this a legitimate process? in dynamics, and in all the mathematical branches of physics, it is; but in some other cases, as in chemistry, it is not; and i then recollected that something not unlike this was pointed out as one of the distinctions between chemical and mechanical phenomena, in the introduction to that favourite of my boyhood, thompson's _system of chemistry_. this distinction at once made my mind clear as to what was perplexing me in respect to the philosophy of politics. i now saw, that a science is either deductive or experimental, according as, in the province it deals with, the effects of causes when conjoined, are or are not the sums of the effects which the same causes produce when separate. it followed that politics must be a deductive science. it thus appeared, that both macaulay and my father were wrong; the one in assimilating the method of philosophizing in politics to the purely experimental method of chemistry; while the other, though right in adopting a deductive method, had made a wrong selection of one, having taken as the type of deduction, not the appropriate process, that of the deductive branches of natural philosophy, but the inappropriate one of pure geometry, which, not being a science of causation at all, does not require or admit of any summing-up of effects. a foundation was thus laid in my thoughts for the principal chapters of what i afterwards published on the logic of the moral sciences; and my new position in respect to my old political creed, now became perfectly definite. if i am asked, what system of political philosophy i substituted for that which, as a philosophy, i had abandoned, i answer, no system: only a conviction that the true system was something much more complex and many-sided than i had previously had any idea of, and that its office was to supply, not a set of model institutions, but principles from which the institutions suitable to any given circumstances might be deduced. the influences of european, that is to say, continental, thought, and especially those of the reaction of the nineteenth century against the eighteenth, were now streaming in upon me. they came from various quarters: from the writings of coleridge, which i had begun to read with interest even before the change in my opinions; from the coleridgians with whom i was in personal intercourse; from what i had read of goethe; from carlyle's early articles in the _edinburgh_ and foreign reviews, though for a long time i saw nothing in these (as my father saw nothing in them to the last) but insane rhapsody. from these sources, and from the acquaintance i kept up with the french literature of the time, i derived, among other ideas which the general turning upside down of the opinions of european thinkers had brought uppermost, these in particular: that the human mind has a certain order of possible progress, in which some things must precede others, an order which governments and public instructors can modify to some, but not to an unlimited extent: that all questions of political institutions are relative, not absolute, and that different stages of human progress not only _will_ have, but _ought_ to have, different institutions: that government is always either in the hands, or passing into the hands, of whatever is the strongest power in society, and that what this power is, does not depend on institutions, but institutions on it: that any general theory or philosophy of politics supposes a previous theory of human progress, and that this is the same thing with a philosophy of history. these opinions, true in the main, were held in an exaggerated and violent manner by the thinkers with whom i was now most accustomed to compare notes, and who, as usual with a reaction, ignored that half of the truth which the thinkers of the eighteenth century saw. but though, at one period of my progress, i for some time undervalued that great century, i never joined in the reaction against it, but kept as firm hold of one side of the truth as i took of the other. the fight between the nineteenth century and the eighteenth always reminded me of the battle about the shield, one side of which was white and the other black. i marvelled at the blind rage with which the combatants rushed against one another. i applied to them, and to coleridge himself, many of coleridge's sayings about half truths; and goethe's device, "many-sidedness," was one which i would most willingly, at this period, have taken for mine. the writers by whom, more than by any others, a new mode of political thinking was brought home to me, were those of the st. simonian school in france. in and i became acquainted with some of their writings. they were then only in the earlier stages of their speculations. they had not yet dressed out their philosophy as a religion, nor had they organized their scheme of socialism. they were just beginning to question the principle of hereditary property. i was by no means prepared to go with them even this length; but i was greatly struck with the connected view which they for the first time presented to me, of the natural order of human progress; and especially with their division of all history into organic periods and critical periods. during the organic periods (they said) mankind accept with firm conviction some positive creed, claiming jurisdiction over all their actions, and containing more or less of truth and adaptation to the needs of humanity. under its influence they make all the progress compatible with the creed, and finally outgrow it; when a period follows of criticism and negation, in which mankind lose their old convictions without acquiring any new ones, of a general or authoritative character, except the conviction that the old are false. the period of greek and roman polytheism, so long as really believed in by instructed greeks and romans, was an organic period, succeeded by the critical or sceptical period of the greek philosophers. another organic period came in with christianity. the corresponding critical period began with the reformation, has lasted ever since, still lasts, and cannot altogether cease until a new organic period has been inaugurated by the triumph of a yet more advanced creed. these ideas, i knew, were not peculiar to the st. simonians; on the contrary, they were the general property of europe, or at least of germany and france, but they had never, to my knowledge, been so completely systematized as by these writers, nor the distinguishing characteristics of a critical period so powerfully set forth; for i was not then acquainted with fichte's _lectures on the characteristics of the present age_. in carlyle, indeed, i found bitter denunciations of an "age of unbelief," and of the present age as such, which i, like most people at that time, supposed to be passionate protests in favour of the old modes of belief. but all that was true in these denunciations, i thought that i found more calmly and philosophically stated by the st. simonians. among their publications, too, there was one which seemed to me far superior to the rest; in which the general idea was matured into something much more definite and instructive. this was an early work of auguste comte, who then called himself, and even announced himself in the title-page as, a pupil of saint simon. in this tract m. comte first put forth the doctrine, which he afterwards so copiously illustrated, of the natural succession of three stages in every department of human knowledge: first, the theological, next the metaphysical, and lastly, the positive stage; and contended, that social science must be subject to the same law; that the feudal and catholic system was the concluding phasis of the theological state of the social science, protestantism the commencement, and the doctrines of the french revolution the consummation, of the metaphysical; and that its positive state was yet to come. this doctrine harmonized well with my existing notions, to which it seemed to give a scientific shape. i already regarded the methods of physical science as the proper models for political. but the chief benefit which i derived at this time from the trains of thought suggested by the st. simonians and by comte, was, that i obtained a clearer conception than ever before of the peculiarities of an era of transition in opinion, and ceased to mistake the moral and intellectual characteristics of such an era, for the normal attributes of humanity. i looked forward, through the present age of loud disputes but generally weak convictions, to a future which shall unite the best qualities of the critical with the best qualities of the organic periods; unchecked liberty of thought, unbounded freedom of individual action in all modes not hurtful to others; but also, convictions as to what is right and wrong, useful and pernicious, deeply engraven on the feelings by early education and general unanimity of sentiment, and so firmly grounded in reason and in the true exigencies of life, that they shall not, like all former and present creeds, religious, ethical, and political, require to be periodically thrown off and replaced by others. m. comte soon left the st. simonians, and i lost sight of him and his writings for a number of years. but the st. simonians i continued to cultivate. i was kept _au courant_ of their progress by one of their most enthusiastic disciples, m. gustave d'eichthal, who about that time passed a considerable interval in england. i was introduced to their chiefs, bazard and enfantin, in ; and as long as their public teachings and proselytism continued, i read nearly everything they wrote. their criticisms on the common doctrines of liberalism seemed to me full of important truth; and it was partly by their writings that my eyes were opened to the very limited and temporary value of the old political economy, which assumes private property and inheritance as indefeasible facts, and freedom of production and exchange as the _dernier mot_ of social improvement. the scheme gradually unfolded by the st. simonians, under which the labour and capital of society would be managed for the general account of the community, every individual being required to take a share of labour, either as thinker, teacher, artist, or producer, all being classed according to their capacity, and remunerated according to their work, appeared to me a far superior description of socialism to owen's. their aim seemed to me desirable and rational, however their means might be inefficacious; and though i neither believed in the practicability, nor in the beneficial operation of their social machinery, i felt that the proclamation of such an ideal of human society could not but tend to give a beneficial direction to the efforts of others to bring society, as at present constituted, nearer to some ideal standard. i honoured them most of all for what they have been most cried down for--the boldness and freedom from prejudice with which they treated the subject of the family, the most important of any, and needing more fundamental alterations than remain to be made in any other great social institution, but on which scarcely any reformer has the courage to touch. in proclaiming the perfect equality of men and women, and an entirely new order of things in regard to their relations with one another, the st. simonians, in common with owen and fourier, have entitled themselves to the grateful remembrance of future generations. in giving an account of this period of my life, i have only specified such of my new impressions as appeared to me, both at the time and since, to be a kind of turning points, marking a definite progress in my mode of thought. but these few selected points give a very insufficient idea of the quantity of thinking which i carried on respecting a host of subjects during these years of transition. much of this, it is true, consisted in rediscovering things known to all the world, which i had previously disbelieved or disregarded. but the rediscovery was to me a discovery, giving me plenary possession of the truths, not as traditional platitudes, but fresh from their source; and it seldom failed to place them in some new light, by which they were reconciled with, and seemed to confirm while they modified, the truths less generally known which lay in my early opinions, and in no essential part of which i at any time wavered. all my new thinking only laid the foundation of these more deeply and strongly, while it often removed misapprehension and confusion of ideas which had perverted their effect. for example, during the later returns of my dejection, the doctrine of what is called philosophical necessity weighed on my existence like an incubus. i felt as if i was scientifically proved to be the helpless slave of antecedent circumstances; as if my character and that of all others had been formed for us by agencies beyond our control, and was wholly out of our own power. i often said to myself, what a relief it would be if i could disbelieve the doctrine of the formation of character by circumstances; and remembering the wish of fox respecting the doctrine of resistance to governments, that it might never be forgotten by kings, nor remembered by subjects, i said that it would be a blessing if the doctrine of necessity could be believed by all _quoad_ the characters of others, and disbelieved in regard to their own. i pondered painfully on the subject till gradually i saw light through it. i perceived, that the word necessity, as a name for the doctrine of cause and effect applied to human action, carried with it a misleading association; and that this association was the operative force in the depressing and paralysing influence which i had experienced: i saw that though our character is formed by circumstances, our own desires can do much to shape those circumstances; and that what is really inspiriting and ennobling in the doctrine of freewill is the conviction that we have real power over the formation of our own character; that our will, by influencing some of our circumstances, can modify our future habits or capabilities of willing. all this was entirely consistent with the doctrine of circumstances, or rather, was that doctrine itself, properly understood. from that time i drew, in my own mind, a clear distinction between the doctrine of circumstances and fatalism; discarding altogether the misleading word necessity. the theory, which i now for the first time rightly apprehended, ceased altogether to be discouraging; and, besides the relief to my spirits, i no longer suffered under the burden--so heavy to one who aims at being a reformer in opinions--of thinking one doctrine true and the contrary doctrine morally beneficial. the train of thought which had extricated me from this dilemma seemed to me, in after years, fitted to render a similar service to others; and it now forms the chapter on liberty and necessity in the concluding book of my _system of logic_. again, in politics, though i no longer accepted the doctrine of the _essay on government_ as a scientific theory; though i ceased to consider representative democracy as an absolute principle, and regarded it as a question of time, place, and circumstance; though i now looked upon the choice of political institutions as a moral and educational question more than one of material interests, thinking that it ought to be decided mainly by the consideration, what great improvement in life and culture stands next in order for the people concerned, as the condition of their further progress, and what institutions are most likely to promote that; nevertheless, this change in the premises of my political philosophy did not alter my practical political creed as to the requirements of my own time and country. i was as much as ever a radical and democrat for europe, and especially for england. i thought the predominance of the aristocratic classes, the noble and the rich, in the english constitution, an evil worth any struggle to get rid of; not on account of taxes, or any such comparatively small inconvenience, but as the great demoralizing agency in the country. demoralizing, first, because it made the conduct of the government an example of gross public immorality, through the predominance of private over public interests in the state, and the abuse of the powers of legislation for the advantage of classes. secondly, and in a still greater degree, because the respect of the multitude always attaching itself principally to that which, in the existing state of society, is the chief passport to power; and under english institutions, riches, hereditary or acquired, being the almost exclusive source of political importance; riches, and the signs of riches, were almost the only things really respected, and the life of the people was mainly devoted to the pursuit of them. i thought, that while the higher and richer classes held the power of government, the instruction and improvement of the mass of the people were contrary to the self-interest of those classes, because tending to render the people more powerful for throwing off the yoke: but if the democracy obtained a large, and perhaps the principal share, in the governing power, it would become the interest of the opulent classes to promote their education, in order to ward off really mischievous errors, and especially those which would lead to unjust violations of property. on these grounds i was not only as ardent as ever for democratic institutions, but earnestly hoped that owenite, st. simonian, and all other anti-property doctrines might spread widely among the poorer classes; not that i thought those doctrines true, or desired that they should be acted on, but in order that the higher classes might be made to see that they had more to fear from the poor when uneducated than when educated. in this frame of mind the french revolution of july found me: it roused my utmost enthusiasm, and gave me, as it were, a new existence. i went at once to paris, was introduced to lafayette, and laid the groundwork of the intercourse i afterwards kept up with several of the active chiefs of the extreme popular party. after my return i entered warmly, as a writer, into the political discussions of the time; which soon became still more exciting, by the coming in of lord grey's ministry, and the proposing of the reform bill. for the next few years i wrote copiously in newspapers. it was about this time that fonblanque, who had for some time written the political articles in the _examiner_, became the proprietor and editor of the paper. it is not forgotten with what verve and talent, as well as fine wit, he carried it on, during the whole period of lord grey's ministry, and what importance it assumed as the principal representative, in the newspaper press, of radical opinions. the distinguishing character of the paper was given to it entirely by his own articles, which formed at least three-fourths of all the original writing contained in it: but of the remaining fourth i contributed during those years a much larger share than anyone else. i wrote nearly all the articles on french subjects, including a weekly summary of french politics, often extending to considerable length; together with many leading articles on general politics, commercial and financial legislation, and any miscellaneous subjects in which i felt interested, and which were suitable to the paper, including occasional reviews of books. mere newspaper articles on the occurrences or questions of the moment, gave no opportunity for the development of any general mode of thought; but i attempted, in the beginning of , to embody in a series of articles, headed "the spirit of the age," some of my new opinions, and especially to point out in the character of the present age, the anomalies and evils characteristic of the transition from a system of opinions which had worn out, to another only in process of being formed. these articles, were, i fancy, lumbering in style, and not lively or striking enough to be, at any time, acceptable to newspaper readers; but had they been far more attractive, still, at that particular moment, when great political changes were impending, and engrossing all minds, these discussions were ill-timed, and missed fire altogether. the only effect which i know to have been produced by them, was that carlyle, then living in a secluded part of scotland, read them in his solitude, and, saying to himself (as he afterwards told me) "here is a new mystic," inquired on coming to london that autumn respecting their authorship; an inquiry which was the immediate cause of our becoming personally acquainted. i have already mentioned carlyle's earlier writings as one of the channels through which i received the influences which enlarged my early narrow creed; but i do not think that those writings, by themselves, would ever have had any effect on my opinions. what truths they contained, though of the very kind which i was already receiving from other quarters, were presented in a form and vesture less suited than any other to give them access to a mind trained as mine had been. they seemed a haze of poetry and german metaphysics, in which almost the only clear thing was a strong animosity to most of the opinions which were the basis of my mode of thought; religious scepticism, utilitarianism, the doctrine of circumstances, and the attaching any importance to democracy, logic, or political economy. instead of my having been taught anything, in the first instance, by carlyle, it was only in proportion as i came to see the same truths through media more suited to my mental constitution, that i recognised them in his writings. then, indeed, the wonderful power with which he put them forth made a deep impression upon me, and i was during a long period one of his most fervent admirers; but the good his writings did me, was not as philosophy to instruct, but as poetry to animate. even at the time when our acquaintance commenced, i was not sufficiently advanced in my new modes of thought to appreciate him fully; a proof of which is, that on his showing me the manuscript of _sartor resartus_, his best and greatest work, which he just then finished, i made little of it; though when it came out about two years afterwards in _fraser's magazine_ i read it with enthusiastic admiration and the keenest delight. i did not seek and cultivate carlyle less on account of the fundamental differences in our philosophy. he soon found out that i was not "another mystic," and when for the sake of my own integrity i wrote to him a distinct profession of all those of my opinions which i knew he most disliked, he replied that the chief difference between us was that i "was as yet consciously nothing of a mystic." i do not know at what period he gave up the expectation that i was destined to become one; but though both his and my opinions underwent in subsequent years considerable changes, we never approached much nearer to each other's modes of thought than we were in the first years of our acquaintance. i did not, however, deem myself a competent judge of carlyle. i felt that he was a poet, and that i was not; that he was a man of intuition, which i was not; and that as such, he not only saw many things long before me, which i could only, when they were pointed out to me, hobble after and prove, but that it was highly probable he could see many things which were not visible to me even after they were pointed out. i knew that i could not see round him, and could never be certain that i saw over him; and i never presumed to judge him with any definiteness, until he was interpreted to me by one greatly the superior of us both--who was more a poet than he, and more a thinker than i--whose own mind and nature included his, and infinitely more. among the persons of intellect whom i had known of old, the one with whom i had now most points of agreement was the elder austin. i have mentioned that he always set himself in opposition to our early sectarianism; and latterly he had, like myself, come under new influences. having been appointed professor of jurisprudence in the london university (now university college), he had lived for some time at bonn to study for his lectures; and the influences of german literature and of the german character and state of society had made a very perceptible change in his views of life. his personal disposition was much softened; he was less militant and polemic; his tastes had begun to turn themselves towards the poetic and contemplative. he attached much less importance than formerly to outward changes; unless accompanied by a better cultivation of the inward nature. he had a strong distaste for the general meanness of english life, the absence of enlarged thoughts and unselfish desires, the low objects on which the faculties of all classes of the english are intent. even the kind of public interests which englishmen care for, he held in very little esteem. he thought that there was more practical good government, and (which is true enough) infinitely more care for the education and mental improvement of all ranks of the people, under the prussian monarchy, than under the english representative government: and he held, with the french _economistes_, that the real security for good government is un _peuple eclaire_, which is not always the fruit of popular institutions, and which, if it could be had without them, would do their work better than they. though he approved of the reform bill, he predicted, what in fact occurred, that it would not produce the great immediate improvements in government which many expected from it. the men, he said, who could do these great things did not exist in the country. there were many points of sympathy between him and me, both in the new opinions he had adopted and in the old ones which he retained. like me, he never ceased to be a utilitarian, and, with all his love for the germans and enjoyment of their literature, never became in the smallest degree reconciled to the innate-principle metaphysics. he cultivated more and more a kind of german religion, a religion of poetry and feeling with little, if anything, of positive dogma; while in politics (and here it was that i most differed with him) he acquired an indifference, bordering on contempt, for the progress of popular institutions: though he rejoiced in that of socialism, as the most effectual means of compelling the powerful classes to educate the people, and to impress on them the only real means of permanently improving their material condition, a limitation of their numbers. neither was he, at this time, fundamentally opposed to socialism in itself as an ultimate result of improvement. he professed great disrespect for what he called "the universal principles of human nature of the political economists," and insisted on the evidence which history and daily experience afford of the "extraordinary pliability of human nature" (a phrase which i have somewhere borrowed from him); nor did he think it possible to set any positive bounds to the moral capabilities which might unfold themselves in mankind, under an enlightened direction of social and educational influences. whether he retained all these opinions to the end of life i know not. certainly the modes of thinking of his later years, and especially of his last publication, were much more tory in their general character than those which he held at this time. my father's tone of thought and feeling, i now felt myself at a great distance from: greater, indeed, than a full and calm explanation and reconsideration on both sides, might have shown to exist in reality. but my father was not one with whom calm and full explanations on fundamental points of doctrine could be expected, at least with one whom he might consider as, in some sort, a deserter from his standard. fortunately we were almost always in strong agreement on the political questions of the day, which engrossed a large part of his interest and of his conversation. on those matters of opinion on which we differed, we talked little. he knew that the habit of thinking for myself, which his mode of education had fostered, sometimes led me to opinions different from his, and he perceived from time to time that i did not always tell him _how_ different. i expected no good, but only pain to both of us, from discussing our differences: and i never expressed them but when he gave utterance to some opinion or feeling repugnant to mine, in a manner which would have made it disingenuousness on my part to remain silent. it remains to speak of what i wrote during these years, which, independently of my contributions to newspapers, was considerable. in and i wrote the five essays since published under the title of _essays on some unsettled questions of political economy_, almost as they now stand, except that in i partially rewrote the fifth essay. they were written with no immediate purpose of publication; and when, some years later, i offered them to a publisher, he declined them. they were only printed in , after the success of the _system of logic_. i also resumed my speculations on this last subject, and puzzled myself, like others before me, with the great paradox of the discovery of new truths by general reasoning. as to the fact, there could be no doubt. as little could it be doubted, that all reasoning is resolvable into syllogisms, and that in every syllogism the conclusion is actually contained and implied in the premises. how, being so contained and implied, it could be new truth, and how the theorems of geometry, so different in appearance from the definitions and axioms, could be all contained in these, was a difficulty which no, one, i thought, had sufficiently felt, and which, at all events, no one had succeeded in clearing up. the explanations offered by whately and others, though they might give a temporary satisfaction, always, in my mind, left a mist still hanging over the subject. at last, when reading a second or third time the chapters on reasoning in the second volume of dugald stewart, interrogating myself on every point, and following out, as far as i knew how, every topic of thought which the book suggested, i came upon an idea of his respecting the use of axioms in ratiocination, which i did not remember to have before noticed, but which now, in meditating on it, seemed to me not only true of axioms, but of all general propositions whatever, and to be the key of the whole perplexity. from this germ grew the theory of the syllogism propounded in the second book of the _logic_; which i immediately fixed by writing it out. and now, with greatly increased hope of being able to produce a work on logic, of some originality and value, i proceeded to write the first book, from the rough and imperfect draft i had already made. what i now wrote became the basis of that part of the subsequent treatise; except that it did not contain the theory of kinds, which was a later addition, suggested by otherwise inextricable difficulties which met me in my first attempt to work out the subject of some of the concluding chapters of the third book. at the point which i had now reached i made a halt, which lasted five years. i had come to the end of my tether; i could make nothing satisfactory of induction, at this time. i continued to read any book which seemed to promise light on the subject, and appropriated, as well as i could, the results; but for a long time i found nothing which seemed to open to me any very important vein of meditation. in i wrote several papers for the first series of _tait's magazine_, and one for a quarterly periodical called the _jurist_, which had been founded, and for a short time carried on, by a set of friends, all lawyers and law reformers, with several of whom i was acquainted. the paper in question is the one on the rights and duties of the state respecting corporation and church property, now standing first among the collected _dissertations and discussions_; where one of my articles in _tait_, "the currency juggle," also appears. in the whole mass of what i wrote previous to these, there is nothing of sufficient permanent value to justify reprinting. the paper in the _jurist_, which i still think a very complete discussion of the rights of the state over foundations, showed both sides of my opinions, asserting as firmly as i should have done at any time, the doctrine that all endowments are national property, which the government may and ought to control; but not, as i should once have done, condemning endowments in themselves, and proposing that they should be taken to pay off the national debt. on the contrary, i urged strenuously the importance of a provision for education, not dependent on the mere demand of the market, that is, on the knowledge and discernment of average parents, but calculated to establish and keep up a higher standard of instruction than is likely to be spontaneously demanded by the buyers of the article. all these opinions have been confirmed and strengthened by the whole of my subsequent reflections. chapter vi. commencement of the most valuable friendship of my life. my father's death. writings and other proceedings up to . it was the period of my mental progress which i have now reached that i formed the friendship which has been the honour and chief blessing of my existence, as well as the source of a great part of all that i have attempted to do, or hope to effect hereafter, for human improvement. my first introduction to the lady who, after a friendship of twenty years, consented to become my wife, was in , when i was in my twenty-fifth and she in her twenty-third year. with her husband's family it was the renewal of an old acquaintanceship. his grandfather lived in the next house to my father's in newington green, and i had sometimes when a boy been invited to play in the old gentleman's garden. he was a fine specimen of the old scotch puritan; stern, severe, and powerful, but very kind to children, on whom such men make a lasting impression. although it was years after my introduction to mrs. taylor before my acquaintance with her became at all intimate or confidential, i very soon felt her to be the most admirable person i had ever known. it is not to be supposed that she was, or that any one, at the age at which i first saw her, could be, all that she afterwards became. least of all could this be true of her, with whom self-improvement, progress in the highest and in all senses, was a law of her nature; a necessity equally from the ardour with which she sought it, and from the spontaneous tendency of faculties which could not receive an impression or an experience without making it the source or the occasion of an accession of wisdom. up to the time when i first saw her, her rich and powerful nature had chiefly unfolded itself according to the received type of feminine genius. to her outer circle she was a beauty and a wit, with an air of natural distinction, felt by all who approached her: to the inner, a woman of deep and strong feeling, of penetrating and intuitive intelligence, and of an eminently meditative and poetic nature. married at an early age to a most upright, brave, and honourable man, of liberal opinions and good education, but without the intellectual or artistic tastes which would have made him a companion for her, though a steady and affectionate friend, for whom she had true esteem and the strongest affection through life, and whom she most deeply lamented when dead; shut out by the social disabilities of women from any adequate exercise of her highest faculties in action on the world without; her life was one of inward meditation, varied by familiar intercourse with a small circle of friends, of whom one only (long since deceased) was a person of genius, or of capacities of feeling or intellect kindred with her own, but all had more or less of alliance with her in sentiments and opinions. into this circle i had the good fortune to be admitted, and i soon perceived that she possessed in combination, the qualities which in all other persons whom i had known i had been only too happy to find singly. in her, complete emancipation from every kind of superstition (including that which attributes a pretended perfection to the order of nature and the universe), and an earnest protest against many things which are still part of the established constitution of society, resulted not from the hard intellect, but from strength of noble and elevated feeling, and co-existed with a highly reverential nature. in general spiritual characteristics, as well as in temperament and organisation, i have often compared her, as she was at this time, to shelley: but in thought and intellect, shelley, so far as his powers were developed in his short life, was but a child compared with what she ultimately became. alike in the highest regions of speculation and in the smaller practical concerns of daily life, her mind was the same perfect instrument, piercing to the very heart and marrow of the matter; always seizing the essential idea or principle. the same exactness and rapidity of operation, pervading as it did her sensitive as well as her mental faculties, would, with her gifts of feeling and imagination, have fitted her to be a consummate artist, as her fiery and tender soul and her vigorous eloquence would certainly have made her a great orator, and her profound knowledge of human nature and discernment and sagacity in practical life, would, in the times when such a _carriere_ was open to women, have made her eminent among the rulers of mankind. her intellectual gifts did but minister to a moral character at once the noblest and the best balanced which i have ever met with in life. her unselfishness was not that of a taught system of duties, but of a heart which thoroughly identified itself with the feelings of others, and often went to excess in consideration for them by imaginatively investing their feelings with the intensity of its own. the passion of justice might have been thought to be her strongest feeling, but for her boundless generosity, and a lovingness ever ready to pour itself forth upon any or all human beings who were capable of giving the smallest feeling in return. the rest of her moral characteristics were such as naturally accompany these qualities of mind and heart: the most genuine modesty combined with the loftiest pride; a simplicity and sincerity which were absolute, towards all who were fit to receive them; the utmost scorn of whatever was mean and cowardly, and a burning indignation at everything brutal or tyrannical, faithless or dishonourable in conduct and character, while making the broadest distinction between _mala in se_ and mere _mala prohibita_--between acts giving evidence of intrinsic badness in feeling and character, and those which are only violations of conventions either good or bad, violations which, whether in themselves right or wrong, are capable of being committed by persons in every other respect lovable or admirable. to be admitted into any degree of mental intercourse with a being of these qualities, could not but have a most beneficial influence on my development; though the effect was only gradual, and many years elapsed before her mental progress and mine went forward in the complete companionship they at last attained. the benefit i received was far greater than any which i could hope to give; though to her, who had at first reached her opinions by the moral intuition of a character of strong feeling, there was doubtless help as well as encouragement to be derived from one who had arrived at many of the same results by study and reasoning: and in the rapidity of her intellectual growth, her mental activity, which converted everything into knowledge, doubtless drew from me, as it did from other sources, many of its materials. what i owe, even intellectually, to her, is in its detail, almost infinite; of its general character a few words will give some, though a very imperfect, idea. with those who, like all the best and wisest of mankind, are dissatisfied with human life as it is, and whose feelings are wholly identified with its radical amendment, there are two main regions of thought. one is the region of ultimate aims; the constituent elements of the highest realizable ideal of human life. the other is that of the immediately useful and practically attainable. in both these departments, i have acquired more from her teaching, than from all other sources taken together. and, to say truth, it is in these two extremes principally, that real certainty lies. my own strength lay wholly in the uncertain and slippery intermediate region, that of theory, or moral and political science: respecting the conclusions of which, in any of the forms in which i have received or originated them, whether as political economy, analytic psychology, logic, philosophy of history, or anything else, it is not the least of my intellectual obligations to her that i have derived from her a wise scepticism, which, while it has not hindered me from following out the honest exercise of my thinking faculties to whatever conclusions might result from it, has put me on my guard against holding or announcing these conclusions with a degree of confidence which the nature of such speculations does not warrant, and has kept my mind not only open to admit, but prompt to welcome and eager to seek, even on the questions on which i have most meditated, any prospect of clearer perceptions and better evidence. i have often received praise, which in my own right i only partially deserve, for the greater practicality which is supposed to be found in my writings, compared with those of most thinkers who have been equally addicted to large generalizations. the writings in which this quality has been observed, were not the work of one mind, but of the fusion of two, one of them as pre-eminently practical in its judgments and perceptions of things present, as it was high and bold in its anticipations for a remote futurity. at the present period, however, this influence was only one among many which were helping to shape the character of my future development: and even after it became, i may truly say, the presiding principle of my mental progress, it did not alter the path, but only made me move forward more boldly, and, at the same time, more cautiously, in the same course. the only actual revolution which has ever taken place in my modes of thinking, was already complete. my new tendencies had to be confirmed in some respects, moderated in others: but the only substantial changes of opinion that were yet to come, related to politics, and consisted, on one hand, in a greater approximation, so far as regards the ultimate prospects of humanity, to a qualified socialism, and on the other, a shifting of my political ideal from pure democracy, as commonly understood by its partisans, to the modified form of it, which is set forth in my _considerations on representative government_. this last change, which took place very gradually, dates its commencement from my reading, or rather study, of m. de tocqueville's _democracy in america_, which fell into my hands immediately after its first appearance. in that remarkable work, the excellences of democracy were pointed out in a more conclusive, because a more specific manner than i had ever known them to be, even by the most enthusiastic democrats; while the specific dangers which beset democracy, considered as the government of the numerical majority, were brought into equally strong light, and subjected to a masterly analysis, not as reasons for resisting what the author considered as an inevitable result of human progress, but as indications of the weak points of popular government, the defences by which it needs to be guarded, and the correctives which must be added to it in order that while full play is given to its beneficial tendencies, those which are of a different nature may be neutralized or mitigated. i was now well prepared for speculations of this character, and from this time onward my own thoughts moved more and more in the same channel, though the consequent modifications in my practical political creed were spread over many years, as would be shown by comparing my first review of _democracy in america_, written and published in , with the one in (reprinted in the _dissertations_), and this last, with the _considerations on representative government_. a collateral subject on which also i derived great benefit from the study of tocqueville, was the fundamental question of centralization. the powerful philosophic analysis which he applied to american and to french experience, led him to attach the utmost importance to the performance of as much of the collective business of society, as can safely be so performed, by the people themselves, without any intervention of the executive government, either to supersede their agency, or to dictate the manner of its exercise. he viewed this practical political activity of the individual citizen, not only as one of the most effectual means of training the social feelings and practical intelligence of the people, so important in themselves and so indispensable to good government, but also as the specific counteractive to some of the characteristic infirmities of democracy, and a necessary protection against its degenerating into the only despotism of which, in the modern world, there is real danger--the absolute rule of the head of the executive over a congregation of isolated individuals, all equals but all slaves. there was, indeed, no immediate peril from this source on the british side of the channel, where nine-tenths of the internal business which elsewhere devolves on the government, was transacted by agencies independent of it; where centralization was, and is, the subject not only of rational disapprobation, but of unreasoning prejudice; where jealousy of government interference was a blind feeling preventing or resisting even the most beneficial exertion of legislative authority to correct the abuses of what pretends to be local self-government, but is, too often, selfish mismanagement of local interests, by a jobbing and _borne_ local oligarchy. but the more certain the public were to go wrong on the side opposed to centralization, the greater danger was there lest philosophic reformers should fall into the contrary error, and overlook the mischiefs of which they had been spared the painful experience. i was myself, at this very time, actively engaged in defending important measures, such as the great poor law reform of , against an irrational clamour grounded on the anti-centralization prejudice: and had it not been for the lessons of tocqueville, i do not know that i might not, like many reformers before me, have been hurried into the excess opposite to that, which, being the one prevalent in my own country, it was generally my business to combat. as it is, i have steered carefully between the two errors, and whether i have or have not drawn the line between them exactly in the right place, i have at least insisted with equal emphasis upon the evils on both sides, and have made the means of reconciling the advantages of both, a subject of serious study. in the meanwhile had taken place the election of the first reformed parliament, which included several of the most notable of my radical friends and acquaintances--grote, roebuck, buller, sir william molesworth, john and edward romilly, and several more; besides warburton, strutt, and others, who were in parliament already. those who thought themselves, and were called by their friends, the philosophic radicals, had now, it seemed, a fair opportunity, in a more advantageous position than they had ever before occupied, for showing what was in them; and i, as well as my father, founded great hopes on them. these hopes were destined to be disappointed. the men were honest, and faithful to their opinions, as far as votes were concerned; often in spite of much discouragement. when measures were proposed, flagrantly at variance with their principles, such as the irish coercion bill, or the canada coercion in , they came forward manfully, and braved any amount of hostility and prejudice rather than desert the right. but on the whole they did very little to promote any opinions; they had little enterprise, little activity: they left the lead of the radical portion of the house to the old hands, to hume and o'connell. a partial exception must be made in favour of one or two of the younger men; and in the case of roebuck, it is his title to permanent remembrance, that in the very first year during which he sat in parliament, he originated (or re-originated after the unsuccessful attempt of mr. brougham) the parliamentary movement for national education; and that he was the first to commence, and for years carried on almost alone, the contest for the self-government of the colonies. nothing, on the whole equal to these two things, was done by any other individual, even of those from whom most was expected. and now, on a calm retrospect, i can perceive that the men were less in fault than we supposed, and that we had expected too much from them. they were in unfavourable circumstances. their lot was cast in the ten years of inevitable reaction, when, the reform excitement being over, and the few legislative improvements which the public really called for having been rapidly effected, power gravitated back in its natural direction, to those who were for keeping things as they were; when the public mind desired rest, and was less disposed than at any other period since the peace, to let itself be moved by attempts to work up the reform feeling into fresh activity in favour of new things. it would have required a great political leader, which no one is to be blamed for not being, to have effected really great things by parliamentary discussion when the nation was in this mood. my father and i had hoped that some competent leader might arise; some man of philosophic attainments and popular talents, who could have put heart into the many younger or less distinguished men that would have been ready to join him--could have made them available, to the extent of their talents, in bringing advanced ideas before the public--could have used the house of commons as a rostra or a teacher's chair for instructing and impelling the public mind; and would either have forced the whigs to receive their measures from him, or have taken the lead of the reform party out of their hands. such a leader there would have been, if my father had been in parliament. for want of such a man, the instructed radicals sank into a mere _cote gauche_ of the whig party. with a keen, and as i now think, an exaggerated sense of the possibilities which were open to the radicals if they made even ordinary exertion for their opinions, i laboured from this time till , both by personal influence with some of them, and by writings, to put ideas into their heads, and purpose into their hearts. i did some good with charles buller, and some with sir william molesworth; both of whom did valuable service, but were unhappily cut off almost in the beginning of their usefulness. on the whole, however, my attempt was vain. to have had a chance of succeeding in it, required a different position from mine. it was a task only for one who, being himself in parliament, could have mixed with the radical members in daily consultation, could himself have taken the initiative, and instead of urging others to lead, could have summoned them to follow. what i could do by writing, i did. during the year i continued working in the _examiner_ with fonblanque who at that time was zealous in keeping up the fight for radicalism against the whig ministry. during the session of i wrote comments on passing events, of the nature of newspaper articles (under the title "notes on the newspapers"), in the _monthly repository_, a magazine conducted by mr. fox, well known as a preacher and political orator, and subsequently as member of parliament for oldham; with whom i had lately become acquainted, and for whose sake chiefly i wrote in his magazine. i contributed several other articles to this periodical, the most considerable of which (on the theory of poetry), is reprinted in the "dissertations." altogether, the writings (independently of those in newspapers) which i published from to , amount to a large volume. this, however, includes abstracts of several of plato's dialogues, with introductory remarks, which, though not published until , had been written several years earlier; and which i afterwards, on various occasions, found to have been read, and their authorship known, by more people than were aware of anything else which i had written, up to that time. to complete the tale of my writings at this period, i may add that in , at the request of bulwer, who was just then completing his _england and the english_ (a work, at that time, greatly in advance of the public mind), i wrote for him a critical account of bentham's philosophy, a small part of which he incorporated in his text, and printed the rest (with an honourable acknowledgment), as an appendix. in this, along with the favourable, a part also of the unfavourable side of my estimation of bentham's doctrines, considered as a complete philosophy, was for the first time put into print. but an opportunity soon offered, by which, as it seemed, i might have it in my power to give more effectual aid, and at the same time, stimulus, to the "philosophic radical" party, than i had done hitherto. one of the projects occasionally talked of between my father and me, and some of the parliamentary and other radicals who frequented his house, was the foundation of a periodical organ of philosophic radicalism, to take the place which the _westminster review_ had been intended to fill: and the scheme had gone so far as to bring under discussion the pecuniary contributions which could be looked for, and the choice of an editor. nothing, however, came of it for some time: but in the summer of sir william molesworth, himself a laborious student, and a precise and metaphysical thinker, capable of aiding the cause by his pen as well as by his purse, spontaneously proposed to establish a review, provided i would consent to be the real, if i could not be the ostensible, editor. such a proposal was not to be refused; and the review was founded, at first under the title of the _london review_, and afterwards under that of the _london and westminster_, molesworth having bought the _westminster_ from its proprietor, general thompson, and merged the two into one. in the years between and the conduct of this review occupied the greater part of my spare time. in the beginning, it did not, as a whole, by any means represent my opinions. i was under the necessity of conceding much to my inevitable associates. the _review_ was established to be the representative of the "philosophic radicals," with most of whom i was now at issue on many essential points, and among whom i could not even claim to be the most important individual. my father's co-operation as a writer we all deemed indispensable, and he wrote largely in it until prevented by his last illness. the subjects of his articles, and the strength and decision with which his opinions were expressed in them, made the _review_ at first derive its tone and colouring from him much more than from any of the other writers. i could not exercise editorial control over his articles, and i was sometimes obliged to sacrifice to him portions of my own. the old _westminster review_ doctrines, but little modified, thus formed the staple of the _review_; but i hoped by the side of these, to introduce other ideas and another tone, and to obtain for my own shade of opinion a fair representation, along with those of other members of the party. with this end chiefly in view, i made it one of the peculiarities of the work that every article should bear an initial, or some other signature, and be held to express the opinions solely of the individual writer; the editor being only responsible for its being worth publishing and not in conflict with the objects for which the _review_ was set on foot. i had an opportunity of putting in practice my scheme of conciliation between the old and the new "philosophic radicalism," by the choice of a subject for my own first contribution. professor sedgwick, a man of eminence in a particular walk of natural science, but who should not have trespassed into philosophy, had lately published his _discourse on the studies of cambridge_, which had as its most prominent feature an intemperate assault on analytic psychology and utilitarian ethics, in the form of an attack on locke and paley. this had excited great indignation in my father and others, which i thought it fully deserved. and here, i imagined, was an opportunity of at the same time repelling an unjust attack, and inserting into my defence of hartleianism and utilitarianism a number of the opinions which constituted my view of those subjects, as distinguished from that of my old associates. in this i partially succeeded, though my relation to my father would have made it painful to me in any case, and impossible in a review for which he wrote, to speak out my whole mind on the subject at this time. i am, however, inclined to think that my father was not so much opposed as he seemed, to the modes of thought in which i believed myself to differ from him; that he did injustice to his own opinions by the unconscious exaggerations of an intellect emphatically polemical; and that when thinking without an adversary in view, he was willing to make room for a great portion of the truths he seemed to deny. i have frequently observed that he made large allowance in practice for considerations which seemed to have no place in his theory. his _fragment on mackintosh_, which he wrote and published about this time, although i greatly admired some parts of it, i read as a whole with more pain than pleasure; yet on reading it again, long after, i found little in the opinions it contains, but what i think in the main just; and i can even sympathize in his disgust at the _verbiage_ of mackintosh, though his asperity towards it went not only beyond what was judicious, but beyond what was even fair. one thing, which i thought, at the time, of good augury, was the very favourable reception he gave to tocqueville's _democracy in america_. it is true, he said and thought much more about what tocqueville said in favour of democracy, than about what he said of its disadvantages. still, his high appreciation of a book which was at any rate an example of a mode of treating the question of government almost the reverse of his--wholly inductive and analytical, instead of purely ratiocinative--gave me great encouragement. he also approved of an article which i published in the first number following the junction of the two reviews, the essay reprinted in the _dissertations_, under the title "civilization"; into which i threw many of my new opinions, and criticised rather emphatically the mental and moral tendencies of the time, on grounds and in a manner which i certainly had not learnt from him. all speculation, however, on the possible future developments of my father's opinions, and on the probabilities of permanent co-operation between him and me in the promulgation of our thoughts, was doomed to be cut short. during the whole of his health had been declining: his symptoms became unequivocally those of pulmonary consumption, and after lingering to the last stage of debility, he died on the rd of june, . until the last few days of his life there was no apparent abatement of intellectual vigour; his interest in all things and persons that had interested him through life was undiminished, nor did the approach of death cause the smallest wavering (as in so strong and firm a mind it was impossible that it should) in his convictions on the subject of religion. his principal satisfaction, after he knew that his end was near, seemed to be the thought of what he had done to make the world better than he found it; and his chief regret in not living longer, that he had not had time to do more. his place is an eminent one in the literary, and even in the political history of his country; and it is far from honourable to the generation which has benefited by his worth, that he is so seldom mentioned, and, compared with men far his inferiors, so little remembered. this is probably to be ascribed mainly to two causes. in the first place, the thought of him merges too much in the deservedly superior fame of bentham. yet he was anything but bentham's mere follower or disciple. precisely because he was himself one of the most original thinkers of his time, he was one of the earliest to appreciate and adopt the most important mass of original thought which had been produced by the generation preceding him. his mind and bentham's were essentially of different construction. he had not all bentham's high qualities, but neither had bentham all his. it would, indeed, be ridiculous to claim for him the praise of having accomplished for mankind such splendid services as bentham's. he did not revolutionize, or rather create, one of the great departments of human thought. but, leaving out of the reckoning all that portion of his labours in which he benefited by what bentham had done, and counting only what he achieved in a province in which bentham had done nothing, that of analytic psychology, he will be known to posterity as one of the greatest names in that most important branch of speculation, on which all the moral and political sciences ultimately rest, and will mark one of the essential stages in its progress. the other reason which has made his fame less than he deserved, is that notwithstanding the great number of his opinions which, partly through his own efforts, have now been generally adopted, there was, on the whole, a marked opposition between his spirit and that of the present time. as brutus was called the last of the romans, so was he the last of the eighteenth century: he continued its tone of thought and sentiment into the nineteenth (though not unmodified nor unimproved), partaking neither in the good nor in the bad influences of the reaction against the eighteenth century, which was the great characteristic of the first half of the nineteenth. the eighteenth century was a great age, an age of strong and brave men, and he was a fit companion for its strongest and bravest. by his writings and his personal influence he was a great centre of light to his generation. during his later years he was quite as much the head and leader of the intellectual radicals in england, as voltaire was of the _philosophes_ of france. it is only one of his minor merits, that he was the originator of all sound statesmanship in regard to the subject of his largest work, india. he wrote on no subject which he did not enrich with valuable thought, and excepting the _elements of political economy_, a very useful book when first written, but which has now for some time finished its work, it will be long before any of his books will be wholly superseded, or will cease to be instructive reading to students of their subjects. in the power of influencing by mere force of mind and character, the convictions and purposes of others, and in the strenuous exertion of that power to promote freedom and progress, he left, as far as my knowledge extends, no equal among men and but one among women. though acutely sensible of my own inferiority in the qualities by which he acquired his personal ascendancy, i had now to try what it might be possible for me to accomplish without him: and the _review_ was the instrument on which i built my chief hopes of establishing a useful influence over the liberal and democratic section of the public mind. deprived of my father's aid, i was also exempted from the restraints and reticences by which that aid had been purchased. i did not feel that there was any other radical writer or politician to whom i was bound to defer, further than consisted with my own opinions: and having the complete confidence of molesworth, i resolved henceforth to give full scope to my own opinions and modes of thought, and to open the _review_ widely to all writers who were in sympathy with progress as i understood it, even though i should lose by it the support of my former associates. carlyle, consequently became from this time a frequent writer in the _review_; sterling, soon after, an occasional one; and though each individual article continued to be the expression of the private sentiments of its writer, the general tone conformed in some tolerable degree to my opinions. for the conduct of the _review_, under, and in conjunction with me, i associated with myself a young scotchman of the name of robertson, who had some ability and information, much industry, and an active scheming head, full of devices for making the _review_ more saleable, and on whose capacities in that direction i founded a good deal of hope: insomuch, that when molesworth, in the beginning of , became tired of carrying on the _review_ at a loss, and desirous of getting rid of it (he had done his part honourably, and at no small pecuniary cost,) i, very imprudently for my own pecuniary interest, and very much from reliance on robertson's devices, determined to continue it at my own risk, until his plans should have had a fair trial. the devices were good, and i never had any reason to change my opinion of them. but i do not believe that any devices would have made a radical and democratic review defray its expenses, including a paid editor or sub-editor, and a liberal payment to writers. i myself and several frequent contributors gave our labour gratuitously, as we had done for molesworth; but the paid contributors continued to be remunerated on the usual scale of the _edinburgh_ and _quarterly reviews_; and this could not be done from the proceeds of the sale. in the same year, , and in the midst of these occupations, i resumed the _logic_. i had not touched my pen on the subject for five years, having been stopped and brought to a halt on the threshold of induction. i had gradually discovered that what was mainly wanting, to overcome the difficulties of that branch of the subject, was a comprehensive, and, at the same time, accurate view of the whole circle of physical science, which i feared it would take me a long course of study to acquire; since i knew not of any book, or other guide, that would spread out before me the generalities and processes of the sciences, and i apprehended that i should have no choice but to extract them for myself, as i best could, from the details. happily for me, dr. whewell, early in this year, published his _history of the inductive sciences_. i read it with eagerness, and found in it a considerable approximation to what i wanted. much, if not most, of the philosophy of the work appeared open to objection; but the materials were there, for my own thoughts to work upon: and the author had given to those materials that first degree of elaboration, which so greatly facilitates and abridges the subsequent labour. i had now obtained what i had been waiting for. under the impulse given me by the thoughts excited by dr. whewell, i read again sir j. herschel's _discourse on the study of natural philosophy_: and i was able to measure the progress my mind had made, by the great help i now found in this work--though i had read and even reviewed it several years before with little profit. i now set myself vigorously to work out the subject in thought and in writing. the time i bestowed on this had to be stolen from occupations more urgent. i had just two months to spare, at this period, in the intervals of writing for the _review_. in these two months i completed the first draft of about a third, the most difficult third, of the book. what i had before written, i estimate at another third, so that one-third remained. what i wrote at this time consisted of the remainder of the doctrine of reasoning (the theory of trains of reasoning, and demonstrative science), and the greater part of the book on induction. when this was done, i had, as it seemed to me, untied all the really hard knots, and the completion of the book had become only a question of time. having got thus far, i had to leave off in order to write two articles for the next number of the _review_. when these were written, i returned to the subject, and now for the first time fell in with comte's _cours de philosophie positive_, or rather with the two volumes of it which were all that had at that time been published. my theory of induction was substantially completed before i knew of comte's book; and it is perhaps well that i came to it by a different road from his, since the consequence has been that my treatise contains, what his certainly does not, a reduction of the inductive process to strict rules and to a scientific test, such as the syllogism is for ratiocination. comte is always precise and profound on the method of investigation, but he does not even attempt any exact definition of the conditions of proof: and his writings show that he never attained a just conception of them. this, however, was specifically the problem, which, in treating of induction, i had proposed to myself. nevertheless, i gained much from comte, with which to enrich my chapters in the subsequent rewriting: and his book was of essential service to me in some of the parts which still remained to be thought out. as his subsequent volumes successively made their appearance, i read them with avidity, but, when he reached the subject of social science, with varying feelings. the fourth volume disappointed me: it contained those of his opinions on social subjects with which i most disagree. but the fifth, containing the connected view of history, rekindled all my enthusiasm; which the sixth (or concluding) volume did not materially abate. in a merely logical point of view, the only leading conception for which i am indebted to him is that of the inverse deductive method, as the one chiefly applicable to the complicated subjects of history and statistics: a process differing from the more common form of the deductive method in this--that instead of arriving at its conclusions by general reasoning, and verifying them by specific experience (as is the natural order in the deductive branches of physical science), it obtains its generalizations by a collation of specific experience, and verifies them by ascertaining whether they are such as would follow from known general principles. this was an idea entirely new to me when i found it in comte: and but for him i might not soon (if ever) have arrived at it. i had been long an ardent admirer of comte's writings before i had any communication with himself; nor did i ever, to the last, see him in the body. but for some years we were frequent correspondents, until our correspondence became controversial, and our zeal cooled. i was the first to slacken correspondence; he was the first to drop it. i found, and he probably found likewise, that i could do no good to his mind, and that all the good he could do to mine, he did by his books. this would never have led to discontinuance of intercourse, if the differences between us had been on matters of simple doctrine. but they were chiefly on those points of opinion which blended in both of us with our strongest feelings, and determined the entire direction of our aspirations. i had fully agreed with him when he maintained that the mass of mankind, including even their rulers in all the practical departments of life, must, from the necessity of the case, accept most of their opinions on political and social matters, as they do on physical, from the authority of those who have bestowed more study on those subjects than they generally have it in their power to do. this lesson had been strongly impressed on me by the early work of comte, to which i have adverted. and there was nothing in his great treatise which i admired more than his remarkable exposition of the benefits which the nations of modern europe have historically derived from the separation, during the middle ages, of temporal and spiritual power, and the distinct organization of the latter. i agreed with him that the moral and intellectual ascendancy, once exercised by priests, must in time pass into the hands of philosophers, and will naturally do so when they become sufficiently unanimous, and in other respects worthy to possess it. but when he exaggerated this line of thought into a practical system, in which philosophers were to be organized into a kind of corporate hierarchy, invested with almost the same spiritual supremacy (though without any secular power) once possessed by the catholic church; when i found him relying on this spiritual authority as the only security for good government, the sole bulwark against practical oppression, and expecting that by it a system of despotism in the state and despotism in the family would be rendered innocuous and beneficial; it is not surprising, that while as logicians we were nearly at one, as sociologists we could travel together no further. m. comte lived to carry out these doctrines to their extremest consequences, by planning, in his last work, the _systeme de politique positive_, the completest system of spiritual and temporal despotism which ever yet emanated from a human brain, unless possibly that of ignatius loyola: a system by which the yoke of general opinion, wielded by an organized body of spiritual teachers and rulers, would be made supreme over every action, and as far as is in human possibility, every thought, of every member of the community, as well in the things which regard only himself, as in those which concern the interests of others. it is but just to say that this work is a considerable improvement, in many points of feeling, over comte's previous writings on the same subjects: but as an accession to social philosophy, the only value it seems to me to possess, consists in putting an end to the notion that no effectual moral authority can be maintained over society without the aid of religious belief; for comte's work recognises no religion except that of humanity, yet it leaves an irresistible conviction that any moral beliefs concurred in by the community generally may be brought to bear upon the whole conduct and lives of its individual members, with an energy and potency truly alarming to think of. the book stands a monumental warning to thinkers on society and politics, of what happens when once men lose sight, in their speculations, of the value of liberty and of individuality. to return to myself. the _review_ engrossed, for some time longer, nearly all the time i could devote to authorship, or to thinking with authorship in view. the articles from the _london and westminster review_ which are reprinted in the _dissertations_, are scarcely a fourth part of those i wrote. in the conduct of the _review_ i had two principal objects. one was to free philosophic radicalism from the reproach of sectarian benthamism. i desired, while retaining the precision of expression, the definiteness of meaning, the contempt of declamatory phrases and vague generalities, which were so honourably characteristic both of bentham and of my father, to give a wider basis and a more free and genial character to radical speculations; to show that there was a radical philosophy, better and more complete than bentham's, while recognizing and incorporating all of bentham's which is permanently valuable. in this first object i, to a certain extent, succeeded. the other thing i attempted, was to stir up the educated radicals, in and out of parliament, to exertion, and induce them to make themselves, what i thought by using the proper means they might become --a powerful party capable of taking the government of the country, or at least of dictating the terms on which they should share it with the whigs. this attempt was from the first chimerical: partly because the time was unpropitious, the reform fervour being in its period of ebb, and the tory influences powerfully rallying; but still more, because, as austin so truly said, "the country did not contain the men." among the radicals in parliament there were several qualified to be useful members of an enlightened radical party, but none capable of forming and leading such a party. the exhortations i addressed to them found no response. one occasion did present itself when there seemed to be room for a bold and successful stroke for radicalism. lord durham had left the ministry, by reason, as was thought, of their not being sufficiently liberal; he afterwards accepted from them the task of ascertaining and removing the causes of the canadian rebellion; he had shown a disposition to surround himself at the outset with radical advisers; one of his earliest measures, a good measure both in intention and in effect, having been disapproved and reversed by the government at home, he had resigned his post, and placed himself openly in a position of quarrel with the ministers. here was a possible chief for a radical party in the person of a man of importance, who was hated by the tories and had just been injured by the whigs. any one who had the most elementary notions of party tactics, must have attempted to make something of such an opportunity. lord durham was bitterly attacked from all sides, inveighed against by enemies, given up by timid friends; while those who would willingly have defended him did not know what to say. he appeared to be returning a defeated and discredited man. i had followed the canadian events from the beginning; i had been one of the prompters of his prompters; his policy was almost exactly what mine would have been, and i was in a position to defend it. i wrote and published a manifesto in the _review_, in which i took the very highest ground in his behalf, claiming for him not mere acquittal, but praise and honour. instantly a number of other writers took up the tone: i believe there was a portion of truth in what lord durham, soon after, with polite exaggeration, said to me--that to this article might be ascribed the almost triumphal reception which he met with on his arrival in england. i believe it to have been the word in season, which, at a critical moment, does much to decide the result; the touch which determines whether a stone, set in motion at the top of an eminence, shall roll down on one side or on the other. all hopes connected with lord durham as a politician soon vanished; but with regard to canadian, and generally to colonial policy, the cause was gained: lord durham's report, written by charles buller, partly under the inspiration of wakefield, began a new era; its recommendations, extending to complete internal self-government, were in full operation in canada within two or three years, and have been since extended to nearly all the other colonies, of european race, which have any claim to the character of important communities. and i may say that in successfully upholding the reputation of lord durham and his advisers at the most important moment, i contributed materially to this result. one other case occurred during my conduct of the _review_, which similarly illustrated the effect of taking a prompt initiative. i believe that the early success and reputation of carlyle's _french revolution_, were considerably accelerated by what i wrote about it in the _review_. immediately on its publication, and before the commonplace critics, all whose rules and modes of judgment it set at defiance, had time to pre-occupy the public with their disapproval of it, i wrote and published a review of the book, hailing it as one of those productions of genius which are above all rules, and are a law to themselves. neither in this case nor in that of lord durham do i ascribe the impression, which i think was produced by what i wrote, to any particular merit of execution: indeed, in at least one of the cases (the article on carlyle) i do not think the execution was good. and in both instances, i am persuaded that anybody, in a position to be read, who had expressed the same opinion at the same precise time, and had made any tolerable statement of the just grounds for it, would have produced the same effect. but, after the complete failure of my hopes of putting a new life into radical politics by means of the _review_, i am glad to look back on these two instances of success in an honest attempt to do mediate service to things and persons that deserved it. after the last hope of the formation of a radical party had disappeared, it was time for me to stop the heavy expenditure of time and money which the _review_ cost me. it had to some extent answered my personal purpose as a vehicle for my opinions. it had enabled me to express in print much of my altered mode of thought, and to separate myself in a marked manner from the narrower benthamism of my early writings. this was done by the general tone of all i wrote, including various purely literary articles, but especially by the two papers (reprinted in the _dissertations_) which attempted a philosophical estimate of bentham and of coleridge. in the first of these, while doing full justice to the merits of bentham, i pointed out what i thought the errors and deficiencies of his philosophy. the substance of this criticism _i_ still think perfectly just; but i have sometimes doubted whether it was right to publish it at that time. i have often felt that bentham's philosophy, as an instrument of progress, has been to some extent discredited before it had done its work, and that to lend a hand towards lowering its reputation was doing more harm than service to improvement. now, however, when a counter-reaction appears to be setting in towards what is good in benthamism, i can look with more satisfaction on this criticism of its defects, especially as i have myself balanced it by vindications of the fundamental principles of bentham's philosophy, which are reprinted along with it in the same collection. in the essay on coleridge i attempted to characterize the european reaction against the negative philosophy of the eighteenth century: and here, if the effect only of this one paper were to be considered, i might be thought to have erred by giving undue prominence to the favourable side, as i had done in the case of bentham to the unfavourable. in both cases, the impetus with which i had detached myself from what was untenable in the doctrines of bentham and of the eighteenth century, may have carried me, though in appearance rather than in reality, too far on the contrary side. but as far as relates to the article on coleridge, my defence is, that i was writing for radicals and liberals, and it was my business to dwell most on that, in writers of a different school, from the knowledge of which they might derive most improvement. the number of the _review_ which contained the paper on coleridge, was the last which was published during my proprietorship. in the spring of i made over the _review_ to mr. hickson, who had been a frequent and very useful unpaid contributor under my management: only stipulating that the change should be marked by a resumption of the old name, that of _westminster review_. under that name mr. hickson conducted it for ten years, on the plan of dividing among contributors only the net proceeds of the _review_ giving his own labour as writer and editor gratuitously. under the difficulty in obtaining writers, which arose from this low scale of payment, it is highly creditable to him that he was able to maintain, in some tolerable degree, the character of the _review_ as an organ of radicalism and progress. i did not cease altogether to write for the _review_, but continued to send it occasional contributions, not, however, exclusively; for the greater circulation of the _edinburgh review_ induced me from this time to offer articles to it also when i had anything to say for which it appeared to be a suitable vehicle. and the concluding volumes of _democracy in america_, having just then come out, i inaugurated myself as a contributor to the _edinburgh_, by the article on that work, which heads the second volume of the _dissertations_. chapter vii. general view of the remainder of my life. from this time, what is worth relating of my life will come into a very small compass; for i have no further mental changes to tell of, but only, as i hope, a continued mental progress; which does not admit of a consecutive history, and the results of which, if real, will be best found in my writings. i shall, therefore, greatly abridge the chronicle of my subsequent years. the first use i made of the leisure which i gained by disconnecting myself from the _review_, was to finish the _logic_. in july and august, , i had found an interval in which to execute what was still undone of the original draft of the third book. in working out the logical theory of those laws of nature which are not laws of causation, nor corollaries from such laws, i was led to recognize kinds as realities in nature, and not mere distinctions for convenience; a light which i had not obtained when the first book was written, and which made it necessary for me to modify and enlarge several chapters of that book. the book on language and classification, and the chapter on the classification of fallacies, were drafted in the autumn of the same year; the remainder of the work, in the summer and autumn of . from april following to the end of , my spare time was devoted to a complete rewriting of the book from its commencement. it is in this way that all my books have been composed. they were always written at least twice over; a first draft of the entire work was completed to the very end of the subject, then the whole begun again _de novo_; but incorporating, in the second writing, all sentences and parts of sentences of the old draft, which appeared as suitable to my purpose as anything which i could write in lieu of them. i have found great advantages in this system of double redaction. it combines, better than any other mode of composition, the freshness and vigour of the first conception, with the superior precision and completeness resulting from prolonged thought. in my own case, moreover, i have found that the patience necessary for a careful elaboration of the details of composition and expression, costs much less effort after the entire subject has been once gone through, and the substance of all that i find to say has in some manner, however imperfect, been got upon paper. the only thing which i am careful, in the first draft, to make as perfect as i am able, is the arrangement. if that is bad, the whole thread on which the ideas string themselves becomes twisted; thoughts placed in a wrong connection are not expounded in a manner that suits the right, and a first draft with this original vice is next to useless as a foundation for the final treatment. during the re-writing of the _logic_, dr. whewell's _philosophy of the inductive sciences_ made its appearance; a circumstance fortunate for me, as it gave me what i greatly desired, a full treatment of the subject by an antagonist, and enabled me to present my ideas with greater clearness and emphasis as well as fuller and more varied development, in defending them against definite objections, or confronting them distinctly with an opposite theory. the controversies with dr. whewell, as well as much matter derived from comte, were first introduced into the book in the course of the re-writing. at the end of , the book being ready for the press, i offered it to murray, who kept it until too late for publication that season, and then refused it, for reasons which could just as well have been given at first. but i have had no cause to regret a rejection which led to my offering it to mr. parker, by whom it was published in the spring of . my original expectations of success were extremely limited. archbishop whately had, indeed, rehabilitated the name of logic, and the study of the forms, rules, and fallacies of ratiocination; and dr. whewell's writings had begun to excite an interest in the other part of my subject, the theory of induction. a treatise, however, on a matter so abstract, could not be expected to be popular; it could only be a book for students, and students on such subjects were not only (at least in england) few, but addicted chiefly to the opposite school of metaphysics, the ontological and "innate principles" school. i therefore did not expect that the book would have many readers, or approvers; and looked for little practical effect from it, save that of keeping the tradition unbroken of what i thought a better philosophy. what hopes i had of exciting any immediate attention, were mainly grounded on the polemical propensities of dr whewell; who, i thought, from observation of his conduct in other cases, would probably do something to bring the book into notice, by replying, and that promptly, to the attack on his opinions. he did reply but not till , just in time for me to answer him in the third edition. how the book came to have, for a work of the kind, so much success, and what sort of persons compose the bulk of those who have bought, i will not venture to say read, it, i have never thoroughly understood. but taken in conjunction with the many proofs which have since been given of a revival of speculation, speculation too of a free kind, in many quarters, and above all (where at one time i should have least expected it) in the universities, the fact becomes partially intelligible. i have never indulged the illusion that the book had made any considerable impression on philosophical opinion. the german, or _a priori_ view of human knowledge, and of the knowing faculties, is likely for some time longer (though it may be hoped in a diminishing degree) to predominate among those who occupy themselves with such inquiries, both here and on the continent. but the "system of logic" supplies what was much wanted, a text-book of the opposite doctrine--that which derives all knowledge from experience, and all moral and intellectual qualities principally from the direction given to the associations. i make as humble an estimate as anybody of what either an analysis of logical processes, or any possible canons of evidence, can do by themselves towards guiding or rectifying the operations of the understanding. combined with other requisites, i certainly do think them of great use; but whatever may be the practical value of a true philosophy of these matters, it is hardly possible to exaggerate the mischiefs of a false one. the notion that truths external to the mind may be known by intuition or consciousness, independently of observation and experience, is, i am persuaded, in these times, the great intellectual support of false doctrines and bad institutions. by the aid of this theory, every inveterate belief and every intense feeling, of which the origin is not remembered, is enabled to dispense with the obligation of justifying itself by reason, and is erected into its own all-sufficient voucher and justification. there never was such an instrument devised for consecrating all deep-seated prejudices. and the chief strength of this false philosophy in morals, politics, and religion, lies in the appeal which it is accustomed to make to the evidence of mathematics and of the cognate branches of physical science. to expel it from these, is to drive it from its stronghold: and because this had never been effectually done, the intuitive school, even after what my father had written in his _analysis of the mind_, had in appearance, and as far as published writings were concerned, on the whole the best of the argument. in attempting to clear up the real nature of the evidence of mathematical and physical truths, the _system of logic_ met the intuitive philosophers on ground on which they had previously been deemed unassailable; and gave its own explanation, from experience and association, of that peculiar character of what are called necessary truths, which is adduced as proof that their evidence must come from a deeper source than experience. whether this has been done effectually, is still _sub judice_; and even then, to deprive a mode of thought so strongly rooted in human prejudices and partialities, of its mere speculative support, goes but a very little way towards overcoming it; but though only a step, it is a quite indispensable one; for since, after all, prejudice can only be successfully combated by philosophy, no way can really be made against it permanently until it has been shown not to have philosophy on its side. being now released from any active concern in temporary politics, and from any literary occupation involving personal communication with contributors and others, i was enabled to indulge the inclination, natural to thinking persons when the age of boyish vanity is once past, for limiting my own society to a very few persons. general society, as now carried on in england, is so insipid an affair, even to the persons who make it what it is, that it is kept up for any reason rather than the pleasure it affords. all serious discussion on matters on which opinions differ, being considered ill-bred, and the national deficiency in liveliness and sociability having prevented the cultivation of the art of talking agreeably on trifles, in which the french of the last century so much excelled, the sole attraction of what is called society to those who are not at the top of the tree, is the hope of being aided to climb a little higher in it; while to those who are already at the top, it is chiefly a compliance with custom, and with the supposed requirements of their station. to a person of any but a very common order in thought or feeling, such society, unless he has personal objects to serve by it, must be supremely unattractive: and most people, in the present day, of any really high class of intellect, make their contact with it so slight, and at such long intervals, as to be almost considered as retiring from it altogether. those persons of any mental superiority who do otherwise, are, almost without exception, greatly deteriorated by it. not to mention loss of time, the tone of their feelings is lowered: they become less in earnest about those of their opinions respecting which they must remain silent in the society they frequent: they come to look upon their most elevated objects as unpractical, or, at least, too remote from realization to be more than a vision, or a theory, and if, more fortunate than most, they retain their higher principles unimpaired, yet with respect to the persons and affairs of their own day they insensibly adopt the modes of feeling and judgment in which they can hope for sympathy from the company they keep. a person of high intellect should never go into unintellectual society unless he can enter it as an apostle; yet he is the only person with high objects who can safely enter it at all. persons even of intellectual aspirations had much better, if they can, make their habitual associates of at least their equals, and, as far as possible, their superiors, in knowledge, intellect, and elevation of sentiment. moreover, if the character is formed, and the mind made up, on the few cardinal points of human opinion, agreement of conviction and feeling on these, has been felt in all times to be an essential requisite of anything worthy the name of friendship, in a really earnest mind. all these circumstances united, made the number very small of those whose society, and still more whose intimacy, i now voluntarily sought. among these, by far the principal was the incomparable friend of whom i have already spoken. at this period she lived mostly with one young daughter, in a quiet part of the country, and only occasionally in town, with her first husband, mr. taylor. i visited her equally in both places; and was greatly indebted to the strength of character which enabled her to disregard the false interpretations liable to be put on the frequency of my visits to her while living generally apart from mr. taylor, and on our occasionally travelling together, though in all other respects our conduct during those years gave not the slightest ground for any other supposition than the true one, that our relation to each other at that time was one of strong affection and confidential intimacy only. for though we did not consider the ordinances of society binding on a subject so entirely personal, we did feel bound that our conduct should be such as in no degree to bring discredit on her husband, nor therefore on herself. in this third period (as it may be termed) of my mental progress, which now went hand in hand with hers, my opinions gained equally in breadth and depth, i understood more things, and those which i had understood before i now understood more thoroughly. i had now completely turned back from what there had been of excess in my reaction against benthamism. i had, at the height of that reaction, certainly become much more indulgent to the common opinions of society and the world, and more willing to be content with seconding the superficial improvement which had begun to take place in those common opinions, than became one whose convictions on so many points, differed fundamentally from them. i was much more inclined, than i can now approve, to put in abeyance the more decidedly heretical part of my opinions, which i now look upon as almost the only ones, the assertion of which tends in any way to regenerate society. but in addition to this, our opinions were far _more_ heretical than mine had been in the days of my most extreme benthamism. in those days i had seen little further than the old school of political economists into the possibilities of fundamental improvement in social arrangements. private property, as now understood, and inheritance, appeared to me, as to them, the _dernier mot_ of legislation: and i looked no further than to mitigating the inequalities consequent on these institutions, by getting rid of primogeniture and entails. the notion that it was possible to go further than this in removing the injustice--for injustice it is, whether admitting of a complete remedy or not--involved in the fact that some are born to riches and the vast majority to poverty, i then reckoned chimerical, and only hoped that by universal education, leading to voluntary restraint on population, the portion of the poor might be made more tolerable. in short, i was a democrat, but not the least of a socialist. we were now much less democrats than i had been, because so long as education continues to be so wretchedly imperfect, we dreaded the ignorance and especially the selfishness and brutality of the mass: but our ideal of ultimate improvement went far beyond democracy, and would class us decidedly under the general designation of socialists. while we repudiated with the greatest energy that tyranny of society over the individual which most socialistic systems are supposed to involve, we yet looked forward to a time when society will no longer be divided into the idle and the industrious; when the rule that they who do not work shall not eat, will be applied not to paupers only, but impartially to all; when the division of the produce of labour, instead of depending, as in so great a degree it now does, on the accident of birth, will be made by concert on an acknowledged principle of justice; and when it will no longer either be, or be thought to be, impossible for human beings to exert themselves strenuously in procuring benefits which are not to be exclusively their own, but to be shared with the society they belong to. the social problem of the future we considered to be, how to unite the greatest individual liberty of action, with a common ownership in the raw material of the globe, and an equal participation of all in the benefits of combined labour. we had not the presumption to suppose that we could already foresee, by what precise form of institutions these objects could most effectually be attained, or at how near or how distant a period they would become practicable. we saw clearly that to render any such social transformation either possible or desirable, an equivalent change of character must take place both in the uncultivated herd who now compose the labouring masses, and in the immense majority of their employers. both these classes must learn by practice to labour and combine for generous, or at all events for public and social purposes, and not, as hitherto, solely for narrowly interested ones. but the capacity to do this has always existed in mankind, and is not, nor is ever likely to be, extinct. education, habit, and the cultivation of the sentiments, will make a common man dig or weave for his country, as readily as fight for his country. true enough, it is only by slow degrees, and a system of culture prolonged through successive generations, that men in general can be brought up to this point. but the hindrance is not in the essential constitution of human nature. interest in the common good is at present so weak a motive in the generality not because it can never be otherwise, but because the mind is not accustomed to dwell on it as it dwells from morning till night on things which tend only to personal advantage. when called into activity, as only self-interest now is, by the daily course of life, and spurred from behind by the love of distinction and the fear of shame, it is capable of producing, even in common men, the most strenuous exertions as well as the most heroic sacrifices. the deep-rooted selfishness which forms the general character of the existing state of society, is _so_ deeply rooted, only because the whole course of existing institutions tends to foster it; and modern institutions in some respects more than ancient, since the occasions on which the individual is called on to do anything for the public without receiving its pay, are far less frequent in modern life, than the smaller commonwealths of antiquity. these considerations did not make us overlook the folly of premature attempts to dispense with the inducements of private interest in social affairs, while no substitute for them has been or can be provided: but we regarded all existing institutions and social arrangements as being (in a phrase i once heard from austin) "merely provisional," and we welcomed with the greatest pleasure and interest all socialistic experiments by select individuals (such as the co-operative societies), which, whether they succeeded or failed, could not but operate as a most useful education of those who took part in them, by cultivating their capacity of acting upon motives pointing directly to the general good, or making them aware of the defects which render them and others incapable of doing so. in the _principles of political economy_, these opinions were promulgated, less clearly and fully in the first edition, rather more so in the second, and quite unequivocally in the third. the difference arose partly from the change of times, the first edition having been written and sent to press before the french revolution of , after which the public mind became more open to the reception of novelties in opinion, and doctrines appeared moderate which would have been thought very startling a short time before. in the first edition the difficulties of socialism were stated so strongly, that the tone was on the whole that of opposition to it. in the year or two which followed, much time was given to the study of the best socialistic writers on the continent, and to meditation and discussion on the whole range of topics involved in the controversy: and the result was that most of what had been written on the subject in the first edition was cancelled, and replaced by arguments and reflections which represent a more advanced opinion. the _political economy_ was far more rapidly executed than the _logic_, or indeed than anything of importance which i had previously written. it was commenced in the autumn of , and was ready for the press before the end of . in this period of little more than two years there was an interval of six months during which the work was laid aside, while i was writing articles in the _morning chronicle_ (which unexpectedly entered warmly into my purpose) urging the formation of peasant properties on the waste lands of ireland. this was during the period of the famine, the winter of - , when the stern necessities of the time seemed to afford a chance of gaining attention for what appeared to me the only mode of combining relief to immediate destitution with permanent improvement of the social and economical condition of the irish people. but the idea was new and strange; there was no english precedent for such a proceeding: and the profound ignorance of english politicians and the english public concerning all social phenomena not generally met with in england (however common elsewhere), made my endeavours an entire failure. instead of a great operation on the waste lands, and the conversion of cottiers into proprietors, parliament passed a poor law for maintaining them as paupers: and if the nation has not since found itself in inextricable difficulties from the joint operation of the old evils and the quack remedy it is indebted for its deliverance to that most unexpected and surprising fact, the depopulation of ireland, commenced by famine, and continued by emigration. the rapid success of the _political economy_ showed that the public wanted, and were prepared for such a book. published early in , an edition of a thousand copies was sold in less than a year. another similar edition was published in the spring of ; and a third, of copies, early in . it was, from the first, continually cited and referred to as an authority, because it was not a book merely of abstract science, but also of application, and treated political economy not as a thing by itself, but as a fragment of a greater whole; a branch of social philosophy, so interlinked with all the other branches, that its conclusions, even in its own peculiar province, are only true conditionally, subject to interference and counteraction from causes not directly within its scope: while to the character of a practical guide it has no pretension, apart from other classes of considerations. political economy, in truth, has never pretended to give advice to mankind with no lights but its own; though people who knew nothing but political economy (and therefore knew that ill) have taken upon themselves to advise, and could only do so by such lights as they had. but the numerous sentimental enemies of political economy, and its still more numerous interested enemies in sentimental guise, have been very successful in gaining belief for this among other unmerited imputations against it, and the _principles_ having, in spite of the freedom of many of its opinions, become for the present the most popular treatise on the subject, has helped to disarm the enemies of so important a study. the amount of its worth as an exposition of the science, and the value of the different applications which it suggests, others of course must judge. for a considerable time after this, i published no work of magnitude; though i still occasionally wrote in periodicals, and my correspondence (much of it with persons quite unknown to me), on subjects of public interest, swelled to a considerable bulk. during these years i wrote or commenced various essays, for eventual publication, on some of the fundamental questions of human and social life, with regard to several of which i have already much exceeded the severity of the horatian precept. i continued to watch with keen interest the progress of public events. but it was not, on the whole, very encouraging to me. the european reaction after , and the success of an unprincipled usurper in december, , put an end, as it seemed, to all present hope for freedom or social improvement in france and the continent. in england, i had seen and continued to see many of the opinions of my youth obtain general recognition, and many of the reforms in institutions, for which i had through life contended, either effected or in course of being so. but these changes had been attended with much less benefit to human well-being than i should formerly have anticipated, because they had produced very little improvement in that which all real amelioration in the lot of mankind depends on, their intellectual and moral state: and it might even be questioned if the various causes of deterioration which had been at work in the meanwhile, had not more than counterbalanced the tendencies to improvement. i had learnt from experience that many false opinions may be exchanged for true ones, without in the least altering the habits of mind of which false opinions are the result. the english public, for example, are quite as raw and undiscerning on subjects of political economy since the nation has been converted to free-trade, as they were before; and are still further from having acquired better habits of thought and feeling, or being in any way better fortified against error, on subjects of a more elevated character. for, though they have thrown off certain errors, the general discipline of their minds, intellectually and morally, is not altered. i am now convinced, that no great improvements in the lot of mankind are possible, until a great change takes place in the fundamental constitution of their modes of thought. the old opinions in religion, morals, and politics, are so much discredited in the more intellectual minds as to have lost the greater part of their efficacy for good, while they have still life enough in them to be a powerful obstacle to the growing up of any better opinions on those subjects. when the philosophic minds of the world can no longer believe its religion, or can only believe it with modifications amounting to an essential change of its character, a transitional period commences, of weak convictions, paralysed intellects, and growing laxity of principle, which cannot terminate until a renovation has been effected in the basis of their belief leading to the evolution of some faith, whether religious or merely human, which they can really believe: and when things are in this state, all thinking or writing which does not tend to promote such a renovation, is of very little value beyond the moment. since there was little in the apparent condition of the public mind, indicative of any tendency in this direction, my view of the immediate prospects of human improvement was not sanguine. more recently a spirit of free speculation has sprung up, giving a more encouraging prospect of the gradual mental emancipation of england; and concurring with the renewal under better auspices, of the movement for political freedom in the rest of europe, has given to the present condition of human affairs a more hopeful aspect.[ ] between the time of which i have now spoken, and the present, took place the most important events of my private life. the first of these was my marriage, in april, , to the lady whose incomparable worth had made her friendship the greatest source to me both of happiness and of improvement, during many years in which we never expected to be in any closer relation to one another. ardently as i should have aspired to this complete union of our lives at any time in the course of my existence at which it had been practicable, i, as much as my wife, would far rather have foregone that privilege for ever, than have owed it to the premature death of one for whom i had the sincerest respect, and she the strongest affection. that event, however, having taken place in july, , it was granted to me to derive from that evil my own greatest good, by adding to the partnership of thought, feeling, and writing which had long existed, a partnership of our entire existence. for seven and a-half years that blessing was mine; for seven and a-half only! i can say nothing which could describe, even in the faintest manner, what that loss was and is. but because i know that she would have wished it, i endeavour to make the best of what life i have left, and to work on for her purposes with such diminished strength as can be derived from thoughts of her, and communion with her memory. when two persons have their thoughts and speculations completely in common; when all subjects of intellectual or moral interest are discussed between them in daily life, and probed to much greater depths than are usually or conveniently sounded in writings intended for general readers; when they set out from the same principles, and arrive at their conclusions by processes pursued jointly, it is of little consequence in respect to the question of originality, which of them holds the pen; the one who contributes least to the composition may contribute more to the thought; the writings which result are the joint product of both, and it must often be impossible to disentangle their respective parts, and affirm that this belongs to one and that to the other. in this wide sense, not only during the years of our married life, but during many of the years of confidential friendship which preceded, all my published writings were as much here work as mine; her share in them constantly increasing as years advanced. but in certain cases, what belongs to her can be distinguished, and specially identified. over and above the general influence which her mind had over mine, the most valuable ideas and features in these joint productions--those which have been most fruitful of important results, and have contributed most to the success and reputation of the works themselves--originated with her, were emanations from her mind, my part in them being no greater than in any of the thoughts which i found in previous writers, and made my own only by incorporating them with my own system of thought! during the greater part of my literary life i have performed the office in relation to her, which from a rather early period i had considered as the most useful part that i was qualified to take in the domain of thought, that of an interpreter of original thinkers, and mediator between them and the public; for i had always a humble opinion of my own powers as an original thinker, except in abstract science (logic, metaphysics, and the theoretic principles of political economy and politics), but thought myself much superior to most of my contemporaries in willingness and ability to learn from everybody; as i found hardly anyone who made such a point of examining what was said in defence of all opinions, however new or however old, in the conviction that even if they were errors there might be a substratum of truth underneath them, and that in any case the discovery of what it was that made them plausible, would be a benefit to truth. i had, in consequence, marked this out as a sphere of usefulness in which i was under a special obligation to make myself active; the more so, as the acquaintance i had formed with the ideas of the coleridgians, of the german thinkers, and of carlyle, all of them fiercely opposed to the mode of thought in which i had been brought up, had convinced me that along with much error they possessed much truth, which was veiled from minds otherwise capable of receiving it by the transcendental and mystical phraseology in which they were accustomed to shut it up, and from which they neither cared, nor knew how, to disengage it; and i did not despair of separating the truth from the error, and exposing it in terms which would be intelligible and not repulsive to those on my own side in philosophy. thus prepared, it will easily be believed that when i came into close intellectual communion with a person of the most eminent faculties, whose genius, as it grew and unfolded itself in thought, continually struck out truths far in advance of me, but in which i could not, as i had done in those others, detect any mixture of error, the greatest part of my mental growth consisted in the assimilation of those truths, and the most valuable part of my intellectual work was in building the bridges and clearing the paths which connected them with my general system of thought.[ ] the first of my books in which her share was conspicious was the _principles of political economy_. the _system of logic_ owed little to her except in the minuter matters of composition, in which respect my writings, both great and small, have largely benefited by her accurate and clear-sighted criticism.[ ] the chapter of the _political econonomy_ which has had a greater influence on opinion than all the rest, that on 'the probable future of the labouring classes,' is entirely due to her; in the first draft of the book, that chapter did not exist. she pointed out the need of such a chapter, and the extreme imperfection of the book without it; she was the cause of my writing it; and the more general part of the chapter, the statement and discussion of the two opposite theories respecting the proper condition of the labouring classes, was wholly an exposition of her thoughts, often in words taken from her own lips. the purely scientific part of the _political economy_ i did not learn from her; but it was chiefly her influence that gave to the book that general tone by which it is distinguished from all previous expositions of political economy that had any pretension to being scientific, and which has made it so useful in conciliating minds which those previous expositions had repelled. this tone consisted chiefly in making the proper distinction between the laws of the production of wealth--which are laws of nature, dependent on the properties of objects--and the modes of its distribution, which, subject to certain conditions, depend on human will. the commom run of political economists confuse these together, under the designation of economic laws, which they deem incapable of being defeated or modified by human effort; ascribing the same necessity to things dependent on the unchangeable conditions of our earthly existence, and to those which, being but the necessary consequences of particular social arrangements, are merely co-extensive with these; given certain institutions and customs, wages, profits, and rent will be determined by certain causes; but this class of political economists drop the indispensable presupposition, and argue that these causes must, by an inherent necessity, against which no human means can avail, determine the shares which fall, in the division of the produce, to labourers, capitalists, and landlords. the _principles of political economy_ yielded to none of its predecessors in aiming at the scientific appreciation of the action of these causes, under the conditions which they presuppose; but it set the example of not treating those conditions as final. the economic generalizations which depend not on necessaties of nature but on those combined with the existing arrangements of society, it deals with only as provisional, and as liable to be much altered by the progress of social improvement. i had indeed partially learnt this view of things from the thoughts awakened in me by the speculations of the st. simonians; but it was made a living principle pervading and animating the book by my wife's promptings. this example illustrates well the general character of what she contributed to my writings. what was abstract and purely scientific was generally mine; the properly human element came from her: in all that concerned the application of philosophy to the exigencies of human society and progress, i was her pupil, alike in boldness of speculation and cautiousness of practical judgment. for, on the one hand, she was much more courageous and far-sighted than without her i should have been, in anticipation of an order of things to come, in which many of the limited generalizations now so often confounded with universal principles will cease to be applicable. those parts of my writings, and especially of the _political economy_, which contemplate possibilities in the future such as, when affirmed by socialists, have in general been fiercely denied by political economists, would, but for her, either have been absent, or the suggestions would have been made much more timidly and in a more qualified form. but while she thus rendered me bolder in speculation on human affairs, her practical turn of mind, and her almost unerring estimate of practical obstacles, repressed in me all tendencies that were really visionary. her mind invested all ideas in a concrete shape, and formed to itself a conception of how they would actually work: and her knowledge of the existing feelings and conduct of mankind was so seldom at fault, that the weak point in any unworkable suggestion seldom escapes her.[ ] during the two years which immediately preceded the cessation of my official life, my wife and i were working together at the "liberty." i had first planned and written it as a short essay in . it was in mounting the steps of the capitol, in january, , that the thought first arose of converting it into a volume. none of my writings have been either so carefully composed, or so sedulously corrected as this. after it had been written as usual twice over, we kept it by us, bringing it out from time to time, and going through it _de novo_, reading, weighing, and criticizing every sentence. its final revision was to have been a work of the winter of - , the first after my retirement, which we had arranged to pass in the south of europe. that hope and every other were frustrated by the most unexpected and bitter calamity of her death--at avignon, on our way to montpellier, from a sudden attack of pulmonary congestion. since then i have sought for such allevation as my state admitted of, by the mode of life which most enabled me to feel her still near me. i bought a cottage as close as possible to the place where she is buried, and there her daughter (my fellow-sufferer and now my chief comfort) and i, live constantly during a great portion of the year. my objects in life are solely those which were hers; my pursuits and occupations those in which she shared, or sympathized, and which are indissolubly associated with her. her memory is to me a religion, and her approbation the standard by which, summing up as it does all worthiness, i endeavour to regulate my life. after my irreparable loss, one of my earliest cares was to print and publish the treatise, so much of which was the work of her whom i had lost, and consecrate it to her memory. i have made no alteration or addition to it, nor shall i ever. though it wants the last touch of her hand, no substitute for that touch shall ever be attempted by mine. the _liberty_ was more directly and literally our joint production than anything else which bears my name, for there was not a sentence of it that was not several times gone through by us together, turned over in many ways, and carefully weeded of any faults, either in thought or expression, that we detected in it. it is in consequence of this that, although it never underwent her final revision, it far surpasses, as a mere specimen of composition, anything which has proceeded from me either before or since. with regard to the thoughts, it is difficult to identify any particular part or element as being more hers than all the rest. the whole mode of thinking of which the book was the expression, was emphatically hers. but i also was so thoroughly imbued with it, that the same thoughts naturally occurred to us both. that i was thus penetrated with it, however, i owe in a great degree to her. there was a moment in my mental progress when i might easily have fallen into a tendency towards over-government, both social and political; as there was also a moment when, by reaction from a contrary excess, i might have become a less thorough radical and democrat than i am. in both these points, as in many others, she benefited me as much by keeping me right where i was right, as by leading me to new truths, and ridding me of errors. my great readiness and eagerness to learn from everybody, and to make room in my opinions for every new acquisition by adjusting the old and the new to one another, might, but for her steadying influence, have seduced me into modifying my early opinions too much. she was in nothing more valuable to my mental development than by her just measure of the relative importance of different considerations, which often protected me from allowing to truths i had only recently learnt to see, a more important place in my thoughts than was properly their due. the _liberty_ is likely to survive longer than anything else that i have written (with the possible exception of the _logic_), because the conjunction of her mind with mine has rendered it a kind of philosophic text-book of a single truth, which the changes progressively taking place in modern society tend to bring out into ever stronger relief: the importance, to man and society of a large variety in types of character, and of giving full freedom to human nature to expand itself in innumerable and conflicting directions. nothing can better show how deep are the foundations of this truth, than the great impression made by the exposition of it at a time which, to superficial observation, did not seem to stand much in need of such a lesson. the fears we expressed, lest the inevitable growth of social equality and of the government of public opinion, should impose on mankind an oppressive yoke of uniformity in opinion and practice, might easily have appeared chimerical to those who looked more at present facts than at tendencies; for the gradual revolution that is taking place in society and institutions has, thus far, been decidedly favourable to the development of new opinions, and has procured for them a much more unprejudiced hearing than they previously met with. but this is a feature belonging to periods of transition, when old notions and feelings have been unsettled, and no new doctrines have yet succeeded to their ascendancy. at such times people of any mental activity, having given up their old beliefs, and not feeling quite sure that those they still retain can stand unmodified, listen eagerly to new opinions. but this state of things is necessarily transitory: some particular body of doctrine in time rallies the majority round it, organizes social institutions and modes of action conformably to itself, education impresses this new creed upon the new generations without the mental processes that have led to it, and by degrees it acquires the very same power of compression, so long exercised by the creeds of which it had taken the place. whether this noxious power will be exercised, depends on whether mankind have by that time become aware that it cannot be exercised without stunting and dwarfing human nature. it is then that the teachings of the _liberty_ will have their greatest value. and it is to be feared that they will retain that value a long time. as regards originality, it has of course no other than that which every thoughtful mind gives to its own mode of conceiving and expressing truths which are common property. the leading thought of the book is one which though in many ages confined to insulated thinkers, mankind have probably at no time since the beginning of civilization been entirely without. to speak only of the last few generations, it is distinctly contained in the vein of important thought respecting education and culture, spread through the european mind by the labours and genius of pestalozzi. the unqualified championship of it by wilhelm von humboldt is referred to in the book; but he by no means stood alone in his own country. during the early part of the present century the doctrine of the rights of individuality, and the claim of the moral nature to develop itself in its own way, was pushed by a whole school of german authors even to exaggeration; and the writings of goethe, the most celebrated of all german authors, though not belonging to that or to any other school, are penetrated throughout by views of morals and of conduct in life, often in my opinion not defensible, but which are incessantly seeking whatever defence they admit of in the theory of the right and duty of self-development. in our own country before the book _on liberty_ was written, the doctrine of individuality had been enthusiastically asserted, in a style of vigorous declamation sometimes reminding one of fichte, by mr. william maccall, in a series of writings of which the most elaborate is entitled _elements of individualism_: and a remarkable american, mr. warren, had framed a system of society, on the foundation of _the sovereignty of the individual_, had obtained a number of followers, and had actually commenced the formation of a village community (whether it now exists i know not), which, though bearing a superficial resemblance to some of the projects of socialists, is diametrically opposite to them in principle, since it recognizes no authority whatever in society over the individual, except to enforce equal freedom of development for all individualities. as the book which bears my name claimed no originality for any of its doctrines, and was not intended to write their history, the only author who had preceded me in their assertion, of whom i thought it appropriate to say anything, was humboldt, who furnished the motto to the work; although in one passage i borrowed from the warrenites their phrase, the sovereignty of the individual. it is hardly necessary here to remark that there are abundant differences in detail, between the conception of the doctrine by any of the predecessors i have mentioned, and that set forth in the book. the political circumstances of the time induced me, shortly after, to complete and publish a pamphlet (_thoughts on parliamentary reform_), part of which had been written some years previously on the occasion of one of the abortive reform bills, and had at the time been approved and revised by her. its principal features were, hostility to the ballot (a change of opinion in both of us, in which she rather preceded me), and a claim of representation for minorities; not, however, at that time going beyond the cumulative vote proposed by mr. garth marshall. in finishing the pamphlet for publication, with a view to the discussions on the reform bill of lord derby's and mr. disraeli's government in , i added a third feature, a plurality of votes, to be given, not to property, but to proved superiority of education. this recommended itself to me as a means of reconciling the irresistible claim of every man or woman to be consulted, and to be allowed a voice, in the regulation of affairs which vitally concern them, with the superiority of weight justly due to opinions grounded on superiority of knowledge. the suggestion, however, was one which i had never discussed with my almost infallible counsellor, and i have no evidence that she would have concurred in it. as far as i have been able to observe, it has found favour with nobody; all who desire any sort of inequality in the electoral vote, desiring it in favour of property and not of intelligence or knowledge. if it ever overcomes the strong feeling which exists against it, this will only be after the establishment of a systematic national education by which the various grades of politically valuable acquirement may be accurately defined and authenticated. without this it will always remain liable to strong, possibly conclusive, objections; and with this, it would perhaps not be needed. it was soon after the publication of _thoughts on parliamentary reform_, that i became acquainted with mr. hare's admirable system of personal representation, which, in its present shape, was then for the first time published. i saw in this great practical and philosophical idea, the greatest improvement of which the system of representative government is susceptible; an improvement which, in the most felicitous manner, exactly meets and cures the grand, and what before seemed the inherent, defect of the representative system; that of giving to a numerical majority all power, instead of only a power proportional to its numbers, and enabling the strongest party to exclude all weaker parties from making their opinions heard in the assembly of the nation, except through such opportunity as may be given to them by the accidentally unequal distribution of opinions in different localities. to these great evils nothing more than very imperfect palliations had seemed possible; but mr. hare's system affords a radical cure. this great discovery, for it is no less, in the political art, inspired me, as i believe it has inspired all thoughtful persons who have adopted it, with new and more sanguine hopes respecting the prospects of human society; by freeing the form of political institutions towards which the whole civilized world is manifestly and irresistibly tending, from the chief part of what seemed to qualify, or render doubtful, its ultimate benefits. minorities, so long as they remain minorities, are, and ought to be, outvoted; but under arrangements which enable any assemblage of voters, amounting to a certain number, to place in the legislature a representative of its own choice, minorities cannot be suppressed. independent opinions will force their way into the council of the nation and make themselves heard there, a thing which often cannot happen in the existing forms of representative democracy; and the legislature, instead of being weeded of individual peculiarities and entirely made up of men who simply represent the creed of great political or religious parties, will comprise a large proportion of the most eminent individual minds in the country, placed there, without reference to party, by voters who appreciate their individual eminence. i can understand that persons, otherwise intelligent, should, for want of sufficient examination, be repelled from mr. hare's plan by what they think the complex nature of its machinery. but any one who does not feel the want which the scheme is intended to supply; any one who throws it over as a mere theoretical subtlety or crotchet, tending to no valuable purpose, and unworthy of the attention of practical men, may be pronounced an incompetent statesman, unequal to the politics of the future. i mean, unless he is a minister or aspires to become one: for we are quite accustomed to a minister continuing to profess unqualified hostility to an improvement almost to the very day when his conscience or his interest induces him to take it up as a public measure, and carry it. had i met with mr. hare's system before the publication of my pamphlet, i should have given an account of it there. not having done so, i wrote an article in _fraser's magazine_ (reprinted in my miscellaneous writings) principally for that purpose, though i included in it, along with mr. hare's book, a review of two other productions on the question of the day; one of them a pamphlet by my early friend, mr. john austin, who had in his old age become an enemy to all further parliamentary reform; the other an able and vigourous, though partially erroneous, work by mr. lorimer. in the course of the same summer i fulfilled a duty particularly incumbent upon me, that of helping (by an article in the _edinburgh review_) to make known mr. bain's profound treatise on the mind, just then completed by the publication of its second volume. and i carried through the press a selection of my minor writings, forming the first two volumes of _dissertations and discussions_. the selection had been made during my wife's lifetime, but the revision, in concert with her, with a view to republication, had been barely commenced; and when i had no longer the guidance of her judgment i despaired of pursuing it further, and republished the papers as they were, with the exception of striking out such passages as were no longer in accordance with my opinions. my literary work of the year was terminated with an essay in _fraser's magazine_ (afterwards republished in the third volume of _dissertations and discussions_), entitled "a few words on non-intervention." i was prompted to write this paper by a desire, while vindicating england from the imputations commonly brought against her on the continent, of a peculiar selfishness in matters of foreign policy to warn englishmen of the colour given to this imputation by the low tone in which english statesmen are accustomed to speak of english policy as concerned only with english interests, and by the conduct of lord palmerston at that particular time in opposing the suez canal; and i took the opportunity of expressing ideas which had long been in my mind (some of them generated by my indian experience, and others by the international questions which then greatly occupied the european public), respecting the true principles of international morality, and the legitimate modifications made in it by difference of times and circumstances; a subject i had already, to some extent, discussed in the vindication of the french provisional government of against the attacks of lord brougham and others, which i published at the time in the _westminster review_, and which is reprinted in the _dissertations_. i had now settled, as i believed, for the remainder of my existence into a purely literary life; if that can be called literary which continued to be occupied in a pre-eminent degree with politics, and not merely with theoretical, but practical politics, although a great part of the year was spent at a distance of many hundred miles from the chief seat of the politics of my own country, to which, and primarily for which, i wrote. but, in truth, the modern facilities of communication have not only removed all the disadvantages, to a political writer in tolerably easy circumstances, of distance from the scene of political action, but have converted them into advantages. the immediate and regular receipt of newspapers and periodicals keeps him _au courant_ of even the most temporary politics, and gives him a much more correct view of the state and progress of opinion than he could acquire by personal contact with individuals: for every one's social intercourse is more or less limited to particular sets or classes, whose impressions and no others reach him through that channel; and experience has taught me that those who give their time to the absorbing claims of what is called society, not having leisure to keep up a large acquaintance with the organs of opinion, remain much more ignorant of the general state either of the public mind, or of the active and instructed part of it, than a recluse who reads the newspapers need be. there are, no doubt, disadvantages in too long a separation from one's country--in not occasionally renewing one's impressions of the light in which men and things appear when seen from a position in the midst of them; but the deliberate judgment formed at a distance, and undisturbed by inequalities of perspective, is the most to be depended on, even for application to practice. alternating between the two positions, i combined the advantages of both. and, though the inspirer of my best thoughts was no longer with me, i was not alone: she had left a daughter, my stepdaughter, [miss helen taylor, the inheritor of much of her wisdom, and of all her nobleness of character,] whose ever growing and ripening talents from that day to this have been devoted to the same great purposes [and have already made her name better and more widely known than was that of her mother, though far less so than i predict, that if she lives it is destined to become. of the value of her direct cooperation with me, something will be said hereafter, of what i owe in the way of instruction to her great powers of original thought and soundness of practical judgment, it would be a vain attempt to give an adequate idea]. surely no one ever before was so fortunate, as, after such a loss as mine, to draw another prize in the lottery of life [--another companion, stimulator, adviser, and instructor of the rarest quality]. whoever, either now or hereafter, may think of me and of the work i have done, must never forget that it is the product not of one intellect and conscience, but of three[, the least considerable of whom, and above all the least original, is the one whose name is attached to it]. the work of the years and consisted chiefly of two treatises, only one of which was intended for immediate publication. this was the _considerations on representative government_; a connected exposition of what, by the thoughts of many years, i had come to regard as the best form of a popular constitution. along with as much of the general theory of government as is necessary to support this particular portion of its practice, the volume contains many matured views of the principal questions which occupy the present age, within the province of purely organic institutions, and raises, by anticipation, some other questions to which growing necessities will sooner or later compel the attention both of theoretical and of practical politicians. the chief of these last, is the distinction between the function of making laws, for which a numerous popular assembly is radically unfit, and that of getting good laws made, which is its proper duty and cannot be satisfactorily fulfilled by any other authority: and the consequent need of a legislative commission, as a permanent part of the constitution of a free country; consisting of a small number of highly trained political minds, on whom, when parliament has determined that a law shall be made, the task of making it should be devolved: parliament retaining the power of passing or rejecting the bill when drawn up, but not of altering it otherwise than by sending proposed amendments to be dealt with by the commission. the question here raised respecting the most important of all public functions, that of legislation, is a particular case of the great problem of modern political organization, stated, i believe, for the first time in its full extent by bentham, though in my opinion not always satisfactorily resolved by him; the combination of complete popular control over public affairs, with the greatest attainable perfection of skilled agency. the other treatise written at this time is the one which was published some years[ ] later under the title of _the subjection of women._ it was written [at my daughter's suggestion] that there might, in any event, be in existence a written exposition of my opinions on that great question, as full and conclusive as i could make it. the intention was to keep this among other unpublished papers, improving it from time to time if i was able, and to publish it at the time when it should seem likely to be most useful. as ultimately published [it was enriched with some important ideas of my daughter's, and passages of her writing. but] in what was of my own composition, all that is most striking and profound belongs to my wife; coming from the fund of thought which had been made common to us both, by our innumerable conversations and discussions on a topic which filled so large a place in our minds. soon after this time i took from their repository a portion of the unpublished papers which i had written during the last years of our married life, and shaped them, with some additional matter, into the little work entitled _utilitarianism_; which was first published, in three parts, in successive numbers of _fraser's magazine_, and afterwards reprinted in a volume. before this, however, the state of public affairs had become extremely critical, by the commencement of the american civil war. my strongest feelings were engaged in this struggle, which, i felt from the beginning, was destined to be a turning point, for good or evil, of the course of human affairs for an indefinite duration. having been a deeply interested observer of the slavery quarrel in america, during the many years that preceded the open breach, i knew that it was in all its stages an aggressive enterprise of the slave-owners to extend the territory of slavery; under the combined influences of pecuniary interest, domineering temper, and the fanaticism of a class for its class privileges, influences so fully and powerfully depicted in the admirable work of my friend professor cairnes, _the slave power_. their success, if they succeeded, would be a victory of the powers of evil which would give courage to the enemies of progress and damp the spirits of its friends all over the civilized world, while it would create a formidable military power, grounded on the worst and most anti-social form of the tyranny of men over men, and, by destroying for a long time the prestige of the great democratic republic, would give to all the privileged classes of europe a false confidence, probably only to be extinguished in blood. on the other hand, if the spirit of the north was sufficiently roused to carry the war to a successful termination, and if that termination did not come too soon and too easily, i foresaw, from the laws of human nature, and the experience of revolutions, that when it did come it would in all probability be thorough: that the bulk of the northern population, whose conscience had as yet been awakened only to the point of resisting the further extension of slavery, but whose fidelity to the constitution of the united states made them disapprove of any attempt by the federal government to interfere with slavery in the states where it already existed, would acquire feelings of another kind when the constitution had been shaken off by armed rebellion, would determine to have done for ever with the accursed thing, and would join their banner with that of the noble body of abolitionists, of whom garrison was the courageous and single-minded apostle, wendell phillips the eloquent orator, and john brown the voluntary martyr.[ ] then, too, the whole mind of the united states would be let loose from its bonds, no longer corrupted by the supposed necessity of apologizing to foreigners for the most flagrant of all possible violations of the free principles of their constitution; while the tendency of a fixed state of society to stereotype a set of national opinions would be at least temporarily checked, and the national mind would become more open to the recognition of whatever was bad in either the institutions or the customs of the people. these hopes, so far as related to slavery, have been completely, and in other respects are in course of being progressively realized. foreseeing from the first this double set of consequences from the success or failure of the rebellion, it may be imagined with what feelings i contemplated the rush of nearly the whole upper and middle classes of my own country even those who passed for liberals, into a furious pro-southern partisanship: the working classes, and some of the literary and scientific men, being almost the sole exceptions to the general frenzy. i never before felt so keenly how little permanent improvement had reached the minds of our influential classes, and of what small value were the liberal opinions they had got into the habit of professing. none of the continental liberals committed the same frightful mistake. but the generation which had extorted negro emancipation from our west india planters had passed away; another had succeeded which had not learnt by many years of discussion and exposure to feel strongly the enormities of slavery; and the inattention habitual with englishmen to whatever is going on in the world outside their own island, made them profoundly ignorant of all the antecedents of the struggle, insomuch that it was not generally believed in england, for the first year or two of the war, that the quarrel was one of slavery. there were men of high principle and unquestionable liberality of opinion, who thought it a dispute about tariffs, or assimilated it to the cases in which they were accustomed to sympathize, of a people struggling for independence. it was my obvious duty to be one of the small minority who protested against this perverted state of public opinion. i was not the first to protest. it ought to be remembered to the honour of mr. hughes and of mr. ludlow, that they, by writings published at the very beginning of the struggle, began the protestation. mr. bright followed in one of the most powerful of his speeches, followed by others not less striking. i was on the point of adding my words to theirs, when there occurred, towards the end of , the seizure of the southern envoys on board a british vessel, by an officer of the united states. even english forgetfulness has not yet had time to lose all remembrance of the explosion of feeling in england which then burst forth, the expectation, prevailing for some weeks, of war with the united states, and the warlike preparations actually commenced on this side. while this state of things lasted, there was no chance of a hearing for anything favourable to the american cause; and, moreover, i agreed with those who thought the act unjustifiable, and such as to require that england should demand its disavowal. when the disavowal came, and the alarm of war was over, i wrote, in january, , the paper, in _fraser's magazine_, entitled "the contest in america," [and i shall always feel grateful to my daughter that her urgency prevailed on me to write it when i did, for we were then on the point of setting out for a journey of some months in greece and turkey, and but for her, i should have deferred writing till our return.] written and published when it was, this paper helped to encourage those liberals who had felt overborne by the tide of illiberal opinion, and to form in favour of the good cause a nucleus of opinion which increased gradually, and, after the success of the north began to seem probable, rapidly. when we returned from our journey i wrote a second article, a review of professor cairnes' book, published in the _westminster review_. england is paying the penalty, in many uncomfortable ways, of the durable resentment which her ruling classes stirred up in the united states by their ostentatious wishes for the ruin of america as a nation; they have reason to be thankful that a few, if only a few, known writers and speakers, standing firmly by the americans in the time of their greatest difficulty, effected a partial diversion of these bitter feelings, and made great britain not altogether odious to the americans. this duty having been performed, my principal occupation for the next two years was on subjects not political. the publication of mr. austin's _lectures on jurisprudence_ after his decease, gave me an opportunity of paying a deserved tribute to his memory, and at the same time expressing some thoughts on a subject on which, in my old days of benthamism, i had bestowed much study. but the chief product of those years was the _examination of sir william hamilton's philosophy_. his _lectures_, published in and , i had read towards the end of the latter year, with a half-formed intention of giving an account of them in a review, but i soon found that this would be idle, and that justice could not be done to the subject in less than a volume. i had then to consider whether it would be advisable that i myself should attempt such a performance. on consideration, there seemed to be strong reasons for doing so. i was greatly disappointed with the _lectures_. i read them, certainly, with no prejudice against sir william hamilton. i had up to that time deferred the study of his _notes to reid_ on account of their unfinished state, but i had not neglected his _discussions in philosophy_; and though i knew that his general mode of treating the facts of mental philosophy differed from that of which i most approved, yet his vigorous polemic against the later transcendentalists, and his strenuous assertion of some important principles, especially the relativity of human knowledge, gave me many points of sympathy with his opinions, and made me think that genuine psychology had considerably more to gain than to lose by his authority and reputation. his _lectures_ and the _dissertations on reid_ dispelled this illusion: and even the _discussions_, read by the light which these throw on them, lost much of their value. i found that the points of apparent agreement between his opinions and mine were more verbal than real; that the important philosophical principles which i had thought he recognised, were so explained away by him as to mean little or nothing, or were continually lost sight of, and doctrines entirely inconsistent with them were taught in nearly every part of his philosophical writings. my estimation of him was therefore so far altered, that instead of regarding him as occupying a kind of intermediate position between the two rival philosophies, holding some of the principles of both, and supplying to both powerful weapons of attack and defence, i now looked upon him as one of the pillars, and in this country from his high philosophical reputation the chief pillar, of that one of the two which seemed to me to be erroneous. now, the difference between these two schools of philosophy, that of intuition, and that of experience and association, is not a mere matter of abstract speculation; it is full of practical consequences, and lies at the foundation of all the greatest differences of practical opinion in an age of progress. the practical reformer has continually to demand that changes be made in things which are supported by powerful and widely-spread feelings, or to question the apparent necessity and indefeasibleness of established facts; and it is often an indispensable part of his argument to show, how those powerful feelings had their origin, and how those facts came to seem necessary and indefeasible. there is therefore a natural hostility between him and a philosophy which discourages the explanation of feelings and moral facts by circumstances and association, and prefers to treat them as ultimate elements of human nature; a philosophy which is addicted to holding up favourite doctrines as intuitive truths, and deems intuition to be the voice of nature and of god, speaking with an authority higher than that of our reason. in particular, i have long felt that the prevailing tendency to regard all the marked distinctions of human character as innate, and in the main indelible, and to ignore the irresistible proofs that by far the greater part of those differences, whether between individuals, races, or sexes, are such as not only might but naturally would be produced by differences in circumstances, is one of the chief hindrances to the rational treatment of great social questions, and one of the greatest stumbling blocks to human improvement. this tendency has its source in the intuitional metaphysics which characterized the reaction of the nineteenth century against the eighteenth, and it is a tendency so agreeable to human indolence, as well as to conservative interests generally, that unless attacked at the very root, it is sure to be carried to even a greater length than is really justified by the more moderate forms of the intuitional philosophy. that philosophy not always in its moderate forms, had ruled the thought of europe for the greater part of a century. my father's _analysis of the mind_, my own _logic_, and professor bain's great treatise, had attempted to re-introduce a better mode of philosophizing, latterly with quite as much success as could be expected; but i had for some time felt that the mere contrast of the two philosophies was not enough, that there ought to be a hand-to-hand fight between them, that controversial as well as expository writings were needed, and that the time was come when such controversy would be useful. considering, then, the writings and fame of sir w. hamilton as the great fortress of the intuitional philosophy in this country, a fortress the more formidable from the imposing character, and the in many respects great personal merits and mental endowments, of the man, i thought it might be a real service to philosophy to attempt a thorough examination of all his most important doctrines, and an estimate of his general claims to eminence as a philosopher; and i was confirmed in this resolution by observing that in the writings of at least one, and him one of the ablest, of sir w. hamilton's followers, his peculiar doctrines were made the justification of a view of religion which i hold to be profoundly immoral--that it is our duty to bow down in worship before a being whose moral attributes are affirmed to be unknowable by us, and to be perhaps extremely different from those which, when we are speaking of our fellow-creatures, we call by the same names. as i advanced in my task, the damage to sir w. hamilton's reputation became greater than i at first expected, through the almost incredible multitude of inconsistencies which showed themselves on comparing different passages with one another. it was my business, however, to show things exactly as they were, and i did not flinch from it. i endeavoured always to treat the philosopher whom i criticized with the most scrupulous fairness; and i knew that he had abundance of disciples and admirers to correct me if i ever unintentionally did him injustice. many of them accordingly have answered me, more or less elaborately, and they have pointed out oversights and misunderstandings, though few in number, and mostly very unimportant in substance. such of those as had (to my knowledge) been pointed out before the publication of the latest edition (at present the third) have been corrected there, and the remainder of the criticisms have been, as far as seemed necessary, replied to. on the whole, the book has done its work: it has shown the weak side of sir william hamilton, and has reduced his too great philosophical reputation within more moderate bounds; and by some of its discussions, as well as by two expository chapters, on the notions of matter and of mind, it has perhaps thrown additional light on some of the disputed questions in the domain of psychology and metaphysics. after the completion of the book on hamilton, i applied myself to a task which a variety of reasons seemed to render specially incumbent upon me; that of giving an account, and forming an estimate, of the doctrines of auguste comte. i had contributed more than any one else to make his speculations known in england, and, in consequence chiefly of what i had said of him in my _logic_, he had readers and admirers among thoughtful men on this side of the channel at a time when his name had not yet in france emerged from obscurity. so unknown and unappreciated was he at the time when my _logic_ was written and published, that to criticize his weak points might well appear superfluous, while it was a duty to give as much publicity as one could to the important contributions he had made to philosophic thought. at the time, however, at which i have now arrived, this state of affairs had entirely changed. his name, at least, was known almost universally, and the general character of his doctrines very widely. he had taken his place in the estimation both of friends and opponents, as one of the conspicuous figures in the thought of the age. the better parts of his speculations had made great progress in working their way into those minds, which, by their previous culture and tendencies, were fitted to receive them: under cover of those better parts those of a worse character, greatly developed and added to in his later writings, had also made some way, having obtained active and enthusiastic adherents, some of them of no inconsiderable personal merit, in england, france, and other countries. these causes not only made it desirable that some one should undertake the task of sifting what is good from what is bad in m. comte's speculations, but seemed to impose on myself in particular a special obligation to make the attempt. this i accordingly did in two essays, published in successive numbers of the _westminster review_, and reprinted in a small volume under the title _auguste comte and positivism_. the writings which i have now mentioned, together with a small number of papers in periodicals which i have not deemed worth preserving, were the whole of the products of my activity as a writer during the years from to . in the early part of the last-mentioned year, in compliance with a wish frequently expressed to me by working men, i published cheap people's editions of those of my writings which seemed the most likely to find readers among the working classes; viz, _principles of political economy_, _liberty_, and _representative government_. this was a considerable sacrifice of my pecuniary interest, especially as i resigned all idea of deriving profit from the cheap editions, and after ascertaining from my publishers the lowest price which they thought would remunerate them on the usual terms of an equal division of profits, i gave up my half share to enable the price to be fixed still lower. to the credit of messrs. longman they fixed, unasked, a certain number of years after which the copyright and stereotype plates were to revert to me, and a certain number of copies after the sale of which i should receive half of any further profit. this number of copies (which in the case of the _political economy_ was , ) has for some time been exceeded, and the people's editions have begun to yield me a small but unexpected pecuniary return, though very far from an equivalent for the diminution of profit from the library editions. in this summary of my outward life i have now arrived at the period at which my tranquil and retired existence as a writer of books was to be exchanged for the less congenial occupation of a member of the house of commons. the proposal made to me, early in , by some electors of westminster, did not present the idea to me for the first time. it was not even the first offer i had received, for, more than ten years previous, in consequence of my opinions on the irish land question, mr. lucas and mr. duffy, in the name of the popular party in ireland, offered to bring me into parliament for an irish county, which they could easily have done: but the incompatibility of a seat in parliament with the office i then held in the india house, precluded even consideration of the proposal. after i had quitted the india house, several of my friends would gladly have seen me a member of parliament; but there seemed no probability that the idea would ever take any practical shape. i was convinced that no numerous or influential portion of any electoral body, really wished to be represented by a person of my opinions; and that one who possessed no local connection or popularity, and who did not choose to stand as the mere organ of a party had small chance of being elected anywhere unless through the expenditure of money. now it was, and is, my fixed conviction, that a candidate ought not to incur one farthing of expense for undertaking a public duty. such of the lawful expenses of an election as have no special reference to any particular candidate, ought to be borne as a public charge, either by the state or by the locality. what has to be done by the supporters of each candidate in order to bring his claims properly before the constituency, should be done by unpaid agency or by voluntary subscription. if members of the electoral body, or others, are willing to subscribe money of their own for the purpose of bringing, by lawful means, into parliament some one who they think would be useful there, no one is entitled to object: but that the expense, or any part of it, should fall on the candidate, is fundamentally wrong; because it amounts in reality to buying his seat. even on the most favourable supposition as to the mode in which the money is expended, there is a legitimate suspicion that any one who gives money for leave to undertake a public trust, has other than public ends to promote by it; and (a consideration of the greatest importance) the cost of elections, when borne by the candidates, deprives the nation of the services, as members of parliament, of all who cannot or will not afford to incur a heavy expense. i do not say that, so long as there is scarcely a chance for an independent candidate to come into parliament without complying with this vicious practice, it must always be morally wrong in him to spend money, provided that no part of it is either directly or indirectly employed in corruption. but, to justify it, he ought to be very certain that he can be of more use to his country as a member of parliament than in any other mode which is open to him; and this assurance, in my own case, i did not feel. it was by no means clear to me that i could do more to advance the public objects which had a claim on my exertions, from the benches of the house of commons, than from the simple position of a writer. i felt, therefore, that i ought not to seek election to parliament, much less to expend any money in procuring it. but the conditions of the question were considerably altered when a body of electors sought me out, and spontaneously offered to bring me forward as their candidate. if it should appear, on explanation, that they persisted in this wish, knowing my opinions, and accepting the only conditions on which i could conscientiously serve, it was questionable whether this was not one of those calls upon a member of the community by his fellow-citizens, which he was scarcely justified in rejecting. i therefore put their disposition to the proof by one of the frankest explanations ever tendered, i should think, to an electoral body by a candidate. i wrote, in reply to the offer, a letter for publication, saying that i had no personal wish to be a member of parliament, that i thought a candidate ought neither to canvass nor to incur any expense, and that i could not consent to do either. i said further, that if elected, i could not undertake to give any of my time and labour to their local interests. with respect to general politics, i told them without reserve, what i thought on a number of important subjects on which they had asked my opinion: and one of these being the suffrage, i made known to them, among other things, my conviction (as i was bound to do, since i intended, if elected, to act on it), that women were entitled to representation in parliament on the same terms with men. it was the first time, doubtless, that such a doctrine had ever been mentioned to english electors; and the fact that i was elected after proposing it, gave the start to the movement which has since become so vigorous, in favour of women's suffrage. nothing, at the time, appeared more unlikely than that a candidate (if candidate i could be called) whose professions and conduct set so completely at defiance all ordinary notions of electioneering, should nevertheless be elected. a well-known literary man[, who was also a man of society,] was heard to say that the almighty himself would have no chance of being elected on such a programme. i strictly adhered to it, neither spending money nor canvassing, nor did i take any personal part in the election, until about a week preceding the day of nomination, when i attended a few public meetings to state my principles and give to any questions which the electors might exercise their just right of putting to me for their own guidance; answers as plain and unreserved as my address. on one subject only, my religious opinions, i announced from the beginning that i would answer no questions; a determination which appeared to be completely approved by those who attended the meetings. my frankness on all other subjects on which i was interrogated, evidently did me far more good than my answers, whatever they might be, did harm. among the proofs i received of this, one is too remarkable not to be recorded. in the pamphlet, _thoughts on parliamentary reform_, i had said, rather bluntly, that the working classes, though differing from those of some other countries, in being ashamed of lying, are yet generally liars. this passage some opponent got printed in a placard, which was handed to me at a meeting, chiefly composed of the working classes, and i was asked whether i had written and published it. i at once answered "i did." scarcely were these two words out of my mouth, when vehement applause resounded through the whole meeting. it was evident that the working people were so accustomed to expect equivocation and evasion from those who sought their suffrages, that when they found, instead of that, a direct avowal of what was likely to be disagreeable to them, instead of being affronted, they concluded at once that this was a person whom they could trust. a more striking instance never came under my notice of what, i believe, is the experience of those who best know the working classes, that the most essential of all recommendations to their favour is that of complete straightforwardness; its presence outweighs in their minds very strong objections, while no amount of other qualities will make amends for its apparent absence. the first working man who spoke after the incident i have mentioned (it was mr. odger) said, that the working classes had no desire not to be told of their faults; they wanted friends, not flatterers, and felt under obligation to any one who told them anything in themselves which he sincerely believed to require amendment. and to this the meeting heartily responded. had i been defeated in the election, i should still have had no reason to regret the contact it had brought me into with large bodies of my countrymen; which not only gave me much new experience, but enabled me to scatter my political opinions rather widely, and, by making me known in many quarters where i had never before been heard of, increased the number of my readers, and the presumable influence of my writings. these latter effects were of course produced in a still greater degree, when, as much to my surprise as to that of any one, i was returned to parliament by a majority of some hundreds over my conservative competitor. i was a member of the house during the three sessions of the parliament which passed the reform bill; during which time parliament was necessarily my main occupation, except during the recess. i was a tolerably frequent speaker, sometimes of prepared speeches, sometimes extemporaneously. but my choice of occasions was not such as i should have made if my leading object had been parliamentary influence. when i had gained the ear of the house, which i did by a successful speech on mr. gladstone's reform bill, the idea i proceeded on was that when anything was likely to be as well done, or sufficiently well done, by other people, there was no necessity for me to meddle with it. as i, therefore, in general reserved myself for work which no others were likely to do, a great proportion of my appearances were on points on which the bulk of the liberal party, even the advanced portion of it, either were of a different opinion from mine, or were comparatively indifferent. several of my speeches, especially one against the motion for the abolition of capital punishment, and another in favour of resuming the right of seizing enemies' goods in neutral vessels, were opposed to what then was, and probably still is, regarded as the advanced liberal opinion. my advocacy of women's suffrage and of personal representation, were at the time looked upon by many as whims of my own; but the great progress since made by those opinions, and especially the response made from almost all parts of the kingdom to the demand for women's suffrage, fully justified the timeliness of those movements, and have made what was undertaken as a moral and social duty, a personal success. another duty which was particularly incumbent on me as one of the metropolitan members, was the attempt to obtain a municipal government for the metropolis: but on that subject the indifference of the house of commons was such that i found hardly any help or support within its walls. on this subject, however, i was the organ of an active and intelligent body of persons outside, with whom, and not with me, the scheme originated, and who carried on all the agitation on the subject and drew up the bills. my part was to bring in bills already prepared, and to sustain the discussion of them during the short time they were allowed to remain before the house; after having taken an active part in the work of a committee presided over by mr. ayrton, which sat through the greater part of the session of , to take evidence on the subject. the very different position in which the question now stands ( ) may justly be attributed to the preparation which went on during those years, and which produced but little visible effect at the time; but all questions on which there are strong private interests on one side, and only the public good on the other, have a similar period of incubation to go through. the same idea, that the use of my being in parliament was to do work which others were not able or not willing to do, made me think it my duty to come to the front in defence of advanced liberalism on occasions when the obloquy to be encountered was such as most of the advanced liberals in the house, preferred not to incur. my first vote in the house was in support of an amendment in favour of ireland, moved by an irish member, and for which only five english and scotch votes were given, including my own: the other four were mr. bright, mr. mclaren, mr. t.b. potter, and mr. hadfield. and the second speech i delivered[ ] was on the bill to prolong the suspension of the habeas corpus in ireland. in denouncing, on this occasion, the english mode of governing ireland, i did no more than the general opinion of england now admits to have been just; but the anger against fenianism was then in all its freshness; any attack on what fenians attacked was looked upon as an apology for them; and i was so unfavourably received by the house, that more than one of my friends advised me (and my own judgment agreed with the advice) to wait, before speaking again, for the favourable opportunity that would be given by the first great debate on the reform bill. during this silence, many flattered themselves that i had turned out a failure, and that they should not be troubled with me any more. perhaps their uncomplimentary comments may, by the force of reaction, have helped to make my speech on the reform bill the success it was. my position in the house was further improved by a speech in which i insisted on the duty of paying off the national debt before our coal supplies are exhausted, and by an ironical reply to some of the tory leaders who had quoted against me certain passages of my writings, and called me to account for others, especially for one in my _considerations on representative government_, which said that the conservative party was, by the law of its composition, the stupidest party. they gained nothing by drawing attention to the passage, which up to that time had not excited any notice, but the _sobriquet_ of "the stupid party" stuck to them for a considerable time afterwards. having now no longer any apprehension of not being listened to, i confined myself, as i have since thought too much, to occasions on which my services seemed specially needed, and abstained more than enough from speaking on the great party questions. with the exception of irish questions, and those which concerned the working classes, a single speech on mr. disraeli's reform bill was nearly all that i contributed to the great decisive debates of the last two of my three sessions. i have, however, much satisfaction in looking back to the part i took on the two classes of subjects just mentioned. with regard to the working classes, the chief topic of my speech on mr. gladstone's reform bill was the assertion of their claims to the suffrage. a little later, after the resignation of lord russell's ministry and the succession of a tory government, came the attempt of the working classes to hold a meeting in hyde park, their exclusion by the police, and the breaking down of the park railing by the crowd. though mr. beales and the leaders of the working men had retired under protest before this took place, a scuffle ensued in which many innocent persons were maltreated by the police, and the exasperation of the working men was extreme. they showed a determination to make another attempt at a meeting in the park, to which many of them would probably have come armed; the government made military preparations to resist the attempt, and something very serious seemed impending. at this crisis i really believe that i was the means of preventing much mischief. i had in my place in parliament taken the side of the working men, and strongly censured the conduct of the government. i was invited, with several other radical members, to a conference with the leading members of the council of the reform league; and the task fell chiefly upon myself, of persuading them to give up the hyde park project, and hold their meeting elsewhere. it was not mr. beales and colonel dickson who needed persuading; on the contrary, it was evident that these gentlemen had already exerted their influence in the same direction, thus far without success. it was the working men who held out, and so bent were they on their original scheme, that i was obliged to have recourse to _les grands moyens_. i told them that a proceeding which would certainly produce a collision with the military, could only be justifiable on two conditions: if the position of affairs had become such that a revolution was desirable, and if they thought themselves able to accomplish one. to this argument, after considerable discussion, they at last yielded: and i was able to inform mr. walpole that their intention was given up. i shall never forget the depth of his relief or the warmth of his expressions of gratitude. after the working men had conceded so much to me, i felt bound to comply with their request that i would attend and speak at their meeting at the agricultural hall; the only meeting called by the reform league which i ever attended. i had always declined being a member of the league, on the avowed ground that i did not agree in its programme of manhood suffrage and the ballot: from the ballot i dissented entirely; and i could not consent to hoist the flag of manhood suffrage, even on the assurance that the exclusion of women was not intended to be implied; since if one goes beyond what can be immediately carried, and professes to take one's stand on a principle, one should go the whole length of the principle. i have entered thus particularly into this matter because my conduct on this occasion gave great displeasure to the tory and tory-liberal press, who have charged me ever since with having shown myself, in the trials of public life, intemperate and passionate. i do not know what they expected from me; but they had reason to be thankful to me if they knew from what i had, in all probability preserved them. and i do not believe it could have been done, at that particular juncture, by any one else. no other person, i believe, had at that moment the necessary influence for restraining the working classes, except mr. gladstone and mr. bright, neither of whom was available: mr. gladstone, for obvious reasons; mr. bright because he was out of town. when, some time later, the tory government brought in a bill to prevent public meetings in the parks, i not only spoke strongly in opposition to it, but formed one of a number of advanced liberals, who, aided by the very late period of the session, succeeded in defeating the bill by what is called talking it out. it has not since been renewed. on irish affairs also i felt bound to take a decided part. i was one of the foremost in the deputation of members of parliament who prevailed on lord derby to spare the life of the condemned fenian insurgent, general burke. the church question was so vigorously handled by the leaders of the party, in the session of , as to require no more from me than an emphatic adhesion: but the land question was by no means in so advanced a position; the superstitions of landlordism had up to that time been little challenged, especially in parliament, and the backward state of the question, so far as concerned the parliamentary mind, was evidenced by the extremely mild measure brought in by lord russell's government in , which nevertheless could not be carried. on that bill i delivered one of my most careful speeches, in which i attempted to lay down some of the principles of the subject, in a manner calculated less to stimulate friends, than to conciliate and convince opponents. the engrossing subject of parliamentary reform prevented either this bill, or one of a similar character brought in by lord derby's government, from being carried through. they never got beyond the second reading. meanwhile the signs of irish disaffection had become much more decided; the demand for complete separation between the two countries had assumed a menacing aspect, and there were few who did not feel that if there was still any chance of reconciling ireland to the british connection, it could only be by the adoption of much more thorough reforms in the territorial and social relations of the country, than had yet been contemplated. the time seemed to me to have come when it would be useful to speak out my whole mind; and the result was my pamphlet _england and ireland_, which was written in the winter of , and published shortly before the commencement of the session of . the leading features of the pamphlet were, on the one hand, an argument to show the undesirableness, for ireland as well as england, of separation between the countries, and on the other, a proposal for settling the land question by giving to the existing tenants a permanent tenure, at a fixed rent, to be assessed after due inquiry by the state. the pamphlet was not popular, except in ireland, as i did not expect it to be. but, if no measure short of that which i proposed would do full justice to ireland, or afford a prospect of conciliating the mass of the irish people, the duty of proposing it was imperative; while if, on the other hand, there was any intermediate course which had a claim to a trial, i well knew that to propose something which would be called extreme, was the true way not to impede but to facilitate a more moderate experiment. it is most improbable that a measure conceding so much to the tenantry as mr. gladstone's irish land bill, would have been proposed by a government, or could have been carried through parliament, unless the british public had been led to perceive that a case might be made, and perhaps a party formed, for a measure considerably stronger. it is the character of the british people, or at least of the higher and middle classes who pass muster for the british people, that to induce them to approve of any change, it is necessary that they should look upon it as a middle course: they think every proposal extreme and violent unless they hear of some other proposal going still farther, upon which their antipathy to extreme views may discharge itself. so it proved in the present instance; my proposal was condemned, but any scheme for irish land reform short of mine, came to be thought moderate by comparison. i may observe that the attacks made on my plan usually gave a very incorrect idea of its nature. it was usually discussed as a proposal that the state should buy up the land and become the universal landlord; though in fact it only offered to each individual landlord this as an alternative, if he liked better to sell his estate than to retain it on the new conditions; and i fully anticipated that most landlords would continue to prefer the position of landowners to that of government annuitants, and would retain their existing relation to their tenants, often on more indulgent terms than the full rents on which the compensation to be given them by government would have been based. this and many other explanations i gave in a speech on ireland, in the debate on mr. maguire's resolution, early in the session of . a corrected report of this speech, together with my speech on mr. fortescue's bill, has been published (not by me, but with my permission) in ireland. another public duty, of a most serious kind, it was my lot to have to perform, both in and out of parliament, during these years. a disturbance in jamaica, provoked in the first instance by injustice, and exaggerated by rage and panic into a premeditated rebellion, had been the motive or excuse for taking hundreds of innocent lives by military violence, or by sentence of what were called courts-martial, continuing for weeks after the brief disturbance had been put down; with many added atrocities of destruction of property logging women as well as men, and a general display of the brutal recklessness which usually prevails when fire and sword are let loose. the perpetrators of those deeds were defended and applauded in england by the same kind of people who had so long upheld negro slavery: and it seemed at first as if the british nation was about to incur the disgrace of letting pass without even a protest, excesses of authority as revolting as any of those for which, when perpetrated by the instruments of other governments, englishmen can hardly find terms sufficient to express their abhorrence. after a short time, however, an indignant feeling was roused: a voluntary association formed itself under the name of the jamaica committee, to take such deliberation and action as the case might admit of, and adhesions poured in from all parts of the country. i was abroad at the time, but i sent in my name to the committee as soon as i heard of it, and took an active part in the proceedings from the time of my return. there was much more at stake than only justice to the negroes, imperative as was that consideration. the question was, whether the british dependencies, and eventually, perhaps, great britain itself, were to be under the government of law, or of military licence; whether the lives and persons of british subjects are at the mercy of any two or three officers however raw and inexperienced or reckless and brutal, whom a panic-stricken governor, or other functionary, may assume the right to constitute into a so-called court-martial. this question could only be decided by an appeal to the tribunals; and such an appeal the committee determined to make. their determination led to a change in the chairmanship of the committee, as the chairman, mr. charles buxton, thought it not unjust indeed, but inexpedient, to prosecute governor eyre and his principal subordinates in a criminal court: but a numerously attended general meeting of the association having decided this point against him, mr. buxton withdrew from the committee, though continuing to work in the cause, and i was, quite unexpectedly on my own part, proposed and elected chairman. it became, in consequence, my duty to represent the committee in the house of commons, sometimes by putting questions to the government, sometimes as the recipient of questions, more or less provocative, addressed by individual members to myself; but especially as speaker in the important debate originated in the session of , by mr. buxton: and the speech i then delivered is that which i should probably select as the best of my speeches in parliament.[ ] for more than two years we carried on the combat, trying every avenue legally open to us, to the courts of criminal justice. a bench of magistrates in one of the most tory counties in england dismissed our case: we were more successful before the magistrates at bow street; which gave an opportunity to the lord chief justice of the queen's bench, sir alexander cockburn, for delivering his celebrated charge, which settled the law of the question in favour of liberty, as far as it is in the power of a judge's charge to settle it. there, however, our success ended, for the old bailey grand jury by throwing out our bill prevented the case from coming to trial. it was clear that to bring english functionaries to the bar of a criminal court for abuses of power committed against negroes and mulattoes was not a popular proceeding with the english middle classes. we had, however, redeemed, so far as lay in us, the character of our country, by showing that there was at any rate a body of persons determined to use all the means which the law afforded to obtain justice for the injured. we had elicited from the highest criminal judge in the nation an authoritative declaration that the law was what we maintained it to be; and we had given an emphatic warning to those who might be tempted to similar guilt hereafter, that, though they might escape the actual sentence of a criminal tribunal, they were not safe against being put to some trouble and expense in order to avoid it. colonial governors and other persons in authority, will have a considerable motive to stop short of such extremities in future. as a matter of curiosity i kept some specimens of the abusive letters, almost all of them anonymous, which i received while these proceedings were going on. they are evidence of the sympathy felt with the brutalities in jamaica by the brutal part of the population at home. they graduated from coarse jokes, verbal and pictorial, up to threats of assassination. among other matters of importance in which i took an active part, but which excited little interest in the public, two deserve particular mention. i joined with several other independent liberals in defeating an extradition bill introduced at the very end of the session of , and by which, though surrender avowedly for political offences was not authorized, political refugees, if charged by a foreign government with acts which are necessarily incident to all attempts at insurrection, would have been surrendered to be dealt with by the criminal courts of the government against which they had rebelled: thus making the british government an accomplice in the vengeance of foreign despotisms. the defeat of this proposal led to the appointment of a select committee (in which i was included), to examine and report on the whole subject of extradition treaties; and the result was, that in the extradition act which passed through parliament after i had ceased to be a member, opportunity is given to any one whose extradition is demanded, of being heard before an english court of justice to prove that the offence with which he is charged, is really political. the cause of european freedom has thus been saved from a serious misfortune, and our own country from a great iniquity. the other subject to be mentioned is the fight kept up by a body of advanced liberals in the session of , on the bribery bill of mr. disraeli's government, in which i took a very active part. i had taken counsel with several of those who had applied their minds most carefully to the details of the subject--mr. w.d. christie, serjeant pulling, mr. chadwick--as well as bestowed much thought of my own, for the purpose of framing such amendments and additional clauses as might make the bill really effective against the numerous modes of corruption, direct and indirect, which might otherwise, as there was much reason to fear, be increased instead of diminished by the reform act. we also aimed at engrafting on the bill, measures for diminishing the mischievous burden of what are called the legitimate expenses of elections. among our many amendments, was that of mr. fawcett for making the returning officer's expenses a charge on the rates, instead of on the candidates; another was the prohibition of paid canvassers, and the limitation of paid agents to one for each candidate; a third was the extension of the precautions and penalties against bribery to municipal elections, which are well known to be not only a preparatory school for bribery at parliamentary elections, but an habitual cover for it. the conservative government, however, when once they had carried the leading provision of their bill (for which i voted and spoke), the transfer of the jurisdiction in elections from the house of commons to the judges, made a determined resistance to all other improvements; and after one of our most important proposals, that of mr. fawcett, had actually obtained a majority, they summoned the strength of their party and threw out the clause in a subsequent stage. the liberal party in the house was greatly dishonoured by the conduct of many of its members in giving no help whatever to this attempt to secure the necessary conditions of an honest representation of the people. with their large majority in the house they could have carried all the amendments, or better ones if they had better to propose. but it was late in the session; members were eager to set about their preparations for the impending general election: and while some (such as sir robert anstruther) honourably remained at their post, though rival candidates were already canvassing their constituency, a much greater number placed their electioneering interests before their public duty. many liberals also looked with indifference on legislation against bribery, thinking that it merely diverted public interest from the ballot, which they considered--very mistakenly as i expect it will turn out--to be a sufficient, and the only, remedy. from these causes our fight, though kept up with great vigour for several nights, was wholly unsuccessful, and the practices which we sought to render more difficult, prevailed more widely than ever in the first general election held under the new electoral law. in the general debates on mr. disraeli's reform bill, my participation was limited to the one speech already mentioned; but i made the bill an occasion for bringing the two great improvements which remain to be made in representative government, formally before the house and the nation. one of them was personal, or, as it is called with equal propriety, proportional representation. i brought this under the consideration of the house, by an expository and argumentative speech on mr. hare's plan; and subsequently i was active in support of the very imperfect substitute for that plan, which, in a small number of constituencies, parliament was induced to adopt. this poor makeshift had scarcely any recommendation, except that it was a partial recognition of the evil which it did so little to remedy. as such, however, it was attacked by the same fallacies, and required to be defended on the same principles, as a really good measure; and its adoption in a few parliamentary elections, as well as the subsequent introduction of what is called the cumulative vote in the elections for the london school board, have had the good effect of converting the equal claim of all electors to a proportional share in the representation, from a subject of merely speculative discussion, into a question of practical politics, much sooner than would otherwise have been the case. this assertion of my opinions on personal representation cannot be credited with any considerable or visible amount of practical result. it was otherwise with the other motion which i made in the form of an amendment to the reform bill, and which was by far the most important, perhaps the only really important, public service i performed in the capacity of a member of parliament: a motion to strike out the words which were understood to limit the electoral franchise to males, and thereby to admit to the suffrage all women who, as householders or otherwise, possessed the qualification required of male electors. for women not to make their claim to the suffrage, at the time when the elective franchise was being largely extended, would have been to abjure the claim altogether; and a movement on the subject was begun in , when i presented a petition for the suffrage, signed by a considerable number of distinguished women. but it was as yet uncertain whether the proposal would obtain more than a few stray votes in the house: and when, after a debate in which the speaker's on the contrary side were conspicuous by their feebleness, the votes recorded in favour of the motion amounted to --made up by pairs and tellers to above --the surprise was general, and the encouragement great: the greater, too, because one of those who voted for the motion was mr. bright, a fact which could only be attributed to the impression made on him by the debate, as he had previously made no secret of his nonconcurrence in the proposal. [the time appeared to my daughter, miss helen taylor, to have come for forming a society for the extension of the suffrage to women. the existence of the society is due to my daughter's initiative; its constitution was planned entirely by her, and she was the soul of the movement during its first years, though delicate health and superabundant occupation made her decline to be a member of the executive committee. many distinguished members of parliament, professors, and others, and some of the most eminent women of whom the country can boast, became members of the society, a large proportion either directly or indirectly through my daughter's influence, she having written the greater number, and all the best, of the letters by which adhesions was obtained, even when those letters bore my signature. in two remarkable instances, those of miss nightingale and miss mary carpenter, the reluctance those ladies had at first felt to come forward, (for it was not on their past difference of opinion) was overcome by appeals written by my daughter though signed by me. associations for the same object were formed in various local centres, manchester, edinburgh, birmingham, bristol, and glasgow; and others which have done much valuable work for the cause. all the societies take the title of branches of the national society for women's suffrage; but each has its own governing body, and acts in complete independence of the others.] i believe i have mentioned all that is worth remembering of my proceedings in the house. but their enumeration, even if complete, would give but an inadequate idea of my occupations during that period, and especially of the time taken up by correspondence. for many years before my election to parliament, i had been continually receiving letters from strangers, mostly addressed to me as a writer on philosophy, and either propounding difficulties or communicating thoughts on subjects connected with logic or political economy. in common, i suppose, with all who are known as political economists, i was a recipient of all the shallow theories and absurd proposals by which people are perpetually endeavouring to show the way to universal wealth and happiness by some artful reorganization of the currency. when there were signs of sufficient intelligence in the writers to make it worth while attempting to put them right, i took the trouble to point out their errors, until the growth of my correspondence made it necessary to dismiss such persons with very brief answers. many, however, of the communications i received were more worthy of attention than these, and in some, oversights of detail were pointed out in my writings, which i was thus enabled to correct. correspondence of this sort naturally multiplied with the multiplication of the subjects on which i wrote, especially those of a metaphysical character. but when i became a member of parliament. i began to receive letters on private grievances and on every imaginable subject that related to any kind of public affairs, however remote from my knowledge or pursuits. it was not my constituents in westminster who laid this burthen on me: they kept with remarkable fidelity to the understanding on which i had consented to serve. i received, indeed, now and then an application from some ingenuous youth to procure for him a small government appointment; but these were few, and how simple and ignorant the writers were, was shown by the fact that the applications came in about equally whichever party was in power. my invariable answer was, that it was contrary to the principles on which i was elected to ask favours of any government. but, on the whole, hardly any part of the country gave me less trouble than my own constituents. the general mass of correspondence, however, swelled into an oppressive burthen. [at this time, and thenceforth, a great proportion of all my letters (including many which found their way into the newspapers) were not written by me but by my daughter; at first merely from her willingness to help in disposing of a mass of letters greater than i could get through without assistance, but afterwards because i thought the letters she wrote superior to mine, and more so in proportion to the difficulty and importance of the occasion. even those which i wrote myself were generally much improved by her, as is also the case with all the more recent of my prepared speeches, of which, and of some of my published writings, not a few passages, and those the most successful, were hers.] while i remained in parliament my work as an author was unavoidably limited to the recess. during that time i wrote (besides the pamphlet on ireland, already mentioned), the essay on plato, published in the _edinburgh review_, and reprinted in the third volume of _dissertations and discussions_; and the address which, conformably to custom, i delivered to the university of st. andrew's, whose students had done me the honour of electing me to the office of rector. in this discourse i gave expression to many thoughts and opinions which had been accumulating in me through life, respecting the various studies which belong to a liberal education, their uses and influences, and the mode in which they should be pursued to render their influences most beneficial. the position taken up, vindicating the high educational value alike of the old classic and the new scientific studies, on even stronger grounds than are urged by most of their advocates, and insisting that it is only the stupid inefficiency of the usual teaching which makes those studies be regarded as competitors instead of allies, was, i think, calculated, not only to aid and stimulate the improvement which has happily commenced in the national institutions for higher education, but to diffuse juster ideas than we often find, even in highly educated men, on the conditions of the highest mental cultivation. during this period also i commenced (and completed soon after i had left parliament) the performance of a duty to philosophy and to the memory of my father, by preparing and publishing an edition of the _analysis of the phenomena of the human mind_, with notes bringing up the doctrines of that admirable book to the latest improvements in science and in speculation. this was a joint undertaking: the psychological notes being furnished in about equal proportions by mr. bain and myself, while mr. grote supplied some valuable contributions on points in the history of philosophy incidentally raised, and dr. andrew findlater supplied the deficiencies in the book which had been occasioned by the imperfect philological knowledge of the time when it was written. having been originally published at a time when the current of metaphysical speculation ran in a quite opposite direction to the psychology of experience and association, the _analysis_ had not obtained the amount of immediate success which it deserved, though it had made a deep impression on many individual minds, and had largely contributed, through those minds, to create that more favourable atmosphere for the association psychology of which we now have the benefit. admirably adapted for a class book of the experience metaphysics, it only required to be enriched, and in some cases corrected, by the results of more recent labours in the same school of thought, to stand, as it now does, in company with mr. bain's treatises, at the head of the systematic works on analytic psychology. in the autumn of the parliament which passed the reform act was dissolved, and at the new election for westminster i was thrown out; not to my surprise, nor, i believe, to that of my principal supporters, though in the few days preceding the election they had become more sanguine than before. that i should not have been elected at all would not have required any explanation; what excites curiosity is that i should have been elected the first time, or, having been elected then, should have been defeated afterwards. but the efforts made to defeat me were far greater on the second occasion than on the first. for one thing, the tory government was now struggling for existence, and success in any contest was of more importance to them. then, too, all persons of tory feelings were far more embittered against me individually than on the previous occasion; many who had at first been either favourable or indifferent, were vehemently opposed to my re-election. as i had shown in my political writings that i was aware of the weak points in democratic opinions, some conservatives, it seems, had not been without hopes of finding me an opponent of democracy: as i was able to see the conservative side of the question, they presumed that, like them, i could not see any other side. yet if they had really read my writings, they would have known that after giving full weight to all that appeared to me well grounded in the arguments against democracy, i unhesitatingly decided in its favour, while recommending that it should be accompanied by such institutions as were consistent with its principle and calculated to ward off its inconveniences: one of the chief of these remedies being proportional representation, on which scarcely any of the conservatives gave me any support. some tory expectations appear to have been founded on the approbation i had expressed of plural voting, under certain conditions: and it has been surmised that the suggestion of this sort made in one of the resolutions which mr. disraeli introduced into the house preparatory to his reform bill (a suggestion which meeting with no favour, he did not press), may have been occasioned by what i had written on the point: but if so, it was forgotten that i had made it an express condition that the privilege of a plurality of votes should be annexed to education, not to property, and even so, had approved of it only on the supposition of universal suffrage. how utterly inadmissible such plural voting would be under the suffrage given by the present reform act, is proved, to any who could otherwise doubt it, by the very small weight which the working classes are found to possess in elections, even under the law which gives no more votes to any one elector than to any other. while i thus was far more obnoxious to the tory interest, and to many conservative liberals than i had formerly been, the course i pursued in parliament had by no means been such as to make liberals generally at all enthusiastic in my support. it has already been mentioned, how large a proportion of my prominent appearances had been on questions on which i differed from most of the liberal party, or about which they cared little, and how few occasions there had been on which the line i took was such as could lead them to attach any great value to me as an organ of their opinions. i had moreover done things which had excited, in many minds, a personal prejudice against me. many were offended by what they called the persecution of mr. eyre: and still greater offence was taken at my sending a subscription to the election expenses of mr. bradlaugh. having refused to be at any expense for my own election, and having had all its expenses defrayed by others, i felt under a peculiar obligation to subscribe in my turn where funds were deficient for candidates whose election was desirable. i accordingly sent subscriptions to nearly all the working class candidates, and among others to mr. bradlaugh. he had the support of the working classes; having heard him speak, i knew him to be a man of ability and he had proved that he was the reverse of a demagogue, by placing himself in strong opposition to the prevailing opinion of the democratic party on two such important subjects as malthusianism and personal representation. men of this sort, who, while sharing the democratic feelings of the working classes, judged political questions for themselves, and had courage to assert their individual convictions against popular opposition, were needed, as it seemed to me, in parliament, and i did not think that mr. bradlaugh's anti-religious opinions (even though he had been intemperate in the expression of them) ought to exclude him. in subscribing, however, to his election, i did what would have been highly imprudent if i had been at liberty to consider only the interests of my own re-election; and, as might be expected, the utmost possible use, both fair and unfair, was made of this act of mine to stir up the electors of westminster against me. to these various causes, combined with an unscrupulous use of the usual pecuniary and other influences on the side of my tory competitor, while none were used on my side, it is to be ascribed that i failed at my second election after having succeeded at the first. no sooner was the result of the election known than i received three or four invitations to become a candidate for other constituencies, chiefly counties; but even if success could have been expected, and this without expense, i was not disposed to deny myself the relief of returning to private life. i had no cause to feel humiliated at my rejection by the electors; and if i had, the feeling would have been far outweighed by the numerous expressions of regret which i received from all sorts of persons and places, and in a most marked degree from those members of the liberal party in parliament, with whom i had been accustomed to act. since that time little has occurred which there is need to commemorate in this place. i returned to my old pursuits and to the enjoyment of a country life in the south of europe, alternating twice a year with a residence of some weeks or months in the neighbourhood of london. i have written various articles in periodicals (chiefly in my friend mr. morley's _fortnightly review_), have made a small number of speeches on public occasions, especially at the meetings of the women's suffrage society, have published the _subjection of women_, written some years before, with some additions [by my daughter and myself,] and have commenced the preparation of matter for future books, of which it will be time to speak more particularly if i live to finish them. here, therefore, for the present, this memoir may close. notes: [ ]in a subsequent stage of boyhood, when these exercises had ceased to be compulsory, like most youthful writers i wrote tragedies; under the inspiration not so much of shakspeare as of joanna baillie, whose _constantine paleologus_ in particular appeared to me one of the most glorious of human compositions. i still think it one of the best dramas of the last two centuries. [ ] the continuation of this article in the second number of the _review_ was written by me under my father's eye, and (except as practice in composition, in which respect it was, to me, more useful than anything else i ever wrote) was of little or no value. [ ] written about . [ ] the steps in my mental growth for which i was indebted to her were far from being those which a person wholly uninformed on the subject would probably suspect. it might be supposed, for instance, that my strong convictions on the complete equality in all legal, political, social, and domestic relations, which ought to exist between men and women, may have been adopted or learnt from her. this was so far from being the fact, that those convictions were among the earliest results of the application of my mind to political subjects, and the strength with which i held them was, as i believe, more than anything else, the originating cause of the interest she felt in me. what is true is that, until i knew her, the opinion was in my mind little more than an abstract principle. i saw no more reason why women should be held in legal subjection to other people, than why men should. i was certain that their interests required fully as much protection as those of men, and were quite as little likely to obtain it without an equal voice in making the laws by which they were bound. but that perception of the vast practical bearings of women's disabilities which found expression in the book on the _subjection of women_ was acquired mainly through her teaching. but for her rare knowledge of human nature and comprehension of moral and social influences, though i should doubtless have held my present opinions, i should have had a very insufficient perception of the mode in which the consequences of the inferior position of women intertwine themselves with all the evils of existing society and with all the difficulties of human improvement. i am indeed painfully conscious of how much of her best thoughts on the subject i have failed to reproduce, and how greatly that little treatise falls short of what it would have been if she had put on paper her entire mind on this question, or had lived to revise and improve, as she certainly would have done, my imperfect statement of the case. [ ] the only person from whom i received any direct assistence in the preparation of the _system of logic_ was mr. bain, since so justly celebrated for his philosophical writings. he went carefully through the manuscript before it was sent to the press, and enriched it with a great number of additional examples and illustrations from science; many of which, as well as some detached remarks of his own in confirmation of my logical views, i inserted nearly in his own words. [ ] a few dedicatory lines acknowledging what the book owed to her, were prefixed to some of the presentation copies of the _political economy_ on iets first publication. her dislike of publicity alone prevented their insertion in the other copies of the work. during the years which intervened between the commencement of my married life and the catastrophe which closed it, the principal occurrences of my outward existence (unless i count as such a first attack of the family disease, and a consequent journey of more than six months for the recovery of health, in italy, sicily, and greece) had reference to my position in the india house. in i was promoted to the rank of chief of the office in which i had served for upwards of thirty-three years. the appointment, that of examiner of india correspondence, was the highest, next to that of secretary, in the east india company's home service, involving the general superintendence of all the correspondence with the indian governments, except the military, naval, and financial. i held this office as long as it continued to exist, being a little more than two years; after which it pleased parliament, in other words lord palmerston, to put an end to the east india company as a branch of the government of india under the crown, and convert the administration of that country into a thing to be scrambled for by the second and third class of english parliamentary politicians. i was the chief manager of the resistance which the company made to their own political extinction, and to the letters and petitions i wrote for them, and the concluding chapter of my treatise on representative government, i must refer for my opinions on the folly and mischief of this ill-considered change. personally i considered myself a gainer by it, as i had given enough of my life to india, and was not unwilling to retire on the liberal compensation granted. after the change was consummated, lord stanley, the first secretary of state for india, made me the honourable offer of a seat in the council, and the proposal was subsequently renewed by the council itself, on the first occasion of its having to supply a vacancy in its own body. but the conditions of indian government under the new system made me anticipate nothing but useless vexation and waste of effort from any participation in it: and nothing that has since happened has had any tendency to make me regret my refusal. [ ] in . [ ]the saying of this true hero, after his capture, that he was worth more for hanging than any other purpose, reminds one, by its combination of wit, wisdom, and self-devotion, of sir thomas more. [ ] the first was in answer to mr. lowe's reply to mr. bright on the cattle plague bill, and was thought at the time to have helped to get rid of a provision in the government measure which would have given to landholders a second indemnity, after they had already been once indemnified for the loss of some of their cattle by the increased selling price of the remainder. [ ] among the most active members of the committee were mr. p.a. taylor, m.p., always faithful and energetic in every assertion of the principles of liberty; mr. goldwin smith, mr. frederic harrison, mr. slack, mr. chamerovzow, mr. shaen, and mr. chesson, the honorary secretary of the association. baron d'holbach a study of eighteenth century radicalism in france by max pearson cushing submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of doctor of philosophy, in the faculty of political science, columbia university new york press of the new era printing company lancaster, pa table of contents introduction. chapter i. holbach the man. early letters to john wilkes. holbach's family. relations with diderot, rousseau, hume, garrick and other important persons of the century. estimate of holbach. his character and personality. chapter ii. holbach's works. miscellaneous works. translations of german scientific works. translations of english deistical writers. boulanger's _antiquité dévoilée_. original works: _le christianisme devoilé_. _théologie portative_. _la contagion sacrée_. _essai sur les préjugés_. _le bons-sens_. chapter iii. the _système de la nature_ and its philosophy. voltaire's correspondence on the subject. goethe's sentiment. refutations and criticisms. holbach's philosophy. appendix. holbach's correspondence. five unpublished letters to john wilkes. [endnotes] bibliography. part i. editions of holbach's works in chronological order. part ii. general bibliography. baron d'holbach a une extréme justesse d'esprit il joignait une simplicité de moeurs tout-à-fait antique et patriarcale. j. a. naigeon, _journal de paris_, le fev. introduction diderot, writing to the princess dashkoff in , thus analysed the spirit of his century: chaque siècle a son esprit qui le caractérise. l'esprit du nôtre semble être celui de la liberté. la première attaque contre la superstition a été violente, sans mesure. une fois que les hommes ont osé d'une manière quelconque donner l'assaut à la barrière de la religion, cette barrière la plus formidable qui existe comme la plus respectée, il est impossible de s'arrêter. dès qu'ils ont tourné des regards menaçants contre la majesté du ciel, ils ne manqueront pas le moment d'après de les diriger contre la souveraineté de la terre. le câble qui tient et comprime l'humanité est formé de deux cordes, l'une ne peut céder sans que l'autre vienne à rompre. [endnote : ] the following study proposes to deal with this attack on religion that preceded and helped to prepare the french revolution. similar phenomena are by no means rare in the annals of history; eighteenth-century atheism, however, is of especial interest, standing as it does at the end of a long period of theological and ecclesiastical disintegration and prophesying a reconstruction of society on a purely rational and naturalistic basis. the anti-theistic movement has been so obscured by the less thoroughgoing tendency of deism and by subsequent romanticism that the real issue in the eighteenth century has been largely lost from view. hence it has seemed fit to center this study about the man who stated the situation with the most unmistakable and uncompromising clearness, and who still occupies a unique though obscure position in the history of thought. holbach has been very much neglected by writers on the eighteenth century. he has no biographer. m. walferdin wrote (in an edition of diderot's works, paris, , vol. xii p. ): "nous nous occupons depuis longtemps à rassembler les matériaux qui doivent servir à venger la mémoire du philosophe de la patrie de leibnitz, et dans l'ouvrage que nous nous proposons de publier sous le titre "d'holbach jugé par ses contemporains" nous espérons faire justement apprécier ce savant si estimable par la profondeur et la variété de ses connaissances, si précieux à sa famille et à ses amis par la pureté et la simplicité de ses moeurs, en qui la vertu était devenue une habitude et la bienfaisance un besoin." this work has never appeared and m. tourneux thinks that nothing of it was found among m. walferdin's papers. [ : ] in mr. james watson published in an english translation of the _système de la nature_, _a short sketch of the life and the writings of baron d'holbach_ by mr. julian hibbert, compiled especially for that edition from saint saurin's article in michaud's _biographie universelle_ (paris, , vol. xx, pp. - ), from barbier's _dict. des ouvrages anonymes_ (paris, ) and from the preface to the paris edition of the _système de la nature_ ( vols., mo, ). this sketch was later published separately (london, , mo, pp. ) but on account of the author's sudden death it was left unfinished and is of no value from the point of view of scholarship. another attempt to publish something on holbach was made by dr. anthony c. middleton of boston in . in the preface to his translation to the _lettres à eugenia_ he speaks of a "biographical memoir of baron d'holbach which i am now preparing for the press." if ever published at all this _memoir_ probably came to light in the _boston investigator_, a free-thinking magazine published by josiah p. mendum, cornhill, boston, but it is not to be found. mention should also be made of the fact that m. assézat intended to include in a proposed study of diderot and the philosophical movement, a chapter to be devoted to holbach and his society; but this work has never appeared. [ : ] of the two works bearing holbach's name as a title, one is a piece of libellous fiction by mme. de genlis, _les diners du baron d'holbach_ (paris, , vo), the other a romance pure and simple by f. t. claudon (paris, , vols., vo) called _le baron d'holbach_, the events of which take place largely at his house and in which he plays the rôle of a minor character. a good account of holbach, though short and incidental, is to be found in m. avézac-lavigne's _diderot et la société du baron d'holbach_ (paris, , vo), and m. armand gasté has a little book entitled _diderot et le cure de montchauvet, une mystification littéraire chez le baron d'holbach_ (paris, , vo). there are several works which devote a chapter or section to holbach. [ : ] the french critics and the histories of philosophy contain slight notices; rosenkranz's "diderot's leben" devotes a chapter to granval, holbach's country seat, and life there as described by diderot in his letters to mlle. volland; and he is included in such histories of ideas as soury, j., "bréviaire de l'histoire de matérialisme" (paris, ) and delvaille, j., _essai sur l'histoire de l'idée de progrès_ (paris, ); but nowhere else is there anything more than the merest encyclopedic account, often defective and incorrect. the sources are in a sense full and reliable for certain phases of his life and literary activity. his own publications, numbering about fifty, form the most important body of source material for the history and development of his ideas. next in importance are contemporary memoirs and letters including those of voltaire, rousseau, diderot, grimm, morellet, marmontel, mme. d'epinay, naigeon, garat, galiani, hume, garrick, wilkes, romilly and others; and scattered letters by holbach himself, largely to his english friends. in addition there is a large body of contemporary hostile criticism of his books, by voltaire, frederick ii, castillon, holland, la harpe, delisle de sales and a host of outraged ecclesiastics, so that one is well informed in regard to the scandal that his books caused at the time. out of these materials and other scattered documents and notices it is possible to reconstruct--though somewhat defectively--the figure of a man who played an important rôle in his own day; but whose name has long since lost its significance--even in the ears of scholars. it is at the suggestion of professor james harvey robinson that this reconstruction has been made. if it shall prove of any interest or value he must be credited with the initiation of the idea as well as constant aid in its realization. for rendering possible the necessary investigations, recognition is due to the administration and officers of the bibliothèque nationale, the british museum, the library of congress, the libraries of columbia and harvard universities, union and andover theological seminaries, and the public libraries of boston and new york. m. p. c. new york city, july, . chapter i. holbach, the man. paul heinrich dietrich, or as he is better known, paul-henri thiry, baron d'holbach, was born in january, , in the little village of heidelsheim (n.w. of carlsruhe) in the palatinate. of his parentage and youth nothing is known except that his father, a rich parvenu, according to rousseau, [ : ] brought him to paris at the age of twelve, where he received the greater part of his education. his father died when holbach was still a young man. it may be doubted if young holbach inherited his title and estates immediately as there was an uncle "messire francois-adam, baron d'holbach, seigneur de héeze, léende et autres lieux" who lived in the rue neuve s. augustin and died in . his funeral was held at saint-roch, his parish church, thursday, september th, where he was afterward entombed. [ : ] holbach was a student in the university of leyden in and spent a good deal of time at his uncle's estate at héeze, a little town in the province of north brabant (s.e. of eindhoven). he also traveled and studied in germany. there are two manuscript letters in the british museum (folio , pp. , , ) addressed by holbach to john wilkes, which throw some light on his school-days. it is interesting to note that most of holbach's friends were young englishmen of whom there were some twenty-five at the university of leyden at that time. [ : ] already at the age of twenty-three holbach was writing very good english, and all his life he was a friend of englishmen and english ideas. his friendship for wilkes, then a lad of nineteen, lasted all his life and increased in intimacy and dignity. the two letters following are of interest because they are the only documents we have bearing on holbach's early manhood. they reveal a certain sympathy and feeling--rather gushing to be sure--quite unlike anything in his later writings, and quite out of line with the supposedly cold temper of a materialist and an atheist. [footnote: these letters, contrary to modern usage, are printed with all the peculiarities of eighteenth century orthography. it was felt that they would lose their quaintness and charm if holbach's somewhat fantastic english were trifled with or his spelling, capitalization and punctuation modernized.] holbach to wilkes hÉeze aug. , _dearest friend_ i should not have felt by half enough the pleasure your kind letter gave me, if i had words to express it; i never doubted of your friendship, nor i hope do you know me so little as to doubt of mine, but your letter is full of such favorable sentiments to me that i must own i cannot repay them but by renewing to you the entire gift of my heart that has been yours ever since heaven favour'd me with your acquaintance. i need not tell you the sorrow our parting gave me, in vain philosophy cried aloud nature was still stronger and the philosopher was forced to yield to the friend, even now i feel the wound is not cur'd. therefore no more of that--_hope_ is my motto. telling me you are happy you make me so but in the middle of your happiness you dont forget your friend, what flattering thought to me! such are the charms of friendship every event is shar'd and nothing nor even the greatest intervals are able to interrupt the happy harmony of truly united minds. i left leyden about or days after you but before my departure i thought myself obliged to let mr dowdenwell know what you told me, he has seen the two letters mr johnson had received and i have been mediator of ye peace made betwixt the parties, i don't doubt but you have seen by this time messrs bland & weatherill who were to set out for engelland the same week i parted with them. when i was leaving leyden mr vernon happen'd to tell me he had a great mind to make a trip to spa. so my uncles' estate being on ye road i desir'd him to come along with me, he has been here a week and went on afterwards in his journey, at my arrival here, i found that general count palfi with an infinite number of military attendants had taken possession of my uncles' house, and that the thousd men lately come from germany to strengthen the allies army, commanded by count bathiani and that had left ye neighborhood of breda a few days before and was come to falkenswert (where you have past in your journey to spa) one hour from hence. prince charles arrived here the same day from germany to take ye command of the allies, the next day the whole army amounting to thd men went on towards the county of liège to prevent the french from beseiging namur, i hear now that the two armies are only one hour from another, so we expect very soon the news of a great battle but not without fear, count saxes army being, by all account of hundred ten thoud. men besides. prince counti's army of thd. this latter general is now employ'd at the siege of charleroy, that can't resist a long while, it is a report that the king of france is arrived in his army, i hope this long account will entertain you for want of news papers: mr. dowdeswell being left alone of our club at leyden i desir'd him to come and spend with me the time of his vacations here, which proposal i hope he will accept and be here next week. what happy triumvirat would be ours if you were to join: but that is impossible at present; however those who cant enjoy reality are fond of feeding their fancies with agreable dreams and charming pictures; that helps a little to sooth the sorrow of absence and makes one expect with more pati[ence] till fortune allows him to put in execution the cherish'd systems he has been fed upon fore some [time] i shall expect with great many thanks the books you are to send me; it will be for me a dubble pleasure to read them, being of your choice which i value as much as it deserves, and looking at them as upon a new proof of your benevolence, as to those i design'd to get from paris for you, i heard i could not get them before my uncles' return hither all commerce being stopt by the way betwixt this country and france. a few days before my departure from leyden i receiv'd a letter from mr freeman from berlin, he seams vastly pleas'd with our germany, and chiefly with hambourg where a beautiful lady has taken in his heart the room of poor mss. vitsiavius, my prophesy was just; traveling seems to have alter'd a good deal his melancholy disposition as i may conjecture by his way of writing. he desired his service to you. as to me, idleness renders me every day more philosopher every passion is languishing within me, i retain but one in a warm degree, viz, friendship in which you share no small part. i took a whim to study a little physic accordingly i purchased several books in that way, and my empty hours here are employ'd with them. i am sure your time will be much better employ'd at alesbury you'll find there a much nobler entertainment cupid is by far lovlier than esculapius, however i shall not envy your happiness, in the contrary i wish that all your desires be crown'd with success, that a passion that proves fatal to great many of men be void of sorrow for you, that all the paths of love be spred over with flowers in one word that you may not address in vain to the charming mss. m. i am almost tempted to fall in love with that unknown beauty, 't would not be quite like don quixotte for your liking to her would be for me a very strong prejudice of her merit, which the poor knight had not in his love for dulcinea. i shall not ask your pardon for the length of this letter i am sure friendship will forgive the time i steal to love however i cannot give up so easily a conversation with a true friend with whom i fancy to speak yet in one of those delightfull evening walks at leyden. it is a dream, i own it, but it is so agreable one to me that nothing but reality could be compared to the pleasure i feel: let me therefore insist a little more upon't and travel with my letter, we are gone! i think to be at alesbury! there i see my dear wilkes! what a flurry of panions! joy! fear of a second parting! what charming tears! what sincere kisses!--but time flows and the end of this love is now as unwelcome to me, as would be to another to be awaken'd in the middle of a dream wherein he is going to enjoy a beloved mistress; the enchantment ceases, the delightfull images vanish, and nothing is left to me but friendship, which is of all my possessions the fairest, and the surest, i am most sincerely dear wilkes your affectionate friend and humble servant de holbach heze the th august n. s. i shall expect with impatience the letter you are to write me from alesbury. will it be here very soon! holbach to wilkes [hÉeze dec. rd. ] _dearest wilkes_ during a little voyage i have made into germany i have received your charming letter of the th. september o. s. the many affairs i have been busy with for these months has hindered me hitherto from returning to you as speedy an answer as i should have done. i know too much your kindness for me to make any farther apology and i hope you are enough acquainted with the sincerety of my friendship towards you to adscribe my fault to forgetfulness or want of gratitude be sure, dear friend, that such a disposition will allways be unknown to me in regard to you. i don't doubt but you will be by this time returned at london, the winter season being an obstacle to the pleasures you have enjoyed following ye letter at alesbury during the last autumn. i must own i have felt a good deal of pride when you gave me the kind assurance that love has not made you forget an old friend, i need not tell you my disposition. i hope you know it well enough and like my friendship for you has no bounds i want expressions to show it. mr dowdeswell has been so good as to let me enjoy his company here in the month of august, and returned to leyden to pursue his studies in the middle of september. we often wished your company and made sincere libations to you with burgundy and champaigne i had a few weeks there after i set out for germany where i expected to spend the whole winter but the sudden death of my uncle's steward has forced me to come back here to put in order the affairs of this estate, i don't know how long i shall be obliged to stay in the meanwhile i act pretty well the part of a county squire, id est, hunting, shooting, fishing, walking every day without to lay aside the ever charming conversation of horace virgil homer and all our noble friends of the elysian fields. they are allways faithfull to me, with their aid i find very well how to employ my time, but i want in this country a true bosom friend like my dear wilkes to converse with, but my pretenssions are too high, for every abode with such a company would be heaven for me. i perceive by your last letter that your hopes are very like to succeed by mss mead, you are sure that every happines that can befall to you will make me vastly happy. i beseech you therefore to let me know everytime how far you are gone, i take it to be a very good omen for you, that your lovely mistress out of compliance has vouchsafed to learn a harsh high-dutch name, which would otherwise have made her starttle, at the very hearing of it. i am very thankful for her kind desire of seeing me in engelland which i dont wish the less but you know my circumstances enough, to guess that i cannot follow my inclinations. i have not heard hitherto anything about the books you have been so kind as to send me over by the opportunity of a friend. i have wrote about it to msrs conrad et bouwer of rotterdam, they answered that they were not yet there. nevertheless i am very much oblided to you for your kindness and wish to find very soon the opportunity of my revenge. mr dowderswell complains very much of mrs bland and weatherill, having not heard of them since their departure from leyden. i desire my compliments to mr dyer and all our old acquaintances. pray be so good as to direct your first letter under the covert of mr dowderwell at ms alliaume's at leyden he shall send it to me over immediately, no more at mr van sprang's like you used to do. i wish to know if mr lyson since his return to his native country, continues in his peevish cross temper. if you have any news besides i'll be glad to hear them by your next which i expect very soon. about politicks i cannot tell you anything at present, you have heard enough by this time the fatal battle fought near liège in ber last; everybody has little hopes of the congress of breda, the austrian and piedmontese are entered into provence, which is not as difficult as to maintain themselves therein, i wish a speedy peace would enable us both to see the rejoicings that will attend the marriage of the dauphin of france with a princess of saxony. i have heard that peace is made between england and spain, which you ought to know better than i. we fear very much for the next campaign the siege of maestrich in our neighborhood. these are all the news i know. i'll tell you another that you have known a long while viz. that nobody is with more sincerity my dear wilkes your faithfull humble servant and friend holbach heeze the d xber ns by holbach was established in paris as a young man of the world. his fortune, his learning, his sociability attracted the younger literary set toward him. in he was already holding his thursday dinners which later became so famous. among his early friends were diderot, rousseau and grimm. with them he took the side of the italian _opera buffa_ in the famous musical quarrel of , and published two witty brochures ridiculing french music. [ : ] he was an art connoisseur and bought oudry's _chienne allaitant ses petits_, the _chef d'oeuvre_ of the salon of . [ : ] during these years he was hard at work at his chosen sciences of chemistry and mineralogy. in he published in a huge volume in quarto with excellent plates, a translation of antonio neri's _art of glass making_, and in a translation of wallerius' _mineralogy_. on july , , the academy of berlin made him a foreign associate in recognition of his scholarly attainments in natural history, [ : ] and later he was elected to the academies of st. petersburg and mannheim. all that was now lacking to this brilliant young man was an attractive wife to rule over his salon. his friends urged him to wed, and in he married mlle. basile-genevieve-susanne d'aine, daughter of "maître marius-jean-baptiste nicolas d'aine, conseiller au roi en son grand conseil, associé externe de l'acad. des sciences et belles letters de prusse." [ : ] m. d'aine was also maître des requêtes and a man of means. mme. d'holbach was a very charming and gracious woman and holbach's good fortune seemed complete when suddenly mme. d'holbach died from a most loathsome and painful disease in the summer of . holbach was heart-broken and took a trip through the provinces with his friend grimm, to whom he was much attached, to distract his mind from his grief. he returned in the early winter and the next year ( ) got a special dispensation from the pope to marry his deceased wife's sister, mlle. charlotte-susanne d'aine. by her he had four children, two sons and two daughters. the first, charles-marius, was born about the middle of august, , and baptized in saint-germain-l'auxerrois, aug. . he inherited the family title and was a captain in the regiment of the schomberg-dragons. [ : ] the first daughter was born towards the end of and the second about the middle of jan., . [ : ] the elder married the marquis de châtenay and the younger the marquis de nolivos, "captaine au régiment de la seurre, dragons." their majesties the king and queen and the royal family signed their marriage contract may , . [ : ] of the second son there seem to be no traces. holbach's mother-in-law, madame d'aine, was a very interesting old woman as she is pictured in diderot's _mémoires_, and there was a brother-in-law, "messire marius-jean-baptiste-nicholas d'aine, chevalier, conseiller du roi en ses conseils, maître des requêtes honoraire de son hôtel, intendant de justice, police, et finances de la généralité de tours," who lived in rue saint dominique, paroisse saint-sulpice. there was in holbach's household for a long time an old scotch surgeon, a homeless, misanthropic old fellow by the name of hope, of whom diderot gives a most interesting account. [ : ] these are the only names we have of the personnel of holbach's household. his town house was in the rue royale, butte saint-roch. it was here that for an almost unbroken period of forty years he gave his sunday and thursday dinners. the latter day was known to the more intimate set of encyclopedists as the _jour du synagogue_. here the _église philosophique_ met regularly to discuss its doctrines and publish its propaganda of radicalism. holbach had a very pleasant country seat, the château of grandval, now in the arrondisement of boissy st. léger at sucy-en-brie. it is pleasantly situated in the valley of a little stream, the morbra, which flows into the marne. the property was really the estate of mme. d'aine who lived with the holbachs. here the family and their numerous guests passed the late summer and fall. here diderot spent weeks at a time working on the encyclopedia, dining, and walking on the steep slopes of the marne with congenial companions. to him we are indebted for our intimate knowledge of grandval and its inhabitants, their slightest doings and conversations; and as danou has well said, if we were to wish ourselves back in any past age we should choose with many others the mid-eighteenth century and the charming society of paris and grandval. [ : ] holbach's life, in common with that of most philosophers, offers no events, except that he came near being killed in the crush and riot in the rue royale that followed the fire at the dauphin's wedding in . [ : ] he was never an official personage. his entire life was spent in study, writing and conversation with his friends. he traveled very little; the world came to him, to the _café de l'europe_, as abbé galiani called paris. from time to time holbach went to contrexéville for his gout and once to england to visit david garrick; but he disliked england very thoroughly and was glad to get back to paris. the events of his life in so far as there were any, were his relations with people. he knew intimately practically all the great men of his century, except montesquieu and voltaire, who were off the stage before his day. [ : ] holbach's most intimate and life-long friend among the great figures of the century was diderot, of whom rousseau said, "À la distance de quelques siècles du moment où il a vécu, diderot paraîtra un homme prodigieux; on regardera de loin cette tête universelle avec une admiration mêlée d'étonnement, comme nous regardons aujourd'hui la tête des platon et des aristote." [ : ] all his contemporaries agreed that nothing was so charged with divine fire as the conversation of diderot. gautherin, in his fine bronze of him on the place saint-germain-des-près, seems to have caught the spirit of his talk and has depicted him as he might have sat in the midst of holbach's society, of which he was the inspiration and the soul. holbach backed diderot financially in his great literary and scientific undertaking and provided articles for the encyclopedia on chemistry and natural science. diderot had a high opinion of his erudition and said of him, "quelque système que forge mon imagination, je suis sur que mon ami d'holbach me trouve des faits et des autorités pour le justifier." [ : ] opinions differ in regard to the intellectual influence of these men upon each other. diderot was without doubt the greater thinker, but holbach stated his atheism with far greater clarity and diderot gave his sanction to it by embellishing holbach's books with a few eloquent pages of his own. diderot said to sir samuel romilly in , "il faut _sabrer_ la théologie," [ : ] and died in in the belief that complete infidelity was the first step toward philosophy. five years later holbach was buried by his side in the crypt of the chapel of the virgin behind the high altar in saint-roch. no tablet marks their tombs, and although repeated investigations have been made no light has been thrown on the exact position of their burial place. according to diderot's daughter, mme. vandeuil, their entire correspondence has been destroyed or lost. [ : ] holbach's relations with rousseau were less harmonious. the account of their mutual misunderstandings contained in the _confessions_, in a letter by cerutti in the _journal de paris_ dec. , , and in private letters of holbach's to hume, garrick, and wilkes, is a long and tiresome tale. the author of _eclaircissements relatifs à la publication des confessions de rousseau..._ (paris, ) blames the _club holbachique_ for their treatment of rousseau, but the fault seems to lie on both sides. according to rousseau's account, holbach sought his friendship and for a few years he was one of holbach's society. but, after the success of the _devin du village_ in , the _holbachiens_ turned against him out of jealousy of his genius as a composer. visions of a dark plot against him rose before his fevered and sensitive imagination, and after he left the society of the encyclopedists, never to return. holbach, on the other hand, while admitting rather questionable treatment of rousseau, never speaks of any personal injury on his part, and bewails the fact that "l'homme le plus éloquent s'est rendu ainsi l'homme le plus anti-littéraire, et l'homme le plus sensible s'est rendu le plus anti-social." [ : ] he did warn hume against taking him to england, and in a letter to wilkes predicted the quarrel that took place shortly after. in writing to garrick [ : ] he says some hard but true things about rousseau, who on his part never really defamed holbach but depicted him as the virtuous atheist under the guise of wolmar in the _nouvelle heloïse_. their personal incompatibility is best explained on the grounds of the radical differences in their temperaments and types of mind and by the fact that rousseau was too sensitive to get on with anybody for any great length of time. two other great frenchmen, buffon and d'alembert, were for a time members of holbach's society, but, for reasons that are not altogether clear, gradually withdrew. grimm suggests that buffon did not find the young philosophers sufficiently deferential to him and to the authorized powers, and feared for his dignity,--and safety, in their company. d'alembert, on the other hand, was a recluse by nature, and, after giving up his editorship on the encyclopedia, easily dropped out of diderot's society and devoted himself to mlle. lespinasse and mme. geoffrin. holbach and helvetius were life-long friends and spent much time together reading at helvetius's country place at voré. after his death in , holbach frequented mme. helvetius' salon where he knew and deeply influenced volney, cabanis, de tracy, and the first generation of the ideologists who continued his and helvetius' philosophical doctrines. among the other frenchmen of the day who were on intimate relations with holbach and frequented his salon were la condamine, condillac, condorcet, turgot, morellet, raynal, grimm, marmontel, colardeau, saurin, suard, saint-lambert, thomas, duclos, chastellux, boulanger, darcet, roux, rouelle, barthès, venel, leroy, damilaville, naigeon, lagrange and lesser names,--but well known in paris in the eighteenth century,--d'alinville, chauvelin, desmahis, gauffecourt, margency, de croismare, de pezay, coyer, de valory, charnoi, not to mention a host of others. among holbach's most intimate english friends were hume, garrick, wilkes, sterne, gibbon, horace walpole, adam smith, benjamin franklin, dr. priestley, lord shelburne, gen. barré, gen. clark, sir james macdonald, dr. gem, messrs. stewart, demster, fordyce, fitzmaurice, foley, etc. holbach addressed a letter to hume in , before making his acquaintance, in which he expressed his admiration of his philosophy and the desire to know him personally. [ : ] in hume came to paris as secretary of the british embassy and immediately called on holbach and became a regular frequenter of his salon. it was to holbach that he wrote first on the outbreak of his quarrel with rousseau and they corresponded at length in egard to the publication of the _exposé succinct_, which was to justify hume in the eyes of the french. hume and holbach had much in common intellectually, although the latter was far more thoroughgoing in his repudiation of theism. david garrick and his wife were frequent visitors at the rue royale on their trips to paris where they were very much liked by holbach's society. nothing is more cordial or gracious than the compliments passed between them in their subsequent correspondence. there are two published letters from holbach in mr. hedgecock's recent study of garrick and his french friends, excellent examples of the happy spontaneity and sympathy that were characteristic of french sociability in the eighteenth century. [ : ] holbach in turn spent several months with garrick at hampton. holbach's early friendship for wilkes has already been mentioned. wilkes spent a great deal of time in paris on the occasion of his exiles from england and became very intimate with holbach. they corresponded up to the very end of holbach's life and there was a constant interchange of friendly offices between them. [ : ] miss wilkes, who spent much time in paris, was a very good friend of mme. holbach and mlle. helvetius. adam smith often dined at holbach's with turgot and the economists; gibbon also found his dinners agreeable except for the dogmatism of the atheists; walpole resented it also and kept away. priestley seems to have gotten on very well, although the philosophers found his materialism and unitarianism a trifle inconsistent. it was at holbach's that shelburne met morellet with whom he carried on a long and serious correspondence on economics. there seem to be no details of holbach's relations with franklin, who was evidently more assiduous at the salon of mme. helvetius whom he desired to marry. holbach's best friend among the italians was abbé galiani, secretary of the neapolitan embassy, who spent ten years in the salons of paris. after his return to naples his longing for paris led him to a voluminous correspondence with his french friends including holbach. a few of their letters are extant. beccaria also came to paris at the invitation of the translator of his _crimes and punishments_, abbé morellet, made on behalf of holbach and his society. beccaria and his friend veri, who accompanied him, had long been admirers of french philosophy, and the frenchmen found much to admire in beccaria's book. one _avocat-général_, m. servan of the parlement of bordeaux, a friend of holbach's, tried to put his reforms in practice and shared the fate of most reformers. holbach was also in correspondence with beccaria, and one of his letters has been published in m. landry's recent study of beccaria. among the other italians whom holbach befriended were paulo frizi, the mathematician; dr. gatti; pincini, the musician; and mme. riccoboni, ex-actress and novelist; whose lively correspondence with garrick whom she met at holbach's sheds much light on the social relations of the century. among the other foreigners who were friends or acquaintances of holbach were his fellow countrymen, frederich melchon grimm, like himself a naturalized frenchman and the bosom friend of diderot; meister, his collaborator in the _literary correspondence_; kohant, a bohemian musician, composer, of the _bergère des alpes_ and mme. holbach's lute-teacher; baron gleichen, comte de creutz, danish and scandinavian diplomats; and a number of german nobles; the hereditary princes of brunswick and saxe gotha, baron alaberg, afterwards elector of mayence, baron schomberg and baron studitz. among the well known women of the century holbach was most intimate with mme. d'epinay, who became a very good friend of mme. holbach's and was present at the birth of her first son, and, in her will, left her a portrait by rembrandt. he was also a friend of mme. geoffrin, attended her salon, and knew mlle. de lespinasse, mme. houderot and most of the important women of the day. there are excellent sources from which to form an estimate of this man whose house was the social centre of the century. just after holbach's death on january , , naigeon, his literary agent, who had lived on terms of the greatest intimacy with him for twenty-four years, wrote a long eulogy which filled the issue of the _journal de paris_ for feb. . there was another letter to the _journal_ on feb. . grimm's _correspondance littéraire_ for march contains a long account of him by meister, and there are other notices in contemporary memoirs such as morellet's and marmontel's. all these accounts agree in picturing him as the most admirable of men. it must be remembered that holbach always enjoyed what was held to be a considerable fortune in his day. from his estates in westphalia he had a yearly income of , _livres_ which he spent in entertaining. this freedom from economic pressure gave him leisure to devote his time to his chosen intellectual pursuits and to his friends. he was a universally learned man. he knew french, german, english, italian and latin extremely well and had a fine private library of about three thousand works often of several volumes each, in these languages and in greek and hebrew. the catalogue of this library was published by debure in . it would be difficult to imagine a more comprehensive and complete collection of its size. he had also a rich collection of drawings by the best masters, fine pictures of which he was a connoisseur, bronzes, marbles, porcelains and a natural history cabinet, so in vogue in those days, containing some very valuable specimens. he was one of the most learned men of his day in natural science, especially chemistry and mineralogy, and to his translations from the best german scientific works is largely due the spread of scientific learning in france in the eighteenth century. holbach was also very widely read in english theology and philosophy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and derived his anti-theological inspiration from these two sources. to this vast fund of learning, he joined an extreme modesty and simplicity. he sought no academic honors, published all his works anonymously, and, had it not been for the pleasure he took in communicating his ideas to his friends, no one would have suspected his great erudition. he had an extraordinary memory and the reputation of never forgetting anything of interest. this plenitude of information, coupled with his easy and pleasant manner of talking, made his society much sought after. naigeon said of him (in his preface to the works of lagrange): personne n'était plus communicatif que m. le baron d'holbach; personne ne prenait aux progrès de la raison un intérêt plus vif, plus sincère, et ne s'occupait avec plus de zèle et l'activité des moyens de les accélérer. Également versé dans la plupart des matières sur lesquelles il importe le plus à des êtres raisonnables d'avoir une opinion arrêtée, m. le baron d'holbach portait dans leur discussion un jugement sain, une logique sévère, et une analyse exacte et précise. quelque fut l'objet de ses entretiens avec ses amis, ou même avec des indifférens, tels qu'en offrent plus ou moins toutes les sociétés; il inspirait sans effort à ceux qui l'écoutaient l'enthousiasme de l'art ou de la science dont il parlait; et on ne le quittait jamais sans regretter de n'avoir pas cultivé la branche particulière de connaissances qui avait fait le sujet de la conversation, sans désirer d'être plus instruit, plus éclairé, et surtout sans admirer la claret, la justesse de son esprit, et l'ordre dans lequel il savait présenter ses idées. this virtue of communicativeness, of _sociabilité_, holbach carried into all the relations of life. he was always glad to lend or give his books to anyone who could make use of them. "je suis riche," he used to say, "mais je ne vois dans la fortune qu'un instrument de plus pour opérer le bien plus promptement et plus efficacement." in fact holbach's whole principle of life and action was to increase the store of human well being. and he did this without any religious motive whatsoever. as julie says of wolmar in _la nouvelle heloïse_, "il fait le bien sans espoir de récompense, il est plus vertueux, plus désintéressé que nous." there are many recorded instances of holbach's gracious benevolence. as he said to helvetius, "vous êtes brouillé avec tous ceux que vous avez obligé, mais j'ai gardé tous mes amis." holbach had the faculty of attaching people to him. diderot tells how at the salon of after holbach had bought oudry's famous picture, all the collectors who had passed it by came to him and offered him twice what he paid for it. holbach went to find the artist to ask him permission to cede the picture to his profit, but oudry refused, saying that he was only too happy that his best work belonged to the man who was the first to appreciate it. instances of holbach's liberality to kohant, a poor musician, and to suard, a poor literary man, are to be found in the pages of diderot and meister, and his constant generosity to his friends is a commonplace in their memoirs and correspondence. only rousseau was ungrateful enough to complain that holbach's free-handed gifts insulted his poverty. his kindness to lagrange, a young literary man whom he rescued from want, has been well told by m. naigeon in the preface to the works of lagrange (p. xviii). but perhaps the most touching instances of holbach's benevolence are his relations with the peasants of contrexéville, one of which was published in the _journal de lecture_, , the other in an anonymous letter to the _journal de paris_, feb. , . the first concerns the reconciliation of two old peasants who, not wanting to go to court, brought their differences to their respected friend for a settlement. nothing is more simple and beautiful than this homely tale as told in a letter of holbach's to a friend of his. the second, which john wilkes said ought to be written in letters of gold, deserves to be reproduced as a whole. l'éloge funèbre que m. naigeon a consacré à la mémoire de m. le baron d'holbach suffit pour donner une idée juste de ses lumières, mais le hasard m'a mis à portée de les juger encore mieux. j'ai vu m. le baron d'holbach dans deux voyages que j'ai faits aux eaux de contrexéville. s'occuper de sa souffrance et de sa guérison, c'est le soin de chaque malade. m. le baron d'holbach devenait le médecin, l'ami, le consolateur de quiconque venait aux eaux et il semblait bien moins occupé de ses infirmités que de celles des autres. lorsque des malades indigens manquaient de secours, ou pécuniaires ou curatifs, il les leur procurait avec un plaisir qui lui faisait plus de bien que les eaux. je me promenais un soir avec lui sur une hauteur couverte d'un massif de bois qui fait perspective de loin et près duquel s'élève un petit hermitage. là, demeure un cénobite qui n'a de revenu que les aumônes de ceux dont il reçoit les visites. nous acquittâmes chacun notre dette hospitalière. en prenant congé de l'hermite, m. le baron d'holbach me dit de le précéder un instant et qu'il allait me suivre. je le précédai, et comme il ne me suivait pas je m'arrêtai, pour l'attendre sur un terte exhaussé d'où l'on découvre tout le pays. je contemplais le canton que je dominais, plongé dans une douce rêverie. j'en fus tiré par des cris et je me retournai vers l'endroit d'òu ils partaient. je vis m. le baron d'holbach environné d'une vieille femme et de deux villageois, l'un vieux comme elle et l'autre jeune. tous trois, les larmes aux yeux, l'embrassaient hautement. allez vous-en donc, s'écrait m. le baron d'holbach; laissez moi, on m'attend, ne me suivez pas, adieu; je reviendrai l'année prochaine. en me voyant arriver vers eux, les trois personnes reconnaissantes disparurent. je lui demandai le sujet de tant de bénédictions. ce jeune paysan que vous avez vu s'etait engagé, j'ai obtenu de son colonel sa liberté en payant les cents écus prescrits par l'ordonnance. il est amoureux d'une jeune paysanne aussi pauvre que lui, je viens d'acheter pour eux un petit bien qui m'a coûté huit cent francs. le vieux père est perclus, aux deux bras, de rhumatismes, je lui ai fourni trois boîtes du baume des valdejeots, si estimé en ce pays-ci. la vieille mère est sujetté à des maux d'estomac, et je lui ai apporté un pot de confection d'hyacinthe. ils travaillaient dans le champ, voisin du bois, je suis allé les voir tandis que vous marchiez en avant. ils m'ont suivi malgré moi. ne parlez de cela à personne. on dirait que je veux faire le généreux et le bon philosophe, mais je ne suis que humain, et mes charités sont la plus agréable dépense de mes voyages. this humanity of holbach's is the very keynote of his character and of his intellectual life as well. as m. walferdin has said, the denial of the supernatural was for him the base of all virtue, and resting on this principle, he exemplified social qualities that do the greatest honor to human nature. he and madame holbach are the only conspicuous examples of conjugal fidelity and happiness among all the people that one has occasion to mention in a study of the intellectual and literary circles of the eighteenth century. they were devoted to each other, to their children and to their friends. considering the traits of holbach's character that have been cited, there can scarcely be two opinions in regard to completeness with which he realized his ideal of humanity and sociability. m. naigeon has well summed up in a few words holbach's relation to the only duties that he recognized, "he was a good husband, a good father and a good friend." chapter ii. holbach's works. holbach's published works, with the exception of a few scattered ones, may be divided into three classes, viz., translations of german scientific works, translations of english deistical writings, and his own works on theology, philosophy, politics and morals. those which fall into none of these categories can be dealt with very summarily. they are: . two pamphlets on the musical dispute of ; _lettre à une dame d'un certain âge sur l'état présent de l'opéra_, ( vo, pp. ) and _arrêt rendu à l'amphithéâtre de l'opéra_, ( vo, pp. ,) both directed against french music and in line with grimm's _petit prophète_ and rousseau's _lettre sur la musique française_. . a translation in prose of akenside's _the pleasures of imagination_ (paris, , vo). . a translation of swift's _history of the reign of queen anne_ in collaboration with m. eidous (amsterdam, , mo, pp. xxiv + ). . translations of an _ode on human life_ and a _hymn to the sun_ in the _variétés littéraires_ ( ). . articles on natural science in the _encyclopédie_ and article _prononciation des langues_ in the _dictionnaire de grammaire_ of the _encyclopédie méthodique_. . translation of wallerius' _agriculture reduced to its true principles_ (paris, , mo). . two _facéties philosophiques_ published in grimm's _correspondence littéraire. l'abbé et le rabbin_, and _essai sur l'art de ramper, à l'usage des courtisans_. . parts of raynal's _histoire philosophique des deux indes_. . notes to lagrange's _vie de senèque_. holbach's translations of german scientific works are as follows: (complete titles to be found in bibliography, pt. i.) . _art de la verrerie de neri, merret, et kunckel_ (paris, durand, ). original work in italian. latin translation by christopher merret. german translation by j. kunckel of löwenstern. holbach's translation comprises the seven books of antionio neri, merret's notes on neri, kunckel's observations on both these authors, his own experiments and others relative to glass-making. the translation was dedicated to malesherbes who had desired to see the best german scientific works published in french. in his _préface du traducteur_ holbach writes: l'envie de me rendre utile, dont tout citoyen doit être animé, m'a fait entreprendre l'ouvrage que je présente au public. s'il a le bonheur de mériter son approbation, quoiqu'il y ait peu de gloire attachée au travail ingrat et fastidieux d'un traducteur, je me déterminerai à donner les meilleurs ouvrages allemands, sur l'histoire naturelle, la minéralogie, la métallurgie et la chymie. tout le monde sait que l'allemagne possede en ce genre des trésors qui ont été jusqu'ici comme enfouis pour la france. . _minéralogie ou description générale du règne mineral par j. g. wallerius_ (paris, durand, ) followed by _hydrologie_ by the same author. second edition, paris, herrissant, . originally in swedish (wallerius was a professor of chemistry in the university of upsala). german translation by j. d. denso, professor of chemistry, stargard, pomerania. holbach's translation was made from the german edition which wallerius considered preferable to the swedish. he was assisted by bernard de jussien and rouelle, and the work was dedicated to a friend and co-worker in the natural sciences, monsieur d'arclais de montamy. . _introduction à la minéralogie... oeuvre posthume de m. j. f. henckel_, paris, cavelier, , first published under title _henckelius in mineralogiâ redivivus_, dresden, , by his pupil, m. stephani, as an outline of his lectures. holbach's translation made from a german edition, corrected, with notes on new discoveries added. . _chimie métallurgique... par m. c. gellert_. paris, briasson, , translated earlier. approbation may , , privilege dec. , . originally a text written by gellert for four artillery officers whom the king of sardinia sent to freyburg to learn mining-engineering. . _traités de physique, d'histoire naturelle, de mineralogy et de métallurgie_. paris, herrissant, , by j. g. lehmann, three vols. i. l'art des mines, ii. traité de la formation des métaux, iii. essai d'une histoire naturelle des couches de la terre. in his preface to the third volume holbach has some interesting remarks about the deluge, the irony of which seems to have escaped the royal censor, millet, _docteur en théologie_. "la description si précise et si détaillée que moïse fait du deluge dans la genèse, ayant une autorité infaillible, puis qu'elle n'est autre que celle de dieu même, nous rend certains de la réalité et de l'universalité de ce châtiment terrible. il s'agit simplement d'examiner si les naturalistes, tels que woodward, schenchzer, buttner et m. lehmann lui-même ne se sont points trompés, lorsqu'ils ont attribué à cet événement seul la formation des couches de la terre et lorsqu'ils s'en sont servis pour expliquer l'état actuel de notre globe. il semble que rien ne doit nous empêcher d'agiter cette question; l'ecriture sainte se contente de nous apprendre la voie miraculeuse dont dieu s'est servi pour punir les crimes du genre humain; elle ne dit rien qui puisse limiter les sentiments des naturalistes sur les autres effets physiques que le déluge a pu produire. c'est une matière qu'elle paroît avoir abandonnée aux disputes des hommes." he then proceeds to question whether the deluge could have produced the results attributed to it and argues against catastrophism which, it must be remembered, was the received geological doctrine down to the days of lyell. "les causes les plus simples sont capables de produire au bout des siècles les effets les plus grands, surtout lorsqu'elles agissent incessament; et nous voyons toutes ces causes réunies agir perpétuellement sous nos yeux. concluons, donc, de tout ce qui précède, que le déluge, seul et les feux souterrains seuls ne suffisent point pour expliquer la formation des couches de la terre. on risquera toujours de se tromper, lorsque par l'envie de simplifier on voudra dériver tous les phénomènes de la nature d'une seule et unique cause." . _pyritologie_ by j. f. henkel, paris, herrissant, , a large volume in quarto, translated by holbach. it contains _flora saturnisans_ (translated by m. charas and reviewed by m. roux), henkel's _opuscules minéralogiques_ and other treatises. original editions: _pyritologia_, leipzig, , ; _flora saturnisans_, leipzig, ; _de appropriatione chymica_, dresden, , and _de lapidum origine_, dresden, , translated into german, with excellent notes, dresden, , by m. c. f. zimmermann, a pupil of m. henkel. holbach's translations seem to have been well received because he writes in this preface: "je m'estimerai heureux si mon travail peut contribuer à entretenir et augmenter le goût universel qu'on a conçu pour le saine physique." . _oeuvres métallurgiques_ de m. j. c. orschall, paris, hardy, . orschall still accepted the old alchemist tradition but was sound in practice and was the best authority on copper. holbach does not attempt to justify his physics which was that of the preceding century. orschall was held in high esteem by henckel and stahl. . _recueil des mémoires des académies d'upsal et de stockholm_, paris, didot, . these records of experiments made in the royal laboratories of sweden, founded in by charles xi, had already been translated into german and english. holbach's translation was made from the german and latin. he promises further treatises on agriculture, natural history and medicine. . _traité du soufre_ by g. e. stahl, paris, didot, . in speaking of stahl's theories holbach says: "il ne faut pas croire que ces connaissances soient des vérités stériles propres seulement à satisfaire une vaine curiosité, elles ont leur application aux travaux de la métallurgie qui leur doivent la perfection où on les a portés depuis quelques temps." holbach understood very clearly the utility of science in his scheme of increasing the store of human well-being, and would doubtless have translated other useful works had not other interests prevented. there is a mss. note of his in the bibliothèque nationale to m. malesherbes, then administrateur de la librairie royale; suggesting other german treatises that might well be translated. (mss. ). holbach to malesherbes _monsieur_ j'ai l'honneur de vous envoyer ci-joint la liste des ouvrages dont m. liège fils pourrait entreprendre la traduction. je n'en connais actuellement point d'autres qui méritent l'attention du public. m. macquer m'a écrit une lettre qui a pour objet les mêmes choses dont vous m'avez fait l'honneur de me parler, et je lui fais la même réponse. j'ai l'honneur d'être avec respect, monsieur, votre très obéissant serviteur d'holbach à paris ce d'avril the list of books was as follows: . johann kunckel's _laboratorium chymicum_, vo. . georg ernest stahl's _commentary on becher's metallurgy_, vo. . _concordantia chymica becheri_, º, published by stahl. . _cadmologia_, or the _natural history of cobalt_, by j. g. lehmann, berlin, , °. after holbach became interested in another line of intellectual activity, namely the writing and translation of anti-religious literature. his first book of this sort really appeared in although no copies bear this date. from on however he published a great many works of this character. it is convenient to deal first with his translations of english deistical writers. they are in chronological order. . _esprit du clergé, ou le christianisme primitif vengé des entreprises et des excès de nos prêtres modernes_. londres (amsterdam), . this book appeared in england in under the title of _the independent whig_; its author was thomas gordon (known through his commentaries on sallust and tacitus) who wrote in collaboration with john trenchard. the book was partially rewritten by holbach and then touched up by naigeon, who, according to a manuscript note by his brother, "atheised it as much as possible." it was sold with great secrecy and at a high price--a reward which the colporters demanded for the risk they ran in peddling seditious literature. the book was a violent attack on the spirit of domination which characterized the christian priesthood at that time. . _de l'imposture sacerdotale, ou recueil de pièces sur le clergé_, londres (amsterdam), . another edition under title _de la monstruosité pontificale_ etc. contains translations of various pamphlets including davisson, _a true picture of popery_; brown, _popery a craft_, london ; gordon, _apology for the danger of the church_, ; gordon, _the creed of an independent whig_, . . _examen des prophéties qui servent de fondement à la religion chrétienne_, londres (amsterdam), . translation of anthony collins, _a discourse on the grounds and reasons of the christian religion_, london, . contains also _the scheme of literal prophecy considered_, , also by collins in answer to the works of clarke, sherlock, chandler, sykes, and especially to whiston's _essay towards restoring the text of the old testament_, one of the thirty-five works directed against collins' original _"discourse"_. copies of this work have become very rare. . _david, ou l'histoire de l'homme selon le coeur de dieu_. londres (amsterdam), . this work appeared in england in and is attributed to peter annet, also to john noorthook. some english eulogists of george ii, messrs. chandler, palmer and others, had likened their late king to david, "the man after god's own heart." the deists, struck by the absurdity of the comparison, proceeded to relate all the scandalous facts they could find recorded of david, and by clever distortions painted him as the most execrable of kings, in a work entitled _david or the man after god's own heart_, which formed the basis of holbach's translation. . _les prêtres démasqués ou des iniquités du clergé chrétien_. londres, . translation of four discourses published under the title _the ax laid to the root of christian priestcraft by a layman_, london, t. cooper, . a rare volume. . _lettres philosophiques..._ londres (amsterdam, ). translation of j. toland's _letters to serena_, london, . the book, which had become very rare in holbach's time, had caused a great scandal at the time of its publication and was much sought after by collectors. it contains five letters, the first three of which are by toland, the other two and the preface by holbach and naigeon. the matters treated are, the origin of prejudices, the dogma of the immortality of the soul, idolatry, superstition, the system of spinoza and the origin of movement in matter. diderot said of these works, in writing to mlle. volland nov. , (_oeuvres_, vol. xviii, p. ): "il pleut des bombes dans la maison du seigneur. je tremble toujours que quelqu'un de ces téméraires artilleurs-là ne s'en trouve mal. ce sont les _lettres philosophiques_ traduites, ou supposées traduites, de l'anglais de toland; c'est _l'examen des prophéties_; c'est la _vie de david ou de l'homme selon là coeur de dieu_, ce sont mélle diables déchainés.--ah! madame de blacy, je crains bien que le fils de l'homme ne soit à la porte; que la venue d'elie ne soit proche, et que nous ne touchions au règne de l'anti-christ. tous les jours, quand je me lève, je regarde par ma fenêtre, si la grande prostituée de babylone ne se promène point déjà dans les rues avec sa grande coupe à la main et s'il ne se fait aucun des signes prédits dans le firmament." . _de la cruauté religieuse_, londres (amsterdam). _considerations upon war, upon cruelty in general and religious cruelty in particular_, london, printed for thomas hope, . . _dissertation critique sur les tourmens de l'enfer_ printed in an original work, _l'enfer détruit_, londres (amsterdam), . a translation of whitefoot's _the torments of hell, the foundation and pillars thereof discover'd, search'd, shaken and remov'd_. london, . . in the _recueil philosophique_ edited by naigeon, londres (amsterdam), . i. dissertation sur l'immortalité de l'âme. translated from hume. ii. dissertation sur le suicide (hume). iii. extrait d'un livre anglais qui a pour titre le christianisme aussi ancien que le monde. (tindal, christianity as old as creation.) . _esprit de judaïsme, ou examen raisonné de la loi de moyse_. londres (amsterdam), ( ), translated from anthony collins. with the exception of some of holbach's own works this is one of the fiercest denunciations of judaism and christianity to be found in print. in fact, it is very much in the style of holbach's anti-religious works and shows beyond a doubt that holbach derived his inspiration from collins and the more radical of the english school. the volume has become exceedingly rare. after outlining the history of judaism the book ends thus: ose, donc enfin, ô europe! secouer le joug insupportable des préjugés qui t'affligent. laisse à des hébreux stupides, à des frénétiques imbéciles, à des asiatiques lâches et dégradés, ces superstitions aussi avilissantes qu'insensées: elles ne sont point faites pour les habitans de ton climat. occupe-toi du soin de perfectionner tes gouvernemens, de corriger tes lois, de réformer tes abus, de régler tes moeurs, et ferme pour toujours les yeux à ces vraies chimères, qui depuis tant de siècles n'ont servi qu'à retarder tes progrès vers la science véritable et à t'écarter de la route du bonheur. . _examen critique de la vie et des ouvrages de saint paul_, londres (amsterdam), . a free translation of peter annet's _history and character of st. paul examined_, written in answer to lyttelton. new edition and translated back into english "from the french of boulanger," london, r. carlile, . a rather unsympathetic account, but with flashes of real insight into "le système religieux des chrétiens dont s. paul fut évidemment le véritable architecte." (epître dédicatoire.) annet said of paul's type of man "l'enthousiaste s'enivre, pour l'ainsi dire, de son propre vin, il se persuade que la cause de ses passions est la cause de dieu (p. ), mais quelque violent qu'ait pu être l'enthousiasme de s. paul, il sentait très bien que la doctrine qu'il prêchait devait paraître bizarre et insensée à des êtres raisonnables" (p. ). . _de la nature humaine, ou exposition des facultés, des actions et des passions de l'âme_, londres (amsterdam), . (thomas hobbes.) reprinted in a french edition of hobbes' works by holbach and sorbière, . appeared first in english in , omitted in a latin edition of hobbes printed in amsterdam. in spite of its brevity, holbach considered this one of hobbes' most important and luminous works. . _discours sur les miracles de jesus christ_ (amsterdam, ?). translated from woolston, whom holbach admired very much for his uncompromising attitude toward truth. he suffered fines and imprisonments, but would not give up the privilege of writing as he pleased. the present discourse was the cause of a quarrel with his friend whiston. he died jan. , , "avec beaucoup de fermeté... il se ferma les yeux et la bouche de ses propres mains, et rendit l'esprit." this work exists in a manuscript book of pages, written very fine, in the bibliothèque nationale (mss. français ) and was current in france long before . in fact it is mentioned by grimm before , but the dictionaries (barber, quérard) generally date it from . before turning to holbach's original works mention should be made of a very interesting and extraordinary book that he brought to light, retouched, and later used as a kind of shield against the attacks of the parliaments upon his own works. in he published a work entitled _l'antiquité dévoilée par ses usages, ou examen critique des principales opinions, cérémonies et institutions religieuses et politiques des différens peuples de la terre_. par feu m. boulanger, amsterdam, . this is a work based on an original manuscript by boulanger, who died in , preceded by an excellent letter on him by diderot, published also in the _gazette littéraire_. the use made by holbach of boulanger's name makes it necessary to consider for a moment this almost forgotten writer. nicholas antoine boulanger was born in . as a child he showed so little aptitude for study that later his teachers could scarcely believe that he had turned out to be a really learned man. as diderot observes, "ces exemples d'enfans, rendus ineptes entre les mains des pédans qui les abrutissent en dépit de la nature la plus heureuse, ne sont pas rares, cependant ils surprennent toujours" (p. ). boulanger studied mathematics and architecture, became an engineer and was employed by the government as inspector of bridges and highways. he passed a busy life in exacting outdoor work but at the same time his active intellect played over a large range of human interests. he became especially concerned with historical origins and set himself to learn latin and greek that he might get at the sources. not satisfied that he had come to the root of the matter he learned arabic, syriac, hebrew and chaldean. diderot says "il lisait et étudiait partout, je l'ai moi-même rencontré sur les grandes routes avec un auteur rabinnique à la main." he made a _mappemonde_ in which the globe is divided in two hemispheres, one occupied by the continents, the other by the oceans, and by a singular coincidence he found that the meridian of the continental hemisphere passed through paris. some such rearrangement of hemispheres is one of the commonplaces of modern geography. he furnished such articles as, _deluge, corvée, société_ for the encyclopedia and wrote several large and extremely learned books, among them _recherches sur l'origine du despotisme oriental_ and _antiquité dévoilée_. he died from overwork at the age of thirty-seven. boulanger's ideas on philosophy, mythology, anthropology and history are of extraordinary interest today. diderot relates his saying--"que si la philosophie avait trouvé tant d'obstacles parmi nous c'était qu'on avait commencé par où il aurait fallu finir, par des maximes abstraites, des raisonnemens généraux, des réflexions subtiles qui ont révolté par leur étrangeté et leur hardiesse et qu'on aurait admises sans peine si elles avaient été précédées de l'histoire des faits." he carried over this inductive method into realm of history, which he thought had been approached from the wrong side, i.e., the metaphysical, "par consulter les lumières de la raison" (p. ). he continues, "j'ai pensé qu'il devait y avoir quelques circonstances _particulières_. un fait et non une spéculation métaphysique m'a toujours semblé devoir être et tribut naturel et nécessaire de l'histoire." curiously enough the central fact in history appeared to boulanger to be the deluge, and on the basis of it he attempted to interpret the _kulturgeschichte_ of humanity. it is a bit unfortunate that he took the deluge quite as literally as he did; his idea, however, is obviously the influence of environmental pressure on the changing beliefs and practices of mankind. under the spell of this new point of view, he writes, "ce qu'on appelle l'histoire n'en est que la partie la plus ingrate, la plus uniforme, la plus inutile, quoi qu'elle soit la plus connue. la véritable histoire est couverte par le voile des temps" (p. ). boulanger however was not to be daunted and on the firm foundation of the fact of some ancient and universal catastrophe, as recorded on the surface of the earth and in human mythology, he proceeds to inquire into the moral effects of the changes in the physical environment back to which if possible the history of antiquity must be traced. man's defeat in his struggle with the elements made him religious, _hinc prima mali labes_. "son premier pas fut un faux pas, sa première maxime fut une erreur" (p. sq). but it was not his fault nor has time repaired the evil moral effects of that early catastrophe. "les grandes révolutions physiques de notre globe sont les véritables époques de l'histoire des nations" (p. ). hence have arisen the various psychological states through which mankind has passed. contemporary savages are still in the primitive state--boulanger properly emphasizes the relation of anthropology to history--"on aperçoit qu'il y a une nouvelle manière de voir et d'écrire l'histoire des hommes" (p. ) and with a vast store of anthropological and folklorist learning he writes it so that his assailant, fabry d'autrey, in his _antiquité justifiée_ (paris, ) is obliged to say with truth, "ce n'est point ici un tissus de mensonges grossiers, de sophismes rebattus et bouffons, appliqués d'un air méprisant aux objets les plus intéressants pour l'humanité. c'est une enterprise sérieuse et réfléchie" (p. ). in holbach published his first original work, a few copies of which had been printed in nancy in . this work was _le christianisme dévoilé ou examen des principes et des effets de la religion chrétienne_. par feu m. boulanger. londres (amsterdam), . there were several other editions the same year, one printed at john wilkes' private press in westminster. it was reprinted in later collections of boulanger's works, and went through several english and spanish editions. the form of the title and the attribution of the work to boulanger were designed to set persecution on the wrong track. there has been some discussion as to its authorship. voltaire and laharpe attributed it to damilaville, at whose book shop it was said to have been sold, but m. barbier has published detailed information given him by naigeon to the effect that holbach entrusted his manuscript to m. de saint-lambert, who had it printed by leclerc at nancy in . most of the copies that got to paris at that time were bought by several officers of the king's regiment then in garrison at nancy, among them m. de villevielle, a friend of voltaire and of condorcet. damilaville did not sell a single copy and even had a great deal of trouble to get one for holbach who waited for it a long time. this circumstantial evidence is of greater value than the statement of voltaire who was in the habit of attributing anonymous works to whomever he pleased. [ : ] the edition of was printed in amsterdam as were most of holbach's works. we have the details of their publication from naigeon _cadet_, a copyist, whose brother, j. a. naigeon, was holbach's literary factotum. in a manuscript note in his copy of the _système de la nature_ he tells how he copied nearly all holbach's works, either at paris or at sedan, where he was stationed, and where his friend blon, the postmaster, aided him, passing the manuscripts on to a madame loncin in liège, who in turn was a correspondent of marc-michel rey, the printer in amsterdam. sometimes they were sent directly by the diligence or through travellers. this account agrees perfectly with information given m. barbier orally by naigeon _aîné_. after being printed in holland the books were smuggled into france _sous le manteau_, as the expression is, and sold at absurd rates by colporters. [ : ] diderot writing to falconet early in [ : ] says: "il pleut des livres incrédules. c'est un feu roulant qui crible le sanctuaire de toutes parts... l'intolérance du gouvernment s'accroit de jour en jour. on dirait que c'est un projet formé d'éteindre ici les lettres, de ruiner le commerce de librairie et de nous réduire à la besace et à la stupidité... _le christianisme dévoilé_ s'est vendu jusqu'à quatre louis." when caught the colporters were severely punished. diderot gives the following instance in a letter to mlle. volland oct. , (avézac-lavigne, _diderot_, p. ): "un apprenti avait reçu, en payment ou autrement, d'un colporteur appelé lécuyer, deux exemplaires du _christianisme dévoilé_ et il avait vendu un de ces exemplaires à son patron. celui-ci le défère au lieutenant de police. le colporteur, sa femme et l'apprenti sont arrêtés tous les trois; ils viennent d'être piloriés, fouettés et marqués, et l'apprenti condamné à neuf ans de galères, le colporteur à cinq ans, et la femme à l'hôpital pour toute sa vie." there are two very interesting pieces of contemporary criticism of _le christianisme dévoilé_, one by voltaire, the other by grimm. voltaire writes in a letter to madame de saint julien december , (_oeuvres_, xliv, p. , ed. garnier): "vous m'apprenez que, dans votre société, on m'attribue _le christianisme dévoilé_ par feu m. boulanger, mais je vous assure que les gens au fait ne m'attribuent point du tout cet ouvrage. j'avoue avec vous qu'il y a de la clarté, de la chaleur, et quelque fois de l'éloquence; mais il est plein de répétitions, de négligences, de fautes contre la langue et je serais très-fâché de l'avoir fait, non seulement comme académicien, mais comme philosophe, et encore plus comme citoyen. "il est entièrement opposé à mes principes. ce livre conduit à l'athéisme que je déteste. j'ai toujours regardé l'athéisme comme le plus grand égarement de la raison, parce qu'il est aussi ridicule de dire que l'arrangement du monde ne prouve pas un artisan suprême qu'il serait impertinent de dire qu'une horloge ne prouve pas un horloger. "je ne réprouve pas moins ce livre comme citoyen; l'auteur paraît trop ennemi des puissances. des hommes qui penseraient comme lui ne formeraient qu'une anarchie: et je vois trop, par l'example de genève, combien l'anarchie est à craindre. ma coutume est d'écrire sur la marge de mes livres ce que je pense d'eux, vous verrez, quand vous daignerez venir à ferney, les marges de _christianisme dévoilé_ chargés de remarques qui montrent que l'auteur s'est trompé sur les faits les plus essentiels." these notes may be read in voltaire's works (vol. xxxi, p. , ed. garnier) and the original copy of _le christianisme dévoilé_ in which he wrote them is in the british museum (c , k ) where it is jealously guarded as one of the most precious autographs of the patriarch of ferney. grimm's notice is from the _correspondance littéraire_ of august , (vol. v, p. ). "il existe un livre intitulé _le christianisme dévoilé ou examen des principes et des effets de la religion chrétienne_, par feu m. boulanger, volume in º. on voit d'abord qu'on lui a donné ce titre pour en faire le pendant de _l'antiquité dévoilée_; mais il ne faut pas beaucoup se connaître en manière pour sentir que ces deux ouvrages ne sont pas sortis de la même plume. on peut assurer avec la même certitude que celui dont nous parlons ne vient point de la fabrique de ferney, parce que j'aimerais mieux croire que le patriache eût pris la lune avec ses dents; cela serait moins impossible que de guetter sa manière et son allure si complètement qu'il n'en restât aucune trace quelconque. par la même raison, je ne crois ce livre d'aucun de nos philosophes connus, parce que je n'y trouve la manière d'aucun de ceux qui ont écrit. d'òu vient-il donc? ma foi, je serais fâché de le savoir, et je crois que l'auteur aura sagement fait de ne mettre personne dans son secret. c'est le livre le plus hardi et le plus terrible qui ait jamais parti dans aucun lieu du monde. la préface consiste dans une lettre où l'auteur examine si la réligion est reéllement nécessaire ou seulement utile au maintien ou à la police des empires, et s'il convient de la respecter sous ce point de vue. comme il établit la négative, il entreprend en conséquence de prouver, par son ouvrage, l'absurdité et l'incohérence du dogme chrétien et de la mythologie qui en résulte, et l'influence de cette absurdité sur les têtes et sur les âmes. dans la seconde partie, il examine la morale chrétienne, et il prétend prouver que dans ses principes généraux elle n'a aucun avantage sur toutes les morales du monde, parce que la justice et la bonté sont recommandées dans tous les catéchismes de l'univers, et que chez aucun peuple, quelque barbare qu'il fut, on n'a jamais enseigné qu'il fallût être injuste et méchant. quant à ce que la morale chrétienne a de particulier, l'auteur pretend démontrer qu'elle ne peut convenir qu'à des enthousiastes peu propres aux devoirs de la société, pour lesquels les hommes sont dans ce monde. il entreprend de prouver, dans la troisième partie, que la religion chrétienne a eu les effets politiques les plus sinistres et les plus funestes, et que le genre humain lui doit tous les malheurs dont il a été accablé depuis quinze à dix-huit siècles, sans qu'on en puisse encore prévoir la fin. ce livre est écrit avec plus de véhémence que de véritable éloquence; il entraine. son style est châtié et correct, quoique un peu dur et sec; son ton est grave et soutenu. on n'y apprend rien de nouveau, et cependant il attache et intéresse. malgré son incroyable témérité, on ne peut refuser à l'auteur la qualité d'homme de bien fortement épris du bonheur de sa race et de la prospérité des sociétés; mais je pense que ses bonnes intentions seraient une sauvegarde bien faible contre les mandements et les réquisitions." this is a clear and fair account of a book that is without doubt the severest criticism of the theory and practice of historical christianity ever put in print. the church very naturally did not let such a book pass unanswered. abbé bergier, a heavy person, triumphantly refuted holbach in eight hundred pages in his _apologia de la religion chrétienne contre l'auteur du christianisme dévoilé_, paris, , which finishes with the fatal prophecy, "nous avons de surs garans de nos espérances: tant que le sang auguste de s. louis sera sur le trône, _il n'y a point de révolutions à craindre ni dans la religion ni dans la politique_. la religion chrétienne fondée sur la parole de dieu... triomphera des nouveaux philosophes. dieu qui veille sur son ouvrage n'a pas besoin de nos faibles mains pour le soutenir" (psaume , vs. , ). . there already existed in another work by holbach entitled _théologie portative ou dictionnaire abrégé de la religion chrétienne. par mr abbé bernier_. londres (amsterdam), ( ). this book went through many editions and was augmented by subsequent authors and editors. voltaire was already writing to d'alembert about it august , . [ : ] in a letter to damilaville, october , he writes (vol. xiv, p. ): depuis trois mois il y a une douzaine d'ouvrages d'une liberté extrême, imprimés en hollande. _la théologie portative_ n'est nullement théologique: ce n'est qu'une plaisanterie continuelle par ordre alphabétique; mais il faut avouer qu'il y a des traits si comiques que plusieurs théologiens mêmes ne pourront s'empêcher d'en rire. les jeunes gens et les femmes lisent cette folie avec avidité. les éditions de tous les livres dans ce goût se multiplient. and on february , , he wrote: on fait tous les jours des livres contre la religion, dont je voudrais bien imiter le style pour la défendre. y a-t-il de plus salé, que la plupart des traits qui se trouvent dans la _théologie portative_? y a-t-il rien de plus vigoreux, de plus profondément raisonné, d'écrit avec une éloquence plus audacieuse et plus terrible, que le _militaire philosophe_, ouvrage qui court toute l'europe? [by naigeon and holbach] lisez la _théologie portative_, et vous ne pourrez vous empêcher de rire, en condammant la coupable hardiesse de l'auteur. lisez _l'imposture sacerdotale_--vous y verrez le style de démosthène. ces livres malheuresement inondent l'europe; mais quelle est la cause de cette inondation? il n'y en a point d'autre que les querelles théologiques qui ont révolté les laïques. _il s'est fait une révolution dans l'esprit humain que rien ne peut plus arrêter: les persécutions ne pourraient qu'irriter le mal_. [footnote: the italics are mine.] it is to be noted however that voltaire's sentiments varied according to the point of view of the person to whom he was writing. in a letter to d'alembert, may , (vol. lxv, p. ), he calls the _théologie portative_ "un ouvrage à mon gré, très plaisant, auquel je n'ai assurément nulle part, ouvrage que je serais très fâché d'avoir fait, et que je voudrais bien avoir été capable de faire." but in a letter to the bishop of annecy june, , he writes (vol. xxviii, p. ): "vous lui [m. de saint florentin] imputez, à ce que je vois par vos lettres, des livres misérables, et jusqu'à _la theologie portative_, ouvrage fait apparemment dans quelque cabaret; vous n'êtes pas obligé d'avoir du goût, mais vous êtes obligé d'être juste" (vol. xxviii, p. ). diderot even said of the book: "c'est un assez bon nombre de bonnes plaisanteries noyées dans un beaucoup plus grand nombre de mauvaises" and this criticism is just. a few examples of the better jokes will suffice: _adam:_ c'est le premier homme, dieu en fait un grand nigaud, qui pour complaire à sa femme eut la bêtise de mordre dans une pomme que ses descendans n'ont point encore pu digérer. _idées innées:_ notions inspirées des prêtres de si bonne heure, si souvent répétées, que devenu grand l'on croît les avoir eu toujours ou les avoir reçus dès le ventre de sa mère. _jonas:_ la baleine fut à la fin obligée de le vomir tant un prophète est un morceau difficile à digérer. _magie:_ il y en a de deux sortes, la blanche et la noire. la première est très sainte et se pratique journellement dans l'église. _protestants:_ chrétiens amphibies. _vierge:_ c'est la mère du fils de dieu et belle-mère de l'église. _visions:_ lanternes magiques que de tout temps le père eternel s'est amusé à montrer aux saintes et aux prophètes. . holbach furnished the last chapter of naigeon's book _le militaire philosophe, ou difficulties sur la religion_, londres (amsterdam), . voltaire ascribed the work to st. hyacinthe. grimm recognized that the last chapter was by another hand and considered it the weakest part of the book. it attempts to demonstrate that all supernatural religions have been harmful to society and that the only useful religion is natural religion or morals. the book was refuted by guidi, in a "_lettre a m. le chevalier de... [barthe] entraîné dans l'irreligion par un libelle intitulé le militaire philosophe_ ( , mo). . holbach's next book was _la contagion sacrée ou l'histoire naturelle de la superstition_, londres (amsterdam), . in his preface holbach attributed the alleged english original of this work to john trenchard but that was only a ruse to avoid persecution. the book is by holbach. it has gone through many editions and been translated into english and spanish. the first edition had an introduction by naigeon. according to him manuscripts of this book became quite rare at one time and were supposed to have been lost. later they became more common and this edition was corrected by collation with six others. [pg transcriber's note: at this point there appears to be a break in the original text. a sentence introducing the fifth book in this list, "letters to eugenie", has evidently been lost.] the letters were written in , according to lequinio (_feuilles posthumes_), who had his information from naigeon, to marguerite, marchioness de vermandois in answer to a very touching and pitiful letter from that lady who was in great trouble over religion. her young husband was a great friend of the holbachs, but having had a strict catholic bringing up she was shocked at their infidelity and warned by her confessor to keep away from them. "yet in their home she saw all the domestic virtues exemplified and beheld that sweet and unchangeable affection for which the d'holbachs were eminently distinguished among their acquaintances and which was remarkable for its striking contrast with the courtly and christian habits of the day. her natural good sense and love for her friends struggled with her monastic education and reverence for the priests. the conflict rendered her miserable and she returned to her country seat to brood over it. in this state of mind she at length wrote to the baron and laid open her situation requesting him to comfort, console, and enlighten her." [ : ] his letters accomplished the desired effect and he later published them in the hope that they would do as much for others. they were carefully revised before they were sent to the press. all the purely personal passages were omitted and others added to hide the identity of the persons concerned. letters of the sort to religious ladies were common at this time. fréret's were preventive, holbach's curative, but appear to be rather strong dose for a _dévote_. other examples are voltaire's _epître à uranie_ and diderot's _entretien d'un philosophe avec la maréchale de..._. . in holbach published two short treatises on the doctrine of eternal punishment which claimed to be translations from english, but the originals are not to be found. the titles are _de l'intolérance convaincue de crime et de folie_ as it is sometimes given, and-- . _l'enfer détruit ou examen raisonné du dogme de l'eternité des peines_. londres, amsterdam, . this letter was translated into english under the title _hell destroyed!_ "now first translated from the french of d'alembert without any mutilations," london , which led mr. j. hibbert to say, "i know not why english publishers attribute this awfully sounding work to the cautious, not to say timid d'alembert. it was followed by whitefoot's _'torments of hell,'_ now first translated from the french." [ : ] of holbach's remaining works on religion two, _histoire critique de jésus christ_ and _tableau des saints_, date from when he began to publish his more philosophical works. . the _histoire critique de jésus christ ou analyse raisonnée des evangiles_ was published without name of place or date. it was preceded by voltaire's _epître à uranie_. it is an extremely careful but unsympathetic analysis of the gospel accounts, emphasizing all the inconsistencies and interpreting them with a literalness that they can ill sustain. from this rationalistic view-point holbach found the gospels a tissue of absurdities and contradictions. his method, however, would not be followed by the critique of today. . the _tableau des saints_ is a still more severe criticism of the heroes of christendom. holbach's proposition is "la raison ne connaît qu'une mesure pour juger et les hommes et les choses, c'est l'utilité réelle et permanente, qui en résulte pour notre espèce," (p. ). judged by this standard, the saints with their eyes fixed on another world have fallen far short. "ils se flattèrent de mériter le ciel en se rendant parfaitement inutile à la terre" (p. xviii). holbach much prefers the heroes of classical antiquity. the book is violent but learned throughout, and deals not only with the jewish patriarchs from moses on but with the church fathers and christian princes down to the contemporary defenders of the faith. after a rather one-sided account of the most dreary characters and events in christian history, holbach concludes: "tel fut, tel est, et tel sera toujours l'esprit du christianisme: il est aisé de sentir qu'il est incompatible avec les principes les plus évidens de la morale et de la saine politique" (p. ). . in _recueil philosophique_, londres (amsterdam), , edited by naigeon. réflexions sur les craintes de la mort. problème important--la religion est-elle nécessaire à la morale et utile à la politique. par m. mirabaud. . _essai sur les préjugés, ou de l'influence des opinions sur les moeurs et sur le bonheur des hommes_. londres (amsterdam), , under name of dumarsais. the book pretended to be an elaboration of dumarsais' essay on the _philosophe_ published in the _nouvelles libertés de penser_, . the special interest connected with it was the refutation frederick the great published under the title _examen de l'essai sur les préjugés_, londres, nourse, ( mo). the king of prussia writing from the point of view of a practical, enlightened despot, took special exception to holbach's remarks on government. "il l'outrage avec autant de grossièreté que d'indécence, il force le gouvernement de prendre fait et cause avec l'église pour s'opposer à l'ennemi commun. mais, quand avec un acharnement violent et les traits de la plus âcre satire, il calomnie son roi et le gouvernement de son pays, on le prend pour un frénétique echappé de ses chaînes, et livré aux transports les plus violens de sa rage. quoi, monsieur le philosophe, protecteur des moeurs et de la vertu, ignorez vous qu'un bon citoyen doit respecter la forme de gouvernement sous laquelle il vit, ignorez vous qu'il ne convient point à un particulier d'insulter les puissances..." (p. ). "non content d'insulter à toutes les têtes couronnés de l'europe, notre philosophe s'amuse, en passant, à répandre du ridicule sur les ouvrages de hugo grotius. j'oserais croire qu'il n'en sera pas cru sur sa parole, et que le _droit de la guerre et de la paix_ ira plus loin à la postérité que _l'essai sur les préjugés_" (p. ). holbach in his anti-militaristic enthusiasm had used the words "bourreaux mercenaires"; "epithète élégante," continues frederick, "dont il honore les guerriers. mais souffrions nous qu'un cerveau brûlé insulte au plus noble emploi de la societé?" (p. ). he goes on to defend war in good old-fashioned terms. "vous déclamez contre la guerre, elle est funeste en elle-même; mais c'est un mal comme ces autres fléaux du ciel qu'il faut supposer nécessaires dans l'arrangement de cet univers parce qu'ils arrivent périodiquement et qu'aucun siècle n'a pu jusqu'à présent d'en avoir été exempt. j'ai prouvé que de tout temps l'erreur a dominé dans ce monde; et comme une chose aussi constante peut être envisagée comme une loi général de la nature, j'en conclus que ce qui a été toujours sera toujours le même" (p. ). frederick sent his little refutation to voltaire for his compliments which were forthcoming. a few days after voltaire wrote to d'alembert: le roi de prusse vous a envoyé, sans doute, son petit écrit contre un livre imprimé cette année, intitulé _essai sur les préjugés_, ce roi a aussi les siens, qu'il faut lui pardonner; on n'est pas roi pour rien. mais je voudrais savoir quel est l'auteur de cet _essai_ contre lequel sa majesté prussienne s'amuse à écrire un peu durement. serait-il de diderot? serait-il de damilaville? serait-il d'helvetius? peut-être ne le connaissez-vous point, je le crois imprimé en hollande (vol. lxvi, p. ). d'alembert answered: oui, le roi de prusse m'a envoyé son écrit contre _l'essai sur les préjugés_. je ne suis point étonné que ce prince n'ait pas goûté l'ouvrage; je l'ai lu depuis cette réfutation et il m'a paru bien long, bien monotone et trop amer. il me semble que ce qu'il y de bon dans ce livre aurait pu et dû être noyé dans moins de pages et je vois que vous en avez porté à peu près le même jugement (vol. lxvi, p. ). in spite of these unfavorable judgments the _essai_ was reprinted as late as by the bibliotheque nationale in its _collection des meilleurs auteurs anciens et modernes_, still attributed to dumarsais with the account of his life by "le citoyen daube" which graced the edition of the year i. ( ) . early in appeared holbach's most famous book, the _système de la nature_, the only book that is connected with his name in the minds of most historians and philosophers. it seems wiser, however, to deal with this work in a chapter apart and continue the account of his later publications. . the next of which was _le bon-sens, ou idées naturelles opposées aux idées surnaturelles. par l'auteur du système de la nature_, londres (amsterdam), . this work has gone through twenty-five editions or more and has been translated into english, german, italian and spanish. as early as it began to be published under the name of the curé jean meslier d'etrépigny, made so famous by voltaire's publication of what was supposed to be his last will and testament in which on his death bed he abjured and cursed christianity. some editions contain in the preface letters by voltaire and his sketch of jean meslier. the last reprint was by de laurence, scott & co., chicago, . the book is nothing more or less than the _système de la nature_, in a greatly reduced and more readable form. voltaire, to whom it was attributed by some, said to d'alembert, "il y a plus que du bon sens dans ce livre, il est terrible. s'il sort de la boutique du _système de la nature_, l'auteur s'est bien perfectionné." d'alembert answered: "je pense comme vous sur le _bon-sens_ qui me paraît un bien plus terrible livre que le _système de la nature_." these remarks were inscribed by thomas jefferson on the title page of his copy of _bon-sens_. the book has gone through several editions in the united states and was sold at a popular price. the german translation was published in baltimore on the basis of a copy found in a second-hand book store in new orleans. the most serious work written against it is a long and carefully written treatise against materialism by an italian monk, gardini, entitled _l'anima umana e sue proprietà dedotte da soli principi de ragione, dal p. lettore d. antonmaria gardini, monaco camaldalese, contro i materialisti e specialmente contro l'opera intitulata, le bon-sens, ou idées naturelles opposées aux idées surnaturelles. in padova mdcclxxxi nella stamperia del seminario. appresso giovanni manfré, con licenza de superiori e privilegio_ ( vo, p. xx + ). . in holbach published his _recherches sur les miracles_, a much more sober work than his previous writings on religion. in this book he raises the well known difficulties with belief in miracles and brings a great deal of real learning and logic to bear on the question. the entire work is in a reasonable and philosophic spirit. his conclusion is that "une vraie religion doit avoir au défaut de bonnes raisons, des preuves sensibles, capables de faire impression sur tout ceux qui la cherchent de bonne foi. ce ne sont pas les miracles." the same year he published two serious but somewhat tiresome works on politics. . _la politique naturelle_. . _système social_ in which he attempts to reduce government to the naturalistic principles which were the basis of his entire philosophy. the first is also attributed to malesherbes. there is a long and keen criticism of the _système social_ by mme. d'epinay in a letter to abbé galiani jan. , (gal. _corresp._, vol. ii, p. ). but the most interesting reaction upon it was that of the abbé richard who criticized it from point of view of the divine right of kings in his long and tiresome work entitled _la défense de la religion, de la morale, de la vertu, de la politique et de la société, dans la réfutation des ouvrages qui ont pour titre, l'un système social etc. vautre la politique naturelle par le r. p. ch. l. richard, professeur de théologie_, etc., paris, moulard, . in a preface of forty-seven pages the fears of the conservative old abbé are well expressed. the aim of these modern philosophers who are poisoning public opinion by their writings is to "démolir avec l'antique édifice de la religion chrétienne, celui des moeurs, de la vertu, de la saine politique etc. rompre tous les canaux de communication entre la terre et le ciel, bannir, exterminer du monde le dieu qui le tira du néant, y introduire l'impiété la plus complète, la licence la plus consomnée, l'anarchie la plus entière, la confusion la plus horrible." . holbach's next work, _ethocratie ou gouvernement fondé sur la morale_, amsterdam, rey, , is interesting mainly for its unfortunate dedication and peroration, inscribed to louis xvi, who was hailed therein as a long expected messiah. . holbach's last works dealt exclusively with morals. they are _la morale universelle ou les devoirs de l'homme fondés sur la nature_, amsterdam, , and . a posthumous work, _elements de la morale universelle, ou catechisme de la nature_, paris, . this is a beautiful little book. it is simple and clear to the last degree. there have been several translations in spanish for the purposes of elementary education in morals in the public schools. it was composed in . holbach's attitude towards morals is indicated by his _avertissement_--"la morale est une science dont les principes sont susceptibles d'une démonstration aussi claire et aussi rigoureuse que ceux du calcul et de la géometrie." chapter iii. the systÈme de la nature. early in appeared the famous _système de la nature, ou des loix du monde physique et du monde morale, par m. mirabaud, secrétaire perpétuel et l'un des quarante de l'académie française_, londres (amsterdam), . this work has gone through over thirty editions in france, spain, germany, england and the united states. no book of a philosophic or scientific character has ever caused such a sensation at the time of its publication, excepting perhaps darwin's _origin of species_, the thesis of which is more than hinted at by holbach. there were several editions in . a very few copies contain a _discours préliminaire de l'auteur_ of sixteen pages which naigeon had printed separately in london. the _abrégé du code de la nature_, which ends the book was also published separately and is sometimes attributed to diderot, vo, pp. [ : ] there is also a book entitled _le vrai sens du système de la nature_, , attributed to helvetius, a very clear, concise epitome largely in holbach's own short and telling sentences, and much more effective than the original because of its brevity. holbach himself reproduced the _système de la nature_ in a shortened form in _bon-sens_, , and payrard plagiarized it freely in _de la nature et de ses lois_, paris, . the book has been attributed to diderot, helvetius, robinet, damilaville and others. naigeon is certain that it is entirely by holbach, although it is generally held that diderot had a hand in it. it was published under the name of mirabaud to obviate persecution. the manuscript, it was alleged, had been found among his papers as a sort of "testament" or philosophical legacy to posterity. this work may be called the bible of scientific materialism and dogmatic atheism. nothing before or since has ever approached it in its open and unequivocal insistence on points of view commonly held, if at all, with reluctance and reserve. it is impossible in a study of this length to deal fully with the attacks and refutations that were published immediately. we may mention first the condemnation of the book by the _parlement de paris_, august , , to be burned by the public hangman along with voltaire's _dieu et les hommes_, and holbach's _discours sur les miracles_, _la contagion sacrée_ and _le christianisme dévoilé_, which had already been condemned on september , . [ : ] the _réquisitoire_ of seguier, _avocat général_, on the occasion of the condemnation of the _système de la nature_ was so weak and ridiculous that the _parlement de paris_ refused to sanction its publication, and it was printed by the express order of the king. as grimm observed, it seemed designed solely to acquaint the ignorant with this dangerous work, without opposing any of its propositions. one would look in vain for a better example of the conservatism of the legal profession. [ : ] le poison des nouveautés profanes ne peut corrompre la sainte gravité des moeurs qui caractérise les vrais magistrats: tout peut changer autour d'eux, _ils restent immuables avec la loi_ (page ). n'est-ce pas ce fatal abus de la liberté de penser, qui a enfanté cette multitude de sectes, d'opinions, de partis, et cet esprit d'indépendance dont d'autres nations ont éprouvé les sinstres révolutions. le même abus produira en france des effets peut-être plus funestes. la liberté indéfinie trouveroit, dans la caractère de la nation, dans son activité, dans son amour pour la nouveauté, un moyen de plus pour préparer les plus affreuses révolutions (p. ). the most interesting private attacks on the _système de la nature_ came from two somewhat unexpected quarters, from ferney and sans souci. voltaire, as usual, was not wholly consistent in his opinions of it, as is revealed in his countless letters on the subject. grimm attributed his hostility to jealousy, and the fear that the _système de la nature_ might "renverse le rituel de ferney et que le patriarcat ne s'en aille au diable avec lui." [ : ] george leroy went so far as to write a book entitled _réflexions sur la jalousie, pour servir de commentaire aux derniers ouvrages de m. de voltaire_, . frederick ii naturally felt bound to defend the kings who, as voltaire said, were no better treated than god in the _système de la nature_. [ : ] voltaire's correspondence during this period is so interesting that it seems worth while to quote at length, especially from his letters to fredrick the great. in may , shortly after the publication of the _système de la nature_ voltaire wrote to m. vernes: [ : ] "on a tant dit de sottises sur la nature que je ne lis plus aucun de ces livres là." but by july he had read it and wrote to grimm: [ : ] "si l'ouvrage eut été plus serré il aurait fait un effet terrible, mais tel qu'il est il en a fait beaucoup. il est bien plus éloquent que spinoza... j'ai une grande curiosité de savoir ce qu'on en pense à paris." in writing to d'alembert about this time he seemed to have a fairly favorable impression of the book. "il m'a paru qu'il y avait des longueurs, des répétitions et quelques inconséquences, mais il y a trop de bon pour qu'on n'éclate avec fureur contre ce livre. si on garde le silence, ce sera une preuve du prodigieux progrès que la tolérance fait tous les jours." [ : ] but there was little likelihood that philosophers or theologians would keep silent about this scandalous book. before the end of the month voltaire was writing to d'alembert about his own and the king of prussia's refutations of it, and the same day wrote to frederick: "il me semble que vos remarques doivent être imprimées; ce sont des leçons pour le genre humain. vous soutenez d'un bras la cause de dieu et vous écrasez de l'autre la superstition." [ : ] later voltaire confessed to frederick that he also had undertaken to rebuke the author of the système de la nature. "ainsi dieu a pour lui les deux hommes les moins superstitieux de l'europe, ce que devrait lui plaire beaucoup" (p. ). frederick, however, hesitated to make his refutation public, and wrote to voltaire: "lorsque j'eus achevé mon ouvrage contre l'athéisme, je crus ma réfutation très orthodoxe, je la relus, et je la trouvai bien éloignée de l'être. il y a des endroits qui ne saurait paraître sans effaroucher les timides et scandaliser les dévots. un petit mot qui m'est échappé sur l'éternité du monde me ferait lapider dans votre patrie, si j'y étais né particulier, et que je l'eusse fait imprimer. je sens que je n'ai point du tout ni l'âme ni le style théologique." [ : ] voltaire, in his "petite drôlerie en faveur de la divinité" (as he called his work) and in his letters, could not find terms harsh enough in which to condemn the _système de la nature_. he called it "un chaos, un grand mal moral, un ouvrage de ténèbres, un péché contre la nature, un système de la folie et de l'ignorance," and wrote to delisle de sales: "je ne vois pas que rien ait plus avili notre siècle que cette énorme sottise." [ : ] voltaire seemed to grow more bitter about holbach's book as time went on. his letters and various works abound in references to it, and it is difficult to determine his motives. he was accused, as has been suggested, by holbach's circle "de caresser les gens en place, et d'abandonner ceux qui n'y sont plus." [ : ] m. avenel believed that he suspected holbach himself of making these accusations. voltaire's letter to the duc de richelieu, nov. , , [ : ] seems to give them foundation. a very different reaction was that of goethe and his university circle at strasburg to whom the _système de la nature_ appeared a harmless and uninteresting book, "grau," "cimmerisch," "totenhaft," "die echte quintessenz der greisenheit." to these fervent young men in the youthful flush of romanticism, its sad, atheistic twilight seemed to cast a veil over the beauty of the earth and rob the heaven of stars; and they lightheardedly discredited both holbach and voltaire in favor of shakespeare and the english romantic school. one would look far for a better instance of the romantic reaction which set in so soon and so obscured the clarity of the issues at stake in the eighteenth century thought. [ : ] the leading refutations directed explicitly against the _système de la nature_ are: . , rive, abbé j. j., lettres philosophiques contre le _ système de la nature_. (portefeuille hebdomadaire de bruxelles.) . frederick ii, _examen critique du livre intitulé, système de la nature_. (political miscellanies, p. .) . voltaire, dieu, réponse de m. de voltaire au _système de la nature_. au château de ferney, , vo, pp. . . , bergier, abbé n. f., examen du matérialisme, ou réfutation du _système de la nature_. paris, humbolt, , vols., mo. . camuset, abbé j. n., principes contre l'incrédulité, a l'occasion du _système de la nature_. paris, pillot, , mo, pp. viii + . . castillon, j. de (salvernini di castiglione), observations sur le livre intitulé, _système de la nature_. berlin, decker, , vo. ( sols broché.) . rochford, dubois de, pensées diverses contre le système des matérialistes, à l'occasion d'un écrit intitulé; _système de la nature_. paris, lambert, , mo. . , l'impie démasqué, ou remontrance aux écrivains incrédules. londres, heydinger, . holland, j. h., réflexions philosophiques sur le _système de la nature_. paris, , vols., vo. . , buzonnière, nouel de, observations sur un ouvrage intitulé le _système de la nature_. paris, debure, père, , vo, pp. . (prix livre, sols broché.) . , fangouse, abbé, la religion prouvée aux incrédules, avec une lettre à l'auteur du _système de la nature_ par un homme du monde. paris, debure l'aîné, mo, p. . same under title réflexions importantes sur la religion, etc., . . , paulian, a. j., le véritable système de la nature, etc., avignon, niel, vols., mo. . , mangold, f. x. von, unumstossliche widerlegung des materialismus gegen den verfasser des _systems der natur_. augsburg, . of these and other refutations of materialism such as saint-martin's _des erreurs et de la vérité_, dupont de nemours' _philosophie de l'univers_, delisles de sales' _philosophie de la nature_, etc., which are not directed explicitly against the _système de la nature_, the works of voltaire and frederick the great are the most interesting but by no means the most serious or convincing. morley finds voltaire very weak and much beside the point, especially in his discussion of order and disorder in nature which holbach had denied. voltaire's argument is that there must be an intelligent motor or cause behind nature (p. ). this is god (p. ). he admits at the outset that all systems are mere dreams but he continues to insist with a dogmatism equal to holbach's on the validity of his dream. he repeatedly asserts without foundation that holbach's system is based on the false experiment of needham (pp. , ), and even goes so far as to ridicule the evolutionary hypothesis altogether (p. ). he speaks of the necessity of a belief in god, by a kind of natural logic. god and matter exist in the nature of things, "tout nous announce un Être suprême, rien ne nous dit ce qu'il est." god himself seems to be a kind of fatalistic necessity. "c'est ce que vous appellerez nature et c'est ce que j'appelle dieu." at the end he shifts the argument from the base of necessity to that of utility. which is the more consoling doctrine? if the idea of god has prevented ten crimes i hold that the entire world should embrace it (p. ). as morley has said, such arguments could scarcely have convinced voltaire himself. frederick was surprised that voltaire and d'alembert had found anything good in the book. his refutation was more methodical than that of voltaire, who called it a "homage to the divinity" but wrote to d'alembert that it was written in the style of a notary. two other refutations emanating from the academy of berlin were those of castillon and holland. the first of these is a very heavy and learned work, formidable and forbidding in its logic. castillon reduces holbach's propositions to three. the self-existence of matter, the essential relation of movement to it, and the possibility of deriving everything from it or some mode of it. castillon concludes after five hundred pages of reasoning that matter is contingent, movement not inherent in it, and that purely spiritual beings exist in independence of it. hence the _système de la nature_ is a "long and wicked error." holland's is a still more serious work, which the sorbonne recommended strongly as an antidote against holbach's _système_ which it qualified as "une malheureuse production que notre siècle doit rougir d'avoir enfantée." but when it was discovered that holland was a protestant his work was condemned forthwith, jan. , . bergier's refutation is interesting as an attack from a churchman of extraordinary keenness and insight into the progress of the new philosophy. in the _système de la nature_ he recognized the hand of the author of _la contagion sacrée_ and the _essai sur les préjugés_ and dealt with it as he did the _christianisme dévoilé_. buzonniere, rochfort and fangouse are milder and more naive in their demonstrations and their works are of no weight or interest. _l'impie démasqué_ is a brutal work which qualifies holbach as a "vile apostle of vice and crime," and the _système de la nature_ as the most impudent treatise on atheism that has yet dishonored the globe--one which covers the century with shame and will be the scandal of future generations. the work of paulian is of a different sort. coming comparatively late, it attempted to review the hostile opinions of many years and then mass them in an overwhelming final attack on the _système de la nature_. to this end paulian rewrites the entire book chapter by chapter, giving the "true version." he then reviews holland's outline and bergier's comments, together with seven articles directed explicitly against the _système de la nature_ in such works as the _lettres helviennes_, of abbé barruel, _dict. des philosophes_, _dict. anti-philosophe_, his own _dict. théologique_, etc., besides many other writings against the new philosophy in general. he then reviews articles by members of the philosophic school against materialism and then goes back to holbach's sources, diderot, bayle, spinoza, lucretius, epicurus, etc. the work is not scholarly but comprehensive and evidently discouraged further formal refutations. the _système de la nature_ had many critics in the stormy days that followed . delisle de sales found it a monstrosity--a _fratras_; la harpe called it an infamous book, "un amas de bêtises qu'on ose appeler philosophie, inconcevables inepties, un immense échafaudage de mensonge et d'invective"; m. villemain is much more calm and fair; lord brougham, like damiron, buzonnière, and many others, found it seductive but full of false reasoning; lerminier was so severe that st.-beuve was moved to defend holbach against him. samuel wilkinson, the english translator of , is one of the few whose criticism is at all favorable. holbach has always appealed to a certain type of radical mind and his translators and editors have generally been men who were often over-enthusiastic. for example, mr. wilkinson says of the _système de la nature_, [ : ] "no work, ancient or modern, has surpassed it in the eloquence and sublimity of its language or in the facility with which it treats the most abstruse and difficult subjects. it is without exception the boldest effort the human mind has yet produced in the investigation of morals and theology. the republic of letters has never produced another author whose pen was so well calculated to emancipate mankind from all those trammels with which the nurse, the school master, and the priest have successively locked up their noblest faculties, before they were capable of reasoning and judging for themselves." it seems unnecessary to analyze the _système de la nature_. this has been done by damiron, soury, fabre, lange, morley, the historians of philosophy, and encyclopaedists; and the book itself is easily available in the larger libraries. the substance of holbach's philosophy is susceptible of clearer treatment apart from it or any one of his books, although it permeates all of them. m. jules soury has said, in describing a certain type of mind: "il est d'heureux esprits, des âmes fortes et saines, que n'effraie point le silence éternel des espaces infinis où s'anéantissait la raison de pascal. naïves et robustes natures, mâles et vigoureux penseurs, qui gardent toute la vie quelque chose des dons charmants de la jeunesse et de l'enfance même, une foi vive dans le témoinage immédiat de nos sens et de notre conscience, une humeur alerte, toute de joyeuse ardeur, et comme une intrépidité d'esprit que rien n'arrête. pour eux tout est clair et uni; ou à peu près, et là où ils soupçonnent quelque bas-bond insondable, ils se détournent et poursuivent fièrement leur chemin. comme cet epicurien dont parle cicéron au commencement du _de natura deorum_, ils ont toujours l'air de sortir de l'assemblée des dieux et de descendre des intermondes d'epicure." such was holbach. his philosophy is based on the child-like assumption that things are as they seem, provided they are observed with sufficient care by a sufficient number of people. this brings us at once to the very heart of holbach's method which was experimental and inductive to the last degree. holbach was nourished on what might be called scientific rather than philosophical traditions. as m. tourneux has pointed out, he had been a serious student of the natural sciences, especially those connected with the constitution of the earth. these studies led him to see the disparity between certain accepted and traditional cosmologies and a scientific interpretation of the terrestrial globe and the forms of life which flourish upon it. finding the supposed sacred and infallible records untrustworthy in one regard, he began to question their veracity at other points. being of a critical frame of mind, he took the records rather more literally than a sympathetic, allegorical apologist would have done, although it cannot be said that he used much historical insight. after having studied the sacred texts for purposes of writing or having translated other men's studies on moses, david, the prophets, jesus, paul, the christian theologians and saints, miracles, etc., he concluded that these accounts were untrustworthy and mendacious. he knew ancient and modern philosophy and found in the greater part of it an unwarranted romantic or theological trend which his scientific training had caused him to suspect. it must be admitted that however false or illogical holbach's conclusions may be considered, he was by no means ignorant of the subjects he chose to treat, as some of his detractors would have one believe. his theory of knowledge was that of locke and condillac, and on this foundation he built up his system of scientific naturalism and dogmatic atheism. his initial assumption is, as has been suggested, that experience (application réitérée des sens) and reason are trustworthy guides to knowledge. by them we become conscious of an external objective world, of which sentient beings themselves are a part, from which they receive impressions through their sense organs. these myriad impressions when compared and reflected upon form reasoned knowledge or truth, provided they are substantiated by repeated experiences carefully made. that is, an idea is said to be true when it conforms perfectly with the actual external object. this is possible unless one's senses are defective, or one's judgment vitiated by emotion and passion. holbach's contention is that if one applies experience and reason to the external universe, or nature, "ce vaste assemblage de tout ce qui existe"; it reveals a _single objective reality_, i. e., _matter_, which is in itself essentially active or in a state of motion. from matter in motion are derived all the phenomena that strike our senses. all is matter or a function of it. matter, then, is not an effect, but a cause. it is not caused; it is from eternity and of necessity. the cardinal point in holbach's philosophy is an inexorable materialistic necessity. nothing, then, is exempt from the laws of physics and chemistry. inorganic substance and organic life fall into the same category. man himself with all his differentiated faculties is but a function of matter and motion in extraordinary complex and involved relations. man's imputation to himself of free will and unending consciousness apart from his machine is an idle tale built on his desires, not on his experiences nor his knowledge of nature. this imputation of a will or soul to nature, independent of it or in any sense above it, is a still more idle one derived from his renunciation of the witness of his senses and his following after the phantoms of his imagination. it is ignorance or disregard of nature then that has given rise to supernatural ideas that have "no correspondence with true sight," or, as holbach expressed it, have no counterpart in the external object. in other words, theology, or poetry about god, as petrarch said, is ignorance of natural causes reduced to a system. man is a purely natural or physical being, like a tree or a stone. his so-called spiritual nature (l'homme moral) is merely a phase of his physical nature considered under a special aspect. he is all matter in motion, and when that ceases to function in a particular way, called life, he ceases to be as a conscious entity. he is so organized, however that his chief desires are to survive and render his existence happy. by happiness holbach means the presence of pleasure and the absence of pain. in all his activity, then, man will seek pleasure and avoid pain. the chief cause of man's misery or lack of well being is his ignorance of the powers and possibilities of his own nature and the universal nature. all he needs is to ascertain his place in nature and adjust himself to it. from the beginning of his career he has been the dupe of false ideas, especially those connected with supernatural powers, on whom he supposed he was dependent. but, if ignorance of nature gave birth to the gods, knowledge of nature is calculated to destroy them and the evils resulting from them, the introduction of theistic ideas into politics and morals. in a word, the truth, that is, _correct ideas of nature_ is the one thing needful to the happiness and well-being of man. the application of these principles to the given situation in france in would obviously have produced unwelcome results. holbach's theory was that religion was worse than useless in that it had inculcated false and pernicious ideas in politics and morals. he would do away completely with it in the interest of putting these sciences on a natural basis. this basis is self-interest, or man's inevitable inclination toward survival and the highest degree of well-being, "l'objet de la morale est de faire connaître aux hommes que leur plus grand intérêt exige qu'ils pratiquent la vertu; le but du gouvernement doit être de la leur faire pratiquer." government then assumes the functions of moral restraint formally delegated to religion; and punishments render virtue attractive and vice repugnant. holbach's theory of social organization is practically that of aristotle. men combine in order to increase the store of individual well-being, to live the good life. if those to whom society has delegated sovereignty abuse their power, society has the right to take it from them. sovereignty is merely an agent for the diffusion of truth and the maintenance of virtue, which are the prerequisites of social and individual well-being. the technique of progress is enlightenment and good laws. nothing could be clearer or simpler than holbach's system. as diderot so truly said, he will not be quoted on both sides of any question. his uncompromising atheism is the very heart and core of his system and clarifies the whole situation. all supernatural ideas are to be abandoned. experience and reason are once for all made supreme, and henceforth refuse to share their throne or abdicate in favor of faith. holbach's aim was as he said to bring man back to nature and render reason dear to him. "il est tempts que cette raison injustement dégradée quitte un ton pusillamine qui la rendront complice du mensonge et du délire." if reason is to rule, the usurper, religion, must be ejected; hence atheism was fundamental to his entire system. he did not suppose by any means that it would become a popular faith, because it presupposed too much learning and reflection, but it seemed to him the necessary weapon of a reforming party at that time. he defines an atheist as follows: "c'est un homme, qui détruit des chimères nuisibles au genre humain, pour ramener les hommes à la nature, à l'expérience, à la raison. c'est un penseur qui, ayant médité la matière, ses propriétés et ses façons d'agir, n'a pas besoin, pour expliquer les phénomènes de l'univers et les opérations de la nature, d'imaginer des puissances idéales, des intelligences imaginaires, des êtres de raison; qui loin de faire mieux connaître cette nature, ne font que la rendre capricieuse, inexplicable, et méconnaissable, inutile au bonheur des hommes." appendix holbach's correspondence the following letters of holbach are extant: holbach to hume, aug. , . holbach to hume, mar. , . holbach to hume, july , . holbach to hume, aug. , . holbach to hume, sept. , . these were printed in hume's _private correspondence_, london, , pp. - , and deal largely with hume's quarrel with rousseau. holbach to garrick, june , . holbach to garrick, feb. , . these two letters are in manuscript in lansdowne house, coll. forster, and were published by f. a. hedgcock, _david garrick et ses amis français_. paris, , pp. - . holbach to wilkes, aug., , (brit. mus. mss., vol. , p. ). holbach to wilkes, dec. , (brit. mus. mss., vol. , p. ). holbach to wilkes, may , (brit. mus. mss., vol. , p. ) holbach to wilkes, nov. , (brit. mus. mss., vol. , p. ). holbach to wilkes, dec. , (brit. mus. mss., vol. , p. ). holbach to wilkes, july , (brit. mus. mss., vol. , p. ). holbach to wilkes, mar. , (brit. mus. mss., vol. , p. ). holbach to wilkes, april , , (wilkes, _correspondence_, london, , vol. iv, p. ). the first seven of these letters are published for the first time in the present volume, pp. - and pp. - . holbach to galiani, aug. , (_critica_, vol. i, pp. sq.). galiani to holbach, april , (galiani, _correspondence_, paris, , vol. i, p. ). galiani to holbach, july , (galiani, _correspondence_, paris, , vol. i, p. ). holbach to galiani, aug. , (_critica_, vol. i, p. ). there are references to other letters in _critica_ which i have not been able to find. holbach to beccaria, mar. , , published by m. landry _beccaria, scritte e lettre inediti_, , p. . holbach to malesherbes, april , (hitherto unpublished). see present volume, p. . holbach to hume (hume, private correspondence, london, , pp. - ) paris, the rd. of august, _sir,_-- i have received with the deepest sense of gratitude your very kind and obliging letter of the th. inst: favors of great men ought to give pride to those that have at least the merit of setting the value that is due upon them. this is my case with you, sir; the reading of your valuable works has not only inspired me with the strongest admiration for your genius and amiable parts, but gave me the highest idea of your person and the strongest desire of getting acquainted with one of the greatest philosophers of my age, and of the best friend to mankind. these sentiments have emboldened me to send formally, though unknown to you, the work you are mentioning to me. i thought you were the best to judge of such a performance, and i took only the liberty of giving a hint of my desires, in case it should meet with your approbation, nor was i surprized, or presumed to be displeased, at seeing my wishes disappointed. the reasons appeared very obvious to me; not withstanding the british liberty, i conceived there were limits even to it. however, my late friend's book has appeared since and there is even an edition of it lately done in england: i believe it will be relished by the friends of truth, who like to see vulgar errors struck at the root. this has been your continued task, sir; and you deserve for it the praises of all sincere wellwishers of humanity: give me leave to rank myself among them, and express to you, by this opportunity you have been so kind as to give me, the fervent desire we have to see you in this country. messrs. stuart, dempster, fordyce, who are so good as to favor me with their company, have given me some hopes of seeing you in this metropolis, where you have so many admirers as readers, and as many sincere friends as there are disciples of philosophy. i don't doubt but my good friend m. helvétius will join in our wishes, and prevail upon you to come over. i assure you, sir, you won't perceive much the change of the country, for all countries are alike for people that have the same minds. i am, with the greatest veneration and esteem, sir, your most obedient and most humble servant. d'holbach. rue royale, butte st. roch, à paris. holbach to garrick (coll. forster, vol. xxi; pub., hedgcock, p. ) paris, feb ye th, . i received, my very dear sir, with a great deal of pleasure, your agreeable letter of ye th of january, but was very sorry to hear that you are inlisted in the numerous troup of _gouty_ people. tho' i have myself the honour of being of that tribe i dont desire my friends should enter into the same corporation. i am particularly griev'd to see you among the invalids for you have, more than any other, occasion for the free use of your limbs. however, don't be cross and peevish for that would be only increasing you distemper; and i charge you especially of not scolding that admirable lady mrs garrick, whose sweetness of temper and care must be a great comfort in your circumstances. i beg leave to present her with my respects and ye compliments of my wife, that has enjoyed but an indifferent state of health, owing to the severity of the winter. mr and made helvetius desire you both their best wishes and so do all your friends, for whom i can answer that every one of them keeps a kind remembrance of your valuable persons. dr. gem thinks you'll do very well to go to bath, but his opinion is that a thin diet would be more serviceable to you than anything else; believe he is in the right. abbé morellet pays many thanks for the answers to his queries, but complains of their shortness and laconism; however it is not your fault. he is glad to hear you have receiv'd his translation of beccaria's book, _des délits et des peines_ and the compliments of our friend dr gatti to whom i gave your direction before he went to london. our friend suard has entered his neck into the matrimonial halter; we are all of us very sorry for it for we know that nothing combin'd with love, will at last make nothing at all. i was not much surpris'd at the particulars you are pleas'd to mention about rousseau. according to the thorough knowledge i have had of him i look on that man as a mere philosophical quack, full of affectation, of pride, of oddities and even villainies; the work he is going to publish justifies the last imputation. is his memory so short as to forget that mr grimm, for those years past, has taken care of the mother of his wench or _gouvernante_ whom he left to starve here after having debauch'd her daughter and having got her or times with child. that great philosopher should remember that mr. grimm has in his hands letters under his own hand-writing that prove him the most ungrateful dogg in the world. during his last stay in paris he made some attempts to see mr diderot, and being refused that favor, he pretended that diderot endeavoured to see him, but that himself had refused peremptorily to comply with his request. i hope these particulars will suffice to let you know what you are to think of that illustrious man. i send you here a copy of a letter supposed to come from the king of prussia, but done by mr horace walpole, whereby you'll see that gentleman has found out his true character. but enough of that rascal who deserves not to be in mr hume's company but rather among the bears, if there are any in the mountains of wales. i am surprized you have not receiv'd yet the _encyclopédie_, for a great number of copies have been sent over already to england unless you have left your subscription here, where hitherto not one copy has been delivered for prudent reasons. we have had in the french comedy a new play called _le philosophie sans le savoir_ done and acted in a new stile, quite natural and moving: it has a prodigious success and deserves it extremely well. marmontel will give us very soon upon the italian stage his comical opera of _la bergère des alpes_. i hope it will prove very agreeable to the publick, having been very much delighted by the rehearsal of it; the music was done by mr cohaut who teaches my wife to play on the luth. we expect a tragedy of the dutch barnvelt. mr wilkes is still in this town, where he intends to stay until you give him leave to return to his native country. we have had the pleasure of seeing mr chanquion, your friend, who seems to be a very discerning gentleman and to whom in favor of your friendship i have shown all the politeness i could. i hear that sr james macdonald has been ill at parma, but is now recovered and in rome. abbé galliani is still at naples and stands a fair chance of being employ'd in the ministry there. adieu, very dear sir and remember your affectionate friend d'holbach holbach to wilkes (brit. mus. mss., vol. , p. ) paris the d of may ( ) _my dear sir_ i am extremely glad to know your lucky passage and happy arrival in your native country. i hope you know too well the sincere dispositions of my heart as to doubt of the friendship i have vowed to you for life; it has been of too long a duration to be shaken by any circumstances, and especially by those that do honor to you. i shall be very happy if your affairs (that seem to be in a fair way) permit you to drop over very soon to spend some time in this place along with miss wilkes to whom made d'holbach and i pay our best compliments. i can easily paint to my imagination the pleasure you both felt at your first meeting; everybody that has any sensibility must be acquainted with the grateful pangs in those moving circumstances. your case with the hawker at your entry in london is very odd and whimsical you did extremely well to humour the man in his opinion about mr. wilkes. i dare say if you had done otherwise his fist would have convinc'd you of the goodness of your cause, and then it would have been impossible for you to pass for a dead man any longer; which however, i think was very necessary for you in the beginning. i expect with great eagerness the settlement of your affairs with the ministry to your own satisfaction; be persuaded, dear sir, that nobody interests himself in your happiness than myself, and nothing will conduce more to it than your steady attachment to the principles of honor and patriotism. if you don't find a way of disposing of the little packet, you need not take much trouble about it, and you may bring it back along with you, when you come to this place, as to the kind offers you are so good as to make me about commissions, experience has taught me that it is unsafe to trust you with them, so i beg leave with gratitude to decline your proposals as that point. all our common friends and acquaintances desire their best compliments to you, and believe me, my dear sir. your affectionate oblig'd humble servant d'holbach holbach to wilkes (brit. mus. mss., vol , p. ) paris ber th _my very dear sir_ i receiv'd with the greatest pleasure the news of your lucky arrival in engelland. you know the sentiments of my heart, and are undoubtedly convinc'd how much i wish for the good success of all your enterprises tho i am to be a great looser by it. i rejoice very heartily at the fine prospect you have now in view and don't doubt but the persons you mention will succeed if they are in good earnest: which is allways a little doubtful in people of that kidney. we have had the pleasure of seeing miss wilkes three or four times since your departure, she is extreamly well and longs for the return of her friend mlle helvetius the th of this month. rousseau will very likely hate the english very cordially for making him pay so dear for his books, it is however a sign that he told us a lye when he pretended in his writings to have no books at all, as to his guitar he should buy a new one to tune his heart a little better than he did before. we have no news here, except the election of mr thomas as a member of the french academy. marquis beccaria is going to leave us very soon being obliged to return to milan: count veri will at the same time set out for england. i'll be oblig'd to you for a copy or two of the book printed in holland you mentioned in your letter you may send it by some private opportunity to miss wilkes, with, proper directions. a gentleman of our society should be glad to get copies of baskervilles' virgil _in octavo_. tho mr davenport and rousseau seem to be pleased very much with one another, i suppose they may very soon be tired of their squabbling, and the latter like the apostles will shake of against the barbarous britons the dust of his feet. receive the hearty compliments of my wife and all our friends. you know the true sentiments of my heart for you, dear sir. i am with great sincerity your most obedient humble servant d'holbach holbach to wilkes (brit. mus. mss., vol. , p. ) _dear sir_ i receiv'd with a great deal of pleasure your friendly letter from ostende of the th. nov. i was extreamly glad to hear your happy arrival at that place, and do not doubt but you met with a lucky passage to dover the following day, we are now enjoying the conversation of your british friends about elections; that will not be tedious for you if, according to your hopes, you should succeed in your projects. i see by your letter that instead of coming back directly by calais you intend to travel with miss wilkes through antwerp and the low countries, which i should think not very advisable in this rigorous season of the year, for generally at that time the waters are lock'd up by the frost and travelling is bad et tedious and may be would prove hurtful to your tender fellow traveler to whom my wife and i desire our best compliments. such a scheme will be more advantagious for you both and more conformable to the wishes of your friends in this place. i hope your arrival in london will contribute to reconcile abbé galliani to that place, where he complains of having not heard of the sun since he set his foot on british shore, however he may comfort himself for we have had very little of it in this country. the abbé must be overjoy'd at the news of the jesuits being expell'd from his native country for now he may say _gens inimica mihi tyrrhenum navigat aquor_. we have no material news in this country, except that the queen continues to be in a very bad state of health. if there is some good new romance i'll be oblig'd to bring it over along with you as, well as a couple of french books call'd _militaire philosophe_ and _théologie portative_ in case you may easily find them in london, for we cannot get them here. i am told the works of one morgan have been esteem'd in your country but i don't know the titles of them, if you should know them and meet with them with facility, i should be very much oblig'd to you provided you make me pay a little more than you have done hitherto for your commissions. all our common friends beg their compliments and i wish for your speedy return, and i am sincerely dear sir your faithful affectionate humble servant d'holbach paris the th of decemb. holbach to wilkes (brit. mus. mss., vol. , p. ) grandval, th of july _dear sir_ i receiv'd with a great deal of pleasure your very agreeable letter of the th of last month. i am extreamly glad that your generous soul is very far from sinking under the weight of these misfortunes, and to see that you don't give up the hopes of carrying triumphantly your point notwithstanding the discouragements you have met with lately. i need not tell you how much your friends in paris and i in particular interest ourselves in all the events that may befall you. our old friendship ought to be a sure pledge of my sincere sentiments for you, and of my best wishes for your good success in all your undertakings. i believe you can do no better but to keep strictly to the rules you have laid down for your conduct, and i don't doubt but you'll find it will answer the best to your purpose. i am very much oblig'd to you, dear sir, for the kind offers you make in your friendly letter. i have desir'd already mr suard to bring over a few books lately published in your metropolis. i am very glad to hear that gentleman is pleas'd with his journey. there's no possibility of getting for you a compleat sett of callots engravings. such a collection must be the business of many years; it is to be found only after the decease of some curious men who have taken a great deal of trouble to collect them. i found indeed in two shops or of them, but the proofs (les épreuves) were very indifferent and they wanted to sell them excessively dear; in general guineas would procure a collection very far from being compleat. my wife and all our common acquaintence desire their best compliments to you and to miss wilkes and you know the sentiments wherewith i am for ever dear sir your affectionate friend and very humble servant d'holbach holbach to wilkes (brit. mus. mss., vol. , p. ) paris the th of march _dear sir_ i receiv'd with a due sense of gratitude the favour of your last letter, and was overjoy'd to hear from yourself that your long confinement has not been able hitherto to obstruct the lively flow of your spirits. a little more patience and you'll reach the end of all your misfortunes, that have been faithfully partaken by your friends in england and abroad, for my own part i wish most sincerely that everything for the future may turn to your profit and welfare, without hurting that of your country, to whom, as a lover of mankind, i am a well wisher. my wife desires her best compliments to you and your beloved daughter, whom we both expect to see again with a great deal of pleasure in this country next month. notwithstanding our bad circumstances we are making very great preparations for the wedding of the dauphin, and our metropolis begins already to be filled with foreigners that flock hither from all parts of the world. our friend mr d'alainville is to set out at the end of april to fetch the archdutchess at strasbourg and bring mask (ed) (?) her different stages on the road to versailles. we have no news in the literary world except that voltaire is become lately _le père temporal_, that is to say the benefactor of the _capucins du pays de gex_ where he lives, a title of which all his pranks seemd to exclude him, but grace you know, is omnipotent, and monks are not over nice when there is something to be got by their condescension. if the hurry of affairs whould leave you any moments to read curious books i would advise you to peruse two very strange works lately publish'd viz _recherches philosophiques sur les américains_, le _système de la nature_ par mirabaud. i suppose you'll find them cheaper and more easily in london that at paris. all your late acquaintances in this town desire me to present you with their sincere compliments and best wishes; as to mine you know that they have no other object but your welfare. i am, dear sir, for ever your most affectionate friend and humble servant d'holbach p. s. i'll be very much oblig'd to you for sending over to me in vol. small octavo. holbach to wilkes (wilkes, correspondence, london, , vol. , p. ) paris, april ; "_my lord_, "i received with the utmost gratitude your lordship's friendly letter of the th of march. ( ?) i should have done myself the honor of answering sooner to your kind propositions, if i had not been prevented by some gouty infirmities that have assailed in the beginning of this spring. i esteem myself very happy to find that the hurry of business, and your exhaltation to the rank of chief-magistrate, could not make you forget your friendship to me; though my present circumstances do not permit me to make use of your friendly invitation, be persuaded my very dear lord that madame d'holbach and myself shall forever keep these signs of your kindness, in very grateful remembrance. we both desire our best compliments to your very amiable lady-mayoress: who acted so well her part lately in the egyptian hall, to the satisfaction of that prodigious crowd you have been entertaining there. all members of our society that have had the happiness of being acquainted with you, desire to be kindly remembered; and a continuation of your valuable friendship shall for ever be the utmost ambition my lord of your most sincerely devoted d'holbach" galiani to holbach (galiani, corresp., vol. i, p. ) naples, le juillet, _bonjour, mon cher baron,_ j'ai vu le _système de la nature_. c'est la ligne où finit la tristesse de la morne et sèche vérité, au-delà commence la gaieté du roman. il n'y a rien de mieux que de se persuader que les dés sont pipés: cette idée en enfante milles autres, et un nouveau monde se régénère. le m. mirabaud est un vrai abbé terray de la métaphysique. il fait des réductions, des suspensions, et cause la banqueroute du savoir, du plaisir et de l'esprit humain. mais vous allez me dire qu'aussi il y avait trop de nonvaleurs: on était trop endetté, il courait trop de papiers non réels sur la place. c'est vrai aussi, et voilà pourquoi la crise est arrivée. adieu, mon cher baron. ecrivez-moi de longues lettres, pour que le plaisir en soit plus grand. embrassez moi longuement la baronne, et soyez longue dans tout que vous faites, dans tout ce que vous patientez, dans tout ce que vous espérer. la longanimité est une belle vertu; c'est elle qui me fait espérer de revoir paris. adieu. holbach to galiani (critica, vol. i, , p. ) grandval, le d'août _bonjour, mon très délicieux abbé,_ j'ai bien reçu votre très-précieuse lettre du de juillet qui m'accuse la réception de celle que je vous avais écrite le de juin. je vois que celle-ci a été longtemps en route, attendu que m. torcia à qui m. diderot s'était chargé de la remettre, a encore traînassé quelque temps à paris, suivant la louable coutume des voyageurs qui nous quittent toujours avec peine. je suis bien aise que vous ayez lu le livre de mirabaud qui fait un bruit affreux dans ce pays. l'abbé bergier l'a déjà réfuté très-longuement et sa réponse paraîtra cet hiver. la sorbonne est, dit-on, occupée à détruire ce maudit _système_ qui lui paraît au moins hérétique. voltaire lui-même se prépare à le pulvériser; en attendant nos seigneurs du parlement y viennent d'y répondre par des fagots, ainsi qu'à quelque autres ouvrages de même trempe. ce qu'il y a de fâcheux c'est que l'ouvrage de v. qui a pour titre _dieu et les hommes_ a été enveloppé dans la même condamnation, ce qui doit déplaire souverainement à l'auteur. je me rappelle à cette occasion ce que m. hume dit d'un catholique que henri viii fit conduire au bûcher avec quelques hérétiques, et dont le seul chagrin était d'être brûlé en si mauvaise compagnie. nonobstant toutes ces réfutations, il parait tous les jours quelques nouveaux ouvrages impies, au point que je suis très surpris que la récolte ait été si bonne dans le royaume. en dernier lieu on vient de publier un ouvrage sous le titre de _droit des souverains sur les biens du clergé_, qui, sans contenir des impiétés n'en est pas moins déplaisant pour cela: il va droit à la cuisine, et veut que pour liquider la dette nationale on vende tous les biens ecclésiastiques et que l'on met nos pontifes à la pension. vous sentez qu'une proposition si mal sonnante n'a pu manquer de mettre le ciel en courroux; sa colère s'est déchargé sur cinq ou six libraires et colporteurs qui ont été mis en prison. [endnotes] [ : ] diderot, _oeuvres_, ed. assézat et tourneaux, vol. xx, p. . [ : ] grimm, _corr. lit._, vol. xv, p. . [ : ] diderot, _oeuvres_, vol. xx, p. . [ : ] among the most important are damiron j. p., _mémoires pour servir à l'histoire de la philosophie au dix-huitième siècle_ (paris, , vols., vo); lange, _geschichte des materialismus_ (eng. tr., boston, ); morley, _diderot and the encyclopedists_ (n. y., , vols., mo); plekhanow, g., _beiträge zur geschichte des materialismus_ (stuttgart, ); hancock, a. e., _the french revolution and the english poets_ (n. y., ); tallentyre, _the friends of voltaire_ (london, ); fabre, _les pères de la révolution_ (paris, ), etc. [ : ] confessions, _oeuvres_, vol. xxiv, p. . [ : ] bib. nat. mss. _pièces originales,_ , d'holbach, , . [ : ] carlyle, rev. dr. a., _autobiography_, ed. burton, boston, , p. sq. for holbach's english friends mentioned in his letters to wilkes. [ : ] see chap. ii and bibliography, pt. i, for these and his other works. [ : ] grimm _cor. lit._, vol. ii, p. . [ : ] _gazette de france_, aug. , . [ : ] jal, _dict. critique_, p. . [ : ] his career is somewhat doubtful. he travelled in italy in and abbé galiani, an old friend of holbach's, got a very agreeable impression of him. john wilkes, in a letter to his daughter in , seems to imply that he had not turned out very well, and hopes that the baron's second son will make good the deficiencies of the first. in he published a translation of weiland's _oberon_ or _huon de bordeaux_ which went thru another edition in , but those are the only details that have come to light. [ : ] diderot, in writing to mlle volland sep. , says: "on nourrit, à chenvières, les deux filles de madame d'holbach. l'aînée est belle comme un chérubin; c'est un visage rond, de grands yeux bleus, des levres fines, une bouche riante, la peau la plus blanche et la plus animée, des cheveux châtains qui ceignent un très joli front. la cadette est un peloton d'embonpoint où l'on ne distingue encore que du blanc et du vermillon." [ : ] gazette de france, june , . [ : ] holbach's intendant was [a] jew, berlise. after his death several of his old servants vincent, david, and plocque, contested holbach's will, in which they thought they were legatees. the case was in the courts for several years and was finally decided against them. douarche, _les tribunaux civil de paris pendant la révolution_, paris, , vol. i., pp. , , , . [ : ] avézac-lavigne, _diderot_, p. . [ : ] _critica_, vol. i, p. , note. [ : ] he met voltaire in paris in , however, and naigeon relates that voltaire greeted him very cordially and said that he had long desired to make his acquaintance. [ : ] collignon, _diderot_, p. . [ : ] avézac-lavigne, _diderot_, p. , note. [ : ] romilly, _memoirs_, vol. i, p. . [ : ] diderot, _oeuvres_, vol. i, p. lxvi, note. [ : ] journal de paris, dec. , . [ : ] see appendix, p. , p. . [ : ] see appendix, p. . [ : ] see appendix, p. . [ : ] see p. sq. and appendix pp. sq. [ : ] barbier, _dict._, vol. i, p. sq. [ : ] barbier, vol. i, p. xxxiii, note. [ : ] _oeuvres_, vol. xviii, p. . [ : ] _oeuvres_, vol. xiv, p. . [ : ] middleton's translation, preface. [ : ] cf. p. . [bibliography part i] [ : ] morley, _diderot_, vol. ii, p. . [ : ] later _bon-sens_ and _théologie portative_ were doomed to the flames by the condemnations of jan. , , and february , . [ : ] _système de la nature_, ed. , vol. ii, p. . [ : ] grimm, _cor. lit._, vol. ix, p. . [ : ] voltaire, _oeuvres_, ed. beuchot, vol. lxvi, p. . subsequent references to voltaire are from this edition. [ : ] vol. lxvii, p. . [ : ] grimm, _cor. lit._, vol. ix, p. . [ : ] vol. lxvi, p. . [ : ] vol. lxvi, p. . [ : ] vol. lxvi, p. . [ : ] vol. lxvi, p. . [ : ] vol. xxviii, p. . [ : ] vol. lxvi, p. . [ : ] goethe, _wahrheit und dichtung_, th book, goethe's _werke_, stuttgart, vol. , p. . auf philosophische weise erleuchtet und gefödert zu werden, hatten wir keinen trieb noch hang: über religiöse gegenstände glaubten wir uns selbst aufgeklärt zu haben, und so war der heftige streit französischer philosophen mit dem pfafftum uns ziemlich gleichgültig. verbotene, zurn feuer verdaminte bücher, welche damals grossen lärmen machten, übten keine wirkung auf uns. ich gedenke statt aller des _système de la nature_, das wir aus neugier in die hand nahmen. wir begriffen nicht, wie ein solches buch gefährlich sein könnte. es kam uns so grau, so cimmerisch, so totenhaft vor, das wir mühe hatten, seine gegenwart auszuhalten, dass wir davor wie vor einern gespenste schauderten. der verfasser glaubt sein buch ganz eigens zu empfehlen, wenn er in der vorrede versichert, dass er, als ein abgelebter greis, soeben in die grube stiegend, der mit- und nachwelt die wahrheit verkünden wolle. wir lachten ihn aus: denn wir glaubten bemerkt zu haben, dass von alten leuten eigentlich an der welt nichts geschätzt werde, was liebenswürdig und gut an ihr ist. "alte kirchen haben dunkle gläser" "wie kirschen und beeren schmecken, muss mann kinder und sperlinge fragen"--dies waren unsere lust und leibworte: und so schien uns jenes buch, als die rechte quintessenz der greisenheit, unschmachhaft, ja abgeschmackt alles sollte notwendig sein und deswegen kein gott. "könnte es denn aber nicht auch notwendig einen gott geben?" fragten wir. dabei gestanden wir freilich, das wir uns den notwendigkeiten der tage und nächte, der jahrszeiten, der klirnatischen einflusse, der physichen und animalischen zustände nicht wohl entziehen könnten: doch fühlten wir etwas in uns, das als vollkommene willkür erschien, und wieder etwas, das sich mit dieser willkür ins gleichgewicht zu setzen suchte. die hoffnung, immer vernünftiger zu werden, uns von den aussern dingen, ja von uns selbst immer unabhängiger zu machen, konnten wir nicht aufgeben. das wort freiheit klingt so schon, dass mann es nicht entbehren könnte und wenn es einen irrtum bezeichnete. keiner von uns hatte das buch hinausgelesen; denn wir fanden uns in der erwartung getäuscht, in der wir es auf geschlagen hatten. _system der natur_ ward angekündigt und wir hofften also wirklich etwas von der natur, unsere abgötten, zu erfahren. physik und chemie, himmels- und erdbeschriebung, naturgeschichte und anatomie und so manches andere hatte nun zeit jahren und bis auf den letzten tag uns immer auf die geschmüchte grosse welt hingeweisen, und wir hatten gern von sonnen und sternen, von planeten und monden, von bergen, thälern, flüssen und meeren und von allem, was dann lebt und webt, das nähere sowie das allgemeinere erfahren. das hierbei wohl manches vorkommen müsste, was dem gemeinen menschen als schädlich, der geistlichkeit als gefährlich, dem staat als unzulässig erschienen möchte, daran hatten wir keinen zweifel, und wir hofften, dieses büchlein sollte nicht unwürdig die feuerprobe bestauden haben. allein wie hohl und leer ward uns in deiser tristen atheistischen halbnacht zu mute, in welcher die erde mit allen ihren gebilden, der himmel mit allen seinen gestirnen verschwand! eine materie sollte sein von ewigkeit und von ewigkeit her bewegt, und sollte nun mit dieser bewegung rechts und links und nach allen seiten ohne weiteres die unendlichen phänomene des daseins hervorbringen. dies alles wären wir sogar zufrieden gewesen, wenn der verfasser wirklich aus seiner bewegten materie die welt vor unsern augen aufgebaut hätte. aber er mochte von der natur so wenig wissen als wir; denn indem er einige allgemeine begriffe hingepfahlt, verlässt er sie sogleich, um dasjenige, was höher als die natur oder als höhere natur in der natur erschient, zur materiellen schweren, zwar bewegten, aber doch richtungs- und gestaltlosen natur zu verwandeln, und glaubt dadurch recht viel gewonnen zu haben. wenn uns jedoch dieses buch einigen schaden gebracht hat, so war es der, das wir allen philosophie, besonderers aber der metaphysick recht herzlich gram wurden, und bleiben, dagegen aber auf lebendige wissen, erfahren, thun und dichten uns nur desto lebhafter und leidenschaftlicher hinwarfen. [ : ] vol. ii, p. , ed. . bibliography--part i. editions of holbach's works in chronological order. as the works of holbach are not yet cataloged in the bibliothèque nationale, the following list is doubtless incomplete. the numbers given are those of the bibliothèque nationale and the british museum where the books were used, except in cases where they were available in boston, new york or washington. abbreviations b. n., bibliothèque nationale. b. m., british museum. l. c., library of congress. c. u., columbia university. h. u., harvard university. u. t. s., union theological seminary. g. t. s., general theological seminary. a. t. s., andover theological seminary. n. y., new york public library. b. p., boston public library. of about editions consulted, c. u. had ; u. t. s. ; n. y. ; h. u. ; b. p. ; l. c. ; a. t. s. ; g. t. s. i. there are or more editions in existence that were not to be found in the library catalogs consulted. . lettre à une dame d'un certain âge sur l'état présent de l'opéra. en arcadie aux dépens de l'académie royale de musique, (paris, vo, pp. .) b. m. b ( ). . arrêt rendu à l'amphithéâtre de l'opéra, sur la plainte du milieu du parterre intervenant dans la querelle des deux coins. (paris, , vo, pp. .) b. n. yf (attributed to diderot). . art de la verrerie, de neri, merret et kunckel; auquel on a ajouté le _sol sine veste_ d'orschall; _l'helioscopium videndi sine veste solem chymicum_; le _sol non sine veste_: le chapitre xi du _flora saturnizans_ de henckel, sur la vitrification des végétaux; un mémoire sur la manière de faire le saffre; le secret des vraies porcelaines de la chine et de saxe; ouvrages où l'on trouvera la manière de faire le verre et le crystal, d'y porter des couleurs, d'imiter les pierres précieuses, de préparer et colorer les emaux, de faire la potasse, de peindre sur le verre, de préparer des vernis, de composer de couvertes pour des fayances et poteries, d'extraire la couleur pourpre de l'or, de contrefaire les rubis, de faire le soffre, de faire et peindre les porcelaines, etc. traduits de l'allemand par m. d... a paris durand, rue st. jacques, au griffon. pissot, quai des augustins, à la sagesse. avec approbation et privilège du roi (in quarto). b. n. v. . c. u. a. n h (avery library). . minéralogie, ou description générale des substances du règne minéral. par mr. jean gotshalk wallerius, professeur royale de chymie, de métallurgie et de pharmacie dans l'université d'upsal, de l'académie impériale des curieux de la nature. ouvrage traduit de l'allemand, a paris, chez durand, rue s. jacques, au griffon. pissot, quai de conti, à la croix d'or, mdcclii. avec approbation et privilège du roi ( vols., vo, pp. xlvii + + ). followed by (second title page) hydrologie, ou description du règne aquatique, divisés par classes, gendres, espèces et variétés, avec la manière de faire l'essai des eaux ( p.). b. n., s. ( ). b. m. h. - . --ibid. (paris, herissant, durand, , vols., vo.) n. y., p. w. d. h. u. geol. - . b. m. h.l. . introduction à la minéralogie; ou connoissance des eaux, des sucs terrestres, des sels, des terres, des pierres, des minéraux, et des métaux: avec une description abrégée des opérations de métallurgie. ouvrage posthume de m. j. f. henckel, publié sous le titre de _henckelius in mineralogiâ redivivus_ et traduit de l'allemand. a paris, chez guillaume cavelier, libraire, rue s. jacques, au lys d'or. mdcclvi. avec approbation et privilège du roi. ( vols., vo, pp. lxxi + + .) b. n. ( ). . chimie métallurgique, dans laquelle on trouvera la théorie et la pratique de cet art. avec des experiences sur la densité des alliages des métaux, et des demi-métaux; et un abrégé de docimastique. avec figures. par m. c. e. gellert, conseiller des mines de saxe et de l'académie imperiale de petersbourg. ouvrages traduits de l'allemand. a paris, chez briasson, rue saint jacques; avec approbation et privelège. ( vols., mo, pp. xii + + xvii + .) b. n., r. ( ). . traités de physique, d'histoire naturelle, de minéralogie et de métallurgie. (paris, , vols., mo.) (general title.) tome i. l'art des mines, ou introduction aux connoissances nécessaires pour l'exploitation des mines métalliques avec un traité des exhalaisons minérales ou moufettes, et plusieurs mémoires sur differens sujets d'histoire naturelle-avec figures. par m. jean gotlob lehmann, docteur en médecine, conseiller des mines de sa majesté prussienne, de l'académie royale des sciences de berlin et de celle des sciences utiles de mayence. traduit de l'allemand. a paris, chez jean thomas herrisant mdcclix. avec approbation et privilège du roi. tome ii. traité de la formation des métaux et de leurs matrices ou minières, ouvrage fondé sur les principes de la physique et de la minéralogie et confirmé par des expériences chymiques. par m. j. g. lehmann, etc. traduit de l'allemand. tome iii. essai d'une histoire naturelle des couches de la terre. dans lequel on traite de leur formation, de leur situation, des minéraux, des métaux et des fossiles qu'elles contiennent. avec des considerations physiques sur les causes des tremblements de terre et de leur propagation. ouvrages traduits de l'allemand, et augmentés de notes du traducteur etc. h. u., m, z. b. m. c. - . . les plaisirs de l'imagination, poème en trois chants, par m. akenside. traduit de l'anglais. a amsterdam, arkstée et merkus, et se trouve à paris chez pissot, quai de conti mdcclix ( vo). b. n. ex. yk et . b. m. f . --ibid. les plaisirs de l'imagination, poème en trois chants, par akenside, traduit de l'anglais par le baron d'holbach, augmenté de notes historiques et littéraires, de la vie de l'auteur et du traducteur, par pissot. paris, hubert mdcccvi ( - vo). b. n. yk . b. m. b ( ). . pyritologie, ou histoire naturelle de la pyrite, ouvrage dans lequel on examine l'origine, la nature, les propriétés et les usages de ce minéral important, et de la plupart des autres substances du même règne: on y a joint le flora saturnisans où l'auteur dèmontre l'alliance qui se trouve entre les végétaux et les minéraux; et les orpuscules minéralogiques, qui comprennent un traité de l'appropriation, un traité de l'origine des pierres, plusieurs mémoires sur la chymie et l'histoire naturelle, avec un traité des maladies des mineurs et des fondeurs. par m. jean-frederic henkel, docteur en médicine, conseiller des mines du roi de pologne, electeur de saxe; de l'académie imperiale des curieux de la nature et de celle de berlin. ouvrages traduit de l'allemand [by baron d'holbach and m., charas] à paris, chez jean thomas hérissant, libraire, rue s. jacques, à s. paul et à s. hilaire. mdcclx. avec approbation et privilège du roi. (paris, , quarto, pp. xvi + .) b. n. . b. m. c . . oeuvres métallurgiques de m. jean-christian orschall, inspecteur des mines de s. a. s. le land-grave de hesse-cassel. contenant i. l'art de la fonderie; ii. un traité de la siquation; iii. le traité de la macération des mines; iv. le traité des trois merveilles; (traduit de l'allemand) le prix est de sols broché et de liv. relié. a paris, chez hardy, libraire, rue s. jacques au dessus de celle de la parcheminerie à la colonne d'or. mdcclx. avec approbation et privilège du roi. ( mo, pp. + .) b. n., s , . . recueil des mémoires les plus intéressants de chymie, et d'histoire naturelle, contenus dans les actes de l'académie d'upsal, et dans les mémoires de l'académie royale des sciences de stockholm; publiés depuis jusqu'en . traduits du latin et de l'allemand. a paris, chez pierre-fr. didot, le jeune, quai des augustins, à s. augustin. mdcclxiv. avec approbation et privilège du roi. ( vols., mo, pp. viii + .) b. n. r ( ). . histoire du règne de la reine anne d'angleterre, contenant les négociations de la paix d'utrecht, et les démêlés qu'elle occasionna en angleterre. ouvrage posthume du docteur jonathan swift. doyen de s. patrice en irelande: publié sur un manuscrit corrigé de la propre main de l'auteur, et traduit de l'anglais par m... [d'holbach and eidous]. a amsterdam, chez marc-michel rey, et arkstée et merkus. mdcclxv. ( mo, pp. xxiv + .) b. n. vo nc . . traité du soufre, ou remarques sur la dispute qui s'est élevée entre les chymistes, au sujet du soufre, tant commun, combustible ou volatil, que fixe, etc. traduit de l'allemand de stahl. a paris, chez pierre-francois didot, le jeune. quai de augustins à saint-augustin. mdcclxvi. avec approbation et privilège du roi. ( mo, pp. .) b. n., r . b. m. b . . l'antiquité dévoilée par ses usages, ou examen critique des principales opinions, cérémonies et institutions réligieuses et politiques des différens peuples de la terre. par feu m., boulanger. homo, quod rationis est particeps, consequentiam cernit causas rerum videt, earumque progressus et quasi antecessiones non ignorat, similitudines compare, rebus praesentibus adjungit at anectit futuras. --cicero, de offic. lib. i. c. . a amsterdam, chez marc-michel rey, mdcclxvi. (quarto pp. viii + .) b. n., e . c. u., a p. b (avery library). --ibid. ( , vols., mo.) b. n. *e - . --ibid. ( , vols., ( mo.) b. n. *e (viii). b. m. a . --ibid. (amsterdam, , vols., mo, pp. lx + + + .) b. m. b . --ibid. in oeuvres de boulanger t. i-iv en suisse. de l'imprimerie philosophique mdccxci. ( vols., ( mo.) b. n., z - . --ibid. in _oeuvres de boulanger_ t. i-ii amsterdam. (paris, vols., vo.) (quérard.) . le christianisme dévoilé, ou examen des principes et des effets de la religion chrétienne. par feu m. boulanger. superstitio error infanus est, amandos timet, quos colit violat; quid enim interest, utrum deos neges, an infames? senec. ep. . a londres, mdcclvi (nancy, leclerc, , vo, pp. xxviii + ). b. n., d . b. m. bb . b. m., c (another copy with ms. notes by voltaire). --ibid. (londres, , vo, pp. xx + .) printed at john wilkes' private press in george st. westminster, according to ms. note in title page. b. m. de. . --ibid. (londres, , vo, pp. .) a. t. s. . --ibid. (a paris, chez les libraires associés, , vo, pp. xvii + .) b. n., d . --ibid. (londres [amsterdam], , mo.) b. m. b --ibid. oeuvres de boulanger t. vii. (en suisse de l'imprimerie philosophique, , mo.) b. n., z . --ibid. oeuvres de boulanger t. v, . --christianity unveiled; being an examination of the principles and effects of the christian religion, from the french of boulanger, author of _researches into the origin of oriental despotism_, by w. m. johnson. new york, , printed at the columbian press by robertson and gowan for the editor and sold by the principal book sellers in the united states. ( mo, pp. ix + .) b. m. de . b. m. i. , ( ) another copy with ms. notes. b. p.... a . --ibid. london, printed and published by r. carlile, fleet st. ( vo, pp. .) b. m. d. . --ibid. the deist, etc. vol. ii, published by r. carlile, . ( vo, pp. vii + .) b. m. f . --el cristianismo a descurbierto, ó examen de los principios y efectos de la religion cristiana. escrito en francés por boulanger y traducido al castellano por s. d. v.... londres en la emprenta de davidson, . ( mo, pp. xxvi + .) b. m. df . . l'esprit du clergé, ou le christianisme primitif vengé des entreprises et des excès de nos prêtres modernes. traduit de l'anglois à londres (amsterdam) mdcclxvii ( vols. vo, pp. + + ). b. m. pp. . . de l'imposture sacerdotale, ou recueil de pièces sur le clergé. traduites de l'anglois. londres (amsterdam) mdcclxvii. ( mo, pp. .) b. n., d ( ). contains, tableau fidèle des papes. _traduit d'une brochure anglaise_ de m. davisson, publie sous le titre de _a true picture of popery_, pp. - . de l'insolence pontificale, ou des prétentions ridicules du pape et des flatteurs de la cour de rome. _extrait de la profession de foi du célèbre giannone_, par. m. davisson, pp. - . sermon. sur les fourberies et les impostures du clergé romain, _traduit de l'anglois sur une brochure publiée à londres en _ par m. bourn birmingham, sous le titre de _popery a craft_, pp. - . le prêtrianisme opposé au christianisme. ou la religion des prêtres comparée à celle de jésus-christ, ou examen de la différence qui se trouve entre les apôtres et les membres du clergé moderne. _publié en anglois en sous le titre de_ priestanity. or a view of the disparity between the apostles and the modern clergy, pp. - . des dangers de l'eglise, _traduit de anglois sur une brochure publiée eu _. par m., thomas gordon, sous le titre d'_apology for the danger of the church_, etc., pp. - . le simbole d'un laïque, ou profession de foi d'un homme désintéressé. traduit de l'anglois de m. gordon, sur une brochure publiée en . sous le titre de _the creed of an independent whig_, pp. - . --ibid. published under title de la monstruosité pontificale, ou tableau fidèle des papes. _traduit de l'anglois_ londres mdcclxxii. ( vo, pp. .) b. n., h. . . examen des prophéties qui servent de fondement à la religion chrétienne, avec un essai de critique sur les prophètes et les prophéties en général. ouvrages traduits de l'anglois. londres mdcclxviii. ( vo, pp. .) b. n., d . b. m. de . contains, discours sur les fondements de la religion chrétienne, pp. - . extrait de l'ouvrage qui a pour titre: examen du septème de ceux qui prétendent que les prophéties se sont accomplies à la lettre. the scheme of literal prophecy considered, etc., . ( vo, pp. - .) . david, ou l'histoire de l'homme selon le coeur de dieu, ouvrage traduit de l'anglois. saül, et david, tragédie en actes d'après l'anglois.... (londres, , vo.) b. n. ex. ld , hz , et rès z. beuchot ( ). b. m. a ( ). . les prêtres démasqués, ou des iniquités du clergé chrétien. ouvrage traduit de l'anglois. londres. mdcclxviii. ( vo, pp. .) b. n., d . b. m. de . . lettres philosophiques, sur l'origine des préjugés, du dogme de l'immortalité de l'ame, de l'idolâtrie et de la superstition; sur le système de spinoza et sur l'origine du mouvement dans la matière. traduites de l'anglois de j. toland. opinionum commenta delet dies, naturae judicia confirmat. cicero, de nat. deor. lib. ii. a londres (amsterdam). . mdcclxviii. ( vo, pp. .) b. n., d . b. m. de . containing, préface ou lettre à un ami, en lui envoyant les dissertations suivantes, dans laquelle l'auteur rend compte des motifs qui les ont fait écrire. (pp. - .) première lettre. de l'origine et de la force de ces préjugés. (pp. - .) seconde lettre. histoire du dogme de l'immortalité de l'ame chez les payens. (pp. - .) troisième lettre. sur l'origine de l'idolâtrie et sur les fondements de la religion payenne. (pp. - .) quartrième lettre. a un gentilhomme hollandois pour lui prouver que le système de spinoza est dépourvu de fondements et pèche dans ses principes. (pp. - .) cinquième lettre. dans laquelle on prouve que le mouvement est essentiel à la matière; en réponse à quelques remarques qui ont été faites à l'auteur au sujet de sa réfutation du système de spinoza. nunc quae mobilitas fit reddita materiaë corporibus paucis licet hinc cognoscere, memmi. lucret., lib. ii, vers . (pp. - .) . théologie portative, ou dictionnaire abrégé de la religion chrétienne. par mr. l'abbé bernier, licencié en théologie. audite hoc sacerdotes, et attendite domus israël, et domus regis auscultate; quia vobis judicium est, quoniam laquens facti estis speculationi et rete expansum super thabor. osée, chap. v, vers. i. londres (amsterdam), mdcclxviii ( ), ( mo, pp. ). b. n., d . b. m. a . --ibid. londres (suisse), . --ibid. a rome, mdcclxxv ( vo, pp. ). b. n., d . --ibid. augmentée d'un volume. a rome, avec permission et privilège du conclave. ( vols., mo ( ).) b. n., d . --ibid. under title. manuel théologique, en form de dictionnaire. ouvrage très utile aux personnes des deux sexes pour le salut de leurs âmes, par l'abbé bernier etc. rome, au vatican de l'imprimerie du conclave. ( vols., vo.) --ibid. . . le militaire philosophe, ou difficultés sur la religion, proposées au r. p. malebranche, prêtre de l'oratoire. par un ancien officier. londres (amsterdam) mdcclxviii. ( vo, pp. .) c. u. n . --ibid. ( vo). b. m. bb . --ibid. ( vo). b. m. de . (last chapter by d'holbach.) . la contagion sacrée, ou histoire naturelle de la superstition. ouvrage traduit de l'anglois. _prima mali labes_. londres (amsterdam), mdcclxvii. ( vols. in , vo.) b. n., d . c. u. h p. --ibid. avec des notes relatives aux circonstances. nouvelle edition. a paris, de l'imprimerie de lemaire, rue d'enfer no. , an de la republique ( ). ( vols. in , vo, pp. - .) u. t. s. b. h. c. --el contagion sagrado, ó historia natural de la supersticion. paris, rodriguez, . ( vols., vo.) (quérard.) . lettres à eugénia, ou préservatif contre les préjugés... arctis relligionum animos nodis exsolvere pergo.--lucret. de rer. nat., lib. , v. - . a londres, mdcclxviii. ( vols., vo, pp. xii + + ) --ibid. oeuvres de nicolas fréret, t. i, pp. - . paris, . ( vo.) h. u. - , vol. i. --cartas á eugenia, por mr. freret. paris. imprenta de f. didot, ( vo, pp. viii + ). b. m. de . --letters to eugenia on the absurd, contradictory and demoralizing dogmas and mysteries of the christian religion. now first translated from the french of fréret, but supposed to be written by baron holbach, author of the system of nature, christianity unveiled, common sense, universal morality, natural morality. r. carlile, the deist, etc., vol. ii, , etc. ( vo, pp. .) b. m. f. . --cartas à eugenia. madrid, , por don benito cano. v. n. y., z f f. --letters to eugenia on the absurd, contradictory and demoralizing dogmas and mysteries of the christian religion, by baron d'holbach, new york, published by h. m. dubecquet, no. william street, . ( vo, pp. .) u. t. s. b. --letters to eugenia etc., translated by anthony c. middleton, m.d. boston, josiah p. mendum, . b. p. . . de la cruauté religieuse. a londres, mdcclxix. ( vo, pp. .) b. n., d . b. m. aa . u. t. s. h . --ibid. amsterdam, , vo. . le la tolérance dans la religion, ou de la liberté de conscience par crellius. l'intolérance convaincue de crime et de folie. ouvrage traduit de l'anglois, londres, mdcclxix. ( vo, pp. .) contains de la tolérance dans la religion, ou de la liberté de conscience (crellius). de l'intolérance dans la religion (d'holbach), p. . enfer détruit ou examen raisonné du dogme de l'eternité des peines. ouvrages, tr. de l'anglois à londres, mdcclxix, p. . dissertation critique sur les tourmens de l'enfer. traduit de l'anglois, p. (by whitefoot). b. n., d . --ibid. hell destroyed! now first translated from the french of d'alembert without any mutilations. london. printed and published by j. w. trust, newgate st., . ( vo, pp. .) (followed by whitefoot's torments of hell, "now first translated from the french," to p. .) . l'esprit du judaïsme, ou examen raisonné de la loi de moyse, et de son influence sur la religion chrétienne. atque utinam nunquam judaea sub acta fuisset pompeii bellis, imperioque titi. latius excisae pestes contagie serpunt, victoresques suos natio victa premit. rutilius, itinerar. lia i, vs. , londres, mdcclxx. ( mo, pp. xxii + .) b. n., d . b. m. bb . . examen critique de la vie et des ouvrages de saint paul, avec une dissertation sur saint pierre par feu m. boulanger. londres, ( vo), (by peter annet). b. n. ex. [d ( ) et h. ]. b. m. o aa . --ibid. nouvelle edition, londres, . ( vo.) b. n. [h ]. --critical examination of the life of st. paul. translated from the french of boulanger. "paul, thou art beside thyself, much learning doth make thee mad." acts, chap, , v . london. printed and published by r. carlile, water lane, fleet st., . ( vo, pp. .) b. m. h g ( ). . histoire critique de jésus-christ, ou analyse raisonnée des evangiles. ecce homo. pudet me humani generis, cuius mentis et aures talia ferre potuerunt. s. augustin. (no date [amsterdam, ?], mo, pp. viii + xxxii + .) b. n, , . b. m. a. . u. t. s. h . --ecce homo! or a critical enquiry into the history of jesus christ, being a rational analysis of the gospels. edinburg, . --ecce homo! or a critical enquiry into the history of jesus christ, being a rational analysis of the gospels. ( d ed.) london, . printed, published and sold by d. i. easton. g. t. s. g. h. . --historia critica de jesus christo, o anáilisis razonado le los evangelios. traducida del frances, por el p. f. de t, ex-jesuita. ecce homo. vel. aqui el hombre. s. juan, cap. , v. . londres, en la imprenta de davidson, . ( vols., mo, pp. xiii + + .) contains advertencia del traductor. . tableau des saints, ou examen de l'esprit, de la conduite, des maximes, et du mérite des personnages que le christianisme révère et propose pour modèles. hoc admonere simplices etiam potest, opinione alterius ne quid ponderent; ambitio namque diffidens mortalium aut gratiae subscribunt, aut odio suo; erit ille nottis, quem per te cognoveris. phaed., lib. iii, fab. . a londres, mdcclxx. ( vols., mo, pp. xxviii + + .) b. n., h , . b. m. , a a a a . . recueil philosophique, ou mélange de pièces sur la religion et la morale. par différents auteurs (ed. naigeon). ovando enim ista observans quieto et libero animo esse poteris, ut ad vem gerendam non superstionem habeas, sed rationem ducem. --cicero, de divinat., lib. . londres, mdcclxx. ( vols., mo.) b. n., d . vol. i, p. (vi), réflexions sur les craintes de la mort. vol. ii, p. (ix), dissertation sur l'immortalité de l'âme. traduite de l'anglais. vol. ii, p. (x), dissertation sur le suicide. traduit de l'anglais. vol. ii, p. (xi). problème important. la religion est elle nécessaire à la morale et utile à la politique? par m. mirabaud. vol. ii, p. (xiii). extrait d'un ecrit anglais qui a pour titre _le christianisme aussi ancien que le monde_. . essai sur les préjugés, ou, de l'influence des opinions sur les moeurs et sur le bonheur des hommes. ouvrage contenant l'apologie de la philosophie par mr. d. m. assiduite quotidiana et consuetudine oculorum assuescunt animi, neque admirantur, neque requerunt rationes earum rerum quas vident. --cicero de nat. deorum, lib. ii. londres, mdcclxx. ( vo, pp. .) b. n., r . b. m. b b b . h. u. phil. . --ibid. paris desray an ( ). ( vols., vo, cortina.) --ibid. oeuvres de dumarsais. paris, pougin, . t. vi vo, pp. - . b. n., z - . h. u. vi. --ibid. paris, niogret, . c. u. d . --essayo sobre las preocupaciones ó del influjo de las opiniones en las costumbres y felicidad de las hombres. por dumarsais. en paris. hallase en la casa de rosa, librero. gran pacio del palacio real. . ( vo, pp. .) b. n., r , . --(bibliothèque nationale. collection des meilleurs auteurs anciens et modernes.) dumarsais. essai sur les préjugés. précédé d'un discours préliminaire et d'un précis historique de la vie de dumarsais par le citoyen daube. paris. librairie de la bibliothèque nationale. rue de richelieu , près le théâtre francais. ci-devant rue de valois . tous droits resérvés ( centimes). b. n. vo r. . . système de la nature, ou des loix du monde physique et du monde moral. par m. mirabaud, secrétaire perpétuel et l'un des quarante de l'académie française. natura rerum vis atque majestas in omnibus momentis fide caret, si quis modè partes ejus, ac non totam complectatur animo.--plin. hist., lib. vii. londres, mdcclxx. ( vols., vo, pp. + .) b. m. f u. t. s. h . --ibid, londres, mdcclxx. (second edition, vols., in vo, pp. + .) b. m., d - . contains discours préliminaire de l'auteur (pp. ). avis de l'editeur. préface de l'auteur, etc. --abrégé du code de la nature, par m., mirabaud, secrétaire perpétuel et l'un des quarante de l'académe française. londres. mdcclxx. ( vo, p.) --ibid. nouvelle Édition augmentée par l'auteur à laquelle on a joint plusieurs pièces des meilleurs auteurs relatives aux mêmes objets, etc. (ed. naigeon.) londres, mdcclxxi. ( vols. in vo, pp. - .) contains vol. ii, p. , réquisitoire, sur lequel est intervenu l'arrêt du parlement du août qui condamne à être brûlés, differens livres ou brochures, intitulés. . la contagion sacrée... . dieu et les hommes. . discours sur les miracles. . examen des apologistes. . examen impartial des principales religions du monde. . christianisme dévoilé. . système de la nature. imprimé par ordre exprès du roi. b. m., d . reprinted in , - . --ibid. nouvelle Édition. londres, , vo, pp. xii + + . contains _sentiments de voltaire sur le système de la nature_. séguier's _réquisitoire_ and holbach's _réplique_. b. m. . . --ibid. nouvelle Édition. londres, . ( vols. in vo, pp. + .) b. n., d g. --ibid. german translation, schreiter. leipzig and frankfort, . --ibid. paris, an. iii ( ). ( vols. in vo.) --the system of nature. translated from the french of m. mirabeau. london, . printed for g. kearsley. l. of c. b -s g e- - . --ibid. philadelphia, . pub. by r. benson. l. of c., b -s g e - - g. --nature and her laws, as applicable to the happiness of man living in society, contrasted with superstitions and imaginary systems. done from the french of m. mirabaud. london in . w. hodgson. c. u. h s. l. of c., b s g e - . --système de la nature,... avec notes de diderot. nouvelle édition. ed. lemonnier, paris, . b. roquefort. ( vols. in vo.) --the system of nature, or the laws of the moral and physical world. translated by samuel wilkinson from the original french of m. mirabaud. printed and published by thomas davison. (vols. , , r. helder, .) london, . vols in vo, pp. xi + - - .) contains life of mirabaud, vol. , pp. - . b. m. . de ? u. s. . h . --système de la nature... par le baron d'holbach. nouvelle edition avec des notes et des corrections par diderot. paris, etienne ledoux, . ( vols. in vo, pp. xvi + + .) b. n., d . b. m. i. . c. u, h . r. n. y., y c o. contains extract of grimm's literary correspondence, aug. , . --système de la nature, ou des lois du monde physique et du monde morale, par le baron d'holbach. nouvelle Édition avec des notes et des corrections par diderot etc. paris, domère, . ( vols. in mo.) contains avis de naigion. avertissement du nouvel éditeur, pp. - . pièces diverses, pp. - . --sistema de la naturaleza, con notas y correcciones por diderot; trad, al castell. por f. a. f.... paris, masson hijo, , vols. in mo. b. n., d . --selections from mirabaud's system of nature in the law of reason, etc. london, . ( mo, pp. .) selections from bon-sens, pp. - , - . b. m. . b. . --nature and her laws, as applicable to the happiness of man living in society, contrasted with superstitions and imaginary systems. from the french of m. de mirabaud. james watson. london, . ( vols. in mo, pp. xxiv + + .) sold for s. d. b. m. b . contains . publisher's preface (by james watson). . preface. . a short account of the life and writings of the baron d'holbach (by julian hibbert). --system of nature, new and improved edition with notes by diderot. translated by h. d. robinson. new york, , published by matsell. n. y., y b x. --system of nature, or the laws of the moral and physical world, from the french of m. mirabaud. (new edition, pp. + .) london, . c. u. h . r . --system der natur von mirabaud. deutsch bearbeitet und mit anmerkungen versehen von biedermann. leipzig, . ( vo, pp. .) georg. wigands verlag. t. s. (andover ). --system der natur.... translated by schreiter, . --system of nature, new and improved edition with notes by diderot, translated by h. d. robinson. stereotype edition, boston, , in vo. published by j. p. mendum. b. p. . - . . --system der natur..., tr. allhusen, . --system of nature..., tr. robinson, boston. . published by j. p. mendum. b. p. . . n. y., y c o - / l. of c., b. . s g e . --the system of nature; or, the laws of the moral and physical world, by the baron d'holbach, originally attributed to m. de mirabaud with memoir by charles bradlaugh. reprinted verbatim from the best edition. london. published by e. truelove, high holborn, . in vo, pp. xi + . b. m. a a . . le bon-sens ou idées naturelles opposées aux idées surnaturelles. detexit quo doloso vaticinandi furore sacerdotes mysteria, illis saepe ignota, audacter publicant. --petronii satyricon. londres (amsterdam) , vo, pp. xii - . u. t. s. h. . --ibid. le bon-sens du curé j. meslier d'etrépigny. rome (paris), , vo. --ibid. another edition, , vo, pp. x- . --ibid. londres (amsterdam), , mo, pp. xii- . u. t. s. h. . --ibid. le bon-sens du curé meslier d'etrépigny. rome (paris), , vo. --ibid. nouvelle édition, suivi du testament du curé meslier. paris, bouqueton, l'an i de la république. ( , vols., mo.) --ibid. le bon-sens du curé j. meslier suivi de son testament. paris, , vo, pp. . c. u. m d . --ibid. paris, palais des thermes de julien, ( ), mo. --ibid. paris, guillaumin, , mo. --ibid. paris, guillaumin, , mo. --common sense, h. d. robinson, new york, circa . --le bon-sens du curé j. meslier, etc. paris, bacquenois, , mo. --ibid. paris, guillaumin, , mo. --ibid. nancy, haener, , mo. --der gesunde menschenverstand. baltimore, . --ibid. baltimore, (second edition), h. u. --ibid. tr. into german by miss anna knoop. circa . --ibid., under title, superstition in all ages; by jean meslier... who left to the world the following pages entitled _common sense_. translated from the french original by miss anna knoop, new york, . c. u. l. m. --ibid. new york, peter eckler, , pp. vi- . u. t. s. --le bon-sens du curé j. meslier, paris, palais des thermes de julien, . (garnier frères, .) h. u. --superstition in all ages, etc. translated from the french original by miss anna knoop; arranged for publication in its present form and manner with new title-page and preface by dr. l. w. delaurence. same to now serve as "text-book" number five for "the congress of ancient, divine, mental and christian masters," chicago, ill., delaurence, scott & co., , pp. xx- - . l. of c. , a . l. w. de laurence. . de la nature humaine, ou exposition des facultés, des actions et des passions de l'âme, et de leurs causes, déduites d'après des principes philosophiques qui ne sont communément ni reçus ni connus. par thomas hobbes; ouvrage traduit de l'anglois. londres (amsterdam), mdcclxxii. ( vo, pp. iv + .) b. m. c c . (bookmark of richard chase sidney.) --ibid. oeuvres philosophiques et politiques de thomas hobbes. . ( vols., vo.) (tr. by sorbière and holbach.) b. m. . . recherches sur les miracles. par l'auteur de l'examen des apologistes de la religion chrétienne. a genus attonitum. ovid. metam. londres, mdcclxxiii. ( vo. pp. .) b. m. de . . la politique naturelle, ou, discours sur les vrais principes du governement. par un ancien magistrat. vis consili expers mole ruit suâ. --horat., ode iv, lib. iii, vers. londres (amsterdam), mdcclxxiii. ( vols. in vo. pp. vii + + .) b. m. h. . u. s. e. h. (ex libris baron carl de vinck, ministre de belgique). c. u. h. . (ascribed also to c. g. lamoignon de malesherbes.) --ibid. londres, . ( vols, in vo.) --la politica naturale: discorsi sui veri principi di governo. traduzione di luigi salvadori. mantova, balbiani e donelli, ' - . ( vols., (l. ).) . système social, ou principes naturels de la moral et de la politique, avec un examen de l'influence du governement sur les moeurs. discenda virtus est, ars est bonum fieri; erras si existimas vitia nobiscum nasci; supervenerunt in gesta sunt. --seneca, epis. . londres, mdcclxxiii. ( vo, pp. + + , in three parts.) b. n., r . e . c. u. . h. . n. y. sc. --ibid. par l'auteur du système de la nature, londres, . ( vols., vo, pp. + + .) b. m. . h . --ibid. a paris, servière, . ( vols., vo, pp. + .) b. m. dc. (ex libris j. gomez de la cortina et amicorum. fallitur hora legendo). --ibid....par le baron d'holbach. paris, niogret, . ( vols, vo.) c. u. . h. . . agriculture réduit à ses vrais principes par jean gottschalk wallerius, paris, lacombe, . ( mo.) . ethocratie ou le gouvernement fondé sur la morale. constituit bonos mores civitati princips. --seneca, de clementia, lib. i. a amsterdam. chez marc michel rey. mdcclxxvi. ( vo, pp. + + .) c. u. . h . . morale universelle, ou les devoirs de l'homme fondés sur la nature. naturâ duce utendum est: hanc ratio observe, hanc consulit, idem est ergo beatè vivere et secundum naturam. --seneca de vita beata, cap. viii init. a amsterdam. chez marc-michel rey, mdcclxxvi. ( vols., vo, pp. + + .) b. n., r - - .. b. m. h- --ibid. a tours, chez letourmy le jeune et compagnie, a angers, de l'imprimerie de jahyer et geslin. imprimeurs-libraries, rue milton, . ( vo.) b. m. . k. - h. u. phil. . . --ibid. paris, smith (rey et gravier), an , . ( vols., vo.) --ibid. par le baron d'holbach. paris, masson et fils. libraires, rue de tournon, no. , . ( vols., vo, pp. xxxii + + + .) c. u. h . b. m. k . --moral universal ódeberes del hombre, fundatos en su naturaleza. obra escrita en francès por el baron de holbach y traducida al castellano por d. manuel diaz moreno zaragoza, , imp. de m. heras. ( vols., vo.) --la moral universel por el baron de holbach. madrid, , imp. y lib. del establecimiento central. ( vols. in to.) --ibid. translated into german by johann umminger. leipzig, . . elements de la morale universelle, ou catechisme de la nature. par feu m., le baron d'holbach des académies de pétersbourg de manheim et de berlin. numquam aliud natura aliud sapientia dicit.--juvenal. a paris. chez g. de bure. rue serpente, no. , mdccxc. ( vo, pp. vi + .) b. m. . a. . b. p., g. . . --elementos de la moral universel, ó catecismo de la naturaleza, por el baron de holbach. madrid, , imp. que fué de fuentenebro, lib de sanchez en vo past. --principios de moral, ó manuel de los deberes del hombre fundados en la naturaleza. obra póstuma de baron de holbach. traducida al espanol por d. l. m. g. adoptada en su mayor parte de la escuelas de primera educacion para instruccion de los ninos. madrid, , imp. de ferrer y compania lib de j sanz. (in mo.) bibliography part ii. general bibliography. allgemeine deutsche biographie. avézac-lavigne, diderot et la société du baron d'holbach. paris, . bachaumont, mémoires secrètes. paris, . barbier, dictionnaire des ouvrages anonymes et pseudonymes. paris, . barni, histoire des idées morales et politiques en france au dix-huitième siècle. paris, . barruel, mémoire pour servir à l'histoire de jacobinisme. hamburg, . lettres helviennes. hamburg, - . bartholmess, histoire philosophique de l'académie de prusse. paris, . bergier, apologie de la religion chrétienne contre l'auteur du _christianisme dévoilé_. paris, . examen du matérialisme, ou réfutation du _système de la nature_. paris, . bibliothèque nationale, pièces originales. d'holbach. manuscrits français, , (col. anisson). boiteau, mémoires de mme. d'epinay. paris. british museum manuscript index, - . mss. folios - , , . brougham, a discourse of natural theology. london, . brunel, les philosophes et l'académie française. paris. brunet, manuel du librairie. paris, . bucherberger, kirche-lexikon. burton, life and correspondence of david hume. edinburgh, . letters of prominent persons addressed to david hume. edinburgh and london, . buzonnière, observations sur un ouvrage intitulé le _système de la nature_. paris, . camuset, principes contre l'incrédulité, à l'occasion du _système de la nature_. paris, . carlile, the deist. london, . carlyle, rev. dr. alexander, autobiography, ed. burton. london, . castillon, observations sur un livre intitulé, _système de la nature_. berlin, . catalogue des manuscrits français dans les bibliothèques départementales. chaudon, dictionnaire anti-philosophique etc. avignon, . claudon, le baron d'holbach. paris, . collignon, diderot. paris, . critica, - damiron, mémoires pour servir à l'histoire de la philosophie au me siècle. paris, . etudes sur la philosophie de d'holbach. mémoires de l'académie des sciences morales et politiques, vol. iv du compte rendu des séances. debure, catalogue des livres de la bibliothèque du feu m. le baron d'holbach. paris, . delisle de sales, philosophie de la nature. paris, . mémoire en faveur de dieu. paris, . delvaille, essai sur l'histoire de l'idée de progrès. paris, . diderot, oeuvres, ed brière. paris, . mémoires, correspondance, et ouvrages inédits de diderot. paris, . oeuvres complètes de diderot, ed. assézat et tourneux. paris, . douarche, les tribunaux civils de paris pendant la révolution. paris, - . dupont de nemours, philosophie de l'univers. paris, l'an iv ( ). duprat, les encyclopédists. paris, . duvoisin, l'autorité des livres du nouveau testament contre les incrédules. paris, . l'autorité des livres de moïse, etc. paris, . eclaircissements relatifs à la publication des _confessions_ de rousseau, avec des réflexions sur les apologies de mm. cerutti et d'holbach etc. paris, . encyclopédie des sciences religieuses. epinay, mme. d' mémoires et correspondance. paris, . fabre, les pères de la révolution. de bayle à condorcet. paris, . fabry d'autrey, antiquité justifiée etc. paris, . fangouse, la religion prouvée aux incrédules, etc. paris, . ferraz, histoire de la philosophie pendant la révolution. paris, . histoire de la philosophie en france au me siecle. paris, . fitzmaurice, life of william, earl of shelburne. london, . fortnightly review, vol. xxviii, . frederick ii, king of prussia, examen critique du livre intitulé _système de la nature_. berlin, . fréret, lettre de thrasybule à leucippe. funck, les sophistes français et la révolution européenne. paris, . galiani, lettres, ed. e. asse. paris. correspondance, ed. perey et maugras. paris, . garrick. private correspondence. london, . gasté, diderot et le curé de montchauvet, etc. paris, . garat, mémoires historiques sur le me siècle. paris, . gazette de france, aug. , . june , . genlis, mme de, les dîners du baron d'holbach, etc. paris, . gibbon, autobiography, ed. murray. london, . private letters, - , ed prothero. london, . grande encyclopédie. grimm, correspondance littéraire et critique. paris, . nouveaux mémoires secrets et inédits, etc. paris, . hammard, mme. de genlis. new york, . hancock, the french revolution and the english poets. new york, . hedgcock, david garrick et ses amis français. paris, . helvetius, le vrai sens du _système de la nature_. paris, . herzog, real-encyklopedie. hibbert, a short sketch of the life and the writings of baron d'holbach. london, . holland, réflexions philosophiques sur la _système de la nature_. paris, . hume, private correspondence, etc. london, . l'impie démasqué, etc. london, . independent whig. london, . jal, dictionnaire critique de biographie et d'histoire. paris, . journal de lecture, vol. i, . journal de paris, . laharpe, cours de littérature. paris, . philosophie du me siècle. paris, . lagrange, oeuvres complètes de senèque. paris, . landry, beccaria, scritte e lettre inediti. . lange, history of materialism. boston, . lanson, manuel bibliographique de la littérature française moderne - . paris, . lenel, un homme de lettres au me siècle, marmontel. paris, . lerminier, de l'influence de la philosophie au siècle. paris, . lévy-bruhle, history of modern philosophy in france. chicago, . lowell, the eve of the french revolution. boston, . magasin encyclopédique. mai, . mangold, von, unumstossliche widerlegung des materialismus gegen den verfasser des systèms der natur. augsburg, . maréchal, dictionnaire des athées (paris). an. viii ( ). marmontel, mémoires, ed. tourneur. paris, . martin, histoire de france, - . th ed. michaud, biographie universelle. morellet, mémoires. paris, . lettres à lord shelburne. paris, . mornet, les sciences de la nature au me siècle. paris, . myers, konversations-lexikon. naigeon, mémoires historiques et philosophiques sur la vie et les ouvrages de denis diderot. paris, . nouvelle revue, june, july, . paulian, la religion prouvée aux incrédules, etc. paris, . paulian, le véritable système de la nature. paris, . payrard, de la nature et de ses lois. paris, . perey et maugras, dernières années de mme. d'epinay. paris, . picavet, les idéologues. paris, . plechanow, beiträge zur geschichte des materialismus. stuttgart, . quérard, la france littéraire. paris, . superchéries littéraires dévoilées. paris, . littérature française contemporaine (continuation). rabbe, biographie. répertoire de la gazette de france. revue bleue, june, . revue de l'histoire littéraire de la france, jan.-june, . revue de synthèse historique, , vol. i. revue des cours et conférences, - . revue des deux mondes, apr., ; june, . revue encyclopédique, vol. xvi. rey, rousseau. paris, . rietstap, armorial général. gonda, . robinet, le personnel municipale de paris pendant la révolution. paris, . rochfort, l'esprit révolutionnaire avant la révolution. paris, . romilly, sir s., memoirs. london, . rosenkrantz, diderot's leben und werke. leipzig, . rousseau, oeuvres complètes. paris, . roustan, les philosophes et la société française au me siècle. paris, . st.-beuve, portraits littéraires. paris, . causeries de lundi. paris, . st.-martin, des erreurs et de la vérité. edinburgh, . soury, bréviaire de l'histoire de matérialisme. paris, . stupuy, chez diderot, comédie en deux actes, en vers. paris, . tallentyre, the friends of voltaire. london, . villemain, cours de littérature française. paris, . voltaire, oeuvres complètes, ed. beuchot. paris, - . oeuvres complètes, ed. garnier. paris, . walpole, h., letters, ed, toynbee. london, . weiland, oberon, tr. holbach fils. paris, . wetzer & welte, kirchen-lexikon. wilkes, correspondence with his friends. london, . letters from the year to , addressed to his daughter. london, . wright, a history of french literature. london, . vita max pearson cushing, born in bangor, maine, october , ; bangor high school, ; a.b. bowdown college, . instructor in english, robert college, constantinople, - ; graduate student in history, columbia university, - ; a.m. columbia, , instructor in history, reed college, portland, oregon, . the letters of william james [illustration: photo of william james.] from a photograph by alice boughton, new york, february , ] the letters of william james edited by his son henry james in two volumes volume i [illustration: colophon] the atlantic monthly press boston copyright, , by henry james _to my mother, gallant and devoted ally of my father's most arduous and happy years, this collection of his letters is dedicated._ preface whether william james was compressing his correspondence into brief messages, or allowing it to expand into copious letters, he could not write a page that was not free, animated, and characteristic. many of his correspondents preserved his letters, and examination of them soon showed that it would be possible to make a selection which should not only contain certain letters that clearly deserved to be published because of their readable quality alone, but should also include letters that were biographical in the best sense. for in the case of a man like james the biographical question to be answered is not, as with a man of affairs: how can his actions be explained? but rather: what manner of being was he? what were his background and education? and, above all, what were his temperament and the bias of his mind? what native instincts, preferences, and limitations of view did he bring with him to his business of reading the riddle of the universe? his own informal utterances throw the strongest light on such questions. in these volumes i have attempted to make such a selection. the task has been simplified by the nature of the material, in which the most interesting letters were often found, naturally enough, to include the most vivid elements of which a picture could be composed. i have added such notes as seemed necessary in the interest of clearness; but i have tried to leave the reader to his own conclusions. the work was begun in , but had to be laid aside; and i should regret the delay in completing it even more than i do if it were not that very interesting letters have come to light during the last three years. james was a great reader of biographies himself, and pointed again and again to the folly of judging a man's ideas by minute logical and textual examinations, without apprehending his mental attitude sympathetically. he was well aware that every man's philosophy is biased by his feelings, and is not due to purely rational processes. he was quite incapable himself of the cool kind of abstraction that comes from indifference about the issue. life spoke to him in even more ways than to most men, and he responded to its superabundant confusion with passion and insatiable curiosity. his spiritual development was a matter of intense personal experience. so students of his books may even find that this collection of informal and intimate utterances helps them to understand james as a philosopher and psychologist. i have not included letters that are wholly technical or polemic. such documents belong in a study of james's philosophy, or in a history of its origin and influence. however interesting they might be to certain readers, their appropriate place is not here. a good deal of biographical information about william james, his brother henry, and their father has already been given to the public; but unfortunately it is scattered, and much of it is cast in a form which calls for interpretation or amendment. the elder henry james left an autobiographical fragment which was published in a volume of his "literary remains," but it was composed purely as a religious record. he wrote it in the third person, as if it were the life of one "stephen dewhurst," and did not try to give a circumstantial report of his youth or ancestry. later, his son henry wrote two volumes of early reminiscences in his turn. in "a small boy and others" and "notes of a son and brother" he reproduced the atmosphere of a household of which he was the last survivor, and adumbrated the figures of henry james, senior, and of certain other members of his family with infinite subtlety at every turn of the page. but he too wrote without much attention to particular facts or the sequence of events, and his two volumes were incomplete and occasionally inaccurate with respect to such details. accordingly i have thought it advisable to restate parts of the family record, even though the restatement involves some repetition. finally, i should explain that the letters have been reproduced _verbatim_, though not _literatim_, except for superscriptions, which have often been simplified. as respects spelling and punctuation, the manuscripts are not consistent. james wrote rapidly, used abbreviations, occasionally "simplified" his spelling, and was inclined to use capital letters only for emphasis. thus he often followed the french custom of writing adjectives derived from proper names with small letters--_e.g._ french literature, european affairs. but when he wrote for publication he was too considerate of his reader's attention to distract it with such petty irregularities; therefore unimportant peculiarities of orthography have generally not been reproduced in this book. on the other hand, the phraseology of the manuscripts, even where grammatically incomplete, has been kept. verbal changes have not been made except where it was clear that there had been a slip of the pen, and clear what had been intended. it is obvious that rhetorical laxities are to be expected in letters written as these were. no editor who has attempted to "improve away" such defects has ever deserved to be thanked. acknowledgments are due, first of all, to the correspondents who have generously supplied letters. several who were most generous and to whom i am most indebted have, alas! passed beyond the reach of thanks. i wish particularly to record my gratitude here to correspondents too numerous to be named who have furnished letters that are not included. such material, though omitted from the book, has been informing and helpful to the editor. one example may be cited--the copious correspondence with mrs. james which covers the period of every briefest separation; but extracts from this have been used only when other letters failed. from dr. dickinson s. miller, from professor r. b. perry, from my mother, from my brother william, and from my wife, all of whom have seen the material at different stages of its preparation, i have received many helpful suggestions, and i gratefully acknowledge my special debt to them. president eliot, dr. miller, and professor g. h. palmer were, each, so kind as to send me memoranda of their impressions and recollections. i have embodied parts of the memoranda of the first two in my notes; and have quoted from professor palmer's minute--about to appear in the "harvard graduates' magazine." for all information about william james's barber ancestry i am indebted to the genealogical investigations of mrs. russell hastings. special acknowledgments are due to mr. george b. ives, who has prepared the topical index. finally, i shall be grateful to anyone who will, at any time, advise me of the whereabouts of any letters which i have not already had an opportunity to examine. h. j. _august, ._ contents i. introduction - _ancestry--henry james, senior--youth--education--certain personal traits._ ii. - - _chemistry and comparative anatomy in the lawrence scientific school._ letters:-- to his family to miss katharine temple (mrs. richard emmet) to his family to katharine james prince to his mother to his sister iii. - - _the harvard medical school--with louis agassiz to the amazon._ letters:-- to his mother to his parents to his father to his father to his parents iv. - - _medical studies at harvard._ letters:-- to thomas w. ward to thomas w. ward to his sister to o. w. holmes, jr. v. - - _eighteen months in germany._ letters:-- to his parents to his mother to his father to o. w. holmes, jr. to henry james to his sister to his sister to thomas w. ward to thomas w. ward to henry p. bowditch to o. w. holmes, jr. to thomas w. ward to his father to henry james to his father vi. - - _invalidism in cambridge._ letters:-- to henry p. bowditch to o. w. holmes, jr., and john c. gray, jr. to thomas w. ward to henry p. bowditch to miss mary tappan to henry james to henry p. bowditch to henry p. bowditch to charles renouvier vii. - - _first years of teaching._ letters:-- to henry james [henry james, senior, to henry james] to his family to his sister to his sister to his sister to henry james to miss theodora sedgwick to henry james to henry james to charles renouvier viii. - - _marriage--contract for the psychology--european colleagues--death of his parents._ letters:-- to francis j. child to miss frances r. morse to mrs. james to josiah royce to josiah royce to charles renouvier to charles renouvier to mrs. james to mrs. james to henry james to his father to mrs. james ix. - - _writing the "principles of psychology"--psychical research--the place at chocorua--the irving street house--the paris psychological congress of ._ letters:-- to charles renouvier to henry l. higginson to henry p. bowditch to thomas davidson to g. h. howison to e. l. godkin to e. l. godkin to shadworth h. hodgson to henry james to shadworth h. hodgson to carl stumpf to henry james to w. d. howells to g. croom robertson to shadworth h. hodgson to his sister to carl stumpf to henry p. bowditch to henry james to his sister to henry james to charles waldstein to his son henry to his son henry to his son william to henry james to miss grace norton to g. croom robertson to henry james to e. l. godkin to henry james to mrs. james to miss grace norton to charles eliot norton to henry holt to mrs. james to henry james to mrs. henry whitman to w. d. howells x. - - _the "briefer course" and the laboratory--a sabbatical year in europe._ letters:-- to mrs. henry whitman to g. h. howison to f. w. h. myers to w. d. howells to w. d. howells to mrs. henry whitman to his sister to hugo münsterberg to henry holt to henry james to miss grace ashburner to henry james to miss mary tappan to miss grace ashburner to theodore flournoy to william m. salter to james j. putnam to miss grace ashburner to josiah royce to miss grace norton to miss margaret gibbens to francis boott to henry james to françois pillon to shadworth h. hodgson to dickinson s. miller to henry james list of illustrations william james _frontispiece_ henry james, sr., and his wife william james at eighteen pencil sketch: _a sleeping dog_ pencil sketch from a pocket note-book: _a turtle_ pencil sketch: _retreating figure of a man_ william james at twenty-five pencil sketches from a pocket note-book pencil sketch: _an elephant_ francis james child dates and family names . january . born in new york. - . at school in boulogne. - . in geneva. - . studied painting under william m. hunt in newport. . entered the lawrence scientific school. . entered the harvard medical school. - . assistant under louis agassiz on the amazon. - . studied medicine in germany. . m.d. harvard. - . instructor in anatomy and physiology in harvard college. . began to give instruction in psychology. . assistant professor of physiology. . married. undertook to write a treatise on psychology. . assistant professor of philosophy. - . spent several months visiting european universities and colleagues. . professor of philosophy. (between and his title was professor of psychology.) . "principles of psychology" appeared. - . european travel. . published "the will to believe and other essays on popular philosophy." . published "talks to teachers," etc. - . broke down in health. two years in europe. - . gifford lectures. "the varieties of religious experience." . acting professor for half-term at stanford university. (interrupted by san francisco earthquake.) . lowell institute lectures, subsequently published as "pragmatism." . resigned all active duties at harvard. . hibbert lectures at manchester college, oxford; subsequently published as "a pluralistic universe." . august . died at chocorua, n.h. (see appendix in volume ii for a full list of books by william james, with their dates.) william james was the eldest of five children. his brothers and sister, with their dates, were: henry (referred to as "harry"), - ; garth wilkinson (referred to as "wilky"), - ; robertson (referred to as "bob" and "bobby"), - ; alice, - . he had five children. their dates and the names by which they are referred to in the letters are: henry ("harry"), ; william ("billy"), ; hermann, - ; margaret mary ("peggy," "peg"), ; alexander robertson ("tweedie," "françois"), . the letters of william james the letters of william james i introduction _ancestry--henry james, senior--youth--education--certain personal traits_ the ancestors of william james, with the possible exception of one pair of great-great-grandparents, all came to america from scotland or ireland during the eighteenth century, and settled in the eastern part of new york state or in new jersey. one irish forefather is known to have been descended from englishmen who had crossed the irish channel in the time of william of orange, or thereabouts; but whether the others who came from ireland were more english or celtic is not clear. in america all his ancestors were protestant, and they appear, without exception, to have been people of education and character. in the several communities in which they settled they prospered above the average. they became farmers, traders, and merchants, and, so far as has yet been discovered, there were only two lawyers, and no doctors or ministers, among them. they seem to have been reckoned as pious people, and several of their number are known to have been generous supporters of the churches in which they worshiped; but, if one may judge by the scanty records which remain, there is no one among them to whom one can point as foreshadowing the inclination to letters and religious speculation that manifested itself strongly in william james and his father. they were mainly concerned to establish themselves in a new country. inasmuch as they succeeded, lived well, and were respected, it is likely that they possessed a fair endowment of both the imagination and the solid qualities that one thinks of as appropriately combined in the colonists who crossed the ocean in the eighteenth century and did well in the new country. but, as to many of them, it is impossible to do more than presume this, and impossible to carry presumption any farther. the last ancestor to arrive in america was william james's paternal grandfather. this grandfather, whose name was also william james, came from bally-james-duff, county cavan, in the year . he was then eighteen years old. he may have left home because his family tried to force him into the ministry,--for there is a story to that effect,--or he may have had more adventurous reasons. but in any case he arrived in a manner which tradition has cherished as wholly becoming to a first american ancestor--with a very small sum of money, a latin grammar in which he had already made some progress at home, and a desire to visit the field of one of the revolutionary battles. he promptly disposed of his money in making this visit. then, finding himself penniless in albany, he took employment as clerk in a store. he worked his way up rapidly; traded on his own account, kept a store, traveled and bought land to the westward, engaged as time went on in many enterprises, among them being the salt industry of syracuse (where the principal residential street bears his name), prospered exceedingly, and amassed a fortune so large, that after his death it provided a liberal independence for his widow and each of his eleven children. the imagination and sagacity which enabled him to do this inevitably involved him in the public affairs of the community in which he lived, although he seems never to have held political office. thus his name appears early in the history of the erie canal project; and, when that great undertaking was completed and the opening of the waterway was celebrated in , he delivered the "oration" of the day at albany. it may be found in munsell's albany collections, and considering what were the fashions of the time in such matters, ought to be esteemed by a modern reader for containing more sense and information than "oratory." he was one of the organizers and the first vice-president of the albany savings bank, founded in , and of the albany chamber of commerce,--the president, in both instances, being stephen van rensselaer. when he died, in , the new york "evening post" said of him: "he has done more to build up the city [of albany] than any other individual." two portraits of the first william james have survived, and present him as a man of medium height, rather portly, clean-shaven, hearty, friendly, confident, and distinctly irish. unrecorded anecdotes about him are not to be taken literally, but may be presumed to be indicative. it is told of him, for instance, that one afternoon shortly after he had married for the third time, he saw a lady coming up the steps of his house, rose from the table at which he was absorbed in work, went to the door and said "he was sorry mrs. james was not in." but the poor lady was herself his newly married wife, and cried out to him not to be "so absent-minded." he discovered one day that a man with whom he had gone into partnership was cheating, and immediately seized him by the collar and marched him through the streets to a justice. "when old billy james came to syracuse," said a citizen who could remember his visits, "things went as _he_ wished." in his comfortable brick residence on north pearl street he kept open house and gave a special welcome to members of the presbyterian ministry. one of his sons said of him: "he was certainly a very easy parent--weakly, nay painfully sensitive to his children's claims upon his sympathy." "the law of the house, within the limits of religious decency, was freedom itself."[ ] indeed, there appears to have been only one matter in which he was rigorous with his family: his presbyterianism was of the stiffest kind, and in his old age he sacrificed even his affections for what he considered the true faith. theological differences estranged him from two of his sons,--william and henry,--and though the old man became reconciled to one of them a few days before his death, he left a will which would have cut them both off with small annuities if its elaborate provisions had been sustained by the court. in william james married (his third wife) catherine barber,[ ] a daughter of john barber, of montgomery, orange county, new york. the barbers had been active people in the affairs of their day. catherine's grandfather had been a judge of the court of common pleas, and her father and her two uncles were all officers in the revolutionary army. one of the uncles, francis barber, had previously graduated from princeton and had conducted a boarding-school for boys at "elizabethtown," new jersey, at which alexander hamilton prepared for college. during the war he rose to the rank of lieutenant-colonel, was detailed by washington to be one of steuben's four aides, and performed other staff-duties. john, catherine's father, returned to montgomery after the revolution, was one of the founders of montgomery academy, an associate judge of the county court, a member of the state legislature, and a church elder for fifty years. in henry james, senior's, reminiscences there is a passage which describes him as an old man, much addicted to the reading of military history, and which contrasts his stoicism with his wife's warm and spontaneous temperament and her exceptional gift of interesting her grandchildren in conversation.[ ] in the same reminiscences catherine barber herself is described as having been "a good wife and mother, nothing else--save, to be sure, a kindly friend and neighbor" and "the most democratic person by temperament i ever knew."[ ] she adopted the three children of her husband's prior marriages and, by their own account, treated them no differently from the five sons and three daughters whom she herself bore and brought up. she managed her husband's large house during his lifetime, and for twenty-seven years after his death kept it open as a home for children, and grandchildren, and cousins as well. this "dear gentle lady of many cares" must have been a woman of sound judgment in addition to being an embodiment of kindness and generosity in all things; for admiration as well as affection and gratitude still attend her memory after the lapse of sixty years. the next generation, eleven in number as has already been said,[ ] may well have given their widowed mother "many cares." it had been the purpose of the first william james to provide that his children (several of whom were under age when he died) should qualify themselves by industry and experience to enjoy the large patrimony which he expected to bequeath to them, and with that in view he left a will which was a voluminous compound of restraints and instructions. he showed thereby how great were both his confidence in his own judgment and his solicitude for the moral welfare of his descendants. but he accomplished nothing more, for the courts declared the will to be invalid; and his children became financially independent as fast as they came of age. most of them were blessed with a liberal allowance of that combination of gayety, volubility, and waywardness which is popularly conceded to the irish; but these qualities, which made them "charming" and "interesting" to their contemporaries, did not keep them from dissipating both respectable talents and unusual opportunities. two of the men--william, namely, who became an eccentric but highly respected figure in the presbyterian ministry, and henry of whom more will be said shortly--possessed an ardor of intellect that neither disaster nor good fortune could corrupt. but on the whole the personalities and histories of that generation were such as to have impressed the boyish mind of the writer of the following letters and of his younger brother like a richly colored social kaleidoscope, dashed, as the patterns changed and disintegrated, with amusing flashes of light and occasional dark moments of tragedy. after they were all dead and gone, the memory of them certainly prompted the author of "the wings of a dove" when he described minny theale's new york forebears as "an extravagant, unregulated cluster, with free-living ancestors, handsome dead cousins, lurid uncles, beautiful vanished aunts, persons all busts and curls," to have known whom and to have belonged to whom "was to have had one's small world-space both crowded and enlarged." it is unnecessary, however, to pause over any but one member of that generation. * * * * * henry james, the second son of william and catherine, was born in . he was apparently a boy of unusual activity and animal spirits, but at the age of thirteen he met with an accident which maimed him for life. he was, at the time, a schoolboy at the albany academy, and one of his fellow students, mr. woolsey rogers hopkins, wrote the following account of what happened. (the professor henry referred to was joseph henry, later the head of the smithsonian institute.) "on a summer afternoon, the older students would meet professor henry in the park, in front of the academy, where amusements and instruction would be given in balloon-flying, the motive power being heated air supplied from a tow ball saturated with spirits of turpentine. when one of these air-ships took fire, the ball would be dropt for the boys, when it was kicked here and there, a roll of fire. [one day when] young james had a sprinkling of this [turpentine] on his pantaloons, one of these balls was sent into the open window of mrs. gilchrist's stable. [james], thinking only of conflagration, rushed to the hayloft and stamped out the flame, but burned his leg." the boy was confined to his bed for the next two years, and one leg was twice amputated above the knee. he was robust enough to survive this long and dire experience of the surgery of the eighteen-twenties, and to establish right relations with the world again; but thereafter he could live conveniently only in towns where smooth footways and ample facilities for transportation were to be had. in he graduated from union college, schenectady, and in entered the princeton theological seminary with the class of ' . by the time he had completed two years of his seminary course, his discontent with the orthodox dispensation was no longer to be doubted. he left princeton, and the truth seems to be that he had already conceived some measure of the antipathy to all ecclesiasticisms which he expressed with abounding scorn and irony throughout all his later years. [illustration: henry james, sr., and his wife.] in he married mary walsh, the sister of a fellow student at princeton, who had shared his religious doubts and had, with him, turned his back on the ministry and left the seminary. she was the daughter of james and mary (robertson) walsh of new york city, and was thus descended from hugh walsh, an irishman of english extraction who came from killingsley,[ ] county down, in , and settled himself finally near newburgh, and from alexander robertson, a scotchman who came to america not long before the revolution and whose name is borne by the school of the scotch presbyterian church in new york city. mary walsh was a gentle lady, who accommodated her life to all her husband's vagaries and presided with cheerful indulgence over the development of her five children's divergent and uncompromising personalities. she lived entirely for her husband and children, and they, joking her and teasing her and adoring her, were devoted to her in return. several contemporaries left accounts of their impressions of her husband without saying much about her; and this was natural, for she was not self-assertive and was inevitably eclipsed by his richly interesting presence. but it is all the more unfortunate that her son henry, who might have done justice, as no one else could, to her good sense and to the grace of her mind and character, could not bring himself to include an adequate account of her in the "small boy and others." to a reader who ventured to regret the omission, he replied sadly, "oh! my dear boy--that memory is too sacred!" william james spoke of her very seldom after her death, but then always with a sort of tender reverence that he vouchsafed to no one else. she supplied an element of serenity and discretion to the councils of the family of which they were often in need; and it would not be a mistake to look to her in trying to account for the unusual receptivity of mind and æsthetic sensibility that marked her two elder sons. during the three or four years that followed his marriage henry james, senior, appears to have spent his time in albany and new york. in the latter city, in the old, or then new, astor house, his eldest son was born on the eleventh of january, . he named the boy william, and a few days later brought his friend r. w. emerson to admire and give his blessing to the little philosopher-to-be.[ ] shortly afterwards the family moved into a house at no. washington place, and there, on april , , the second son, henry, came into the world. there was thus a difference of fifteen months in the ages of william and the younger brother, who was also to become famous and who figures largely in the correspondence that follows. william james derived so much from his father and resembled him so strikingly in many ways that it is worth while to dwell a little longer on the character, manners, and beliefs of the elder henry james. he was not only an impressive and all-pervading presence in the early lives of his children, but always continued to be for them the most vivid and interesting personality who had crossed the horizon of their experience. he was their constant companion, and entered into their interests and poured out his own ideas and emotions before them in a way that would not have been possible to a nature less spontaneous and affectionate. his books, written in a style which "to its great dignity of cadence and full and homely vocabulary, united a sort of inward palpitating human quality, gracious and tender, precise, fierce, scornful, humorous by turns, recalling the rich vascular temperament of the old english masters rather than that of an american of today,"[ ] reveal him richly to anyone who has a taste for theological reading. his philosophy is summarized in the introduction to "the literary remains," and his own personality and the very atmosphere of his household are reproduced in "a small boy and others," and "notes of a son and brother." thus what it is appropriate to say about him in this place can be given largely in either his own words or those of one or the other of his two elder sons. the intellectual quandary in which henry james, senior, found himself in early manhood was well described in letters to emerson in and . "here i am," he wrote, "these thirty-two years in life, ignorant in all outward science, but having patient habits of meditation, which never know disgust or weariness, and feeling a force of impulsive love toward all humanity which will not let me rest wholly mute, a force which grows against all resistance that i can muster against it. what shall i do? shall i get me a little nook in the country and communicate with my _living_ kind--not my talking kind--by life only; a word perhaps of that communication, a fit word once a year? or shall i follow some commoner method--learn science and bring myself first into man's respect, that i may thus the better speak to him? i confess this last theory seems rank with earthliness--to belong to days forever past.... i am led, quite without any conscious wilfulness either, to seek the _laws_ of these appearances that swim round us in god's great museum--to get hold of some central _facts_ which may make all other facts properly circumferential, and _orderly_ so--and you continually dishearten me by your apparent indifference to such law and central facts, by the dishonor you seem to cast on our intelligence, as if it stood much in our way. now my conviction is that my intelligence is the necessary digestive apparatus for my life; that there is _nihil in vita_--worth anything, that is--_quod non prius in intellectu_.... oh, you man without a handle! shall one never be able to help himself out of you, according to his needs, and be dependent only upon your fitful tippings-up?"[ ] to a modern ear these words confess not only the mental isolation and bewilderment of their author, but also the rarity of the atmosphere in which his philosophic impulse was struggling to draw breath. like many other struggling spirits of his time, he fell into a void between two epochs. he was a theologian too late to repose on the dogmas and beliefs that were accepted by the preceding generation and by the less critical multitude of his own contemporaries. he was, in youth, a skeptic--too early to avail himself of the methods, discoveries, and perspectives which a generation of scientific inquiry conferred upon his children. the situation was one which usually resolved itself either into permanent skepticism or a more or less unreasoning conformity. in the case of henry james there happened ere long one of those typical spiritual crises in which "man's original optimism and self-satisfaction get leveled with the dust."[ ] while he was still struggling out of his melancholy state a friend introduced him to the works of swedenborg. by their help he found the relief he needed, and a faith that possessed him ever after with the intensity of revelation. "the world of his thought had a few elements and no others ever troubled him. those elements were very deep ones and had theological names." so wrote his son after he had died.[ ] he never achieved a truly philosophic formulation of his religious position, and mr. howells once complained that he had written a book about the "secret of swedenborg" and had _kept it_. he concerned himself with but one question, conveyed but one message; and the only business of his later life was the formulation and serene reutterance, in books, occasional lectures, and personal correspondence, of his own conception of god and of man's proper relation to him. "the usual problem is--given the creation to find the creator. to mr. james it [was]--given the creator to find the creation. god is; of his being there is no doubt; but who and what are we?" so said a critic quoted in the introduction to the "literary remains," and william james's own estimate may be quoted from the same place (page ). "i have often," he wrote "tried to imagine what sort of a figure my father might have made, had he been born in a genuinely theological age, with the best minds about him fermenting with the mystery of the divinity, and the air full of definitions and theories and counter-theories, and strenuous reasoning and contentions, about god's relation to mankind. floated on such a congenial tide, furthered by sympathetic comrades, and opposed no longer by blank silence but by passionate and definite resistance, he would infallibly have developed his resources in many ways which, as it was, he never tried; and he would have played a prominent, perhaps a momentous and critical, part in the struggles of his time, for he was a religious prophet and genius, if ever prophet and genius there were. he published an intensely positive, radical, and fresh conception of god, and an intensely vital view of our connection with him. and nothing shows better the altogether lifeless and unintellectual character of the professional theism of our time, than the fact that this view, this conception, so vigorously thrown down, should not have stirred the faintest tremulation on its stagnant pool." the reader will readily infer that there was nothing conventional, prim, or parson-like about this man. the fact is that the devoutly religious mind is often quite anarchic in its disregard of all those worldly institutions and conventions which do not express human dependence on the creator. henry james, senior, dealt with such things in the most allusive and paradoxical terms. "i would rather," he once ejaculated, "have a son of mine corroded with all the sins of the decalogue than have him perfect!" his prime horror, writes henry james, was of prigs; "he only cared for virtue that was more or less ashamed of itself; and nothing could have been of a happier whimsicality than the mixture in him, and in all his walk and conversation, of the strongest instinct for the human and the liveliest reaction from the literal. the literal played in our education as small a part as it perhaps ever played in any, and we wholesomely breathed inconsistency and ate and drank contradictions.... the moral of all was that we need never fear not to be good enough if we were only social enough; a splendid meaning indeed being attached to the latter term. thus we had ever the amusement, since i can really call it nothing less, of hearing morality, or moralism, as it was more invidiously worded, made hay of in the very interest of character and conduct; these things suffering much, it seemed, by their association with conscience--the very home of the literal, the haunt of so many pedantries."[ ] the erroneous statement that has become current, and that describes henry james, senior, as a swedenborgian minister, is a rich absurdity to anyone who knew him or his writings. not only had the churches in general sold themselves to the devil, in his view, but the arch-sinners in this respect were the swedenborgian congregations, for they, if any, might be expected to know better. a letter which he wrote to the editor of the "new jerusalem messenger," in , illustrates this and tells more about him than could ten pages of description: dear sir,--you were good enough, when i called on you at mr. appleton's request in new york, to say among other friendly things that you would send me your paper; and i have regularly received it ever since. i thank you for your kindness, but my conscience refuses any longer to sanction its taxation in this way, as i have never been able to read the paper with any pleasure, nor therefore of course with any profit. i presume its editorials are by you, and while i willingly seized upon every evidence they display of an enlarged spirit, i yet find the general drift of the paper so very poverty-stricken in a spiritual regard, as to make it absolutely the least nutritive reading i know. the old sects are notoriously bad enough, but your sect compares with these very much as a heap of dried cod on long wharf in boston compares with the same fish while still enjoying the freedom of the atlantic ocean. i remember well the manly strain of your conversation with me in new york, and i know therefore how you must suffer from the control of persons so unworthy as those who have the property of your paper. why don't you cut the whole concern at once, as a rank offence to every human hope and aspiration? the intercourse i had some years since with the leaders of the sect, on a visit to boston, made me fully aware of their deplorable want of manhood; but judging from your paper, the whole sect seems spiritually benumbed. your mature men have an air of childishness and your young men have the aspect of old women. i find it hard above all to imagine the existence of a living woman in the bounds of your sect, whose breasts flow with milk instead of hardening with pedantry. i know such things are of course, but i tell you frankly that these are the sort of questions your paper forces on the unsophisticated mind. i really know nothing so sad and spectral in the shape of literature. it seems composed by skeletons and intended for readers who are content to disown their good flesh and blood, and be moved by some ghastly mechanism. it cannot but prove very unwholesome to you spiritually, to be so nearly connected with all that sadness and silence, where nothing more musical is heard than the occasional jostling of bone by bone. do come out of it before you wither as an autumn leaf, which no longer rustles in full-veined life on the pliant bough, but rattles instead with emptiness upon the frozen melancholy earth. pardon my freedom; i was impressed by your friendliness towards me, and speak to you therefore in return with all the frankness of friendship. consider me as having any manner and measure of disrespect for your ecclesiastical pretensions, but as being personally, yours cordially, h. james.[ ] a diary entry made by his daughter alice has fortunately been preserved. "a week before father died," says this entry, "i asked him one day whether he had thought what he should like to have done about his funeral. he was immediately very much interested, not having apparently thought of it before; he reflected for some time, and then said with the greatest solemnity and looking so majestic: 'tell him to say only this: "here lies a man, who has thought all his life that the ceremonies attending birth, marriage and death were all damned non-sense." don't let him say a word more!'" henry james, senior, lived entirely with his books, his pen, his family, and his friends. the first three he could carry about with him, and did carry along on numerous restless and extended journeys. from friends, even when he left them on the opposite side of the ocean, he was never quite separated, for he always maintained a wide correspondence, partly theological, partly playful and friendly. he was so sociable and so independent and lively a talker, that he entered into hearty relations with interesting people wherever he went. thackeray was a familiar visitor at his apartment in paris when his older children were just old enough to remember, and his recollections of carlyle and emerson will reward any reader whose appetite does not carry him as far as the theological disquisitions. "i suppose there was not in his day," said e. l. godkin, "a more formidable master of english style."[ ] in his conversation the winning impulsiveness of both his humor and his indignation appeared more clearly even than in his writing. he loved to talk, not for the sake of oppressing his hearer by an exposition of his own views, but in order to stir him up and rouse him to discussion and rejoinder. at home he was not above espousing the queerest of opinions, if by so doing he could excite his children to gallop after him and ride him down. "meal-times in that pleasant home were exciting. 'the adipose and affectionate wilky,' as his father called him, would say something and be instantly corrected or disputed by the little cock-sparrow bob, the youngest, but good-naturedly defend his statement, and then henry (junior) would emerge from his silence in defence of wilky. then bob would be more impertinently insistent, and mr. james would advance as moderator, and william, the eldest, join in. the voice of the moderator presently would be drowned by the combatants and he soon came down vigorously into the arena, and when, in the excited argument, the dinner-knives might not be absent from eagerly gesticulating hands, dear mrs. james, more conventional, but bright as well as motherly, would look at me, laughingly reassuring, saying, 'don't be disturbed; they won't stab each other. this is usual when the boys come home.' and the quiet little sister ate her dinner, smiling, close to the combatants. mr. james considered this debate, within bounds, excellent for the boys. in their speech singularly mature and picturesque, as well as vehement, the gaelic (irish) element in their descent always showed. even if they blundered, they saved themselves by wit."[ ] it was certainly to their father's talk, to the influence of his "full and homely" idiom, and to the attention-arresting whimsicality and humor with which he perverted the whole vocabulary of theology and philosophy, that both william and henry owed much of their own wealth of resource in ordinary speech. they used often to exaggerate their father's tricks of utterance, for he would have been the last man to refuse himself as a whetstone for his children's wit, and the business of outdoing the head of the family in the matter of language was an exercise familiar to all his sons.[ ] whoever knew them will remember that their everyday diction displayed a natural command of such words and figures as most men cannot use gracefully except when composing with pen in hand. finally, with respect to the constancy of henry james, senior's, presence in the lives of his children, it should be made clear that he never had any "business" or profession to interfere with "his almost eccentrically home-loving habit." during the years of moving about europe, during the quiet years in newport, the family was thrown upon its inner social resources. the children were constantly with their parents and with each other, and they continued all their lives to be united by much stronger attachments than usually exist between members of one family. * * * * * william james never acknowledged himself as feeling particularly indebted to any of the numerous schools and tutors to whom his father's oscillations between new york, europe, and newport confided him. he was sent first to private schools in new york city; but they seem to have been considered inadequate to his needs, for he was not allowed to remain long in any one. nor were the changes any less frequent after the family moved to europe (for the second time since his birth) in . he was then thirteen years old. the exact sequence of events during the next five years of restless movement cannot be determined now, but the important points are clear. the family, including by this time three younger brothers and a younger sister as well as a devoted maternal aunt, remained abroad from to . london, paris, boulogne-sur-mer, and geneva harbored them for differing periods. in london and paris governesses, tutors, and a private school of the sort that admits the irregularly educated children of strangers visiting the continent, administered what must have been a completely discontinuous instruction. in boulogne, william and his younger brother henry attended the _collège_ through the winter of - . this term at the _collège de boulogne_, during which he passed his sixteenth birthday, was his earliest experience of thorough teaching, and he once said that it gave him his first conception of earnest work. then, after a year at newport, there was another european migration--this time to geneva for the winter of - . there william was entered at the "academy," as the present university was still called. he subsequently described himself as having reached geneva "a miserable, home-bred, obscure little ignoramus." during the following summer he was sent for a while to bonn-am-rhein, to learn german. some latin, mathematics to the extent of the usual school algebra and trigonometry, a smattering of german and an excellent familiarity with french--such, in conventional terms, was the net result of his education in . he tried to make up for the deficiencies in his schooling, and as occasion offered he picked up a few words of greek, attained to a moderate reading knowledge of italian, and a quite complete command of german. but these came later. [illustration: william james at eighteen. from a daguerreotype.] he seldom referred to his schooling with anything but contempt, and usually dismissed all reference to it by saying that he "never had any." but, as is often the case with even those boys who follow a regular curriculum, his amusements and excursions beyond the bounds of his prescribed studies did more to develop him appropriately than did any of his schoolmasters. an interest in exact knowledge showed itself early. he once recalled a trivial incident which illustrates this, though he apparently remembered it because he realized, young as he was when it occurred, that it grew out of a real difference between the cast of his mind and the cast of henry's. as readers of the "small boy" will remember, henry, at the ordinarily "tough" age of ten, was already animated by a secret passion for authorship, and used to confide his literary efforts to folio sheets, which he stored in a copy-book and which he tried to conceal from his tormenting brother. but william came upon them, and discovered that on one page henry had made a drawing to represent a mother and child clinging to a rock in the midst of a stormy ocean and that he had inscribed under it: "the thunder roared and the lightning followed!" william saw the meteorological blunder immediately; he fairly pounced upon it, and he tormented the sensitive romancer about it so unmercifully that the occasion had to be marked by punishments and the inauguration of a maternal protectorate over the copy-book. about four years later, when he was fifteen years old, his father bought a microscope to give him at christmas. william happened upon the bill for it in advance, and was hardly able to contain his excitement until christmas day, so portentous seemed the impending event. apparently no similar experience ever equalled the intensity of this one. he doubtless made as good use of the instrument as an unguided boy could. but though his proclivities were generously indulged, they were never trained. at geneva he began to study anatomy, but there was no regular instruction in osteology; so he borrowed a copy of sappey's "anatomie" and got permission to visit the museum and there examine the human skeleton by himself. clearly, there was profit for him also in the restlessness which governed his father's movements and which threw the boy into quickening collision with places, people, and ideas at a rate at which such contacts are not vouchsafed to many schoolboys. from so far back as his nineteenth year (there is no evidence to go by before that) william was blessed with an effortless and confirmed cosmopolitanism of consciousness; and he had attained to an acquaintance with english and french reviews, books, paintings, and public affairs which was remarkable not only for its happy ease, but, in one so young, for its wide range. the letters which follow show clearly with what expert observation he responded, all his life, to changes of scene and to the differences between peoples and environments. the fascination of these differences never failed for him when he traveled, and his letters from abroad give such voluminous proof of his own addiction to what he somewhat harshly called "the most barren of exercises, the making of international comparisons," that the problem of the editor is to control rather than to emphasize the evidence. he began young to be a wide reader; soon he became a wide reader in three languages. above all, he was encouraged early to trust his own impulse and pursue his own bent. probably his active and inquiring intelligence could not have been permanently cribbed and confined by any schooling, no matter how narrow and rigorous. but, as nothing was to be more remarkable about him in his maturity than the easy assurance with which he passed from one field of inquiry to another, ignoring conventional bounds and precincts, never losing his freshness of tone, shedding new light and encouragement everywhere, so it is impossible not to believe that the influences and circumstances which combined in his youth fostered and corroborated his native mobility and detachment of mind. meanwhile he had one occupation to which no reference has yet been made, but to which he thought, for a while, of devoting himself wholly, namely, painting. he began to draw before he had reached his 'teens. henry james said: "as i catch w. j.'s image, from far back, at its most characteristic, he sits drawing and drawing, always drawing, especially under the lamp-light of the fourteenth street back parlor; and not as with a plodding patience, which i think would less have affected me, but easily, freely, and, as who should say, infallibly: always at the stage of finishing off, his head dropped from side to side and his tongue rubbing his lower lip. i recover a period during which to see him at all was so to see him--the other flights and faculties removed him from my view."[ ] what was an idle amusement in new york became, when the boy was transferred to foreign places and cut off from other amusements, a sharpener of observation and a resource for otherwise vacant hours. for when the family of young americans reached st. john's wood, london, and then moved to the continent, the two elder boys found little to do at first except to wander about "in a state of the direst propriety," staring at street scenes, shop-windows, and such "sights" as they were old enough to enjoy, and then to buy "water-colors and brushes with which to bedaub eternal drawing blocks." in paris william had better lessons in drawing than he had ever had elsewhere, and it seems fair to say that he made good use of his opportunity to educate his eye; saw good pictures; sketched and copied with zest; and began to show great aptitude in his own "daubings." from bonn, later still, he wrote to his genevese fellow student charles ritter: "je me suis pleinement décidé à éssayer le métier de peintre. en un an ou deux je saurais si j'y suis propre ou non. si c'est non, il sera facile de reculer. il n'y a pas sur la terre un objet plus déplorable qu'un méchant artiste."[ ] he applied himself with energy to art for the following year at newport, working daily in the studio of william hunt, along with his stimulating young friend, john la farge. to what good purpose he had drawn and painted from boyhood, and to what point he trained his gift that winter, cannot now be measured and defined in words. paper and canvas are the proof of such things, which must be seen rather than described; and unfortunately only one canvas and very few drawings have been preserved. in the "notes of a son and brother," several random sketches are reproduced which will say much to the discerning critic. the one canvas that at all indicates the climax of his artistic effort, the beautiful and simple portrait of his cousin katharine temple, is also reproduced in the "notes"; but a small half-tone gives, alas! only an inadequate impression of the quality of the painting. the sketches which are included in the following pages will give an idea of the felicity of his hand, and of his talent for seeing the living line whenever he made sketches or notes from life. he threw these scraps off so easily, valuing them not at all, that few were kept. then, before a year had passed (that is to say, in ), he had decided not to be a painter after all. thereafter what was remarkable was just that he let so genuine a talent remain completely neglected. except to record an observation in the laboratory, to explain the object under discussion to a student, or to amuse his children, he soon left pencil and brush quite untouched. * * * * * the photographs of james reproduced in this book are all excellent "likenesses," and one, with his colleague, royce, caught an attitude which suggests the alertness that marked his bearing. he was of medium height (about five feet eight and one-half inches), and though he was muscular and compact, his frame was slight and he appeared to be slender in youth, spare in his last years. his carriage was erect and his tread was firm to the end. until he was over fifty he used to take the stairs of his own house two, or even three, steps at a bound. he moved rapidly, not to say impatiently, but with an assurance that invested his figure with an informal sort of dignity. after he strained his heart in the adirondacks in he had to habituate himself to a moderate pace in walking, but he never learned to make short movements and movements of unpremeditated response in a deliberate way. when he drove about the hilly roads of the adirondacks or new hampshire, he was forever springing in and out of the carriage to ease the horses where the way was steep. (indeed it was so intolerable to him to sit in a carriage while straining beasts pulled it up grade, that he lost much of his enjoyment of driving when he could no longer walk up the hills.) great was his brother henry's astonishment at chocorua, in , to see that he still got out of a "democrat wagon" by springing lightly from the top of the wheel. his doctors had cautioned him against such sudden exertions; but he usually jumped without thinking. in talking he gesticulated very little, but his face and voice were unusually expressive. his eyes were of that not very dark shade whose depth and color changes with alterations of mood. mrs. henry whitman, who knew him well and painted his portrait, called them "irascible blue eyes." he talked in a voice that was low-pitched rather than deep--an unforgettably agreeable voice, that was admirable for conversation or a small lecture-room, although in a very large hall it vibrated and lacked resonance. his speech was full of earnest, humorous and tender cadences. james was always as informal in his dress as the occasion permitted. the norfolk jacket in which he used to lecture to his classes invariably figured in college caricatures--as did also his festive neckties. but there was nothing that disgusted him more than a "loutish" carelessness about appearances. a friend of old days, describing a first meeting with him in the late sixties ejaculated, "he was the _cleanest_-looking chap!" there seemed to be no flabby or unvitalized fibre in him. people and conversation excited him--if too many, or too long-continued, to the point of irritation and exhaustion. if, as was sometimes the case, he was moody and silent in a small company, it was a sign that he was overworked and tired out. but when he was roused to vivacity and floated on the current of congenial discussion, his enunciation was rapid, with occasional pauses while he searched for the right word or figure and pursed his lips as though helping the word to come. then he talked spontaneously, humorously, and often extravagantly, just as he will appear to have written to his correspondents. sometimes he was vehement, but never ponderous; and he never made anyone, no matter how humble, feel that he was trying to "impress." men and women of all sorts felt at ease with him, and anybody who, in touchstone's phrase,[ ] had any philosophy in him, was soon expounding his private hopes, faiths, and skepticisms to james with gusto. he was, distinctly, not a man who required a submissive audience to put him in the vein. a kind of admiring attention that made him self-conscious was as certain to reduce him to silence as a manly give and take was sure to bring him out. it never seemed to occur to him to debate or talk for victory. in faculty meetings he spoke seldom, and he spent very little time on his feet--except as called upon--when professional congresses or conferences were thrown open to discussion. similarly, he was seldom at his best at large dinners or formal occasions. his best talk might have been described by a phrase which he used about his father. it was pat and intuitive and had a "smiting" quality. he was never guilty of abusing anecdote,--that frequent instrument of social oppression,--but he loved and told a good story when it would help the discussion along, and showed a fair gift of mimicry in relating one.[ ] once, in the early days of their acquaintance, françois pillon, who knew how affectionately james was attached to harvard university and cambridge and who assumed that he was a new englander, asked him about the puritans. james launched upon a vivacious sketch of their sombre community, and when he had finished pillon ejaculated with mingled solicitude and astonishment: "alors! pas un seul bon-vivant parmi vos ancêtres!" the story of the solemn-minded student who stemmed the full tide of a lecture one day by exclaiming, "but, doctor, doctor!--to be serious for a moment--," is already well known. but what counted for the charm and effect of james's conversation more than all else was his lively interest in his interlocutor and in every fresh idea that developed in talk with him. he made the other man feel that he had no desire to pigeon-hole him and dismiss him from further consideration, but that he rejoiced in him as a fellow creature, unique like himself and forever fascinating. "how delicious," he cried, "is the fact that you can't cram individuals under cut-and-dried heads of classification!" he fell instinctively into the other man's mental stride while he drew him out about his age, occupation, history, family circumstances, theories, prejudices, and peculiarities. he abounded in sympathy and even enthusiasm for the other's personal aims and peculiar ideals. his first reaction to a new scene or to fresh contact with a foreign people was apt to be one of admiration. "how jolly it looks!" he would exclaim, "and how superior in such and such ways to that last!" "how _good_ they seem!" "how sound and worthy to be given its chance to develop is such a civilization!" restlessness, discriminating moods, and a longing for the "simplifications" of home soon followed; but even when restlessness and homesickness became acute, their effect was not permanent. he was no sooner back in his own home than the peculiar virtues of the place and people from whom he had fled shone again as unique and precious to the universe. it was good that there should be one oxford, and that it should cling to every ancient peculiarity without surrendering to the spirit of the age--and good too that there should be one chautauqua! for james was perennially "keen" about new things and future things, about beginnings and promises. his mind looked forward eagerly. youth never bored him. anything spontaneous, young, or original was likely to excite him. and then he would pour out expressions of approval and acclaim. brilliant students and young authors were often "little geniuses"; he guessed that they would "produce something very big before long"; they had already arrived at "an important vision," or had "driven their spear into the universe where its ribs are short"; they were going to make "perhaps the most original contribution to philosophy that anyone had made for a generation." it must be admitted that his recognition would occasionally have had a happier effect had it been less encouraging. but he enjoyed being generous and hated to spoil a gift of praise by "stingy" qualifications. he might have said that the great point was not to let any unique virtue in a man evaporate or be wasted. at any rate, he said, that should be seen to in a university. he was quite unconventional in recognizing originality, and preferred all the risks involved in hailing potentialities that might never come to fruition, to a policy of playing safe in his estimates. yet on the whole he very seldom "fooled himself." few men who have possessed a comparable gift of discovering special virtues in different individuals have combined with it so just a sense of what could not be expected of those same individuals in the way of other virtues. but there would be danger of misunderstanding if this trait were mentioned without an important qualification. the reader will do well, in interpreting any judgment of james's to consider whether the book, or theory, or man under consideration was new and unrecognized, or was already established and secure of a place in men's esteem. in the former case, especially if there was anything in the situation to appeal to james's natural "inclination to succor the under-dog," his praise was likely to be extravagantly expressed and his reservations were apt to be withheld. in the latter case he was no less certain to give free rein to his critical discernment. men who knew him as a teacher are likely to remember how he encouraged them in their efforts on the one hand, and on the other how stimulating to them and enlarging to their mental horizons were his free and often destructive comments upon famous books and illustrious men. as a teacher at harvard for thirty-five years, he influenced the lives and thoughts of more than a generation of students who sat in his classes. to many of them he was an adviser as well as a teacher, and to some he was a lifelong friend. such was the character of his books and public discourses that people of all sorts and conditions from outside the university came to him or wrote to him for encouragement and counsel. the burden of his message to all was the bracing text which he himself loved and lived by--"son of man, stand upon thy feet and i will speak unto thee." he never tried to win disciples, to compel allegiance to his own doctrines, or to found a school. but he taught countless young men to love philosophy, and helped many a troubled soul besides to face the problems of the universe in an independent and gallant spirit. he helped them by example as well as by precept, for it was plain to everyone who knew him or read him that his genius was ardently adventurous and humane. ii - _chemistry and comparative anatomy in the lawrence scientific school_ in the autumn of james turned to scientific work, and began what was to become a lifelong connection with cambridge and harvard university by registering for the study of chemistry in the lawrence scientific school. among the students who were in the school in his time were several who were to be his friends and colleagues in later years--nathaniel s. shaler, later professor of geology and dean of the scientific school, alexander agassiz, engineer, captain of industry, eminent biologist, and organizer of the museum that his father had founded, the entomologist samuel h. scudder, f. w. putnam, who afterwards became curator of the peabody museum of ethnology and anthropology, and alpheus hyatt, the palæontologist, who was curator of the museum of comparative zoölogy at harvard for many years before his death in . the chemical laboratory of the school had just been placed under the charge of charles w. eliot,--in to become president eliot,--who writes: "i first came in contact with william james in the academic year - . as i was young and inexperienced, it was fortunate for me that there were but fifteen students of chemistry in the scientific school that year, and that i was therefore able to devote a good deal of attention to the laboratory work of each student. the instruction was given chiefly in the laboratory and was therefore individual. james was a very interesting and agreeable pupil, but was not wholly devoted to the study of chemistry. during the two years in which he was registered as a student in chemistry, his work was much interfered with by ill-health, or rather by something which i imagined to be a delicacy of nervous constitution. his excursions into other sciences and realms of thought were not infrequent; his mind was excursive, and he liked experimenting, particularly novel experimenting.... i received a distinct impression that he possessed unusual mental powers, remarkable spirituality, and great personal charm.[ ] this impression became later useful to harvard university." henry james published many of the few still existing letters which william wrote during this time in his "notes of a son and brother." three of them are among the first six selected for inclusion here. the fun and extravagance of these early letters is so full of an intimate raillery that they should be read in their context in that book, where the whole family has been made to live again. the first of the letters that follow was written a few weeks after the opening of the autumn term in which james began his course in chemistry. the son of professor benjamin peirce (the mathematician) of whom it makes mention was the brilliant but erratic charles s. peirce, to whom other references appear in later letters, and whose name james subsequently associated with his pragmatism. "harry," "wilky" and "bobby" will be recognized as william's younger brothers. wilky was at the sanborn school in concord, thirteen miles away. bobby was in newport, under the parental roof at kay street. the emerson referred to was r. w. emerson's son, edward w. emerson, and "tom" ward, the thomas w. ward of a lifelong friendship and of several later letters and allusions. _to his family._ cambridge, _sunday afternoon, sept. , _. dearest family,--this morning, as i was busy over the tenth page of a letter to wilky, in he popped and made my labor of no account. i had intended to go and see him yesterday, but concluded to delay as i had plenty of work to do and did not wish to take the relish off the visits by making them frequent when i was not home-sick. moreover, emerson and tom ward were going on, and i thought he would have too much of a good thing. but he walked over this morning with, or rather without them, for he went astray and arrived very hot and dusty. i gave him a bath and took him to dinner and he is now gone to see [andrew?] robeson and emerson. his plump corpusculus looks as always. he says it is pretty lonely at concord and he misses bob's lively and sportive wiles very much in the long and lone and dreary evenings, tho' he consoles himself by thinking he will have a great time at study. i have at last got to feel quite settled and homelike. i write in my new parlor whither i moved yesterday. you have no idea what an improvement it is on the old affair, worth double the price, and the little bedroom under the roof is perfectly delicious, with a charming outlook upon little backyards with trees and pretty old brick walls. the sun is upon _this_ room from earliest dawn till late in the afternoon--a capital thing in winter. i like mrs. upham's very much. dark, aristocratic dining-room, with royal cheer--"fish, roast-beef, veal-cutlets or pigeons?" says the splendid, tall, noble-looking, white-armed, black-eyed juno of a handmaid as you sit down. and for dessert, a choice of three, _three_ of the most succulent, unctuous (no, not unctuous, unless you imagine a celestial unction without the oil) pie-ey confections, always two plates full--my eye! she has an admirable chemical, not mechanical, combination of jam and cake and cream, which i recommend to mother if she is ever at a loss; though she has no well-stored pantry like that of good old kay street; or if she has, it exists not for miserable me. i get up at six, breakfast and study till nine, when i go to school till one, when dinner, a short loaf and work again till five, then gymnasium or walk till tea, and after that, visit, work, literature, correspondence, etc., etc., till ten, when i "divest myself of my wardrobe" and lay my weary head upon my downy pillow and dreamily think of dear old home and father and mother and brothers and sister and aunt and cousins and all that the good old newport sun shines upon, until consciousness is lost. my time last week was fully occupied, and i suspect will be so all winter--i hope so. this chemical analysis is so bewildering at first that i am entirely "muddled and beat"[ ] and have to employ most all my time reading up. agassiz gives now a course of lectures in boston, to which i have been. he is evidently a great favorite with his audience and feels so himself. but he is an admirable, earnest lecturer, clear as day, and his accent is most fascinating. i should like to study under him. prof. wyman's lectures on [the] comp[arative] anatomy of vert[ebrates] promise to be very good; prosy perhaps a little and monotonous, but plain and packed full and well arranged (_nourris_). eliot i have not seen much of; i don't believe he is a _very_ accomplished chemist, but can't tell yet. young [charles] atkinson, nephew of miss staigg's friend, is a very nice boy. i walked over to brookline yesterday afternoon with him to see his aunt, who received me very cordially. there is something extremely good about her. the rest of this year's class is nothing wonderful. in last year's there is a son of prof. peirce, whom i suspect to be a very "smart" fellow with a great deal of character, pretty independent and violent though. [storrow] higginson i like very well. [john] ropes is always out, so i have not seen him again. we are only about twelve in the laboratory, so that we have a very cosy time. i expect to have a winter of "crowded" life. i can be as independent as i please, and want to live regardless of the good or bad opinion of everyone. i shall have a splendid chance to try, i know, and i know too that the "native hue of resolution" has never been of very great shade in me hitherto. but i am sure that that feeling is a right one, and i mean to live according to it if i can. if i do, i think i shall turn out all right. i stopped this letter before tea, when wilk the rosy-gilled and higginson came in. i now resume it after tea by the light of a taper and that of the moon. this room is without gas and i must get some of the jovial harry's abhorred kerosene tomorrow. wilk read harry's letter and amused me "metch" by his naïve interpretation of mother's most rational request "that i should keep a memorandum of all monies i receive from father." he thought it was that she might know exactly what sums the prodigal philosopher really gave out, and that mistrust of his generosity caused it. the phrase has a little sound that way, as harry framed it, i confess.... * * * * * "kitty" temple, next addressed, was the eldest of four temple cousins, who were daughters of henry james, senior's, favorite sister. having lost both their parents the temple children had come to live in newport under the care of their paternal aunt, mrs. edmund tweedie. the fast friendship between the elder jameses and the tweedies, the relationship between the two groups of children and the parity of their ages resulted in the jameses, temples and tweedies all living almost as one family. "minny," kitty's younger sister, was about seventeen years old and was the enchanting and most adored of all the charming and freely circulating young relatives with whom william had more or less grown up. henry james drew two of his most appealing heroines from her image,--minny theale in the "wings of the dove" and isabel archer in "the portrait of a lady,"--and she is still more authentically revealed by references that recur in "notes of a son and brother" and in the bundle of her own letters with which that volume beautifully closes. in a long-after year william, who was fondly devoted to her, received an early letter of hers containing an affectionate reference to himself and wrote to the friend who had sent it: "i am deeply thankful to you for sending me this letter, which revives all sorts of poignant memories and makes her live again in all her lightness and freedom. few spirits have been more free than hers. i find myself wishing so that she could know me as i am now. as for knowing her as _she_ is now??!! i find that she means as much in the way of human character for me now as she ever did, being unique and with no analogue in all my subsequent experience of people. thank you once more for what you have done." at the time of the next letter, "minny" had just cut her hair short, and a photograph of her new aspect was the occasion of the badinage about her madness. "dr. prince" was an alienist to whom another james cousin had lately been married. _to miss katharine temple (mrs. richard emmet)._ cambridge, [_sept. _]. my dear kitty,--imagine if you can with what palpitations i tore open the rude outer envelope of your precious, long-looked-for missive. i read it by the glimmer of the solitary lamp which at eventide lights up the gloom of the dark and humid den called post office. and as i read on unconscious of the emotion i was betraying, a vast crowd collected. profs. agassiz and wyman ran with their note-books and proceeded to take observations of the greatest scientific import. i with difficulty reached my lodgings. when thereout fell the photograph. wheeeew! oohoo! aha! la-la! [_marks representing musical flourish_] boisteroso triumphissimmo, chassez to the right, cross over, forward two, hornpipe and turn summerset! up came the fire engines; but i proudly waved them aside and plunged bareheaded into the chill and gloomy bowels of the night, to recover by violent exercise the use of my reasoning faculties, which had almost been annihilated by the shock of happiness. as i stalked along, an understanding of the words in your letter grew upon me, and then i felt, my sober senses returning, that i ought not to be so elate. for you certainly bring me bad news enough. elly's arm broken and minny gone mad should make me rather drop a tear than laugh. but leaving poor elly's case for the present, let's speak of minny and her fearful catastrophe. do you know, kitty,--now that it 's all over, i don't see why i should not tell you,--i have often had flashes of horrid doubts about that girl. occasionally i have caught a glance from her furtive eye, a glance so wild, so weird, so strange, that it has frozen the innermost marrow in my bones; and again the most sickening feeling has come over me as i have noticed fleeting shades of expression on her face, so short, but ah! so piercingly pregnant of the mysteries of mania--_unhuman_, ghoul-like, fiendish-cunning! ah me! ah me! now that my worst suspicions have proved true, i feel sad indeed. the well-known, how-often fondly-contemplated features tell the whole story in the photograph taken, as you say, a few days before the crisis. madness is plainly lurking in that lurid eye, stamps indelibly the arch of the nostril and the curve of the lip, and in ambush along the soft curve of the cheek it lies ready to burst forth in consuming fire. but oh! still is it not pity to think that that fair frame, whilom the chosen fane of intellect and heart, clear and white as noonday's beams, should now be a vast desert through whose lurid and murky glooms glare but the fitful forked lightnings of fuliginous insanity!--well, kitty, after all, it is but an organic lesion of the gray cortical substance which forms the _pia mater_ of the brain, which is very consoling to us all. was she all alone when she did it? could no one wrest the shears from her vandal hand? i declare i fear to return home,--but of course dr. prince has her by this time. i shall weep as soon as i have finished this letter. but now, to speak seriously, i am really shocked and grieved at hearing of poor little elly's accident and of her suffering. i suppose she bears it though like one of the amazons of old. i suppose the proper thing for me to do would be to tell her how naughty and careless she was to go and risk her bones in that unprincipled way, and how it will be a good lesson to her for the future about climbing into swings, etc., etc., _ad libitum_; but i will leave that to you, as her elder sister (i have no doubt you've dosed her already), and convey to her only the expression of my warmest condolence and sympathy. i hope to see her getting on finely when i come home, which will be shortly. after all it will soon be over, and then her arm will be better than ever, twice as strong, and who of us are exempt from pain? take me, for example: you might weep tears of blood to see me day after day forced to hold ignited crucibles in my naked hands till the eyes of my neighbors water and their throats choke with the dense fumes of the burning leather. yet i ask for no commiseration. nevertheless i bestow it upon poor elly, to whom give my best love and say i look forward to seeing her soon. and henrietta the ablebodied and strongminded--your report of her constancy touched me more than anything has for a long while. tell her to stick it out for a few days longer and she will be richly rewarded by an apple and a chestnut _from massachusetts_. as for yourself and sister in the affair of the wings, 'tis but what i expected,--i am too old now to expect much from human nature,--yet after such length of striving to please, so many months of incessant devotion, one _must_ feel a slight twinge. if your sister can still understand, let her know that i thank her for her photograph. too bad, too bad! with her long locks she would still be winning, outwardly, spite of the howling fiends within; but they gone, like samson, she has nothing left.--but now, my dear kitty, i must put an end to my scribbling. this writing in the middle of the week is an unheard-of license, for i must work, work, work. relentless chemistry claims its hapless victim. excuse all faults of grammar, punctuation, spelling and sense on the score of telegraphic haste. love to all and to yourself. please "remember me" to your aunt charlotte, and believe [me] yours affectionately, w. j. _to his family._ cambridge, sunday afternoon [_early nov., _]. dearly beloved family,--wilky and i have just returned from dinner, and having completed a concert for the benefit of the inmates of pasco hall and the hall next door, turn ourselves, i to writing a word home, he to digesting in a "lobbing" position on the sofa. wilky wrote you a complete account of our transactions in boston yesterday much better than i could have done. i suppose you will ratify our action as it seemed the only one possible to us. the radiance of harry's visit[ ] has not faded yet, and i come upon gleams of it three or four times a day in my farings to and fro; but it has never a bit diminished the lustre of far-off shining newport all silver and blue and this heavenly group below[ ] (all being more or less failures, especially the two outside ones),--the more so as the above-mentioned harry could in no wise satisfy my cravings to know of the family and friends, as he did not seem to have been on speaking terms with any of them for some time past and could tell me nothing of what they did, said, or thought about any given subject. never did i see a so much uninterested creature in the affairs of those about him. he is a good soul though in his way, too--much more so than the light fantastic wilky, who has been doing nothing but disaster since he has been here, breaking down my good resolutions about eating, keeping me from any intellectual exercise, ruining my best hat wearing it while dressing, while in his night-gown, wishing to wash his face with it on, insisting on sleeping in my bed, inflicting on me thereby the pains of crucifixion, and hardly to be prevented from taking the said hat to bed with him. the odious creature occupied my comfortable armchair all the morning in the position represented in the fine plate which accompanies this letter. but one more night though and he shall be gone and no thorn shall be in the side of the serene and hallowed felicity of expectation in which i shall revel until the time comes for going home, home, home to the hearts of my infancy and budding youth. it is not homesickness i have, if by that term be meant a sickness of heart and loathing of my present surroundings, but a sentiment far transcending this, that makes my hair curl for joy whenever i think of home, by which home comes to me as hope, not as regret, and which puts roses long faded thence in my old mother's cheeks, mildness in my father's voice, flowing graces into my aunt kate's movements, babbling confidingness into harry's talk, a straight parting into robby's hair and a heavenly tone into the lovely babe's temper, the elastic graces of a kitten into moses's[ ] rusty and rheumatic joints. aha! aha! the time will come--thanksgiving in less than two weeks and then, oh, then!--probably a cold reception, half repellent, no fatted calf, no fresh-baked loaf of spicy bread,--but i dare not think of that side of the picture. i will ever hope and trust and my faith shall be justified. as wilky has submitted to you a résumé of his future history for the next few years, so will i, hoping it will meet your approval. thus: one year study chemistry, then spend one term at home, then one year with wyman, then a medical education, then five or six years with agassiz, then probably death, death, death with inflation and plethora of knowledge. this you had better seriously consider. this is a glorious day and i think i must close and take a walk. so farewell, farewell until a quarter to nine sunday evening soon! your bold, your beautiful, your blossom!! * * * * * _dedicated to miss kitty, oh! i beg pardon, to miss temple._ the following curious facts were discovered by the chemist james in some of his recent investigations: at pensacola, fla., there is a navy yard, and consequently many officers of the u.s.a. in pensacola there is a larger proportional number of old maids than in any city of the union. the ladies of pensacola, instead of seeking an eligible partner in the middle ranks of society, spend their lives in a vain attempt to entrap the officers who flirt with them and then leave pensacola. the moral lesson is evident. * * * * * the "kitty" to whom james addressed the next letter was another cousin, the daughter of one of his father's elder brothers. her husband was the alienist to whom the reader will remember that the mad minny was consigned in a previous letter. it should also be explained that james's two youngest brothers had now entered the union army, and that one of them, wilky, adjutant of the first colored regiment, had been wounded in the charge on fort wagner in which colonel robert gould shaw was killed. _to mrs. katharine james (mrs. william h.) prince._ cambridge, _sept. , _. my dear cousin kitty,--i was very agreeably surprised at getting your letter a few days after arriving here, and am heartily glad to find that you still remember me and think sometimes of the visit you paid us that happy summer. i often think of you, and at such times feel very much like renewing our delightful converse. several times i have been on the uttermost _brink_ of writing to you, but somehow or other i have always quailed at plunging over. nature makes us so awkward. i again felt several times like going to pay you a short visit,--last winter and this spring, i remember,--but hesitated, never having been invited, and being entirely ignorant how you would receive me, whether you would chain me up in your asylum and scourge me, or what--tho' i believe those good old days are over. when you were at our house, i recollect i was in the first flush of my chemical enthusiasm. a year and a half of hard work at it here has somewhat dulled my ardor; and after half a year's vegetation at home, i am back here again, studying this time comparative anatomy. i am obliged before the th of january to make finally and irrevocably "the choice of a profession." i suppose your sex, which has, or should have, its bread brought to it, instead of having to go in search of it, has no idea of the awful responsibility of such a choice. i have four alternatives: natural history, medicine, printing, beggary. much may be said in favor of each. i have named them in the ascending order of their pecuniary invitingness. after all, the great problem of life seems to be how to keep body and soul together, and i _have_ to consider lucre. to study natural science, i know i should like, but the prospect of supporting a family on $ a year is not one of those rosy dreams of the future with which the young are said to be haunted. medicine would pay, and i should still be dealing with subjects which interest me--but how much drudgery and of what an unpleasant kind is there! of all departments of medicine, that to which dr. prince devotes himself is, i should think, the most interesting. and i should like to see him and his patients at northampton very much before coming to a decision. the worst of this matter is that everyone must more or less act with insufficient knowledge--"go it blind," as they say. few can afford the time to try what suits them. however, a few months will show. i shall be most happy some day to avail myself of your very cordial invitation. i have heard so much of the beauty of northampton that i want very much to see the place too. i heard from home day before yesterday that "wilky was improving daily." i hope he is, poor fellow. his wound is a very large and bad one and he will be confined to his bed a long while. he bears it like a man. he is the best abolitionist you ever saw, and makes a common one, as we are, feel very small and shabby. poor little bob is before charleston, too. we have not heard from him in a very long while. he made an excellent officer in camp here, every one said, and was promoted. but i must stop. i hope, now that the ice is broken, you will soon feel like writing again. and, if you please, eschew all formality in addressing me by dropping the title of our relationship before my name. as for you, the case is different. my senior, a grave matron, quasi-mother of i know not how many scores, not of children, but of live lunatics, which is far more exceptional and awe-inspiring, i tremble to think i have shown too much levity and familiarity already. are you very different from what you were two years ago? as no word has passed between us since then, i suppose i should have begun by congratulating you first on your engagement, which is i believe the fashionable thing, then on your marriage, tho' i don't rightly know whether that is fashionable or not. at any rate i now end. yours most sincerely, wm. james. _to his mother._ cambridge, [_circa sept., _]. my dearest mother,--...to answer the weighty questions which you propound: i am glad to leave newport because i am tired of the place itself, and because of the reason which you have very well expressed in your letter, the necessity of the whole family being near the arena of the future activity of us young men. i recommend cambridge on account of its own pleasantness (though i don't wish to be invidious towards brookline, longwood, and other places) and because of its economy if i or harry continue to study here much longer.... i feel very much the importance of making soon a final choice of my business in life. i stand now at the place where the road forks. one branch leads to material comfort, the flesh-pots; but it seems a kind of selling of one's soul. the other to mental dignity and independence; combined, however, with physical penury. if i myself were the only one concerned i should not hesitate an instant in my choice. but it seems hard on mrs. w. j., "that not impossible she," to ask her to share an empty purse and a cold hearth. on one side is _science_, upon the other _business_ (the honorable, honored and productive business of printing seems most attractive), with _medicine_, which partakes of [the] advantages of both, between them, but which has drawbacks of its own. i confess i hesitate. i fancy there is a fond maternal cowardice which would make you and every other mother contemplate with complacency the worldly fatness of a son, even if obtained by some sacrifice of his "higher nature." but i fear there might be some anguish in looking back from the pinnacle of prosperity (_necessarily_ reached, if not by eating dirt, at least by renouncing some divine ambrosia) over the life you might have led in the pure pursuit of truth. it seems as if one _could_ not afford to give that up for any bribe, however great. still, i am undecided. the medical term opens tomorrow and between this and the end of the term here, i shall have an opportunity of seeing a little into medical business. i shall confer with wyman about the prospects of a naturalist and finally decide. i want you to become familiar with the notion that i _may_ stick to science, however, and drain away at your property for a few years more. if i can get into agassiz's museum i think it not improbable i may receive a salary of $ to $ in a couple of years. i know some stupider than i who have done so. you see in that case how desirable it would be to have a home in cambridge. anyhow, i am convinced that somewhere in this neighborhood is the place for us to rest. these matters have been a good deal on my mind lately, and i am very glad to get this chance of pouring them into yours. as for the other boys, i don't know. and that idle and useless young female, alice, too, whom we shall have to feed and clothe!... cambridge is all right for business in boston. living in boston or brookline, etc., would be as expensive as newport if harry or i stayed here, for we could not easily go home every day. give my warmest love to aunt kate, father, who i hope will not tumble again, and all of them over the way. recess in three weeks; till then, my dearest and best of old mothers, good-bye! your loving son, w. j. [p.s.] give my best love to kitty and give _cette petite_ humbug of a minny a hint about writing to me. i hope you liked your shawl. * * * * * the physical and nervous frailty, which president eliot had noticed in james during the first winter at the scientific school, and which later manifested itself so seriously as to interfere with his studies, kept him from enlisting in the federal armies during the civil war. the case was too clear to occasion discussion in his letters. he continued as a student at the school and, at about the time the foregoing letter was written, transferred himself from the chemical department to the department of comparative anatomy and physiology, in which professor jeffries wyman was teaching. it was in these two subjects that he himself was to begin teaching ten years later. the next year ( - ), when he entered the medical school, professor wyman was again his instructor. jeffries wyman ( - ) was a less widely effective man than agassiz, but his influence counted more in james's student years than did that of any other teacher. "all the young men who worked under him," says president eliot, "took him as the type of scientific zeal, disinterestedness and candor." n. s. shaler, an admirable judge of men, has recorded his opinion of wyman in his autobiography, saying: "in some ways he was the most perfect naturalist i have ever known ... within the limits of his powers he had the best-balanced mind it has been my good fortune to come into contact with.... though he published but little, his store of knowledge of the whole field of natural history was surprisingly great, and, as i came to find, it greatly exceeded that of my master agassiz in its range and accuracy."[ ] james, who was wyman's pupil during two critical years, held him in particular reverence and affection, and said of him: "those who year by year received part or all of their first year's course of medical instruction from him always speak with a sort of worship of their preceptor. his extraordinary effect on all who knew him is to be accounted for by the one word, character. never was a man so absolutely without detractors. the quality which every one first thinks of in him is his extraordinary modesty, of which his unfailing geniality and serviceableness, his readiness to confer with and listen to younger men--how often did his unmagisterial manner lead them unawares into taking dogmatic liberties, which soon resulted in ignominious collapse before his quiet wisdom!--were kindred manifestations. next were his integrity, and his complete and simple devotion to objective truth. these qualities were what gave him such incomparable fairness of judgment in both scientific and worldly matters, and made his opinions so weighty even when they were unaccompanied by reasons.... an accomplished draughtsman, his love and understanding of art were great.... he had if anything too little of the _ego_ in his composition, and all his faults were excesses of virtue. a little more restlessness of ambition, and a little more willingness to use other people for his purposes, would easily have made him more abundantly productive, and would have greatly increased the sphere of his effectiveness and fame. but his example on us younger men, who had the never-to-be-forgotten advantage of working by his side, would then have been, if not less potent, at least different from what we now remember it; and we prefer to think of him forever as the paragon that he was of goodness, disinterestedness, and single-minded love of the truth."[ ] the stream of james's correspondence still flowed entirely for his family at this time, and his letters were often facetious accounts of his way of life and occupations. _to his sister_ (age ). cambridge, _sept. , _. chÃ�rie charmante de bal,--notwithstanding the abuse we poured on each other before parting and the (on _my_ part) feigned expressions of joy at not meeting you again for so many months, it was with the liveliest regret that i left newport before your return. but i was obliged in order to get a room here--drove, literally drove to it. that you should not have written to me for so long grieves me more than words can tell--you who have nothing to do besides. it shows you to have little affection and _that_ of a poor quality. i have, however, heard from _others_ who tell me that wilky is doing well, "improving daily," which i am very glad indeed to hear. i am glad you had such a pleasant summer. i am nicely established in a cosy little room, with a large recess with a window in it, containing bed and washstand, separated from the main apartment by a rich green silken curtain and a large gilt cornice. this gives the whole establishment a splendid look. i found when i got here that miss upham had changed her price to $ . . great efforts were made by two of us to raise a club, but little enthusiasm was shown by anyone else and it fell through. i then, with that fine economical instinct which distinguishes me, resolved to take a tea and breakfast of bread and milk in my room and only pay miss upham for dinners. miss u. is at swampscott. so i asked to see [her sister] mrs. wood, to learn the cost of seven dinners. she, with true motherly instinct, said that i should only make a slop in my room, and that she would rather let me keep on for $ . , seeing it was me. i said she must first consult miss upham. she returned from swampscott saying that miss u. had sworn _she_ would rather pay _me_ a dollar a week than have me go away. ablaze with economic passion, i cried "done!" trying to make it appear as if she had made a formal offer to that effect. but she would not admit it, and after much recrimination we were separated, it being agreed that i should come for $ . , _but tell no-one_. (mind _you_ don't either.) i now lay my hand on my heart, and confidently look towards my mother for that glance of approbation which she _must_ bestow. have i not redeemed any weaknesses of the past? though part of my conception failed, yet it was boldly planned and would have been a noble stroke. i have been pretty busy this week. i have a filial feeling towards wyman already. i work in a vast museum, at a table all alone, surrounded by skeletons of mastodons, crocodiles, and the like, with the walls hung about with monsters and horrors enough to freeze the blood. but i have no fear, as most of them are tightly bottled up. occasionally solemn men and women come in to see the museum, and sometimes timid little girls (reminding me of thee, beloved, only they are less fashionably dressed) who whisper: "is folks allowed here?" it pains me to remark, however, that not all the little girls are of this pleasing type, _most_ being boldfaced jigs. how does wilky get on? is mayberry gone? how is he nursed? who holds his foot for the doctor? tell me all about him. everyone here asks about him, and all without exception seem enthusiastic about the darkeys. how has aunt kate's knee been since her return? sorry indeed was i to leave without seeing her. give her my best love. is kitty temple as angelic as ever? give my best love to her and minny and the little ones. (my little friend elly, how often i think of her!) have your lessons with bradford (the brandy-witness) begun? you may well blush. tell harry mr. [francis j.] child is here, just as usual; mrs. c. at swampscott. [c. c.] salter back, but morose. one or two new students, and prof. [w. w.] goodwin, who is a very agreeable man. among other students, a son of ed. everett [william everett], very intelligent and a capital scholar, studying law. he took honors at cambridge, england. tucks, _mère & fille_ away, _fils_ here.... i send a photograph of gen. sickles for yours and wilky's amusement. it is a part of a great anthropomorphological collection[ ] which i am going to make. so take care of it, as well as of all the photographs you will find in the table drawer in my room. but isn't he a bully boy? harry's handwriting much better. desecrate my room as little as possible. good-bye, much love to wilky and all. if he wants nursing send for me without hesitation. love to the tweedies. haven't you heard yet from bobby? your aff. bro., wm. [illustration: pencil sketch from a pocket note-book.] iii - _the harvard medical school--with louis agassiz to the amazon_ in the family moved from newport to boston, where henry james, senior, took a house on ashburton place (no. ) for two years, and there was no more occasion for family letters. although james began the regular course at the medical school, he had arrived at no clear professional purpose and no selection of any particular field of study. the school afforded him some measure of preparation for natural science as well as for practice. philosophy had undoubtedly begun to beckon him, although its appealing gesture lacked authority and did not enlist him in any regular course of philosophic studies. in sixty-five he wrote to his brother henry from brazil saying, "when i get home, i'm going to study philosophy all my days." but in many respects his character and tastes matured slowly. the instruction offered by professor francis bowen in harvard college does not appear to have excited his interest at all. it cannot have failed to excite the irony of his father,--as did everything of the sort that was academic and orthodox,--and james would have been aware of this and might have been influenced. on the other hand, it was obvious that, in the case of his father, who had no connection with church, college or school, the consideration and expression of theories and beliefs had always been a totally unremunerative occupation; and james had to consider how to earn a living. his prospective share of the property that had sufficed for his parents was clearly not going to be enough to support him in independent leisure. in the way of bread and butter, biology and medicine offered more than metaphysical speculation. last and most important, the tide of contemporary inquiry, driven forward by the storm of the darwinian controversy, was setting strongly toward a fresh examination of nature. philosophy must embrace the new reality. everything that was stimulating in contemporary thought urged men to the scrutiny of the phenomenal world. "natural history," which has since diversified and amplified itself beyond the use of that appellation, was almost romantically "having its day." grau, teurer freund, ist alle theorie, und grün des lebens goldener baum.[ ] thus goethe, and louis agassiz, whose lectures james had already followed, and with the abundance of whose inspiring activity no other scientific energizing could then compare, was fond of quoting the lines. under such circumstances it was not strange that james should interrupt his medical studies in order to join the expedition which agassiz was preparing to lead to the amazon. no richer or more instructive experience could well have offered itself to him at twenty-three than this journey to brazil seemed to promise. he was no sooner on the amazon, however, than it became clear to him that he was not intended to be a field-naturalist; and he pictured the stages of this self-discovery in long, diary-like letters which he sent home to his family. on arriving at rio he was forced to consider the question of his going on or coming home, by an illness that kept him quarantined for several uncomfortable weeks, and left him depressed and unable to use his eyes during several weeks more. although he decided in favor of continuing with agassiz, he revealed more and more clearly in his letters that he was seeing brazil with the eye of an adventurer and lover of landscape rather than of a geologist or collector, and that the months spent in fishing and pickling specimens were to count most for him by teaching him what his vocation was _not_. he found that he was essentially indifferent to the classification of birds, beasts, and fishes, and that he was not made to deal with the riddle of the universe from the only angle of approach that was possible in agassiz's company. it would be a mistake, however, to let it appear that nine months of collecting with louis agassiz were nine months wasted. there are some men whom it is an education to work under, even though the affair in hand be foreign to one's ultimate concern. agassiz was such an one, "recognized by all as one of those naturalists in the unlimited sense, one of those folio-copies of mankind, like linnæus and cuvier." thirty years after, james could still say of him: "since benjamin franklin we had never had among us a person of more popularly impressive type.... he was so commanding a presence, so curious and enquiring, so responsive and expansive, and so generous and reckless of himself and his own, that everyone said immediately, here is no musty _savant_, but a man, a great man, a man on the heroic scale, not to serve whom is avarice and sin."[ ]--"to see facts and not to argue or _raisonniren_ was what life meant for agassiz," and james, who was already incorrigibly interested in the causes, values and purposes of things, and whose education had been most unsystematic, profited by his corrective influence. "james," said agassiz at this time, "some people perhaps consider you a bright young man; but when you are fifty years old, if they ever speak of you then, what they will say will be this: that james--oh, yes, i know him; he used to be a very bright young man!" such "cold-water therapeutics" were gratefully accepted from one who was not only a teacher but a kind friend; and james remembered them, and recorded later that "the hours he spent with agassiz so taught him the difference between all possible abstractionists and all livers in the light of the world's concrete fullness, that he was never able to forget it." considering with what passionate fidelity his own abstractions always face the concrete, this is perhaps more of an acknowledgment than at first sight appears. * * * * * the thayer expedition set sail from new york april , . the next letter was written from ship-board, still in new york harbor. the "professor" will be recognized as louis agassiz. _to his mother._ [_mar. ?_], . ...we have been detained hours on this steamer in port on account of different accidents.... a dense fog is raging which will prevent our going outside as long as it lasts. sapristi! c'est embêtant.... the professor has just been expatiating over the map of south america and making projects as if he had sherman's army at his disposal instead of the ten novices he really has. he may get some students at rio to accompany the different parties, which will let them be more numerous. i'm sure i hope he will, on account of the language. if each of us has a portuguese companion, he can do things twice as easily. the prof. now sits opposite me with his face all aglow, holding forth to the captain's wife about the imperfect education of the american people. he has talked uninterruptedly for a quarter of an hour at least. i know not how she reacts; i presume she feels somewhat flattered by the attention, however. this morning he made a characteristic speech to mr. billings, mr. watson's friend. mr. b. had offered to lend him some books. agassiz: "may i enter your state-room and take them when i shall want them, sir?" billings, extending his arm said genially, "sir, all that i have is yours!" to which, agassiz, far from being overcome, replied, shaking a monitory finger at the foolishly generous wight, "look out, sir, dat i take not your skin!" that expresses very well the man. offering your services to agassiz is as absurd as it would be for a south carolinian to invite general sherman's soldiers to partake of some refreshment when they called at his house.... at this moment prof. passes behind me and says, "now today i am going to show you a little what i will have _you_ do." hurray! i have not been able to get a word out of the old animal yet about my fate. i'm only sorry i can't tell _you_.... _to his parents._ rio, brazil, _apr. , _. my dearest parents,--every one is writing home to catch the steamer which leaves rio on monday. i do likewise, although, so far, i have very little to say to you. you cannot conceive how pleasant it is to feel that tomorrow we shall lie in smooth water at rio and the horrors of this voyage will be over. o the vile sea! the damned deep! no one has a right to write about the "nature of evil," or to have any opinion about evil, who has not been at sea. the awful slough of despond into which you are there plunged furnishes too profound an experience not to be a fruitful one. i cannot yet say what the fruit is in my case, but i am sure some day of an accession of wisdom from it. my sickness did not take an actively nauseous form after the first night and second morning; but for twelve mortal days i was, body and soul, in a more indescribably hopeless, homeless and friendless state than i ever want to be in again. we had a head wind and tolerably rough sea all that time. the trade winds, which i thought were gentle zephyrs, are hideous moist gales that whiten all the waves with foam.... _sunday evening._ yesterday morning at ten o'clock we came to anchor in this harbor, sailing right up without a pilot. no words of mine, or of any man short of william the divine, can give any idea of the magnificence of this harbor and its approaches. the boldest, grandest mountains, far and near. the palms and other trees of such vivid green as i never saw anywhere else. the town "realizes" my idea of an african town in its architecture and effect. almost everyone is a negro or a negress, which words i perceive we don't know the meaning of with us; a great many of them are native africans and tattooed. the men have white linen drawers and short shirts of the same kind over them; the women wear huge turbans, and have a peculiar rolling gait that i have never seen any approach to elsewhere. their attitudes as they sleep and lie about the streets are picturesque to the last degree. yesterday was, i think, the day of my life on which i had the most outward enjoyment. nine of us took a boat at about noon and went on shore. the strange sights, the pleasure of walking on terra firma, the delicious smell of land, compared with the hell of the last three weeks, were perfectly intoxicating. our portuguese went beautifully,--every visage relaxed at the sight of us and grinned from ear to ear. the amount of fraternal love that was expressed by bowing and gesture was tremendous. we had the best dinner i ever eat. guess how much it cost. , reis--literal fact. paid for by the rich man of the party. the brazilians are of a pale indian color, without a particle of red and with a very aged expression. they are very polite and obliging. _all_ wear black beaver hats and glossy black frock coats, which makes them look like _des épiciers endimanchés_. we all returned in good order to the ship at p.m., and i lay awake most of the night on deck listening to the soft notes of the vampire outside of the awning. (not knowing what it was, we'll call it the vampire.) this morning tom ward and i took another cruise on shore, which was equally new and strange. the weather is like newport. i have not seen the thermometer.... agassiz just in, delighted with the emperor's simplicity and the precision of his information; but apparently they did not touch upon our material prospects. he goes to see the emperor again tomorrow. agassiz is one of the most fascinating men personally that i ever saw. i could listen to him talk by the hour. he is so childlike. bishop potter, who is sitting opposite me writing, asks me to give his best regards to father. i am in such a state of abdominal tumefaction from having eaten bananas all day that i can hardly sit down to write. the bananas here are no whit better than at home, but _so_ cheap and _so_ filling at the price. my fellow "savans" are a very uninteresting crew. except tom ward i don't care if i never see one of 'em again. i like dr. cotting very much and mrs. agassiz too. i could babble on all night, but must stop somewhere. dear old father, mother, aunt kate, harry and alice! you little know what thoughts i have had of you since i have been gone. and i have felt more sympathy with bob and wilk than ever, from the fact of my isolated circumstances being more like theirs than the life i have led hitherto. please send them this letter. it is written as much for them as for anyone. i hope harry is rising like a phoenix from his ashes, under the new régime. bless him. i wish he or some person i could talk to were along. thank aunt kate once more. kiss alice to death. i think father is the _wisest_ of all men whom i know. give my love to the girls, especially the hoopers. tell harry to remember me to t. s. p[erry] and to holmes. adieu. your loving w. j. give my love to washburn. _to his father._ rio, _june , _. my dearest old father and my dearest old everybody at home,--i've got so much to say that i don't well know where to begin.--i sent a letter home, i think about a fortnight ago, telling you about my small-pox, etc., but as it went by a sailing vessel it is quite likely that this may reach you first. that was written from the _maison de santé_ where i was lying in the embrace of the loathsome goddess, and from whose hard straw bed, eternal chicken and rice, and extortionate prices i was released yesterday. the disease is over, and granting the necessity of having it, i have reason to think myself most lucky. my face will not be marked at all, although at present it presents the appearance of an immense ripe raspberry.... my sickness began four weeks ago today. you have no idea of the state of bliss into which i have been plunged in the last twenty-four hours by the first draughts of my newly gained freedom. to be dressed, to walk about, to see my friends and the public, to go into the dining-room and order my own dinner, to feel myself growing strong and smooth-skinned again, make a very considerable reaction. now that i know i am no longer an object of infection, i am perfectly cynical as to my appearance and go into the dining-room here when it is at its fullest, having been invited and authorized thereto by the good people of the hotel. i shall stay here for a week before returning to my quarters, although it is very expensive. but i need a soft bed instead of a hammock, and an arm-chair instead of a trunk to sit upon for some days yet.... in my last letter, i said something about coming home sooner than i expected. since then, i have thought the matter over seriously and conscientiously every day, and it has resulted in my determining so to do. my coming was a mistake, a mistake as regards what i anticipated, and a pretty expensive one both for you, dear old father, and for the dear generous old aunt kate. i find that by staying i shall learn next to nothing of natural history as i care about learning it. my whole work will be mechanical, finding objects and packing them, and working so hard at that and in traveling that no time at all will be found for studying their structure. the affair reduces itself thus to so many months spent in physical exercise. can i afford this? _first_, pecuniarily? no! instead of costing the $ or $ agassiz told me twelve months of it would cost, the expense will be nearer to triple that amount.... _secondly_, i can't afford the excursion mentally (though that is not exactly the adjective to use). i said to myself before i came away: "w. j., in this excursion you will learn to know yourself and your resources somewhat more intimately than you do now, and will come back with your character considerably evolved and established." this has come true sooner, and in a somewhat different way, than i expected. i am now certain that my forte is not to go on exploring expeditions. i have no inward spur goading me forwards on that line, as i have on several speculative lines. i am convinced now, for good, that i am cut out for a speculative rather than an active life,--i speak now only of my _quality_; as for my _quantity_, i became convinced some time ago and reconciled to the notion, that i was one of the very lightest of featherweights. now why not be reconciled with my deficiencies? by accepting them your actions cease to be at cross-purposes with your faculties, and you are so much nearer to peace of mind. on the steamer i began to read humboldt's travels. hardly had i opened the book when i seemed to become illuminated. "good heavens, when such men are provided to do the work of traveling, exploring, and observing for humanity, men who gravitate into their work as the air does into our lungs, what need, what _business_ have we outsiders to pant after them and toilsomely try to serve as their substitutes? there are men to do all the work which the world requires without the talent of any one being strained." men's activities are occupied in two ways: in grappling with external circumstances, and in striving to set things at one in their own topsy-turvy mind. you must know, dear father, what i mean, tho' i can't must[er] strength of brain enough now to express myself with precision. the grit and energy of some men are called forth by the resistance of the world. but as for myself, i seem to have no spirit whatever of that kind, no pride which makes me ashamed to say, "i can't do that." but i have a mental pride and shame which, although they seem more egotistical than the other kind, are still the only things that can stir my blood. these lines seem to satisfy me, although to many they would appear the height of indolence and contemptibleness: "ne forçons point notre talent,--nous ne ferions rien avec grâce,--jamais un lourdaud, quoi-qu'il fasse,--ne deviendra un galant." now all the time i should be gone on this expedition i should have a pining after books and study as i have had hitherto, and a feeling that this work was not in my path and was so much waste of life. i had misgivings to this effect before starting; but i was so filled with enthusiasm, and the romance of the thing seemed so great, that i stifled them. here on the ground the romance vanishes and the misgivings float up. i have determined to listen to them this time. i said that my act was an expensive mistake as regards what i anticipated, but i have got this other _edification_ from it. it has to be got some time, and perhaps only through some great mistake; for there are some familiar axioms which the individual only seems able to learn the meaning of through his individual experience. i don't know whether i have expressed myself so as to let you understand exactly how i feel. o my dear, affectionate, wise old father, how i longed to see you while i lay there with the small-pox,[ ] first revolving these things over! and how i longed to confer with you in a more confiding way than i often do at home! when i get there i can explain the gaps. as this letter does not sail till next saturday (this is sunday), i will stop for the present, as i feel quite tired out.... * * * * * it was not feasible for james to leave the expedition and return home immediately, and soon after the last letter was written, his returning health and eyesight brought with them a more cheerful mood. he determined to stay in brazil for a few months longer. _to his father._ river solimoes (amazon), _sept. - , _. my dearest daddy,--great was my joy the other evening, on arriving at manaos, to get a batch of letters from you.... i could do no more then than merely "accuse" the reception. now i can manage to sweat out a few lines of reply. it is noon and the heat is frightful. we have all come to the conclusion that, for _us_ at least, there will be no hell hereafter. we have all become regular alembics, and the heat grows upon you, i find. nevertheless it is not the dead, sickening heat of home. it is more like a lively baking, and the nights remain cool. we are just entering on the mosquito country, and i suspect our suffering will be great from them and the flies. while the steamboat is in motion we don't have them, but when she stops you can hardly open your mouth without getting it full of them. poor mr. bourkhardt is awfully poisoned and swollen up by bites he got ten days ago on a bayou. at the same time with the mosquitoes, the other living things seem to increase; so it has its good side. the river is much narrower--about two miles wide perhaps or three (i'm no judge)--very darkly muddy and swirling rapidly down past the beautiful woods and islands. we are all going up as far as tabatinga, when the professor and madam, with some others, go into peru to the mountains, while bourget and i will get a canoe and some men and spend a month on the river between tabatinga and ega. bourget is a very dog, yapping and yelping at every one, but a very hard-working collector, and i can get along very well with him. we shall have a very gypsy-like, if a very uncomfortable time. the best of this river is that you can't bathe in it on account of the numerous anthropophagous fishes who bite mouthfuls out of you. tom ward _may_ possibly be out and at manaos by the time we get back there at the end of october. heaven grant he may, poor fellow! i'd rather see him than any one on this continent. agassiz is perfectly delighted with him, his intelligence and his energy, thinks him in fact much the best man of the expedition. i see no reason to regret my determination to stay. "on contrary," as agassiz says, as i begin to use my eyes a little every day, i feel like an entirely new being. everything revives within and without, and i now feel sure that i shall learn. i have profited a great deal by hearing agassiz talk, not so much by what he says, for never did a man utter a greater amount of humbug, but by learning the way of feeling of such a vast practical engine as he is. no one sees farther into a generalization than his own knowledge of details extends, and you have a greater feeling of weight and solidity about the movement of agassiz's mind, owing to the continual presence of this great background of special facts, than about the mind of any other man i know. he has a great personal tact too, and i see that in all his talks with me he is pitching into my loose and superficial way of thinking.... now that i am become more intimate with him, and can talk more freely to him, i delight to be with him. i only saw his defects at first, but now his wonderful qualities throw them quite in the background. i am convinced that he is the man to do me good. he will certainly have earned a holiday when he gets home. i never saw a man work so hard. physically, intellectually and socially he has done the work of ten different men since he has been in brazil; the only danger is of his overdoing it.... i am beginning to get impatient with the brazilian sleepiness and ignorance. these indians are particularly exasperating by their laziness and stolidity. it would be amusing if it were not so infuriating to see how impossible it is to make one hurry, no matter how imminent the emergency. how queer and how exhilarating all those home letters were, with their accounts of what every one was doing, doing, doing. to me, just awakening from my life of forced idleness and from an atmosphere of brazilian inanity, it seemed as if a little window had been opened and a life-giving blast of one of our october nor'westers had blown into my lungs for half an hour. i had no idea before of the real greatness of american energy. they wood up the steamer here for instance at the rate (accurately counted) of eight to twelve logs a minute. it takes them two and one-half hours to put in as much wood as would go in at home in less than fifteen minutes. [illustration: a pencil sketch from a pocket note-book.] every note from home makes me proud of our country.... i have not been able to look at the papers, but i have heard a good deal. i do hope our people will not be such fools as to hang jeff. davis for treason. can any one believe in revenge now? and if not for that, for what else should we hang the poor wretch? lincoln's violent death did more to endear him to those indifferent and unfriendly to him than the whole prosperous remainder of his life could have done; and so will jeff's if he is hung. poor old abe! what is it that moves you so about his simple, unprejudiced, unpretending, honest career? i can't tell why, but albeit unused to the melting mood, i can hardly ever think of abraham lincoln without feeling on the point of blubbering. is it that he seems the representative of pure simple human nature against all conventional additions?... _to his parents._ teffÃ� (amazon), _oct. , _. ...i left the party up at saõ paulo the th of last month and got here the th of this, having gone up two rivers, the içá and jutay, and made collections of fishes which were very satisfactory to the prof. as they contained almost one hundred new species. on the whole it was a most original month, and one which from its strangeness i shall remember to my dying day; much discomfort from insects and rain, much ecstasy from the lovely landscape, much hard work and heat, a very disagreeable companion, j---- [added to the party in brazil], the very best of fare, turtle and fresh fish every day, and running through all a delightful savor of freedom and gypsy-hood which sweetened all that might have been unpleasant. we slept on the beaches every night and fraternized with the indians, who are socially very agreeable, but mentally a most barren people. i suppose they are the most exclusively practical race in the world. when i get home i shall bore you with all kinds of stories about them. i found the rest of the party at this most beautiful little place in a wonderful picturesque house. it was right pleasant to meet them again. the prof. has been working himself out and is thin and nervous. that good woman, mrs. agassiz, is perfectly well. the boys, poor fellows, have all their legs in an awful condition from a kind of mite called "muguim" which gets under the skin and makes dreadful sores. you can't walk in the woods without getting them on you, and poor hunney [hunnewell] is ulcerated very badly. they have no mosquitoes though here. since last night we have had everything packed--our packing-work, its volume, its dirtyness, and its misery is wonderful. twenty-nine full barrels of specimens from here, and hardly one tight barrel among them. the burly execrations of the burly dexter when at the cooper's work would make your hair shiver. but when a good barrel presents itself, then the calm joy almost makes amends for the past. dexter says he has the same feeling for a decent barrel that he has for a beautiful woman. when the steamer comes we are going down to manaos, where we expect the gunboat which the government has promised the prof. dexter and tal go up the rio negro for a month. the rest of us are going to the madeira river in the steamer. i don't know what i shall do exactly, but there will probably be some canoeing to be done, in which case i'm ready; tho' the rainy season is beginning, which makes canoe traveling very uncomfortable. we shall be at parâ by the middle of december certainly. i am very anxious to learn whether the new york and brazilian steamers are to run. we may learn at manaos, where there is also a chance for letters for us, and american papers. why can't you send the "north american," with father's and harry's articles? it would be worth any price to me. * * * * * _ nd oct._ on board the old homestead, viz., steamer icamiaba. the only haven of rest we have in this country, and then only when she is in motion; for when we stop at a place, the prof. is sure to come around and say how very desirable it would be to get a large number of fishes from this place, and willy-nilly you must trudge. i wrote in my last letter something about the possibility of my wishing to go down south again with the professor. i don't think there is any more probability of it than of my wishing to explore central africa. if there is anything i hate, it is collecting. i don't think it is suited to my genius at all; but for that very reason this little exercise in it i am having here is the better for me. i am getting to be very practical, orderly, and businesslike. that fine disorder which used to prevail in my precincts, and which used to make mother heave a beautiful sigh when she entered my room, is treated by the people with whom i am here as a heinous crime, and i feel very sensitive and ashamed about it. the nd of october!--what glorious weather you are having at home now, and how we should all like to be wound up by one day of it! i have often longed for a good, black, sour, sleety, sloshy winter's day in washington street. oh, the bliss of standing on such a day half way between roxbury and boston and having all the horse-cars pass you full! it will be splendid to get home in mid-winter and revel in the cold. i am delighted to hear how well wilky is, and to hear from him. i wish bob would write me a line--and only one letter from alice in all this time--shame! oh, the lovely white child! how the red man of the forest would like to hug her to his bosom once more! i proposed, beloved alice, to write thee a long letter by this steamer describing my wonderful adventures with the wild indians, and the tiger [jaguar?], and various details which interest thy lovely female mind; but i feel so darned heavy and seedy this morning that i cannot pump up the flow of words, and the letter goes on with the steamer from manaos this evening. this expedition has been far less adventurous and far more picturesque than i expected. i have not yet seen a single snake wild here. the adventure with the tiger consisted in his approaching to within paces of our mosquito net, and roaring so as to wake us, and then keeping us awake most of the rest of the night by roaring far and near. i confess i felt some skeert, on being suddenly awoke by him, tho' when i had laid me down i had mocked the apprehensions of tal about tigers. the adventure with the wild indians consisted in our seeing two of them naked at a distance on the edge of the forest. on shouting to them in lingoa geral they ran away. it gave me a very peculiar and unexpected thrilling sensation to come thus suddenly upon these children of nature. but i now tell you in confidence, my beloved white child, what you must not tell any of the rest of the family (for it would spoil the adventure), that we discovered a few hours later that these wild indians were a couple of mulattoes belonging to another canoe, who had been in bathing. i shall have to stop now. do you still go to school at miss clapp's? for heaven's sake write to me, bal! tell harry if he sees [john] bancroft to tell him bourkhardt is much better, having found an indian remedy of great efficacy. please give my best love to the tweedies, temples, washburns, la farges, paine, childs, elly van buren and in fact everybody who is in any way connected with me. best of love to aunt kate, wilk and bob, harry and all the family. i pine for harry's literary _efforts_ and to see a number or so of the "nation." you can't send too many magazines or papers--care of james b. bond, parâ. w. j. iv - _medical studies at harvard_ james returned from brazil in march, , and immediately entered the massachusetts general hospital for a summer's service as undergraduate interne. in the autumn he left the hospital and resumed his studies in the harvard medical school. the faculty of the school then included dr. o. w. holmes and professor jeffries wyman. charles ed. brown-séquard was lecturing on the pathology of the nervous system. during the years of james's interrupted course a number of men attended the school who were to be his friends and colleagues for many years thereafter--among them william g. farlow, subsequently professor of cryptogamic botany and a cambridge neighbor for forty years, and charles p. putnam and james j. putnam--two brothers in whose company he was later to spend many adirondack vacations and to whom he became warmly attached. henry p. bowditch, whose instinct for physiological inquiry was already vigorous, and who was destined to become a leader of research in america, and the teacher and inspirer of a generation of younger investigators, was another medical school contemporary with whom he formed an enduring friendship. the instruction given in the harvard medical school in the sixties was as good as any obtainable in america, but it fell short of what is nowadays reckoned as essential for a medical education to an extent that none but a modern student of medicine can understand. the emphasis was still on lectures, demonstrations and reading, and the pupil's rôle was an almost completely passive one. james, according to the testimony of one of his classmates, made a solitary exception to the practice of the class by attempting to keep a graphic record of his microscopic studies in histology and pathology. when questioned about this long after, he admitted that he believed himself to have been the only student of his time in the medical school who took the trouble to make drawings from the microscopic field with regularity. the teaching of pasteur and lister had not then revolutionized medicine. modern bacteriology and the possibilities of aseptic surgery were yet to be understood. surgeons who operated in the amphitheatre of the massachusetts general hospital could still take pride in appearing in blood-soiled gowns, much as a fisherman scorns a brand-new outfit and sports his weather-rusted old clothes. the demonstrations of even dr. henry j. bigelow, a skillful operator who was then a leader in his profession, filled james with a horror which he never forgot. on the other hand, the discovery of anesthesia, which made possible an enlarged and humane use of animals for experimental inquiry, and such illuminating reports and investigations as those of claude bernard, helmholtz, virchow and ludwig were giving a great impetus to the investigation of bodily processes and functions, and a study of these was a possible next step in james's evolution. he had already been unusually well grounded in comparative anatomy by agassiz and jeffries wyman. he was gravitating surely, even if he did not yet realize it clearly, toward philosophy. whenever he more or less consciously projected himself forward, it must have seemed to him that the examination of processes in the living body, for which he was already prepared, might be related, in an enlightening way, to the philosophic pursuits that were beginning to invite him. physiology therefore commanded both his respect and his curiosity, and he turned in that direction rather than toward what he then saw surgery and the practice of internal medicine to be. during the winter of - he lived with his parents in the house[ ] in quincy street, cambridge, in which they had settled themselves, and worked regularly at the medical school. he had come back from the year of mere animal existence on the amazon in excellent physical condition. of the four letters which follow, two were written to thomas w. ward, who, it will be remembered, had been a member of the amazon expedition, and who, after getting back to new york, had entered the great baring banking house of which his father, samuel ward, was the american partner. o. w. holmes, jr., will be recognized as the present associate justice of the united states supreme court. in no one did james find more sympathetic philosophic companionship at this period. _to thomas w. ward._ boston, _mar. , _. meo caro compadre,--i have been intending to write you every night for the last month, but the strange epistolary inertia which always weighs down upon me has kept me from it until now. i have had news of you two or three times from my father having met yours, and from dexter, who said he had met you in new york. i am very curious to know how you find your occupation to suit you, and if you find the dust of daily drudgery to obscure at all the visions of your far-off-future power. from what dexter said i am afraid they do a little. we had given up allen[ ] as gone to the fishes; but the poor devil arrived last week after a -days' passage!!! i never felt gladder for anything in my life. he had a horrible time at sea, being within miles of new york and then blown back as far as st. thomas. he says most of his collections arrived at bahia spoiled by the sun. he was sixteen days crossing a limestone desert on which nothing grew but cacti; so there was no shade at noon, and the thermometer at °. his health has been improved by the voyage, however, and he thinks it is better now than when he left for brazil. nevertheless he is going to give up natural history for the present and adopt some out-of-door life till he gets decidedly better, which he says he has been slowly but steadily doing for some years past. poor allen! none of us have been sold as badly as he. if i had not been to brazil, i would go again to do what i have done, knowing beforehand what it would be. allen says _he_ would not, on any account. i have been studying now for about two weeks, and think i shall be much more interested in it than before. it was some time before i could get settled down to reading. but now i do it quite naturally, and even _thinking_ is beginning not to feel like a wholly abnormal process; all which, as you may imagine, is very agreeable--altho' i confess that as yet the philosophical _rouages_ of my mind have not attained even to the degree of lubrication they had before i left. i shan't apologize for the egotistical pronoun, for i suppose, my dear old thomas, that you will be interested to compare my experience since my return with yours, and learn something from it if possible--even as i would with yours. i spent the first month of my return in nothing but "social intercourse," having the two temple girls and elly van buren in the house for a fortnight, and being obliged to escort them about to parties, etc., nearly every night. the consequences were a falling in love with every girl i met--succeeded now by a reaction which makes me, and will make me for a long time, decline every invitation. i feel now somehow as if i had settled down upon a steady track that i shall not have much temptation to slip off of, for a good many months at any rate. i am conscious of a desire i never had before so strongly or so permanently, of narrowing and deepening the channel of my intellectual activity, of economizing my feeble energies and consequently treating with more _respect_ the few things i shall devote them to. this temper may be a transient one; mais pour peu qu'il dure un an ou deux, to fix the shorter term! i'm sure it will give a tone to my mind it lacked before. as for the disrespect with which you treat the worthy problems that you turn your back upon, i don't see now exactly how you get over that; but something tells me that, practically, my salvation depends for the present on following some such plan. and, i am sure that, in the majority of men at any rate, the process of growing into a calm mental state is not one of leveling, but of going around, difficulties. the problem they solve is not one of being, but of method. they reach a point from which the view within certain limits is harmonious, and they keep within those limits; they find as it were a centre of oscillation in which they may be at rest. now whether any other kind of solution is possible, i don't know. many men will say not; but i feel somehow, now, as if i had no right to an opinion on any subject, no right to open my mouth before others until i know some _one_ thing as thoroughly as it can be known, no matter how insignificant it may be. after that i shall perhaps be able to think on general subjects.--the only fellow here i care anything about is holmes, who is on the whole a first-rate article, and one which improves by wear. he is perhaps too exclusively intellectual, but sees things so easily and clearly and talks so admirably that it's a treat to be with him. t. s. perry is also flourishing in health and spirits. ed[ward] emerson i have not yet seen. i made the acquaintance the other day of miss fanny dixwell of cambridge (the eldest), do you know her? she is decidedly ai, and (so far) the best girl i have known. i should like if possible to confine my whole life to her, ellen hooper, sara sedgwick,[ ] holmes, harry, and the medical school, for an indefinite period, letting no breath of extraneous air enter. there, i hope that's a confession of faith. i wish you would write me a similar or even more "developed" one, for i really want to know how the building up into flesh and blood of the wide-sweeping plans that the solitudes of brazil gave birth to seems to alter them. write soon, and i'll answer soon; for i think, chéri de thomas, que ce doux commerce que nous avons mené tant d'années ought not all of a sudden to die out. i'd give a great deal to see you, but see no prospect of getting to new york for a long time. our family spends six months at swampscott from the first of may. i shall have a room in town. what chance is there of your being able to pay us a visit at swampscott in my vacation (from july to sept. )? ever your friend wm. james. _to thomas w. ward._ boston, _june , _. chÃ�ri de thomas,--i cannot exactly say i _hasten_ to reply to your letter. i have thought of you about every day since i received it, and given you a brazilian hug therewith, and wanted to write to you; but having been in a pretty unsettled theoretical condition myself, from which i hoped some positive conclusions might emerge worthy to be presented to you as the last word on the kosmos and the human soul, i deferred writing from day to day, thinking that better than to offer you the crude and premature spawning of my intelligence. in vain! the conclusions never have emerged, and i see that, if i am _ever_ to write you, i must do it on the spur of the moment, with all my dullness thick upon me. i have just read your letter over again, and am grieved afresh at your melancholy tone about yourself. you ask why i am quiet, while you are so restless. partly from the original constitution of things, i suppose; partly because i am less quiet than you suppose; only i once heard a proverb about a man consuming his own smoke, and i do so particularly in your presence because you, being so much more turbid, produce a reaction in me; partly because i am a few years older than you, and have not solved, but grown callous (i hear your sneer) to, many of the problems that now torture you. the _chief_ reason is the original constitution of things, which generated me with fewer sympathies and wants than you, and also perhaps with a certain tranquil confidence in the right ordering of the whole, which makes me indifferent in some circumstances where you would fret. yours the nobler, mine the happier part! i _think_, too, that much of your uneasiness comes from that to which you allude in your letter--your oscillatoriness, and your regarding each oscillation as something final as long as it lasts. there is nothing more certain than that every man's life (except perhaps harry quincy's) is a line that continuously oscillates on every side of its direction; and if you would be more confident that any state of tension you may at any time find yourself in will inevitably relieve _itself_, sooner or later, you would spare yourself much anxiety. i myself have felt in the last six months more and more certain that each man's constitution limits him to a certain amount of emotion and action, and that, if he insists on going under a higher pressure than normal for three months, for instance, he will pay for it by passing the next three months below par. so the best way is to keep moving steadily and regularly, as your mind becomes thus deliciously appeased (as you imagine mine to be; ah! tom, what damned fools we are!). if you feel below par now, don't think your life is deserting you forever. you are just as sure to be up again as you are, when elated, sure to be down again. six months, or any given cycle of time, is sure to see you produce a certain amount, and your fretful anxiety when in a stagnant mood is frivolous. the good time will come again, as it has come; and go too. i think we ought to be independent of our moods, look on them as external, for they come to us unbidden, and feel if possible neither elated nor depressed, but keep our eyes upon our work and, if we have done the best we could _in that given condition_, be satisfied. i don't know whether all this solemn wisdom of mine seems to you anything better than conceited irrelevance. i began the other day to read the thoughts of marcus aurelius, translated by long, published by ticknor, which, if you have not read, i advise you to read, slowly. i only read two or three pages a day, and am only half through the book. he certainly had an invincible soul; and it seems to me that any man who can, like him, grasp the love of a "life according to nature," _i.e._, a life in which your individual will becomes so harmonized to nature's will as cheerfully to acquiesce in whatever she assigns to you, knowing that you serve _some_ purpose in her vast machinery which will never be revealed to you--any man who can do this will, i say, be a pleasing spectacle, no matter what his lot in life. i think old mark's perpetual yearnings for patience and equanimity and kindliness would do your heart good.--i have come to feel lately, more and more (i can't tell though whether it will be permanent) like paying my footing in the world in a very humble way, (driving my physicking trade like any other tenth-rate man), and then living my free life in my leisure hours entirely within my own breast as a thing the world has nothing to do with; and living it easily and patiently, without feeling responsible for its future. i will now, my dear old tom, stop my crudities. although these notions and others have of late led me to a pretty practical contentment, i cannot help feeling as if i were insulting heaven by offering them about as if they had an absolute worth. still, as i am willing to take them all back whenever it seems right, you will excuse my apparent conceit. besides, they may suggest some practical point of view to you. the family is at swampscott. i have a room in bowdoin street for the secular part of the week. we have a very nice house in swampscott.... i am anxiously waiting your arrival on class day. i expect you to spend all your time with me either here or in swampscott, when we shall, i trust, patch up the kosmos satisfactorily and rescue it from its present fragmentary condition.... _to his sister._ cambridge, _nov. , _. chÃ�rie de jeune balle,--i am just in from town in the keen, cold and eke beauteous moonlight, which by the above qualities makes me think of thee, to whom, nor to whose aunt, have i (not) yet written. (i don't understand the grammar of the not.) your first question is, "where have i been?" "to c. s. peirce's lecture, which i could not understand a word of, but rather enjoyed the sensation of listening to for an hour." i then turned to o. w. holmes's and wrangled with him for another hour. you may thank your stars that you are not in a place where you have to ride in such full horse-cars as these. i rode half way out with my "form" entirely out of the car overhanging the road, my feet alone being on the same vertical line as any part of the car, there being just room for them on the step. aunt kate may, and probably _will_, have shoot through her prolific mind the supposish: "how wrong in him to do sich! for if, while in that posish, he should have a sudden stroke of paralysis, or faint, his nerveless fingers relaxing their grasp of the rail, he would fall prostrate to the ground and bust." to which i reply that, when i go so far as to have a stroke of paralysis, i shall not mind going a step farther and getting bruised. your next question probably is "_how_ are and _where_ are father and mother?"... i think father seems more lively for a few days past and cracks jokes with harry, etc. mother is recovering from one of her indispositions, which she bears like an angel, doing any amount of work at the same time, putting up cornices and raking out the garret-room like a little buffalo. your next question is "wherever is harry?" i answer: "he is to ashburner's, to a tea-squall in favor of miss haggerty." i declined. he is well. we have had nothing but invitations ( ) in or days. one, a painted one, from "mrs. l----," whoever she may be. i replied that domestic affliction prevented me from going, but i would take a pecuniary equivalent instead, viz: to oyster stew cts., chicken salad . , roll . , ice creams at cts. . , small cakes at . , . , pear $ . , lb. confectionery . . glasses hock at . $ . glasses sherry at . salad spilt on floor . dish of do., broken . damage to carpet & miss l----'s dress frm. do . glasses broken . curtains set fire to in dressing-room . other injury frm. fire in room . injury to house frm. water pumped upon it by steam fire-engine come to put out fire . miscellaneous . ------- . i expect momentarily her reply with a check, and when it comes will take you and aunt kate on a tour in europe and have you examined by the leading physicians and surgeons of that country. m---- l---- came out here and dined with us yesterday of her own accord. i no longer doubt what i always suspected, her _penchant_ for me, and i don't blame her for it. elly temple staid here two days, too. she scratched, smote, beat, and kicked me so that i shall dread to meet her again. what an awful time bob & co. must have had at sea! and how anxious you must have been about them. with best love to aunt kate and yourself believe me your af. bro. wm. james. _to o. w. holmes, jr._ [a pencil memorandum, winter of - ?] why i'm blest if i'm a materialist: the materialist posits an x for his ultimate principle. were he satisfied to inhabit this vacuous x, i should not at present try to disturb him. but that atmosphere is too rare; so he spends all his time on the road between it and sensible realities, engaged in the laudable pursuit of degrading every (sensibly) higher thing into a (sensibly) lower. he thus accomplishes an immensely great positively conceived and felt result, and it availeth little to naturalize the sensible impression of this that he should at the end put in his little caveat that, after all, the low denomination is as unreal as the unreduced higher ones were. in the confession of ignorance is nothing which the mind can close upon and clutch--it's a vanishing negation; while the pretension of knowledge is full of positive, massively-felt contents. the former kicks the beam. what balm is it, when instead of my high you have given me a low, to tell me that the low is good for nothing? if you take my $ gold and give me greenbacks, i feel unreconciled still, even when you have assured me that the greenbacks are counterfeit. or what comfort is it to me now to be told that a billion years hence greenbacks and gold will have the same value? especially when that is explained to be zero? how anyone can say that this pennyworth of negation can so balance these tons of affirmation as to make the naturalist _feel_ like anyone else--i confess it's a mystery to me. but as a man's happiness depends on his feeling, i think materialism inconsistent with a high degree thereof, and in this sense maintained that a materialist should not be an optimist, using the latter word to signify one whose philosophy authenticates, by guaranteeing the objective significance of, his most pleasurable feelings. you have transferred the question of optimism to a wider field, where i can't well follow it now. the term would have to be defined first, and then i think it would take me ten or twelve years of hard study to form any opinion as to the truth of your second premise.--i send the above remarks on "materialism," because they were what i was groping for the other evening, but could not say till you were gone and i in bed. to conclude: _corruptio optimistorum pessima!_ [illustration: pencil sketch from a pocket note-book.] v - _eighteen months in germany_ in the spring of james interrupted his course at the medical school again. he was impelled to do this, partly by the pressure of a conviction that his health required him to stop work or continue elsewhere under different conditions, and partly by a desire to learn german and study physiology in the german laboratories. he knew a little german already, and it seemed reasonable to suppose that if he went abroad immediately he would have time to familiarize himself with the language during a pleasant and restful summer and would be ready to enter one of the universities in the autumn. he sailed in april and spent the summer in dresden and bohemia. but his health became worse instead of better. it is unnecessary to detail the record of a long illness by selecting for this book the passages of his correspondence in which james sooner or later revealed what his condition was. it would also be idle to inquire closely about the causes of his illness, considering that, for one reason, james was completely puzzled and baffled himself. insomnia, digestive disorders, eye-troubles, weakness of the back, and sometimes deep depression of spirits followed each other or afflicted him simultaneously. if his trouble was in part nervous, it was a reality none the less. a photograph that was taken of him at about this period recorded the aspect of a very ill man. if his introspective genius made things worse for him for a while, it probably did more to pull him through in the end than the--to our present-day understanding--harsh and unnecessary treatments, regimens, water-cures, courses of exercise, galvanisms, and blistering to which he subjected himself. on the other hand, the illness which began in , and which limited james's activities and occupations for several years, had another effect. it overtook him when he was only twenty-five years old, and threw him heavily upon his inner moral and intellectual resources. it caught him alone and among strangers, more or less prostrated him, and defeated his plans just at a time of life when he was beginning, with the eagerness of youth and philosophic genius combined, to reckon over each fresh experience into the terms of a possible answer to the riddles of life and death, predestination, freedom, and responsibility. it gave a personal intimacy and intensity to the deepest problems that philosophy and religion can present to man's understanding. this illness may perhaps have prevented james from becoming a physiological investigator. but clearly it developed and deepened the bed in which the stream of his philosophic life was to flow. he sailed for europe in april, and went almost directly to dresden, where he found quarters in a _pension_ presided over by an amiable frau spannenberg. he spent his mornings, and often his evenings, reading and studying german. he made an excursion to bad-teplitz in bohemia, but the "cure" there did not greatly relieve his back, and the baths made him feel "as if his brain had been boiled,"[ ] so he returned to frau spannenberg's. in the early autumn he moved to berlin, attended a few lectures at the university there, and read a good deal on the physiology of the nervous system; but he was unable to work in the laboratories, and found it expedient to return to teplitz at the end of january ( ). what he did thereafter will appear as the letters proceed. _to his parents._ dresden, _may , _. ...though i have been just a little over two weeks settled in dresden, i hardly know anything about it or about germany yet. nothing but confused, vague and probably erroneous impressions of the people, owing chiefly to my imperfect knowledge of the language. in the first place there is not the slightest touch of the romantic, picturesque, or even _foreign_ about living here. i think there is very little absolutely in the place to give such impressions, and i think i have outgrown my old susceptibility to them. whereas in old times i used to notice every window, door-handle and smell as having a peculiar and exotic charm, every old street and house as filled with historic life and mystery, they are now to me streets and houses and nothing more. the heyday of youth is o'er! alack the day! my traveling has been accompanied with hardly more astonishment or excitement than would accompany a journey to chicago.... [illustration: william james at twenty-five. from a photograph] the place which has most invited me to live in it is strasburg. the people all speak both french and german, each with the other's accent, and the environs are ravishing. the saxons are a very short and ill-favored race, both sexes, not light-haired as the rhinelanders, and most eccentrically toothed. many of the young officers, however, are very good-looking fellows. the poor people wear old greasy caps and black coats, and no collars, but black cravats as in england, and look very ugly. the great number of _old_ men and women here has struck me very much. can it be that we have so few at home? or do we keep them indoors? or do the germans show their age so much sooner? i know not. the americans i have met have been a poor crowd. the english i have seen have been distinguished by their pure and clean appearance, and by an awkwardness which in a certain way appeals to your sympathies. they have the faculty of _blushing_ which is denied to the french and comparatively to the germans, and in spite of all my prejudices i feel more akin to them than to the others. i have, since i wrote my last letter, led a perfectly monotonous life. read all the morning, go out for a walk and a lounge in a concert garden in the afternoon, and read after tea. i am quite well satisfied with my progress in the noble german tongue, which has been steady, although, since the first day i wrote to you about [it], not brilliant. its difficulties are i think quite unjustifiably great for a modern language--it is in fact without _any_ of the modern improvements. i read the little newspapers, which dr. semler takes, carefully from beginning to end; and what with the other newspapers i see at a reading-room, the talk i hear, and a little other reading, i have a quite vague and confused but very wonderful impression of the strange difference between the whole german way of thinking and ours; and in my as yet crude fancy it seems to be connected with the grammatical structure of the sentences and the endless power of making new words by combination. i have just been reading hegel's chapter on epic poetry in his "aesthetik," and [the] truly monstrous sentences therein were quite a revelation to me. it seems to me that the expression corresponds much more closely to the spontaneous and impromptu mode of thought than in our latinized tongues--that the language allows and invites speculation and expatiation without limit. as soon as the first glimmering of an idea has dawned upon you, there is no reason why you should not begin to inscribe, for you can wallow round and round as you proceed, affixing limitations, lugging in definitions and explanations as fast as they suggest each other, and need never go back to reshape your beginning. while with us you will, as a rule, come to grief if you begin your sentence without a pretty distinct idea of what the whole is going to be. then the endless power of word-multiplication by composition, and of making adjectives of whole phrases must allow you to _fix_, and to fix in a most homely, pregnant form, a host of evanescent shades of meaning (most of which would with us be lost), as fast as they flash upon the mind. and from these successive approximations the final form of the thought may be more easily and surely distilled than if it had to be all formed in one's head before it could get even an approximate expression. however, i don't pretend to say that these hasty impressions are correct. they may be the mere creations of a distempered fancy. at any rate, i am sure that german is the native tongue of all wilky-isms, and that in germany [wilky] would be one of the first authors of the age for style. the mischief of it is that, instead of using these approximations as such, the people let them stand permanently, and as they can make them with so little trouble, there arises in literature and talk an entangled mass of crudity and barbarism that spoils everything. they get accustomed to such elephantine ways of saying things that they don't mind it at all, and i have had more amusement out of the newspaper than i ever derived from the text of "punch." i wish i could remember some of the expressions. yesterday, for instance, the paper said the emperor of austria's message was more _atomistisch_ than _dynamisch_--this, in a peppery little political article, shows what scholastic expressions the people are accustomed to. the context gave no explanation. then, a couple of days ago, in a review of some histories of german literature, the surprising depth of one author was praised, altho' it was granted "that _here and there_ he had not succeeded in lighting up the ultimate life-spring (_lebensgrund_) of the phenomena." of another that "_without entirely losing sight of what was human_ (_menschlich_) in the phenomena, he had accomplished a work of extraordinarily logical development and luminous procedure (_gang_)." imagine entirely leaving out the human in a history of _literature_!... * * * * * _may ._ the pleasant spinster from hamburg i mentioned in my last letter as being so well read, has, i find, "drawn the line" of her information at geography and physical science. she comes out strong in sanscrit and greek literature (which she knows of course by translations), and in church history, but she drives me frantic by her endless talking about america, in the course of which she continually leaps without any warning from new york to rio de janeiro and thence to valparaiso. she has friends in each of these localities, and it is apparently a fixed conviction of hers that they take tea together every evening. at first i tried to show her that these places were all far apart and that the ways of one were not those of the others, and from her apparent comprehension and submission i used to fancy i had succeeded; but it was only the elastic and transient bowing of the reed before the gale. a rather amusing incident occurred the other evening. i was speaking of the different classes of people that made up our population, and endeavoring to give a keen analysis of the irish character, when she asked me to tell her something about a people we had with us called "yankees," about whom she had heard such strange stories, and who seemed to be, if report were true, of all the peoples in the world the very worst (_das allerschlimmste_). what was their genesis and what were they? imagine the feelings of the poor old lady, who had asked the question merely from a wish to please me by her intelligent interest in our affairs, when the truth was told her.... the other afternoon i fell into conversation with a tall and rather aristocratic-looking old gentleman with a gray moustache, who spoke very good french, at a beer garden, and found out afterwards that he was no less a person than the illustrious kaulbach. strangely enough, we quite accidentally got on the subject of the gallery. he spoke of several of the pictures, but said nothing that was not commonplace. i have as yet only had a mere glimpse at the gallery, but will do it thoroughly before i leave. i'd give anything if harry could see some of the venetian things there, and the shepherds' adoration of correggio, which he probably knows, or rather _méconnaît_, by prints which give nought but the rather unpleasant and, unless you are let into the secret, motivelessly eccentric drawing. but it would take victor hugo to find the proper antithetic epithets to describe the combined gladness and solemnity of the painting, its innocence and its depth. i have always had, i don't know why, a prejudice against correggio; but i never saw a painting before that breathed out so easily such a moral poetry. it seems to me to kill rafael's celebrated madonna right out. although that too is a good "piece." i find myself in the gallery much too disposed to exalt one thing at the expense of its neighbors, which is very unjust to them; but by taking it easily and letting the pictures do their own work i think it will all come right. mr. paul veronese had _eyes_, anyhow. i am sure it would be the making of john la farge to come abroad, alone, if no other way. dis lui, henry, que je lui écrirai tantôt à ce sujet. i have been having a literary debauch to start in the language with, but am getting down again to medicine. the enthusiastic, oratorical and eloquent schiller, the wise and exquisite goethe, and the virile and human lessing have in turn held me entranced by their _dramal_. je te recommande, henry, "emilia galotti" comme étude. c'est serré comme du chêne, rapide comme l'avalanche, toute la retenue et la vigueur de merimée, et au fond un gros coeur dont la tendresse comprimée n'échappe que par des phrases dont la sobriété même déchire, ou bien par du bitter irony. lessing seems to have a religious feeling that people miss in goethe, and seems to be a great deal deeper than schiller, though, of course, he is a far more homespun character. i have been reading goethe's "italienische reise." it is perfectly fascinating; but you can read very little of it at a time, it is so damnably tedious, and you can't bear to skip. paradoxical as it may appear, there is a deal of _naïveté_ in the old cuss. attends donc un peu que mon grand article sur goethe apparaisse dans "l'américain du nord!" i expect t. s. perry here in a fortnight on his way from venice. you may imagine with what joy. i have just been interrupted by the supper, which takes place at nine p.m. and consists of beer, eggs, herrings, ham, and bread and butter, and is not displeasing to the carnal man. i have been writing a most infernally long letter, for which i apologize. it will be the last time. the fact is i have so few resources here that i am driven to write. tell alice that there are two miss twomblys from boylston street living here, one exceedingly pretty. she doubtless, by her feminine system of espionage, knows who they are, though i know none of their friends and they none of mine. i got mother's letter and the "nation" with great joy soon after my arrival. i read father's article, but with much the old result. i am desirous of reading his article in the n. a. r. and hope he will not delay to send it when it appears. heaps of love all round. _to his mother._ dresden, _june , _. dearest mother,--i have been reading a considerable deal of german, and in a very desultory way, as i want to get accustomed to a variety of styles, so as to be able to read any book at sight, skipping the useless; and i may say that i now begin to have that power whenever the book is writ in a style at all adapted to the requirements of the human, as distinguished from the german, mind. the profounder and more philosophical german requires, however, that you should bring all the resources of your nature, of every kind, to a focus, and hurl them again and again on the sentence, till at last you feel something give way, as it were, and the idea begins to unravel itself. as for speaking, that is a very different matter and advances much more slowly.... life is so monotonous in this place that unless i make some philosophical discoveries, or unless _something_ happens, my letters will have to be both few and short. i get up and have breakfast, which means a big cup of cocoa and some bread and butter with an egg, if i want it, at eight. i read till half-past one, when dinner, which is generally quite a decent meal; after dinner a nap, more _germanorum_ and more read till the sun gets low enough to go out, when out i go--generally to the grosser garten, a lovely park outside the town where the sun slants over the greenest meadows and sends his shafts between the great trees in a most wholesome manner. there are some spots where the trees are close together, and in their classic gloom you find mossy statues, so that you feel as if you belonged to the last century. often i go and sit on a terrace which overlooks the elbe and, with my eyes bent upon the lordly cliffs far down the river on the other side, with strains of the sweetest music in my ear, and with pint after pint of beer successively finding their way into the fastnesses of my interior, i enjoy most delightful reveries, _au nombre desquels_ those concerning my home and my sister are not the least frequent. in the house (which stands on a corner) my great resource when time hangs heavy on my hands is to sit in the window and examine my neighbors. the houses are all four stories high and composed of separate flats, as in paris. i live in the me. diagonally opposite is a young ladies' boarding-school where the _young_ ladies, very young they are, are wont to relax from their studies by kissing their hands, etc., etc., etc., to a young english lout, who has been here in the house, and myself. said lout left for england yesterday, for which i heartily thank him, and i shall now monopolize the attention of the school. we rather _had_ them, for we had a telescope to observe them by. not one was good-looking. there has, however, lately arisen in the christian strasse, just under my window, a most ravishing apparition, and i begin to think my heart will not wither wholly away. about eighteen, hair like night, and _such_ eyes! their mute-appealing, love-lorn look goes through and through me. every day for the last week, after dinner, have i sat in my window and she in hers. i with the telescope! she with those eyes! and we communing with each other!! i will try to make a likeness of her and send with this letter, but i may not succeed.[ ] she has only one defect, which is the length of her nose. if that were only an inch and a half shorter, i should propose at once to her mother for it; but religious difference might intervene, so it is better as it is. i am expecting t. s. perry any day now, you may imagine how impatiently.... tell harry i have been reading some essays by fr. theod. vischer, the _bedeutende esthetiker_, on strauss, on goethe's "faust" and its critics, etc., etc., which have much interested me. he is a splendid writer for style and matter--as brilliant as any of the non-absolutely-harlequin frenchmen. the foundation of the thought is, or at least appears to be to my untutored mind, hegelian; but they were published in and he may have changed. his "aesthetik" henceforward appears in the list of "books which i must some day read." some of the commentaries there quoted on "faust" are incredibly monstrous for ponderous imbecility and seeing everything in the universe and out of it, except the point. i read this morning an essay of kuno fischer's on lessing's "nathan"--one of the parasitic and analytic sort on the whole, but still very readable. the way these cusses slip so fluently off into the "ideal," the "jenseitige," the "inner," etc., etc., and undertake to give a _logical_ explanation of everything which is so palpably trumped up _after_ the facts, and the reasoning of which is so grotesquely incapable of going an inch into the future, is both disgusting and disheartening. you never saw such a mania for going deep into the bowels of truth, with such an absolute lack of intuition and perception of the skin thereof. to hear the grass grow from morn till night is their happy occupation. there is something that strikes me as corrupt, immodest in this incessant taste for explaining things in this mechanical way; but the era of it may be past now--i don't know. i speak only of æsthetic matters, of course. the political moment both here and in austria is extremely interesting to one who has a political sense, and even i am beginning to have an opinion--and one all in favor of prussia's victory and supremacy as a great practical stride towards civilization. i think the french tone in the last quarrel deserved a degrading and stinging humiliation as much as anything in history ever did, and i'm very sorry they did not get it. of course there's no end of bunkum and inflation here, too, but it is practically a healthy thing.... _to his father._ berlin, _sept. , _. my beloved old dad,--...i think it will be just as well for you not to say anything to any of the others about what i shall tell you of my condition hitherto, as it will only give them useless pain, and poor harry especially (who evidently from his letters runs much into that utterly useless emotion, sympathy, with me) had better remain ignorant.... my confinement to my room and inability to indulge in any social intercourse drove me necessarily into reading a great deal, which in my half-starved and weak condition was very bad for me, making me irritable and tremulous in a way i have never before experienced. two evenings which i spent out, one at gerlach's, the other at thies's, aggravated my dorsal symptoms very much, and as i still clung to the hope of amelioration from repose, i avoided going out to the houses where it was possible. although i cannot exactly say that i got low-spirited, yet thoughts of the pistol, the dagger and the bowl began to usurp an unduly large part of my attention, and i began to think that some change, even if a hazardous one, was necessary. it was at that time that dr. carus advised teplitz. while there, owing to the weakening effects of the baths, both back and stomach got worse if anything; but the beautiful country and a number of drives which i thought myself justified in taking made me happy as a king.... i have purposely hitherto written fallacious accounts of my state home, to produce a pleasant impression on you all--but you may rely on the present one as literally certain, and as it makes the others after all only _premature_, i don't see what will be the use of impairing the family confidence in my letters by saying anything about it to them. i have no doubt that you will consider the teplitz expenditure justified, as i do. my sickness has added some other items in the way of medicine and cab hire to the expenses of my life in dresden, but nothing _very_ considerable. so much for biz. i have read your article, which i got in teplitz, several times carefully. i must confess that the darkness which to me has always hung over what you have written on these subjects is hardly at all cleared up. every sentence seems written from a point of view which i nowhere get within range of, and on the other hand ignores all sorts of questions which are visible from my present view. my questions, i know, belong to the understanding, and i suppose deal entirely with the "natural constitution" of things; but i find it impossible to step out from them into relation with "spiritual" facts, and the very language you use _ontologically_ is also so extensively rooted in the finite and phenomenal that i cannot avoid accepting it as it were in its mechanical sense, when it becomes to me devoid of significance. i feel myself in fact more and more drifting towards the sensationalism closed in by skepticism--but the skepticism will keep bursting out in the very midst of it, too, from time to time; so that i cannot help thinking i may one day get a glimpse of things through the ontological window. at present it is walled up. i can understand now no more than ever the world-wide gulf you put between "head" and "heart"; to me they are inextricably entangled together, and seem to grow from a common stem--and _no_ theory of creation seems to me to make things clearer. i cannot logically understand _your_ theory. you posit first a phenomenal nature in which the _alienation_ is produced (but phenomenal to _what_? to the already unconsciously existing creature?), and from this effected alienation a _real_ movement of return follows. but how _can_ the real movement have its rise in the phenomenal? and if it does not, it seems to me the creation is the very arbitrary one you inveigh against; and the whole process is a mere circle of the creator described within his own being and returning to the starting-point. i cannot understand what you mean by the descent of the creator into nature; you don't explain it, and it seems to be the kernel of the whole. you speak sometimes of our natural life as our whole conscious life; sometimes of our consciousness as composed of both elements, finite and infinite. if our _real_ life is unconscious, i don't see how you can occupy in the final result a different place from the stoics, for instance. these are points on which i have never understood your position, and they will doubtless make you smile at my stupidity; but i cannot help it. i ought not to write about them in such a hurry, for i have been expecting every moment to see tom dwight come in, with whom i promised to go to the theatre. i arrived here late last night. my back will prevent my studying physiology this winter at leipsig, which i rather hoped to do. i shall stay here if i can. if unable to live here and cultivate the society of the natives without a greater moral and dorsal effort than my shattered frame will admit, i will retreat to vienna where, knowing so many americans, i shall find social relaxation without much expense of strength. dwight has come. much love from your affectionate, wm. james. _to o. w. holmes, jr._ berlin, _sept. , _. my dear wendle,--i was put in the possession, this morning, by a graceful and unusual attention on the part of the postman, of a letter from home containing, amongst other valuable matter, a precious specimen of manuscript signed "o. w. h. jr." covering just one page of small note paper belonging to a letter written by minny temple!!!!! now i myself am not proud,--poverty, misery and philosophy have together brought me to a pass where there are few actions so shabby that i would not commit them if thereby i could relieve in any measure my estate, or lighten the trouble of living,--but, by jove, sir! there _is_ a point, _sunt_ certi denique fines, down to which it seems to me hardly worth while to condescend--better give up altogether.--i do not intend any personal application. men differ, thank heaven! and there may be some constituted in such a fearful and wonderful manner, that to write to a friend after six months, in another person's letter, hail him as "one of the pillars on which life rests," and after twelve lines stop short, seems to them an action replete with beauty and credit. to me it is otherwise. and if perchance, o wendy boy, there lurked in any cranny of _thy_ breast a spark of consciousness, a germ of shame at the paltriness of thy procedure as thou inditedst that pitiful apology for a letter, i would fain fan it, nourish it, till thy whole being should become one incarnate blush, one crater of humiliation. mind, i should not have found fault with you if you had not written at all. there would have been a fine brutality about that which would have commanded respect rather than otherwise--certainly not _pity_. 'tis that, _writing_, that should be the result. bah! but i will change the subject, as i do not wish to provoke you to recrimination in your next letter. let it be as substantial and succulent as the last, with its hollow hyperbolic expression of esteem, was the opposite, and i assure you that the past shall be forgotten.--i am, as you have probably been made aware, "a mere wreck," bodily. i left home without telling anyone about it, because, hoping i might get well, i wanted to keep it a secret from alice and the boys till it was over. i thought of telling you "in confidence," but refrained, partly because walls have ears, partly from a morbid pride, mostly because of the habit of secrecy that had grown on me in six months. i dare say harry has kept you supplied with information respecting my history up to the present time, and perhaps read you portions of my letters. my history, internal and external, since i have been in germany, has been totally uneventful. the external, with the exception of three r. r. voyages (to and from teplitz and to berlin), resembles that of a sea anemone; and the internal, notwithstanding the stimulus of a new language and country, has contracted the same hue of stagnation. a tedious egotism seems to be the only mental plant that flourishes in sickness and solitude; and when the bodily condition is such that muscular and cerebral activity not only remain _unexcited_, but are _solicited_, by an idiotic hope of recovery, to crass indolence, the "elasticity" of one's spirits can't be expected to be very great. since i have been here i have admired harry's pluck more and more. _pain_, however intense, is light and life, compared to a condition where hibernation would be the ideal of conduct, and where your "conscience," in the form of an aspiration towards recovery, rebukes every tendency towards motion, excitement or life as a culpable excess. the deadness of spirit thereby produced "must be felt to be appreciated." i have been in this city ten days and hope to stay all winter. i have got a comfortable room near the university and will attempt to follow some of the lectures. my wish was to study physiology practically, but i shall not be able. the number of subjects and fractions of subjects on which courses of lectures are given here and at the other universities would make you stare. berlin is a "live" place, with a fine, tall, intelligent-looking population, infinitely better-looking than that of dresden. i like the germans very much, so far (which is not far at all) as i have got to know them. the apophthegm, "a fat man consequently a good man," has much of truth in it. the germans come out strong on their abdomens,--even when these are not vast in capacity, one feels that they are of mighty powerful construction, and play a much weightier part in the economy of the man than with us,--affording a massive, immovable background to the consciousness, over which, as on the surface of a deep and tranquil sea, the motley images contributed by the other senses to life's drama glide and play without raising more than a pleasant ripple,--while with _us_, who have no such voluminous background, they forever touch bottom, or come out on the other side, or kick up such a tempest and fury that we enjoy no repose. the germans have leisure, kindness to strangers, a sort of square honesty, and an absence of false shame and damned pecuniary pretension that makes intercourse with them very agreeable. the language is infernal; and i seem to be making no progress beyond the stage in which one just begins to misunderstand and to make one's self misunderstood. the scientific literature is even richer than i thought. in literature proper, goethe's "faust" seems to me almost worth learning the language for. i wish i could communicate to you some startling discoveries regarding our dilapidated old friend the kosmos, made since i have been here. but i actually haven't had a fresh idea. and my reading until six weeks ago, having been all in german, covered very little ground. for the past six weeks i have, by medical order, been relaxing my brain on french fiction, and am just returning to the realities of life, german and science. if you want to be consoled, refreshed, and reconciled to the kosmos, the whole from a strictly abdominal point of view, read "l'ami fritz," and "les confessions d'un joueur de clarinette," etc., by erckmann-chatrian. they are books of gold, so don't read them till you are just in the mood and all other wisdom is of no avail. then they will open the skies to you. on looking back over this letter i perceive i have unwittingly been betrayed into a more gloomy tone than i intended, and than would convey a faithful impression of my usual mental condition--in which occur moments of keen enjoyment. the contemplation of my letter of credit alone makes me chuckle for hours. if i ever have leisure i will write an additional bridgewater, illustrating the beneficence and ingenuity, etc., in providing me with a letter of credit when so many poor devils have none. there, i have again unintentionally fallen into a vein of irony--i do not mean it. i am full of hope in the future. my back, etc., are far better since i have been in teplitz; in fact i feel like a new man. i have several excellent letters to people here, and when they return from the country, when t. s. perry arrives for the winter, when the lectures get a-going, and i get thinking again, when long letters from you and the rest of my "_friends_" (ha! ha!) arrive regularly at short intervals--i shall mock the state of kings. you had better believe i have thought of you with affection at intervals since i have been away, and prized your qualities of head, heart, and person, and my priceless luck in possessing your confidence and friendship in a way i never did at home; and cursed myself that i didn't make more of you when i was by you, but, like the base indian, threw evening after evening away which i might have spent in your bosom, sitting in your whitely-lit-up room, drinking in your profound wisdom, your golden jibes, your costly imagery, listening to your shuddering laughter, baptizing myself afresh, in short, in your friendship--the thought of all this makes me even now forget your epistolary peculiarities. but pray, my dear old wendell, let me have _one_ letter from you--tell me how your law business gets on, of your adventures, thoughts, discoveries (even though but of mares' nests, they will be interesting to your williams); books read, good stories heard, girls fallen in love with--nothing can fail to please me, except your failing to write. please give my love to john gray, jim higginson and henry bowditch. tell h. b. i will write to him very soon; but that is no reason why he should not write to me without waiting, and tell me about himself and medicine in boston. give my very best regards also to your father, mother and sister. and believe me ever your friend, wm. james. p. s. why can't you write me the result of your study of the _vis viva_ question? i have not thought of it since i left. i wish very much you would, if the trouble be not too great. anyhow you could write the central formulas without explication, and oblige yours. excuse the scrawliness of this too hurriedly written letter. _to henry james._ berlin, _sept. , _. beloved 'arry,--i hope you will not be severely disappointed on opening this fat envelope to find it is not all _letter_. i will first explain to you the nature of the enclosed document and then proceed to personal matters. the other day, as i was sitting alone with my deeply breached letter of credit, beweeping my outcast state, and wondering what i could possibly do for a living, it flashed across me that i might write a "notice" of h. grimm's novel which i had just been reading. to conceive with me is to execute, as you well know. and after sweating fearfully for three days, erasing, tearing my hair, copying, recopying, etc., etc., i have just succeeded in finishing the enclosed. i want you to read it, and if, after correcting the style and thoughts, with the aid of mother, alice and father, and rewriting it if possible, you judge it to be capable of interesting in any degree anyone in the world but h. grimm, himself, to send it to the "nation" or the "round table." i feel that a living is hardly worth being gained at this price. style is not my forte, and to strike the mean between pomposity and vulgar familiarity is indeed difficult. still, an the rich guerdon accrue, an but ten beauteous dollars lie down on their green and glossy backs within the family treasury in consequence of my exertions, i shall feel glad that i have made them. i have not seen grimm yet as he is in switzerland. in his writings he is possessed of real imagination and eloquence, chiefly in an ethical line, and the novel is really _distingué_, somewhat as cherbuliez's are, only with rather a deficiency on the physical and animal side. he is, to my taste, too idealistic, and father would scout him for his arrant moralism. goethe seems to have mainly suckled him, and the manner of this book is precisely that of "wilhelm meister" or "elective affinities." there is something not exactly _robust_ about him, but, _per contra_, great delicacy and an extreme belief in the existence and worth of truth and desire to attain it justly and impartially. in short, a rather painstaking liberality and want of careless animal spirits--which, by the bye, seem to be rather characteristics of the rising generation. but enough of him. the notice was mere taskwork. i could not get up a spark of interest in it, and i should not think it would be _d'actualité_ for the "nation." still, i could think of nothing else to do, and was bound to do something.[ ] ... i am a new man since i have been here, both from the ruddy hues of health which mantle on my back, and from the influence of this live city on my spirits. dresden was a place in which it always seemed afternoon; and as i used to sit in my cool and darksome room, and see through the ancient window the long dusty sunbeams slanting past the roof angles opposite down into the deep well of a street, and hear the distant droning of the market and think of no reason why it should not thus continue _in secula seculorum_, i used to have the same sort of feeling as that which now comes over me when i remember days passed in grandma's old house in albany. here, on the other hand, it is just like home. berlin, i suppose, is the most american-looking city in europe. in the quarter which i inhabit, the streets are all at right angles, very broad, with dusty trees growing in them, houses all new and flat-roofed, covered with stucco, and of every imaginable irregularity in height, bleak, ugly, unsettled-looking--_werdend_. germany is, i find, as a whole (i hardly think more experience will change my opinion), very nearly related to our country, and the german nature and ours so akin in fundamental qualities, that to come here is not much of an experience. there is a general colorlessness and bleakness about the outside look of life, and in artistic matters a wide-spread manifestation of the very same creative spirit that designs our kerosene-lamp models, for instance, at home. nothing in short that is worth making a pilgrimage to see. to travel in italy, in egypt, or in the tropics, may make creation widen to one's view; but to one of our race all that is _peculiar_ in germany is mental, and _that_ germany can be brought to us.... (_after dinner._) i have just been out to dine. i am gradually getting acquainted with all the different restaurants in the neighborhood, of which there are an endless number, and will presently choose one for good,--certainly not the one where i went today, where i paid _groschen_ for a soup, chicken and potatoes, and was almost prevented from breathing by the damned condescension of the waiters. i fairly sigh for a home table. i used to find a rather pleasant excitement in dining "round," that is long since played out. could i but find some of the honest, florid and ornate ministers that wait on you at the parker house, here, i would stick to their establishment, no matter what the fare. these indifferent reptiles here, dressed in cast-off wedding-suits, insolent and disobliging and always trying to cheat you in the change, are the plague of my life. after dinner i took quite a long walk under the linden and round by the palace and museum. there are great numbers of statues (a great many of them "equestrian") here, and you have no idea how they light up the place. what you say about the change of the seasons wakens an echo in my soul. today is really a harbinger of winter, and felt like an october day at home, with a northwest wind, cold and crisp with a white light, and the red leaves falling and blowing everywhere. i expect t. s. perry in a week. we shall have a very good large parlor and bedroom, _together_, in this house, and steer off in fine style right into the bowels of the winter. i expect it to be a stiff one, as everyone speaks of it here with a certain solemnity.... i wish you would articulately display to me in your future letters the names of all the books you have been reading. "a great many books, none but good ones," is provokingly vague. on looking back at what _i_ have read since i left home, it shows exceeding small, owing in great part i suppose to its being in german. i have just got settled down again--after a nearly-two-months' debauch on french fiction, during which time mrs. sand, the fresh, the bright, the free; the somewhat shrill but doughty balzac, who has risen considerably in my esteem or rather in my affection; théophile gautier the good, the golden-mouthed, in turn captivated my attention; not to speak of the peerless erckmann-chatrian, who renews one's belief in the succulent harmonies of creation--and a host of others. i lately read diderot, "oeuvres choisies," vols., which are entertaining to the utmost from their animal spirits and the comic modes of thinking, speaking and behaving of the time. think of meeting continually such delicious sentences as this,--he is speaking of the educability of beasts,--"et peut-on savoir jusqu'où l'usage des mains porterait les singes s'ils avaient le loisir comme la faculté d'inventer, et si la frayeur continuelle que leur inspirent les hommes ne les retenait dans l'abrutissement"!!! but i must pull up, as i have to write to father still.... adieu, lots of love from your aff. wilhelm. * * * * * the preceding letter shows james as but recently arrived in berlin and as arranging himself there for a winter of physiology at the university. he was soon joined by his young compatriot thomas sergeant perry, an intimate friend of earlier newport days and of the subsequent boston and cambridge years, and the two young americans set up joint lodgings at number in the mittelstrasse. although james's main purpose was to work at the university, he was luckily not without social resources. george bancroft, the historian and former secretary of the navy and minister to england, was at this time representing the united states in berlin and was an old family acquaintance. his and another hospitable family, the louis thieses, who had been cambridge neighbors and whose house in quincy street the james parents had acquired upon mr. thies's return to his native land, were a link with home, and at the same time rendered hospitable services to james by helping him to a few german acquaintances. by far the most congenial and interesting of these was herman grimm, the son of the younger of the universally beloved brothers of the fairy tales. herman grimm had married gisela von arnim, the daughter of goethe's bettina, and was at this time a man of just past forty years. professor of the history of art in the university of berlin, essayist, author of "the life of michael angelo" and of lectures on goethe as well as of several works of fiction, grimm was a versatile and charming specimen of that "learned" germany which we now think of as flourishing most amiably during the generation that preceded the franco-prussian war. the easy and cordial way in which his household accepted james appears, as in the next letter, to have been richly appreciated. _to his sister._ berlin, _oct. , _. your excellent long letter of september reached me in due time. if about that time you felt yourself strongly hugged by some invisible spiritual agency, you may now know that it was _me_. what would not i give if you could pay me a visit here! since i last wrote home the lingual rubicon has been passed, and i find to my surprise that i can speak german--certainly not in an ornamental manner, but there is hardly anything which i would not dare to attempt to _begin_ to say and be pretty sure that a kind providence would pull me through, somehow or other. i made the discovery at my first visit to grimm a fortnight ago, and have confirmed it several times since. i can likewise understand educated people perfectly. i feel my german as old moses used to feel his oats, and for ten days past have walked along the street dandling my head in a fatuous manner that rivets the attention of the public. the university lectures were to have begun this week, but the lazy professors have put it off to the last of the month. [illustration: pencil sketches from a pocket note-book.] i will describe to you the manner in which i spent yesterday. _ex uno disce omnes_--(a german proverb). i awoke at half-past eight at the manly voice of t. s. perry caroling his morning hymn from his neighboring bed--if the instrument of torture the germans sleep in be worthy of that name. after some preliminary conversation we arose, performed our washing, each in a couple of tumblers full of water in a little basin of this shape [sketch], donned our clothes, and stepped into our salon into which the morning sun was streaming and adding its genial warmth to that of the great porcelain stove, into which the maid had put the handful of fuel (which, when ignited, makes the stove radiate heat for twelve hours) the while we slumbered. t. s. p. found on the table a letter from [moorfield] storey, which the same vigilant maid had placed there, and i the morning paper, full of excitement about the italian affairs and the diabolical designs of napoleon on germany. after a breakfast of cocoa, eggs and excellent rolls, i finished the paper, and took up my regular reading, while t. s. p. worked at his german lesson. i finished the chapter in a treatise on galvanism which bears the neat and concise title of [_not deciphered_]. by o'clock t. s. p. had gone to his german lesson, and it was about time for me to rig up to go to grimm's to dine, having received a kind invitation the day before. as i passed through the pleasant wood called the "thiergarten," which was filled with gay civil and military cavaliers, i looked hard for the imposing equestrian figure of the hon. geo. bancroft; but he was not to be seen. i got safely to grimm's, and in a moment the other guest arrived. herr professor----, whose name i could not catch,[ ] a man of a type i have never met before. he is writing now a life of schleiermacher of which one volume is published. a soft fat man with black hair (somewhat the type of the photographs of renan), of a totally uncertain age between and , with little bits of green eyes swimming in their fat-filled orbits, and the rest of his face quite "realizing one's idea" of the infant bacchus. i, with my usual want of enterprise, have neglected hitherto to provide myself with a swallow-tailed coat; but i had a resplendent fresh-biled shirt and collar, while the professor, who wore the "obligatory coat," etc., had an exceedingly grimy shirt and collar and a rusty old rag of a cravat. which of us most violated the proprieties i know not, but your feminine nature will decide. grimm wore a yellowish, greenish, brownish coat whose big collar and cuffs and enormous flaps made me strongly suspect it had been the property of the brothers grimm, who had worn it on state occasions, and dying, bequeathed it to herman. the dinner was very good. the prof. was overflowing with information with regard to everything knowable and unknowable. he is the first man i have ever met of a class, which must be common here, of men to whom learning has become as natural as breathing. a learned man at home is in a measure isolated; his study is carried on in private, at reserved hours. to the public he appears as a citizen and neighbor, etc., and they know at most _about_ him that he is addicted to this or that study; his intellectual occupation always has something of a put-on character, and remains external at least to some part of his being. whereas this cuss seemed to me to be nothing if not a professor ... [_line not deciphered_] as if he were able to stand towards the rest of society _merely_ in the relation of a man learned in this or that branch--and never for a moment forget the interests or put off the instincts of his specialty. if he should meet people or circumstances that could in no measure be dealt with on that ground, he would pass on and ignore them, instead of being obliged, like an american, to sink for the time the specialty. he talked and laughed incessantly at table, related the whole history of buddhism to mrs. grimm, and i know not what other points of religious history. after dinner mrs. grimm went, at the suggestion of her husband, to take a nap ... [_line not deciphered_] while g. and the professor engaged in a hot controversy about the natural primitive forms of religion, grimm inclining to the view that the historically first form must have been monotheistic. i noticed the professor's replies grow rather languid, when suddenly his fat head dropped forward, and g. cried out that he had better take a good square nap in the arm-chair. he eagerly snatched at the proposal. grimm got him a clean handkerchief, which he threw over his face, and presently he seemed to slumber. grimm woke him in ten minutes to take some coffee. he rose, refreshed like a giant, and proceeded to fight with grimm about the identity of homer. grimm has just been studying the question and thinks that the poems of homer _must_ have been composed in a _written_ language. from there through a discussion about the madness of hamlet--g. being convinced that shakespeare _meant_ to mystify the reader, and intentionally constructed a riddle. the sun waned low and i took my leave in company with the prof. we parted at the corner, _without_ the prof. telling me (as an honest, hospitable american would have done) that he would be happy to see me at his domicile, so that i know not whether i shall be able to continue acquainted with a man i would fain know more of. i got into a droschke and, coming home, found t. s. p. in the room, and while telling him of the events of the dinner was interrupted by the entrance of the rev. h. w. foote of stone chapel.... the excellent little man had presented himself a few evenings before, bringing me from dresden a very characteristic note from elizabeth peabody (in which among other things she says she is "on the wing for italy"--she is as _folâtre_ a creature as your friend mrs. w----), and we have dined together every day since, and had agreed to go to hear "fidelio" together at the opera that evening. foote is really a good man and i shall prosecute his friendship every moment of his stay here; seems to have his mind open to every interest, and has a sweet modesty that endears him to the heart. he goes home next month. i advise harry to call and see him; i know he will sympathize with him. t. s. p. never grows weary of repeating a pun of ware's about him in italy, who, when asked what had become of foote (they traveled for a time together), replied: "i left him at the hotel, hand in glove with the bootts." "fidelio" was truly musical. after it, i went to zennig's restaurant (it was over by quarter before nine), where i had made a rendez-vous with a young doctor to whom mr. thies had given me a letter. having been away from berlin, i had seen him for the first time the day before yesterday. he is a very swell young jew with a gorgeous cravat, blue-black whiskers and oily ringlets, not prepossessing; and we had made this appointment. i waited half an hour and, the faithless israelite not appearing, came home, and after reading a few hours went to bed. _two hours later._ i have just come in from dinner, a ceremony which i perform at the aforesaid zennig's, unter den linden. (by the bye, you must not be led by that name to imagine, as i always used to, an avenue over-shadowed by patriarchal lime trees, whose branches form a long arch. the "linden" are two rows of small, scrubby, abortive horse-chestnuts, beeches, limes and others, planted like the trees in commonwealth avenue.) zennig's is a table-d'hôte, so-called notwithstanding the unities of hour and table are violated. you have soup, three courses, and dessert or coffee and cheese for - / groschen if you buy tickets, and i shall probably dine there all winter. we dined with foote today, who spoke among other things of a new english novel whose heroine "had the bust and arms of the venus of milo." t. s. p. remarked that her having the arms might account for the venus herself being without them. i enclose you the photograph of an actress here with whom i am in love. a neat coiffure, is it not? i also send you a couple more of my own precious portraits. i got them taken to fulfill a promise i had made to a young bohemian lady at teplitz, the niece of the landlady. sweet anna adamowiz! (pronounce--_vitch_), which means descendant of adam.--she belongs consequently to one of the very first families in bohemia. i used to drive dull care away by writing her short notes in the bohemian tongue such as; "navzdy budes v me mysli irohm pamatkou," _i.e._, forever bloomest thou in my memory;--"dej mne tooji bodo biznu," give me your photograph; and isolated phrases as "mlaxik, dicka, pritel, pritelkyne," _i.e._, jüngling, mädchen, freund, freundinn; "mi luja," i love, etc. these were carried to her by the chambermaid, and the style, a little more florid than was absolutely _required_ by mere courtesy, was excused by her on the ground of my limited acquaintance with the subtleties of the language. besides, the sentiments were on the whole good and the error, if any, in the right direction. when she gave me her photograph (which i regret to say she spelt "fotokraft"!!!!) she made me promise to send her mine. _hence_ mine. i have been this afternoon to get a dress-coat measured, which will doubtless be a comfort to you to know. i must now stop. g-- * * * * * i had got as far as the above _g_ when the faithless israelite of yesterday evening came in. he gave a satisfactory explanation of his absence and has been making a very pleasant visit. he is coming back at nine o'clock to take us (after the german mode of exercising hospitality) to a tavern to meet some of his boon companions. i reckon he is a better fellow than he seemed at first sight. i will leave this letter open till tomorrow to let you know what happens at the tavern, and whether the boon companions are old-clothes men, or christian gentlemen. good-night, my darling sister! sei tausend mal von mir geküsst.[ ] give my best love to father, mother, aunt kate, the boys and everyone. ever yr. loving bro., wm. james. * * * * * p.m. decidedly the jew rises in my estimation. he treated us in the german fashion to a veal cutlet and a glass of beer which we paid for ourselves. his boon companions were apparently christians of a half-baked sort. one who sat next to me was half drunk [and] insisted on talking the most hideous english. t. s. p., who necessarily took small part in the conversation, endeavored to explain to selberg that he was a "skeleton at the banquet," but could not get through. i came to his assistance, but forgot, of course, the word "skelett," and found nothing better to say than that he was a _vertebral column_ at their banquet, which classical allusion i do not think was understood by the jew. the young men did not behave with the politeness and attention to us which would have been shown to two germans by a similar crowd at home. selberg himself however improved every minute, and i have no doubt will turn out a capital fellow. excuse these scraps of paper, w. j. good night. _to his sister._ berlin, _nov. , _. sÃ�ss balchen!--i stump wearily up the three flights of stairs after my dinner to this lone room where no human company but a ghastly lithograph of johannes müller and a grinning skull are to cheer me. out in the street the slaw and fine rain is falling as if it would never stop--the sky is low and murky, and the streets filled with water and that finely worked-up paste of mud which never is seen on our continent. for some time past i have thought with longing of the brightness and freshness of my home in new england--of the extraordinary, and in ordinary moments little appreciated, but sometimes-coming-across-you-and-striking-you-with-an-unexpected-sense-of-rich-privilege blessings of a mother's love (excuse my somewhat german style)--of the advantage of having a youthful-hearted though bald-headed father who looks at the kosmos as if it had some life in it--of the delicious and respectable meals in the family circle with the aforesaid father telling touching horse-car anecdotes,[ ] and the serene harry dealing his snubs around--with a clean female handmaiden to wait, and an open fire to toast one's self at afterwards instead of one of these pallid porcelain monuments here,--with a whole country around you full of friends and acquaintances in whose company you can refresh your social nature, a library of books in the house and a still bigger one over the way,--and all the rest of it. the longer i live, the more inclined am i to value the domestic affections and to be satisfied with the domestic and citizenly virtues (probably only for the reason that i am temporarily debarred from exercising any of them, i blush to think). at any rate i feel _now_ and _here_ the absence of any object with which to start up some sympathy, and the feeling is real and unpleasant while it lasts. i ought not, i confess, to sing in this tune _today_, for before dinner i made a call on a young lady here (named frl. bornemann) whom i had met at mrs. grimm's and whom mrs. g. had advised me to go and see. she lives with her brother, an _advocat_. they are rich orflings, and i had really a friendly visit there and hope it may ripen into familiarity. i got on tolerably well with the german--only making one laughable mistake, viz. in talking of the shower of meteors, _stern-schnuppen_, the other night to speak of the "stern-schnupfen" (_schnupfen_ = snuffles, catarrh). and this visit is the occasion of my writing this week to you. frl. b. is intimate with miss thies, and hearing that we lived in their house, she was seized with an extremely german desire to have some ivy leaves or other leaves from the garden to surprise miss thies with on christmas. your young female heart will probably beat responsive to the project and _infallibly_ by return mail send the leaves. she only wants one or two. you might also send a board from the flooring, some old grass and bits of hay from the front "lawn," or cut out an eye from the "gal" who is so much "struck with them babies"[ ] in the parlor. they would all awaken tender memories, i have no doubt. now do not delay even for one day to execute this, alice! but set about it now with this letter in your hand. you see there is no time to lose, and i am very anxious not to disappoint the excellent young lady. the few commissions and questions i have sent home have been so unnoticed and disregarded that i hardly hope for success this time. it has always been the way with me, however, from birth upwards, and heaven forbid that i should now begin to complain! but lo! i here send another commission. i definitely appoint by name my father h. james, senior, author of substance & shadder, etc., to perform it; and solemnly charge all the rest of you to be as lions in his path, as thorns upon his side, as lumps in his mashed potatoes, until he do it or write me nay. 'tis to send by post cousin's lectures on kant, and that other french translation of a german introduction to kant, which he bought last winter! by return of mail! and if not convenient to send the books, to write me the name of the author of the last-mentioned one, which i have forgotten. it behooves me to learn something of the "philosopher of königsberg," and i want these to ease the way. i sincerely hope that these words may not be utterly thrown away. i got a letter from mother the day after i wrote last week to harry, without date, but written after the tweedies' visit. i got this morning a "nation" and the "advertisement" to father's essay on swedenborg. in the latter the old lyre is twanged with a greater freshness and force than ever, so that even t. s. perry was made to vibrate in unison with it. i wrote to father three weeks ago respecting his former article. i hope the letter is by this time in his hands. i am very sorry the fat one went astray. it contained, _inter alia_, an account of my expenditure up to its time of writing. i would give a good deal to be able to enjoy as you are all doing the society of venerable brother robertson. it is a great pity that we should get so estranged by separation from each other. i wish, now he's at home, he would once write to me. i have got tolerably well to work, and enjoy my lectures at the university intensely. are the "rainbows for children" i see noticed in the "nation" that old book by mrs. tappan? i hope harry is not the person therein mentioned as having palmed off on godkin a translation from the german as an original article on thorwaldsen. you have not told me a word about the tappans since i quit. i am very glad to hear of aunt kate's leg being so much better and staying so. tell her i hope it has not been improving at the expense of her heart, as her long silence sometimes makes me shudderingly fear. adieu. kisses to all, not forgetting ellen.[ ] ever your bruder, w. j. _to thomas w. ward._ [fragment of a letter from berlin, _circa nov. ?_] ...i have begun going to the physiological lectures at the university. there are in all seven courses and four lectures. i take five courses and three lectures. there is a bully physiological laboratory, the sight of which, inaccessible as it is to me in my present condition, gave me a sharp pang. i have blocked out some reading in physiology and psychology which i hope to execute this winter--though reading german is still disgustingly slow.... it seems to me that perhaps the time has come for psychology to begin to be a science--some measurements have already been made in the region lying between the physical changes in the nerves and the appearance of consciousness-at (in the shape of sense perceptions), and more may come of it. i am going on to study what is already known, and perhaps may be able to do some work at it. helmholtz and a man named wundt at heidelberg are working at it, and i hope i live through this winter to go to them in the summer. from all this talk you probably think i am working straight ahead--towards a definite aim. alas, no! i finger book-covers as ineffectually as ever. the fact is, this sickness takes all the spring, physical and mental, out of a man.... _to thomas w. ward._ berlin, _nov. , _. ...if six years ago i could have felt the same satisfied belief in the worthiness of a life devoted to simple, patient, monotonous, scientific labor day after day (without reference to its results) and at the same time have had some inkling of the importance and nature of _education_ (_i.e._, getting orderly habits of thought, and by intense exercise in a variety of different subjects, getting the mind supple and delicate and firm), i might be now on the path to accomplishing something some day, even if my health had turned out no better than it is. but my habits of mind have been so bad that i feel as if the greater part of the last ten years had been worse than wasted, and now have so little surplus of physical vigor as to shrink from trying to retrieve them. too late! too late! if i had been _drilled_ further in mathematics, physics, chemistry, logic, and the history of metaphysics, and had established, even if only in my memory, a firm and thoroughly familiar _basis_ of knowledge in all these sciences (like the basis of human anatomy one gets in studying medicine), to which i should involuntarily refer all subsequently acquired facts and thoughts,--instead of having now to keep going back and picking up loose ends of these elements, and wasting whole hours in looking to see how the new facts are related to them, or whether they are related to them at all,--i might be steadily advancing.--but enough! excuse the damned whine of this letter; i had no idea whatever of writing it when i sat down, but i am in a mood of indigestion and blueness. i would not send you the letter at all, were it not that i thought it might tempt you soon to write to me. you have no idea, my dear old tom, how i long to hear a word about you.... _to henry p. bowditch._ berlin, _dec. , _. bester heinrich,--i have arrived safely on this side of the ocean and hasten to inform you of the fact.--what a fine pair of young men we are to write so punctually and constantly to each other!--i will not gall you by any sarcasms, however (i naturally think you are more to blame than myself), because (as you naturally are of a similar way of thinking) you might recriminate at great length in your next and much other to-me-more-agreeable matter be crowded out of your letter. suffice [it] to say that i have thought of you continually, and with undiminished affection, since that bright april morn when we parted; but i am of such an invincibly inert nature as regards letter-writing that it takes a combination of outward and inward circumstances and motives that hardly ever happens, to start me. i wrote you a letter last summer, but destroyed it because i was in such doleful dumps while writing it that it would have given you too unpleasant an impression.... i live near the university, and attend all the lectures on physiology that are given there, but am unable to do anything in the laboratory, or to attend the cliniques or virchow's lectures and demonstrations, etc. du bois-raymond, an irascible man of about forty-five, gives a very good and clear, yea, brilliant, series of five lectures a week, and two ambitious young jews give six more between them which are almost as instructive. the opportunities for study here are superb, it seems to me. whatever they may be in paris, they can_not_ be better. the physiological laboratory, with its endless array of machinery, frogs, dogs, etc., etc., almost "bursts my gizzard," when i go by it, with vexation. the german language is not child's play. i have lately begun to understand almost everything i hear said around me; but i still speak "with a slight foreign accent," as you may suppose--and, with all my practice in reading, do not think i can read more than half as fast as in english. it is very discouraging to get over so little ground. but a steady boring away is bound to fetch it, i suppose; and it seems to me it is worth the trouble. the general level of thoroughness and exactness in scientific work here is beyond praise; and the abundance of books on every division of every subject something we english have no idea of. it all comes from the thorough mode of educating the people from childhood up. the _staats examina_, before passing which no doctor can practise here in prussia, exact an amount of physiological, and what we at home call "merely theoretical" knowledge of the candidate, which a young doctor at home would claim and receive especial distinction for having made himself master of. but the men here think it but fair; gird about their loins and set about working their way through. the general impression the germans make on me is not at all that of a remarkably intellectually gifted people; and if they are not so, their eminence must come solely from their habits of conscientious and plodding work. it may be that their expressionless faces do their minds injustice. i don't know enough of them to decide. but i know the work is a large factor in the result. it makes one repine at the way he has been brought up, to come here. unhappily most of us come too late to profit by what we see. bad habits are formed, and life hurries us on too much to stop and drill. but it seems to me that the fact of so many american students being here of late years (they outnumber greatly all other foreign students) ought to have a good influence on the training of the succeeding generation with us. tuck, dwight, dick derby, quincy, townsend, and heaven knows how many more are in vienna. tuck and dwight write me that they are getting on remarkably well. i saw them both here in september and think t. d. improves a good deal as he grows older. berlin is a bleak and unfriendly place. the inhabitants are rude and graceless, but must conceal a solid worth beneath it. i only know seven of them, and they are of the _élite_. it is very hard getting acquainted with them, as you have to make all the advances yourself; and your antagonist shifts so between friendliness and a drill sergeant's formal politeness that you never know exactly on what footing you stand with him. these prussians bow in the most amusing way you ever saw,--as if an invisible hand suddenly punched them in the abdomen and an equally invisible foot forthwith kicked them in the rear,--one time and two motions, and they do it times a day. but enough of national gossip--let us return to that about individuals. oh! that i could see thy prominent nose and thy sagacious eyes at this moment relieved against the back of that empty arm-chair that stands opposite this table. oh! that we might once again sit apart from the fretful and insipid herd of our congeners, and take counsel together concerning the world and life--our lives in particular, and all life in general. how the shy goddess would tremble in her hiding-places at the sound of our unerringly approaching voices. and how you would pour into my astonished ear all that is new and wonderful about pathology and microscopical research, all that is sound and neat about operative surgery, while i would recite the most thrilling chapters of kolliker's "entwickelungs-geschichte," or helmholtz's "innervationsfortpflanzungsgeschwindigkeitsbestimmungen"! i suppose you have been rolling on like a great growing snowball through the vast fields of medical knowledge and are fairly out of the long tunnel of low spirits that leads there by this time. it is only three months since i have taken up medical reading, as i made all sorts of excursions into the language when i came here, and, owing to the slowness of progression i spoke of above, i have not got over much ground. of course i can never hope to practise; but i shall graduate on my return, and perhaps pick up a precarious and needy living by doing work for medical periodicals or something of that kind--though i hate writing as i do the foul fiend. but i don't want to break off connexion with biological science. i can't be a teacher of physiology, pathology, or anatomy; for i can't do laboratory work, much less microscopical or anatomical. i may get better, but hardly before it will be too late for me to begin school again. i'll tell you what let's do! set up a partnership, you to run around and attend to the patients while i will stay at home and, reading everything imaginable in english, german, and french, distil it in a concentrated form into your mind. this division of labor will give the firm an immense advantage over all of our wooden-headed contemporaries. for, in your person, it will have more experience than any one else has time to acquire; and in mine, more learning. we will divide the profits equally, of course; and he who survives the other (you, probably) will inherit the whole. does not the idea tempt you? if you don't like it, i'll go you halves in the profits in any other feasible way. seriously, you see i have no very definite plans for the future; but i have enough to keep body and soul together for some years to come, and i see no need of providing for more. this talk of course is only for your "private ear." i want you to write immediately on receipt of this,--for if you don't then, you never will,--and tell me all about what you've been doing and learning and what your future plans are. also, gossip about the school and hospital. i have not had a chance to talk medicine with any one but dwight and tuck (for a week), and hunger thereafter.... believe me, ever til deth, your friend wm. james. t. s. perry of ' , who lives with me here, reminds me of a story to tell you. he lived with architect ware in paris, and ware received a visit from dr. bowditch and mr. dixwell last summer. the concierge woman was terribly impressed by the personal majesty of your uncles, particularly of dr. bowditch, of whom she said: "il a le grand air, tout à fait comme christophe colomb!" it would be curious to understand exactly who and what she thought c. c. was, or whether she would have thought mr. dixwell like americus vespucius if she had known _him_. _to o. w. holmes, jr._ berlin, _jan. , _. my dear wendle,--ich weiss nicht was soll es bedeuten, dass ich so traurig bin, tonight. the ghosts of the past all start from their unquiet graves and keep dancing a senseless whirligig around me so that, after trying in vain to read three books, to sleep, or to think, i clutch the pen and ink and resolve to work off the fit by a few lines to one of the most obtrusive ghosts of all--namely the tall and lank one of charles street. good golly! how i would prefer to have about twenty-four hours talk with you up in that whitely lit-up room--without the sun rising or the firmament revolving so as to put the gas out, without sleep, food, clothing or shelter except your whiskey bottle, of which, or the like of which, i have not partaken since i have been in these longitudes! i should like to have you opposite me in any mood, whether the facetiously excursive, the metaphysically discursive, the personally confidential, or the jadedly _cursive_ and argumentative--so that the oyster-shells which enclose my being might slowly turn open on their rigid hinges under the radiation, and the critter within loll out his dried-up gills into the circumfused ichor of life, till they grew so fat as not to know themselves again. i feel as if a talk with you of any kind could not fail to set me on my legs again for three weeks at least. i have been chewing on two or three dried-up old cuds of ideas i brought from america with me, till they have disappeared, and the nudity of the kosmos has got beyond anything i have as yet experienced. i have not succeeded in finding any companion yet, and i feel the want of some outward stimulus to my soul. there is a man named grimm here whom my soul loves, but in the way emerson speaks of, _i.e._ like those people we meet on staircases, etc., and who always ignore our feelings towards them. i don't think we shall ever be able to establish a straight line of communication between us. i don't know how it is i am able to take so little interest in reading this winter. i marked out a number of books when i first came here, to finish. what with their heaviness and the damnable slowness with which the dutch still goes, they weigh on me like a haystack. i loathe the thought of them; and yet they have poisoned my slave of a conscience so that i can't enjoy anything else. i have reached an age when practical work of some kind clamors to be done--and i must still wait! there! having worked off that pent-up gall of six weeks' accumulation i feel more genial. i wish i could have some news of you--now that the postage is lowered to such a ridiculous figure (and no letter is double) there remains no _shadow_ of an excuse for not writing--but, still, i don't expect anything from you. i suppose you are sinking ever deeper into the sloughs of the law--yet i ween the eternal mystery still from time to time gives her goad another turn in the raw she once established between your ribs. don't let it heal over yet. when i get home let's establish a philosophical society to have regular meetings and discuss none but the very tallest and broadest questions--to be composed of none but the very topmost cream of boston manhood. it will give each one a chance to air his own opinion in a grammatical form, and to sneer and chuckle when he goes home at what damned fools all the other members are--and may grow into something very important after a sufficient number of years. the german character is without mountains or valleys; its favorite food is roast veal; and in other lines it prefers whatever may be the analogue thereof--all which gives life here a certain flatness to the high-tuned american taste. i don't think any one need care much about coming here unless he wants to dig very deeply into some exclusive specialty. i have been reading nothing of any interest but some chapters of physiology. there has a good deal been doing here of late on the physiology of the senses, overlapping perception, and consequently, in a measure, the psychological field. i am wading my way towards it, and if in course of time i strike on anything exhilarating, i'll let you know. i'll now pull up. i don't know whether you take it as a compliment that i should only write to you when in the dismalest of dumps--perhaps you ought to--you, the one emergent peak, to which i cling when all the rest of the world has sunk beneath the wave. believe me, my wendly boy, what poor possibility of friendship abides in the crazy frame of w. j. meanders about thy neighborhood. good-bye! keep the same bold front as ever to the common enemy--and don't forget your ally, w. j. that is, after all, all i wanted to write you and it may float the rest of the letter. pray give my warm regards to your father, mother and sister; and my love to the honest gray and to jim higginson. [_written on the outside of the envelope._] _jan. ._ by a strange coincidence, after writing this last night, i received yours this morning. not to sacrifice the postage-stamps which are already on the envelope (economical w!) i don't reopen it. but i will write you again soon. meanwhile, bless your heart! thank you! _vide_ shakespeare: sonnet xxlx. _to thomas w. ward._ berlin, _jan. --, _. ...it made me feel quite sad to hear you talk about the inward deadness and listlessness into which you had again fallen in new york. bate not a jot of heart nor hope, but steer right onward. take for granted that you've got a temperament from which you must make up your mind to expect twenty times as much anguish as other people need to get along with. regard it as something as external to you as possible, like the curl of your hair. remember when old december's darkness is everywhere about you, that the world is really in every minutest point as full of life as in the most joyous morning you ever lived through; that the sun is whanging down, and the waves dancing, and the gulls skimming down at the mouth of the amazon, for instance, as freshly as in the first morning of creation; and the hour is just as fit as any hour that ever was for a new gospel of cheer to be preached. i am sure that one can, by merely thinking of these matters of fact, limit the power of one's evil moods over one's way of looking at the kosmos. i am very glad that you think the methodical habits you must stick to in book-keeping are going to be good discipline to you. i confess to having had a little feeling of spite when i heard you had gone back on science; for i had always thought you would one day emerge into deep and clear water there--by keeping on long enough. but i really don't think it so _all_-important what our occupation is, so long as we do respectably and keep a clean bosom. whatever we are _not_ doing is pretty sure to come to us at intervals, in the midst of our toil, and fill us with pungent regrets that it is lost to us. i have felt so about zoölogy whenever i was not studying it, about anthropology when studying physiology, about practical medicine lately, now that i am cut off from it, etc., etc., etc.; and i conclude that that sort of nostalgia is a necessary incident of our having imaginations, and we must expect it more or less whatever we are about. i don't mean to say that in some occupations we should not have less of it though. my dear old thomas, you have always sardonically greeted me as the man of calm and clockwork feelings. the reason is that your own vehemence and irregularity was so much greater, that it involuntarily, no matter what my private mood might have been, threw me into an outwardly antagonistic one in which i endeavored to be a clog to your mobility, as it were. so i fancy you have always given me credit for less sympathy with you and understanding of your feelings than i really have had. all last winter, for instance, when i was on the continual verge of suicide, it used to amuse me to hear you chaff my animal contentment. the appearance of it arose from my reaction against what seemed to me your unduly _noisy_ and demonstrative despair. the fact is, i think, that we have both gone through a good deal of similar trouble; we resemble each other in being both persons of rather wide sympathies, not particularly logical in the processes of our minds, and of mobile temperament; though your physical temperament being so much more tremendous than mine makes a great quantitative difference both in your favor, and against you, as the case may be. well, neither of us wishes to be a mere loafer; each wishes a work which shall by its mere _exercise_ interest him and at the same time allow him to feel that through it he takes hold of the reality of things--whatever that may be--in some measure. now the first requisite is hard for us to fill, by reason of our wide sympathy and mobility; we can only choose a business in which the evil of feeling restless shall be at a minimum, and then go ahead and make the best of it. that minimum will grow less every year.--in this connection i will again refer to a poem you probably know: "a grammarian's funeral," by r. browning, in "men and women." it always strengthens my backbone to read it, and i think the feeling it expresses of throwing upon eternity the responsibility of making good your one-sidedness somehow or other ("leave _now_ for dogs and apes, man has forever") is a gallant one, and fit to be trusted if one-sided activity is in itself at all respectable. the other requirement is hard theoretically, though practically not so hard as the first. all i can tell you is the thought that with me outlasts all others, and onto which, like a rock, i find myself washed up when the waves of doubt are weltering over all the rest of the world; and that is the thought of my having a will, and of my belonging to a brotherhood of men possessed of a capacity for pleasure and pain of different kinds. for even at one's lowest ebb of belief, the fact remains empirically certain (and by our will we can, if not _absolutely_ refrain from looking beyond that empirical fact, at least practically and _on the whole_ accept it and let it suffice us)--that men suffer and enjoy. and if we have to give up all hope of seeing into the purposes of god, or to give up theoretically the idea of final causes, and of god anyhow as vain and leading to nothing for us, we can, by our will, make the enjoyment of our brothers stand us in the stead of a final cause; and through a knowledge of the fact that that enjoyment on the whole depends on what individuals accomplish, lead a life so active, and so sustained by a clean conscience as not to need to fret much. individuals can add to the welfare of the race in a variety of ways. you may delight its senses or "taste" by some production of luxury or art, comfort it by discovering some moral truth, relieve its pain by concocting a new patent medicine, save its labor by a bit of machinery, or by some new application of a natural product. you may open a road, help start some social or business institution, contribute your mite in _any_ way to the mass of the work which each generation subtracts from the task of the next; and you will come into _real_ relations with your brothers--with some of them at least. i know that in a certain point of view, and the most popular one, this seems a cold activity for our affections, a stone instead of bread. we long for sympathy, for a purely _personal_ communication, first with the soul of the world, and then with the soul of our fellows. and happy are they who think, or know, that they have got them! but to those who must confess with bitter anguish that they are perfectly isolated from the soul of the world, and that the closest human love encloses a potential germ of estrangement or hatred, that all _personal_ relation is finite, conditional, mixed (_vide_ in dana's "household book of poetry," stanzas by c. p. cranch, "thought is deeper than speech," etc., etc.), it may not prove such an unfruitful substitute. at least, when you have added to the property of the race, even if no one knows your name, yet it is certain that, without what you have done, some individuals must needs be acting now in a somewhat different manner. you have modified their life; you are in _real_ relation with them; you have in so far forth entered into their being. and is that such an unworthy stake to set up for our good, after all? who are these men anyhow? our predecessors, even apart from the physical link of generation, have made us what we are. every thought you now have and every act and intention owes its complexion to the acts of your dead and living brothers. _everything_ we know and are is through men. we have no revelation but through man. every sentiment that warms your gizzard, every brave act that ever made your pulse bound and your nostril open to a confident breath was a man's act. however mean a man may be, man is _the best we know_; and your loathing as you turn from what you probably call the vulgarity of human life--your homesick yearning for a _better_, somewhere--is furnished by your manhood; your ideal is made up of traits suggested by past men's words and actions. your manhood shuts you in forever, bounds all your thoughts like an overarching sky--and all the good and true and high and dear that you know by virtue of your sharing in it. they are the natural product of our race. so that it seems to me that a sympathy with men as such, and a desire to contribute to the weal of a species, which, whatever may be said of it, contains all that we acknowledge as good, may very well form an external interest sufficient to keep one's moral pot boiling in a very lively manner to a good old age. the idea, in short, of becoming an accomplice in a sort of "mankind its own god or providence" scheme is a _practical_ one. i don't mean, by any means, to affirm that we must come to that, i only say it is _a_ mode of envisaging life; which is capable of affording moral support--and may at any rate help to bridge over the despair of skeptical intervals. i confess that, in the lonesome gloom which beset me for a couple of months last summer, the only feeling that kept me from giving up was that by waiting and living, by hook or crook, long enough, i might make my _nick_, however small a one, in the raw stuff the race has got to shape, and so assert my reality. the stoic feeling of being a sentinel obeying orders without knowing the general's plans is a noble one. and so is the divine enthusiasm of moral culture (channing, etc.), and i think that, successively, they may all help to ballast the same man. what a preacher i'm getting to be! i had no idea when i sat down to begin this long letter that i was going to be carried away so far. i feel like a humbug whenever i endeavor to enunciate moral truths, because i am at bottom so skeptical. but i resolved to throw off "_views_" to you, because i know how stimulated you are likely to be by any accidental point of view or formula which you may not exactly have struck on before (_e.g._, what you write me of the effect of that sentence of your mother's about marrying). i had no idea this morning that i had so many of the elements of a pascal in me. excuse the presumption.--but to go back. i think that in business as well as in science one can have this philanthropic aspiration satisfied. i have been growing lately to feel that a great mistake of my past life--which has been prejudicial to my education, and by telling me which, and by making me understand it some years ago, some one might have conferred a great benefit on me--is an impatience of _results_. inexperience of life is the cause of it, and i imagine it is generally an american characteristic. i think you suffer from it. results should not be too voluntarily aimed at or too busily thought of. they are _sure_ to float up of their own accord, from a long enough daily work at a given matter; and i think the work as a mere occupation ought to be the primary interest with us. at least, i am sure this is so in the intellectual realm, and i strongly suspect it is the secret of german prowess therein. have confidence, even when you seem to yourself to be making no progress, that, if you but go on in your own uninteresting way, they must bloom out in their good time. ouf, my dear old tom! i think i must pull up. i have no time or energy left to gossip to thee of our life here.... _to his father._ teplitz, _jan. , _. my dear dad,--don't allow yourself to be shocked with surprise on reading the above date till you hear the reasons which have brought me here at this singular season. they are grounded in the increasing wear and tear of my life in berlin, and in my growing impatience to get well enough to be able to do some work in the summer.... i find myself getting more interested in physiology and nourishing a hope that i _may_ be able to make its study (and perhaps its teaching) my profession; and, joining the thought that if i came to teplitz now for three weeks i could have still another turn at it, if necessary, in april,--before the summer semester at heidelberg began,--to the consciousness that in my present condition i was doing worse than wasting time at berlin, i took advantage of a fine sunshiny morning four days ago, packed my trunk, said good-bye to t. s. perry, and took the railroad for this place. i hope you won't think from seeing me back here that my loudly trumpeted improvement in the autumn was fallacious. on the contrary, i feel more than ever, now that i am back in presence of my old measures of strength (distances, etc.), how substantial that improvement was--only it has not yet bridged the way up to complete soundness. i have been feeling for a month past that i ought to come here, but an effeminate shrinking from loneliness and so forth, and the inhuman blackness of the weather kept me from it. now that i am here, i am only sorry i deferred it so long. i found the _fürstenbad_ open, and with four other "cure-guests" in it. all its varletry, male and female, fat as wood-chucks from their winter's repose; a theatre (!) going in town three times a week; the head waiter of the restaurant where in the summer i used, for the price of a glass of milk, to read the "times" and the "independence belge," no longer wearing the pallid look of stern and desperate _business_ with which he used to scud around among the crowded tables, and which used to make me stand in mortal fear of him, but appearing as a comfortable and red-cheeked human being with even greater conversational gifts than usual; every one moreover glad to see me, etc., etc. the veil of winter has been lifted for a week and the buried spring [has] peeped out and taken a-breathing before her time. today everything is a-dripping, the earth has a moving smell, and the sky is full of spots of melting blue. if such weather but lasts, the time will pass here very quickly. i have brought a lot of good books, and if their interest wanes have the whole circulating library to fall back on. so much for teplitz. sunday before last mrs. bancroft told me that the most beautiful woman in berlin had asked after me with affection and expressed a desire to see me. after making me guess in vain she told me that it was mrs. lieutenant pertz, _née_ emma wilkinson.[ ] i went to see her and found her looking hardly a day older or different, and certainly very good-looking, though probably mrs. b.'s description was exaggerated. she had the sweetest and simplest of manners and asked all about the family, to whom she sends her love. she told me nothing particular about her own family which we did not know, except that jamie had an aquiline nose. she has three fine children, much more of the british than the german type, and it was right pleasant to see her. she has very handsome brown eyes. nice manners are a very charming thing, and some of the ladies here might set a good example to some _other_ young ladies i might mention (who do not live miles from quincy street); fräulein borneman, for example. let alice cultivate a manner clinging yet self-sustained, reserved yet confidential; let her face beam with serious beauty, and glow with quiet delight at having you speak to her; let her exhibit short glimpses of a soul _with wings_, as it were (but very short ones); let her voice be musical and the tones of her voice full of caressing, and every movement of her full of grace, and you have no idea how lovely she will become.... i am sorry wilky has had a relapse of his fever. he and bob are still the working ones of the family (harry too, though!), but i hope my day will yet come. give him and bob a great deal of love for me. life in teplitz is favorable to letter-writing and i will write to bob next week. love to every one else, from yours ever, wm. james. _to henry james._ fÃ�rstenbad, teplitz, _mar. , _. ...i have been admitted to the intimacy of a family here named g----, who keep a hotel and restaurant. immense, bulky, garrulous, kind-hearted woman, father with thick red face, little eyes and snow-white hair, two daughters of about twenty. the whole conversation and tea-taking there reminded me so exactly of erckmann-chatrian's stories that i wanted to get a stenographer and a photographer to take them down. the great, thick remarks, all about housekeeping and domestic economy of some sort or other; the jokes; the masses of eatables, from the awful swine soup (tasting of nothing i could think of but the perspiration of the animal and which the terrible mother forced me to gulp down by accusing me, whenever i grew pale and faltered, of not relishing their food), through the sausages (liver sausages, blood sausages, and more), to the beer and wine; then the masses of odoriferous cheese, which i refused in spite of all attacks, entreaties and accusations, and then heard, oh, horrors! with somewhat the feeling i suppose with which a criminal hears the judge pass sentence of death upon him,--then heard an order given for some more sausages to be brought in to me instead; the air of religious earnestness with which the eating of the father was talked about, how the mother told the daughter not to give him so much wine, because he never enjoyed his beer so much after it, while he with his silver spectacles and pointing with his pudgy forefinger to the lines, read out of the newspaper half aloud to himself; the immense long room with walls of dark wood, the big old-fashioned china stove at each end of it, etc., etc.,--all brought up the _taverne du jambon de mayence_ into my mind.... [w. j.] * * * * * the water-cure at teplitz worked no cure; but james repaired to heidelberg in the spring, to hear helmholtz lecture and with the hope of following the medical courses during the summer semester. once more he had to stop work, and for a while he returned to berlin. from there he traveled by way of geneva, stopping characteristically for only the very briefest of glances at the familiar scenes of his school-days, and hurrying on to spend the latter part of the summer at another watering-place, divonne in savoy. the following brief letter seems to have been written there, and is interesting as a first reference to charles renouvier, a french philosopher who later exercised an important influence on james's thinking. _to his father._ [divonne?], _oct. , _. dear father,--...i have not been doing much studying lately, nor indeed for some time past, though i manage to keep something _dribbling_ all the while. i began the other day kant's "kritik," which is written crabbedly enough, but which strikes me so far as almost the sturdiest and _honestest_ piece of work i ever saw. whether right or wrong (and it is pretty clearly wrong in a great many details of its _analytik_ part, however the rest may be), there it stands like a great snag or mark to which everything metaphysical or psychological must be _referred_. i wish i had read it earlier. it is very slow reading and i shall only give it a couple of hours daily. i got a little book by a number of authors, "l'année philosophique," which may interest you if you have not got it already. the introduction, a review of the state of philosophy in france for some years back, is by one charles renouvier, of whom i never heard before but who, for vigor of style and compression, going to the core of half a dozen things in a single sentence, so different from the namby-pamby diffusiveness of most frenchmen, is unequaled by anyone. he takes his stand on kant. i have not read the rest of the book. here i stop and take my douche. i will be as economical as i can this winter in details, and next summer will see us together. i wish i had the inclination to write, or anything to write about, as harry has. i feel ashamed of fattening on the common purse when all the other boys are working, but writing seems for me next to impossible. lots of love to all. yours, w. j. * * * * * the "cure" at divonne was as profitless as had been the similar experiments at teplitz. so instead of staying abroad for the winter, james turned his face homeward almost immediately. after a fortnight's companionship with h. p. bowditch in paris, he embarked on november for america, disappointed in the chief hopes with which he had landed in europe eighteen months before, but much matured in character and thought, and resolved to seek his health and his career at home. [illustration: pencil sketch from a pocket note-book.] vi - _invalidism in cambridge_ the return to cambridge from germany in november, , marked the beginning of four outwardly uneventful years. james spent them under his father's roof. his family and intimate friends were usually close at hand; the stream of his correspondence shrank to almost nothing. the few letters that have been preserved do incomplete justice to this period, but can, fortunately, be supplemented by other documents. * * * * * james obtained his medical degree easily enough in june, ; but he had no thought of engaging in the practice of medicine. he wanted to go on with physiology; but he was not strong enough to work in a laboratory. condemned to sedentary occupations, and without any definite responsibilities, he seemed, to his own jaundiced vision, to be declining into a desultory and profitless idleness. in this he was hardly fair to himself or to the conditions. it is true that he had no remunerative occupation, and that he could look forward to no well-defined professional career for which he could be preparing and training himself. he was, also, handicapped by the fact that sometimes he could not use his eyes for more than two hours a day. on the other hand, he would probably not have been happy in any professional harness into which he could then have fitted, and was really more fortunate in having leisure to read and discuss and fill note-books forced upon him between his twenty-seventh and thirty-first years. such leisure has been the unattained goal of many another man with a mind not one tenth so curious and speculative as his; and few men who have attained it have made as good use of their free time as james made of the years to . his eyes were weak, to be sure, and his letters usually bewail his inability to use them more. but, skipping as he had trained himself to, and snatching at every opportunity, he somehow got over a great deal of reading in neurology, physiology of the nervous system, and psychology. he was not confined to the books that were on the shelves of the quincy street house, but could borrow from the excellent harvard and boston libraries without inconvenience. at times, when he was able to read for several hours a day, he used, as he put it, "to keep himself from using his mind too much" by turning to non-professional literature in german, french, and english. one letter to his brother (june , ) affords material for reflection upon the range and power of assimilation of a mind which could seek such relaxation. "i have," he writes in this letter, "been reading for recreation, since you left, a good many german books: steffens and c. p. moritz's autobiographies, some lyric poetry, w. humboldt's letters, schmidt's history of german literature, etc., which have brought to a head the slowly maturing feeling of german culture.... reading of the revival, or rather the birth, of german literature--kant, schiller, goethe, jacobi, fichte, schelling, [the] schlegels, tieck, richter, herder, steffens, w. humboldt, and a number of others--puts one into a real classical period. these men were all interesting as men, each standing as a type or representative of a certain way of taking life, and beginning at the bottom--taking nothing for granted. in england, the only parallel i can think of is coleridge, and in france, rousseau and diderot. if the heroes and heroines of all of ste.-beuve's gossip had had a tenth part of the _significance_ of these and their male and female friends, bad readers like myself would never think of growing impatient with him as an old debauchee." a diary entry made by his sister alice, a few years later says: "in old days, when [william's] eyes were bad, and i used to begin to tell him something which i thought of interest from whatever book i might be reading ... he would invariably say, 'i glanced into that book yesterday and read that.'"[ ] he had already formed the habit of making marginal notes, of writing down summaries of his reading, and of formulating his ideas on paper--the admirable practice, in short, of confiding in note-books and addressing himself freely to the waste-basket. for instance: "in , when still a medical student, he began to write an essay showing how almost everyone who speculated about brain processes illicitly interpolated into his account of them links derived from the entirely heterogeneous universe of feeling. spencer, hodgson (in his 'time and space'), maudsley, lockhart, clarke, bain, dr. carpenter, and other authors were cited as having been guilty of the confusion. the writing was soon stopped because he perceived that the view which he was upholding against these authors was a pure conception, with no proofs to be adduced of its reality."[ ] he kept some of his memoranda in a series of the alphabetized blank-books which used to be sold under the name of "todd's index rerum" during the sixties, and which were devised to facilitate indexing and reference. he continued to make entries in these books until , and perhaps later. he also filled copy-books and pocket note-books, of which a few mutilated but interesting fragments remain. in these he sometimes copied out quotations, sometimes noted comments on his reading, sometimes tried to clothe an idea of his own in precise words. occasionally he made diary-like entries that show how familiar a companion he was making of the note-book. he was already at his ease in the practice of the baconian maxim that reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man. a few book-notices or reviews did reach the public. seven are listed under the years to in professor r. b. perry's "list of published writings." although the matter of these reviews is seldom of present-day interest, the curious reader will find sentences and paragraphs in them that are prophetic of passages in james's later writings, and will observe that he already commanded a style that expressed the color and quality of his thought.[ ] * * * * * considering that james, while still in his twenties, had found such resources within himself, and had learned how to occupy himself in ways so appropriate to the development of his best faculties, it would seem that he need not have labored under any sense of frustration and impotence. but such a feeling undoubtedly did weigh heavily upon him during more or less of the whole period between his winter in berlin and . and it was indeed due in great part to something else than the mere fact that he could not yet feel the rungs of the ladder of any particular career under his feet. no reader of the "varieties of religious experience" can have doubted that he had known religious despondency himself as well as observed the distress of it in others. the problem of the moral constitution of things, the question of man's relation to the universe,--whether significant or impotent and meaningless,--these had clearly come home to him as more than questions of metaphysical discourse. it was during this period that such doubts invaded his consciousness in a way that was personal and intimate and, for the time being, oppressive. he was tormented by misgivings which almost paralyzed his naturally buoyant spirit. bad health, a feeling of the purposelessness of his own particular existence, his philosophic doubts and his constant preoccupation with them, all these combined to plunge him into a state of morbid depression. he seems to have hidden the depth of it from those who were about him. he even had an experience of that kind of melancholy "which takes the form of panic fear." when he wrote the chapter on the "sick soul" thirty years later, he put into it an account of this experience. he still disguised it as the report of an anonymous "french correspondent." subsequently he admitted to m. abauzit that the passage was really the story of his own case,[ ] and it may be repeated here, for the words of the fictitious french correspondent, who was really james, are the most authentic statement that could be given. they will be found at page of the "varieties of religious experience." "whilst in this state of philosophic pessimism and general depression of spirits about my prospects, i went one evening into a dressing-room in the twilight, to procure some article that was there; when suddenly there fell upon me without any warning, just as if it came out of the darkness, a horrible fear of my own existence. simultaneously there arose in my mind the image of an epileptic patient whom i had seen in the asylum, a black-haired youth with greenish skin, entirely idiotic, who used to sit all day on one of the benches, or rather shelves, against the wall, with his knees drawn up against his chin, and the coarse gray undershirt, which was his only garment, drawn over them, inclosing his entire figure. he sat there like a sort of sculptured egyptian cat or peruvian mummy, moving nothing but his black eyes and looking absolutely non-human. this image and my fear entered into a species of combination with each other. _that shape am i_, i felt, potentially. nothing that i possess can defend me against that fate, if the hour for it should strike for me as it struck for him. there was such a horror of him, and such a perception of my own merely momentary discrepancy from him, that it was as if something hitherto solid within my breast gave way entirely, and i became a mass of quivering fear. after this the universe was changed for me altogether. i awoke morning after morning with a horrible dread at the pit of my stomach, and with a sense of the insecurity of life that i never knew before, and that i have never felt since. it was like a revelation; and although the immediate feelings passed away, the experience has made me sympathetic with the morbid feelings of others ever since. it gradually faded, but for months i was unable to go out into the dark alone. "in general i dreaded to be left alone. i remember wondering how other people could live, how i myself had ever lived, so unconscious of that pit of insecurity beneath the surface of life. my mother in particular, a very cheerful person, seemed to me a perfect paradox in her unconsciousness of danger, which you may well believe i was very careful not to disturb by revelations of my own state of mind. i have always thought that this experience of melancholia of mine had a religious bearing.... i mean that the fear was so invasive and powerful that, if i had not clung to scripture-texts like _the eternal god is my refuge_, etc., _come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy-laden_, etc., _i am the resurrection and the life_, etc., i think i should have grown really insane." the date of this experience cannot and need not be fixed exactly. it was undoubtedly later than the berlin winter and after the return to cambridge. perhaps it was during the winter of - , for one of the note-books contains an entry dated april , , in which james's resolution and self-confidence appear to be reasserting themselves. this entry must be quoted too. it is not only illuminating with respect to , but suggests parts of the "psychology" and of the philosophic essays that later gave comfort and courage to unnumbered readers. "i think that yesterday was a crisis in my life. i finished the first part of renouvier's second "essais" and see no reason why his definition of free will--"the sustaining of a thought _because i choose to_ when i might have other thoughts"--need be the definition of an illusion. at any rate, i will assume for the present--until next year--that it is no illusion. my first act of free will shall be to believe in free will. for the remainder of the year, i will abstain from the mere speculation and contemplative _grüblei_[ ] in which my nature takes most delight, and voluntarily cultivate the feeling of moral freedom, by reading books favorable to it, as well as by acting. after the first of january, my callow skin being somewhat fledged, i may perhaps return to metaphysical study and skepticism without danger to my powers of action. for the present then remember: care little for speculation; much for the _form_ of my action; recollect that only when habits of order are formed can we advance to really interesting fields of action--and consequently accumulate grain on grain of willful choice like a very miser; never forgetting how one link dropped undoes an indefinite number. _principiis obsta_--today has furnished the exceptionally passionate initiative which bain posits as needful for the acquisition of habits. i will see to the sequel. not in maxims, not in _anschauungen_,[ ] but in accumulated _acts_ of thought lies salvation. _passer outre._ hitherto, when i have felt like taking a free initiative, like daring to act originally, without carefully waiting for contemplation of the external world to determine all for me, suicide seemed the most manly form to put my daring into; now, i will go a step further with my will, not only act with it, but believe as well; believe in my individual reality and creative power. my belief, to be sure, _can't_ be optimistic--but i will posit life (the real, the good) in the self-governing _resistance_ of the ego to the world. life shall [be built in][ ] doing and suffering and creating." * * * * * the next letter was written from cambridge during the winter following the return from germany, and while james was completing the work necessary to entitle him to a medical degree.[ ] the reader will recognize "the firm of b & j" as the medical partnership proposed to bowditch in the letter of december , . _to henry p. bowditch._ cambridge, _jan. , _. my dear henry,--i am in receipt of two letters from yez (dates forgotten) wherein you speak of having received my money and paid my bills and of fleury's book. you're a gentleman in all respects. you said nothing about whether the pounds when reduced back to francs and thalers made exactly the original sum from which the pounds were calculated. if it was but five centimes under and you have concealed it, i shall brand you as a villain where'er i go. so out with the truth. do i still owe you anything?... i have just been quit by chas. s. peirce, with whom i have been talking about a couple of articles in the st. louis "journal of speculative philosophy" by him, which i have just read. they are exceedingly bold, subtle and incomprehensible, and i can't say that his vocal elucidations helped me a great deal to their understanding, but they nevertheless interest me strangely. the poor cuss sees no chance of getting a professorship anywhere, and is likely to go into the observatory for good. it seems a great pity that as original a man as he is, who is willing and able to devote the powers of his life to logic and metaphysics, should be starved out of a career, when there are lots of professorships of the sort to be given in the country to "safe," orthodox men. he has had good reason, i know, to feel a little discouraged about the prospect, but i think he ought to hang on, as a german would do, till he grows gray.... i saw wyman a few weeks ago. he said his indian collecting, etc., took up all his working time now. do you keep your room above the freezing point or can't the thing be done? have you made any bosom friends among french students, or do you find the superficial accidents of language and breeding to hold you wider apart than the deep force of your common humanity can draw you together? it's deuced discouraging to find how this is almost certain to be the case. the older i grow, the more important does it seem to me for the interest of science and of the sick, and of the firm of b. & j., that you should take charge of a big state lunatic asylum. think of the interesting cases, and of the autopsies! and if you once took firm root, say at somerville, i should feel assured of a refuge in my old and destitute days, for you certainly would not be treacherous enough to spurn me from the door when i presented myself--on the pretext that i was only shamming dementia. think of the matter seriously. i read a little while ago chambers's "clinical lectures," which are exceedingly interesting and able. the lectures on indigestion in the volume are worth, in quality, ten such books as that guipon i left in paris, though more limited in subject. i have been trying to get "hilton on rest and pain," which you recommended, from the athenæum, but, _more librorum_, when you want 'em, it keeps "out." ... i hope this letter is _décousue_ enough for you. what is a man to write when a reef is being taken in his existence, and absence from thought and life is all he aspires to. better times will come, though, and with them better letters. good-bye! ever yours, wm. james. _to o. w. holmes, jr., and john c. gray, jr._ [_winter of - ._] gents!--entry-thieves--chevaliers d'industrie--well-dressed swindlers--confidence men--wolves in sheep's clothing--asses in lion's skin--gentlemanly pickpockets--beware! the hand of the law is already on your throats and waits but a wink to be tightened. all the resources of the immensely powerful corporation of harvard university have been set in motion, and concealment of your miserable selves or of the almost equally miserable (though not _as such_ miserable) goloshes which you stole from our entry on sunday night is as impossible as would be the concealment of the state house. the motive of your precipitate departure from the house became immediately evident to the remaining guests. but they resolved to _ignore_ the matter provided the overshoes were replaced within a week; if not, no _considerations whatever_ will prevent messrs. gurney & perry[ ] from proceeding to treat you with the utmost severity of the law. it is high time that some of these genteel adventurers should be made an example of, and your offence just comes in time to make the cup of public and private forbearance overflow. my father and self have pledged our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor to see the thing through with gurney and perry, as the credit of our house is involved and we might ourselves have been losers, not only from you but from the aforesaid g. & p., who have been heard to go about openly declaring that "if they had known the party was going to be _that_ kind of an affair, d--d if they would not have started off earlier themselves with some of those aristocratic james overcoats, hats, gloves and canes!" so let me as a friend advise you to send the swag back. no questions will be asked--mum's the word. wm. james. _to thomas w. ward._ _march_ [?], . ...i had great movings of my bowels toward thee lately--the distant, cynical isolation in which we live with our heart's best brothers sometimes comes over me with a deep bitterness, and i had a little while ago an experience of life which woke up the spiritual monad within me as has not happened more than once or twice before in my life. "malgré la vue des misères où nous vivons et qui nous tiennent par la gorge," there is an inextinguishable spark which will, when we least expect it, flash out and reveal the existence, at least, of something real--of reason at the bottom of things. i can't tell you how it was now. i'm swamped in an empirical philosophy.[ ] i feel that we are nature through and through, that we are wholly conditioned, that not a wiggle of our will happens save as the result of physical laws; and yet, notwithstanding, we are _en rapport_ with reason.--how to conceive it? who knows? i'm convinced that the defensive tactics of the french "spiritualists" fighting a steady retreat before materialism will never do anything.--it is not that we are all nature _but_ some point which is reason, but that all is nature _and_ all is reason too. we shall see, damn it, we shall see!... [w. j.] * * * * * "the bootts," with whom "architect ware" reported the reverend mr. foote to be hand in glove in italy in , reappear in the following letter. francis boott (harvard ) had early been left a widower, and had just returned from a long european residence which he had devoted to the education of his charming and gifted daughter "lizzie," later to become the wife of frank duveneck of cincinnati, the painter and sculptor. boott was about the age of henry james, senior, but the intimacy which began at pomfret during the summer of ripened into one of those whole-family friendships which obliterate differences of age. later, although both the elder jameses and young mrs. duveneck had died, william and boott saw each other frequently in cambridge. the beautiful little commemorative address which james delivered after boott's death has been included in the volume of "memories and studies." _to henry p. bowditch._ pomfret, conn., _aug. , _. ...i have been at this place since july st with my family. there are a few farmhouses close together on the same road, which take boarders. we are in the best of them, and very pleasant it is. the country is beautifully hilly and fertile, and the climate deliciously windy and cool. i came here resolved to lead the life of an absolute caterpillar, and have succeeded very well so far, spending most of my time swinging in a hammock under the pine trees in front of the house, and having hardly read fifty pages of anything in the whole six weeks. it has told on me most advantageously. i am far better every way than when i came, and am beginning to walk about quite actively. maybe it's the beginning of a final rise to health, but i'm so sick of prophesying that i won't say anything about it till it gets more confirmed. one thing is sure, however, that i've given the policy of "rest" a fair trial and shall consider myself justified next winter in going about visiting and to concerts, etc., regardless of the fatigue. i am forgetting all this while to tell you that i passed my examination with no difficulty and am entitled to write myself m.d., if i choose. buckingham's midwifery gave me some embarrassment, but the rest was trifling enough. so there is one epoch of my life closed, and a pretty important one, i feel it, both in its scientific "yield" and in its general educational value as enabling me to see a little the inside workings of an important profession and to learn from it, as an average example, how all the work of human society is performed. i feel a good deal of intellectual hunger nowadays, and if my health would allow, i think there is little doubt that i should make a creditable use of my freedom, in pretty hard study. i hope, even as it is, not to have to remain absolutely idle--and shall try to make whatever reading i can do bear on psychological subjects.... wendell holmes and john gray were on here last saturday and sunday, and seemed in very jolly spirits at being turned out to pasture from their boston pen. i should think wendell worked too hard. gray is going to lenox for a fortnight, but w. is to take no vacation. during the month of july we had the good fortune to have as fellow boarders mr. boott and his daughter from boston. miss b., although not overpoweringly beautiful, is one of the very best members of her sex i ever met. she spent the first eighteen years of her life in europe, and has of course italian, french and german at her fingers' ends, and i never realized before how much a good education (i mean in its common sense of a wide information) added to the charms of a woman. she has a great talent for drawing, and was very busy painting here, which, as she is in just about the same helpless state in which i was when i abandoned the art, made her particularly interesting to me. you had better come home soon and make her acquaintance--for you know these first-class young spinsters do not _always_ keep for ever, although on the whole they tend to, in boston. the successors to the bootts in this house are gen. casey (of "infantry tactics" notoriety) and spouse. he is an amiable but mildish old gentleman, and about thirty years older than his wife. i'm glad, on the whole, that general grant, and not he, was our commander in the late war. if you want some good light german reading, let me advise you to try at least the first half of jung-stilling's autobiography. he was a pious german who lived through the latter half of the last century, and wrote with the utmost vividness and naïveté all his experiences, that the glory of god's providence might be increased. i read it with great delight a few weeks since; it merits the adjective _fresh_ as well as most books. i saw jeffries wyman a short time before leaving. he said he had heard from you. i'd give much to hear from your lips an account of your plans, hopes and so forth, as well as the _ergebnisse_ of the past year. i was truly glad to hear of your determination to stick to physiology. however discouraging the work of each day may seem, stick at it long enough, and you'll wake up some morning--a physiologist--just as the man who takes a daily drink finds himself unexpectedly a drunkard. i wish i'd asked you sooner to send me a photograph of bernard and vulpian--or any other parisian medical men worth having--is it too late now?--and too late for pflüger? i address this still to bonn, supposing they'll send it after you if you've gone. write soon to yours affectionately, wm. james. _to miss mary tappan._ _sunday, april _ [ ?]. my dear mary,--mother says she met you in town this morning, looking more lovely than ever, but--_with your bonnet on the back of your head!_ i hope that this is a mistake. mother's eyesight is growing fallacious and frequently leads her to see what she would like to see. i cannot think that you would submit to be swayed in your own views of right bonnet-wearing by the mere vociferation of persons like her and alice, especially when you had heard _me_ expressly say i agreed with you that the forehead is the truly ladylike place for a bonnet. enough!---- i waded out to cambridge from your party. if you enjoyed yourselves as much as i did (but i'm afraid you didn't) you will keep on giving them. somehow your part of the town is very inaccessible to me or i should frequently bore you. hoping, in spite of this fearful mother story today, that you are still unsophisticated, i am always yours affectionately, wm. james. you need not answer this. [_across top of first page_] written two days ago--kept back from diffidence--sent now because anything is better than this dead silence between us! _to henry james._ cambridge, _may , _. dear harry,--'tis saturday evening, ten minutes past six of the clock and a cold and rainy day (indian winter, as t. s. p. calls such). i had a fire lighted in my grate this afternoon. there is nevertheless a broken blue spot in the eastern clouds as i look out, and the grass and buds have started visibly since the morning. the trees are half-way out--you of course have long had them in full leaf--and the early green is like a bath to the eyes. father is gone to newport for a day, and is expected back within the hour. my jaw is aching badly in consequence of a tooth i had out two days ago, the which refused to be pulled, was broken, but finally extracted, and has left its neighbors prone to ache since. i hope it won't last much longer. i spent the morning, part of it at least, in fishing the "revues germaniques" up from [the] cellar, looking over their contents, and placing them volumewise, and flat, in the two top shelves of the big library bookcase _vice_ thies's good old books just removed, the shelves being too low to take any of our books upright. i feel melancholy as a whip-poor-will and took up pen and paper to sigh melodiously to you. but sighs are hard to express in words. we have been three weeks now without hearing from you, and if a letter does not come tomorrow or monday, i don't know what'll become of us. howells brought, a week ago, a long letter you had written to him on the eve of leaving malvern, so our next will be from london.... my! how i long to see you, and feel of you, and talk things over. i have at last, i think, begun to rise out of the sloughs of the past three months.... what a blessing this change of seasons is, as you used to say, especially in the spring. the winter is man's enemy, he must exert himself against it to live, or it will squeeze him in one night out of existence. so it is hateful to a sick man, and all the greater is the peace of the latter when it yields to a time when nature seems to coöperate with life and float one passively on. but i hear father arriving and i must go down to hear his usual _compte rendu_.[ ] * * * * * _sunday_, p.m. no letter from you this morning.... it seems to me that all a man has to depend on in this world, is, in the last resort, mere brute power of resistance. i can't bring myself, as so many men seem able to, to blink the evil out of sight, and gloss it over. it's as real as the good, and if it is denied, good must be denied too. it must be accepted and hated, and resisted while there's breath in our bodies.... _to henry p. bowditch._ cambridge, _dec. , _. my dear henry,--your letter written from leipzig just before the declaration of war reached me in the country. i have thought of you and of answering you, abundantly, ever since; but have mostly been prevented by sheer physical _imbecillitas_. now i am ashamed of such a state, and shall write you a page or so a day till the letter is finished. i have had no idea all this time where or what you have been, traveler, student, or medical army officer. you may imagine how excited i was at the beginning of the war. i had not dared to hope for such a complete triumph of poetic justice as occurred. now i feel much less interested in the success of the germans, first because i think it's time that the principle of territorial conquest were abolished, second because success will redound to the credit of autocratic government there, and good as that may happen to be in the particular junctures, it's unsafe and pernicious in the long run. moreover, if france succeeds in beating off the germans now, i should think there would be some chance of the peace being kept between them hereafter--the french will have gained an insight they never had of the horrors of a war of conquest, and some degree of loathing for it in the abstract; and they will not have to fight to regain their honor. moreover, i should like to see the republic succeed. but if alsace and lorraine be taken, there _must_ be another war, for them and for honor. on the other hand, justice seems to demand a permanent penalty for the political immorality of france. so that there will be enough good to console one for the bad, whichever way it turns out.... * * * * * st. as i said, i have no idea of how the war may have affected your movements and occupations. it did my heart good to hear of the solid and businesslike way in which you were working at leipzig, and i should think [that], with ludwig and the laboratory, you would feel like giving it another winter--though the other attractions of berlin and vienna must pull you rather strongly away. i heard a rumor the other day that lombard's place was being kept for you here. i hope it's true, for your sake and that of boston. thank you very much for the photographs of ludwig and fechner. i have enjoyed ludwig's face very much, he must be a good fellow; and fechner, down to below the orbits, has a strange resemblance to jeffries wyman. i have quite a decent nucleus of a physiognomical collection now, and any further contributions it may please you to make to it will be most thankfully received. j. wyman i have not seen since his return. such is the state of brutal social isolation which characterizes this community! partly sickness, partly a morbid shrinking from the society of anyone who is alive intellectually are to blame, however, in my case. i, as i wrote, am long since dead and buried in that respect. i fill my belly for about four hours daily with husks,--newspapers, novels and biographies, but thought is tabooed,--and you can imagine that conversation with wyman should only intensify the sense of my degradation. * * * * * _jan. , ._ since my last date i have been unable to write until today, and now, i think, to make sure of the letter going at all, i had better cut it short and send it off to your father to direct. i have indeed nothing particular to communicate, and only want to give you assurance of my undying affection. this morning degrees below zero, and n.w. wind. don't you wish you were here to enjoy the sunshine of it? a batch of telegrams in the "advertiser," showing that france must soon throw up the sponge. faidherbe licked at st. quentin, bourbaki pursued, chanzy almost disintegrated, and paris frozen and starved out. well, so be it! only the german liberals will have the harder battle to fight at home for the next twenty years. i suspect that england, irresolute and unhandsome as is the figure she makes externally, is today in a healthier state than any country in europe. she is renovating herself socially, and although she may be eclipsed during these days of "militarismus," yet when they depart, as surely they must some time, from sheer exhaustion, she will be ready to take the lead by influence. i know of no news here to tell you. i suppose you get the "nation," which keeps up well, notwithstanding its monotony. i shall be expecting to fold you to my bosom some time next summer. heaven speed the day! write me as soon as you get this. you haven't the same excuse for silence that i have. speak of your work, your plans and the war. good bye, old fellow, and believe me, ever your friend, wm. james. _to henry p. bowditch._ cambridge, _apr. , _. ...so the gallant gauls are shooting each other again! i wish we knew what it all meant. from the apparent generality of the movement in paris, it seems as if it must be something more dignified than it at first appeared. but can anything great be expected now from a nation between the two factions of which there is such hopeless enmity and mistrust as between the religious and the revolutionary parties in france? no mediation is possible between them. in england, america and germany, a regular advance is possible, because each man confides in his brothers. however great the superficial differences of opinion, there is at bottom a trust in the power of the deep forces of human nature to work out their salvation, and the minority is contented to bide its time. but in france, nothing of the sort; no one feels secure against what he considers evil, by any guaranty but force; and if his opponents get uppermost, he thinks all is forever lost. how much catholic education is to answer for this and how much national idiosyncrasy, it is hard to say. but i am inclined to think the latter is a large factor. the want of true sympathy in the french character, their love of external mechanical order, their satisfaction in police-regulation, their everlasting cry of "traitor," all point to it. but, on the other hand, protestantism would seem to have a good deal to do with the fundamental cohesiveness of society in the countries of germanic blood. for what may be called the revolutionary party there has _developed_ through insensible grades of rationalism out of the old orthodox conceptions, religious and social. the process has been a continuous modification of positive belief, and the extremes, even if they had no respect for each other and no desire for mutual accommodation (which i think at bottom they have), would yet be kept from cutting each other's throats by the intermediate links. but in france belief and denial are separated by a chasm. the step once made, "écrasez l'infâme" is the only watchword on each side. how any order is possible except by a cæsar to hold the balance, it is hard to see. but i don't want to dose you with my crude speculations. this difference was brought home vividly to me by reading yesterday in the "revue des deux mondes" for last december a splendid little story, "histoire d'un sous-maître," by erckmann-chatrian, and what was uppermost in my mind came out easiest in writing. i shall be overjoyed to see you in september, but expect to hear from you many a time ere then. i see little medical society, none in fact; but hope to begin again soon. [r. h.] fitz, i believe, is showing great powers in "pathology" since his return. and i hear a place in the school is being kept warm for you on your return. count me for an auditor. i invested yesterday in a ticket for a course of "university" lectures on "optical phenomena and the eye," by b. joy jeffries, to be begun out here tomorrow. it's the first mingling in the business of life which i have done since my return home. wyman is in florida till may. he has an obstinate cough and seems anxious about his lungs. i hope he'll be spared, though, many a long year. ever yours truly, wm. james. _to charles renouvier._ cambridge, _nov. , _. monsieur,--je viens d'apprendre par votre "science de la morale," que l'ouvrage de m. lequier, auquel vous faites renvoi dans votre deuxième essai de critique, n'a jamais été mis en vente. ceci explique l'insuccès avec lequel j'ai pendant longtemps tâché de me le procurer par la voie de la librairie. serait-ce trop vous demander, s'il vous restait encore des exemplaires, de m'en envoyer un, que je présenterais, après l'avoir lu, en votre nom, à la bibliothèque universitaire de cette ville? si l'édition est déjà épuisée, ne vous mettez pas en peine de me répondre, et que le vif intérêt que je prends à vos idées serve d'excuse à ma demande. je ne peux pas laisser échapper cette occasion de vous dire toute l'admiration et la reconnaissance que m'ont inspirée la lecture de vos essais (sauf le me, que je n'ai pas encore lu). grâce à vous, je possède pour la première fois une conception intelligible et raisonnable de la liberté. je m'y suis rangé à peu près. sur d'autres points de votre philosophie il me reste encore des doutes, mais je puis dire que par elle je commence à renaître à la vie morale; et croyez, monsieur, que ce n'est pas une petite chose! chez nous, c'est la philosophie de mill, bain, et spencer qui emporte tout à présent devant lui. elle fait d'excellents travaux en psychologie, mais au point de vue pratique elle est déterministe et matérialiste, et déjà je crois aperçevoir en angleterre les symptomes d'une renaissance de la pensée religieuse. votre philosophie par son côté phénoméniste semble très propre à frapper les ésprits élevés dans l'école empirique anglaise, et je ne doute pas dès qu'elle sera un peu mieux connue en angleterre et dans ce pays, qu'elle n'ait un assez grand retentissement. elle paraît faire son chemin lentement; mais je suis convaincu que chaque année nous rapprochera du jour où elle sera reconnue de tous comme étant la plus forte tentative philosophique que le siècle ait vue naître en france, et qu'elle comptera toujours comme un des grands jalons dans l'histoire de la speculation. dès que ma santé (depuis quelques années très mauvaise) me permet un travail intellectuel un peu sérieux, je me propose d'en faire une étude plus approfondie et plus critique, et d'en donner un compte-rendu dans une de nos revues. si donc, monsieur, il se trouve un exemplaire encore disponible de la "rech[erche] d'une première verité," j'oserai vous prier de l'envoyer à l'adresse de la libraire ci-incluse, en écrivant mon nom sur la couverture. m. galette soldera tous les frais, s'il s'en trouve. veuillez encore une fois, cher monsieur, croire aux sentiments d'admiration et de haut respect avec lesquels je suis votre très obéissant serviteur, william james. vii - _first years of teaching_ in president eliot wished to provide instruction in physiology and hygiene for the harvard undergraduates, and looked about him for instructors. he had formed an impression of james ten years before which, as he said, "was later to become useful to harvard university," and in the interval he had known him as a cambridge neighbor and had been aware of the direction his interests had taken. he proposed that james and dr. thomas dwight--a young anatomist who was also to become an eminent teacher--should share in the new undertaking. in august, , the college appointed james "instructor in physiology," to conduct three exercises a week "during half of the ensuing academic year." thus began a service in the university which was to be almost continuously active and engrossing until . the fact that james began by teaching anatomy and physiology, passed thence to psychology, and last to philosophy, has been wrongly cited as if his interest in each successive subject of his college work had been the fruit of his experience in teaching the preceding subject. this inference from the mere sequence of events will appear strange to attentive readers of what has gone before. indeed, if the fact that james devoted a good share of his time to physiology in the seventies calls for remark at all, it should be noted that his subject, from soon after the beginning, was really physiological psychology, and that--more interesting than anything else in this connection--one may discern a patient surrender to limitations imposed by the state of his health on the one hand, and on the other a sound sense of the value of physiology to psychological investigations and so to philosophy, as both underlying the sequence of events in his teaching. whatever may have been the succession of his college "courses," psychology and philosophy were never divorced from each other in his thought or in his writings. thus it is interesting to find, that at the very moment of his engagement to teach physiology,--at a date intermediate between the appointment and the commencement of the course in fact,--he wrote to his brother, "if i were well enough, now would be my chance to strike at harvard college, for peterson has just resigned his sub-professorship of philosophy, and i know of no very formidable opponent. but it's impossible. i keep up a small daily pegging at my physiology, whose duties don't begin till january, and which i shall find easy, i think." he had needed definite duties and responsibilities and more or less recognized his need; so he undertook to teach a subject which, though congenial and interesting, lay distinctly off the path of his deepest inclination. the first three fragments that follow refer to his preparation for the plunge into teaching. the course on comparative anatomy and physiology was given by dwight and james under the general head of natural history and was an "elective" open to juniors and seniors. "as the course was experimental and a part of the new expansion of the elective system," writes president eliot, "the president and the faculty were interested in the fact that the new course under these two young instructors attracted juniors and seniors." _to henry james._ scarboro, _aug. , _. ...the appointment to teach physiology is a perfect god-send to me just now, an external motive to work, which yet does not strain me--a dealing with men instead of my own mind, and a diversion from those introspective studies which had bred a sort of philosophical hypochondria in me of late and which it will certainly do me good to drop for a year.... * * * * * cambridge, _nov. , _. ...i go into the medical school nearly every morning to hear bowditch lecture, or paddle round in his laboratory. it is a noble thing for one's spirits to have some responsible work to do. i enjoy my revived physiological reading greatly, and have in a corporeal sense been better for the past four or five weeks than i have been at all since you left.... * * * * * cambridge, _feb. , _. ...this morning arose, went to brewer's to get two partridges to garnish our cod-fish dinner. bought at richardson's an "appleton's journal" containing part of "bressant," a novel by julian hawthorne, to send bob temple. at . arrived your letter of january th, which was a very pleasant continuation of your _aufenthalt_ in rome. at . , after reading an hour in flint's "physiology," i went to town, paid a bill of randidge's, looked into the athenæum reading-room, got one dozen raw oysters at higgins's saloon in court street, came out again, thermometer having risen to near thawing point, dozed half an hour before the fire, and am now writing this to you. i am enjoying a two weeks' respite from tuition, the boys being condemned to pass examinations, in which i luckily take no part at present. i find the work very interesting and stimulating. it presents two problems, the intellectual one--how best to state your matter to them; and the practical one--how to govern them, stir them up, not bore them, yet make them work, etc. i should think it not unpleasant as a permanent thing. the authority is at first rather flattering to one. so far, i seem to have succeeded in interesting them, for they are admirably attentive, and i hear expressions of satisfaction on their part. whether it will go on next year can't at this hour, for many reasons, be decided. i have done almost absolutely no visiting this winter, and seen hardly anyone or heard anything till last week, when a sort of frenzy took possession of me and i went to a symphony concert and thrice to the theatre. a most lovely english actress, young, innocent, refined, has been playing juliet, which play i enjoyed most intensely, though it was at the boston theatre and her support almost as poor as it could have been. neilson is she hight. i ne'er heard of her before. a rival american beauty has been playing a stinking thing of sardou's ("agnes") at the globe, which disgusted me with cleverness. her name is miss ethel, and she is a ladylike but depressing phenomenon, all made up of nerves and american insubstantiality. i have read hardly anything of late, some of the immortal wordsworth's "excursion" having been the best. i have simply shaken hands with gray since his engagement, and have only seen holmes twice this winter. i fear he is at last feeling the effects of his overwork.... * * * * * cambridge, _apr. , _. ...i have been cut out all this winter from the men with whom i used to gossip on generalities, holmes, putnam, peirce, shaler, john gray and, last not least, yourself. i rather hanker after it, bowditch being almost the only man i have seen anything of this winter, and that at his laboratory.... child and i have struck up quite an intimacy.... t. s. perry is my only surviving crony. he dines pretty regular once a week here.... ever your affectionate w. j. * * * * * the next letter, although not from william james, will help to fill out the picture. _henry james, senior, to henry james._ cambridge, _mar. , _. ... [william] gets on greatly with his teaching; his students--fifty-seven of them--are elated with their luck in having him, and i feel sure he will have next year a still larger number by his fame. he came in the other afternoon while i was sitting alone, and after walking the floor in an animated way for a moment, broke out: "bless my soul, what a difference between me as i am now and as i was last spring at this time! then so hypochondriacal"--he used that word, though perhaps less in substance than form--"and now with my mind so cleared up and restored to sanity. it's the difference between death and life." he had a great effusion. i was afraid of interfering with it, or possibly checking it, but i ventured to ask what especially in his opinion had produced the change. he said several things: the reading of renouvier (particularly his vindication of the freedom of the will) and of wordsworth, whom he has been feeding on now for a good while; but more than anything else, his having given up the notion that all mental disorder requires to have a physical basis. this had become perfectly untrue to him. he saw that the mind does act irrespectively of material coercion, and could be dealt with therefore at first hand, and this was health to his bones. it was a splendid declaration, and though i had known from unerring signs of the fact of the change, i never had been more delighted than by hearing of it so unreservedly from his own lips. he has been shaking off his respect for men of mere science as such, and is even more universal and impartial in his mental judgments than i have known him before.... * * * * * james's first harvard appointment had been for one year only. in the spring of the question of its renewal on somewhat different terms came up. president eliot informed him that the college wished some one man to give the instruction which he and dr. dwight had shared between them, and offered him the whole course, including the anatomy. it cost him "some perplexity to make the decision." he thought he saw that such an instructorship "might easily grow into a permanent biological appointment, to succeed wyman, perhaps." at first he resolved "to fight it out on the line of mental science," feeling that "with such arrears of lost time behind [him] and such curtailed power of work," he could no longer "afford to make so considerable an expedition into the field of anatomy." but when he then considered himself as a possible future teacher of philosophy, he was overwhelmed by a feeling which he recorded on a page of his diary: "philosophical activity _as a business_ is not normal for most men, and not for me.... to make the _form_ of all possible thought the prevailing _matter_ of one's thought breeds hypochondria. of course my deepest interest will, as ever, lie with the most general problems. but ... my strongest moral and intellectual craving is for some stable reality to lean upon.... that gets reality for us in which we place our responsibility, and the concrete facts in which a biologist's responsibilities lie form a fixed basis from which to aspire as much as he pleases to the mastery of universal questions when the gallant mood is on him; and a basis too upon which he can passively float and tide over times of weakness and depression, trusting all the while blindly in the beneficence of nature's forces, and the return of higher opportunities." accordingly he determined to give himself to biology, reporting to his brother henry, who was at that time in europe, "i am not a strong enough man to choose the other and nobler lot in life, but i can in a less penetrating way work out a philosophy in the midst of the other duties...." * * * * * as the summer went on, he still had misgivings that he would not be strong enough to prepare and conduct the laboratory demonstrations necessary for a large class in comparative anatomy and physiology. he saw that his first year of teaching had been "of great moral service to him," but thought that in other ways the strain and fatigue had been a brake upon the rate of his wished-for improvement. he therefore made up his mind to postpone the instructorship for a year and go abroad once more. these hesitations, and a few months in europe, marked the end of the period of morbid depression through which the reader has been following him. he returned to america eager for work. meanwhile parts of four letters written while he was abroad may be given. _to his family._ on board s.s. spain, _oct. , _. dearest family,--i begin my queenstown letter now because the first section of the voyage seems to be closing. the delicious warm stern wind, cloudy sky and smooth sea which we have had, unlike anything i remember on the atlantic, threatens to change into something less agreeable, for the wind is fresh ahead, and the waves all capped with white and the vessel begins to roll more and more. hitherto she has not rolled an inch, and all our days have been spent on deck, and i have enjoyed less sickness than ever before; though i must say i loathe the element. i am confirmed in my preference for big boats, and shall probably try one of the inman line when i return, as this, sweet alice, is rather cunardy as to its table and sitting accommodations. miss k---- and her two friends sit opposite me at meals and seem to ply a good knife and fork. the other passengers are inoffensive and quiet, with the exception of my roommate, who is a fine fellow, and a lovely young missionary going to the gabun coast to convert the niggers--a fearful waste of herself, one is tempted to think. there are eleven missionaries on board, and a young lady who is traveling with a party of them and confided to me yesterday that she dreaded it was her doom to become one too. my chum is a graduate of bowdoin college, going to study two years in europe on money which he made during his vacations by peddling quack medicines of his own concoction, and cutting corns. he has supported himself four years in this way, and _abgesehen_ from the swindle of his life in vacation time, is an honor to his native land, without prejudices and full of animal spirits, wit and intelligence. we wash in the same basin. he has never tasted spirituous liquor. i am also intimate with a french commercial traveler, incredibly ignorant, but extremely good-natured and gentlemanly. i have now determined to stick to the missionary as close as possible. she is twenty-four years old and very beautiful. i finished the "strange adventures of a phaeton" yesterday. a perfectly beautiful book, beside which "good-bye, sweetheart," which i have begun, tastes coarse. good-bye. i hope a storm won't arise, but if it does, i'm glad enough to be in such an extraordinarily steady ship. i pity you at home without me, and long to pat the rich, creamy throat of little sister. (expression derived from "goodbye, sweetheart.") * * * * * _friday morn._ ach! i thought yesterday was friday, but found in the evening that it was only thursday. no matter, six days are now past. as i predicted, the sea grew pretty big before sundown and the ship has been skipping about all night like a lively kitten. but her motion is delightfully easy, and no one, so far as i can see, has been sick. i never was better in my life than yesterday made me. nevertheless, little sister, in looking at the black waves with their skin of silver lace i have regretted saying that safety was a minor consideration with me. i doubt in my heart that even comfort is to be preferred to danger. the sea looks too indigestible--the all-digesting sea! i threw away "goodbye, sweetheart" at the th page and have begun the "tour of the world in eighty days," a much better book. i am sorry that the little beauty's care for her bro.'s comfort did not go so far as to provide him with a needle-and-thread-book, etc. _true_ sympathy divines wants; and a sister who could not foresee that in three days her bro. should be driven to borrowing miss k----'s needle-book to sew on his buttons cannot be said to be in very close magnetic relations with him. i lurched about the deck arm in arm with the young missionary yestreen. i told her that, if i were a missionary, instead of going to the most unhealthy part of africa, i would choose, say, paris for a field. she, all unconscious of the subtle humor of my remark, said, "oh, yes! there are fearful numbers of heathen there!" i have just rolled out of bed and into my clothes, and write this in my stateroom, but can stand no longer its aromatic air and hasten to say good-bye and mount to the deck.... good-bye, good-bye. ever your loving w. j. * * * * * on landing, james proceeded to florence, to join his brother henry for a winter in italy. _to his sister._ florence, _oct. _ [ ]. midnight. beloved sweetlington,--at this solemn hour i can't go to sleep without remembering thee and thy beauty. i have just arrived from an eleven-hours ride from turin, pouring rain all the way. ditto yesterday during my twenty-two-hours ride from paris. the angel sleeps in number hard by, all unwitting that i, the demon (or perhaps you have already begun in your talks to distinguish me from him as the archangel), am here at last. i wouldn't for worlds disturb this his last independent slumber. not having seen the sun but for three days (on board ship) since the eleventh, the natural gloom of my disposition and circumstances has been much aggravated. and i had in london and paris a pretty melancholy time. i stayed but two days and one night in the latter place, which, according to the law of opposition that rules your opinions and mine, seemed to me a very tedious place. its haussmanization has produced a terribly monotonous-looking city--no expression of having _grown_, in any of the quarters i visited, and i did not have time to bring to the surface what power i may possess of sympathizing with the french way of being and doing. the awful thin and slow dinner in the tremendously imperial dining-room of the hôtel du louvre, the exaggerated neatness and order and reglementation of everything visible, contrasted with the volcanic situation of things at the present moment, all a-kinder turned my plain yankee stomach, which has not yet recovered from the simpler lessons of joy it learnt at scarboro and magnolia last summer. i went to the théâtre français and heard a play in verse of ponsard, thin stuff splendidly represented. altogether i don't care if i never go to paris again. london "impressed" me twelve times as much. today in italy my spirits have riz. the draggle-tailed physiognomy of the railway stations on the way here, the beautifully good-natured easy-going expression on the faces of the railway officials, the charming dialogue i have just had with the aged but angelic chambermaid whose phrases i managed to understand the sense of as a whole without recognizing any particular words--together with the consciousness of having for a time come to my journey's end and of the certainty of breakfasting tomorrow with the angel, all let me go to bed with a light heart; hoping that yours is as much so, beloved alice and all.... _to his sister._ florence, _nov. , _. beloved sisterkin,--your "nice long letter," as you call it, of oct. reached me five days ago, mother's of november th yesterday, and with it one from father to harry. though you will probably disbelieve me, i cannot help stating how agreeable it is to me to be once more in regular communication with that which, in spite of all shortcomings, is all that has ever been vouchsafed to me in the way of a "home" (and a mother). the hotel in which we live here is anything but home-like. in fact, when the heart aches for cosiness, etc., all it can do is to turn out into the street. i begin to feel, too, strongly that at my time of life, with such a set of desultory years behind, what a man most wants is to be settled and concentrated, to cultivate a patch of ground which may be humble but still is his own. here all this dead civilization crowding in upon one's consciousness forces the mind open again even as the knife the unwilling oyster--and what my mind wants most now is practical tasks, not the theoretical digestion of additional masses of what to me are raw and disconnected empirical materials. i feel like one still obliged to eat more and more grapes and pears and pineapples, when the state of the system imperiously demands a fat irish stew, or something of that sort. i knew it all before i came, however; and i hope in a fortnight to be able comparatively to disregard what lies about me and get interested in the physiological books i brought. so far i find the pictures, etc., drive my thoughts far away. i have just been reading a big german octavo, burkhardt's "renaissance in italy," with the title of which you may enrich your historical consciousness, though i hardly think you need read the book. this is the place for history. i don't see how, if one lived here, historical problems could help being the most urgent ones for the mind. it would suit you admirably. even art comes before one here much more as a problem--how to account for its development and decline--than as a refreshment and an edification. i really think that end is better served by the stray photographs which enter our houses at home, finding us in the midst of our work and surprising us. but here i am pouring out this one-sided splenetic humor upon you without having the least intended it when i sat down. your pen accidentally slips into a certain vein and you must go on till you get it out clearly. if you had heard me telling harry two or three times lately that i feared the fatal fascination of this place,--that i began to feel it taking little stitches in my soul,--you would have a different impression of my state than my above written words have left upon you.... i went out intending to stroll in the boboli garden, a wonderful old piece of last-century stateliness, but found it shut till twelve. so i returned to harry's room, where i sit by the pungent wood fire writing this letter which i did not expect to begin till the afternoon, while he, just at this moment rising from the table where his quill has been busily scratching away at the last pages of his turguenieff article, comes to warm his legs and puts on another log.... good-bye beloved sister, and father and mother.... write repeatedly such nice long letters, and make glad the heart of both the angel and the other brother, w. j. _to his sister._ rome, _dec. , _. beloved beautlington,--i cannot retire to rest on this eve of a well-filled day without imparting to thy noble nature a tithe of the enjoyment and happiness with which i am filled, and wishing you was here to take your share in it.... the barbarian mind stretches little by little to take in rome, but i doubt if i shall ever call it the "city of my soul," or "my country." strange to say, my very enjoyment of what here belongs to hoary eld has done more to reconcile me to what belongs to the present hour, business, factories, etc., etc., than anything i ever experienced. every day i sally out into the sunshine and plod my way o'er steps of broken thrones and temples until one o'clock, when i repair to a certain café in the corso, begin to eat and read "galignani" and the "débats," until harry comes in with the flush of successful literary effort fading off his cheek. (it may interest the sympathetic soul of mother to know that my diet until that hour consists of a roll, which a waiter in wedding costume brings up to my room when i rise, and three sous' worth of big roasted chestnuts, which i buy, on going out, from an old crone a few doors from the hotel. in this respect i am economical. likewise in my total abstinence from spirituous liquors, to which harry, i regret to say, has become an utter slave, spending a large part of his earnings in bass's ale and wine, and trembling with anger if there is any delay in their being brought to him.) after feeding, the angel in his old and rather shabby striped overcoat, and i in my usual neat attire, proceed to walk together either to the big pincian terrace which overhangs the city, and where on certain days everyone resorts, or to different churches and spots of note. i always dine at the table-d'hôte here; harry sometimes, his indisposition lately (better the past two days) having made him prefer a solitary gorge at the restaurant. the people in the house are hardly instructive or exciting, but at dinner and for an hour after in the dining-room they very pleasantly kill time. i am become so far anglicized that i find myself quite fearful of speaking too much to a family of three "cads" who sit opposite me at the table-d'hôte, and of whom the young lady (though rather greasy about the face) is very handsome and intelligent. in the evening i usually light my fire and read some local book.... i got a note from hillebrand saying schiff would gladly let me work in his laboratory if i liked. i suppose i ought if i can, but i hanker after home even at the price of a february voyage, and i hate to spend so much money here on my mere gizzard and cheeks.--there, my sweet sister, i hope that is a sufficiently spirited epistle for . p.m. when, oh, when, will you write me another like the solitary one i got from you in florence? seven weeks and one letter! c'est très caractéristique de vous! i wrote two days ago to annie ashburner. tell the adorable sara sedgwick [mrs. w. e. darwin] that i can't possibly refrain much longer--in spite of my just resentment--from writing to her. love to all.... your w. j. * * * * * after his return his college duties proved both absorbing and stimulating. beginning, as the reader has seen, as an instructor in the department of natural history, charged with teaching the comparative anatomy and physiology of vertebrates, he added a course on physiological psychology in , and organized the beginnings of the psychological laboratory.[ ] the next year this course was transferred to the department of philosophy and given under the title "psychology." he contributed numerous reviews of scientific and philosophic literature, along with a few anonymous articles, to the columns of the "atlantic monthly" and the "nation," and in appeared in the "journal of speculative philosophy" and the "critique philosophique," with three important papers entitled "spencer's definition of mind as correspondence," "brute and human intellect," and "quelques considérations sur la méthode subjective." meanwhile his correspondence diminished to its minimum. when his brother henry also came home to america in , it ceased almost entirely. it did not begin to flow freely again, at least so far as letters are now recoverable, until after . _to henry james._ cambridge, _june , _. a few days ago came your letter from florence of june , speaking of the glare on the _piazza_ and the coolness and space of your rooms, of your late dinners and your solitude, and of the progress of your novel, and, finally, of your expected departure about the th; so that i suppose you are today percolating the cool arcades of bologna or the faded beauties of verona, or haply [are] at venice.... as the weeks glide by, my present life and my last year's life at home seem to glide together across the five months breach that italy made in them, and to become continuous; while those months step out of the line and become a sort of side-decoration or picture hanging vaguely in my memory. as this happens more and more, i take the greater pleasure in it. especially does the utter friendliness of florence, rome, etc., grow dear to me, and get strangely mixed up with still earlier and more faded impressions, derived i know not whence, which infused into the places when i first saw them that strange thread of familiarity. the thought of the florentine places you name in your letters like "leiser nachhall längst verklungner lieder, zieht mit errinnerungsschauer durch die brust." i hope you'll pass through dresden if you sail from germany. i forgot to say that the eagle line from hamburg has now the largest and finest ships and the newest.... * * * * * miss theodora sedgwick, to whom the next letter is addressed, was a member of the stockbridge and new york family of that name, and a sister of mrs. charles eliot norton and mrs. william darwin, to whom reference has already been made. at this time she was living with two maiden aunts named ashburner, friends of james's parents, in a house on kirkland street, cambridge, not far from mr. norton's "shady hill." the letter of november , , contained an allusion to this household, and others will occur as the letters proceed. _to miss theodora sedgwick._ cambridge, _aug. , _. miss theodora sedgwick to william james, dr. aug. , to orchestra seat in hippodrome [barnum's circus] $ . " " " carriage fares at c. $ . " " " glass vanilla cream sodawater $ . " " " plate of soup lost $ . " " " hours time at - / cents $ . " " " sundries $ . ----- total $ . rec'd on account. $ . wm. james honored miss,--i hope you will find the aforesaid charges moderate. when you transmit me the cents still due, please send back at the same time whatever letters of mine you may still have in your possession, and the diamonds, silks, etc., which you may have at different times been glad to receive from me. likewise both pieces of the collar stud i so recently lavished upon you. we can then remain as strangers. i come of a race sensitive in the extreme; more accustomed to treat than to be treated, especially in this manner; and caring for its money as little as for its life. what wonder then that the mercenary conduct of one whom i have ever fostered without hope of pecuniary reward should work like madness in my brain? on the point of closing i see with rapture that a way of accommodation is still open! o joy! the salmon, blackberries, etc., i consumed, had a market value. by charging me for the tea cents, you will make the thing reciprocal, and i will call the account square. perhaps even then the dreadful feeling of wounded pride and barnum-born resentment may with time fade away. amen. respectfully yours, w. j. _to henry james._ cambridge, _jan._ [ ], . ...your letter no. speaking of your visit to turguenieff was received by me duly and greatly enjoyed. i never heard you speak so enthusiastically of any human being. it is too bad he is to leave paris; but if he gives you the "run" of flaubert and eke george sand, it will be so much gained. i don't think you know miss a----, but if you did, you would thank me for pointing out to you the parallelism between her and george sand which overwhelmed me the other day when i was calling on her, and she (who has just lost her sister b---- and had her father go through an attack of insanity) was snuggling down so hyper-comfortably into garrulity about b----, and her poor dead t---- and her dead mother, that i was fairly suffocated, just as i am by the _comfort_ george sand takes in telling you of the loves of servant men for ladies, and other things _contra naturam_. christmas passed off here in a rather wan and sallow manner. i got a gold scarf-ring from mother and a gold watch-chain from aunt kate. let me, by the way, advise you to get a scarf-ring; 't is one of the greatest inventions of modern times, in saving labor, silk and shirt fronts. alice got a desk, and from me a scotch terrier pup only seven weeks old, whom we call bunch, who has almost doubled his size in a week, who is a perfect lion in determination and courage, and who don't seem to care a jot for any human society but that of jane in the kitchen, whose person is, i suppose, pervaded by a greasy and smoky smell agreeable to his nostrils. he has a perfect passion for the dining-room; whenever he is left to himself, he travels thither and lies down under the table and takes no notice of you when you go to call him. he does not sleep half as much as dido, never utters a sound when shut up for the night in the kitchen, and altogether fills us with a sort of awe for the roman firmness and independence of his character. he is "animated" by a colliquative diarrhoea or cholera, which keeps us all sponging over his tracks, but which don't affect his strength or spirits a bit. he is in short a very queer substitute for poor, dear dido.... _to henry james._ newport, _june , _. my dear h.,--i write you after [a] considerable interval filled with too much work and weariness to make letter-writing convenient.... i ran away three days ago, the recitations being over for the year, in order to break from the studious associations of home. i have been staying at the tweedies with mrs. chapman, and james sturgis and his wife, and enjoying extremely, not the conversation indoors, but the lonely lying on the grass on the cliffs at lyly pond, and four or five hours yesterday at the dumplings, feeling the moving air and the gentle living sea. there is a purity and mildness about the elements here which purges the soul of one. and i have been as if i had taken opium, not wanting to do anything else than the particular thing i happened to be doing at the moment, and feeling equally good whether i stood or walked or lay, or spoke or was silent. it's a splendid relief from the overstrain and stimulus of the past few scholastic months. i go the day after tomorrow (monday) with the tweedies to new york, assist at henrietta temple's wedding on tuesday, and then pass on to the centennial for a couple of days. i suppose it will be pretty tiresome, but i want to see the english pictures, which they say are a good show.... i fancy my vacationizing will be confined to visits of a week at a time to different points, perhaps the pleasantest way after all of spending it. newport as to its villas, and all that, is most repulsive to me. i really didn't know how little charm and how much shabbiness there was about the place. there are not more than three or four houses out of the whole lot that are not offensive, in some way, externally. but the mild nature grows on one every day. this afternoon, god willing, i shall spend on paradise.[ ] the tweedies keep no horses, which makes one walk more or pay more than one would wish. the younger seabury told me yesterday that he was just reading your "roderick hudson," but offered no [comment]. colonel waring said of your "american" to me: "i'm not a blind admirer of h. james, jr., but i said to my wife after reading that first number, 'by jove, i think he's hit it this time!'" i think myself the thing opens very well indeed, you have a first-rate datum to work up, and i hope you'll do it well. your last few letters home have breathed a tone of contentment and domestication in paris which was very agreeable to get.... your accounts of ivan sergeitch are delightful, and i envy you the possession of the young painter's intimacy. give my best love to ivan. i read his book which you sent home (foreign books sent by mail pay duty now, though; so send none but good ones), and although the vein of "morbidness" was so pronounced in the stories, yet the mysterious depths which his plummet sounds atone for all. it is the amount of life which a man feels that makes you value his mind, and turguenieff has a sense of worlds within worlds whose existence is unsuspected by the vulgar. it amuses me to recommend his books to people who mention them as they would the novels of wilkie collins. you say we don't notice "daniel deronda." i find it extremely interesting. gwendolen and her spouse are masterpieces of conception and delineation. her ideal figures are much vaguer and thinner. but her "sapience," as you excellently call it, passes all decent bounds. there is something essentially womanish in the irrepressible garrulity of her moral reflections. why is it that it makes women feel so good to moralize? man philosophizes as a matter of business, because he must,--he does it to a purpose and then lets it rest; but women don't seem to get over being tickled at the discovery that they have the faculty; hence the tedious iteration and restlessness of george eliot's commentary on life. the la farges are absent. yours always, w. j. * * * * * under the title "bain and renouvier," james contributed a review containing a brief discussion of free will and determinism to the "nation" of june , . he of course sent a copy to renouvier. the following letter begins with a reference to renouvier's acknowledgment. james had been acquainted with renouvier's work since , when, as the reader will recall, he read a number of the "année philosophique," renouvier's annual survey of contemporary philosophy, for the first time. the diary entry already quoted from the year has shown what effect renouvier's essays then had on his mind. his admiration for the elder philosopher was great and he cherished it loyally for the rest of his life. indeed, in the unfinished manuscript, which was published posthumously as "some problems of philosophy," james looked back at the formative period of his own philosophical thinking and wrote: "renouvier was one of the greatest of philosophic characters, and but for the decisive impression made on me in the seventies by his masterly advocacy of pluralism i might never have got free from the monistic superstition under which i had grown up." in time he made renouvier's acquaintance in france and wrote to him often. he examined and discussed his writings with college classes. occasionally he reported these discussions and read renouvier's answers to the students. on the other side, renouvier paid james the compliment of printing or translating several of his papers in the "critique philosophique," and thus brought him early to the notice of french readers. _to charles renouvier._ cambridge, _july , _. my dear sir,--i am quite overcome by your appreciation of my poor little article in the "nation." it gratifies me extremely to hear from your own lips that my apprehension of your thoughts is accurate. in so despicably brief a space as that which a newspaper affords, i could hardly hope to attain any other quality than that, and perhaps clearness. i had written another paragraph of pure eulogy of your powers, which the editor suppressed, to my great regret, for want of room. i need not repeat to you again how grateful i feel to you for all i have learned from your admirable writings. i do what lies in my feeble power to assist the propagation of your works here, but _students_ of philosophy are rare here as everywhere. it astonishes me, nevertheless, that you have had to wait so long for general recognition. only a few months ago i had the pleasure of introducing to your "essais" two _professors_ of philosophy, able and learned men, who hardly knew your name!! but i am perfectly convinced that it is a mere affair of time, and that you will take your place in the general history of speculation as the classical and finished representative of the tendency which was begun by hume, and to which writers before you had made only fragmentary contributions, whilst you have fused the whole matter into a solid, elegant and definitive system, perfectly consistent, and capable, by reason of its moral vitality, of becoming popular, so far as that is permitted to philosophic systems. after your essays, it seems to me that the only important question is the deepest one of all, the one between the principle of contradiction, and the _sein und nichts_.[ ] you have brought it to that clear issue; and extremely as i value your logical attitude, it would be uncandid of me (after what i have said) not to confess that there are certain psychological and moral facts, which make me, as i stand today, unable wholly to commit myself to your position, to burn my ships behind me, and proclaim the belief in the _one_ and the many to be the original sin of the mind. i long for leisure to study up these questions. i have been teaching anatomy and physiology in harvard college here. next year, i add a course of physiological psychology, using, for certain practical reasons, spencer's "psychology" as a textbook. my health is not strong; i find that laboratory work and study, too, are more than i can attend to. it is therefore not impossible that i may in - be transferred to the philosophical department, in which there is likely to be a vacancy. if so, you may depend upon it that the name of renouvier will be as familiar as that of descartes to the bachelors of arts who leave these walls. believe me with the greatest respect and gratitude, faithfully yours, wm. james. ...i must add a _vivat_ to your "critique philosophique," which keeps up so ably and bravely! and although it is probably an entirely superfluous recommendation, i cannot refrain from calling your attention to the most robust of english philosophic writers, [shadworth] hodgson, whose "time and space" was published in by longmans, and whose "theory of practice," in two volumes, followed it in . * * * * * in connection with the allusion to two professors of philosophy who hardly knew renouvier's name, it would be fair to say that james was acutely conscious of the prevailing academic conditions. he was, in fact, one among a few younger men who were already rejuvenating the teaching of philosophy in american colleges. they began their work under difficult conditions. dr. g. stanley hall wrote an open letter to the "nation" in , in which he said:-- "i have often wished that the 'nation' would devote some space to the condition of philosophy in american colleges. within the last few years i have visited the class-rooms of many of our best institutions, and believe that there are few if any branches which are so inadequately taught as those generally roughly classed as philosophy. deductive logic, or the syllogism, is the most thoroughly dwelt upon, while induction, æsthetic and psychological and ethical studies, and especially the history of the leading systems of philosophy, ancient and modern, and the marvellous new developments in england and germany, are almost entirely ignored. the persistent use of hamilton, butler's 'analogy' and a score of treatises on 'moral science,' which deduce all the ground of obligation from theological considerations, as text-books, is largely responsible for the supposed unpopularity of the studies.... i think the success which has attended the recent lecture courses at cambridge on modern systems of philosophy, and on æsthetic studies of literature and the fine arts, shows plainly how much might be accomplished in this direction by the proper method of instruction." james's comment on this, printed anonymously in the "nation" for september , , expressed his view of the situation more fully:-- "the philosophical teaching, as a rule, in our higher seminaries is in the hands of the president, who is usually a minister of the gospel, and, as he more often owes his position to general excellence of character and administrative faculty than to any speculative gifts or propensities, it usually follows that 'safeness' becomes the main characteristic of his tuition; that his classes are edified rather than awakened, and leave college with the generous youthful impulse, to reflect on the world and our position in it, rather dampened and discouraged than stimulated by the lifeless discussions and flabby formulas they have had to commit to memory.... "let it not be supposed that we are prejudging the question whether the final results of speculation will be friendly or hostile to the formulas of christian thought. all we contend for is that we, like the greeks and the germans, should now attack things as if there were no official answer preoccupying the field. at present we are bribed beforehand by our reverence or dislike for the official answer; and the free-thinking tendency which the 'popular science monthly,' for example, represents, is condemned to an even more dismal shallowness than the spiritualistic systems of our text-books of 'mental science.' we work with one eye on our problem, and with the other on the consequences to our enemy or to our lawgiver, as the case may be; the result in both cases is mediocrity. "if the best use of our colleges is to give young men a wider openness of mind and a more flexible way of thinking than special technical training can generate, then we hold that philosophy (taken in the broad sense in which our correspondent uses the word) is the most important of all college studies. however skeptical one may be of the attainment of universal truths (and to make our position more emphatic, we are willing here to concede the extreme positivistic position), one can never deny that philosophic study means the habit of always seeing an alternative, of not taking the usual for granted, of making conventionalities fluid again, of imagining foreign states of mind. in a word, it means the possession of mental perspective. touchstone's question, 'hast any philosophy in thee, shepherd?' will never cease to be one of the tests of a wellborn nature. it says, is there space and air in your mind, or must your companions gasp for breath whenever they talk with you? and if our colleges are to make men, and not machines, they should look, above all things, to this aspect of their influence.... "as for philosophy, technically so called, or the reflection of man on his relations with the universe, its educational essence lies in the quickening of the spirit to its _problems_. what doctrines students take from their teachers are of little consequence provided they catch from them the living, philosophic attitude of mind, the independent, personal look at all the data of life, and the eagerness to harmonize them.... "in short, philosophy, like molière, claims her own where she finds it. she finds much of it today in physics and natural history, and must and will educate herself accordingly.... meanwhile, when we find announced that the students in harvard college next year may study any or all of the following works under the guidance of different professors,--locke's 'essay,' kant's 'kritik,' schopenhauer and hartmann, hodgson's 'theory of practice,' and spencer's 'psychology,'--we need not complain of universal academic stagnation, even today." viii - _marriage--contract for the psychology--european colleagues--death of his parents_ early in james had been introduced by their common friend thomas davidson (that ardent and lovable man whom he sketched with incomparable strokes in "a knight errant of the intellectual life") to miss alice h. gibbens, and the next day he wrote to his brother wilky that he had met "the future mrs. w. j." miss gibbens had grown up in weymouth, a pleasant little massachusetts town in which several generations of her ancestors had lived comfortably and which was then still untouched by the "development" that later converted it and its neighbour, quincy, into unseemly stone-quarriers' suburbs. in she had just returned, with her widowed mother and two younger sisters, from a five-years' residence in europe and was teaching in a school for girls in boston. on july , , after a short engagement, he and miss gibbens were married by the reverend rufus ellis at the house of the bride's grandmother in boston. it must be left to a later day and a less intimate and partial hand to do adequate justice to a marriage which was happy in the rarest and fullest sense, and which was soon to work an abiding transformation in james's health and spirits. no mere devotion could have achieved the skill and care with which his wife understood and helped him. family duties and responsibilities, often grave and worrisome enough, weighed lightly in the balance against the tranquillity and confidence that his new domesticity soon brought him. during the twenty-one years that immediately followed his marriage he accomplished an amount of teaching, college committee-service and administration, friendly and helpful personal intercourse with his students, reading and book-writing, original research, not to speak of his initial excursions into the field of psychical research, and a good deal of popular lecturing to eke out his income, that would have astonished anyone who had known him only during the early seventies, and that would have honored the capacity and endurance of any man. the serener tone of his letters soon contrasts itself with much that has gone before. the occasional references to fatigue, insomnia, and eye-strain, which still occur in his correspondence are explained by the amount of work he imposed upon himself rather than by the lack of strength with which he met his tasks. meanwhile his wife, who entered into all his plans and undertakings with unfailing understanding and high spirit, stood guard over his library door, protected him from interruptions and distractions, managed the household and the children and the family business, helped him to order his day and to see and entertain his friends at convenient times, sped him off on occasional much-needed vacations, and encouraged him to all his major undertakings, with a sustaining skill and cheer which need not be described to anyone who knew his household. to the importance of her companionship it is still, happily, impossible to do justice. if consulted, she would not tolerate even this allusion; yet to gloss over her sustaining influence entirely would be to do injustice to james himself. * * * * * the summer of was momentous in james's life for another reason. in june, one month before his marriage, he contracted with messrs. henry holt & company to write a volume on psychology for the "american science series" that they were beginning to publish. he was asked by mr. holt, in the course of preliminary correspondence, whether he could deliver the manuscript in a year's time. james replied (june, ): "my other engagements and my health both forbid the attempt to execute the work rapidly. its quality too might then suffer. i don't think i could finish it inside of two years--say the fall of ." thus he proposed to throw the book off rapidly. he doubtless conceived of it in the beginning as a more or less literary survey of the subject as it was then known, and he certainly did not foresee that he was going to devote twelve years of critical study and original research to its preparation. * * * * * meanwhile, immediately after their marriage, james took his wife to the upper end of keene valley in the adirondacks for the rest of the summer. they both knew and loved the region already. indeed, although there has been no occasion to mention it before, keene valley had already become for james the playground toward which he turned most eagerly when summer came. it never lost its charm for him; he managed to spend a week or two of almost every year there or nearby; and allusions to the region will appear in a number of later letters. at the head of these valleys, in the basin of the ausable lakes and on the surrounding slopes of the most interesting group of mountains in the adirondacks, a great tract of forest has been preserved. giant, noonmark, colvin, and the gothics raise their splendid ridges and summits to the enclosing horizon, and dix, haystack, and marcy, the last the highest mountain of the adirondack range, are within a day's walk of the little community that used to be known as "beede's." where the ausable club's picturesque golf-course is now laid out, the fields of smith beede's farm then surrounded his primitive, white-painted hotel. half a mile to the eastward, in a patch of rocky pasture beside giant brook, stood the original beede farm-house, and this henry p. bowditch, charles and james putnam, and william james had bought for a few hundred dollars (subject to beede's cautious proviso in the deed that "the purchasers are to keep no boarders"). they had adapted the little story-and-a-half dwelling to their own purposes and converted its surrounding sheds and pens into habitable shanties of the simplest kind. so they established a sort of camp, with the mountains for their climbing, the brook to bathe in, and the primeval forest fragrant about them. with a friend or native guide,--or often alone, with a book and lunch in his light rücksack,--james would go off for a long day's walk on one of the mountain trails. he liked to start early and to spend several hours at mid-day stretched out on the sheltered side of an open ridge or summit. in this way he would combine a day of outdoor exercise with fifty to eighty pages of professional reading, the daily stint to which he often held himself in his holidays. in the summer of seventy-eight he planned to combine this sort of refreshment with work on the "psychology." the plan seemed a little innocent to at least one friend,--francis j. child,--who said in a letter to james russell lowell: "william has already begun a manual of psychology--in the honeymoon;--but they are both writing it." _to francis j. child._ [dictated to mrs. james] keene valley, _aug. _ [ ]. carissimo,--daily since the first instant have we trembled with joyous expectancy of your holiday face arriving at our door. daily have we dashed the teardrop of disappointment from our common eye! and now to get a letter instead of your revered form! it is shameful. we are dying with the tedium of each other's society and you would make the wheels of life go round again. your excursion to scarborough is simply criminal under the circumstances. you know we longed to see you. it is not too late to repair your fault, for although we shall not outstay the st of september, you would find the putnams and the best thirty-five-year-old medical society in boston to keep you company after we go. you had better come from scarborough through portland direct to burlington by the white mt. r.r. from burlington take boat to westport, whence stage to beede's and our beating heart. but such is the crassitude of your malignity that after this we hardly dare expect you. seriously, how could you be so insane? as for the remaining matter of your somewhat illegible letter, what is this mythological and poetical talk about psychology and psyche and keeping back a manuscript composed during a honeymoon? the only psyche now recognized by science is a decapitated frog whose writhings express deeper truths than your weakminded poets ever dreamed. _she_ (not psyche but the bride) loves all these doctrines which are quite novel to her mind, hitherto accustomed to all sorts of mysticism and superstitions. she swears entirely by reflex action now, and believes in universal _nothwendigkeit_. hope not with your ballad-mongering ever to gain an influence. we have spent, however, a ballad-like summer in this delicious cot among the hills. we only needed crooks and a flock of sheep. i need not say that our psychic reaction has been one of content--perhaps as great as ever enjoyed by man. so farewell, false friend, till such near time as your ehrwürdig person decorate our hearth at mrs. hanks's in harvard st. communicate our hearty love to mrs. child and believe us your always doting (w. and a.) j. and for heaven's sake _come_ while yet there is time! wm. * * * * * when the college opened in the autumn of seventy-eight james and his wife returned to cambridge and lived for a few months in lodgings at harvard street. the next letter begins a series from which a number of later letters will be given. one of the warmest of james's lifelong friendships was with miss frances r. morse of boston. the "exquisite mary" referred to near the end is her sister, later mrs. john w. elliot. _to miss frances r. morse._ [dictated to mrs. james] cambridge, _dec. , _. _our_ dear fanny,--i (w.) shield myself under my wife's handwriting to drop that formal style of address which has so long cast its cold shadow over our intercourse, and for which, now that i have become an old fogy whilst you still remain a blooming child, there seems no further good reason. are you willing that henceforward we should call each other by our first names? if so, respond in kind. i have got into the habit of dictating to _her_ all that i write, in order to save my eyes. this letter is from both of us. your letter from brighton of oct. th was duly and gladly received. you have since then seen a great many things, and we have heard of you occasionally, latest of your ascent of the nile with the longfellows. they will be pleasant companions and i hope the long rest, delicious climate and beautiful outlook of that voyage will do ---- a world of good. it is too pitiful to think of her breaking down just at a time when one's active faculties have so much incitement to exert themselves. i am glad your mother is so much better. and how you will enjoy the sights of the winter! don't you wish you had taken history instead of english literature! we are very happily "boarding" on the corner of harvard and ware street, next door to old mrs. cary's, where the tappans used to live. we have absolutely no housekeeping trouble; we live surrounded by our wedding presents, and can devote all our energies to studying our lessons, dining with our respective mothers-in-law, receiving and repaying our "calls," which average one a day, and anxiously keeping our accounts in a little book so as to see where the trouble is if both ends don't meet. we meant to have sent you this letter on christmas day, but it was crowded out by many interruptions. we had, considering the age of the world and the hard times, quite a show of xmas gifts and mild festivities. ...i suppose you get your "nation" regularly on the nile, so i make no comments on public affairs. we all feel sorry for poor old england just now. it really seems as if with us things were settling down upon a solid and orderly basis of general frugality. keen cold weather, bare ground, and clear sky, west wind filling the air with clouds of frozen dust, and an engagement at the dentist's in an hour from this will seem to you on the nile like tales told by an idiot. still they are true for me. pray write again and let us hear that you are all well, especially the exquisite mary, to whom give lots of love, and with plenty to your parents and self, believe me, yours faithfully, wm. james. * * * * * the passage which follows is taken from a letter to mrs. james, of about this time. it is so unusual a bit of self-analysis that it is included here. james himself never failed to recognize that every man's thought is biased by his temperament as well as guided by purely rational considerations. _to mrs. james._ ...i have often thought that the best way to define a man's character would be to seek out the particular mental or moral attitude in which, when it came upon him, he felt himself most deeply and intensely active and alive. at such moments there is a voice inside which speaks and says: "_this_ is the real me!" and afterwards, considering the circumstances in which the man is placed, and noting how some of them are fitted to evoke this attitude, whilst others do not call for it, an outside observer may be able to prophesy where the man may fail, where succeed, where be happy and where miserable. now as well as i can describe it, this characteristic attitude in me always involves an element of active tension, of holding my own, as it were, and trusting outward things to perform their part so as to make it a full harmony, but without any _guaranty_ that they will. make it a guaranty--and the attitude immediately becomes to my consciousness stagnant and stingless. take away the guaranty, and i feel (provided i am _überhaupt_ in vigorous condition) a sort of deep enthusiastic bliss, of bitter willingness to do and suffer anything, which translates itself physically by a kind of stinging pain inside my breast-bone (don't smile at this--it is to me an essential element of the whole thing!), and which, although it is a mere mood or emotion to which i can give no form in words, authenticates itself to me as the deepest principle of all active and theoretic determination which i possess.... w. j. * * * * * the next letter contains the first reference to work on the "psychology." it also introduces into this volume the name and personality of a colleague-to-be with whom james's relations were destined to be close and permanent. josiah royce was then a young man "from the intellectual barrens of california" whose brilliant work was still to be done, and whose philosophic genius had not yet been disclosed to the public, although it may fairly be said to have been announced by every line of his engagingly socrates-like face and figure. he had been born and brought up among the most primitive surroundings in grass valley, california, and won his way to a brief period of study in germany and to a degree at johns hopkins in . while yet a student there, he paid a visit to cambridge, and he has left his own quotable record of the meeting which resulted, and of what followed. "my real acquaintance with [james] began one summer-day in , when i first visited him in [his father's] house on quincy street, and was permitted to pour out my soul to somebody who really seemed to believe that a young man might rightfully devote his life to philosophy if he chose. i was then a student at the johns hopkins university. the opportunities for a life-work in philosophy in this country were few. most of my friends and advisers had long been telling me to let the subject alone. perhaps, so far as i was concerned, their advice was sound; but in any case i was, so far, incapable of accepting that advice. yet if somebody had not been ready to tell me that i had a right to work for truth in my own way, i should ere long have been quite discouraged. i do not know what i then could have done. james found me at once--made out what my essential interests were at our first interview, accepted me with all my imperfections, as one of those many souls who ought to be able to find themselves in their own way, gave a patient and willing ear to just my variety of philosophical experience, and used his influence from that time on, not to win me as a follower, but to give me my chance. it was upon his responsibility that i was later led to get my first opportunities here at harvard."[ ] the opportunities did not ripen until - , however; and in the meanwhile royce returned to the young university of california as an instructor in logic and rhetoric. letters written to him there will show how cordially james continued to sympathize with the aspirations of his young friend, and how eagerly he fostered the possibility of an appointment to the harvard philosophical department. when the opportunity arose, james seized it. thereafter he and royce saw each other so constantly in cambridge that there were not many occasions for either to write letters to the other. instead, allusions to royce appear frequently in the letters to other people. the philosophical club which is alluded to at the end of the letter was presided over by dr. w. t. harris and held informal meetings in boston during this one winter. its purpose was to read and discuss hegel. dr. c. c. everett, prof. g. h. palmer, and thomas davidson were among the members. _to josiah royce._ cambridge, _feb. _ [ ]. my dear royce,--your letter was most welcome. i had often found myself wondering how you were getting on, and your wail as the solitary philosopher between behrings' strait and tierra del fuego has a grand, lonesome picturesqueness about it. i am sorry your surroundings are not more mentally congenial. but recollect your extreme youth and the fact that you are making a living and practising yourself in the pedagogic art, _überhaupt_. you might be forced to do something much farther away from your chosen line, and even then not make a living. i think you are a lucky youth even as matters stand. unexpected chances are always turning up. a fortnight ago president eliot was asked to recommend some one for a $ professorship of philosophy in the new york city college. one griffin of amherst was finally appointed. i imagine that gilman [of johns hopkins] is keeping his eye on you and only waiting for the disgrace of youth to fade from your person. i liked your article on schiller very much, and hope you will send more to harris. that most villainous of editors, as i am told, has himself been to baltimore lately as an office-seeker. but the rumor may be false. in some respects he might be a useful man for the johns hopkins university, but i would give no more for his judgment than for that of a digger indian. i hope you will write something about hodgson. he is quite as worthy as kant of supporting any number of parasites and partial assimilators of his substance. my sentence, i perceive, has a rather uncomplimentary sound. i meant only to say that you should not be deterred from treating him in your own way from fear of inadequacy. all his commentators must undoubtedly be inadequate for some time to come; but they will all help each other out. he seems to me the wealthiest mine of thought i ever met with. with me, save for my eyes, things are jogging along smoothly. i am writing (very slowly) what may become a text-book of psychology. a proposal from gilman to teach in baltimore three months yearly for the next three years had to be declined as incompatible with work here. i will send you a corrected copy of harris's journal with my article on space, which was printed without my seeing the proof. i suppose you subscribe to "mind." the only decent thing i have ever written will, i hope, appear in the july number of that sheet.[ ] the delays of publication are fearful. most of this was written in . if it ever sees the light, i hope you will let me know what you think of it, and how it tallies with your own theory of the concept, which latter i would fain swallow and digest. i wish you belonged to our philosophic club here. it is very helpful to the uprooting of weeds from one's own mind as well as the detection of beams in one's neighbor's eyes. write often and believe me faithfully yours, wm. james. _to josiah royce._ cambridge, _feb. , _. beloved royce!--so far was i from having forgotten you that i had been revolving in my mind, on the very day when your letter came, the rhetorical formulas of objurgation with which i was to begin a page of inquiries of you: whether you were dead and buried or had become an idiot or were sick or blind or what, that you sent no word of yourself. _i_ am blind as ever, which may excuse my silence. first of all _glückwünsche_ as to your _verlobung_! which, like the true philosopher that you are, you mention parenthetically and without names, dates, numbers of dollars, etc., etc. i think it shows great sense in her, and no small amount of it in you, whoe'er she be. i have found in marriage a calm and repose i never knew before, and only wish i had done the thing ten years earlier. i think the lateness of our usual marriages is a bad thing, and hope your engagement will not last very long. it is refreshing to hear your account of philosophic work.... i'm sorry you've given up your article on hodgson. he _is_ obscure enough, and makes me sometimes wonder whether the _ignotum_ does not pass itself off for the _magnifico_ in his pages. i enclose his photograph as a loan, trusting you will return it soon. i will never write again for harris's journal. he refused an article of mine a year ago "for lack of room," and has postponed the printing of two admirable original articles by t. davidson and elliot cabot for the last ten months or more, in order to accommodate mrs. channing's verses and miss----'s drivel about the school of athens, etc., etc. it is too loathsome. harris has resigned his school position in st. louis and will, i am told, come east to live. i know not whether he means to lay siege to the johns hopkins professorship. my ignorant prejudice against all hegelians, except hegel himself, grows wusser and wusser. their sacerdotal airs! and their sterility! contemplating their navels and the syllable _oum_! my dear friend palmer, assistant professor of philosophy here, is already one of the white-winged band, having been made captive by caird in two summers of vacation in scotland.... the ineffectiveness and impotence of the ending of [caird's] work on kant seem to me simply scandalous, after its pretentious (and able) beginning. what do you think of carveth [reid]'s essay on shadworth [hodgson]? i haven't read it. our philosophic club here is given up this year--i think we're all rather sick of each other's voices. my teaching is small in numbers, though my men are good. i've tried renouvier as a text-book--for the last time! his exposition offers too many difficulties. i enjoyed your rhapsody on space, and hereby pledge myself to buy two copies of your work ten years hence, and to devote the rest of my life to the propagation of its doctrines. i despise my own article,[ ] which was dashed off for a momentary purpose and published for another. but i don't see why its main doctrine, from a psychologic and sublunary point of view, is not sound; and i think i can, if my psychology ever gets writ, set it down in decently clear and orderly form. all _deducers_ of space are, i am sure, mythologists. you are, after all, not so very much isolated in california. we are all isolated--"columns left alone of a temple once complete," etc. books are our companions more than men. but i wish nevertheless, and firmly expect, that somehow or other you will get a call east, and within my humble sphere of power i will do what i can to further that end. my accursed eye-sight balks me always about study and production. _ora pro me!_ with most respectful and devout regards to the fair object, believe me always your wm. james. _to charles renouvier._ cambridge, _june , _. my dear monsieur renouvier,--my last lesson in the course on your "essais" took place today. the final examination occurs this week. the students have been profoundly interested, though their reactions on your teaching seem as diverse as their personalities; one (the maturest of all) being yours body and soul, another turning out a strongly materialistic fatalist! and the rest occupying positions of mixed doubt and assent; all however (but one) being convinced by your treatment of freedom and certitude. as for myself, i must frankly confess to you that i am more unsettled than i have been for years. i have read several times over your reply to lotze, and your reply to my letter. the latter was fully discussed in the class. the former seems to me a perfectly masterly expression of a certain intellectual position, and with the latter, i think it makes it perfectly clear to me where our divergence lies. i can formulate all your reasonings for myself, but--dare i say it?--they fail to awaken conviction. it seems as if, the simpler the point, the more hopeless the disagreement in philosophy. but i will enter into no further discussion now. i think it will be profitable for me, for some time to come, inwardly to digest the matters in question and your utterances before trying to articulate any more opinions. i am overwhelmed with duties at present, and shall very shortly sail for england to pass part of the vacation; maybe i shall get to the continent and see you. if we meet, i hope you will treat my heresies on the question of the infinite with the indulgence and magnanimity which your doctrine of freedom in theoretic affirmations exacts!! i will send you in a day or two an essay which develops your psychology of the voluntary process, and which i hope will give you pleasure. pray excuse the haste and superficiality of this note, which is only meant to explain why i do not write at greater length and to announce my hope of soon grasping you by the hand and assuring you in person of my devotion and indebtedness. always yours, wm. james. * * * * * james sailed in june a good deal fagged by his year's work, and got back by the first week of september, having spent most of the interval seeking solitude and refreshment in the alps and northern italy. on his way home he paid his respects to renouvier at avignon, but otherwise made no effort to meet his european colleagues. _to charles renouvier._ cambridge, _dec. , _. my dear monsieur renouvier,--your note and the conclusion of my article in the "critique" came together this morning. it gives me almost a feeling of pain that you, at your age and with your achievements, should be spending your time in translating my feeble words, when by every principle of right i should be engaged in turning your invaluable writings into english. the state of my eyes is, as you know, my excuse for this as for all other shortcomings. i have not even read the whole of your translation of [my] "feeling of effort," though the passages i have perused have seemed to me excellently well done. my exposition strikes me as rather complicated now. it was written in great haste and, were i to rewrite it, it should be simpler. the omissions of which you speak are of no importance whatever. i have read your discussion with lotze in the "revue philosophique" and agree with hodgson that you carry off there the honors of the battle. _quant au fond de la question_, however, i am still in doubt and wait for the light of further reflexion to settle my opinion. the matter in my mind complicates itself with the question of a universal ego. if time and space are not _in se_, do we not need an enveloping ego to make continuous the times and spaces, not necessarily coincident, of the partial egos? on this question, as i told you, i will not fail to write again when i get new light, which i trust may decide me in your favor. my principal amusement this winter has been resisting the inroads of hegelism in our university. my colleague palmer, a recent convert and a man of much ability, has been making an active propaganda among the more advanced students. it is a strange thing, this resurrection of hegel in england and here, after his burial in germany. i think his philosophy will probably have an important influence on the development of our liberal form of christianity. it gives a quasi-metaphysic backbone which this theology has always been in need of, but it is too fundamentally rotten and charlatanish to last long. as a reaction against materialistic evolutionism it has its use, only this evolutionism is fertile while hegelism is absolutely sterile. i think often of the too-short hours i spent with you and monsieur pillon and wish they might return. believe me with the warmest thanks and regards, yours faithfully, wm. james. * * * * * in august of james arranged with the college for a year's leave of absence, and sailed for europe again, this time with the double purpose of giving himself a vacation and of meeting some of the european investigators who were working on the problems in which he had become absorbed. he landed in england, and paused there just long enough to throw his brother henry into the state of half-resentful bewilderment that invariably resulted from their first european reunions. henry, to whom europe, and england in particular, had already become an absorbing passion and for whom american reactions upon europe were still an unexhausted theme, greeted every arriving american with eager curiosity and a confident expectation that the stranger would "register" impressions of the most charming enchantment and pleasure for his edification. william, on the other hand, was always most under the european spell when in america; and--whether moved by the constitutional restlessness that seized him so soon as ever he began to travel, or by the perversity that was a fascinating trait in his character and was usually provoked by his younger brother's admiring neighborhood--he was always most ardently american when on european soil. thus his first words of greeting to henry on stepping out of the steamer-train were: "my!--how cramped and inferior england seems! after all, it's poor old europe, just as it used to be in our dreary boyhood! america may be raw and shrill, but i could never live with this as you do! i'm going to hurry down to switzerland [or wherever] and then home again as soon as may be. it was a mistake to come over! i thought it would do me good. hereafter i'll stay at home. you'll have to come to america if you want to see the family." the effect on henry can better be imagined than described. time never accustomed him to these collisions, even though he learned to expect them. england inferior! a mistake to come abroad! horror and consternation are weak terms by which to describe his feelings; and nothing but a devotion seldom existing between brothers, and a lively interest in the astonishing phenomenon of such a reaction, ever carried him through the hour. he usually ended by hurrying william onward--anywhere--within the day if possible--and remained alone to ejaculate, to exclaim and to expatiate for weeks on the rude and exciting cyclone that had burst upon him and passed by. on this occasion it took only two days for william to start on from london for the rhine, nüremburg, and vienna; then to venice, where he idled for the first half of october. after this short pause he returned to prague; and then, working northward, consumed the autumn in visiting the universities of dresden, berlin, leipzig, liège and paris. intimate letters to his wife, who had remained in cambridge with their two little boys, are almost the only ones that survive. a few passages from these will therefore be included. _to mrs. james._ vienna, _sept. , _. ...i wish you could have been with me yesterday to see some french pictures at the "internationale kunst ausstellung"; they gave an idea of the vigor of france in that way just now. one, a peasant woman, in all her brutish loutishness sitting staring before her at noonday on the grass she's been cutting, while the man lies flat on his back with straw hat over face. she with such a look of infinite unawakenedness, such childlike virginity under her shapeless body and in her face, as to make it a poem.[ ] dear, perhaps the deepest impression i've got since i've been in germany is that made on me by the indefatigable beavers of old wrinkled peasant women, striding like men through the streets, dragging their carts or lugging their baskets, minding their business, seeming to notice nothing, in the stream of luxury and vice, but belonging far away, to something better and purer. their poor, old, ravaged and stiffened faces, their poor old bodies dried up with ceaseless toil, their patient souls make me weep. "they are our conscripts." they are the venerable ones whom we should reverence. all the mystery of womanhood seems incarnated in their ugly being--the mothers! the mothers! ye are all one! yes, alice dear, what i love in you is only what these blessed old creatures have; and i'm glad and proud, when i think of my own dear mother with tears running down my face, to know that she is one with these.[ ] good-night, good-night!... _to mrs. james._ aussig, bohemia, _nov. , _. ...as for prague, _veni, vidi, vici_. i went there with much trepidation to do my social-scientific duty. the mighty hering in especial intimidated me beforehand; but having taken the plunge, the cutaneous glow and "euphoria" (_vide_ dictionary) succeeded, and i have rarely enjoyed a forty-eight hours better, in spite of the fact that the good and sharp-nosed stumpf (whose book "Ã�ber die raumvorstellungen" i verily believe thou art capable of never having noticed the cover of!) insisted on trotting me about, day and night, over the whole length and breadth of prague, and that [ernst] mach (professor of physics), genius of all trades, simply took stumpf's place to do the same. i heard [ewald] hering give a very poor physiology lecture and mach a beautiful physical one. i presented them with my visiting card, saying that i was with their "schriften sehr vertraut und wollte nicht eher prague verlassen als bis ich wenigstens ein paar worte mit ihnen umtauschte," etc.[ ] they received me with open arms. i had an hour and a half's talk with hering, which cleared up some things for me. he asked me to come to his house that evening, but i gave an evasive reply, being fearful of boring him. meanwhile mach came to my hotel and i spent four hours walking and supping with him at his club, an unforgettable conversation. i don't think anyone ever gave me so strong an impression of pure intellectual genius. he apparently has read everything and thought about everything, and has an absolute simplicity of manner and winningness of smile when his face lights up, that are charming. with stumpf i spent five hours on monday evening (this is thursday), three on wednesday morning and four in the afternoon; so i feel rather intimate. a clear-headed and just-minded, though pale and anxious-looking man in poor health. he had another philosopher named marty [?] to dine with me yesterday--jolly young fellow. my native _geschwätzigkeit_[ ] triumphed over even the difficulties of the german tongue; i careered over the field, taking the pitfalls and breastworks at full run, and was fairly astounded myself at coming in alive. i learned a good many things from them, both in the way of theory and fact, and shall probably keep up a correspondence with stumpf. they are not so different from us as we think. their greater thoroughness is largely the result of circumstances. i found that i had a more _cosmopolitan_ knowledge of modern philosophic literature than any of them, and shall on the whole feel much less intimidated by the thought of their like than hitherto. my letters will hereafter, i feel sure, have a more jocund tone. damn italy! it isn't a good thing to stay with one's inferiors. with the nourishing breath of the german air, and the sort of smoky and leathery german smell, vigor and good spirits have set in. i have walked well and slept well and eaten well and read well, and in short begin to feel as i expected i should when i decided upon this arduous pilgrimage. prague is a ---- city--the adjective is hard to find; not magnificent, but everything is too honest and homely,--we have in fact no english word for the peculiar quality that good german things have, of depth, solidity, picturesqueness, magnitude and homely goodness combined. they have worked out a really great civilization. "dienst ist dienst"![ ] said the gateman of a certain garden yesterday afternoon whom stumpf was trying to persuade to let me in, as an american, to see the view five minutes after the closing hour had struck. _dienst ist dienst._ that is really the german motto everywhere--and i should like to know what american would ever think of justifying himself by just that formula. i say german of prague, for it seems to me, in spite of the feverish nationalism of the natives, to be outwardly a pure german city.... * * * * * berlin, _nov. , _. ...yesterday i went to the veterinary school to see h. munk, the great brain vivisector. he was very cordial and poured out a torrent of talk for one and a half hours, though he could show me no animals. he gave me one of his new publications and introduced me to dr. baginsky (professor samuel porter's favorite authority on the semicircular canals, whose work i treated superciliously in my article). so we opened on the semicircular canals, and baginsky's torrent of words was even more overwhelming than munk's. i never felt quite so helpless and small-boyish before, and am to this hour dizzy from the onslaught. in the evening at the house of gizycki (a docent on ethics), to a "privatissimum" with a supper after it. good, square, deep-chested talk again, which i couldn't help contrasting with the whining tones of our students and of some of the members of the hegel club--i hate to leave the wholesome, tonic atmosphere, the land where one talks best when he talks manliest--slowest, distinctest, with most deliberate emphasis and strong voice.... * * * * * leipzig, _nov. , _. ...jones spoilt my incipient nap this afternoon and i adjourned to his room to meet smith and brown[ ] again, with another american wild-cat reformer. jones is too many for me--i'm glad i'm to get far off. religion is well, moral regeneration is well, so is improvement of society, so are the courage, disinterestedness, ideality of all sorts, these men show in their lives; but i verily believe that the condition of being a man of the world, a gentleman, etc., carries something with it, an atmosphere, an outlook, a play, that all these things together fail to carry, and that is worth them all. i got so suffocated with their everlasting spiritual gossip! the falsest views and tastes somehow in a man of fashion are truer than the truest in a plebeian cad. and when i told the new man there that a "materialist" would have no difficulty in keeping his place in harvard college provided he was well-bred, i said what was really the highest test of the college excellence. i suppose he thought it sounded cynical. _their_ sphere is with the masses struggling into light, not with us at harvard; though i'm glad i can meet them cordially for a while now and then. thou see'est i have some "spleen" on me today.... * * * * * leipzig, _nov. , _. ...yesterday was a splendid day within and without.... the old town delightful in its blackness and plainness. i heard several lecturers. old ludwig's lecture in the afternoon was memorable for the extraordinary impression of character he made on me. the traditional german professor in its highest sense. a rusty brown wig and broad-skirted brown coat, a voluminous black neckcloth, an absolute unexcitability of manner, a clean-shaven face so plebeian and at the same time so grandly carved, with its hooked nose and gentle kindly mouth and inexhaustible patience of expression, that i never saw the like. then to wundt, who has a more refined elocution than any one i've yet heard in germany. he received me very kindly after the lecture in his laboratory, dimly trying to remember my writings, and i stay over today, against my intention, to go to his _psychologische gesellschaft_ tonight. have been writing psychology most all day.... * * * * * in train for liÃ�ge, _nov. , _. ...i believe i didn't tell you, in the bustle of traveling, much about wundt. he made a very pleasant and personal impression on me, with his agreeable voice and ready, tooth-showing smile. his lecture also was very able, and my opinion of him is higher than before seeing him. but he seemed very busy and showed no desire to see more of me than the present interview either time. the _psychologische gesellschaft_ i stayed over to see was postponed, but he did not propose to me to do anything else--to the gain of my ease, but to the loss of my vanity. dear old stumpf has been the friendliest of these fellows. with him i shall correspond.... * * * * * liÃ�ge, _nov. , _. ...i am still at delboeuf's, aching in every joint and muscle, weary in every nerve-cell, but unable to get away till tomorrow noon. i was to have started today.... the total lesson of what i have done in the past month is to make me quieter with my home-lot and readier to believe that it is one of the chosen places of the earth. certainly the instruction and facilities at our university are on the whole superior to anything i have seen; the rawnesses we mention with such affliction at home belong rather to the century than to us (witness the houses here); we are not a whit more isolated than they are here. in all belgium there seem to be but two genuine philosophers; in berlin they have little to do with each other, and i really believe that in my way i have a wider view of the field than anyone i've seen (i count out, of course, my ignorance of ancient authors). we are a sound country and my opinion of our essential worth has risen and not fallen. we only lack abdominal depth of temperament and the power to sit for an hour over a single pot of beer without being able to tell at the end of it what we've been thinking about. also to reform our altogether abominable, infamous and infra-human voices and way of talking. (what _further_ fatal defects hang together with that i don't know--it seems as if it must carry something very bad with it.) the first thing to do is to establish in cambridge a genuine german plebeian kneipe club, to which all instructors and picked students shall be admitted. if that succeeds, we shall be perfect, especially if we talk therein with deeper voices.... _to henry james._ paris, _nov. , _. dear h.,--found at hottinguer's this a.m. your letter with all the enclosures--and a wail you had sent to berlin. also six letters from my wife and seven or eight others, not counting papers and magazines. i will mail back yours and father's letter to me. alice [mrs. w. j.] speaks of father's indubitable improvement in strength, but our sister alice apparently is somewhat run down.--paris looks delicious--i shall try to get settled as soon as possible and meanwhile feel as if the confusion of life was recommencing. i saw in germany all the men i cared to see and talked with most of them. with three or four i had a really nutritious time. the trip has amply paid for itself. i found third-class _nichtraucher_ almost always empty and perfectly comfortable. the great use of such experiences is less the definite information you gain from anyone, than a sort of solidification of your own foothold on life. nowhere did i see a university which seems to do for _all_ its students anything like what harvard does. our methods throughout are better. it is only in the select "seminaria" (private classes) that a few german students making researches with the professor gain something from him personally which his genius alone can give. i certainly got a most distinct impression of my own _information_ in regard to _modern_ philosophic matters being broader than that of any one i met, and our harvard post of observation being more cosmopolitan. delboeuf in liège was an angel and much the best teacher i've seen....[ ] "the century," with your very good portrait, etc., was at hottinguer's this a.m., sent by my wife. i shall read it presently. i'm off now to see if i can get your leather trunk, sent from london, arrested by inundations, and ordered to be returned to paris. i never needed its contents a second. and in your little american valise and my flabby black hand-bag and shawl-straps and a small satchel, i carried not only everything i used, but collected a whole library of books in leipsig, some pieces of venetian glass in their balky bolsters of seaweed, a quart bottle of eau de cologne, and a lot of other acquisitions. i feel remarkably tough now, and fairly ravenous for my psychologic work. address hottinguer's. w. j. * * * * * james's mother had died during the preceding winter. now, just after his arrival in paris, he received news that his father was dangerously ill. he went to london immediately, with the intention of getting home as soon as possible. on arriving at his brother henry's lodgings, he found that henry had already sailed. he also received a despatch advising him that the danger was not immediate and that he should wait. he remained, but with misgivings which the next news intensified. _to his father._ bolton st., london, _dec. , _. darling old father,--two letters, one from my alice last night, and one from aunt kate to harry just now, have somewhat dispelled the mystery in which the telegrams left your condition; and although their news is several days earlier than the telegrams, i am free to suppose that the latter report only an aggravation of the symptoms the letters describe. it is far more agreeable to think of this than of some dreadful unknown and sudden malady. we have been so long accustomed to the hypothesis of your being taken away from us, especially during the past ten months, that the thought that this may be your last illness conveys no very sudden shock. you are old enough, you've given your message to the world in many ways and will not be forgotten; you are here left alone, and on the other side, let us hope and pray, dear, dear old mother is waiting for you to join her. if you go, it will not be an inharmonious thing. only, if you are still in possession of your normal consciousness, i should like to see you once again before we part. i stayed here only in obedience to the last telegram, and am waiting now for harry--who knows the exact state of my mind, and who will know yours--to telegraph again what i shall do. meanwhile, my blessed old father, i scribble this line (which may reach you though i should come too late), just to tell you how full of the tenderest memories and feelings about you my heart has for the last few days been filled. in that mysterious gulf of the past into which the present soon will fall and go back and back, yours is still for me the central figure. all my intellectual life i derive from you; and though we have often seemed at odds in the expression thereof, i'm sure there's a harmony somewhere, and that our strivings will combine. what my debt to you is goes beyond all my power of estimating,--so early, so penetrating and so constant has been the influence. you need be in no anxiety about your literary remains. i will see them well taken care of, and that your words shall not suffer for being concealed. at paris i heard that milsand, whose name you may remember in the "revue des deux mondes" and elsewhere, was an admirer of the "secret of swedenborg," and hodgson told me your last book had deeply impressed him. so will it be; especially, i think, if a collection of _extracts_ from your various writings were published, after the manner of the extracts from carlyle, ruskin, & co. i have long thought such a volume would be the best monument to you.--as for us; we shall live on each in his way,--feeling somewhat unprotected, old as we are, for the absence of the parental bosoms as a refuge, but holding fast together in that common sacred memory. we will stand by each other and by alice, try to transmit the torch in our offspring as you did in us, and when the time comes for being gathered in, i pray we may, if not all, some at least, be as ripe as you. as for myself, i know what trouble i've given you at various times through my peculiarities; and as my own boys grow up, i shall learn more and more of the kind of trial you had to overcome in superintending the development of a creature different from yourself, for whom you felt responsible. i say this merely to show how my _sympathy_ with you is likely to grow much livelier, rather than to fade--and not for the sake of regrets.--as for the other side, and mother, and our all possibly meeting, i _can't_ say anything. more than ever at this moment do i feel that if that _were_ true, all would be solved and justified. and it comes strangely over me in bidding you good-bye how a life is but a day and expresses mainly but a single note. it is so much like the act of bidding an ordinary good-night. good-night, my sacred old father! if i don't see you again--farewell! a blessed farewell! your william. * * * * * the elder henry james died on the nineteenth of december. a cablegram was sent to london; and on learning of his father's death, james wrote a letter to his wife from which the following extract is taken. _to mrs. james._ ...father's boyhood up in albany, grandmother's house, the father and brothers and sister, with their passions and turbulent histories, his burning, amputation and sickness, his college days and ramblings, his theological throes, his engagement and marriage and fatherhood, his finding more and more of the truths he finally settled down in, his travels in europe, the days of the old house in new york and all the men i used to see there, at last his quieter motion down the later years of life in newport, boston and cambridge, with his friends and correspondents about him, and his books more and more easily brought forth--how long, how long all these things were in the living, but how short their memory now is! what remains is a few printed pages, us and our children and some incalculable modifications of other people's lives, influenced this day or that by what he said or did. for me, the humor, the good spirits, the humanity, the faith in the divine, and the sense of his right to have a say about the deepest reasons of the universe, are what will stay by me. i wish i could believe i should transmit some of them to our babes. we all of us have some of his virtues and some of his shortcomings. unlike the cool, dry thin-edged men who now abound, he was full of the fumes of the _ur-sprünglich_ human nature; things turbid, more than he could formulate, wrought within him and made his judgments of rejection of so much of what was brought [before him] seem like revelations as well as knock-down blows.... i hope that rich soil of human nature will not become more rare!... * * * * * two months later james said in a letter to mrs. gibbens: "it is singular how i'm learning every day now how the thought of his comment on my experiences has hitherto formed an integral part of my daily consciousness, without my having realized it at all. i interrupt myself incessantly now in the old habit of imagining what he will say when i tell him this or that thing i have seen or heard." * * * * * james remained in london until mid-february of , and took advantage of the opportunity to see more of certain men there--among them shadworth hodgson, edmund gurney, croom robertson, frederick pollock, leslie stephen, carveth reid, and francis galton. his eyes were troubling him again, but he did some writing on psychology. after paying another short visit to paris, he sailed for home in march. ix - _writing the "principles of psychology"--psychical research--the place at chocorua--the irving street house--the paris psychological congress of _ james had now found his feet, professionally, as well as in other ways. he strode ahead on the next stage of his journey with a firmness of which he would have been incapable in the seventies, and carried a heavy burden of work forward, with never a long halt and without ever setting it down, until he had finished the two large volumes of the "principles of psychology" in . the previous decade had counted steadily for inward clarification, for health and for confidence. he was no longer harassed by serious illnesses and pursued by the spectre of possible invalidism. marriage, parenthood--these immense events in a man's spiritual journey--had happened for him within the last four years and had brought him new loves and ambitions. he was no longer perplexed by misgivings about his aims and abilities, but had arrived at the conception of his treatise on psychology and had begun to formulate its chapters. he had become a very successful teacher, and might fairly have suspected himself of being an inspiring one. his work was beginning to be well known outside the halls of his own university. it is not the purpose of this book to trace the origin of his ideas or their influence on contemporary discussion. but any reader who will glance at professor perry's annotated "list" of his published work may see that he had written important papers by , and that most of what was original in his psychology must by then have been present to his mind. during the visit he had just made to europe, he had got a personal impression of the transatlantic colleagues whose writings had interested him especially, and had spent many hours in the company of certain among them with whom he found himself to be particularly in sympathy. thus he had gained a bracing sense of comradeship with the men who were collaborating in his field. last of all, he had brought home with him a happy conviction that the most propitious place for him to teach and write his book in was the philosophical department of his own university. so far as the "textbook on psychology" was concerned, however, he still underestimated the amount of original investigation and thought which his instinct for "concrete" reality was to exact of him. perhaps also he made too little allowance for the inadequacies of current laboratory methods and of the existing literature of the subject. helmholtz and wundt had already published important reports from their laboratories in germany; but psychology was still generally considered to be an inductive science, which achieved its purposes by introspection and description, and which had no very broad connection with physiology nor many laboratory methods of its own. james had still to help make a modern science of it by his own immense effort. he may perhaps be said to have set to work when he offered the course on "the relation between physiology and psychology" to graduate students in , and made the class take part in experiments which he arranged in a room in the lawrence scientific school building.[ ] thus with teaching, experimenting, and occasionally writing out his conclusions as he went along, he ploughed his way through his subject. the triple process is familiar enough today to most men of science. but james and the majority of his contemporaries had been trained differently or not at all; and their generation, following a few great leaders like pasteur, darwin and helmholtz, had to establish new standards of criticism and new methods of inquiry in every department of science. when the "psychology" was drawing to its completion, james wrote two sentences about his difficulties to his brother henry. they might equally well have been written at any other time during the eighties. "i have," he said, "to forge every sentence in the teeth of irreducible and stubborn facts. it is like walking through the densest brush-wood." * * * * * there was one peculiarly stubborn and irreducible class of facts which he took up and gave much thought to during this period. as early as he had recognized the desirability of examining the class of phenomena that are popularly called psychic[ ] in a critical and modern spirit. this was not because he was in the least impressed by the lucubrations of the kind of mind which can be well described, in macaulay's phrase, as "utterly wanting in the faculty by which a demonstrated truth is distinguished from a plausible supposition." but an instinctive "love of sportsmanlike fair play" was stirred in him by the indifference with which men who professed to be students of nature,[ ] and particularly scientists whose prime concern was with our mental life, usually declined to examine phenomena which have occurred in every known human race and generation. he was in cordial sympathy with the announced intention of the society for psychical research to investigate the abnormal and "supernormal" occurrences. he referred aptly to such occurrences as "wild facts," having as yet no scientific "stall or pigeon-hole."[ ] above all, he was conscious, from the beginning, of the proximity and possible relevance to his psychological and philosophical problems of this large body of unanalyzed material. most people cannot approach such matters without emotional bias. the atmosphere in which the public discussion of them goes on is still poisoned by superstition and clouded by prejudice. no scientific man involves himself in such inquiries, even now, without the certitude that his statements will be misconstrued by some of his professional brethren, and that his name will be taken in vain by newspapers and charlatans. james recognized all this, but saw in it no excuse for avoiding the subject; rather, a reason for examining it in an unprejudiced spirit and for avowing his conclusions openly. the english society for psychical research had been founded in . in james became a corresponding member and concerned himself actively in organizing an american society of the same name in boston. he made contributions to the "proceedings" of this society during the six years of its existence; and, when it amalgamated with the english society in , he became a vice-president of the latter. with the exception of a term during which he served as its president (in - ), he continued to be a vice-president of the s. p. r. until his death, and occasionally published through its "proceedings." in the eighties he took up his share of the drudgery which was involved in investigating alleged cases of apparition, thought-transference, and mediumship. for one entire winter he and professor g. h. palmer attended "cabinet séances" every saturday without discovering anything that they could report as other than fraudulent. but in the following year he got upon the track of the now famous mrs. piper, and he made his first report on her trance-state to the s. p. r. in . after many tests and trials he was unable to "resist the conviction that knowledge appeared in her trances which she had never gained by the ordinary waking use of her eyes, ears and wits." withholding his acceptance from the spirit-message hypothesis, he added: "what the source of this knowledge may be i know not, and have not a glimmer of an explanatory suggestion to make; but from admitting the fact of such knowledge i can see no escape."[ ] he continued to find time for the investigation of other cases, and could sometimes console himself by laughing over expeditions which were quite fruitless of interesting result. a few sentences from letters addressed to mrs. james in , reporting an adventure with richard hodgson in new york, will serve as illustration:-- "[apr. .] hodgson and i started after our baggage arrived, to find mr. b----, who, you may have seen by the papers, is making a scandal by having given himself over (hand and foot) to a medium, 'madam d----,' who does most extraordinarily described physical performances. we found the old girl herself, a type for alexandre dumas, obese, wicked, jolly, intellectual, with no end of go and animal spirits, who entertained us for an hour, gave us an appointment for a sitting on monday, and asked us to come and see mr. b. tonight. what will come of it all i don't know. it will be baffling, i suppose, like everything else of that kind." "[apr. .] mr. b. and mrs. d. were 'too tired' to see us last night! i suspect that will be the case next monday. it is the knowing thing to do under the circumstances. but that woman is one with whom one would fall _wildly_ in love, if in love at all--she is such a fat, _fat_ old villain...." "[apr. th.] in bed at . , after the most hideously inept psychical night, in charleston, over a much-praised female medium who fraudulently played on the guitar. a plague take all white-livered, anæmic, flaccid, weak-voiced yankee frauds! give me a full blooded red-lipped villain like dear old d.--when shall i look upon her like again?" in james undertook the labor of conducting the "census of hallucinations" in america. the census sought to discover, from lists of people selected at random, how many of them, when in good health and awake, had ever heard a voice, seen a form, or felt a touch which no material presence could account for. james received about seven thousand answers to the inquiries that were sent out in america; and after he had digested and reported them, the results turned out to be in remarkable conformity with the returns from other parts of the world. some of james's own deductions from the returns will be found in the essay, "what psychical research has accomplished."[ ] among other things, the census showed apparitions corresponding with a distant event as occurring more than four hundred times oftener than could be expected from a calculation of chances. after this task had been completed, he usually avoided spending time in personal investigations. _to charles renouvier._ keene valley, _aug. , _ adirondacks. my dear monsieur renouvier,--my silence has been so protracted that i fear you must have wondered what its reasons could be. only the old ones!--much to do, and little power to do it, obliging procrastination. you will doubtless have heard from the pillons of my safe return home. i have spent the interval in the house of my mother-in-law in cambridge, trying to do some work in the way of psychologic writing before the fatal day should arrive when the college bell, summoning _me_ as well as my colleagues to the lecture-room, should make literary work almost impossible. although my bodily condition, thanks to my winter abroad, has been better than in many years at a corresponding period, what i succeeded in accomplishing was well-nigh zero. i floundered round in the morasses of the theory of cognition,--the object and the ego,--tore up almost each day what i had written the day before, and although i am inwardly, of course, more aware than i was before of where the difficulties of the subject lie, outwardly i have hardly any manuscript to show for my pains. your unparalleled literary fecundity is a perfect wonder to me. you should return pious thanks to the one or many gods who had a hand in your production, not only for endowing you with so clear a head, but for giving you so admirable a working temperament. the most rapid piece of literary work i ever did was completed ten days ago, and sent to "mind," where it will doubtless soon appear. i had promised to give three lectures at a rather absurd little "summer school of philosophy," which has flourished for four or five years past in the little town of concord near boston, and which has an audience of from twenty to fifty persons, including the lecturers themselves; and, finding at the last moment that i could do nothing with my much meditated subject of the object and the ego, i turned round and lectured "on some omissions of introspective psychology,"[ ] and wrote the substance of the lectures out immediately after giving them--the whole occupying six days. i hope you may read the paper some time and approve it--though it is out of the current of your own favorite topics and consequently hardly a proper candidate for the honours of translation in the "critique." i understand now why no really good classic manual of psychology exists; why all that do exist only treat of particular points and chapters with any thoroughness. it is impossible to write one at present, so infinitely more numerous are the difficulties of the task than the means of their solution. every chapter bristles with obstructions that refer one to the next ten years of work for their mitigation. with all this i have done very little consecutive reading. i have not yet got at your historic survey in the "critique religieuse," for which my brain nevertheless itches. but i have read your articles apropos of fouillée, and found them--the latest one especially--admirable for clearness and completeness of statement. surely nothing like them has ever been written--no such stripping of the question down to its naked essentials. those who, like fouillée, have the intuition of the absolute unity, will of course not profit by them or anything else. why can all others view their own beliefs as _possibly_ only hypotheses--_they_ only not? why does the absolute unity make its votaries so much more _conceited_ at having attained it, than any other supposed truth does? this inner sense of superiority to all antagonists gives fouillée his _fougue_ and adds to his cleverness, and no doubt increases immensely the effectiveness of his writing over the average reader's mind. but it also makes him careless and liable to overshoot the mark. i have just been interrupted by a visit from noah porter, d.d., president of yale college, whose bulky work on "the human intellect" you may have in your library, possibly. an american college president is a very peculiar type of character, partly man of business, partly diplomatist, partly clergyman, and partly professor of metaphysics, armed with great authority and influence if his college is an important one--which yale is; and porter is the paragon of the type--_bonhomme et rusé_, learned and simple, kindhearted and sociable, yet possessed of great decision and obstinacy. he is over seventy, but comes every summer here to the woods to refresh himself by long mountain walks and life in "camp," sleeping on a bed of green boughs before a great fire in the open air. he looks like a farmer or a fisherman, and there is no sort of human being who does not immediately feel himself entirely at home in his company. i have been here myself just a week. the virgin forest comes close to our house, and the diversity of walks through it, the brooks and the ascensions of hilltops are infinite. i doubt if there be anything like it in europe. your mountains are grander, but you have nowhere this carpet of absolutely primitive forest, with its indescribably sweet exhalations, spreading in every direction unbroken. i shall stay here doing hardly any work till late in september. i need to lead a purely animal life for at least two months to carry me through the teaching year. my wife and two children are here, all well. i would send you her photograph and mine, save that hers--the only one i have--is too bad to send to anyone, and my own are for the moment exhausted. i find myself counting the years till my next visit to europe becomes possible. then it shall occur under more cheerful circumstances, if possible; and i shall stay the full fifteen months instead of only six. as i look back now upon the winter, i find the strongest impression i received was that of the singularly artificial, yet deeply vital and soundly healthy, character of the english social and political system as it now exists. it is one of the most _bizarre_ outbirths of time, one of the most abnormal, in certain ways, and yet one of the most successful. i know nothing that so much confirms your philosophy as this spectacle of an accumulation of individual initiatives _all preserved_. i hope both you and the pillons are well. i shall never forget their friendliness, nor the spirit of human kindness that filled their household. i am ashamed to ask for letters from you, when after so long a silence i can myself give you so little that is of philosophic interest. but we must take long views; and, if life be granted, i shall do something yet, both in the way of reading and writing. ever truly yours, wm. james. * * * * * at about this time major henry l. higginson, then the junior partner in the banking house of lee, higginson & company and soon to be widely known as the founder of the boston symphony orchestra, undertook to look after the small patrimony which james had inherited. he tactfully assumed the initiative respecting whatever had to be done, and continued to render this friendly service as long as james lived. on his side james, who knew nothing about investments and was incapable of considering them without involving himself in excessive and unprofitable worry, was delighted to leave decisions to his friend's wiser judgment. occasional jocose communications like the following came to be almost his only incursions into his own "affairs." _to henry l. higginson._ _oct. _ [ ?]. my dear henry,--i receive today from your office two documents, one containing some unintelligible hieroglyphics, "c. b.& q., " etc., etc.; the other winding up with a statement that i owe you $ , . !! the latter explains your mysterious interest in my affairs. i feared as much! go on, shylock, go on! you have me in your power. the peculiar combination of ignorance and poverty which i present makes me an easy victim. and i confess that as a psychologist i am curious to see how far your instincts of cupidity will carry you. i await eagerly the ulterior developments. yours, etc., wm. james. [_enclosed with the foregoing_] extract from a biographic sketch of w. j. soon to be published in the "harvard register":-- "he now fancied himself possessed of immense wealth, and gave without stint his imaginary riches. he has ever since been under gentle restraint, and leads a life not merely of happiness, but of bliss; converses rationally, reads the newspapers, where every talk of distress attracts his notice, and being furnished with an abundant supply of blank checks, he fills up one of them with a munificent sum, sends it off to the sufferer, and sits down to his dinner with a happy conviction that he has earned the right to a little indulgence in the pleasures of the table; and yet, on a serious conversation with one of his old friends, he is quite conscious of his real position; but the conviction is so exquisitely painful that he will not let himself believe it." _to h. p. bowditch._ [post-card] cambridge, mass., _jan. _ [ ]. heute den ten januar wurde mir vor stunden in rascher aufeinander-folge _ein_ ( ) wunderschöner jüdischaussehender, kräftiger und munterer knabe geboren. alles geht nach wunsch, und bittet um stiller theilnahme der glückliche vater. w. j. [_translation._] today the st of january, two hours since, there was born to me in rapid succession _one_ (i) wonderfully beautiful, jewish-looking, sturdy and lively boy. everything is going as one would wish, and the happy father craves your hushed sympathy. w. j. _to thomas davidson._ cambridge, _mar. , _. my dear davidson,--i am in receipt of two letters from you since my last, the latest one of them from capri. i am very sorry to hear of your continued bad physical condition. you have a queer constitution,--with such an unusual amount of strength in most ways,--to be a constant prey to ailment. i have long ago come to think that the right measure of a man's health is not how much comfort or discomfort he feels in the year, but how much work, through thick and thin, he manages to get through. judged by that standard, you doubtless score an unusually high number. but when i hear you talking about texas, i confess i really begin to feel alarmed. from rome to austin! how can you think of such a thing? are you sure m---- is not playing the part of the tailless fox in the fable? i know not a living soul in texas, and if i did i should have moral scruples about becoming an accomplice in any plot for transporting you there. why is it that everything in this world is offered us on no medium terms between either having too much of it or too little? you pine for a professorship. i pine for your leisure to write and study. teaching duties have really devoured the whole of my time this winter, and with hardly any intellectual profit whatever. i have read nothing, and written nothing save one lecture on the freedom of the will. how it is going to end, i don't well see. the four months of non-lecturing study i had at home last year, when i slept well and led a really intellectual life, seem like a sort of lost paradise. however, vacations make amends. this summer i am to edit my poor father's literary remains, "with a sketch of his writings" which will largely consist of extracts and no doubt help to the making him better known. you ask why i don't write oftener. if you could see the arrears of work under which my table groans, and the number of semi-business letters and notes i now have to write with my infernal eyesight, you would ask no longer. in fact i am beginning to ask whether it be not my bounden duty to stop corresponding with my friends altogether. only at that price does there seem to be any prospect of doing any reading at all. i had neither seen your article in the unitarian review[ ] nor heard of it, but ran for it as soon as i got your announcement of its existence. i know not what to think of it practically; though i confess the idea of engrafting the bloodless pallor of boston unitarianism on the roman temperament strikes one at first sight as rather queer. unitarianism seems to have a sort of moribund vitality here, because it is a branch of protestantism and the tree keeps the branch sticking out. but whether it could be grafted on a catholic trunk seems to me problematic. i confess i rather despair of any popular religion of a philosophic character; and i sometimes find myself wondering whether there can be any popular religion raised on the ruins of the old christianity without the presence of that element which in the past has presided over the origin of all religions, namely, a belief in new _physical_ facts and possibilities. abstract considerations about the soul and the reality of a moral order will not do in a year what the glimpse into a world of new phenomenal possibilities enveloping those of the present life, afforded by an extension of our insight into the order of nature, would do in an instant. are the much despised "spiritualism" and the "society for psychical research" to be the chosen instruments for a new era of faith? it would surely be strange if they were; but if they are not, i see no other agency that can do the work. i like your formula that in consciousness there must be two irreducibles, "being and feeling," and nothing else. but i can't put philosophy into letters. when is our long-postponed talk to take place? _aufgeschoben_ for another summer, and i fear another winter too, from what you write. it is too bad! we have a week's recess in a couple of days and i start to look up summer lodgings. alice and the two-month-old baby are very well and send you love. always truly yours, wm. james. _to g. h. howison._ cambridge, _feb. , _. my dear howison,--i've just reread (for the fourth time, i believe) your letter of the th november. i need not say how tickled i am at your too generous words about my divinity school address on determinism.[ ] sweet are the praises of an enemy. there is, thank heaven! a plane below all formulas and below enmities due to formulas, where men occasionally meet each other moving, and recognize each other as brothers inhabiting the _same depths_. such is this depth of the _problem_ of determinism--howe'er we solve it, we are brothers if we know it to be a _problem_. no man on either side awakens any sense of intellectual respect in me who regards the solution as a cock-sure and immediately given thing, and wonders that any one should hesitate to choose his party. you find fault with my deterministic disjunction, "pessimism or subjectivism," and ask why i forgot the third way of "objective moral activity," etc. (you probably remember.) i didn't forget it. it entered for me into pessimism, for, since such activity has failed to be universally realized, it was (deterministically) _impossible from eternity_, and the universe in so far forth not an object of pure worship, not an absolute. my trouble, you see, lies with monism. determinism = monism; and a monism like this world can't be an object of pure optimistic contemplation. by pessimism i simply mean _ultimate_ non-optimism. the ideal is only a part of this world. make the world a pluralism, and you forthwith have an object to worship. make it a unit, on the other hand, and worship and abhorrence are equally one-sided and equally legitimate reactions. _indifferentism_ is the true condition of such a world, and turn the matter how you will, i don't see how any philosophy of the absolute can ever escape from that capricious alternation of mysticism and satanism in the treatment of its great idol, which history has always shown. reverence is an accidental personal mood in such a philosophy, and has naught to do with the essentials of the system. at least, so it seems to me; and in view of that, i prefer to stick in the wooden finitude of an ultimate pluralism, because that at least gives me something definite to worship and fight for. however, i know i haven't exhausted all wisdom, and am too well aware that this position, like everything else, is a _parti pris_ and a _pis aller_,--_faute de mieux_,--to continue the gallic idiom. your predecessor royce thinks he's got the thing at last. it is too soon for me to criticize his book; but i must say it seems to me one of the very freshest, profoundest, solidest, most human bits of philosophical work i've seen in a long time. in fact, it makes one think of royce as a man from whom nothing is too great to expect. your list of thirty lectures makes one bow down in reverence before you. i should be afraid you were over-working. your hume-kant circular shall be diligently scanned when my hume lectures come off, in about six weeks. i am better as to the eyes, which gives me much hope. am, however, "maturing" building plans for a house, which is bad for sleep. i do hope and trust there will be no "enttäuschung" about berkeley,[ ] and that not only the work, but the place and the climate, may prove well adapted to both you and mrs. howison. ever truly yours, wm. james. * * * * * the next letters relate to the "literary remains of henry james," which had just been published, and in which william james had collected a number of his father's papers and edited them with an introductory essay on their author's philosophy. needless to say, the two letters to godkin have not been included among these with any thought of the unfortunate review to which they refer. they furnish too good an illustration of james's loyalty and magnanimity to be omitted. if more critics, and more of the criticized, were to cultivate the manliness and generosity with which james always entered discussion, there would be less reviewers "never-quite-forgiven," and less feuds in the world of science. _to e. l. godkin._ cambridge, [_feb._] , . my dear godkin,--doesn't the impartiality which i suppose is striven for in the "nation," sometimes overshoot the mark "and fall on t'other side"? poor harry's books seem always given out to critics with antipathy to his literary temperament; and now for this only and last review of my father--a writer exclusively religious--a personage seems to have been selected for whom the religious life is complete _terra incognita_. a severe review by one interested in the subject is one thing; a contemptuous review by one with the subject out of his sight is another. make no reply to this! one must disgorge his bile. i was taken ill in philadelphia the day after seeing you, and had to return home after some days without stopping in n.y. i _may_ get there the week after next, and if so shall claim _one_ dinner, over which i trust no cloud will be cast by the beginning of this note! with best respects to mrs. godkin, always truly yours wm. james. _to e. l. godkin._ cambridge, _feb. , _. my dear godkin,--your cry of remorse or regret is so "whole-souled" and complete that i should not be human were i not melted almost to tears by it, and sorry i "ever spoke to you as i did." i felt pretty sure that you had no positive oversight of the thing in this case, but i addressed you as the official head. and my _emotion_ was less that of filial injury than of irritation at what seemed to me editorial stupidity in giving out the book to the wrong _sort_ of person altogether--a theist of some sort being the only proper reviewer. i am heartily sorry that the thing should have distressed you so much more than it did me. you can take your consolation in the fact that it has now afforded you an opportunity for the display of those admirable qualities of the heart which your friends know, but which the ordinary readers of the "nation" probably do not suspect to slumber beneath the gory surface of that savage sheet. i hear that you are soon coming to give us some political economy. i am very glad on every account, and suppose mrs. godkin will come _mit_. always truly yours wm. james. _to shadworth h. hodgson._ cambridge, _ feb., _. my dear hodgson,--your letter of the th was most welcome. anything responsive about my poor old father's writing falls most gratefully upon my heart. for i fear he found _me_ pretty unresponsive during his lifetime; and that through my means any post-mortem response should come seems a sort of atonement. you would have enjoyed knowing him. i know of no one except carlyle who had such a smiting _ursprünglichkeit_ of intuition, and such a deep sort of humor where human nature was concerned. he bowled one over in such a careless way. he was like carlyle in being no _reasoner_ at all, in the sense in which philosophers are reasoners. reasoning was only an unfortunate necessity of exposition for them both. his _ideas_, however, were the exact inversion of carlyle's; and he had nothing to correspond to carlyle's insatiable learning of historic facts and memory. as you say, the world of his thought had a few elements and no others ever troubled him. _those_ elements were very deep ones, and had theological names. under "man" he would willingly have included all flesh, even that resident in sirius or ethereal worlds. but he felt no need of positively looking so far. he was the humanest and most genial being in his impulses whom i have ever personally known, and had a bigness and power of nature that everybody felt. i thank you heartily for your interest. i wish that somebody could _take up_ something from his system into a system more articulately scientific. as it is, most people will feel the _presence_ of something real and true for the while they read, and go away and presently, unable to dovetail [it] into their own framework, forget it altogether. i am hoping to write you a letter ere long, a letter philosophical. i am going over idealism again, and mean to review your utterances on the subject. you know that, to quote what gurney said one evening, to attain to assimilating your thought is the chief purpose of one's life. but you know also how hard it is for the likes of me to write, and how much that is felt is unthought, and that as thought [it] goes and must go unspoken. brother royce tells me he has sent you his "religious aspect of philosophy." he is a wonderfully powerful fellow, not yet thirty, and this book seems to me to have a real fresh smell of the earth about it. you will enjoy it, i know. i am very curious to hear what you think of his brand-new argument for absolute idealism. i and mine are well. but the precious time as usual slips away with little work done. happy you, whose time is all your own! wm. james _to henry james._ cambridge, _apr. , _. ...i am running along quite smoothly, and my eyes,--you never knew such an improvement! it has continued gradually, so that practically i can use them all i will. it saves my life. _why_ it should come now, when, bully them as i would, it wouldn't come in the past few years, is one of the secrets of the nervous system which the last trump, but nothing earlier, may reveal. a week's recess begins today, and the day after tomorrow i shall start for the south shore to look up summer quarters. i want to try how sailing suits me as a summer kill-time. the walking in keene valley suits me not, and driving is too "cost-playful." i have made a start with my psychology which i shall work at, temperately, through the vacation and hope to get finished a year from next fall, _sans faute_. then shall the star of your romances be eclipst!... _to shadworth h. hodgson._ newport, _dec. , _. my dear hodgson,--i have just read your "philosophy and experience" address, and re-read with much care your "dialogue on free will" in the last "mind." i thank you kindly for the address. but isn't philosophy a sad mistress, estranging the more intimately those who in all other respects are most intimately united,--although 'tis true she unites them afresh by their very estrangement! i feel for the first time now, after these readings, as if i might be catching sight of your foundations. always hitherto has there been something elusive, a sense that what i caught could not be _all_. now i feel as if it might be all, and yet for me 'tis not enough. your "method" (which surely after _this_ needs no additional expository touch) i seem at last to understand, but it shrinks in the understanding. for what is your famous "two aspects" principle more than the postulate that the world is thoroughly _intelligible_ in nature? and what the practical outcome of the distinction between _whatness_ and _thatness_ save the sending us to experience to ascertain the connections among things, and the declaration that no amount of insight into their intrinsic qualities will account for their existence? i can now get no more than that out of the method, which seems in truth to me an over-subtle way of getting at and expressing pretty simple truths, which others share who know nothing of your formulations. in fact your wondrously delicate retouchings and discriminations appear rather to darken the matter from the point of view of teaching. one gains much by the way, of course, that he would have lost by a shorter path, but one risks losing the end altogether. (i reserve what you say at the end of both articles about conscience, etc.--which is original and beautiful and which i feel i have not yet assimilated. i will only ask whether all you say about the decisions of conscience implying a future verification does not hold of scientific decisions as well, so that _all_ reflective _cognitive_ judgments, as well as practical judgments, project themselves ideally into eternity?) as for the free will article, i have very little to say, for it leaves entirely untouched what seems to me the only living issue involved. the paper is an exquisite piece of literary goldsmith's work,--nothing like it in that respect since berkeley,--but it hangs in the air of speculation and touches not the earth of life, and the beautiful distinctions it keeps making gratify only the understanding which has no end in view but to exercise its eyes by the way. the distinctions between _vis impressa_ and _vis insita_, and compulsion and "reaction" _mean_ nothing in a monistic world; and any world is a monism in which the parts to come are, as they are in your world, absolutely involved and presupposed in the parts that are already given. were such a monism a palpable optimism, no man would be so foolish as to care whether it was predetermined or not, or to ask whether he was or was not what you call a "real agent." he would acquiesce in the flow and drift of things, of which he found himself a part, and rejoice that it was such a whole. the question of free will owes its entire being to a difficulty you disdain to notice, namely that we _cannot_ rejoice in such a whole, for it is _not_ a palpable optimism, and yet, if it be predetermined, we _must treat_ it as a whole. indeterminism is the only way to _break_ the world into good parts and into bad, and to stand by the former as against the latter. i can understand the determinism of the mere mechanical intellect which will not hear of a moral dimension to existence. i can understand that of mystical monism shutting its eyes on the concretes of life, for the sake of its abstract rapture. i can understand that of mental defeat and despair saying, "it's all a muddle, and here i go, along with it." i can _not_ understand a determinism like yours, which rejoices in clearness and distinctions, and which is at the same time alive to moral ones--unless it be that the latter are purely speculative for it, and have little to do with its real feeling of the way life _is_ made up. for life _is_ evil. two souls are in my breast; i see the better, and in the very act of seeing it i do the worse. to say that the molecules of the nebula implied this and _shall have implied it_ to all eternity, so often as it recurs, is to condemn me to that "dilemma" of pessimism or subjectivism of which i once wrote, and which seems to have so little urgency to you, and to which all talk about abstractions erected into entities; and compulsion _vs._ "freedom" are simply irrelevant. what living man cares for such niceties, when the real problem stares him in the face of how practically to meet a world foredone, with no possibilities left in it? what a mockery then seems your distinction between determination and compulsion, between passivity and an "activity" every minutest feature of which is preappointed, both as to its _whatness_ and as to its _thatness_, by what went before! what an insignificant difference then the difference between "impediments from within" and "impediments from without"!--between being fated to do the thing _willingly_ or not! the point is not as to how it is done, but as to its being done at all. it seems a wrong complement to the rest of life, which rest of life (according to your precious "free-will determinism," as to any other fatalism), whilst shrieking aloud at its _whatness_, nevertheless exacts rigorously its _thatness_ then and there. is that a reasonable world from the moral point of view? and is it made more reasonable by the fact that when i brought about the _thatness_ of the evil _whatness_ decreed to come by the _thatness_ of all else beside, i did so consentingly and aware of no "impediments outside of my own nature"? with what can i _side_ in such a world as this? this monstrous indifferentism which brings forth everything _eodem jure_? our nature demands something _objective_ to take sides with. if the world is a unit of this sort there _are_ no sides--there's the moral rub! and you don't see it! ah, hodgson! hodgson _mio!_ from whom i hoped so much! most spirited, most clean, most thoroughbred of philosophers! _perchè di tanto inganni i figli tuoi?_[ ] if you want to reconcile us rationally to determinism, write a theodicy, reconcile us to _evil_, but don't talk of the distinction between impediments from within and without when the within and the without of which you speak are both within that _whole_ which is the only real agent in your philosophy. there is no such superstition as the idolatry of the _whole_. i originally finished this letter on sheet number one--but it occurred to me afterwards that the end was too short, so i scratched out the first lines of the crossed writing, and refer you now to what follows them.--[_lines from sheet number i._] it makes me sick at heart, this discord among the only men who ought to agree. i am the more sick this moment as i must write to your ancient foe (at least the stimulus to an old "mind" article of yours), one f. e. abbot who recently gave me his little book "scientific theism"--the burden of his life--which makes me groan that i cannot digest a word of it. farewell! heaven bless you all the same--and enable you to forgive me. we are well and i hope you are the same. ever faithfully yours, w. j. [_from the final sheet._] let me add a wish for a happy new year and the expression of my undying regard. you are tenfold more precious to me now that i have braved you thus! adieu! _to carl stumpf._ cambridge, _jan. , _. my dear stumpf,--...let me tell you of my own fate since i wrote you last. it has been an eventful and in some respects a sad year. we lost our youngest child in the summer--the flower of the flock, months old--with a painful and lingering whooping-cough complicated with pneumonia. my wife has borne it like an angel, however, which is something to be thankful for. her mother, close to whom we have always lived, has had a severe pulmonary illness, which has obliged her to repair to italy for health. she is now on the ocean, with her youngest and only unmarried daughter, the second one having only a month ago become the wife of that [w. m.] salter whose essays on ethics have lately been translated by von gizycki in berlin. so i have gained him as a brother-in-law, and regard it as a real gain. i have also gained a full professorship with an increase of pay, and have moved into a larger and more commodious house.[ ] my eyes, too, are much better than they were a year ago, and i am able to do more work, so there is plenty of sweet as well as bitter in the cup. i don't know whether you have heard of the london "society for psychical research," which is seriously and laboriously investigating all sorts of "supernatural" matters, clairvoyance, apparitions, etc. i don't know what you think of such work; but i think that the present condition of opinion regarding it is scandalous, there being a mass of testimony, or apparent testimony, about such things, at which the only men capable of a critical judgment--men of scientific education--will not even look. we have founded a similar society here within the year,--some of us thought that the publications of the london society deserved at least to be treated as if worthy of experimental disproof,--and although work advances very slowly owing to the small amount of disposable time on the part of the members, who are all very busy men, we have already stumbled on some rather inexplicable facts out of which something may come. it is a field in which the sources of deception are extremely numerous. but i believe there is no source of deception in the investigation of nature which can compare with a fixed belief that certain kinds of phenomenon are _impossible_. my teaching is much the same as it was--a little better in quality, i hope. i enjoy very much a new philosophic colleague, josiah royce, from california, who is just thirty years old and a perfect little socrates for wisdom and humor. i still try to write a little psychology, but it is exceedingly slow work. no sooner do i get interested than bang! goes my sleep, and i have to stop a week or ten days, during which my ideas get all cold again. nothing so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task.... i try to spend two hours a day in a laboratory for psycho-physics which i started last year, but of which i fear the _fruits_ will be slow in ripening, as my experimental aptitude is but small. but i am convinced that one must guard in some such way as that against the growing tendency to _subjectivism_ in one's thinking, as life goes on. i am hypnotizing, on a large scale, the students, and have hit one or two rather pretty unpublished things of which some day i hope i may send you an account.... ever faithfully yours, wm. james. * * * * * when the american society for psychical research was organized in boston in the autumn of , thomas davidson wrote to comment on its apparent anti-spiritual bias. in the following reply, dated february , , but more easily understood if inserted here out of its chronological place, james defined the society's conception of its function. in so doing he described his own attitude toward psychical research quite exactly:-- "as for any 'antispiritual bias' of our society, no theoretic basis, or _bias_ of any sort whatever, so far as i can make out, exists in it. the one thing that has struck me all along in the men who have had to do with it is their complete colorlessness philosophically. they seem to have no preferences for any general _ism_ whatever. i doubt if this could be matched in europe. anyhow, it would make no difference in the important work to be done, what theoretic bias the members had. for i take it the urgent thing, to rescue us from the present disgraceful condition, is to ascertain in a manner so thorough as to constitute _evidence_ that will be accepted by outsiders, just what the _phenomenal conditions of certain_ concrete phenomenal occurrences are. not till that is done, can spiritualistic or anti-spiritualistic theories be even mooted. i'm sure that the more we can steer clear of theories at first, the better. the choice of officers was largely dictated by motives of policy. not that scientific men are necessarily better judges of all truth than others, but that their adhesion would popularly seem better _evidence_ than the adhesion of others, in the matter. and what we want is not only truth, but evidence. we shall be lucky if our scientific names don't grow discredited the instant they subscribe to any 'spiritual' manifestations. but how much easier to discredit literary men, philosophers or clergymen! i think newcomb, for president, was an uncommon hit--if he believes, he will probably carry others. you'd better chip in, and not complicate matters by talking either of spiritualism or anti-spiritualism. '_facts_' are what are wanted." _to henry james._ cambridge, _may , _. my dear harry,--i seize my pen the first leisure moment i have had for a week to tell you that i have read "the bostonians" in the full flamingness of its bulk, and consider it an exquisite production. my growling letter was written to you before the end of book i had appeared in the "atlantic"; and the suspense of narrative in that region, to let the relation of olive and verena grow, was enlarged by the vacant months between the numbers of the magazine, so that it seemed to me so slow a thing had ne'er been writ. never again shall i attack one of your novels in the magazine. i've only read one number of the "princess casamassima"--though i hear all the people about me saying it is the best thing you've done yet. to return to "the bostonians"; the two last books are simply sweet. there isn't a hair wrong in verena, you've made her neither too little nor too much--but absolutely _liebenswürdig_. it would have been so easy to spoil her picture by some little excess or false note. her moral situation, between woman's rights and ransom, is of course deep, and her discovery of the truth on the central park day, etc., inimitably given. ransom's character, which at first did not become alive to me, does so, handsomely, at last. in washington, hay told me that secretary lamar was delighted with it; hay himself ditto, but especially with "casamassima." i enclose a sheet from a letter of gurney's but just received. you see how seriously he takes it. and i suppose he's right from a profoundly serious point of view,--_i.e._, he would be right if the characters were real,--but as the story stands, i don't feel his objection. the _fancy_ is more tickled by r.'s victory being complete. i hear very little said of the book, and i imagine it is being less read than its predecessors. the truth about it, combining what i said in my previous letter with what i have just written, seems to be this, that it is superlatively well done, provided one admits that method of doing such a thing at all. really the _datum_ seems to me to belong rather to the region of fancy, but the treatment to that of the most elaborate realism. one can easily imagine the story cut out and made into a bright, short, sparkling thing of a hundred pages, which would have been an absolute success. but you have worked it up by dint of descriptions and psychologic commentaries into near --charmingly done for those who have the leisure and the peculiar mood to enjoy that amount of miniature work--but perilously near to turning away the great majority of readers who crave more matter and less art. i can truly say, however, that as i have lain on my back after dinner each day for ten days past reading it to myself, my enjoyment has been complete. i imagine that inhabitants of other parts of the country have read it more than natives of these parts. they have bought it for the sake of the information. the way you have touched off the bits of american nature, central park, the cape, etc., is exquisitely true and calls up just the feeling. knowing you had done such a good thing makes the meekness of your reply to me last summer all the more wonderful. i cannot write more--being much overloaded and in bad condition. the spring is opening deliciously--all the trees half out, and the white, bright, afternoon east winds beginning. our household is well.... don't be alarmed about the labor troubles here. i am quite sure they are a most healthy phase of evolution, a little costly, but normal, and sure to do lots of good to all hands in the end. i don't speak of the senseless "anarchist" riot in chicago, which has nothing to do with "knights of labor," but is the work of a lot of pathological germans and poles. i'm amused at the anti-gladstonian capital which the english papers are telegraphed to be making of it. all the irish names are among the killed and wounded policemen. almost every anarchist name is continental. affectly., w. j. * * * * * james read "the bostonians," and wrote to his brother about it, with that special shade of detachment which is peculiar to fraternal judgments. he was less careful to measure his praise when he wrote to other authors about their novels. _to w. d. howells._ jaffrey, n.h., _july , _. my dear howells,--i "snatch" a moment from the limitless vacation peace and leisure in which i lie embedded and which doesn't leave me "time" for anything, to tell you that i have been reading your "indian summer," and that it has given me about as exquisite a kind of delight as anything i ever read in my life, in the line to which it belongs. how you tread the narrow line of nature's truth so infallibly is more than i can understand. then the profanity, the humor, the humanity, the morality--the everything! in short, 'tis cubical, and set it up any way you please 'twill stand. that blessed young female made me squeal at every page. how _can_ you have got back to the conversations of your prime? but i won't discriminate or analyze. this is only meant for an inarticulate cry of _viva howells_. i repeat it: long live howells! god grant you may do as good things again! i don't believe you can do better. with warmest congratulations to mrs. howells that you _and_ she were born, i am ever yours, wm. james. * * * * * mr. howells called such letters "whoops of blessing." when a new book pleased james particularly, he was apt to send a "whoop" to its author. with respect to the next letter, it will be recalled that croom robertson was the editor of "mind." richard hodgson was later for many years the secretary of the american branch of the society for psychical research, in boston. he became a warm friend. other allusions to him occur later. _to g. croom robertson._ _aug. , _. my dear robertson,--...i have just been reading the last number of "mind," and find it rather below par. r. hodgson muddled, clotted, dusky and ineffectual, save for a gleam or two of light in as many separate points. how can an adult man spend his time in trying to torture an accurate meaning into spencer's incoherent accidentalities? it is so much more easy to do the work over for oneself. i rubbed my eyes at the macdonald paper, as a dim sense came over me that it might be a divinity student who "sat under" me for a part of last year. i ween it is. little did i know the viper i was nourishing. why don't you have a special "neo-hegelian department" in "mind," like the "children's department" or the "agricultural department" in our newspapers--which educated readers skip? with montgomery's paper i am for the most part in warm sympathy, though he might make a discrimination or two more. i'm sorry i've not yet read his first number. his non-empirical style, so different from that of the british school, will stand in the way of his views' deglutition by the ordinary reader. i've got the same stuff all neatly down in black and white, in a very empirical style, which alas! must wait perhaps years till the other chapters are finished. however, in these matters, no matter how much different men strike the same vein, they do it in such different _ways_, that no one of them absolutely supersedes the need of the others. davidson i saw the other day in cambridge. he was fresh from the concord school, where they had been belaboring goethe as their _pièce de résistance_ and topping off with pantheism as dessert. he had read aloud a paper of montgomery's against pantheism, as well as one of his own on goethe's titanism. montgomery's is shortly to appear in a journal here. i am rather curious to read it. to go on with "mind," hull's paper (donaldson's) is refreshing. x---- is a little stub-and-twist fellow who also sat under me last year, and now has a fellowship for next year. he is a silent, mannerless little cub, but has first-rate stuff in him, i think, as an original worker; theological training. have you had time yet to look into royce's book? royce seems to me to be a man of the greatest promise, performance too, in that book. i wish you would have it worthily reviewed. here i have run on about the accidents of the hour, instead of the eternal things of the soul. no matter; all is a symbol, and these words will probably waft my presence somehow into yours.... pray drop me even a short line soon, to let me know about you and mrs. robertson. i've heard nothing _of_ you, even, for many months. haven't you a brother, or something, to send over here, since there seems no hope of having you yourself? gurney wrote the other day that he was about to send his brother. farewell! i think of you both often, and am with heartiest affection, yours always, wm. james. _to shadworth h. hodgson._ jaffrey, n.h., _sept. , _. my dear hodgson,--i ought long ere this to have written you a genuine letter in reply to your two of feb. , _respective_ march . (the latter by the way came to me many weeks too late, all blurred and water-stained, with a notice gummed on it telling as how it had been rescued from the oregon sunken on the bottom of the ocean. this makes it ex-as well as in-trinsically interesting, and does honor to our nineteenth-century post-office perfection.) i suppose one reason for my procrastination has been the shrinking-back of the fleshly man from another gnashing of the teeth over the free-will business. i have just been reading your letters again, and beautiful letters they are--also your pregnant little paper on monism. but i'm blest if they make me budge an inch from my inveterate way of looking at the question. i hate to think that controversy should be useless, and arguments of no avail, but the history of opinion on this problem is ominous; so i will be very short, hardly more than "yea, yea! nay, nay!" the subject of my concern seems entirely different from yours. i care absolutely nothing whether there be "agents" or no agents, or whether man's actions be really "_his_" or not. what i care for is that my moral reactions should find a real outward application. all those who, like you, hold that the world is a system of "uniform law" which repels all variation as so much "chaos," oblige, it seems to me, the world to be judged integrally. now the only _integral_ emotional reaction which can be called forth by such a world as this of our experience, is that of dramatic or melodramatic interest--romanticism--which _is_ the emotional reaction upon it of all intellects who are neither religious nor moral. the moment you seek to go deeper, you must break the world into parts, the parts that seem good and those that seem bad. whatever indian mystics may say about overcoming the bonds of good and evil, for _us_ there is no higher synthesis in which their contradiction merges, no _one_ way of judging that world which holds them both. either close your eyes and adopt an optimism or a pessimism equally daft; or exclude moral categories altogether from a place in the world's definition, which leaves the world _unheimlich_, reptilian, and foreign to man; or else, sticking to it that the moral judgment _is_ applicable, give up the hope of applying it to the _whole_, and admit that, whilst some parts are good, others are bad, and being bad, _ought_ not to have been, "argal," possibly _might_ not have been. in short, be an indeterminist on moral grounds with which the differences between compulsory or spontaneous uniformity and perceptive and conceptive order have absolutely nothing to do. but enough! i am far beyond the yea and nay i promised, and feel more like gossiping with you as a friend than wrangling with you as a foe. i hope things are going well with you in these months and that politics have not exasperated you beyond the possibility of philosophizing.... i got successfully through the academic year, in spite of the fact that i wasted a great deal of time on "psychical research" and had other interruptions from work which i would fain have done. i intend _per fas aut nefas_ to make more time for myself next year. the family is very well; and with the exception of an attack of illness of a couple of weeks, the vacation has been a delightful and beneficial one. i wish i could live in the country all the year round, or rather nine months of it. when i retire from the harness, if that ever happens, i probably shall. i have just been on a little trip to the white mountains and may possibly buy a small farm which i saw in a convenient and romantic neighborhood. new england farms are now dirt cheap--the natives going west, the irish coming in and making a better living than the yankees could. here were seventy-five acres of land, two thirds of it oak and pine timber, one third hay, a splendid spring of water, fair little house and large barn, close to a beautiful lake and under a mountain feet high, four and a half hours from boston, for dollars! a rivulet of great beauty runs through it. i am only waiting to see if i can get the strip between it and the lake shore to buy.... i have just read, with infinite zest and stimulation, bradley's "logic." i suppose you have read it. it is surely "epoch-making" in english philosophy. both empiricists and pan-rationalists must settle their accounts with it. it breaks up all the traditional lines. and what a fighter the cuss is! do you know him? what is he personally? whether churlish and sour, or simply redundantly ironical and irrepressible, i can't make out from his polemic tone; but should apprehend the former. it will be long ere i settle my accounts with his book. well! adieu and good luck to you, in spite of your viciousness in the matter of determinism! send me all you write and believe me as ever, always most affectionately yours, wm. james. * * * * * with respect to the next letter, and others to james's sister, which follow, it should now be explained that miss alice james had gone abroad in . the illness which was the cause of her journey developed more and more serious complications. being near her brother henry in england, she stayed on there during the remaining six years of her life. in spite of much suffering, she never let herself adopt an invalidish tone,[ ] but kept her attention turned toward things outside her sick-room, and was apt to greet expressions of commiseration in a way to discourage their repetition--as the following letter testifies. "k. p. l." was a devoted friend, miss katharine p. loring of boston; "a. k." was the aunt kate mentioned in early letters. _to his sister._ cambridge, _feb. , _. dearest alice,--your card and, a day or two later, k. p. l.'s letter to a. k., have made us acquainted with your sad tumble-down, for which i am sorrier than i can express, and can only take refuge in the hope, incessantly springing up again from its ashes, that you will "recuperate" more promptly than of late has been the case. i'm glad, at any rate, that it has got you into harry's lodgings for a while, and hope your next permanent arrangement will prove better than the last. when, as occasionally happens, i have a day of headache, or of real sickness like that of last summer at mrs. dorr's, i think of you whose whole life is woven of that kind of experience, and my heart sinks at the horizon that opens, and wells over with pity. but when all is over, the longest life appears short; and we had better drink the cup, whatever it contains, for it _is_ life. but i will not moralize or sympathize, for fear of awakening more "screams of laughter" similar to those which you wrote of as greeting my former attempts. we have had but one letter from harry--soon after his arrival at florence. i hope he has continued to get pleasure and profit from his outing. i haven't written to him since he left london, nor do i now write him a special letter, but the rest of this is meant for him as well as you, and if he is still to be away, you will forward it to him. we are getting along very well, on the whole, i keeping very continuously occupied, but not seeming to get ahead much, _for the days grow so short_ with each advancing year. a day is now about a minute--hardly time to turn round in. mrs. gibbens arrived from chicago last night, and in ten days she and margaret will start, with our little billy, for aiken, s.c., to be gone till may. b. is asthmatic, she is glad to go south for her own sake, and the open-air life all day long will be much better for him than our arduous winter and spring. he is the most utterly charming little piece of human nature you ever saw, so packed with life, impatience, and feeling, that i think father must have been just like him at his age.... i have been paying ten or eleven visits to a mind-cure doctress, a sterling creature, resembling the "venus of medicine," mrs. lydia e. pinkham,[ ] made solid and veracious-looking. i sit down beside her and presently drop asleep, whilst she disentangles the snarls out of my mind. she says she never saw a mind with so many, so agitated, so restless, etc. she said my _eyes_, mentally speaking, kept revolving like wheels in front of each other and in front of my face, and it was four or five sittings ere she could get them _fixed_. i am now, _unconsciously to myself_, much better than when i first went, etc. i thought it might please you to hear an opinion of my mind so similar to your own. meanwhile what boots it to be made unconsciously better, yet all the while consciously to lie awake o' nights, as i still do? lectures are temporarily stopped and examinations begun. i seized the opportunity to go to my chocorua place and see just what was needed to make it habitable for the summer. it is a goodly little spot, but we may not, after all, fit up the buildings till we have spent a summer in the place and "studied" the problem a little more closely. the snow was between two and three feet deep on a level, in spite of the recent thaws. the day after i arrived was one of the most crystalline purity, and the mountain simply exquisite in gradations of tint. i have a tenant in the house, one sanborn, who owes me a dollar and a half a month, but can't pay it, being of a poetic and contemplative rather than of an active nature, and consequently excessively poor. he has a sign out "attorney and pension agent," and writes and talks like one of the greatest of men. he was working the sewing machine when i was there, and talking of his share in the war, and why he didn't go to live in boston, etc. (namely that he wasn't known), and my heart was heavy in my breast that so rich a nature, fitted to inhabit a tropical dreamland, should have nothing but that furnitureless cabin within and snow and sky without, to live upon. for, however spotlessly pure and dazzlingly lustrous snow may be, pure snow, always snow, and naught but snow, for four months on end, is, it must be confessed, a rather lean diet for the human soul--deficient in variety, chiaroscuro, and oleaginous and medieval elements. i felt as i was returning home that some intellectual inferiority _ought_ to accrue to all populations whose environment for many months in the year consisted of pure snow.--you are better off, better off than you know, in that great black-earthed dunghill of an england. i say naught of politics, war, strikes, railroad accidents or public events, unless the departure of c. w. eliot and his wife for a year in europe be a public event.... well, dear old alice, i hope and pray for you. lots of love to harry, and if katharine is with you, to her. yours ever, w. j. _to carl stumpf._ cambridge, _ feb., _. my dear stumpf,--your two letters from rügen of sept. th, and from halle of jan. came duly, and i can assure you that their contents was most heartily appreciated, and not by me alone. i fairly squealed with pleasure over the first one and its rich combination of good counsel and humorous commentary, and read the greater part of it to my friend royce, assistant professor of philosophy here, who enjoyed it almost as much as i. there is a heartiness and solidity about your letters which is truly german, and makes them as nutritious as they are refreshing to receive. your _kater-gefühl_,[ ] however, in your second letter, about your _auslassungen_[ ] on the subject of wundt, amused me by its speedy evolution into _auslassungen_ more animated still. i can well understand why wundt should make his compatriots impatient. foreigners can afford to be indifferent for he doesn't _crowd_ them so much. he aims at being a sort of napoleon of the intellectual world. unfortunately he will never have a waterloo, for he is a napoleon without genius and with no central idea which, if defeated, brings down the whole fabric in ruin. you remember what victor hugo says of napoleon in the miserables--"il gênait dieu"; wundt only _gêners_ his _confrères_; and whilst they make mincemeat of some one of his views by their criticism, he is meanwhile writing a book on an entirely different subject. cut him up like a worm, and each fragment crawls; there is no _noeud vital_ in his mental medulla oblongata, so that you can't kill him all at once. but surely you must admit that, since there must be professors in the world, wundt is the most praiseworthy and never-too-much-to-be-respected type of the species. he isn't a genius, he is a _professor_--a being whose duty is to know everything, and have his own opinion about everything, connected with his _fach_. wundt has the most prodigious faculty of appropriating and preserving knowledge, and as for opinions, he takes _au grand sérieux_ his duties there. he says of each possible subject, "here i must have an opinion. let's see! what shall it be? how many possible opinions are there? three? four? yes! just four! shall i take one of these? it will seem more original to take a higher position, a sort of _vermittelungsansicht_[ ] between them all. that i will do, etc., etc." so he acquires a complete assortment of opinions of his own; and, as his memory is so good, he seldom forgets which they are! but this is not reprehensible; it is admirable--from the professorial point of view. to be sure, one gets tired of that point of view after a while. but was there ever, since christian wolff's time, such a model of the german professor? he has utilized to the uttermost fibre every gift that heaven endowed him with at his birth, and made of it all that mortal pertinacity could make. he is the finished example of how much mere _education_ can do for a man. beside him, spencer is an ignoramus as well as a charlatan. i admit that spencer is occasionally more _amusing_ than wundt. his "data of ethics" seems to me incomparably his best book, because it is a more or less frank expression of the man's personal _ideal of living_--which has of course little to do with science, and which, in spencer's case, is full of definiteness and vigor. wundt's "ethics" i have not yet seen, and probably shall not "tackle" it for a good while to come. i was much entertained by your account of f----, of whom you have seen much more than i have. i am eager to see him, to hear about his visit to halle, and to get his account of you. but [f.'s place of abode] and boston are ten hours asunder by rail, and i never go there and he never comes here. he seems a very promising fellow, with a good deal of independence of character; and if you knew the conditions of education in this country, and of the preparation to fill chairs of philosophy in colleges, you would not express any surprise at his, or mine, or any other american's small amount of "information über die philosophische literatur." times are mending, however, and within the past six or eight years it has been possible, in three or four of our colleges, to get really educated for philosophy as a profession. the most promising man we have in this country is, in my opinion, the above-mentioned royce, a young californian of thirty, who is really built for a metaphysician, and who is, besides that, a very complete human being, alive at every point. he wrote a novel last summer, which is now going through the press, and which i am very curious to see. he has just been in here, interrupting this letter, and i have told him he must send a copy of his book, the "religious aspect of philosophy," to you, promising to urge you to read it when you had time. the first half is ethical, and very readable and full of profound and witty details, but to my mind not of vast importance philosophically. the second half is a new argument for monistic idealism, an argument based on the possibility of truth and error in knowledge, subtle in itself, and rather lengthily expounded, but seeming to me to be one of the few big original suggestions of recent philosophical writing. i have vainly tried to escape from it. i still suspect it of inconclusiveness, but i frankly confess that i am _unable_ to overthrow it. since you too are an anti-idealist, i wish very much you would try your critical teeth upon it. i can assure you that, if you come to close quarters with it, you will say its author belongs to the genuine philosophic breed. i am myself doing very well this year, rather light work, etc., but still troubled with bad sleep so as to advance very slowly with private study and writing. however, few days without a line at least. i found to my surprise and pleasure that robertson was willing to print my chapter on space in "mind," even though it should run through all four numbers of the year.[ ] so i sent it to him. most of it was written six or even seven years ago. to tell the truth, i am _off_ of space now, and can probably carry my little private ingenuity concerning it no farther than i have already done in this essay; and fearing that some evil fiend might put it into helmholtz's mind to correct all his errors and tell the full truth in the new edition of his "optics," i felt it was high time that what i had written should see the light and not be lost. it is dry stuff to read, and i hardly dare to recommend it to you; but if you do read it, there is no one whose favorable opinion i should more rejoice to hear; for, as you know, you seem to me, of all writers on space, the one who, on the whole, has thought out the subject most _philosophically_. of course, the experimental patience, and skill and freshness of observation of the helmholtzes and herings are altogether admirable, and perhaps at bottom _worth_ more than philosophic ability. space is really a direfully difficult subject! the third dimension bothers me very much still. i have this very day corrected the proofs of an essay on the perception of time,[ ] which i will send you when it shall appear in the "journal of speculative philosophy" for october last. (the number of "july, " is not yet out!) i rather enjoyed the writing of it. i have just begun a chapter on "discrimination and comparison," subjects which have been long stumbling-blocks in my path. yesterday it seemed to me that i could perhaps do nothing better than just translate and of the first _abschnitt_ of your "tonpsychologie," which is worth more than everything else put together which has been written on the subject. but i will stumble on and try to give it a more personal form. i shall, however, borrow largely from you.... have you seen [edmund] gurney's two bulky tomes, "phantasms of the living," an amazingly patient and thorough piece of work? i should not at all wonder if it were the beginning of a new department of natural history. but even if not, it is an important chapter in the statistics of _völkerpsychologie_, and i think gurney worthy of the highest praise for his devotion to this unfashionable work. he is not the kind of stuff which the ordinary pachydermatous fanatic and mystic is made of.... _to henry p. bowditch._ [post-card] cambridge, _mar. _ [ ]. my live-stock is increased by a _töchterchen_, modest, tactful, unselfish, quite different from a boy, and in fact a really _epochmachendes erzeugniss_.[ ] i shall begin to save for her dowry and perhaps your harold will marry her. their ages are suitable. grüsse an die gnädige frau. w. j. _to henry james._ cambridge, _apr. , _. my dear harry,--...i got back yesterday from five days spent at my sylvan home at lake chocorua, whither i had gone to see about getting the buildings in order for the summer. the winter has been an exceptionally snowy one back of the coast, and i found, when i arrived, four feet of snow on a level and eight feet where it had drifted. the day before yesterday the heat became summer-like, and i took a long walk in my shirt-sleeves, going through the snow the whole length of my leg when the crust broke. it was a queer combination--not exactly agreeable. the snow-blanket keeps the ground from freezing deep; so that very few days after the snow is gone the soil is dry, and spring begins in good earnest. i tried snow-shoes but found them clumsy. they were making the maple-sugar in the woods; i had excellent comfort at the hotel hard by; with whose good landlord and still better landlady i am good friends; i rested off the fumes of my lore-crammed brain, and altogether i smile at the pride of greece and rome--from the height of my new hampshire home. i'm afraid it will cost nearer $ than $ to finish all the work. but we shall have ten large rooms (two of them x ), and three small ones--not counting kitchen, pantries, etc., and if you want some real, roomy, rustic happiness, you had better come over and spend all your summers with us. i can see that the thought makes you sick, so i'll say no more about it, but my permanent vision of your future is that your pen will fail you as a means of support, and, having laid up no income, you will return like the prodigal son to my roof. you will then find that, with a wood-pile as large as an ordinary house, a hearth four feet wide, and the american sun flooding the floor, even a new hampshire winter is not so bad a thing. with house provided, two or three hundred dollars a year will support a man comfortably enough at tamworth iron works, which is the name of our township. but, enough! my vulgarity makes you shudder.... college begins tomorrow, and there are seven weeks more of lectures. i never did my work so easily as this year, and hope to write two more chapters of psychology ere the vacation. that immortal work is now more than two thirds done. to you, who throw off two volumes a year, i must seem despicable for my slowness. but the truth is that (leaving other impediments out of account) the "science" is in such a confused and imperfect state that every paragraph presents some unforeseen snag, and i often spend many weeks on a point that i didn't foresee as a difficulty at all. american scholarship is looking up in that line. three first-class works, in point both of originality and of learning, have appeared here within four months. stanley hall's and mine will make five. meanwhile in england they are doing little or nothing. the "psychical researchers" seem to be the only active investigators.... _to his sister._ chocorua, n.h., _july , _. dearest sister,--it is an unconscionable time since i have written either to you or to harry. too little eyesight, and too much use thereof, is the reason. i thought i should go wild during the examination period. i have now got some presbyopic spectacles and hope for an improvement. i think i've been straining my eyes for three or four months past by not having them on. a short dictated letter from you came the other day, and has been sent back to alice in cambridge, so i cannot give its date. i am grieved in the extreme to hear of another breakdown in your health.... but i make no sympathetic comment, as you would probably "roar" over it. there is this to be said, that it is probably less tragic to be sick all the time than to be sometimes well and incessantly tumbling down again. i thought of the difference in our lots yesterday as i was driving home in the evening with a wagon in tow, which i had started at six-thirty to get at a place called fryeburg, miles away. all day in the open air, talking with the country people, trying horses which they had to swap, but concluding to stick to my own--a most blessed feeling of freedom, and change from cambridge life. i never knew before how much freedom came with having a horse of one's own. i am becoming quite an expert jockey, having examined and tried at least two dozen horses in the last six weeks; and i don't know a more fascinating occupation. the day before yesterday, i spent most of both forenoon and afternoon in the field under the blazing sun, sprinkling my potato plants with paris green. the house comes on slowly, but in a fortnight we shall surely be inside of the larger half of it, and the rest can then drag on. three or four men can't get ahead very fast. it has some delightful rooms, and, i have no doubt, will make us all happy for several years to come. not for eternity, for everything fades, and i can see that some day we shall be glad to sell out and move on, to something grander, perhaps. for simple harmonious loveliness, however, this can't be beat.... what a grotesque sort of time you have been having with your queen's jubilee! what a chance for a woman to give some human shove to things, by the smallest _real_ word or act, and what incapacity to guess its existence or to profit by it! one can see the ground for bonaparte-worship, when one contemplates the results of the orthodox and conservative crowned-head education. he, at least, could have dropped an unconventional word, done something to pierce the cuticle. but the density of british unintellectuality is a spectacle for gods. one can't imagine it or describe it. one can only _see_ it.... w. j. * * * * * such enterprises as the horse-swapping just alluded to were not always conducted with that circumspection which marks your true horse-trader. the companion of one search for a horse reported james as accosting a man whom he met driving along the road and asking, "do you know anyone who wants to sell a horse?" at chocorua everyone was willing to sell a horse, and accordingly the man answered that he "didn't know as he did," but what might james be ready to pay? james replied that he was looking for a horse "for about $ , but _might_ pay $ ." there was a pause before the man spoke: "i've got a horse in my barn that would be just what you want--_for one hundred and seventy five_." the buyer was ready enough to laugh over such an incident; but he could not mend his trustful ways. the great thing was to have the fun of poking about the country-side and of talking business, or anything else, with its people whenever occasion offered; and, after all, the horses james bought usually turned out to be sound and serviceable enough. perhaps it was because he looked at every living creature with a discriminating eye, and had not been a comparative anatomist for nothing. in the end, too, he was suited by any horse that pulled willingly and was safe for man, woman, and child to drive. there were no motor-cars then, and few other summer residents or visitors at chocorua. james's two-seated "democrat" wagon, full of family and guests, and often followed by a child on the pony and by one or two other riders, used to travel quietly along the secluded and hilly roads for many hours a day. during this summer, and yearly during the next four, james found real rest and refreshment on his chocorua farm. the conditions were simple and the place yielded him all the joys of proprietorship without involving him in responsibilities to cattle and fields. anyone who knows central new hampshire will realize how rudimentary "farming" in one of the most barren parts of rocky new england necessarily was. the glacial soil produced nothing naturally except woods and apple trees. but the country was very beautiful, and on his own acres james was lord of part of the earth. clearing away bushes and stones from one of the little fields near the house; causing something to be planted which, during those first years, always seemed as if it _must_ be responsive enough to grow; cutting out trees to improve the look of the woods or to open an interesting view; dragging stones out of the bathing-hole in the brook; buying a horse or two and a cow on some lonely roadside at the beginning of each summer--these were fascinating adventures. james was an insatiable lover of landscape, and particularly of wide "views." his inclination was to "open" the view, to cut down obstructing trees, even at the expense of the foreground. in drives and walks about chocorua he usually made for some high hill that commanded the ossipee valley or the peaks of the sandwich range and white mountains. most hills in the neighborhood were topped by granite ledges and deserted pastures, and each commanded a different prospect. so the expedition often took the form of a picnic on one of these ledges. axes were taken along; permission was sometimes obtained to cut down any worthless tree that had sprung up to shut off the horizon. before the end of such an afternoon james was more than likely to have fallen in love with the spot and to be talking of buying it. indeed he was forever playing with projects for buying this or that hill-top or high farm and establishing a new dwelling-place of some sort on it. he was usually restrained by the price or by remembering the housekeeping cares with which his wife was already over-burdened. but he actually did buy two--one near chocorua and one on a shoulder of mt. hurricane in the adirondacks; and about the chocorua region there is hardly a high-perched pasture which he did not at some time nourish the hope of possessing. another consideration that usually deterred him from buying was the difficulty of combining hill-tops with brooks. he used often to bewail this dispensation of nature; for a vacation without a brook or a pond to bathe in was as unthinkable as a summer dwelling-place that did not command a splendid view was "inferior." the little house at chocorua stood at no great elevation, but it was near the lake, and the place boasted its own brook, with a little pool, overhung by trees, into which the cold water splashed noisily over a natural dam. thither, rain or shine, james used to walk across the meadow for an early morning dip; and after a walk or a drive or a couple of hours of chopping, or a warm half-day with a book in the woods, he used to plunge into it again. a few lines, through which breathes the happiest chocorua mood, may be added here, although they were written during a later summer. _to henry james._ chocorua, _july _. ...i have been up here for ten days reveling in the deliciousness of the country, dressed in a single layer of flannel, shirt, breeches and long stockings, exercising my arms as well as my legs several hours a day, and already feeling that bodily and spiritual freshness that comes of health, and of which no other good on earth is worthy to unlatch the shoe.... * * * * * the next letter also rejoices over chocorua, although it turns first to academic amenities. the correspondent addressed, now sir charles walston, and henry jackson, both of the english cambridge, had sent james two cases of audit ale. _to charles waldstein._ cambridge, _july , _. my dear waldstein,--it never rains but it pours. the case of beer from _you_ also came duly. day after day i wondered about its _provenance_, but your letter dispels the mystery. i had begun to believe that all the colleges of cambridge and oxford were going to vie with each other in wooing my appreciation of their respective brews. the dream is shattered but the reality remains. five dozen is enough for me to fall back upon--in the immediate present, at all events. as for that unknown but thrice-blest jackson, henry jackson of trinity (_dulcissimum mundi nomen_)--is that the way he always acts, or is he only so towards _me_? i thank him from the bottom of my heart, and swear an eternal friendship with him. if ever he is in need of meat, drink, advice or defence, let him henceforth know to whom to apply--purse, house, life, all shall be at his disposal. such a magnanimous heart as his was ne'er known before. i wish i knew his _fach_! but my ignorance is too encyclopedic. he must be a very great philosopher. goddard shall have some of the stuff.--of course you mean george goddard--i know him well. this has been written in the midst of interruptions. i am back in cambridge for only a couple of days, to send furniture up to my new hampshire farmlet. you may play the swell, but i play the yeoman. which is the better and more godly life? surely the latter. the mother earth is in my finger-nails and my back is aching and my skin sweating with the ache and sweat of father adam and all his _normal_ descendants. no matter! swells and artists have their place too. farewell! i am called off again by the furniture. remember me! and as for the divine henry jackson, thank him again and again. his ale is royal stuff. i will make no comparisons between his and yours. ever affectionately yours, wm. james. * * * * * in explanation of the next letters, it should be said that in it seemed advisable to get the children into a warmer winter climate than that of cambridge. accordingly mrs. james carried the three ("harry," "billy," and "margaret mary," aged respectively eight, five, and two years), and a german governess off to aiken, south carolina, for three months. james was thus left in the garden street house with no other member of the family except--for he counted as one--a small pug-dog named jap. dr. hildreth, who is referred to, was a next-door neighbor, whose children were somewhat older than the james children. _to his son henry (age )._ cambridge, _mar. , _. beloved heinrich,--you lazy old scoundrel, why don't you write a letter to your old dad? tell me how you enjoy your riding on horseback, what billy does for a living, and which things you like best of all the new kinds of things you have to do with in aiken. how do you like the darkeys being so numerous? everything goes on quietly here. the house so still that you can hear a pin drop, and so clean that everything makes a mark on it. all because there are no brats and kids around. jap is my only companion, and he sneezes all over me whenever i pick him up. mrs. hildreth and the children are gone to florida. the emmets seem very happy. i will close with a fable. a donkey felt badly because he was not so great a favorite as a lap-dog. he said, i must act like the lap-dog, and then my mistress will like me. so he came into the house and began to lick his mistress, and put his paws on her, and tried to get into her lap. instead of kissing him for this, she screamed for the servants, who beat him and put him out of the house. moral: it's no use to try to be anything but a donkey if you are one. but neither you nor billy are one. good-night! you blessed boy. stick to your three r's and your riding, so as to get on _fast_. the ancient persians only taught their boys to ride, to shoot the bow and to tell the truth. good-night! kiss your dear old mammy and that belly-ache of a billy, and little margaret mary for her dad. good-night. your father. _to his son henry._ cambridge, _mar. _ [ ]. beloved heinrich,--your long letter came yesterday p.m. much the best you ever writ, and the address on the envelope so well written that i wondered whose hand it was, and never thought it might be yours. your tooth also was a precious memorial--i hope you'll get a better one in its place. send me the other as soon as it is tookin out. they ought to go into the peabody museum. if any of george washington's baby-teeth had been kept till now, they would be put somewhere in a public museum for the world to wonder at. i will keep this tooth, so that, if you grow up to be a second geo. washington, i may sell it to a museum. when washington was only eight years old his mother didn't know he was going to be washington. but he did be it, when the time came. i will now tell you about what dr. hildreth is doing. the family is in florida, and he is building himself a new house. they are just starting the foundation. the fence is taken down between our yard and his, by the stable, and teams are driving through with lumber. our back yard is filled with lumber for the frame of the house. it is to be cut, squared, mortised, etc., in our yard and then carried through to his. i dined last night at the dibblees'. the boys had been to dancing-school. i like their looks. all the boys and girls together kept up such a talking that i seemed to be in a boiler factory where they bang the iron with the hammers so. it's just so with them every day. but they're very good-natured, even if they don't let the old ones speak. say to fräulein that "ich lasse sie grüssen von herzensgrund!"[ ] thump bill for me and ask him if he likes it so nicely. jap's nose is all dry and brown with holding it so everlastingly towards the fire. we are having ice-cream and the rev. george a. gordon to lunch today. the ice-cream is left over from the philosophical club last night. now pray, old harry, stick to your books and let me see you do sums and read _fast_ when you get back. the best of all of us is your mother, though. good-bye! your loving dad. w. j. _to his son william._ garden street, _apr. , _. : a.m. beloved williamson,--this is sunday, the sabbath of the lord, and it has been very hot for two days. i think of you and harry with such longing, and of that infant whom i know so little, that i cannot help writing you some words. your mammy writes me that she can't get _you_ to _work_ much, though harry works. you _must_ work a little this summer in our own place. how nice it will be! i have wished that both you and harry were by my side in some amusements which i have had lately. first, the learned seals in a big tank of water in boston. the loveliest beasts, with big black eyes, poking their heads up and down in the water, and then scrambling out on their bellies like boys tied up in bags. they play the guitar and banjo and organ, and one of them saves the life of a child who tumbles in the water, catching him by the collar with its teeth, and swimming him ashore. they are both, child and seal, trained to do it. when they have done well, their master gives them a lot of fish. they eat an awful lot, scales, and fins, and bones and all, without chewing. that is the worst thing about them. he says he never beats them. they are full of curiosity--more so than a dog for far-off things; for when a man went round the room with a pole pulling down the windows at the top, all their heads bobbed out of the water and followed him about with their eyes _aus lauter_[ ] curiosity. dogs would hardly have noticed him, i think. now, speaking of dogs, jap was _nauseated_ two days ago. i thought, from his licking his nose, that he was going to be sick, and got him out of doors just in time. he vomited most awfully on the grass. he then acted as if he thought i was going to punish him, poor thing. he can't discriminate between sickness and sin. he leads a dull life, without you and margaret mary. i tell him if it lasts much longer, he'll grow into a common beast; he hates to be a beast, but unless he has human companionship, he will sink to the level of one. so you must hasten back and make much of him. i also went to the panorama of the battle of bunker hill, which is as good as that of gettysburg. i wished harry had been there, because he knows the story of it. you and he shall go soon after your return. it makes you feel just as if you lived there. well, i will now stop. on monday morning the th or sunday night the th of may, i will take you into my arms; that is, i will meet you with a carriage on the wharf, when the boat comes in. and i tell you i shall be glad to see the whole lot of you come roaring home. give my love to your mammy, to aunt margaret, to fräulein, to harry, to margaret mary, and to yourself. your loving dad, wm. james. _to henry james._ chochura, n.h., _july , _. my dear harry,--your note announcing edmund gurney's death came yesterday, and was a most shocking surprise. it seems one of death's stupidest strokes, for i know of no one whose life-task was begun on a more far-reaching scale, or from whom one expected with greater certainty richer fruit in the ripeness of time. i pity his lovely wife, to whom i wrote a note yesterday; and also a brief notice for the "nation."[ ] to me it will be a cruel loss; for he recognized me more than anyone, and in all my thoughts of returning to england he was the englishman from whom i awaited the most nourishing communion. we ran along on very similar lines of interest. he was very profound, subtle, and voluminous, and bound for an intellectual synthesis of things much solider and completer than anyone i know, except perhaps royce. well! such is life! all these deaths make what remains here seem strangely insignificant and ephemeral, as if the weight of things, as well as the numbers, was all on the other side.[ ] i have to thank you for a previous letter three or four weeks old, which, having sent to aunt kate, i cannot now date. i must also thank for "partial portraits" and "the reverberator." the former, i of course knew (except the peculiarly happy woolson one), but have read several of 'em again with keen pleasure, especially the turguenieff. "the reverberator" is masterly and exquisite. i quite squealed through it, and all the household has amazingly enjoyed it. it shows the technical ease you have attained, that you can handle so delicate and difficult a fancy so lightly. it is simply delicious. i hope your other magazine things, which i am following your advice and not reading [in magazine form], are only half as good. how you can keep up such a productivity and live, i don't see. all your time is your own, however, barring dinner-parties, and that makes a great difference. most of my time seems to disappear in college duties, not to speak of domestic interruptions. our summer starts promisingly. how with my lazy temperament i managed to start all the things we put through last summer, now makes me wonder. the place has yet a good deal to be done with it, but it can be taken slowly, and alice is a most _vaillante_ partner. we have a trump of a hired man.... some day i'll send you a photograph of the little place. please send this to alice, for whose letters i'm duly grateful. i only hope she'll keep decently well for a little while. yours ever, w. j. p.s. i have just been downstairs to get an envelope, and there on the lawn saw a part of the family which i will describe, for you to insert in one of your novels as a picture of domestic happiness. on the newly made lawn in the angle of the house and kitchen ell, in the shadow of the hot afternoon sun, lies a mattress taken out of our spare-room for an airing against richard hodgson's arrival tomorrow. on it the madonna and child--the former sewing in a nice blue point dress, and smiling at the latter (named peggy), immensely big and fat for her years, and who, with quite a vocabulary of adjectives, proper names, and a mouthful of teeth, shows as yet, although in her sixteenth month, no disposition to walk. she is rolling and prattling to herself, now on mattress and now on grass, and is an exceedingly good-natured, happy, and intelligent child. it conduces to her happiness to have a hard cracker in her fist, at which she mumbles more or less all day, and of which she is never known to let go, even taking it into her bath with her and holding it immersed till that ceremony is o'er. a man is papering and painting one of our parlors, a carpenter putting up a mantelpiece in another. margaret and harry's tutor are off on the backs of the two horses to the village seven miles off, to have 'em shod. i, with naught on but gray flannel shirt, breeches, belt, stockings and shoes, shall now proceed across the lake in the boat and up the hill, to get and carry the mail. harry will probably ride along the shore on the pony which aunt kate has given him, and where billy and fräulein are, heaven only knows. returning, i shall have a bath either in lake or brook--doesn't it sound nice? on the whole it is nice, but very hot. _to miss grace norton._ [post-card] [chocorua,] _aug. , _. it would take g[uy] de m[aupassant] himself to just fill a post-card chock-full and yet leave naught to be desired, with an account of "pierre et jean." it is a little cube of bronze; or like the body of the capitaine beausire, "plein comme un oeuf, dur comme une balle"--dur surtout! fifteen years ago, i might have been _enthused_ by such art; but i'm growing weak-minded, and the charm of this admirable precision and adequacy of art to subject leaves me too cold. it is like these modern tools and instruments, so admirably compact, and strong, and reduced to their fighting weight. one of those little metallic pumps, _e.g._, so oily and powerful, with a handle about two feet long, which will throw a column of water about four inches thick feet. unfortunately, g. de m.'s pump only throws dirty water--and i am _beginning_ to be old fogy eno' to like even an old shackly wooden pump-handle, if the water it fetches only carries all the sweetness of the mountain-side. yrs. ever, w.j. the dying fish on p[in]s stick most in my memory. is that right in a novel of human life? _to g. croom robertson._ _oct. , ._ ...i am teaching ethics and the philosophy of religion for the first time, with that dear old duffer martineau's works as a text. it gives me lots to do, as i only began my systematic reading in that line three weeks ago, having wasted the summer in farming (if such it can be called) and philosophizing. my "psychology" will therefore have to be postponed until another year; for with as much college work as i have this year, i can't expect to write a line of it.... _to henry james._ _oct. , ._ ...the cambridge year begins with much vehemence--i with a big class in ethics, and seven graduates from other colleges in advanced psychology, giving me a good deal of work. but i feel uncommonly hearty, and shall no doubt come out of it all in good shape.... i am to have lots of reading and no writing to speak of this year and expect to enjoy it hugely. it does one good to read classic books. for a month past i've done nothing else, in behalf of my ethics class--plato, aristotle, adam smith, butler, paley, spinoza, etc., etc. no book is celebrated without deserving it for some quality, and recenter books, certain never to be celebrated, have an awfully squashy texture.... _to e. l. godkin._ cambridge, _apr. , _. my dear godkin,--harry's address is de vere gardens, w. i imagine that he will be there till midsummer. i hope 'tis yourself that's going! you must need it awfully. i fully meant to call on you when i was in n. y. a fortnight ago. but i was so dead tired that i slept on my hotel bed all the only afternoon i had, went to daly's theatre in the evening and then had to come away. you are the noblest roman of them all; and what a man shall do for a newspaper with sanity, intellect and backbone in it, when your editorial pen has ceased to trickle, i don't know. there must be plenty of morals in the world, plenty of brains, plenty of education, plenty of literary skill, but was there ever a time or country when they seemed less to coalesce, in the field of journalism? in the earlier years i may say that my whole political education was due to the "nation"; later came a time when i thought you looked on the doings of terence powderly and co. too much from without and too little from within; now i turn to you again as my only solace in a world where nothing stands straight. you have the most curious way of always being _right_, so i never dare to trust myself now when you're agin me. i read my "nation" rather quicker than i used, but i depend on it perhaps more than ever, and cannot forbear seizing this passing occasion to tell you so. i hope, once more, that you're going abroad yourself. it will do you no end of good to _take in_ after your daily giving out for so long. harry will be delighted to see you. poor alice is stranded at leamington, unable to use her legs or brain to any account, but never complaining, and living apparently on the irish question, being a violent parnellite. i settle the affairs of the universe in my college courses, and have got so far ahead as to be building a big new house on that part of it known as the norton estate.[ ] a new street passes before your old house, now grace norton's. i am a little north of it, facing it, and squatting right across the old norton avenue. four other houses are going up there immediately, two of 'em actually under way. no answer to this is expected, from a man as busy as you. please give my best respects to mrs. godkin, and believe me ever affectionately yours, wm. james. _to henry james._ cambridge, _may , _. my dear harry,--i have been feeling so dead-tired all this spring that i believe a long break from my usual scenes is necessary. it is like the fagged state that drove me abroad the last two times. i have been pretty steadily busy for six years and the result isn't wonderful, considering what a miserable nervous system i have anyhow. the upshot of it is that i have pretty much made up my mind to invest $ (if necessary) of aunt kate's legacy in my constitution, and spend the summer abroad. this will give me the long-wished opportunity of seeing you and alice, and enable me to go to an international congress of "physiological psychologists" which i have had the honor of an invitation to attend in the capacity of "honorary committee"-man for the u. s. it will be instructive and inspiring, no doubt, and won't last long, and [will] give me an opportunity to meet a number of eminent men. but for these three reasons, i think i should start for the pacific coast as being more novel. i confess i find myself caring more for landscapes than for men--strange to say, and doubtless shameful; so my stay in london will probably be short. i learn from godkin that he is to be with you about the same time that i shall be in london. i don't suppose you have room for both of us, but pray don't let that trouble you. i can easily find a lodging somewhere for a few days, which are all that i shall stay. i am heartily glad godkin is about to go abroad; i know of no one who so richly deserves a vacation. my heart is warming up again to the "nation," as it hasn't for many years. i long to have a good long talk with you about yourself, alice, and , old things. alice used to be so perturbed at _expecting_ things that in my ignorance of her present condition i don't venture to announce to her my arrival. but do you use your discretion as to where and how she shall be informed. send her this, if it is the best way. it's a bad summer for me to be gone, with the house-building here, the chocorua place unfinished, and the crowds set in motion by the paris exhibition; and _perhaps_, if i find myself unexpectedly hearty when lectures end two weeks hence, i may not go after all. but i can't help feeling in my bones that i _ought_ to go, so i probably shall. it will then be the cephalonia, sailing june , and i shall get off at queenstown, as i am on the whole more curious to see the emerald isle than any other part of europe, except scotland, which i probably shan't see at all. the "congress" in paris begins aug. . how good it will be to see poor alice again, and to hear you discourse! ever affectly, yours, w.j. * * * * * in late june james did, in fact, sail on the cephalonia and disembark at queenstown. thence he proceeded _via_ cork to killarney and on to dublin, where he spent a day at trinity college before going to glasgow and oban. having, in the briefest time and at first sight, fallen "dead in love wi' scotland both land and people" he traveled on _via_ edinburgh, and reached london by the th of july. there he stayed with henry james for ten days and saw his sister. a letter from london to mrs. james may be included in part. _to mrs. james._ de vere gardens, london, _july , _. ... [after seeing mrs. gurney i went] to brighton, where i spent a night at myers's lodgings, and the evening with him and the sidgwicks trying thought-transference experiments which, however, on that occasion did not succeed.... the best thing by far which i saw in brighton, and a thing the impression of which will perhaps outlast everything else on this trip, was four cuttle-fish (octopus) in the aquarium. i wish we had one of them for a child--such flexible intensity of life in a form so inaccessible to our sympathy. next day to haslemere to the pearsall smiths, where i spent a really _gemüthlich_ evening and morning. pearsall himself as engaging as of yore. the place and country wonderfully rich and beautiful. returning yesterday, went with h. to national gallery in the afternoon, and read brownell on france in the p.m. yesterday, sunday, harry went to the country after breakfast, whilst i wrote a lot of notes and read zola's "germinal," a story of mines and miners, and a truly magnificent work, if successfully to reproduce the horror and pity of certain human facts and make you see them as if real can make a book magnificent. towards four o'clock (the weather fine) i mounted the top of a bus and went (with thousands of others similarly enthroned) to hampton court, through kew, richmond, bushey park, etc.; about miles there and back, all for _s._ _d._ i strolled for an hour or more in the hampton court gardens, and overlooked the thames all _bizarrée_ with row-boats and male and female rowers, and got back, _perdu dans la foule_, at p.m.--a most delightful and interesting six hours, with but the usual drawback, that _you_ were not along. how you would have enjoyed every bit of it, especially the glimpses, between richmond and hampton, over the high brick walls and between the bars of the iron gates, of these extraordinary english gardens and larger grounds, all black with their tufted vegetation. more different things can grow in a square foot here, if they're taken care of, than i've ever seen elsewhere, and one of these high ivy-walled gardens is something the _like_ of which is altogether unknown to us. like all human things (except wives) they grow banal enough, if one stays long in their company, but the first acquaintance between alice gibbens and them is something which i would fain see. the crowd was immense and the picturesqueness of everything quite medieval, as were also the good manners and the tendency to a certain hearty sociability, shown in the chaffing from vehicle to vehicle along the road. i'm glad i had this sight of the greatness of the english people, and glad i had no social duties to perform.... harry is as nice and simple and amiable as he can be. he has covered himself, like some marine crustacean, with all sorts of material growths, rich sea-weeds and rigid barnacles and things, and lives hidden in the midst of his strange heavy alien manners and customs; but these are all but "protective resemblances," under which the same dear old, good, innocent and at bottom very powerless-feeling harry remains, caring for little but his writing, and full of dutifulness and affection for all gentle things.... * * * * * from london james crossed to paris, to attend the international congress of physiological psychology which had been arranged to coincide with the international exposition of that year. he found between and colleagues, most of them european, of course, in attendance at its sessions. this incident in his life may be summarized in a few sentences from his own report of the congress, in "mind": "the most striking feature of the discussions was, perhaps, their tendency to slope off to some one or other of those shady horizons with which the name of "psychic-research" is now associated.... the open results were, however (as always happens at such gatherings), secondary in real importance to the latent ones--the friendships made, the intimacies deepened, and the encouragement and inspiration which came to everyone from seeing before them in flesh and blood so large a portion of that little army of fellow students from whom and for whom all contemporary psychology exists. the individual worker feels much less isolated in the world after such an experience." to stumpf he wrote similarly (aug. ): "the sight of men all actively interested in psychology has made me feel much less lonely in the world, and ready to finish my book this year with a great deal more _entrain_. a book hanging so long on one's hands at last gets outgrown, and even disgusting to one." on his way home james went again to see his sister, and her account of him is not to be omitted. "william, instead of going to switzerland, came suddenly back from paris and went home, having, as usual, exhausted europe in a few weeks, finding it stale, flat and unprofitable. the only necessity being to get home, the first letter after his arrival, was, of course, full of plans for his return _plus_ wife and infants; he is just like a blob of mercury--you can't put a mental finger upon him. h. and i were laughing over him, and recalling father, and william's resemblance (in his ways) to him. tho' the results are the same, they seem to come from such a different nature in the two; in w., an entire inability or indifference to 'stick to a thing for the sake of sticking,' as some one said of him once; whilst father, the delicious infant! couldn't submit even to the thralldom of his own whim; and then the dear being was such a prey to the demon homesickness.... but to return to our mutton, william: he came with h. on august on his way to liverpool. he told all about his paris experience, where he was a delegate to the psychological congress, which was a most brilliant success. the french most polite and hospitable. they invited w. to open the congress, and they always had a foreigner in the chair at the different meetings. i extracted with great difficulty from him that 'monsieur willyam james' was frequently referred to by the speakers. he liked the henry sidgwicks and fred. myers. mrs. myers paid him the following enigmatic compliment: 'we are so glad that you are _as_ you are.'" * * * * * [illustration: francis james child. caricature from a pocket note-book.] on getting back to cambridge in the autumn, james moved his family into a house which he had just built in irving street--a street which had been newly opened through what used to be called norton's woods. he had planned this house with such eager interest in all its details that he had even designed doors and windows and had practically been his own architect with respect to everything except structural specifications. the result was a detached wooden house of pleasantly square outer appearance, covered with shingles which soon weathered brown, and having dark green trimmings. inside there was one room which deserves particular mention. james loved to have "space" about him[ ] and he planned a library that was the largest and sunniest room the house could provide. it was about - / feet wide and feet long. the walls were lined with book-shelves from floor to ceiling, except where james hung a portrait of his father over the open fireplace. on the southern side there was a triple window whose total width was nearly half the length of the room, and which let in a flood of sunlight. through it one looked out upon a small lawn overhung by a large elm, and upon more grass and trees beyond. this was his study and living-room for the rest of his life. here most of the cambridge letters that follow may be assumed to have been written. * * * * * after james moved to irving street, several people referred to in the letters became his very near neighbors. josiah royce, francis j. child, c. e. norton, miss theodora sedgwick were all within three minutes walk of his door. miss grace norton lived across the way. _to miss grace norton._ cambridge, _dec. , _. dear miss norton,--will you accept, as a christmas offering, the accompanying bottles of california champagne, _extremely_ salubrious in its after-effects, quite as intoxicating, almost as good-tasting and only half as "cost-playful" as french champagne--in short, a beverage which no household should be without. i should gladly have sought out something more sentimental,--though after a bottle or so, this seems rosy with sentiment,--but i have no gifts of invention in the _present_ line, and took something useful, merely to testify to the affection and admiration with which i am ever yours, wm. james. _to charles eliot norton._ undated [ ]. my dear mr. norton,--this introduces to you mr. x----, from south abington, a workman in a tack factory since boyhood, who has nevertheless gone quite deeply into studies philosophic, mathematical and sociological. he will tell you more about himself, and i wish if convenient that you would "draw him out"--i should like much to hear your impression. i want, if possible, to help him to a start in life here. palmer has invited him to stay with him for a week. and we are busy studying him and trying to cast his horoscope, to feel whether we can conscientiously recommend him to some millionaire to support in college for a year (as unmatriculated), and so give him a chance to make himself known and find some better avocation for himself than the making of tacks ten hours a day. he knows nothing of our plan, thinks this a mere spree, so please don't let it out! very truly yours, wm. james. * * * * * the workman from the tack factory, like more than one other lame duck before and after him, had aroused what professor palmer once aptly called james's "inclination toward the under-dog and his insistence on keeping the door open for every species of human experiment." it made no difference what x----'s doctrines were, or whether or not they were akin to james's way of thinking. and if such a man was unfitted to arouse other people's sympathies, james's own were the more readily challenged. the erratics of the philosophical world were significant phenomena, and sometimes interested him most just when they were most "queer"--when they were perhaps aberrant to the point of being pathological specimens. it mattered as little to james where such people sprang from, or by what strange processes they had arrived at their ideas, as it matters to a naturalist that beetles have to be hunted for in all sorts of places. he filled the "varieties of religious experience" with the records of abnormal cases and with accounts of the mental and emotional adventures of people whom the everyday world called cranks and fanatics. he was not only curious about such men, but endlessly patient and helpful to them. to some indeed his encouragement was more comforting than profitable, and among them must be numbered the x---- of this letter--an uncouth and helpless creature, who has since achieved his only immortality in another sphere of being. the poor man never got over this "spree," but withdrew from the tack factory forever, spent many years in a mills hotel working over an unsalable _magnum opus_, and every now and then appealing for funds. a letter on a later page recurs to this case. * * * * * in the spring of james finished the remaining chapters of the "psychology." the next letters were written during the final weeks of work on the book. _to henry holt._ cambridge, _may , _. my dear holt,--i was in hopes that you would propose to break away from the famous "series" and publish the book independently, in two volumes. an abridgement could then be prepared for the series. if there be anything which i loathe it is a mean overgrown page in small type, and i think the author's feelings ought to go for a good deal in the case of the enormous _rat_ which his ten years gestation has brought forth. in any event, i dread the summer and next year, with two new courses to teach, and, i fear, no vacation. what i wrote you, if you remember, was to send you the "heft" of the ms. by may st, the rest to be done in the intervals of proof-correcting. you however insisted on having the entire ms. in your hands before anything should be done. it seems to me that this delay is, _now_ at any rate, absurd. there is certainly less than two weeks' work on the ms. undone. and every day got behind us now means a day of travel and vacation for me next september. i really think, considering the sort of risk i am running by the delay, that i must _insist_ on getting to press now as soon as the page is decided on. no one could be more disgusted than i at the sight of the book. _no_ subject is worth being treated of in pages! had i ten years more, i could rewrite it in ; but as it stands it is this or nothing--a loathsome, distended, tumefied, bloated, dropsical mass, testifying to nothing but two facts: _ st_, that there is no such thing as a _science_ of psychology, and _ nd_, that w. j. is an incapable. yours provided you hurry up things, wm. james. * * * * * when mrs. james took the children to chocorua for the summer, james remained in cambridge to finish the book. _to mrs. james._ cambridge, _may _, : p.m. ...wrote hard pretty much all day, lectured on ansel bourne, etc., had three students to lunch, chubb being gone to milton. visit this a.m. from bishop keane of the new catholic university at washington, to get advice about psycho-physic laboratory. feel very well, though i drink coffee daily. "psychology" will certainly be finished by sunday noon!... * * * * * _sunday, may_ [ ], : p.m. ...the job is done! all but some paging and half a dozen little footnotes, the work is completed, and as i see it as a unit, i feel as if it might be rather a vigorous and richly colored chunk--for that kind of thing at least!... * * * * * _may _, : p.m. ...i sot up till two last night putting the finishing touches on the ms., which now goes to holt in irreproachable shape, woodcuts and all. i insured it for $ . in giving it to the express people this a.m. that will make them extra careful at a cost of $ . . this morning a great feeling of weariness came over me at o'clock, and i was taking down a volume of tennyson intending to doze off in my chair, when x---- arrived.... * * * * * _may ._ ...i came home very weary, and lit a fire, and had a delicious two hours all by myself, thinking of the big _étape_ of my life which now lay behind me (i mean that infernal book done), and of the possibilities that the future yielded of reading and living and loving out from the shadow of that interminable black cloud.... at any rate, it does give me some comfort to think that i don't live _wholly_ in projects, aspirations and phrases, but now and then have something done to show for all the fuss. the joke of it is that i, who have always considered myself a thing of glimpses, of discontinuity, of _aperçus_, with no power of doing a big job, suddenly realize at the _end_ of this task that it is the biggest book on psychology in any language except wundt's, rosmini's and daniel greenleaf thompson's! still, if it burns up at the printing-office, i shan't much care, for i shan't ever write it again!! _to henry james._ chocorua, _june , _. my dear harry, ...the great event for me is the completion at last of my tedious book. i have been at my desk with it every day since i got back from europe, and up at four in the morning with it for many a day of the last month. i have written every page four or five times over, and carried it "on my mind" for nine years past, so you may imagine the relief. besides, i am glad to appear at last as a man who has done something more than make phrases and projects. i will send you a copy, in the fall, i trust, though [the printer] is so inert about starting the proofs that we may not get through till midwinter or later. as "psychologies" go, it is a good one, but psychology is in such an ante-scientific condition that the whole present generation of them is predestined to become unreadable old medieval lumber, as soon as the first genuine tracks of insight are made. the sooner the better, for me!... _to mrs. henry whitman._ cambridge, _july , _. my dear mrs. whitman,--how good a way to begin the day, with a letter from you, and a composition of yours to correct! to take the latter first, i trembled a little when, after looking over the printed document, i found you beginning so sympathetically to stroke down mr. jay; but you made it all right ere the end. since the movement is on foot, it is time that rational people like yourself should get an influence in it. i doubt whether the earth supports a more genuine enemy of all that the catholic church _inwardly_ stands for than i do--_écrasez l'infâme_ is the only way i can feel about it. but the concrete catholics, including the common priests in this country, are an entirely different matter. their wish to educate their own, and to do what proselytizing they can, is natural enough; so is their wish to get state money. "destroying american institutions" is a widely different matter; and instead of this vague phrase, i should like to hear one specification laid down of an "institution" which they are now threatening. the only way to resist them is absolute firmness and impartiality, and continuing in the line which you point out, bless your 'art! down with demagogism!--this document is not quite free therefrom.... as for the style, i see in it nothing but what is admirable. a pedant might object (near the end) to a _drop_ of (even huguenot) blood _beating high_; but how can i object to anything from your pen? and now , thanks for your kind words about the proofs. the pages i sent you are probably the most _continuously_ amusing in the book--though occasionally there is a passing gleam elsewhere. if there is aught of good in the style, it is the result of ceaseless toil in rewriting. everything comes out wrong with me at first; but when once objectified in a crude shape, i can torture and poke and scrape and pat it till it offends me no more. i take you at your word and send you some more sheets--only, to get something pithy and real, i go back to some practical remarks at the end of a chapter on habit, composed with a view of benefiting the _young_. may they accordingly be an inspiration to _you_! most of the book is altogether unreadable from any human point of view, as i feel only too well in my deluge of proofs. my dear wife will come down next week (i think) to help me through. thank you once more, and believe me, with warm regards to your husband, yours always, wm. james. _to w. d. howells._ chocorua, _aug. , _. my dear howells,--you've done it this time and no mistake! i've had a little leisure for reading this summer, and have just read, first your "shadow of a dream," and next your "hazard of new fortunes," and can hardly recollect a novel that has taken hold of me like the latter. some compensations go with being a mature man, do they not? you couldn't possibly have done so solid a piece of work as that ten years ago, could you? the steady unflagging flow of it is something wonderful. never a weak note, the number of characters, each intensely individual, the observation of detail, the everlasting wit and humor, and beneath all the bass accompaniment of the human problem, the entire americanness of it, all make it a very great book, and one which will last when we shall have melted into the infinite azure. ah! my dear howells, it's worth something to be able to write such a book, and it is so peculiarly _yours_ too, flavored with your idiosyncrasy. (the book is so d--d humane!) congratulate your wife on having brought up such a husband. _my_ wife had been raving about it ever since it came out, but i couldn't read it till i got the larger printed copy, and naturally couldn't credit all she said. but it makes one love as well as admire you, and so o'er-shadows the equally exquisite, though slighter "shadow of a dream," that i have no adjectives left for that. i hope the summer is speeding well with all of you. i have been in cambridge six weeks and corrected pages of proof. the year which shall have witnessed the apparition of your "hazard of new fortunes," of harry's "tragic muse," and of _my_ "psychology" will indeed be a memorable one in american literature!! believe me, with warm regards to mrs. howells, yours ever affectionately, wm. james. * * * * * the "principles of psychology" appeared in the early autumn. x - _the "briefer course" and the laboratory--a sabbatical year in europe_ the publication of the "principles" may be treated as making a date--at any rate in the story of james's life. although conceived originally as a manual or textbook, it had gone far beyond that mere summary of a subject which it is the rôle of most textbooks to be, and had finally assumed the form of a philosophic survey. "it was a declaration of independence (defining the boundary lines of a new science with unapproachable genius.)"[ ] in the scientific world it established james's already high reputation and greatly extended his influence. beyond scientific circles the book's style, its colloquial directness, its humor, and its moral depth and appeal, won it an instantaneous popularity. even before it appeared, the compositor at the printing-press was reported as so enthralled by his "copy" that he was reading the manuscript out of hours. passages, among which the chapter on habit is the most widely known, "went home" with the force of eloquent sermons. "i can't tell you what the book has _meant_ to me." such was the burden of countless messages that began to come in from non-professional readers. during the course of the first winter after its appearance, it became clear that the only obstacle to its almost universal use in american colleges was its size. and so james spent the summer of in making an abridgment which appeared that autumn under the title "briefer course." in one form or the other, either in the two-volume edition or the one-volume abridgment,--either in "james" or in "jimmy," as the two books were soon nicknamed,--james's "psychology" was soon in use in most of the colleges. during the thirty years that have passed since then, the majority of the english-speaking students who have entered the field of psychology have entered by the door which james's pages threw wide to them. but by this time the inclination of james's own mind was more and more strongly toward philosophy, and the experimental laboratory was becoming a burden to him. it is true that the laboratory with which he had thus far done his own work would not nowadays be reckoned as at all a big affair. but owing to advances which had been made in the science during the previous ten years, an enlarged laboratory was a necessity for further progress and for right teaching. it would then require more time and attention from its director; james wished to give less time than heretofore. "i naturally hate experimental work," he said, "and all my circumstances conspired (during the important years of my life) to prevent me from getting into a routine of it, so that now it is always the duty that gets postponed. there are plenty of others, to keep my time as fully employed as my working powers permit."[ ] there appeared to be one solution for the difficulty, and in he set about to arrange it. he raised enough money to establish the harvard laboratory on such a basis that an able experimenter could be invited to make its direction his chief concern. he recommended the appointment of hugo münsterberg to take charge for three years. he had been much impressed by the originality and promise implied by some experimental work which münsterberg had already done at freiburg, and his conviction--in respect to all academic appointments--was that youth and originality should be sought rather than "safety"; that the way to organize a strong philosophical department was to get men of different schools into its faculty, and that they should expound dissimilar rather than harmonious points of view and doctrines. when this appointment had been made, james saw his way clear to taking the sabbatical year of absence from college duties to which he was already more than entitled. for nine years he had allowed himself only the briefest interruptions of work, and by he was in a badly fatigued condition. he sailed for antwerp in may, and took his family with him. he had no more definite purpose than to escape all literary and academic obligations and "lie fallow" in europe for the next fifteen months. letters will show that he accomplished this with fair success. * * * * * meanwhile, those which immediately follow were written from cambridge. the first of them was to a boston neighbor and correspondent, one letter to whom has already been given and to whom there will be a number more. sarah whitman, who had lived in baltimore before her marriage to henry whitman of boston made her a resident of that city and of beverly, was a person to whose charm and talents and taste it would be impossible to do justice here. she was a lover of every art, and worked, herself, at painting, and with more success and great distinction in stained glass. eager and generous of spirit, she was constantly confided in and consulted by a small host of friends. she was, in an eminent degree, one of those happy mortals who possess a native gift for friendship and hospitality. at the date of the next letter she was, for a season, in england. _to mrs. henry whitman._ cambridge, _oct. , _. my dear mrs. whitman,--it does me good to hear from you, and to come in contact with the spirit with which you "chuck" yourself at life. it is medicinal in a way which it would probably both surprise and please you to know, and helps to make me ashamed of those pusillanimities and self-contempts which are the bane of my temperament and against which i have to carry on my lifelong struggle. enough! as for you, beat sargent, play round chamberlain, extract the goodness and wisdom of bryce, absorb the autumn colors of the land and sea, mix the crimson and the opal fire in the glass, charm everyone you come in contact with by your humanity and amiability; in short, _continue_, and we shall have plenty to talk about at the next (but for that, tedious) dinner at which it may be my blessing to be placed by your side! also enough! you will probably erelong be receiving the stalwart [henry m.] stanley and his accomplished bride. i am reading with great delight his book. how delicious is the fact that you can't cram individuals under cut and dried heads of classification. stanley is a genius all to himself, and on the whole i like him right well, with his indescribable mixture of the battering ram and the orator, of hardness and sentiment, egotism and justice, domineeringness and democratic feeling, callousness to others' insides, yet kindliness, and all his other odd contradictions. he is probably on the whole an innocent. at any rate, it does me a lot of good to read about his heroic adventures. as for "detail," of which you write, it is the ever-mounting sea which is certain to engulf one, soul and body. you have a genius to cope with it.--but again, enough! naturally i "purr" like your cat at the handsome words you let fall about the "psychology." go on! but remember that you can do so just as well without reading it: i shan't know the difference. seriously, your determination to read that fatal book is the one flaw in an otherwise noble nature. i wish that i had never written it. i hope to get my wife and the rest of the family down from new hampshire this week, though it does seem a sin to abandon the feast of light, color, and purity, for the turbid town. good-night! yours faithfully, wm. james. * * * * * james was now beginning to prepare the condensed edition of the "principles of psychology," which appeared the next year as the "briefer course." professor howison, who was informed of the project, had uttered a protest against the irreverent irony with which james treated the hegelian dialectics in the "principles,"[ ] and had expressed a hope that such passages would be omitted from the briefer course. _to g. h. howison._ cambridge, _jan. , _. my poor dear darling howison,--your letter is received and wrings my heart with its friendliness and animosity combined. but don't think me more frivolous than i am. "those bagatelle diatribes about hegelism," etc., are not reprinted in this book, not a single syllable of them! i make some jokes about caird on a certain page, but caird already forgives me, and writes that i am sophisticated by hegel myself. if you carefully ponder the _note_ on that same page or the next one (volume i, page ), you will see the real inwardness of my whole feeling about the matter. i am not as low as i seem, and some day (d. v.) may get out another and a more "metaphysical" book, which will steal all your hegelian thunder except the dialectical method, and show me to be a true child of the gospel. heartily and everlastingly yours, wm. james. _to f. w. h. myers._ newport, r.i., _jan. , _. my dear myers,--your letter of the th came duly, but not till now have i had leisure to write you a line of reply. verily you are the stuff of which world-changers are made! what a despot for psychical research! i always feel guilty in your presence, and am, on the whole, glad that the broad blue ocean rolls between us for most of the days of the year; although i should be glad to have it intermit occasionally, on days when i feel particularly larky and indifferent, when i might meet you without being bowed down with shame. to speak seriously, however, i agree in what you say, that the position i am now in (professorship, book published and all) does give me a very good pedestal for carrying on psychical research effectively, or rather for disseminating its results effectively. i find however that _narratives_ are a weariness, and i must confess that the reading of narratives for which i have no personal responsibility is almost intolerable to me. those that come to me at first-hand, incidentally to the census, i get interested in. others much less so; and i imagine my case is a very common case. one page of experimental thought-transference work will "carry" more than a hundred of "phantasms of the living." i shall stick to my share of the latter, however; and expect in the summer recess to work up the results already gained in an article[ ] for "scribner's magazine," which will be the basis for more publicity and advertising and bring in another bundle of schedules to report on at the congress. of course i wholly agree with you in regard to the _ultimate_ future of the business, and fame will be the portion of him who may succeed in naturalizing it as a branch of legitimate science. i think it quite on the cards that you, with your singular tenacity of purpose, and wide look at all the intellectual relations of the thing, may live to be the ultra-darwin yourself. only the facts are _so_ discontinuous so far that possibly all our generation can do may be to get 'em called facts. i'm a bad fellow to investigate on account of my bad memory for anecdotes and other disjointed details. teaching of students will have to fill most of my time, i foresee; but of course my weather eye will remain open upon the occult world. our "branch," you see, has tided over its difficulties temporarily; and by raising its fee will enter upon the new year with a certain momentum. you'll have to bleed, though, ere the end, devoted creatures that you are, over there! i thank you most heartily for your kind words about my book, and am touched by your faithful eye to the errata. the volumes were run through the press in less than seven weeks, and the proof-reading suffered. my friend g. stanley hall, leader of american psychology, has written that the book is the most complete piece of self-evisceration since marie bashkirtseff's diary. don't you think that's rather unkind? but in this age of nerves all philosophizing is really something of that sort. i finished yesterday the writing of an address on ethics which i have to give at yale college; and, on the way hither in the cars, i read the last half of rudyard kipling's "the light that failed"--finding the latter indecently true to nature, but recognizing after all that my ethics and his novel were the same sort of thing. all literary men are sacrifices. "les festins humains qu'ils servent à leurs fêtes ressemblent la plupart à ceux des pélicans," etc., etc. enough!... _to w. d. howells._ cambridge, _apr. , _. my dear howells,--you made me what seemed at the time a most reckless invitation at the childs' one day--you probably remember it. it seemed to me improper then to take it up. but it has lain rankling in my mind ever since; and now, as the spring weather makes a young man's fancy lightly turn away from the metaphysical husks on which he has fed exclusively all winter to some more human reading, i say to myself, why shouldn't i have copies, from the author himself, of "silas lapham" and of the "minister's charge"--which by this time are almost the only things of yours which i have never possessed? take this as thou wilt!... _to w. d. howells._ cambridge, _june , _. my dear howells,--you are a sublime and immortal genius! i have just read "silas lapham" and "lemuel barker"--strange that i should not have read them before, after hearing my wife rave about them so--and of all the perfect works of fiction they are the perfectest. the truth, in gross and in detail; the concreteness and solidity; the geniality, humanity, and unflagging humor; the steady way in which it keeps up without a dead paragraph; and especially the fidelity with which you stick to the ways of human nature, with the ideal and the un-ideal inseparably beaten up together so that you never give them "clear"--all make them a feast of delight, which, if i mistake not, will last for all future time, or as long as novels _can_ last. silas is the bigger total success because it deals with a more important story (i think you ought to have made young corey _angrier_ about irene's mistake and its consequences); but the _work_ on the much obstructed lemuel surely was never surpassed. i hope his later life was happy! altogether _you_ ought to be happy--you can fold your arms and write no more if you like. i've just got your "criticism and fiction," which shall speedily be read. and whilst in the midst of this note have received from the postman your clipping from kate field's "washington," the author of which i can't divine, but she's a blessed creature whoever she is. yours ever, wm. james. _to mrs. henry whitman._ cambridge, _june , _. my dear mrs. whitman,--you _are_ magnificent. here comes your letter at o'clock, just as i am looking wearily out of the window for a change, and makes me feel like an aspiring youth again. but i can't go to beverly tomorrow, nor indeed leave my room, i fear; for i've had every kind of _-itis_ that can afflict one's upper breathing channels, and although convalescent, am as weak as a blade of grass, and feel as antique as methusalem. a fortnight hence i shall be like a young puppy-dog again, however, and shall turn up inevitably between two trains more than once ere the summer is over. i've managed to get through volume i of scott's journal in the last two days. the dear old boy! but who would not be "dear" who could have such a mass of doggerel running in his head all the time, and make a hundred thousand dollars a year just by letting his pen trickle? bless his dear old "unenlightened" soul all the same! the scotch are the finest race in the world--except the baltimoreans[ ] and jews--and i think i enjoyed my twenty-four hours of edinburgh two summers ago more than any twenty-four hours a city ever gave me. good-bye! i'm describing w. s.'s character when i ought to be describing yours--but you never give me a chance. when i get that task performed, we shall settle down to a solid basis; though probably all that will be in "the dim future." meanwhile my love to all the youth and beauty (including your own) and best wishes for their happiness and freedom from influenzas of every description till the end of time. affectionately yours, w. j. _to his sister._ chocorua, n.h., _july , _. dearest alice,--...of course [this medical verdict on your case may mean] as all men know, a finite length of days; and then, good-bye to neurasthenia and neuralgia and headache, and weariness and palpitation and disgust all at one stroke--i should think you would be reconciled to the prospect with all its pluses and minuses! i know you've never cared for life, and to me, now at the age of nearly fifty, life and death seem singularly close together in all of us--and life a mere farce of frustration in all, so far as the realization of the innermost ideals go to which we are made respectively capable of feeling an affinity and responding. your frustrations are only rather more flagrant than the rule; and you've been saved many forms of self-dissatisfaction and misery which appertain to such a multiplication of responsible relations to different people as i, for instance, have got into. your fortitude, good spirits and unsentimentality have been simply unexampled in the midst of your physical woes; and when you're relieved from your post, just _that_ bright note will remain behind, together with the inscrutable and mysterious character of the doom of nervous weakness which has chained you down for all these years. as for that, there's more in it than has ever been told to so-called science. these inhibitions, these split-up selves, all these new facts that are gradually coming to light about our organization, these enlargements of the self in trance, etc., are bringing me to turn for light in the direction of all sorts of despised spiritualistic and unscientific ideas. father would find in me today a much more receptive listener--all _that_ philosophy has got to be brought in. and what a queer contradiction comes to the ordinary scientific argument against immortality (based on body being mind's condition and mind going _out_ when body is gone), when one must believe (as now, in these neurotic cases) that some infernality in the body _prevents_ really existing parts of the mind from coming to their effective rights at all, suppresses them, and blots them out from participation in this world's experiences, although they are _there_ all the time. when that which is _you_ passes out of the body, i am sure that there will be an explosion of liberated force and life till then eclipsed and kept down. i can hardly imagine _your_ transition without a great oscillation of both "worlds" as they regain their new equilibrium after the change! everyone will feel the shock, but you yourself will be more surprised than anybody else. it may seem odd for me to talk to you in this cool way about your end; but, my dear little sister, if one has things present to one's mind, and i know they are present enough to _your_ mind, why not speak them out? i am sure you appreciate that best. how many times i have thought, in the past year, when my days were so full of strong and varied impression and activities, of the long unchanging hours in bed which those days stood for with you, and wondered how you bore the slow-paced monotony at all, as you did! you can't tell how i've pitied you. but you _shall_ come to your rights erelong. meanwhile take things gently. look for the little good in each day as if life were to last a hundred years. above all things, save yourself from bodily pain, if it can be done. you've had too much of that. take all the morphia (or other forms of opium if that disagrees) you want, and don't be afraid of becoming an opium-drunkard. what was opium created for except for such times as this? beg the good katharine (to whom _our_ debt can never be extinguished) to write me a line every week, just to keep the currents flowing, and so farewell until i write again. your ever loving, w. j. * * * * * the reader should not fail to realize, in reading the letter which follows, that it was written, not only while münsterberg was still a remote young psychologist in germany, with no claim on james's consideration, but before there was any question of calling him to harvard. _to hugo münsterberg._ chocorua, _july , _. dear dr. mÃ�nsterberg,--i have just read prof. g. e. müller's review of you in the g. g. h., and find it in many respects so brutal that i am impelled to send you a word of "consolation," if such a thing be possible. german polemics in general are not distinguished by mansuetude; but there is something peculiarly hideous in the business when an established authority like müller, instead of administering fatherly and kindly admonition to a youngster like yourself, shows a malign pleasure in knocking him down and jumping up and down upon his body. all your merits he passes by parenthetically as _selbstverständlich_; your sins he enlarges upon with unction. don't mind it! don't be angry! turn the other cheek! make no ill-mannered reply!--and great will be your credit and reward! answer by continuing your work and making it more and more irreproachable. i can't myself agree in some of your theories. _a priori_, your muscular sense-theory of psychic measurements seems to me incredible in many ways. your general mechanical _welt-anschauung_ is too abstract and simple for my mind. but i find in you just what is lacking in this critique of müller's--a sense for the perspective and proportion of things (so that, for instance, you _don't_ make experiments and quote figures to the th decimal, where a coarse qualitative result is all that the question needs). whose _theories_ in psychology have any _definitive_ value today? no one's! their only use is to sharpen farther reflexion and observation. the man who throws out most new ideas and immediately seeks to subject them to experimental control is the most useful psychologist, in the present state of the science. no one has done this as yet as well as you. if you are only _flexible_ towards your theories, and as ingenious in testing them hereafter as you have been hitherto, i will back you to beat the whole army of your critics before you are forty years old. too much ambition and too much rashness are marks of a certain type of genius in its youth. the _destiny_ of that genius depends on its power or inability to assimilate and get good out of such criticisms as müller's. get the good! forget the bad!--and müller will live to feel ashamed of his tone. i was very much grieved to learn from delabarre lately that the doctors had found some weakness in your heart! what a wasteful thing is nature, to produce a fellow like you, and then play such a trick with him! bah!--but i prefer to think that it will be no serious impediment, if you only go _piani piano_. you will do the better work doubtless for doing it a little more slowly. not long ago i was dining with some old gentlemen, and one of them asked, "what is the best assurance a man can have of a long and active life?" he was a doctor; and presently replied to his own question: "to be entirely broken-down in health before one is thirty-five!"--there is much truth in it; and though it applies more to nervous than to other diseases, we all can take our comfort in it. _i_ was entirely broken-down before i was thirty. yours cordially, wm. james. delabarre and mackaye wrote to me of you with great admiration and gratitude for all they have gained. _to henry holt._ chocorua, n.h., _july , _. my dear holt,--i expect to send you within ten days the ms. of my "briefer course," boiled down to possibly pages. by adding some twaddle about the senses, by leaving out all polemics and history, all bibliography and experimental details, all metaphysical subtleties and digressions, all quotations, all humor and pathos, all _interest_ in short, and by blackening the tops of all the paragraphs, i think i have produced a tome of pedagogic classic which will enrich both you and me, if not the student's mind. the difficulty is about when to correct the proofs. i've practically had no vacation so far, and won't touch them during august. i can start them september first up here. i can't rush them through in cambridge as i did last year; but must do them leisurely, to suit this northern mail and its hours. i _could_ have them done by another man in cambridge, if there were desperate hurry; but on the whole i should prefer to do them myself. write and propose something! the larger book seems to be a decided success--especially from the literary point of view. i begin to look down upon mark twain! yours ever, wm. james. _to henry james._ asheville, n.c., _aug. , _. my dear harry,--...of poor lowell's death you heard. i left cambridge the evening of the funeral, for which i had waited over, and meant to write to you about it that very afternoon. but as it turned out, i didn't get a moment of time.... he had never been ill in his life till two years ago, and didn't seem to understand or realize the fact as most people do. i doubt if he dreamed that his end was approaching until it was close at hand. few images in my memory are more touching than the picture of his attitude in the last visits i paid him. he was always up and dressed, in his library, with his velvet coat and tobacco pipes, and ready to talk and be talked to, alluding to his illness with a sort of apologetic and whimsical plaintiveness that had no querulousness in it, though he coughed incessantly, and the last time i was there (the last day of june, i think) he was strongly narcotized by opium for a sciatica which had lately supervened. looking back at him, what strikes one most was his singularly boyish cheerfulness and robustness of temperament. he was a sort of a boy to the end, and makes most others seem like premature old men....[ ] * * * * * miss grace ashburner, next addressed, and her sister miss anne ashburner, were two old ladies, friends of james's parents, for whom he felt an especially affectionate regard. they, and their niece miss theodora sedgwick, lived in kirkland street, next door to professor child and near the norton family. they had become near neighbors as well as friends when james moved into his new house. _to miss grace ashburner._ linville, n.c., _aug. , _. my dear miss grace,--the time has come for that letter to be written! i have been thinking of you ever since i left home; but every letter-writing moment so far has been taken up by the information necessary to be imparted to my faithful spouse about my whereabouts, expenses, health, longings for home and the children, etc.; then a long-due letter to harry had to be written, another to alice, and one to katharine loring; finally, one to my cousin elly emmet who is about to marry _en secondes noces_ a scotchman, until at the last the moment is ripe for the most ideal correspondent of all! i have at last "struck it rich" here in north carolina, and am in the most peculiar, and one of the most poetic places i have ever been in. strange to say, it is on the premises of a land speculation and would-be "boom." a tract of twenty-five square miles of wilderness, feet above the sea at its lowest part, has been bought; between and miles of the most admirable alpine, evenly-graded, zigzagging roads built in various directions from the centre, which is a smallish cleared plateau; an exquisite little hotel built; nine cottages round about it; and that is all. not a loafer, not a fly, not a blot upon the scene! the serpent has not yet made his appearance in this eden, around which stand the hills covered with primeval forest of the most beautiful description, filled with rhododendrons, laurels, and azaleas which, through the month of july, must make it ablaze with glory. i went this morning on horseback with the manager of the concern, a really charming young north carolinian educated at our institute of technology, to the top of "grandfather mountain" (close by, which the company owns) and which is only a couple of hundred feet lower than mt. washington. the road, the forest, the view, the crags were as good as such things can be. apparently the company had just planted a couple of hundred thousand dollars in _pure esthetics_--a most high-toned proceeding in this degenerate age. later, doubtless, a railroad, stores, and general sordidness with wealth will creep in. meanwhile let us enjoy things! there "does be" advantages in creation as opposed to evolution, in the railway, in the telegraph and the electric light, and all that goes with them. this peculiar combination of virgin wilderness with perfectly planned roads, queen anne cottages, and a sweet little modern hotel, has never been realized until our day. but what am i doing? i always held a descriptive letter in abhorrence: sentiment is the only thing that should be allowed a place in a correspondence between two persons of opposite genders. but to feel sentiment is one thing, and to express it both forcibly and gracefully is another. had i but the pen of an f. j. child, i might do something. as it is, my dear, dear miss grace, i can only rather dumbly say how everlastingly tender was, is and ever shall be the emotion which accompanies my thoughts of you. especially in these days when your patience and good spirits add such a halo to you and to your sister too. i am fast overtaking you in age, and it gives the deepest sort of satisfaction to feel the process of growing together with one's old friends as one does. "thought is deeper than all speech," so i will say no more. i shall hope to see you, and see you feeling well, before the week is over. meanwhile, with heartiest affection to your dear sister, and to theodora as well as to yourself, i am always, your loving, wm. james. _to henry james._ cambridge, _apr. , _. my dear harry,--...i have been seething in a fever of politics about the future of our philosophy department. harvard must lead in psychology; and i, having founded her laboratory, am not the man to carry on the practical work. i have _almost_ succeeded, however, in clinching a bargain whereby münsterberg, the ablest experimental psychologist in germany, allowance made for his being only years old,--he is in fact the rudyard kipling of psychology,--is to come here. when he does he will scoop out all the other universities as far as that line of work goes. we have also had another scheme, at the various stages of which you, balzac or howells ought to have been present, to work up for a novel or the stage. there's a great comedy yet to be made out of the university newly founded by the american millionaire. in this case the millionaire had announced his desire to found a professorship of psychology applied to education. the thing was to get it for harvard, which he mistrusted. i went at him tooth and nail, trying to persuade him that royce was the man. letters, _pour-parlers_, visits (he lives in n. y.), finally a two-days' visit at this house, and a dinner for him. he is a real balzackian figure--a regular porker, coarse, vulgar, vain, cunning, mendacious, etc., etc. the worst of it is that he will probably give us nothing,--having got all the attention and flattery from us at which he aimed,--so that we have our labor for our pains, and the gods laugh as they say "served them right." i have long been meaning to write of my intense enjoyment of du maurier's "peter ibbetson," which i verily believe will be one of the classics of the english tongue. the _beauty_ of it goes beyond everything--and the light and happy touch--the rapid style! please tell him if you see him that we are all on our knees. your last book fell into margaret gibbens's hands, and i have barely seen it. i shan't have time to read it till the voyage.... _to miss mary tappan._ cambridge, _april , _. my dear mary,--your kind letter about poor alice came today, and makes me do what i have long been on the _point_ of doing--write a friendly word to you. yes, alice's death is a great release to her; she longed for it; and it is in a sense a release to all of us. in spite of its terrific frustrations her life was a triumph all the same, as i now see it. her particular burden was borne well. she never whimpered or complained of her sickness, and never seemed to turn her face towards it, but up to the very limit of her allowance attended to outer things. when i went to london in september to bid her good-bye, she altogether refused to waste a minute in talking about her disease, and conversed only of the english people and harry's play. so her soul was not subdued! i wish that mine might ever be as little so! poor harry is left rather disconsolate. he habitually stored up all sorts of things to tell her, and now he has no ear into which to pour their like. he says her talk was better than anyone's he knew in london. strange to say, altho' practically bedridden for years, her mental atmosphere, barring a little over-vehemence, was altogether that of the _grand monde_, and the information about both people and public affairs which she had the art of absorbing from the air was astonishing. we are probably all going to europe on the th of may--[ss.] friesland [to] antwerp. both alice and i need a "year off," and i hope we shall get it. our winter abode is yet unknown. i wish you were going to stay and we could be near you. i wish anyhow we might meet this summer and talk things over. it doesn't pay in this short life for good old friends to be non-existent for each other; and how can one write letters of friendship when letters of business fill every chink of time? i _do hope_ we shall meet, my dear mary. both of us send you lots of love, and plenty to ellen too. yours ever, w.j. * * * * * james sailed for antwerp with his family on may , and escaped not only from college duties but from the postman and from his writing-table. he spent the summer in the black forest and switzerland before moving down to florence in september. it happened that a few weeks were passed in a _pension_ at vers-chez-les-blanc above the lake of geneva, in which professor theodore flournoy of the university of geneva, to whom the next letter but one is addressed, was also spending his vacation with his family. flournoy had reviewed the "principles" in the "journal de genève," and there had already been some correspondence between the two men. at vers-chez-les-blanc a real friendship sprang up quickly. it grew deeper and closer as the years slipped by, for in temperament and mental outlook the swiss and the american were close kin. _to miss grace ashburner._ gryon, switzerland, _july , _. my dear miss grace, or rather, let me say, my dear grace,--since what avails such long friendship and affection, if not that privilege of familiarity? i have thought of you often and of the quiet place that harbors you, but have been too distracted as yet to write any letters but necessary ones on business. we have been in europe five and a half weeks and are only just beginning to see a ray of daylight on our path. how could arthur, how could madame lucy,[ ] see us go off and not raise a more solemn word of warning? it seems to me that the most solemn duty _i_ can have in what remains to me of life will be to save my inexperienced fellow beings from ignorantly taking their little ones abroad when they go for their own refreshment. to combine novel anxieties of the most agonizing kind about your children's education, nocturnal and diurnal contact of the most intimate sort with their shrieks, their quarrels, their questions, their rollings-about and tears, in short with all their emotional, intellectual and bodily functions, in what practically in these close quarters amounts to one room--to combine these things (i say) with a _holiday_ for _oneself_ is an idea worthy to emanate from a lunatic asylum. the wear and tear of a professorship for a year is not equal to one week of this sort of thing. but let me not complain! since i am responsible for their being, i will launch them worthily upon life; and if a foreign education is required, they shall have it. only why talk of "sabbatical" years?--there is the hideous mockery! alice, if she writes to you, will (after her feminine fashion) gloze over this aspect of our existence, because she has been more or less accustomed to it all these years and _on the whole does not dislike it_ (!!), but i for once will speak frankly and not disguise my sufferings. here in this precipitous alpine village we occupy rooms in an empty house with a yellow-plastered front and an iron balcony above the street. up and down that street the cows, the goats, the natives, and the tourists pass. the church-roof and the pastor's house are across the way, dropped as it were twenty feet down the slope. close beside us are populous houses either way, and others beside _them_. yet on that iron balcony all the innermost mysteries of the james family are blazoned and bruited to the entire village. _things_ are dried there, quarrels, screams and squeals rise incessantly to heaven, dressing and undressing are performed, punishments take place--recriminations, arguments, execrations--with a publicity after which, if there _were_ reporters, we should never be able to show our faces again. and when i think of that cool, spacious and quiet mansion lying untenanted in irving street, with a place in it for everything, and everything in its place when _we_ are there, i could almost weep for "the pity of it." but we may get used to this as other travelers do--only arthur and lucy ought to have dropped some word of warning ere we came away! our destiny seems relentlessly driving us towards paris, which on the whole i rather hate than otherwise, only the educational problem promises a better solution there. the boys meanwhile have got started on french lessons here, and though we must soon "move on" like a family of wandering jews, we shall probably leave one behind in the pastor's family hard-by. the other boy we shall get into a family somewhere else, and then have none but peg and the baby to cope with. perhaps strength will be given us for that. switzerland meanwhile is an unmitigated blessing, from the mountains down to the bread and butter and the beds. the people, the arrangements, the earth, the air and the sky, are satisfactory to a degree hard to imagine beforehand. there is an extraordinary absence of feminine beauty, but great kindliness, absolute honesty, fixed tariffs and prices for everything, etc., etc., and of course absolutely clean hotels at prices which, though not the "dirt cheap" ones of former times, are yet very cheap compared with the american standard. we stayed for ten days at a _pension_ on the lake of lucerne which was in all respects as beautiful and ideal as any scene on the operatic stage, yet we paid just about what the childs pay at nickerson's vile and filthy hotel at chocorua. of course we made the acquaintance of cambridge people there whose acquaintance we had not made before--i mean the family of joseph henry thayer of the divinity school, whose daughter miriam, with her splendid playing and general grace and amiability, was a proof of how much hidden wealth cambridge contains. but i have talked too much about ourselves and ought to talk about you. what can i do, however, my dear grace, except express hopes? i know that you have had a hot summer, but i know little else. have you borne it well? have you had any relief from your miserable suffering state? or have you gone on as badly or worse than ever? of course you can't answer these questions, but some day theodora will. i devoutly trust that things have gone well and that you may even have been able to see some friends, and in that way get a little change. your sister, to whom pray give the best love of both of us, is i suppose holding her own as bravely as ever; only i should like to know the fact, and that too theodora will doubtless ere long acquaint us with. to that last-named exemplary and delightful being give also our best love; and with any amount of it of the tenderest quality for yourself, believe me, always your affectionate, wm. james. love to all the childs, please, and all the nortons who may be within reach. _to theodore flournoy._ pensione villa maggiore (pallanza), _sept. , _. my dear flournoy,--your most agreeable letter--one of those which one preserves to read in one's old age--came yesterday.... i am much obliged to you for the paper by sécretan, and (unless you deny me the permission) i propose to keep it, and let you get a new one, which you can do more easily than i. it is much too oracular and brief, but its _pregnancy_ is a good example of what an intellect gains by growing old: one says vast things simply. i read it stretched on the grass of monte motterone, the rigi of this region, just across the lake, with all the kingdoms of the earth stretched before me, and i realized how exactly a philosophic _weltansicht_ resembles that from the top of a mountain. you are driven, as you ascend, into a choice of fewer and fewer paths, and at last you end in two or three simple attitudes from each of which we see a great part of the universe amazingly simplified and summarized, but nowhere the entire view at once. i entirely agree that renouvier's system fails to satisfy, but it seems to me the classical and consistent expression of _one_ of the great attitudes: that of insisting on logically intelligible formulas. if one goes beyond, one must abandon the hope of _formulas_ altogether, which is what all pious sentimentalists do; and with them m. sécretan, since he fails to give any articulate substitute for the "criticism" he finds so unsatisfactory. most philosophers give formulas, and inadmissible ones, as when sécretan makes a _memoire sans oubli_ = _duratio tota simul_ = eternity! i have been reading with much interest the articles on the will by fouillée, in the "revue philosophique" for june and august. there are admirable descriptive pages, though the final philosophy fails to impress me much. i am in good condition now, and must try to do a little methodical work every day in florence, in spite of the temptations to _flânerie_ of the sort of life. i did hope to have spent a few days in geneva before crossing the mountains! but perhaps, for the holidays, you and madame flournoy will cross them to see us at florence. the vers-chez-les-blanc days are something that neither she nor i will forget! you and i are strangely contrasted as regards our professorial responsibilities: you are becoming entangled in laboratory research and demonstration just as i am getting emancipated. as regards _demonstrations_, i think you will not find much difficulty in concocting a programme of classical observations on the senses, etc., for students to verify; it worked much more easily at harvard than i supposed it would when we applied it to the whole class, and it improved the spirit of the work very much. as regards _research_, i advise you not to take that duty too conscientiously, if you find that ideas and projects do not abound. as long as [a] man is working at anything, he must give up other things at which he might be working, and the best thing he can work at is usually the thing he does most spontaneously. you philosophize, according to your own account, more spontaneously than you work in the laboratory. so do i, and i always felt that the occupation of philosophizing was with me a valid excuse for neglecting laboratory work, since there is not time for both. your work as a philosopher will be more _irreplaceable_ than what results you might get in the laboratory out of the same number of hours. some day, i feel sure, you will find yourself impelled to publish some of your reflections. until then, take notes and read, and feel that your true destiny is on the way to its accomplishment! it seems to me that a great thing would be to add a new course to your instruction. au revoir, my dear friend! my wife sends "a great deal of love" to yours, and says she will write to her as soon as we get settled. i also send my most cordial greetings to madame flournoy. remember me also affectionately to those charming young _demoiselles_, who will, i am afraid, incontinently proceed to forget me. always affectionately yours, wm. james. _to william m. salter._ florence, _oct. , _. ...so the magician renan is no more! i don't know whether you were ever much subject to his spell. if so, you have a fine subject for sunday lectures! the queer thing was that he so slowly worked his way to his natural mental attitude of irony and persiflage, on a basis of moral and religious material. he levitated at last to his true level of superficiality, emancipating himself from layer after layer of the inhibitions into which he was born, and finally using the old moral and religious vocabulary to produce merely musical and poetic effects. that moral and religious ideals, seriously taken, involve certain refusals and renunciations of freedom, renan seemed at last entirely to forget. on the whole, his sweetness and mere literary coquetry leave a displeasing impression, and the only way to handle him is not to take him heavily or seriously. the worst is, he was a prig in his ideals.... _to james j. putnam._ piazza dell'indipendenza, florence, _oct. , _. my dear jim,--we got your delightful letter ever so long ago, and nothing but invincible lethargy on my part, excusing itself to conscience by saying, "i mustn't write till i have something definitive to announce," is responsible for this delay. the lethargy was doubtless the healthy reversion of the nervous system to its normal equilibrium again, so i let it work. and the conscientious sophism was not so unreasonable after all. my brain has gradually got working in a natural manner again, and we are definitively settled for the winter, so the time for a line to you has come. to begin with, your letter sounded delicious, and i like to think of you as enjoying the neighborhood of our good little [chocorua] lake so much, and particularly as expressing such satisfaction in the look of our little place. if it hasn't "style," it has at least a harmonious domesticity of appearance. a recent letter referred to "dr. putnam's" place on the hill across the lake, as if you or charlie might have been buying over there too. is this so? i shall be very glad if it is so. as for ourselves, coming abroad with a pack of children is not the same thing in reality as it is on paper. a summer full of passive enjoyment is one thing, a summer full of care for the present and anxious schemes for the coming winter is another. when you come abroad, come with marian for the summer only and leave the children at home. of course they have gained perception and intelligence, and if this florence school only turns out well, they will have a good deal of french, and other experiences which will be precious to them hereafter; so that on their [account] there will be nothing to regret. but the parental organism in sore need of recuperative vacation gets a great deal more of it per dollar and per day if allowed to wander by itself. enough now of this philosophy!... i am telling you nothing of our summer, most all of which was passed in switzerland. germany is good, but switzerland is better. _how_ good switzerland is, is something that can't be described in words. the healthiness of it passes all utterance--the air, the roads, the mountains, the customs, the institutions, the people. not a breath of art, poetry, esthetics, morbidness, or "suggestions"! it is all there, solid meat and drink for the sick body and soul, ready to be turned to, and do you infallible good when the nervous and gas-lit side of life has had too much play. what a see-saw life is, between the elemental things and the others! we must have both; but aspiration for aspiration, i think that of the over-cultured and exquisite person for the insipidity of health is the more pathetic. after the suggestiveness, decay and over-refinement of florence this winter, i shall be hungry enough for the eternal elements to be had in schweiz. i didn't do any high climbing, for which my legs and _schwindeligkeit_ both unfit me, but any amount of solid moderate walking (say four to six hours a day), which did me a lot of good. i envy the climbers, though! now that my brain begins to work again, i have mapped out a profitable course of winter reading, _naturphilosophie_ and _kunstgeschichte_, and, if the boys' school is only as good as it is cracked up to be, we shall have had a good year. alice is very well, and much refreshed in spite of maternal cares and perplexities.... love from both of us to both of you, and wishes for a good winter. love also to all your family circle, especially annie, and to mrs. wynne if she be near. w. j. _to miss grace ashburner._ piazza dell indipendenza florence, _oct. , _. my dear grace,--it is needless to say that your long and delightful reply written by theodora's self-effacing hand reached us duly, and that i have "been on the point" of writing to you again ever since. that "point" as you well know, is one to which somehow one seems long to cleave without jumping off. but at last here goes--irrevocably! i did not expect that in your condition you would be either so conscientious or so energetic as to send so immediate and full a return, and i must expressly stipulate, my dear old friend, that the sole condition upon which i write now is that you shall not feel that i expect a single word of answer. (needless to say, however, how much any infringement of this condition on your part will be _enjoyed_.) well! cold and wet drove us out of switzerland that first week in september, though, as it turned out, we should have had a fine rest of the month if we had stayed. we crossed the simplon to pallanza on lake maggiore, where we stayed ten days, till the bad fare made us sick; and then came straight to florence by the st. as almost no strangers had arrived, we had the pick of all the furnished apartments, most of which threatened great bleakness or gloominess for the winter, with their high ceilings, and _some_ rooms in all of them lit from court or well. our family seems to be of the maximum size for which apartments are made! we found but this one into all the rooms of which the sun can come either before- or after-noon. it is clean, and abundantly furnished with sofas and chairs, but not a "convenience for housekeeping" of any kind whatsoever. no oven in which to make the macaroni _au gratin_, no place to keep more than a week's supply of charcoal, or i fear more than three or four days' supply of wood for the fire when the cold weather comes, as come it will with a vengeance, from all accounts. i hope our children won't freeze! harry and billy started school at last two days ago, and glad i am to see them at it. in the immortal words of our townsman rindge in his monumental inscription, "every man" (and "every" boy!) "should have an honest occupation."[ ] what they need is comrades of their own age, and competitive play and work, rather than monuments of antiquity or landscape beauty. animal, not vegetable or mineral life is their element. the school is english, they'll get no more french or german there than at browne and nichols's [school at home] and they'll have to begin italian, i'm afraid, which will be pure interruption and leave not a rack behind after they've been home a year. still one mustn't always grumble about one's children, and they are getting an amount of perception over here, and a freedom from prejudices about american things and ways, which will certainly be of general service to their intelligence, and be worth more to them hereafter than their year would have been if spent in drill for the harvard exams--even if what they lose do amount to a whole year, which i much doubt. but i think it may be called certain that they shan't be kept abroad a _second_ year! for ourselves, florence is delicious. i have a sort of organic protestation against certain things here, the toneless air in the streets, which feels like used-up indoor air, the "general debility" which pervades all ways and institutions, the worn-out faces, etc., etc. but the charming sunny manners, the old-world picturesqueness wherever you cast your eye, and above all, the magnificent remains of art, redeem it all, and insidiously spin a charm round one which might well end by turning one into one of these mere northern loungers here for the rest of one's days, recreant to all one's native instincts. the stagnancy of the thermometer is the great thing. day after day a changeless air, sometimes sun and sometimes shower, but no other difference except possibly from week to week the faintest possible progress in the direction of cold. it must be very good for one's nerves after our acrobatic climate. we have an excellent man-cook, the most faithful of beings, at two and a half dollars a week. he never goes out except to market, and understands, strange to say, the naked latin roots without terminations in which we hold _un_sweet discourse with him. but on dante and charles norton's _admirable_ "pony" i am getting up the lingo fast! all this time i am saying nothing about you or your sister, or the dear childs, or the nortons, or anyone. of your own condition we have got very scanty news indeed since your letter.... perhaps theodora will just sit down and write two pages,--not a letter, if she isn't ready; but just two pages--to give some authentic account of how the fall finds you all, especially you. i hope the opium business and all has not given you additional trouble, and that the pain has not made worse havoc than before. when one thinks of your patience and good cheer, my dear, dear grace, through all of life, one feels grateful to the higher powers for the example. please take the heartfelt love of both of us, give some to your dear sister and to theodora, and believe me ever your affectionate, wm. james. love too, to the nortons, old and young, and to the childs. _to josiah royce._ florence, _dec. , _. beloved josiah,--your letter of oct. , with "missent indian mail" stamped upon its envelope in big letters, was handed in only ten days ago, after i had long said in my heart that you were no true friend to leave me thus languishing so long in ignorance of all that was befalling in irving st. and the country round about. its poetical hyperboles about the way i was missed made amends for everything, so i am not now writing to ask you for my diamonds back, or to return my ringlet of your hair. it was a beautiful and bully letter and filled the hearts of both of us with exceeding joy. i have heard since then from the gibbenses that you are made professor--i fear at not more than $ . but still it is a step ahead and i congratulate you most heartily thereupon. what i most urgently wanted to hear from you was some estimate of münsterberg, and when you say, "he is an immense success," you may imagine how i am pleased. he has his foibles, as who has not; but i have a strong impression that that youth will be a great man. moreover, his naïveté and openness of nature make him very lovable. i do hope that [his] english will go--of course there can be no question of the students liking him, when once he gets his communications open. he has written me exhaustive letters, and seems to be outdoing even you in the amount of energizing which he puts forth. may god have him in his holy keeping! from the midst of my laziness here the news i get from cambridge makes it seem like a little seething florence of the xvth century. having all the time there is, to myself, i of course find i have no time for doing any particular duties, and the consequence is that the days go by without anything very serious accomplished. but we live well and are comfortable by means of sheet-iron stoves which the clammy quality of the cold rather than its intensity seems to necessitate, and italianism is "striking in" to all of us to various degrees of depth, shallowest of all i fear in peg and the baby. when _gemüthlichkeit_ is banished from the world, it will still survive in this dear and shabby old country; though i suppose the same sort of thing is really to be found in the east even more than in italy, and that we shall seek it there when italy has got as tram-roaded and modernized all over as berlin. it is a curious smell of the past, that lingers over everything, speech and manners as well as stone and stuffs! i went to padua last week to a galileo anniversary. it was splendidly carried out, and great fun; and they gave all of us foreigners honorary degrees. i rather like being a doctor of the university of padua, and shall feel more at home than hitherto in the "merchant of venice." i have written a letter to the "nation" about it, which i commend to the attention of your gentle partner.[ ] ... mark twain is here for the winter in a villa outside the town, hard at work writing something or other. i have seen him a couple of times--a fine, soft-fibred little fellow with the perversest twang and drawl, but very human and good. i should think that one might grow very fond of him, and wish he'd come and live in cambridge. i am just beginning to wake up from the sort of mental palsy that has been over me for the past year, and to take a little "notice" in matters philosophical. i am now reading wundt's curiously long-winded "system," which, in spite of his intolerable sleekness and way of _soaping_ everything on to you by plausible transitions so as to make it run continuous, has every now and then a compendiously stated truth, or _aperçu_, which is nourishing and instructive. come march, i will send you proposals for my work next year, to the "cosmology" part of which i am just beginning to wake up. [a. w.] benn, of the history of greek philosophy, is here, a shy irishman (i should judge) with a queer manner, whom i have only seen a couple of times, but with whom i shall probably later take some walks. he seems a good and well-informed fellow, much devoted to astronomy, and i have urged your works on his attention. he lent me the "new world" with your article in it, which i read with admiration. would that belief would ensue! perhaps i shall get straight. i have just been "penning" a notice of renouvier's "principes de la nature" for schurman.[ ] renouvier cannot be _true_--his world is so much _dust_. but that conception is a _zu überwindendes moment_, and he has given it its most energetic expression. there is a theodicy at the end, a speculation about this being a world fallen, which ought to interest you much from the point of view of your own cosmology. münsterberg wrote me, and i forgot to remark on it in my reply, that scripture wanted him to contribute to a new yale psychology review, but that he wished to publish in a volume. i confess it disgusts me to hear of each of these little separate college tin-trumpets. what i should really like would be a philosophic _monthly_ in america, which would be all sufficing, as the "revue philosophique" is in france. if it were a monthly, münsterberg could find room for all his contributions from the laboratory. but i don't suppose that scripture will combine with schurman any more than hall would, or for the matter of that, i don't know whether schurman himself would wish it.... what are you working at? is the goethe work started? is music raging round you both as of yore? how are the children? we heard last night the new opera by mascagni, "i rantzau," which has made a _furore_ here and which i enjoyed hugely. how is santayana, and what is he up to? you can't tell how thick the atmosphere of cambridge seems over here? "surcharged with vitality," in short. write again whenever you can spare a fellow a half hour, and believe me, with warmest regards from both of us to both of you, yours always, wm. james. pray give love to palmer, nichols, santayana, münsterberg, and all. _to miss grace norton._ florence, _dec. , _. my dear grace,--i hope that my silence has not left you to think that i have forgotten all the ties of friendship. far from it!--but have _you_ never felt the rapture of day after day with no letter to write, nor the shrinking from breaking the spell by changing a limitless possibility of future outpouring into a shabby little actual scrawl? remote, unwritten to and unheard from, you seem to me something ideal, off there in your inaccessible cambridge palazzo, bathed in the angelic american light, occupying your mind with noble literature, pure, solitary, incontaminate--a station from which the touch of this vulgar epistle will instantly bring you down; for you will have been imagining your poor correspondent in the same high and abstract fashion until what he says breaks the charm (as infallibly it must), and with the perception of his finiteness must also come a faint sense of discouragement as if _you_ were finite too--for communications bring the communicants to a common level. all of which sounds, my dear grace, as if i were refraining from writing to you out of my well-known habit of "metaphysical politeness"; or trying to make you think so. but i think i can trust you to see that all these elaborate conceits (which seem imitated from the choice italian manner, and which i confess have flowed from my pen quite unpremeditatedly and somewhat to my own surprise) are nothing but a shabby cloak under which i am trying to hide my own palpable _laziness_--a laziness which even the higher affections can only render a little restless and uncomfortable, but not dispel.--however, it _is_ dispelled at last, isn't it? so let me begin. you will have heard stray tidings of us from time to time, so i need give you no detailed account of our peregrinations or decisions. we had a delicious summer in switzerland, that noble and medicinal country, and we have now got into first-rate shape at florence, although there is a menace of "sociability" commencing, which may take away that wonderful and unexampled sense of peace. i have been enjoying [myself] of late in sitting under the lamp until midnight, secure against any possible interruption, and reading what things i pleased. i believe that last year in cambridge i counted one single night in which i could sit and read passively till bedtime; and now that the days have begun to lengthen and that the small end of winter appears looking through the future, i begin to count them here as something unspeakably precious that may ne'er return. the boys are at an english school which, though certainly very good, gives them rather less french and german than they would have at browne and nichols's. peg is having first-rate "opportunities" in the way of dancing, gymnastics and other accomplishments of a bodily sort. we have a little shred of a half-starved, but very cheerful, ex-ballet dancer who brings a poor little, humble, peering-eyed fiddler--"maestro" she calls him--three times a week to our big salon, and makes supple the limbs of peg and the two infants of dr. baldwin by the most wonderful patience and diversity of exercises at five francs a lesson. when one thinks of the sort of lessons the children at cambridge get, and of the sort of price they pay, it makes one feel that geography is a tremendous frustrator of the so-called laws of demand and supply. alice and i lunched this noon with young loeser, whose name you may remember some years ago in cambridge. he is devoted to the scientific study of pictures, and i hope to gain some truth from him ere we leave. he is a dear good fellow. baron ostensacken is also here--i forget whether you used to know him. the same quaint, cheerful, nervous, intelligent, rather egotistic old bachelor that he used to be, who also runs to pictures in his old age, after the strictly entomological method, i fancy, this time; for i doubt whether he cares near as much for the pictures themselves as for the science of them. but you can't keep science out of anything in these bad times. love is dead, or at any rate seems weak and shallow wherever science has taken possession. i am glad that, being incapable cf anything like scholarship in any line, i still can take some pleasure from these pictures in the way of love; particularly glad since some years ago i thought that my care for pictures had faded away with youth. but with better opportunities it has revived. loeser describes bôcher as _basking_ in the presence of pictures, as if it were an amusing way of taking them, whereas it is the true way. is mr. bôcher giving his lectures or talks again at your house? duveneck[ ] is here, but i have seen very little of him. the professor is an oppressor to the artist, i fear; and metaphysical politeness has kept me from pressing him too much. what an awful trade that of professor is--paid to talk, talk, talk! i have seen artists growing pale and sick whilst i talked to them without being able to stop. and i loved them for not being able to love me any better. it would be an awful universe if _everything_ could be converted into words, words, words. i have been so sorry to hear of the miserable condition of so many of your family circle this summer.... give my love to your brother charles, to sally, lily, dick, margaret and all the dear creatures. also to the other dears on both sides of the kirkland driveway. i hope and trust that your winter is passing cheerfully and healthily away. with warm good wishes for a happy new year, and affectionate greetings from both of us, believe me always yours, wm. james. * * * * * it will be recalled that miss gibbens, to whom the next letter was addressed, was mrs. james's sister. _to miss margaret gibbens (mrs. l. r. gregor)._ florence, _jan. , _. beloved margaret,--a happy new year to you all! my immediate purpose in writing is to celebrate alice's social greatness, and to do humble penance for the obstacles i have persistently thrown in her path. by which i mean that the dinner which we gave on sunday night, and which she with great equanimity got up, was a perfect success. she began, according to her wont, after we had been in the apartment a fortnight, to say that we must give a dinner to the villaris, etc. if you could have seen the manner of our ménage at that time, you would have excused the terrible severity of the tones in which i rebuked her, and the copious eloquence in which i described our past, present, and future life and circumstances and expressed my doubts as to whether she ought not to inhabit an asylum rather than an apartment. as time wore on we got a waitress, and added dessert spoons, fruit knives, etc., etc., to our dining-room resources; also got some silver polish, etc.; and alice would keep returning to the idea in a way which made _me_, i confess, act like the madman with whose conversation at such times (dictated i must say by the highest social responsibility) you are acquainted. at last she invited the lorings, i. ostensacken and loeser for new year's night; i groaning, she smiling; i hopeless and abusive, she confident and defensive, of our resources; i doing all i could to add to her burden and make things impossible, she explaining to raffaello in her inimitable italian, drilling the handmaids, screening the direful lamp most successfully with three japanese umbrellas after i contended that it was impossible to do so, procuring the only two little red petticoats in the city to put on our two candles, making a bunch of flowers, so small in the centre of a star of fern leaves that i bitterly laughed at it, look exquisitely lovely--and then, with her beautiful countenance, which always becomes transfigured in the presence of company, keeping the conversation going till after eleven o'clock. i humbly prostrated myself before her after it was over,--for the table really looked sweet--no human being would have believed it beforehand,--threw the wood-ashes on my head, and swore that she should have the villaris, and the king of italy if she wished and whenever she wished, and that i would write to you in token of my shame. it will please your mother to hear what a successful creature she is. her diet is still eccentric,--flying from one extreme of abstinence to another,--and her sleep fitful and accidental in its times and seasons. she sits up very late at night, and slumbers publicly when afternoon visitors come in, upright in her chair, with the lamp shining full on her beautiful countenance from which all traces of struggle have disappeared and [where] sleep reigns calmly victorious--at least she did this once lately.... p.s. on reading this to alice she says she doesn't see what call i had to write it, and that as for my obstructing the dinner, i hadn't made it more impossible than i always make everything. this with a sweet ironical smile which i can't give on paper.... _to francis boott._ florence, _jan. , _. dear mr. boott,--your letter of dec. th was very welcome, with its home gossip and its florentine advice. our winter has worn away, as you see, with very little discomfort from cold. it is true that i have been irritated at the immovable condition of my bed-room thermometer which, for five weeks, has been at °f., not shifting in all that time more than one degree either way, until i longed for a change; but how much better such steadfastness than the acrobatic performances of our american winter-thermometer. you and other sybarites scared us so, in the fall, about the arctic cold we should have, that i used daily to make vows to the creator and the saints that, if they would only carry us safely to the first of february, i never would ask them for another favor as long as i lived. with the impending winter once _overcome_ i thought life would be one long vista of relief thenceforth. but practically there has been nothing _to_ overcome. i am glad, however, that now that january disappears, we may have some warm days, coming more and more frequently. the spring must be really delicious. we are keeping as shy of "society" as we can, but still we see a good many people, and the interruptions to study (from that, and the domestic causes which abound in our narrow quarters--narrow in winter-time, broad enough when fires go out) are very great. duveneck[ ] spent a most delightful evening here a while ago, and left a big portfolio of photos of böcklin's pictures and a big bunch of cigars for me two days later. i wish i didn't always feel like a _phrase-monger_ with honest artists like him. however there are some fellows who seem phrase-mongers to me, x----, _e.g._, so it's "square."... we have a cook, raffaello, the most modest and faithful of his sex. our manner of communication with him is _awful_; but he finishes all our sentences for us, and, strange to say, just as we would have finished them if we could. alice swears we must bring him home to america. should you think it safe? he seems to have no friends or diversions here, and no love except for his saucepans. but i dread the responsibility of being foster-father to him in our cold and uncongenial land. it would be different if i spoke his lingo.--what do _you_ think? and _what_ a pretty lingo it is! italian and german seem to me _the_ languages. the mongrels french and english might drop out! apropos to english, i return your slip [about the teaching of english?] "as per request," having been amused at the manifestation of the ruling passion in you. i don't care how incorrect language may be if it only has fitness of epithet, energy and clearness. but i do pity the poor english department. i see they are talking in england of more study of their own tongue in the schools being required.... mark twain dined with us last night, in company with the good villari and the charming mrs. villari; but there was no chance then to ask him to sing nora mccarty. he's a dear man, and there'll be a chance yet. he is in a delightful villa at settignano, and says he has written more in the past four months than he could have done in two years at hartford. well! good-bye, dear old friend. yours ever, wm. james. _to henry james._ florence, _mar. , _. ...i don't wonder that it seems strange to you that we should be leaving here just in the glory of the year. _your_ view of italy is that of the tourist; and that is really the only way to _enjoy_ any place. ours is that of the resident in whom the sweet decay breathed in for six months has produced a sort of physiological craving for a change to robuster air. one ends by craving one's own more permanent attitude, and a country whose language i can speak and where i can settle into my own necessary work (which has been awfully prevented here of late), without a guilty sense that i am neglecting the claims of pictures and monuments, is the better environment now. in short, italy has well served its purpose by us and we shall be eternally grateful. but we have no farther use for it, and the spring is also beautiful in lands that will [be] fresher to our senses. there are moments when the florentine debility becomes really hateful to one, and i don't see how the lorings and others can come and make their home with it. you have done the best thing, in putting yourself in the strongest _milieu_ to be found on earth. but italy is incomparable as a refreshing refuge, and i am sorry that you are likely to lose it this year.... _to françois pillon._ [post-card] london, _june , _. you can hardly imagine how strong my disappointment was in losing you in paris--when we might have found you by going to alcan's on monday, or by writing you before we came. it seems now sheer folly! but i didn't think of the possibility of your being gone so early in the summer. our three young children are all in switzerland, the older boy in munich, and my wife and i are like middle-aged omnibus-horses let loose in a pasture. the first time we have had a holiday together for years. i feel like a barrel without hoops! we shall be here in england for a month at least. after that everything is uncertain. i _may_ not even pass through paris again. w. j. _to shadworth h. hodgson._ london, _june , _. my dear hodgson,--i am more different kinds of an ass, or rather i am (without ceasing to be different kinds) the same kind more often than any other living man! this morning i knocked at your door, inwardly exultant with the certainty that i should find you, and learned that you had left for saltburn just one hour ago! a week ago yesterday the same thing happened to me at pillon's in paris, and because of the same reason, my having announced my presence a day too late. my wife and i have been here six days. as it was her first visit to england and she had a lot of clothes to get, having worn out her american supply in the past year, we thought we had better remain _incog._ for a week, drinking in london irresponsibly, and letting the dressmakers have their will with her time. i early asked at your door whether you were in town and visible, and received a reassuring reply, so i felt quite safe and devoted myself to showing my wife the sights, and enjoying her naïf wonder as she drank in britain's greatness. four nights ago at : p.m. i pointed out to her (as possibly the climax of greatness) your library windows with one of them open and bright with the inner light. she said, "let's ring and see him." my heart palpitated to do so, but it was late and a hot night, and i was afraid you might be in tropical costume, safe for the night, and my hesitation lost us. we came home. it is too, too bad! i wanted much to see you, for though, my dear hodgson, our correspondence has languished of late (the effect of encroaching eld), my sentiments to you-ward (as the apostle would say) are as lively as ever, and i recognize in you always the friend as well as the master. are you likely to come back to london at all? our plans didn't exactly lie through yorkshire, but they are vague and may possibly be changed. but what i wanted my wife to see was s. h. h. in his own golden-hued library with the rumor of the cab-stand filling the air.... but write, you noble old philosopher and dear young man, to yours always, wm. james. _to dickinson s. miller._ london, _july , _. darling miller,--i must still for a while call you darling, in spite of your toryism, ecclesiasticism, determinism, and general diabolism, which will probably result in your ruthlessly destroying me both as a man and as a philosopher some day. but sufficient unto that day will be its evil, so let me take advantage of the hours before "black-manhood comes" and still fondle you for a while upon my knee. and both you and angell, being now colleagues and not students, had better stop mistering or professoring me, or i shall retaliate by beginning to "mr." and "prof." you.... what you say of erdmann, uphues and the atmosphere of german academic life generally, is exceedingly interesting. if we can only keep our own humaner tone in spite of the growing complication of interests! i think we shall in great measure, for there is nothing here in english academic circles that corresponds to the german savagery. i do hope we may meet in switzerland shortly, and you can then tell me what erdmann's greatness consists in.... i have done hardly any reading since the beginning of march. my genius for being frustrated and interrupted, and our unsettled mode of life have played too well into each other's hands. the consequence is that i rather long for settlement, and the resumption of the harness. if i only had working strength not to require these abominably costly vacations! make the most of these days, my dear miller. they will never exactly return, and will be looked back to by you hereafter as quite ideal. i am glad you have assimilated the german opportunities so well. both hodder and angell have spoken with admiration of the methodical way in which you have forged ahead. it is a pity you have not had a chance at england, with which land you seem to have so many inward affinities. if you are to come here let me know, and i can give you introductions. hodgson is in yorkshire and i've missed him. myers sails for the chicago psychic congress, aug. nd. sidgwick may still be had, perhaps, and bryce, who will give you an order to the strangers' gallery. the house of commons, cradle of all free institutions, is really a wonderful and moving sight, and at bottom here the people are more good-natured on the irish question than one would think to listen to their strong words. the cheery, active english temperament beats the world, i believe, the deutschers included. but so cartilaginous and unsentimental as to the _gemüth_! the girls like boys and the men like horses! i shall be greatly interested in your article. as for uphues, i am duly uplifted that such a man should read me, and am ashamed to say that amongst my pile of sins is that of having carried about two of his books with me for three or four years past, always meaning to read, and never actually reading them. i only laid them out again yesterday to take back to switzerland with me. such things make me despair. paulsen's _einleitung_ is the greatest treat i have enjoyed of late. his synthesis is to my mind almost lamentably unsatisfactory, but the book makes a station, an _étape_, in the expression of things. good-bye--my wife comes in, ready to go out to lunch, and thereafter to haslemere for the night. she sends love, and so do i. address us when you get to switzerland to m. cérésole, as above, "la chiesaz sur vevey (vaud), and believe me ever yours, wm. james. _to henry james._ the salters' hill-top [near chocorua], _sept. , _. ...i am up here for a few days with billy, to close our house for the winter, and get a sniff of the place. the salters have a noble hill with such an outlook! and a very decent little house and barn. but oh! the difference from switzerland, the thin grass and ragged waysides, the poverty-stricken land, and sad american sunlight over all--sad because so empty. there is a strange thinness and femininity hovering over all america, so different from the stoutness and masculinity of land and air and everything in switzerland and england, that the coming back makes one feel strangely sad and hardens one in the resolution never to go away again unless one can go to end one's days. such a divided soul is very bad. to you, who now have real practical relations and a place in the old world, i should think there was no necessity of ever coming back again. but europe has been made what it is by men staying in their homes and fighting stubbornly generation after generation for all the beauty, comfort and order that they have got--we must abide and do the same.[ ] as england struck me newly and differently last time, so america now--force and directness in the people, but a terrible grimness, more ugliness than i ever realized in things, and a greater weakness in nature's beauty, such as it is. one must pitch one's whole sensibility first in a different key--then gradually the quantum of personal happiness of which one is susceptible fills the cup--but the moment of change of key is lonesome.... we had the great helmholtz and his wife with us one afternoon, gave them tea and invited some people to meet them; she, a charming woman of the world, brought up by her aunt, madame mohl, in paris; he the most monumental example of benign calm and speechlessness that i ever saw. he is growing old, and somewhat weary, i think, and makes no effort beyond that of smiling and inclining his head to remarks that are made. at least he made no response to remarks of mine; but royce, charles norton, john fiske, and dr. walcott, who surrounded him at a little table where he sat with tea and beer, said that he spoke. such power of calm is a great possession. i have been twice to mrs. whitman's, once to a lunch and reception to the bourgets a fortnight ago. mrs. g----, it would seem, has kept them like caged birds (probably because they wanted it so); mrs. b. was charming and easy, he ill at ease, refusing to try english unless compelled, and turning to _me_ at the table as a drowning man to a "hencoop," as if there were safety in the presence of anyone connected with you. i could do nothing towards inviting them, in the existent state of our ménage; but when, later, they come back for a month in boston, i shall be glad to bring them into the house for a few days. i feel quite a fellow feeling for him; he seems a very human creature, and it was a real pleasure to me to see a frenchman of b.'s celebrity _look_ as ill at ease as i myself have often _felt_ in fashionable society. they are, i believe, in canada, and have only too much society. i shan't go to chicago, for economy's sake--besides i _must_ get to work. but _everyone_ says one ought to sell all one has and mortgage one's soul to go there; it is esteemed such a revelation of beauty. people cast away all sin and baseness, burst into tears and grow religious, etc., under the influence!! _some_ people evidently.... the people about home are very pleasant to meet.... yours ever affectionately, wm. james. end of volume i mcgrath-sherrill press graphic arts bldg. boston * * * * * typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber: he tried to make up for the deficiences=>he tried to make up for the deficiencies "little genuises"=>"little geniuses" i am desirious of reading=>i am desirous of reading et peut-on savoir jusqu'ou=>et peut-on savoir jusqu'où dés que ma santé=>dès que ma santé journal of speculative philsophy=>journal of speculative philosophy end was apporaching until it was close at hand=>end was approaching until it was close at hand footnotes: [ ] _literary remains of henry james_, p. . [ ] henry james (in _a small boy and others_, p. ) says of catherine barber; "she represented for us in our generation the only english blood--that of both her own parents--flowing in our veins." she may well have seemed to her grandson to be of a different type from other members of the family, who were more recently, and doubtless obviously, irish or scotch; but the statement is incorrect. john barber was the son of patrick barber, who came from longford county, ireland, about and settled at neelytown near newburgh (after having lived in new york city and princeton) about , and of jannet rhea (or rea) whose parents were well-to-do people in old shawangunk in . whatever may have been the previous history of the rhea family, their name does not suggest an english origin. both patrick barber and matthew rhea were pillars of goodwill presbyterian church in montgomery. [ ] see _literary remains_, p. . [ ] if the reader were familiar, as he cannot be presumed to have been, with the elder henry james or his writings, he would be in no danger of finding anything cold or qualifying in these words, but would discern a true adoration expressing itself in a way that was peculiarly characteristic of their writer. for henry james, senior, a spiritual democracy deeper than that of our political jargon was not a mere conception: it was an unquestioned reality. the outer wrappings in which people swathed their souls excited him to anger and ridicule more often than praise; but when men or women seemed to him beautiful or adorable he thought it was because they betrayed more naturally than others the inward possession of that humble "social" spirit which he wanted to think of as truly a common possession--god's equal gift to each and all. to say of his mother that _that_ could be felt in her, that she was _merely_ that, was his purest praise. the reader may find this habit of his thought expressing itself anew in william james by turning to a letter on page below. that letter might have been written by henry james, senior. [ ] the places of two of the eleven who died early were taken by their orphaned children. [ ] according to the rev. hugh walsh of newburgh, who has worked out the walsh genealogy. _a small boy and others_ (page ) says "killyleagh." [ ] _a small boy and others_, p. . [ ] _literary remains of henry james_, introduction, p. . [ ] see, further, _notes of a son and brother_, pp. _et seq._ [ ] _society of the redeemed form of man_, quoted in the introduction to _literary remains_, p. , _et seq._ [ ] letter to shadworth h. hodgson, p. _infra_. [ ] _a small boy and others_, p. . [ ] _vide_ also a passage in the _literary remains_, at p. . [ ] _life of e. l. godkin_, vol. ii, p. . new york, . [ ] _early years of the saturday club_; e. w. emerson's chapter on henry james, senior, p. . there follows a delightful account of a "conversation" at r. w. emerson's house in concord, at which henry james, senior, upset a prepared discourse of alcott's and launched himself into an attack on "morality." whereupon miss mary moody emerson, "eighty-four years old and dressed underneath without doubt, in her shroud," seized him by the shoulders and shook him and rebuked him. "mr. james beamed with delight and spoke with most chivalrous courtesy to this deborah bending over him." [ ] some passages in william james's early letters to his family might seem labored. they should be read with this in mind. an especially high-sounding phrase or a flight into a grand style was understood as a signal meaning "fun," and such passages are never to be taken as serious. [ ] _a small boy and others_, p. . [ ] "i have fully decided to try being a painter. i shall know in a year or two whether i am made to be one. if not, it will be easy to retreat. there's nothing in the world so despicable as a bad artist." ( .) [ ] for james's use of touchstone's question, see p. _infra_. [ ] _cf._ henry james's _life of w. w. story_, vol. ii, p. , where there is a passage which sounds reminiscent of the author's father and brother. [ ] the following entries occur among some "notes on his students" which president eliot made at the time-- "first term, ' -' , james, w., entered this term, passed examination on qualitative analysis well." "second term, ' -' , james, w., studied quantitative analysis. irregular in attendance at laboratory, passed examination on fownes's organic chemistry, mark ." "first term, ' -' , james, w., studied quantitative analysis and was tolerably punctual at recitations till thanksgiving, when he began an investigation of the effects of different bread-raising materials on the urine. he worked steadily on this until the end of the term, mastering the processes, and studying the effect of yeast on bicarbonate of sodium and bitartrate of potash." the investigation referred to consisted of experiments of which he himself was the subject. there is no record for the second term of - . president eliot has generously supplied the editor with a memorandum on william james's connection with the college, from which these, and several statements below, have been drawn. [ ] the expression was undoubtedly recognized in kay street as borrowed from the lincolnshire boor, in fitzjames stephen's essay on spirit-rapping, who ended his life with the words, "what with faith, and what with the earth a-turning round the sun, and what with the railroads a-fuzzing and a-whizzing, i'm clean stonied, muddled and beat." [ ] a diary of mr. t. s. perry's has fixed the date of this visit as oct. -nov. . [ ] w. j. could make much better drawings than the ones which he enclosed in this letter. [ ] a horse. [ ] n. s. shaler, _autobiography_, pp. _ff._ [ ] _harvard advocate_, oct. , . [ ] the "great anthropomorphological collection" consisted of photographs of authors, scientists, public characters, and also people whose only claim upon his attention was that their physiognomies were in some way typical or striking. james never arranged the collection or preserved it carefully, but he filled at least one album in early days, and he almost always kept some drawer or box at hand and dropped into it portraits cut from magazines or obtained in other ways. he seemed to crave a visual image of everybody who interested him at all. [ ] all theory is gray, dear friend, but the golden tree of life is green. [ ] see _memories and studies_, pp. , , and ; and the address on agassiz, _passim_. [ ] the case of small-pox left no scar whatever. indeed james afterward regarded it as having been perhaps no small-pox at all, but only varioloid, and by october he described himself as being in better health than ever before. during several weeks of convalescence that followed his distressing experience in quarantine he was, however, quite naturally, "blue and despondent." [ ] this house has since been enlarged and converted into the colonial club. [ ] john a. allen, another of the brazilian party. [ ] miss dixwell became mrs. o. w. holmes; the other two, mrs. e. w. gurney and mrs. william e. darwin respectively. [ ] miss kate havens of stamford, conn., a fellow _pensionnaire_ at frau spannenberg's, has kindly supplied a helpful memorandum. [ ] an accompanying drawing presented a telescopic exaggeration of features, which are hardly appropriate to the christian strasse. [ ] the notice of grimm's _unüberwindliche mächte_ appeared under the title "a german-american novel" in the _nation_, ; vol. v, p. . [ ] the herr professor was later identified as w. dilthey. [ ] i send you a thousand kisses. [ ] "when in his grotesque moods [the elder henry james] maintained that, to a right-minded man, a crowded cambridge horse-car 'was the nearest approach to heaven upon earth.'" e. l. godkin, _life_, vol. ii, p. . [ ] an allusion to a picture in the parlor which had formerly belonged to the thieses. [ ] a devoted family servant. [ ] a daughter of henry james, senior's, english friend j. j. garth wilkinson. "wilky" james had been named after mr. wilkinson. see _notes of a son and brother_, p. . [ ] a note-book in which there are many pages of titles, under dates between and , appears to have been a record of reading; it was not kept systematically and is incomplete. the following entries were made between the date "june , ' --m.d."--the date of graduation from the medical school--and the end of the year . it will be understood that "r m" signified the _revue des deux mondes_. the original entries stand in a column, without punctuation, and occupy two and a half pages. amplifications are added in brackets:-- "a. dumas, fils; père prod[igue], / monde; fils naturel, question d'argent. / jung; stilling's leben. [ vols. ]. / j. s. mill; subjection of women [ ]. / h[orace] bushnell; woman suffrage, etc. [ ]. / balzac; le curé de tours. / browning; the ring and the book. / ravaison [mollien]; rapport s. l. philosophie [la philosophie en france au xixe siècle. paris, ]. / goethe; aus meinem leben. / coquerel fils; [perhaps athanase josué coquerel, - , author of "libres études" ( )]. / em. burnouf; [la] sc[ience] des relig[ions, vi. les orthodoxies, comment elles se forment et déclinent] r m. july , . / leblais; matérialisme and sp[iri]t[ua]l[i]sme. [paris, ]. / littré; paroles de [la] philos[ophie] pos[itive, ]. / caro; le mat[érialis]me and la science [ ]. / comte and littré; principes de phil. pos. [comte, auguste. cours de philosophie positive, vols., nd ed. with preface by littré. paris, ]. / littré, bridges; replies to mill. [bridges, john henry. unity of comte's life and doctrine; a reply to strictures on comte's later writings, addressed to j. s. mill. london, ]. / h. spencer; reasons for dissenting from comte. / secrétan; preface to phil. de la liberté [ ]. / schopenhauer; das metaph. bedürfniss. / h[enry] james [sen.]; moralism and christianity [n.y. ]. / jouffroy; dist. ent. psych. and phys. [part of the "mélanges philosophiques"?]. / benedikt; electrotherap[ie], first pp. / lecky; history of morals [ vols. ]. / froude; short studies, etc. (skimmed). / duke of argyle; primeval man [ ]. / turgeneff; nouvelles moscovites. / lewes: [biographical] hist. of phil., prolegomena, kant, comte. / geo. sand; constance verrier. / mérimée; lokis. r m. sept. . / j. grote; exploratio philosophica, [ ]. / h[enry] james [sen.]; lectures and miscellanies. [ ]. / [k. j?] simrock. / c. reade; griffith gaunt. / g. droz; autour d'une source. / o. feuillet. / d. f. strauss; chr[istian] marklin. mannheim. . / m. müller; chips [from a german workshop] vol. i and vol. ii partly. / lis [elisa?] maier; w. humboldt's leben. [ ]. / lis maier; geo. forster's [leben, ]. / schleiermacher; correspondenz. vol. i. / réville; israelitic monotheism, r m, er sept. . [la religion primitive d'israel et le développement du monothéisme]. / deutsch; islam. quarterly rev. oct. ' . / fichte; best[immung] des gelehrten. i and ii vorlesungen. / ste.-beuve; art[icle on] leopardi, [in] port[raits] cont[emporains] iii. / westm[inster]: rev[iew] art. on lecky. oct. . / [t. g. von] hippel; selbstleben. / vita de leopardi. / fichte; bestim[mung] des menschen. / gwinner; schopenhauer. /" thanks are due to mr. e. f. walbridge, librarian of the new york harvard club, for identifying a number of abbreviated titles. [ ] _psychology_, vol. i, p. , note. the quotation is literal. the subject of the foot-note in the _psychology_ is "the author." [ ] see, for example, the use made of touchstone's question, in the _nation_ in (quoted on page _infra_). james was certainly unconscious of the repetition when he wrote page of _some problems of philosophy_. consider also, a few sentences from a notice of morley's _voltaire_ (_atlantic monthly_, , vol. xxx, p. ). "as the opinions of average men are swayed more by examples and types than by mere reasons, so a personality so accomplished as mr. morley's cannot fail by its mere attractiveness to influence all who come within its reach and inspire them with a certain friendliness toward the faith that animates it. the standard example, goethe, is ever at hand. but to be thus widely effective, a man must not be a specialist. mr. john mill, weighty and many-sided as he is by nature and culture, is yet deficient in the æsthetic direction; and the same is true of m. littré in france. their lances lack that final tipping with light that made voltaire's so irresistible. what henry iv's soldiers followed was his white plume; and that imponderable superfluity, grace, in some shape, seems one factor without which no awakening of men's sympathies on a large scale can take place." [ ] _william james_, by theodore flournoy (geneva, ), p. note. [ ] grubbing among subtleties. [ ] regardings, or contemplative views. [ ] ms. doubtful. [ ] "i made a discovery in sending in my credentials to the dean which gratified me. it was that, adding in conscientiously every week in which i have had anything to do with medicine, i can't sum up more than three years and two or three months. three years is the minimum with which one can go up for examination; but as i began away back in ' , i have been considering myself as having studied about five years, and have felt much humiliated by the greater readiness of so many younger men to answer questions and understand cases." to henry james, june , . [ ] ephraim w. gurney and t. s. perry. [ ] it ought perhaps to be noted, even if only to dismiss the subject and prevent misapprehension, that at about this time a man whose philosophic ability was great and whose thought was vigorously materialistic was often at the house in quincy street. this was chauncey wright. he was twelve years james's senior; a man whose best work was done in conversation--who wrote little, and whose talents are now to be measured chiefly by the strong impression that he made on some of his contemporaries. "of the two motives to which philosophic systems owe their being, the craving for consistency or unity in thought, and the desire for a solid outward warrant for our emotional ends, his mind was dominated only by the former. never in a human head was contemplation more separated from desire." (_vide_ james's obituary notice of wright, contributed to the _nation_ for sept. , .) it has been suggested that wright influenced james's thinking. if so, his influence was not lasting and, in the opinion of the editor, can easily be overstated. james was not limited to any one philosophic companionship even at this time; and if he felt wright's influence, it is remarkable that there should be no mention of him in any of the letters or memoranda that have survived and that there was never any acknowledgment in james's subsequent writings. he was ever inclined to make acknowledgment, even to his opponents. [ ] _cf._ the description of henry james, senior's, home-comings in _a small boy and others_, p. . [ ] the early history of experimental psychology in america once occasioned discussion. but the discussion seems to have arisen from its being assumed that some particular formality or event should be recognized as marking the coming into being, or the coming of age, of a "department" or a "laboratory." james has stated the facts as to the history of the harvard laboratory in his own words: "i, myself, 'founded' the instruction in experimental psychology at harvard in - , or , i forget which. for a long series of years the laboratory was in two rooms of the scientific school building, which at last became choked with apparatus, so that a change was necessary. i then, in , resolved on an altogether new departure, raised several thousand dollars, fitted up dane hall, and introduced laboratory exercises as a regular part of the undergraduate psychology course."--_vide science_, (n. s.) vol. ii, pp. , . also, p. _infra_. [ ] the name of a rocky promontory near newport. [ ] being and non-being. [ ] _harvard graduates' magazine_, vol. xviii, p. (june, ). [ ] "the only decent thing i have ever written" appeared in _mind_ under the title "the sentiment of rationality." a footnote (p. ) ran as follows: "this article is the first chapter of a psychological work on the motives which lead men to philosophize. it deals with the purely theoretic or logical impulse. other chapters treat of practical and emotional motives, and in the conclusion an attempt is made to use the motives as tests of the soundness of different philosophies." [ ] "the spatial quale," _journal of speculative philosophy_, , vol. xiii, p. . [ ] bastien-lepage's les foins (the hay-makers). [ ] _vide_ introduction, p. _supra_. [ ] that i was intimate with their writings and did not wish to leave prague without exchanging a few words with them. [ ] loquacity. [ ] service is service. [ ] the true names of three compatriots, who may be living, are not given. [ ] "my tour in germany was pleasant, and from the pedagogic point of view instructive; although its chief result was to make me more satisfied than ever with our harvard college methods of teaching, and to make me feel that in america we have perhaps a more cosmopolitan post of observation than is elsewhere to be found." to renouvier, dec. , . [ ] see p. _supra_, and note. [ ] see an unsigned review of epes sargent's "planchette," in the boston _advertiser_ of march , . "the present attitude of society on this whole question is as extraordinary and anomalous as it is discreditable to the pretension of an age which prides itself on enlightenment and the diffusion of knowledge.... the phenomena seem, in their present state, to pertain more to the sphere of the disinterested student of nature than to that of the ordinary layman." the review was reprinted in _collected essays and reviews_. [ ] as an example of this james once quoted huxley: "i take no interest in the subject. the only case of 'spiritualism' i have had the opportunity of examining into for myself was as gross an imposture as ever came under my notice. but supposing the phenomena to be genuine--they do not interest me. if anybody would endow me with the faculty of listening to the chatter of old women and curates in the nearest cathedral town, i should decline the privilege, having better things to do. and if the folk in the spiritual world do not talk more wisely and sensibly than their friends report them to do, i put them in the same category. the only good that i can see in the demonstration of the truth of 'spiritualism' is to furnish an additional argument against suicide. better live a crossing-sweeper, than die and be made to talk twaddle by a 'medium' hired at a guinea a séance." _life and letters_, vol. i, p. (new york, ). james's comment should be added: "obviously the mind of the excellent huxley has here but two whole-souled categories, namely, revelation or imposture, to apperceive the case by. sentimental reasons bar revelation out, for the messages, he thinks, are not romantic enough for that; fraud exists anyhow; therefore the whole thing is nothing but imposture. the odd point is that so few of those who talk in this way realize that they and the spiritists are using the same major premise and differing only in the minor. the major premise is: 'any spirit-revelation must be romantic.' the minor of the spiritist is: 'this _is_ romantic'; that of the huxleyan is: 'this is dingy twaddle'--whence their opposite conclusions!" (_memories and studies_, pp. , .) [ ] _the will to believe_, etc., p. . [ ] _cf._ _the will to believe_, etc., p. . [ ] it is not the province of this book to estimate the importance of the work done by james and the other men--sidgwick, myers, gurney, richard hodgson, sir oliver lodge, and richet, to go no further--who supported and guided the s. p. r. it must be traced in the literature of automatisms, hypnosis, divided personality, and the "subliminal." in james's own writings the reader may be referred to the above named chapter of _the will to believe_, etc., two papers included in _memories and studies_, and a review of myers's _human personality_ in proc. of the (eng.) s. p. r., vol. xviii, p. ( ). see also p. _infra_, and note. [ ] _mind_, , vol. ix, pp. - . [ ] _unitarian review_, dec., ; vol. xx, p. . [ ] "the dilemma of determinism." _unitarian review_, sept., . republished in _the will to believe and other essays_. [ ] professor howison had accepted an appointment at the university of california (berkeley). [ ] "why so heartlessly deceive your sons?" leopardi, _to sylvia_. [ ] from appian way to garden street. [ ] "it's amusing to see how, even upon my microscopic field, minute events are perpetually taking place illustrative of the broadest facts of human nature. yesterday nurse and i had a good laugh, but i must allow that decidedly she 'had' me. i was thinking of something that interested me very much, and my mind was suddenly flooded by one of those luminous waves that sweep out of consciousness all but the living sense, and overpower one with joy in the rich, throbbing complexity of life, when suddenly i looked up at nurse, who was dressing me, and saw her primitive, rudimentary expression (so common here), as of no inherited quarrel with her destiny of putting petticoats over my head; the poverty and deadness of it, contrasted to the tide of speculation that was coursing through my brain, made me exclaim, 'oh, nurse, don't you wish you were inside of _me_?' her look of dismay, and vehement disclaimer--'inside of you, miss, when you have just had a sick-headache for five days!'--gave a greater blow to my vanity than that much-battered article has ever received. the headache had gone off in the night and i had clean forgotten it when the little wretch confronted me with it, at this sublime moment, when i was feeling within me the potency of a bismarck, and left me powerless before the immutable law that, however great we may seem to our own consciousness, no human being would exchange his for ours, and before the fact that _my_ glorious rôle was to stand for _sick-headache_ to mankind! what a grotesque being i am, to be sure, lying in this room, with the resistance of a thistle-down, having illusory moments of throbbing with the pulse of the race, the mystery to be solved at the next breath, and the fountain of all happiness within me--the sense of vitality, in short, simply proportionate to the excess of weakness. to sit by and watch these absurdities is amusing in its way, and reminds me of how i used to _listen_ to my 'company manners' in the days when i had 'em, and how ridiculous they sounded. "ah! those strange people who have the courage to be unhappy! _are_ they unhappy, by the way?" [from a diary of alice james's.] [ ] whose picture used to adorn the numerous advertisements of a patent medicine called "mrs. pinkham's vegetable compound." [ ] the state of self-reproachful irritation described by _kater-gefühl_ cannot be justly rendered by any english word. [ ] outbursts. [ ] mediatory attitude (view). [ ] "the perception of space." _mind_, ; vol. xii, pp. - , - , - , - . [ ] _journal of speculative philosophy_, , vol. xx, p. . [ ] epochmaking manifestation. [ ] i send her heartiest greetings. [ ] from pure. [ ] if it was printed, this notice has escaped identification. [ ] "how i shall miss that man's presence in the world!... our problems were the same and for the most part our solutions." "he is a terrible loss to me. i didn't know till the news came how much i mentally referred to him as a critic and sympathizer, or how much i counted on seeing more of him hereafter." (from letters to g. croom robertson.) _vide_, also, _the will to believe_, etc., pp. - . [ ] _vide_, pp. - _infra_. [ ] "i write every morning at one of the card tables in the parlor, all alone in a room feet long--just about the right size for one man." (letter from the hotel del monte, sept. , .) [ ] j. m. cattell. address upon the th anniversary of the american psychological association, dec. . _science_ (n.s.), vol. xlv, p. . [ ] to hugo münsterberg, aug. , . [ ] _e.g._, _principles of psychology_, vol. i, p. . "one is almost tempted to believe that the pantomime state of mind and that of the hegelian dialectics are, emotionally considered, one and the same thing. in the pantomime all common things are represented to happen in impossible ways, people jump down each other's throats, houses turn inside out, old women become young men, everything 'passes into its opposite' with inconceivable celerity and skill; and this, so far from producing perplexity, brings rapture to the beholder's mind. and so, in the hegelian logic, relations elsewhere recognized under the insipid name of distinctions (such as that between knower and object, many and one) must first be translated into impossibilities and contradictions, then 'transcended' and identified by miracles, ere the proper temper is induced for thoroughly enjoying the spectacle they show." [ ] "what psychical research has accomplished," was first published in _the forum_, , vol. xiii, p. . [ ] it will be recalled that mrs. whitman had been a baltimorean before she came to live in boston. [ ] _aug. ._ "lowell's funeral at mid-day.... went to child's to say good-bye, and found walcott, howells, cranch, etc. poor dear old child! we drank a glass standing to the hope of seeing lowell again." [ ] mr. and mrs. arthur sedgwick. mr. sedgwick was miss ashburner's nephew. [ ] see vol. ii, p. _infra_. [ ] see "the galileo festival at padua": _nation_ (new york), jan. , ; a four-column account of the festival. [ ] _philosophical review_ ( ), vol. ii, p. [ ] mr. frank duveneck, painter and sculptor, now of cincinnati. [ ] mr. duveneck was mr. boott's son-in-law. _vide_ page _supra_. [ ] jan. , ' . to carl stumpf. "one should not be a cosmopolitan, one's soul becomes 'disintegrated,' as janet would say. parts of it remain in different places, and the whole of it is nowhere. one's native land seems foreign. it is not wholly a good thing, and i think i suffer from it." (images generously made available by the internet archive.) friedrich nietzsche by george brandes author of "william shakespeare," etc. london william heinemann [illustration: sculptor: j. davidson.--photo: a. langdon coburn.] i an essay on aristocratic radicalism[ ] ( ) friedrich nietzsche appears to me the most interesting writer in german literature at the present time. though little known even in his own country, he is a thinker of a high order, who fully deserves to be studied, discussed, contested and mastered. among many good qualities he has that of imparting his mood to others and setting their thoughts in motion. during a period of eighteen years nietzsche has written a long series of books and pamphlets. most of these volumes consist of aphorisms, and of these the greater part, as well as the more original, are concerned with moral prejudices. in this province will be found his lasting importance. but besides this he has dealt with the most varied problems; he has written on culture and history, on art and women, on companionship and solitude, on the state and society, on life's struggle and death. he was born on october , ; studied philology; became in professor of philology at basle; made the acquaintance of richard wagner and became warmly attached to him, and associated also with the distinguished historian of the renaissance, jakob burkhardt. nietzsche's admiration and affection for burkhardt were lasting. his feeling for wagner, on the other hand, underwent a complete revulsion in the course of years. from having been wagner's prophet he developed into his most passionate opponent. nietzsche was always heart and soul a musician; he even tried his hand as a composer in his _hymn to life_ (for chorus and orchestra, ), and his intercourse with wagner left deep traces in his earliest writings. but the opera of parsifal, with its tendency to catholicism and its advancement of the ascetic ideals which had previously been entirely foreign to wagner, caused nietzsche to see in the great composer a danger, an enemy, a morbid phenomenon, since this last work showed him all the earlier operas in a new light. during his residence in switzerland nietzsche came to know a large circle of interesting people. he suffered, however, from extremely severe headaches, so frequent that they incapacitated him for about two hundred days in the year and brought him to the verge of the grave. in he resigned his professorship. from to his state of health improved, though extremely slowly. his eyes were still so weak that he was threatened with blindness. he was compelled to be extremely careful in his mode of life and to choose his place of residence in obedience to climatic and meteorological conditions. he usually spent the winter at nice and the summer at sils-maria in the upper engadine. the years and were astonishingly rich in production; they saw the publication of the most remarkable works of widely different nature and the preparation of a whole series of new books. then, at the close of the latter year, perhaps as the result of overstrain, a violent attack of mental disorder occurred, from which nietzsche never recovered. as a thinker his starting-point is schopenhauer; in his first books he is actually his disciple. but, after several years of silence, during which he passes through his first intellectual crisis, he reappears emancipated from all ties of discipleship. he then undergoes so powerful and rapid a development--less in his thought itself than in the courage to express his thoughts--that each succeeding book marks a fresh stage, until by degrees he concentrates himself upon a single fundamental question, the question of moral values. on his earliest appearance as a thinker he had already entered a protest, in opposition to david strauss, against any moral interpretation of the nature of the cosmos and assigned to our morality its place in the world of phenomena, now as semblance or error, now as artificial arrangement. and his literary activity reached its highest point in an investigation of the origin of the moral concepts, while it was his hope and intention to give to the world an exhaustive criticism of moral values, an examination of the value of these values (regarded as fixed once for all). the first book of his work, _the transvaluation of all values_, was completed when his malady declared itself. [ ] "the expression 'aristocratic radicalism,' which you employ, is very good. it is, permit me to say, the cleverest thing i have yet read about myself,"--nietzsche, dec. , . i. nietzsche first received a good deal of notice, though not much commendation, for a caustic and juvenile polemical pamphlet against david strauss, occasioned by the latter's book, _the old faith and the new_. his attack, irreverent in tone, is directed not against the first, warlike section of the book, but against the constructive and complementary section. the attack, however, is less concerned with the once great critic's last effort than with the mediocracy in germany, to which strauss's last word represented the last word of culture in general. a year and a half had elapsed since the close of the franco-german war. never had the waves of german self esteem run so high. the exultation of victory had passed into a tumultuous self-glorification. the universal view was that german culture had vanquished french. then this voice made itself heard, saying-- admitting that this was really a conflict between two civilisations, there would still be no reason for crowning the victorious one; we should first have to know what the vanquished one was worth; if its value was very slight--and this is what is said of french culture--then there was no great honour in the victory. but in the next place there can be no question at all in this case of a victory of german culture; partly because french culture still persists, and partly because the germans, now as heretofore, are dependent on it. it was military discipline, natural bravery, endurance, superiority on the part of the leaders and obedience on the part of the led, in short, _factors that have nothing to do with culture_, which gave germany the victory. but finally and above all, german culture was not victorious for the good reason that germany as yet has nothing that can be called culture. it was then only a year since nietzsche himself had formed the greatest expectations of germany's future, had looked forward to her speedy liberation from the leading-strings of latin civilisation, and heard the most favourable omens in german music.[ ] the intellectual decline, which seemed to him--rightly, no doubt--to date indisputably from the foundation of the empire, now made him oppose a ruthless defiance to the prevailing popular sentiment. he maintains that culture shows itself above all else in a unity of artistic style running through every expression of a nation's life. on the other hand, the fact of having learnt much and knowing much is, as he points out, neither a necessary means to culture nor a sign of culture; it accords remarkably well with barbarism, that is to say, with want of style or a motley hotchpotch of styles. and his contention is simply this, that with a culture consisting of hotchpotch it is impossible to subdue any enemy, above all an enemy like the french, who have long possessed a genuine and productive culture, whether we attribute a greater or a lesser value to it. he appeals to a saying of goethe to eckermann: "we germans are of yesterday. no doubt in the last hundred years we have been cultivating ourselves quite diligently, but it may take a few centuries yet before our countrymen have absorbed sufficient intellect and higher culture for it to be said of them that it is a long time since they were barbarians." to nietzsche, as we see, the concepts of culture and homogeneous culture are equivalent. in order to be homogeneous a culture must have reached a certain age and have become strong enough in its peculiar character to have penetrated all forms of life. homogeneous culture, however, is of course not the same thing as native culture. ancient iceland had a homogeneous culture, though its flourishing was brought about precisely by active intercourse with europe; a homogeneous culture existed in italy at the time of the renaissance, in england in the sixteenth, in france in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, although italy built up her culture of greek, roman and spanish impressions, france hers of classical, celtic, spanish and italian elements, and although the english are the mixed race beyond all others. true, it is only a century and a half since the germans began to liberate themselves from french culture, and hardly more than a hundred years since they entirely escaped from the frenchmen's school, whose influence may nevertheless be traced even to-day: but still no one can justly deny the existence of a german culture, even if it is yet comparatively young and in a state of growth. nor will any one who has a sense for the agreement between german music and german philosophy, an ear for the harmony between german music and german lyrical poetry, an eye for the merits and defects of german painting and sculpture, which are the outcome of the same fundamental tendency that is revealed in the whole intellectual and emotional life of germany, be disposed in advance to deny germany a homogeneous culture. more precarious will be the state of such smaller countries whose dependence on foreign nations has not unfrequently been a dependence raised to the second power. to nietzsche, however, this point is of relatively small importance. he is convinced that the last hour of national cultures is at hand, since the time cannot be far off when it will only be a question of a european or european-american culture. he argues from the fact that the most highly developed people in every country already feel as europeans, as fellow-countrymen, nay, as confederates, and from the belief that the twentieth century must bring with it the war for the dominion of the world. when, therefore, from the result of this war a tempestuous wind sweeps over all national vanities, bending and breaking them, what will then be the question? the question will then be, thinks nietzsche, in exact agreement with the most eminent frenchmen of our day, whether by that time it has been possible to train or rear a sort of caste of pre-eminent spirits who will be able to grasp the central power. the real misfortune is, therefore, not that a country is still without a genuine, homogeneous and perfected culture, but that it thinks itself cultured. and with his eye upon germany nietzsche asks how it has come about that so prodigious a contradiction can exist as that between the lack of true culture and the self-satisfied belief in actually possessing the only true one--and he finds the answer in the circumstance that a class of men has come to the front which no former century has known, and to which (in ) he gave the name of "culture-philistines." the culture-philistine regards his own impersonal education as the real culture; if he has been told that culture presupposes a homogeneous stamp of mind, he is confirmed in his good opinion of himself, since everywhere he meets with educated people of his own sort, and since schools, universities and academies are adapted to his requirements and fashioned on the model corresponding to his cultivation. since he finds almost everywhere the same tacit conventions with respect to religion, morality and literature, with respect to marriage, the family, the community and the state, he considers it demonstrated that this imposing homogeneity is culture. it never enters his head that this systematic and well-organised philistinism, which is set up in all high places and installed at every editorial desk, is not by any means made culture just because its organs are in concert. it is not even bad culture, says nietzsche; it is barbarism fortified to the best of its ability, but entirely lacking the freshness and savage force of original barbarism; and he has many graphic expressions to describe culture-philistinism as the morass in which all weariness is stuck fast, and in the poisonous mists of which all endeavour languishes. all of us are now born into the society of cultured philistinism, in it we all grow up. it confronts us with prevailing opinions, which we unconsciously adopt; and even when opinions are divided, the division is only into party opinions--public opinions. an aphorism of nietzsche's reads: "what is public opinion? it is private indolence." the dictum requires qualification. there are cases where public opinion is worth something: john morley has written a good book on the subject. in the face of certain gross breaches of faith and law, certain monstrous violations of human rights, public opinion may now and then assert itself as a power worthy to be followed. otherwise it is as a rule a factory working for the benefit of culture-philistinism. on entering life, then, young people meet with various collective opinions, more or less narrow-minded. the more the individual has it in him to become a real personality, the more he will resist following a herd. but even if an inner voice says to him: "become thyself! be thyself!" he hears its appeal with despondency. has he a self? he does not know; he is not yet aware of it. he therefore looks about for a teacher, an educator, one who will teach him, not something foreign, but how to become his own individual self. we had in denmark a great man who with impressive force exhorted his contemporaries to become individuals. but sören kierkegaard's appeal was not intended to be taken so unconditionally as it sounded. for the goal was fixed. they were to become individuals, not in order to develop into free personalities, but in order by this means to become true christians. their freedom was only apparent; above them was suspended a "thou shalt believe!" and a "thou shalt obey!" even as individuals they had a halter round their necks, and on the farther side of the narrow passage of individualism, through which the herd was driven, the herd awaited them again--one flock, one shepherd. it is not with this idea of immediately resigning his personality again that the young man in our day desires to become himself and seeks an educator. he will not have a dogma set up before him, at which he is expected to arrive. but he has an uneasy feeling that he is packed with dogmas. how is he to find himself in himself, how is he to dig himself out of himself? this is where the educator should help him. an educator can only be a liberator. it was a liberating educator of this kind that nietzsche as a young man looked for and found in schopenhauer. such a one will be found by every seeker in the personality that has the most liberating effect on him during his period of development. nietzsche says that as soon as he had read a single page of schopenhauer, he knew he would read every page of him and pay heed to every word, even to the errors he might find. every intellectual aspirant will be able to name men whom he has read in this way. it is true that for nietzsche, as for any other aspirant, there remained one more step to be taken, that of liberating himself from the liberator. we find in his earliest writings certain favourite expressions of schopenhauer's which no longer appear in his later works. but the liberation is here a tranquil development to independence, throughout which he retains his deep gratitude; not, as in his relations with wagner, a violent revulsion which leads him to deny any value to the works he had once regarded as the most valuable of all. he praises schopenhauer's lofty honesty, beside which he can only place montaigne's, his lucidity, his constancy, and the purity of his relations with society, state and state-religion, which are in such sharp contrast with those of kant. with schopenhauer there is never a concession, never a dallying. and nietzsche is astounded by the fact that schopenhauer could endure life in germany at all. a modern englishman has said: "shelley could never have lived in england: a race of shelleys would have been impossible." spirits of this kind are early broken, then become melancholy, morbid or insane. the society of the culture-philistines makes life a burden to exceptional men. examples of this occur in plenty in the literature of every country, and the trial is constantly being made. we need only think of the number of talented men who sooner or later make their apologies and concessions to philistinism, so as to be permitted to exist. but even in the strongest the vain and weary struggle with culture-philistinism shows itself in lines and wrinkles. nietzsche quotes the saying of the old diplomatist, who had only casually seen and spoken to goethe: "_voilà un homme qui a eu de grands chagrins_," and goethe's comment, when repeating it to his friends: "if the traces of our sufferings and activities are indelible even in our features, it is no wonder that all that survives of us and our struggles should bear the same marks." and this is goethe, who is looked upon as the favourite of fortune! schopenhauer, as is well known, was until his latest years a solitary man. no one understood him, no one read him. the greater part of the first edition of his work, _die welt als wille und vorstellung_, had to be sold as waste paper. in our day taine's view has widely gained ground, that the great man is entirely determined by the age whose child he is, that he unconsciously sums it up and ought consciously to give it expression.[ ] but although, of course, the great man does not stand outside the course of history and must always depend upon predecessors, an idea nevertheless always germinates in a single individual or in a few individuals; and these individuals are not scattered points in the low-lying mass, but highly gifted ones who draw the mass to them instead of being drawn by it. what is called the spirit of the age originates in quite a small number of brains. nietzsche who, mainly no doubt through schopenhauer's influence, had originally been strongly impressed by the dictum that the great man is not the child of his age but its step-child, demands that the educator shall help the young to educate themselves _in opposition to the age_. it appears to him that the modern age has produced for imitation three particular types of man, one after the other. first rousseau's man; the titan who raises himself, oppressed and bound by the higher castes, and in his need calls upon holy nature. then goethe's man; not werther or the revolutionary figures related to him, who are still derived from rousseau, nor the original faust figure, but faust as he gradually develops. he is no liberator, but a spectator, of the world. he is not the man of action. nietzsche reminds us of jarno's words to wilhelm meister: "you are vexed and bitter, that is a very good thing. if you could be thoroughly angry for once, it would be better still." to become thoroughly angry in order to make things better, this, in the view of the nietzsche of thirty, will be the exhortation of schopenhauer's man. this man voluntarily takes upon himself the pain of telling the truth. his fundamental idea is this: a life of happiness is impossible; the highest a man can attain to is a heroic life, one in which he fights against the greatest difficulties for something which, in one way or another, will be for the good of all. to what is truly human, only true human beings can raise us; those who seem to have come into being by a leap in nature; thinkers and educators, artists and creators, and those who influence us more by their nature than by their activity: the noble, the good in a grand style, those in whom the genius of good is at work. these men are the aim of history. nietzsche formulates this proposition: "humanity must work unceasingly for the production of solitary great men--this and nothing else is its task." this is the same formula at which several aristocratic spirits among his contemporaries have arrived. thus renan says, almost in the same words: "in fine, the object of humanity is the production of great men ... nothing but great men; salvation will come from great men." and we see from flaubert's letters to george sand how convinced he was of the same thing. he says, for instance: "the only rational thing is and always will be a government of mandarins, provided that the mandarins can do something, or rather, can do much.... it matters little whether a greater or smaller number of peasants are able to read instead of listening to their priest, but it is infinitely important that many men like renan and littré may live and be heard. our salvation now lies in a real aristocracy."[ ] both renan and flaubert would have subscribed to nietzsche's fundamental idea that a nation is the roundabout way nature goes in order to produce a dozen great men. yet, although the idea does not lack advocates, this does not make it a dominant thought in european philosophy. in germany, for instance, eduard von hartmann thinks very differently of the aim--of history. his published utterances on the subject are well known. in conversation he once hinted how his idea had originated in his mind: "it was clear to me long ago," he said, "that history, or, to use a wider expression, the world process, must have an aim, and that this aim could only be negative. for a golden age is too foolish a figment." hence his visions of a destruction of the world voluntarily brought about by the most gifted men. and connected with this is his doctrine that humanity has now reached man's estate, that is, has passed the stage of development in which geniuses were necessary. in the face of all this talk of the world process, the aim of which is annihilation or deliverance--deliverance even of the suffering godhead from existence--nietzsche takes a very sober and sensible stand with his simple belief that the goal of humanity is not to be infinitely deferred, but must be found in the highest examples of humanity itself. and herewith he has arrived at his final answer to the question, what is culture? for upon this relation depend the fundamental idea of culture and the duties culture imposes. it imposes on me the duty of associating myself by my own activity with the great human ideals. its fundamental idea is this: it assigns to every individual who wishes to work for it and participate in it, the task of striving to produce, within and without himself, the thinker and artist, the lover of truth and beauty, the pure and good personality, and thereby striving for the perfection of nature, towards the goal of a perfected nature. when does a state of culture prevail? when the men of a community are steadily working for the production of single great men. from this highest aim all the others follow. and what state is farthest removed from a state of culture? that in which men energetically and with united forces resist the appearance of great men, partly by preventing the cultivation of the soil required for the growth of genius, partly by obstinately opposing everything in the shape of genius that appears amongst them. such a state is more remote from culture than that of sheer barbarism. but does such a state exist? perhaps some one will ask. most of the smaller nations will be able to read the answer in the history of their native land. it will there be seen, in proportion as "refinement" grows, that the refined atmosphere is diffused, which is unfavourable to genius. and this is all the more serious, since many people think that in modern times and in the races which now share the dominion of the world among them, a political community of only a few millions is seldom sufficiently numerous to produce minds of the very first order. it looks as if geniuses could only be distilled from some thirty or forty millions of people. norway with ibsen, belgium with maeterlinck and verhaeren are exceptions. all the more reason is there for the smaller communities to work at culture to their utmost capacity. in recent times we have become familiar with the thought that the goal to be aimed at is happiness, the happiness of all, or at any rate of the greatest number. wherein happiness consists is less frequently discussed, and yet it is impossible to avoid the question, whether a year, a day, an hour in paradise does not bring more happiness than a lifetime in the chimney-corner. but be that as it may: owing to our familiarity with the notion of making sacrifices for a whole country, a multitude of people, it appears unreasonable that a man should exist for the sake of a few other men, that it should be his duty to devote his life to them in order thereby to promote culture. but nevertheless the answer to the question of culture--how the individual human life may acquire its highest value and its greatest significance--must be: by being lived for the benefit of the rarest and most valuable examples of the human race. this will also be the way in which the individual can best impart a value to the life of the greatest number. in our day a so-called cultural institution means an organisation in virtue of which the "cultured" advance in serried ranks and thrust aside all solitary and obstinate men whose efforts are directed to higher ends; therefore even the learned are as a rule lacking in any sense for budding genius and any feeling for the value of struggling contemporary genius. therefore, in spite of the indisputable and restless progress in all technical and specialised departments, the conditions necessary to the appearance of great men are so far from having improved, that dislike of genius has rather increased than diminished. from the state the exceptional individual cannot expect much. he is seldom benefited by being taken into its service; the only certain advantage it can give him is complete independence. only real culture will prevent his being too early tired out or used up, and will spare him the exhausting struggle against culture-philistinism. nietzsche's value lies in his being one of these vehicles of culture: a mind which, itself independent, diffuses independence and may become to others a liberating force, such as schopenhauer was to nietzsche himself in his younger days. [ ] _the birth of tragedy_, p. ff. (english edition). [ ] the author of these lines has not made himself the advocate of this view, as has sometimes been publicly stated, but on the contrary has opposed it. after some uncertainty i pronounced against it as early as , in _den franske Æsthetik i vore dage_, pp. , , and afterwards in many other places. [ ] nietzsche; _thoughts out of season_, ii., p. f. (english edition). renan: _dialogues et fragments philosophiques_, p. . flaubert: _lettres à george sand_, p. ff. . four of nietzsche's early works bear the collective title, _thoughts out of season_ (_unzeitgemässe betrachtungen_), a title which is significant of his early-formed determination to go against the stream. one of the fields in which he opposed the spirit of the age in germany is that of education, since he condemns in the most uncompromising fashion the entire historical system of education of which germany is proud, and which as a rule is everywhere regarded as desirable. his view is that what keeps the race from breathing freely and willing boldly is that it drags far too much of its past about with it, like a round-shot chained to a convict's leg. he thinks it is historical education that fetters the race both in enjoyment and in action, since he who cannot concentrate himself on the moment and live entirely in it, can neither feel happiness himself nor do anything to make others happy. without the power of feeling unhistorically, there is no happiness. and in the same way, forgetfulness, or rather, non-knowledge of the past is essential to all action. forgetfulness, the unhistorical, is as it were the enveloping air, the atmosphere, in which alone life can come into being. in order to understand it, let us imagine a youth who is seized with a passion for a woman, or a man who is swayed by a passion for his work. in both cases what lies behind them has ceased to exist--and yet this state (the most unhistorical that can be imagined) is that in which every action, every great deed is conceived and accomplished. now answering to this, says nietzsche, there exists a certain degree of historical knowledge which is destructive of a man's energy and fatal to the productive powers of a nation. in this reasoning we can hear the voice of the learned german philologist, whose observations have mostly been drawn from german scholars and artists. for it would be unreasonable to suppose that the commercial or peasant class, the soldiers or manufacturers of germany suffered from an excess of historical culture. but even in the case of german savants, authors and artists the evil here pointed out may be of such a nature as not to admit of remedy by simply abolishing historical education. those men whose productive impulse has been checked or killed by historical studies were already so impotent and ineffective that the world would not have been enriched by their productions. and moreover, what paralyses is not so much the heterogeneous mass of dead historical learning (about the actions of governments, political chess-moves, military achievements, artistic styles, etc.), as the knowledge of certain great minds of the past, by the side of whose production anything that can be shown by a man now living appears so insignificant as to make it a matter of indifference whether his work sees the light or not. goethe alone is enough to reduce a young german poet to despair. but a hero-worshipper like nietzsche cannot consistently desire to curtail our knowledge of the greatest. the want of artistic courage and intellectual boldness has certainly deeper-lying causes; above all, the disintegration of the individuality which the modern order of society involves. strong men can carry a heavy load of history without becoming incapacitated for living. but what is interesting and significant of nietzsche's whole intellectual standpoint is his inquiry as to how far life is able to make use of history. history, in his view, belongs to him who is fighting a great fight, and who needs examples, teachers and comforters, but cannot find them among his contemporaries. without history the mountain chain of great men's great moments, which runs through milleniums, could not stand clearly and vividly before me. when one sees, that it only took about a hundred men to bring in the culture of the renaissance; it may easily be supposed, for example, that a hundred productive minds, trained in a new style, would be enough to make an end of culture-philistinism. on the other hand, history may have pernicious effects in the hands of unproductive men. thus young artists are driven into galleries instead of out into nature, and are sent, with minds still unformed, to centres of art, where they lose courage. and in all its forms history may render men unfit for life; in its _monumental_ form by evoking the illusion that there are such things as fixed, recurring historical conjunctions, so that what has once been possible is now, in entirely altered conditions, possible again; in its _antiquarian_ form by awakening a feeling of piety for ancient, bygone things, which paralyses the man of action, who must always outrage some piety or other; finally in its _critical_ form by giving rise to the depressing feeling that the very errors of the past, which we are striving to overcome, are inherited in our blood and impressed on our childhood, so that we live in a continual inner conflict between an old and a new nature. on this point, as on others already alluded to, nietzsche's quarrel is ultimately with the broken-winded education of the present day. that _education_ and _historical education_ have in our time almost become synonymous terms, is to him a mournful sign. it has been irretrievably forgotten that culture ought to be what it was with the greeks: a motive, a prompting to resolution; nowadays culture is commonly described as inwardness, because it is a dead internal lump, which does not stir its possessor. the most "educated" people are walking encyclopædias. when they act, they do so in virtue of a universally approved, miserable convention, or else from simple barbarism. with this reflection, no doubt of general application, is connected a complaint which was bound to be evoked by modern literary germany in particular; the complaint of the oppressive effect of the greatness of former times, as shown in the latter-day man's conviction that he is a latecomer, an after-birth of a greater age, who may indeed teach himself history, but can never produce it. even philosophy, nietzsche complains, with a side-glance at the german universities, has been more and more transformed into the history of philosophy, a teaching of what everybody has thought about everything; "a sort of harmless gossip between academic grey-beards and academic sucklings." it is boasted as a point of honour that freedom of thought exists in various countries. in reality it is only a poor sort of freedom. one may think in a hundred ways, but one may only act in one way--and that is the way that is called "culture" and is in reality "only a form, and what is more a bad form, a uniform." nietzsche attacks the view which regards the historically cultured person as the justest of all. we honour the historian who aims at pure knowledge, from which nothing follows. but there are many trivial truths, and it is a misfortune that whole battalions of inquirers should fling themselves upon them, even if these narrow minds belong to honest men. the historian is looked upon as objective when he measures the past by the popular opinions of his own time, as subjective when he does not take these opinions for models. that man is thought best fitted to depict a period of the past, who is not in the least affected by that period. but only he who has a share in building up the future can grasp what the past has been, and only when transformed into a work of art can history arouse or even sustain instincts. as historical education is now conducted, the mass of impressions communicated is so great as to produce numbness, a feeling of being born old of an old stock--although less than thirty human lives, reckoned at seventy years each, divide us from the beginning of our era. and with this is connected the immense superstition of the value and significance of universal history. schiller's phrase is everlastingly repeated: "the history of the world is the tribunal of the world," as though there could be any other historical tribunal than thought; and the hegelian view of history as the ever-clearer self-revelation of the godhead has obstinately held its own, only that it has gradually passed into sheer admiration of success, an approval of any and every fact, be it never so brutal. but greatness has nothing to do with results or with success. demosthenes, who spoke in vain, is greater than philip, who was always victorious. everything in our day is thought to be in order, if only it be an accomplished fact; even when a man of genius dies in the fulness of his powers, proofs are forthcoming that he died at the right time. and the fragment of history we possess is entitled "the world process"; men cudgel their brains, like eduard von hartmann, in trying to find out its origin and final goal--which seems to be a waste of time. why you exist, says nietzsche with sören kierkegaard, nobody in the world can tell you in advance; but since you do exist, try to give your existence a meaning by setting up for yourself as lofty and noble a goal as you can. significant of nietzsche's aristocratic tendency, so marked later, is his anger with the deference paid by modern historians to the masses. formerly, he argues, history was written from the standpoint of the rulers; it was occupied exclusively with them, however mediocre or bad they might be. now it has crossed over to the standpoint of the masses. but the masses--they are only to be regarded as one of three things: either as copies of great personalities, bad copies, clumsily produced in a poor material, or as foils to the great, or finally as their tools. otherwise they are matter for statisticians to deal with, who find so-called historical laws in the instincts of the masses--aping, laziness, hunger and sexual impulse. what has set the mass in motion for any length of time is then called great. it is given the name of a historical power. when, for example, the vulgar mob has appropriated or adapted to its needs some religious idea, has defended it stubbornly and dragged it along for centuries, then the originator of that idea is called great. there is the testimony of thousands of years for it, we are told. but--this is nietzsche's and kierkegaard's idea--the noblest and highest does not affect the masses at all, either at the moment or later. therefore the historical success of a religion, its toughness and persistence, witness against its founder's greatness rather than for it. when an instance is required of one of the few enterprises in history that have been completely successful, the reformation is commonly chosen. against the significance of this success nietzsche does not urge the facts usually quoted: its early secularisation by luther; his compromises with those in power; the interest of princes in emancipating themselves from the mastery of the church and laying hands on its estates, while at the same time securing a submissive and dependent clergy instead of one independent of the state. he sees the chief cause of the success of the reformation in the uncultured state of the nations of northern europe. many attempts at founding new greek religions came to naught in antiquity. although men like pythagoras, plato, perhaps empedocles, had qualifications as founders of religions, the individuals they had to deal with were far too diversified in their nature to be helped by a common doctrine of faith and hope. in contrast with this, the success of luther's reformation in the north was an indication that northern culture was behind that of southern europe. the people either blindly obeyed a watchword from above, like a flock of sheep; or, where conversion was a matter of conscience, it revealed how little individuality there was among a population which was found to be so homogeneous in its spiritual needs. in the same way, too, the original conversion of pagan antiquity was only successful on account of the abundant intermixture of barbarian with roman blood which had taken place. the new doctrine was forced upon the masters of the world by barbarians and slaves. the reader now has examples of the arguments nietzsche employs in support of his proposition that history is not so sound and strengthening an educational factor as is thought: only he who has learnt to know life and is equipped for action has use for history and is capable of applying it; others are oppressed by it and rendered unproductive by being made to feel themselves late-comers, or are induced to worship success in every field. nietzsche's contribution to this question is a plea against every sort of historical optimism; but he energetically repudiates the ordinary pessimism, which is the result of degenerate or enfeebled instincts--of decadence. he preaches with youthful enthusiasm the triumph of a _tragic_ culture, introduced by an intrepid rising generation, in which the spirit of ancient greece might be born again. he rejects the pessimism of schopenhauer, for he already abhors all renunciation; but he seeks a pessimism of healthiness, one derived from strength, from exuberant power, and he believes he has found it in the greeks. he has developed this view in the learned and profound work of his youth, _the birth of tragedy, or hellenism and pessimism_, in which he introduced two new terms, _apollonian_ and _dionysian_. the two greek deities of art, apollo and dionysus, denote the antithesis between plastic art and music. the former corresponds to dreaming, the latter to drunkenness. in dreams the forms of the gods first appeared to men; dreams are the world of beauteous appearance. if, on the other hand, we look down into man's lowest depths, below the spheres of thought and imagination, we come upon a world of terror and rapture, the realm of dionysus. above reign beauty, measure and proportion; but underneath the profusion of nature surges freely in pleasure and pain. regarded from nietzsche's later standpoint, the deeper motive of this searching absorption in hellenic antiquity becomes apparent. even at this early stage he suspects, in what passes for morality, a disparaging principle directed against nature; he looks for its essential antithesis, and finds it in the purely artistic principle, farthest removed from christianity, which he calls dionysian. our author's main psychological features are now clearly apparent. what kind of a nature is it that carries this savage hatred of philistinism even as far as to david strauss? an artist's nature, obviously. what kind of a writer is it who warns us with such firm conviction against the dangers of historical culture? a philologist obviously, who has experienced them in himself, has felt himself threatened with becoming a mere aftermath and tempted to worship historical success. what kind of a nature is it that so passionately defines culture as the worship of genius? certainly no eckermann-nature, but an enthusiast, willing at the outset to obey where he cannot command, but quick to recognise his own masterful bias, and to see that humanity is far from having outgrown the ancient antithetical relation of commanding and obeying. the appearance of napoleon is to him, as to many others, a proof of this; in the joy that thrilled thousands, when at last they saw one who knew how to command. but in the sphere of ethics he is not disposed to preach obedience. on the contrary, constituted as he is, he sees the apathy and meanness of our modern morality in the fact that it still upholds obedience as the highest moral commandment, instead of the power of dictating to one's self one's own morality. his military schooling and participation in the war of - probably led to his discovery of a hard and manly quality in himself, and imbued him with an extreme abhorrence of all softness and effeminacy. he turned aside with disgust from the morality of pity in schopenhauer's philosophy and from the romantic-catholic element in wagner's music, to both of which he had previously paid homage. he saw that he had transformed both masters according to his own needs, and he understood quite well the instinct of self preservation that was here at work. the aspiring mind creates the helpers it requires. thus he afterwards dedicated his book, human, all-too-human, which was published on voltaire's centenary, to the "free spirits" among his contemporaries; his dreams created the associates that he had not yet found in the flesh. the severe and painful illness, which began in his thirty-second year and long made him a recluse, detached him from all romanticism and freed his heart from all bonds of piety. it carried him far away from pessimism, in virtue of his proud thought that "a sufferer has no right to pessimism." this illness made a philosopher of him in a strict sense. his thoughts stole inquisitively along forbidden paths: this thing passes for a value. can we not turn it upside-down? this is regarded as good. is it not rather evil?--is not god refuted? but can we say as much of the devil?--are we not deceived? and deceived deceivers, all of us?... and then out of this long sickliness arises a passionate desire for health, the joy of the convalescent in life, in light, in warmth, in freedom and ease of mind, in the range and horizon of thought, in "visions of new dawns," in creative capacity, in poetical strength. and he enters upon the lofty self-confidence and ecstasy of a long uninterrupted production. . it is neither possible nor necessary to review here the long series of his writings. in calling attention to an author who is still unread, one need only throw his most characteristic thoughts and expressions into relief, so that the reader with little trouble may form an idea of his way of thinking and quality of mind. the task is here rendered difficult by nietzsche's thinking in aphorisms, and facilitated by his habit of emphasising every thought in such a way as to give it a startling appearance. english utilitarianism has met with little acceptance in germany; among more eminent contemporary thinkers eugen dühring is its chief advocate; friedrich paulsen also sides with the englishmen. eduard von hartmann has attempted to demonstrate the impossibility of simultaneously promoting culture and happiness. nietzsche finds new difficulties in an analysis of the concept of happiness. the object of utilitarianism is to procure humanity as much pleasure and as little of the reverse as possible. but what if pleasure and pain are so intertwined that he who wants all the pleasure he can get must take a corresponding amount of suffering into the bargain? clärchen's song contains the words: "_himmelhoch jauchzend, zum tode betrübt_" who knows whether the latter is not the condition of the former? the stoics believed this, and, wishing to avoid pain, asked of life the minimum of pleasure. probably it is equally unwise in our day to promise men intense joys, if they are to be insured against great sufferings. we see that nietzsche transfers the question to the highest spiritual plane, without regard to the fact that the lowest and commonest misfortunes, such as hunger, physical exhaustion, excessive and unhealthy labour, yield no compensation in violent joys. even if all pleasure be dearly bought, it does not follow that all pain is interrupted and counterbalanced by intense enjoyment. in accordance with his aristocratic bias he then attacks bentham's proposition: the greatest possible happiness of the greatest possible number. the ideal was, of course, to procure happiness for everybody; as this could not be done, the formula took the above shape. but why happiness for the greatest number? we might imagine it for the best, the noblest, the most gifted; and we may be permitted to ask whether moderate prosperity and moderate well-being are preferable to the inequality of lot which acts as a goad, forcing culture ever upward. then there is the doctrine of unselfishness. to be moral is to be unselfish. it is good to be so, we are told. but what does that mean--good? good for whom? not for the self-sacrificer, but for his neighbour. he who praises the virtue of unselfishness, praises something that is good for the community but harmful to the individual. and the neighbour who wants to be loved unselfishly is not himself unselfish. the fundamental contradiction in this morality is that it demands and commends a renunciation of the ego, for the benefit of another ego. at the outset the essential and invaluable element of all morality is, in nietzsche's view, simply this, that it is a prolonged constraint. as language gains in strength and freedom by the constraint of verse, and as all the freedom and delicacy to be found in plastic art, music and dancing is the result of arbitrary laws, so also does human nature only attain its development under constraint. no violence is thereby done to nature; this is the very nature of things. the essential point is that there should be obedience, for a long time and in the same direction. thou shalt obey, some one or something, and for a long time--otherwise thou wilt come to grief; this seems to be the moral imperative of nature, which is certainly neither categorical (as kant thought), nor addressed to the individual (nature does not trouble about the individual), but seems to be addressed to nations, classes, periods, races--in fact, to mankind. on the other hand, all the morality that is addressed to the individual for his own good, for the sake of his own welfare, is reduced in this view to mere household remedies and counsels of prudence, recipes for curbing passions that might want to break out; and all this morality is preposterous in form, because it addresses itself to all and generalises what does not admit of generalisation. kant gave us a guiding rule with his categorical imperative. but this rule has failed us. it is of no use saying to us: act as others ought to act in this case. for we know that there are not and cannot be such things as identical actions, but that every action is unique in its nature, so that any precept can only apply to the rough outside of actions. but what of the voice and judgment of conscience? the difficulty is that we have a conscience behind our conscience, an intellectual one behind the moral. we can tell that the judgment of so-and-so's conscience has a past history in his instincts, his original sympathies or antipathies, his experience or want of experience. we can see quite well that our opinions of what is noble and good, our moral valuations, are powerful levers where action is concerned; but we must begin by refining these opinions and independently creating for ourselves new tables of values. and as regards the ethical teachers' preaching of morality for all, this is every bit as empty as the gossip of individual society people about each other's morals. nietzsche gives the moralists this good advice: that, instead of trying to educate the human race, they should imitate the pedagogues of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, who concentrated their efforts on the education of a single person. but as a rule the moral ranters are themselves quite uneducated persons, and their children seldom rise above moral mediocrity. he who feels that in his inmost being he cannot be compared with others, will be his own lawgiver. for one thing is needful: to give style to one's character. this art is practised by him who, with an eye for the strong and weak sides of his nature, removes from it one quality and another, and then by daily practice and acquired habit replaces them by others which become second nature to him; in other words, he puts himself under restraint in order by degrees to bend his nature entirely to his own law. only thus does a man arrive at satisfaction with himself, and only thus does he become endurable to others. for the dissatisfied and the unsuccessful as a rule avenge themselves on others. they absorb poison from everything, from their own incompetence as well as from their poor circumstances, and they live in a constant craving for revenge on those in whose nature they suspect harmony. such people ever have virtuous precepts on their lips; the whole jingle of morality, seriousness, chastity, the claims of life; and their hearts ever bum with envy of those who have become well balanced and can therefore enjoy life. for millenniums morality meant obedience to custom, respect for inherited usage. the free, exceptional man was immoral, because he broke with the tradition which the others regarded with superstitious fear. very commonly he took the same view and was himself seized by the terror he inspired. thus a popular morality of custom was unconsciously elaborated by all who belonged to the tribe; since fresh examples and proofs could always be found of the alleged relation between guilt and punishment--if you behave in such and such a way, it will go badly with you. now, as it generally does go badly, the allegation was constantly confirmed; and thus popular morality, a pseudoscience on a level with popular medicine, continually gained ground. manners and customs represented the experiences of bygone generations concerning what was supposed to be useful or harmful; the sense of morality, however, does not attach to these experiences as such, but only to their age, their venerability and consequent incontestability. in the state of war in which a tribe existed in old times, threatened on every side, there was no greater gratification, under the sway of the strictest morality of custom, than cruelty. cruelty is one of the oldest festal and triumphal joys of mankind. it was thought that the gods, too, might be gratified and festively disposed by offering them the sight of cruelties--and thus the idea insinuated itself into the world that voluntary self-torture, mortification and abstinence are also of great value, not as discipline, but as a sweet savour unto the lord. christianity as a religion of the past unceasingly practised and preached the torture of souls. imagine the state of the mediæval christian, when he supposed he could no longer escape eternal torment. eros and aphrodite were in his imagination powers of hell, and death was a terror. to the morality of cruelty has succeeded that of pity. the morality of pity is lauded as unselfish, by schopenhauer in particular. eduard von hartmann, in his thoughtful work, _phänomenologie des sittlichen bewusstseins_ (pp. - ), has already shown the impossibility of regarding pity as the most important of moral incentives, to say nothing of its being the only one, as schopenhauer would have it. nietzsche attacks the morality of pity from other points of view. he shows it to be by no means unselfish. another's misfortune affects us painfully and offends us--perhaps brands us as cowards if we do not go to his aid. or it contains a hint of a possible danger to ourselves; moreover, we feel joy in comparing our own state with that of the unfortunate, joy when we can step in as the stronger, the helper. the help we afford gives us a feeling of happiness, or perhaps it merely rescues us from boredom. pity in the form of actual fellow-suffering would be a weakness, nay, a misfortune, since it would add to the world's suffering. a man who seriously abandoned himself to sympathy with all the misery he found about him, would simply be destroyed by it. among savages the thought of arousing pity is regarded with horror. those who do so are despised. according to savage notions, to feel pity for a person is to despise him; but they find no pleasure in seeing a contemptible person suffer. on the other hand, the sight of an enemy's suffering, when his pride does not forsake him in the midst of his torment--that is enjoyment, that excites admiration. the morality of pity is often preached in the formula, love thy neighbour. nietzsche in the interests of his attack seizes upon the word _neighbour_. not only does he demand, with kierkegaard, a setting-aside of morality for the sake of the end in view, but he is exasperated that the true nature of morality should be held to consist in a consideration of the immediate results of our actions, to which we are to conform. to what is narrow and pettifogging in this morality he opposes another, which looks beyond these immediate results and aspires, even by means that cause our neighbour pain, to more distant objects; such as the advancement of knowledge, although this will lead to sorrow and doubt and evil passions in our neighbour. we need not on this account be without pity, but we may hold our pity captive for the sake of the object. and as it is now unreasonable to term pity unselfish and seek to consecrate it, it is equally so to hand over a series of actions to the evil conscience, merely because they have been maligned as egotistical. what has happened in recent times in this connection is that the instinct of self-denial and self-sacrifice, everything altruistic, has been glorified as if it were the supreme value of morality. the english moralists, who at present dominate europe, explain the origin of ethics in the following way: unselfish actions were originally called _good_ by those who were their objects and who benefited by them; afterwards this original reason for praising them was forgotten, and unselfish actions came to be regarded as good in themselves. according to a statement of nietzsche himself it was a work by a german author with english leanings, dr. paul rée's _der ursprung der moralischen empfindungen_ (chemnitz, ), which provoked him to such passionate and detailed opposition that he had to thank this book for the impulse to clear up and develop his own ideas on the subject. the surprising part of it, however, is this: dissatisfaction with his first book caused rée to write a second and far more important work on the same subject--_die entstehung des gewissens_ (berlin, )--in which the point of view offensive to nietzsche is abandoned and several of the leading ideas advanced by the latter against rée are set forth, supported by a mass of evidence taken from various authors and races of men. the two philosophers were personally acquainted. i knew them both, but had no opportunity of questioning either on this matter. it is therefore impossible for me to say which of the two influenced the other, or why nietzsche in alludes to his detestation of the opinions put forward by rée in , without mentioning how near the latter had come to his own view in the work published two years previously. rée had already adduced a number of examples to show that the most diverse peoples of antiquity knew no other moral classification of men than that of nobles and common people, powerful and weak; so that the oldest meaning of good both in greece and iceland was noble, mighty, rich. nietzsche builds his whole theory on this foundation. his train of thought is this-- the critical word _good_ is not due to those to whom goodness has been shown. the oldest definition was this: the noble, the mightier, higher-placed and high-minded held themselves and their actions to be _good_--of the first rank--in contradistinction to everything low and low-minded. noble, in the sense of the class-consciousness of a higher caste, is the primary concept from which develops _good_ in the sense of spiritually aristocratic. the lowly are designated as _bad_ (not evil). bad does not acquire its unqualified depreciatory meaning till much later. in the mouth of the people it is a laudatory word; the german word _schlecht_ is identical with _schlicht_ (cf. _schlechtweg_ and _schlechterdings_). the ruling caste call themselves sometimes simply the mighty, sometimes the truthful; like the greek nobility, whose mouthpiece theognis was. with him beautiful, good and noble always have the sense of aristocratic. the aristocratic moral valuation proceeds from a triumphant affirmation, a yea-saying, which we find in the homeric heroes: we, the noble, beautiful and brave--we are the good, the beloved of the gods. these are strong men, charged with force, who delight in warlike deeds, to whom, in other words, happiness is activity. it is of course unavoidable that these nobles should misjudge and despise the plebeian herd they dominate. yet as a rule there may be traced in them a pity for the downtrodden caste, for the drudge and beast of burden, an indulgence towards those to whom happiness is rest, the sabbath of inactivity. among the lower orders, on the other hand, an image of the ruling caste distorted by hatred and spite is necessarily current. in this distortion there lies a revenge.[ ] in opposition to the aristocratic valuation (good = noble, beautiful, happy, favoured by the gods) the slave morality then is this: the wretched alone are the _good_; those who suffer and are heavy laden, the sick and the ugly, they are the only pious ones. on the other hand, you, ye noble and rich, are to all eternity the _evil_, the cruel, the insatiate, the ungodly, and after death the damned. whereas noble morality was the manifestation of great self-esteem, a continual yea-saying, slave morality is a continual nay, a _thou shalt not_, a negation. to the noble valuation _good--bad_ (bad = worthless) corresponds the antithesis of slave morality, _good--evil_. and who are the evil in this morality of the oppressed? precisely the same who in the other morality were the good. let any one read the icelandic sagas and examine the morality of the ancient northmen, and then compare with it the complaints of other nations about the vikings' misdeeds. it will be seen that these aristocrats, whose conduct in many ways stood high, were no better than beasts of prey in dealing with their enemies. they fell upon the inhabitants of christian shores like eagles upon lambs. one may say they followed an eagle ideal. but then we cannot wonder that those who were exposed to such fearful attacks gathered round an entirely opposite moral ideal, that of the lamb. in the third chapter of his _utilitarianism_, stuart mill attempts to prove that the sense of justice has developed from the animal instinct of making reprisal for an injury or a loss. in an essay on "the transcendental satisfaction of the feeling of revenge" (supplement to the first edition of the _werth des lebens_) eugen dühring has followed him in trying to establish the whole doctrine of punishment upon the instinct of retaliation. in his _phänomenologie_ eduard von hartmann shows how this instinct strictly speaking never does more than involve a new suffering, a new offence, to gain external satisfaction for the old one, so that the principle of requital can never be any distinct principle. nietzsche makes a violent, passionate attempt to refer the sum total of false modern morality, not to the instinct of requital or to the feeling of revenge in general, but to the narrower form of it which we call spite, envy and _rancune_. what he calls slave morality is to him purely spite-morality; and this spite-morality gave new names to all ideals. thus impotence, which offers no reprisal, became goodness; craven baseness became humility; submission to him who was feared became obedience; inability to assert one's self became reluctance to assert one's self, became forgiveness, love of one's enemies. misery became a distinction; god chastens whom he loves. or it became a preparation, a trial and a training; even more--something that will one day be made good with interest, paid back in bliss. and the vilest underground creatures, swollen with hate and spite, were heard to say: we, the good, we are the righteous. they did not hate their enemies--they hated injustice, ungodliness. what they hoped for was not the sweets of revenge, but the victory of righteousness. those they had left to love on earth were their brothers and sisters in hatred, whom they called their brothers and sisters in love. the future state they looked for was called the coming of their kingdom, of god's kingdom. until it arrives they live on in faith, hope and love. if nietzsche's design in this picture was to strike at historical christianity, he has given us--as any one may see--a caricature in the spirit and style of the eighteenth century. but that his description hits off a certain type of the apostles of spite-morality cannot be denied, and rarely has all the self-deception that may lurk beneath moral preaching been more vigorously unmasked. (compare _beyond good and evil_ and _the genealogy of morals_.)[ ] [ ] nietzsche supports his hypothesis by derivations, some doubtful, others incorrect; but their value is immaterial. [ ] where nietzsche's words are quoted, in the course of this essay, considerable use has been made of the complete english translation of his works, edited by dr. oscar levy.--tr. . nietzsche would define man as an animal that can make and keep promises. he sees the real nobility of man in his capacity for promising something, answering for himself and undertaking a responsibility--since man, with the mastery of himself which this capacity implies, necessarily acquires in addition a mastery over external circumstances and over other creatures, whose will is not so lasting. the consciousness of this responsibility is what the sovereign man calls his conscience. what, then, is the past history of this responsibility, this conscience? it is a long and bloody one. frightful means have been used in the course of history to train men to remember what they have once promised or willed, tacitly or explicitly. for milleniums man was confined in the strait-jacket of the morality of custom, and by such punishments as stoning, breaking on the wheel or burning, by burying the sinner alive, tearing him asunder with horses, throwing him into the water with a stone on his neck or in a sack, by scourging, flaying and branding--by all these means a long memory for what he had promised was burnt into that forgetful animal, man; in return for which he was permitted to enjoy the advantages of being a member of society. according to nietzsche's hypothesis, the consciousness of guilt originates simply as consciousness of a debt. the relation of contract between creditor and debtor, which is as old as the earliest primitive forms of human intercourse in buying, selling, bartering, etc.--this is the relation that underlies it. the debtor (in order to inspire confidence in his promise of repayment) pledges something he possesses: his liberty, his woman, his life; or he gives his creditor the right of cutting a larger or smaller piece of flesh from his body, according to the amount of the debt. (the roman code of the twelve tables; again in _the merchant of venice_.) the logic of this, which has become somewhat strange to us, is as follows: as compensation for his loss the creditor is granted a kind of voluptuous sensation, the delight of being able to exercise his power upon the powerless. the reader may find evidence in rée (_op. cit_., p. ff.) for nietzsche's dictum, that for milleniums this was the view of mankind: the sight of suffering does one good. the infliction of suffering on another is a feast at which the fortunate one swells with the joy of power. we may also find evidence in rée that the instincts of pity, fairness and clemency, which were afterwards glorified as virtues, were originally regarded almost everywhere as morally worthless, nay, as indications of weakness. buying and selling, as well as everything psychologically connected therewith and older than any form of social organisation, contain the germs, in nietzsche's view, of compensation, assessing, justice and duty. man soon became proud of himself as a being who measures values. one of the earliest generalisations was this: everything has its price. and the thought that everything can be paid for was the oldest and most naïve canon of justice. now the whole of society, as it gradually develops, stands in the same relation to its members as the creditor to the debtor. society protects its members; they are assured against the state of outlawry--on condition that they do not break their pledges to the community. he who breaks his word--the criminal--is relegated to the outlawry involved in exclusion from society. as nietzsche, who is so exclusively taken up by the psychological aspect, discards all accessories of scholarship, it is impossible to examine directly the accuracy of his assertions. the historical data will be found collected in rée's paragraphs on resentment and the sense of justice, and in his section on the buying-off of revenge, i. e. settlement by fines. other thinkers besides nietzsche (such as e. von hartmann and rée) have combated the view that the idea of justice has its origin in a state of resentment, and nietzsche has scarcely brought to light any fresh and convincing proof; but what is characteristic of him as a writer is the excess of personal passion with which he attacks this view, obviously because it is connected with the reasoning of modern democracy. in many a modern cry for justice there rings a note of plebeian spite and envy. involuntarily many a modern savant of middle-class or lower middle-class origin has attributed an unwarrantable importance to the atavistic emotions prevalent among those who have been long oppressed: hatred and rancour, spite and thirst for revenge. nietzsche does not occupy himself for an instant with the state of things in which revenge does duty as the sole punitive justice; for the death feud is not a manifestation of the thrall's hatred of his master, but of ideas of honour among equals. he dwells exclusively on the contrast between a ruling caste and a caste of slaves, and shows a constantly recurring indignation with doctrines which have caused the progressive among his contemporaries to look with indulgence on the instincts of the populace and with suspicion or hostility on master spirits. his purely personal characteristic, however, the unphilosophical and temperamental in him, is revealed in the trait that, while he has nothing but scorn and contempt for the down-trodden class or race, for the _slave morality_ resulting from its suppressed rancour, he positively revels in the ruling caste's delight in its power, in the atmosphere of healthiness, freedom, frankness and truthfulness in which it lives. its acts of tyranny he defends or excuses. the image it creates for itself of the slave caste is to him far less falsified than that which the latter forms of the master caste. nor can there be serious question of any real injustice committed by this caste. for there is no such thing as right or wrong in itself. the infliction of an injury, forcible subjection, exploitation or annihilation is not in itself a wrong, cannot be such, since life in its essence, in its primary functions, is nothing but oppression, exploitation and annihilation. conditions of justice can never be anything but exceptional conditions, that is, as limitations of the real desire of life, the object of which is power. nietzsche replaces schopenhauer's _will to life_ and darwin's _struggle for existence_ by the _will to power_. in his view the fight is not for life--bare existence--but for power. and he has a great deal to say--somewhat beside the mark--of the mean and paltry conditions those englishmen must have had in view who set up the modest conception of the struggle for life. it appears to him as if they had imagined a world in which everybody is glad if he can only keep body and soul together. but life is only an expression for the minimum. in itself life seeks, not self-preservation alone, but self-increase, and this is precisely the "will to power." it is therefore obvious that there is no difference of principle between the new catchword and the old; for the struggle for existence necessarily leads to the conflict of forces and the fight for power. now a system of justice, seen from this standpoint, is a factor in the conflict of forces. conceived as supreme, as a remedy for every kind of struggle, it would be a principle hostile to life and destructive of the future and progress of humanity. something similar was in the mind of lassalle, when he declared that the standpoint of justice was a bad standpoint in the life of nations. what is significant of nietzsche is his love of fighting for its own sake, in contrast to the modern humanitarian view. to nietzsche the greatness of a movement is to be measured by the sacrifices it demands. the hygiene which keeps alive millions of weak and useless beings who ought rather to die, is to him no true progress. a dead level of mediocre happiness assured to the largest possible majority of the miserable creatures we nowadays call men, would be to him no true progress. but to him, as to renan, the rearing of a human species higher and stronger than that which now surrounds us (the "superman"), even if this could only be achieved by the sacrifice of masses of such men as we know, would be a great, a real progress. nietzsche's visions, put forth in all seriousness, of the training of the superman and his assumption of the mastery of the world, bear so strong a resemblance to renan's dreams, thrown out half in jest, of a new asgard, a regular manufactory of Æsir (_dialogues philosophiques_, ), that we can scarcely doubt the latter's influence. but what renan wrote under the overwhelming impression of the paris commune, and, moreover, in the form of dialogue, allowing both _pro_ and _con_. to be heard, has crystallised in nietzsche into dogmatic conviction. one is therefore surprised and hurt to find that nietzsche never mentions renan otherwise than grudgingly. he scarcely alludes to the aristocratic quality of his intellect, but he speaks with repugnance of that respect for the gospel of the humble which renan everywhere discloses, and which is undeniably at variance with his hope of the foundation of a breeding establishment for supermen. renan, and after him taine, turned against the almost religious feelings which were long entertained in the new europe towards the first french revolution. renan regretted the revolution betimes on national grounds; taine, who began by speaking warmly of it, changed his mind on closer inquiry. nietzsche follows in their footsteps. it is natural for modern authors, who feel themselves to be the children of the revolution, to sympathise with the men of the great revolt; and certainly the latter do not receive their due in the present anti-revolutionary state of feeling in europe. but these authors, in their dread of what in political jargon is called cæsarism, and in their superstitious belief in mass movements, have overlooked the fact that the greatest revolutionaries and liberators are not the united small, but the few great; not the small ungenerous, but the great and generous, who are willing to bestow justice and well-being and intellectual growth upon the rest. there are two classes of revolutionary spirits: those who feel instinctively drawn to brutus, and those who equally instinctively are attracted by cæsar. cæsar is the great type; neither frederick the great nor napoleon could claim more than a part of his qualities. the modern poetry of the 'forties teems with songs in praise of brutus, but no poet has sung cæsar. even a poet with so little love for democracy as shakespeare totally failed to recognise his greatness; he gave us a pale caricature of his figure and followed plutarch in glorifying brutus at his expense. even shakespeare could not see that cæsar placed a very different stake on the table of life from that of his paltry murderer. cæsar was descended from venus; in his form was grace. his mind had the grand simplicity which is the mark of the greatest; his nature was nobility. he, from whom even to-day all supreme power takes its name, had every attribute that belongs to a commander and ruler of the highest rank. only a few men of the italian renaissance have reached such a height of genius. his life was a guarantee of all the progress that could be accomplished in those days. brutus's nature was doctrine, his distinguishing mark the narrowness that seeks to bring back dead conditions and that sees omens of a call in the accident of a name. his style was dry and laborious, his mind unfertile. his vice was avarice, usury his delight. to him the provinces were conquests beyond the pale. he had five senators of salamis starved to death because the town could not pay. and on account of a dagger-thrust, which accomplished nothing and hindered nothing of what it was meant to hinder, this arid brain has been made a sort of genius of liberty, merely because men have failed to understand what it meant to have the strongest, richest and noblest nature invested with supreme power. from what has been said above it will easily be understood that nietzsche derives justice entirely from the active emotions, since in his view revengeful feelings are always low. he does not dwell on this point, however. older writers had seen in the instinct of retaliation the origin of punishment. stuart mill, in his _utilitarianism_, derived justice from already established punitive provisions (_justum_ from _jussum_), which were precautionary measures, not reprisals. rée, in his book on the _origin of conscience_, defended the kindred proposition that punishment is not a consequence of the sense of justice, but _vice versa_. the english philosophers in general derive the bad conscience from punishment. the value of the latter is supposed to consist in awakening a sense of guilt in the delinquent. against this nietzsche enters a protest. he maintains that punishment only hardens and benumbs a man; in fact, that the judicial procedure itself prevents the criminal from regarding his conduct as reprehensible; since he is made to witness precisely the same kind of acts as those he has committed--spying, entrapping, outwitting and torturing--all of which are sanctioned when exercised against him in the cause of justice. for long ages, too, no notice whatever was taken of the criminal's "sin"; he was regarded as harmful, not guilty, and looked upon as a piece of destiny; and the criminal on his side took his punishment as a piece of destiny which had overtaken him, and bore it with the same fatalism with which the russians suffer to this day. in general we may say that punishment tames the man, but does not make him "better." the bad conscience, then, is still unexplained. nietzsche proposes the following brilliant hypothesis: the bad conscience is the deep-seated morbid condition that declared itself in man under the stress of the most radical change he has ever experienced--when he found himself imprisoned in perpetuity within a society which was inviolable. all the strong and savage instincts such as adventurousness, rashness, cunning, rapacity, lust of power, which till then had not only been honoured, but actually encouraged, were suddenly put down as dangerous, and by degrees branded as immoral and criminal. creatures adapted to a roving life of war and adventure suddenly saw all their instincts classed as worthless, nay, as forbidden. an immense despondency, a dejection without parallel, then took possession of them. and all these instincts that were not allowed an outward vent, turned inwards on the man himself--feelings of enmity, cruelty, delight in change, in hazard, violence, persecution, destruction--and thus the bad conscience originated. when the state came into existence--not by a social contract, as rousseau and his contemporaries assumed--but by a frightful tyranny imposed by a conquering race upon a more numerous, but unorganised population, then all the latter's instinct of freedom turned inwards; its active force and will to power were directed against man himself. and this was the soil which bore such ideals of beauty as self-denial, self-sacrifice, unselfishness. the delight in self-sacrifice is in its origin a phase of cruelty; the bad conscience is a will for self-abuse. then by degrees guilt came to be felt as a debt, to the past, to the ancestors; a debt that had to be paid back in sacrifices--at first of nourishment in its crudest sense--in marks of honour and in obedience; for all customs, as the work of ancestors, are at the same time their commands.[ ] there is a constant dread of not giving them enough; the firstborn, human and animal, are sacrificed to them. fear of the founder grows in proportion as the power of the race increases. sometimes he becomes transformed into a god, in which the origin of the god from fear is clearly seen. the feeling of owing a debt to the deity steadily grew through the centuries, until the recognition of the christian deity as universal god brought about the greatest possible outburst of guilty feeling. only in our day is any noticeable diminution of this sense of guilt to be traced; but where the consciousness of sin reaches its culminating point, there the bad conscience eats its way like a cancer, till the sense of the impossibility of paying the debt--atoning for the sin--is supreme and with it is combined the idea of eternal punishment. a curse is now imagined to have been laid upon the founder of the race (adam), and all sin becomes original sin. indeed, the evil principle is attributed to nature herself, from whose womb man has sprung--until we arrive at the paradoxical expedient in which tormented christendom has found a temporary consolation for two thousand years: god offers himself for the guilt of mankind, pays himself in his own flesh and blood. what has here happened is that the instinct of cruelty, which has turned inwards, has become self-torture, and all man's animal instincts have been reinterpreted as guilt towards god. every nay man utters to his nature, to his real being, he flings out as a yea, an affirmation of reality applied to god's sanctity, his capacity of judge and executioner, and in the next place to eternity, the "beyond," pain without end, eternal punishment in hell. in order rightly to understand the origin of ascetic ideals, we must, moreover, consider that the earliest generations of spiritual and contemplative natures lived under a fearful pressure of contempt on the part of the hunters and warriors. the unwarlike element in them was despicable. they had no other means of holding their own than that of inspiring fear. this they could only do by cruelty to themselves, mortification and self-discipline in a hermit's life. as priests, soothsayers and sorcerers they then struck superstitious terror into the masses. the ascetic priest is the unsightly larva from which the healthy philosopher has emerged. under the dominion of the priests our earth became the ascetic planet; a squalid den careering through space, peopled by discontented and arrogant creatures, who were disgusted with life, abhorred their globe as a vale of tears, and who in their envy and hatred of beauty and joy did themselves as much harm as possible. nevertheless the self-contradiction we find in asceticism--life turned _against_ life--is of course only apparent. in reality the ascetic ideal corresponds to a decadent life's profound need of healing and tending. it is an ideal that points to depression and exhaustion; by its help life struggles against death. it is life's device for self-preservation. its necessary antecedent is a morbid condition in the tamed human being, a disgust with life, coupled with the desire to be something else, to be somewhere else, raised to the highest pitch of emotion and passion. the ascetic priest is the embodiment of this very wish. by its power he keeps the whole herd of dejected, fainthearted, despairing and unsuccessful creatures, fast to life. the very fact that he himself is sick makes him their born herdsman. if he were healthy, he would turn away with loathing from all this eagerness to re-label weakness, envy, pharisaism and false morality as virtue. but, being himself sick, he is called upon to be an attendant in the great hospital of sinners--the church. he is constantly occupied with sufferers who seek the cause of their pain outside themselves; he teaches the patient that the guilty cause of his pain is himself. thus he diverts the rancour of the abortive man and makes him less harmful, by letting a great part of his resentment recoil on himself. the ascetic priest cannot properly be called a physician; he mitigates suffering and invents consolations of every kind, both narcotics and stimulants. the problem was to contend with fatigue and despair, which had seized like an epidemic upon great masses of men. many remedies were tried. first, it was sought to depress vitality to the lowest degree: not to will, not to desire, not to work, and so on; to become apathetic (pascal's _il faut s'abêtir_). the object was sanctification, a hypnotising of all mental life, a relaxation of every purpose, and consequently freedom from pain. in the next place, mechanical activity was employed as a narcotic against states of depression: the "blessing of labour." the ascetic priest, who has to deal chiefly with sufferers of the poorer classes, reinterprets the task of the unfortunate drudge for him, making him see in it a benefit. then again, the prescription of a little, easily accessible joy, is a favourite remedy for depression; such as gladdening others, helping them in love of one's neighbour. finally, the decisive cure is to organise all the sick into an immense hospital, to found a congregation of them. the disinclination that accompanies the sense of weakness is thereby combated, since the mass feels strong in its inner cohesion. but the chief remedy of the ascetic priest was, after all, his reinterpretation of the feeling of guilt as "sin." the inner suffering was a punishment. the sick man was the sinner. nietzsche compares the unfortunate who receives this explanation of his qualms with a hen round which a chalk circle has been drawn: he cannot get out. wherever we look, for century after century, we see the hypnotic gaze of the sinner, staring--in spite of job--at guilt as the only cause of suffering. everywhere the evil conscience and the scourge and the hairy shirt and weeping and gnashing of teeth, and the cry of "more pain! more pain!" everything served the ascetic ideal. and then arose epidemics like those of st. vitus's dance and the flagellants, witches' hysteria and the wholesale delirium of extravagant sects (which still lingers in otherwise beneficially disciplined bodies such as the salvation army). the ascetic ideal has as yet no real assailants; there is no decided prophet of a new ideal. inasmuch as since the time of copernicus science has constantly tended to deprive man of his earlier belief in his own importance, its influence is rather favourable to asceticism than otherwise. at present the only real enemies and underminers of the ascetic ideal are to be found in the charlatans of that ideal, in its hypocritical champions, who excite and maintain distrust of it. as the senselessness of suffering was felt to be a curse, the ascetic ideal gave it a meaning; a meaning which brought a new flood of suffering with it, but which was better than none. in our day a new ideal is in process of formation, which sees in suffering a condition of life, a condition of happiness, and which in the name of a new culture combats all that we have hitherto called culture. [ ] compare lassalle's theory of the original religion of rome. g. brandes; _ferdinand lassalle_ (london and new york, ), pp. ff. . among nietzsche's works there is a strange book which bears the title, _thus spake zarathustra_. it consists of four parts, written during the years - , each part in about ten days, and conceived chapter by chapter on long walks--"with a feeling of inspiration, as though each sentence had been shouted in my ear," as nietzsche wrote in a private letter. the central figure and something of the form are borrowed from the persian _avesta_. zarathustra is the mystical founder of a religion whom we usually call zoroaster. his religion is the religion of purity; his wisdom is cheerful and dauntless, as that of one who laughed at his birth; his nature is light and flame. the eagle and the serpent, who share his mountain cave, the proudest and the wisest of beasts, are ancient persian symbols. this work contains nietzsche's doctrine in the form, so to speak, of religion. it is the koran, or rather the avesta, which he was impelled to leave--obscure and profound, high-soaring and remote from reality, prophetic and intoxicated with the future, filled to the brim with the personality of its author, who again is entirely filled with himself. among modern books that have adopted this tone and employed this symbolic and allegorical style may be mentioned mickiewicz's _book of the polish pilgrims_, slowacki's anheli, and the words of a believer, by lamennais, who was influenced by mickiewicz. a newer work, known to nietzsche, is carl spitteler's prometheus and epimetheus ( ). but all these books, with the exception of spitteler's, are biblical in their language. zarathustra, on the other hand, is a book of edification for free spirits. nietzsche himself gave this book the highest place among his writings. i do not share this view. the imaginative power which sustains it is not sufficiently inventive, and a certain monotony is inseparable from an archaistic presentment by means of types. but it is a good book for those to have recourse to who are unable to master nietzsche's purely speculative works; it contains all his fundamental ideas in the form of poetic recital. its merit is a style that from the first word to the last is full-toned, sonorous and powerful; now and then rather unctuous in its combative judgments and condemnations; always expressive of self-joy, nay, self-intoxication, but rich in subtleties as in audacities, sure, and at times great. behind this style lies a mood as of calm mountain air, so light, so ethereally pure, that no infection, no bacteria can live in it--no noise, no stench, no dust assails it, nor does any path lead up. clear sky above, open sea at the mountain's foot, and over all a heaven of light, an abyss of light, an azure bell, a vaulted silence above roaring waters and mighty mountain-chains. on the heights zarathustra is alone with himself, drawing in the pure air in full, deep breaths, alone with the rising sun, alone with the heat of noon, which does not impair the freshness, alone with the voices of the gleaming stars at night. a good, deep book it is. a book that is bright in its joy of life, dark in its riddles, a book for spiritual mountain-climbers and dare-devils and for the few who are practised in the great contempt of man that loathes the crowd, and in the great love of man that only loathes so deeply because it has a vision of a higher, braver humanity, which it seeks to rear and train. zarathustra has sought the refuge of his cave out of disgust with petty happiness and petty virtues. he has seen that men's doctrine of virtue and contentment makes them ever smaller: their goodness is in the main a wish that no one may do them any harm; therefore they forestall the others by doing them a little good. this is cowardice and is called virtue. true, they are at the same time quite ready to attack and injure, but only those who are once for all at their mercy and with whom it is safe to take liberties. this is called bravery and is a still baser cowardice. but when zarathustra tries to drive out the cowardly devils in men, the cry is raised against him, "zarathustra is godless." he is lonely, for all his former companions have become apostates; their young hearts have grown old, and not old even, only weary and slothful, only commonplace--and this they call becoming pious again. "around light and liberty they once fluttered like gnats and young poets, and already are they mystifiers, and mumblers and mollycoddles." they have understood their age. they chose their time well. "for now do all night-birds again fly abroad. now is the hour of all that dread the light." zarathustra loathes the great city as a hell for anchorites' thoughts. "all lusts and vices are here at home; but here are also the virtuous, much appointable and appointed virtue. much appointable virtue with scribe-fingers and hardy sitting-flesh and waiting-flesh, blessed with little breast-stars and padded, haunchless daughters. here is also much piety and much devout spittle-licking and honey-slavering before the god of hosts. for 'from on high' drippeth the star and the gracious spittle; and upward longeth every starless bosom." and zarathustra loathes the state, loathes it as henrik ibsen did and more profoundly than he. to him the state is the coldest of all cold monsters. its fundamental lie is that it is the people. no; creative spirits were they who created the people and gave it a faith and a love; thus they served life; every people is peculiar to itself, but the state is everywhere the same. the state is to zarathustra that "where the slow suicide of all is called life." the state is for the many too many. only where the state leaves oft does the man who is not superfluous begin; the man who is a bridge to the superman. from states zarathustra has fled up to his mountain, into his cave. in forbearance and pity lay his greatest danger. rich in, the little lies of pity he dwelt among men. "stung from head to foot by poisonous flies and hollowed out like a stone by many drops of malice, thus did i sit among them, saying to myself: innocent is everything petty of its pettiness. especially they who call themselves the good, they sting in all innocence, they lie in all innocence; how could they be just towards me? "he who dwelleth among the good, him teacheth pity to lie. pity breedeth bad air for all free souls. for the stupidity of the good is unfathomable. "their stiff wise men did i call wise, not stiff. their grave-diggers did i call searchers and testers--thus did i learn to confound speech. the grave-diggers dig for themselves diseases. from old refuse arise evil exhalations. upon the mountains one should live." and with blessed nostrils he breathes again the freedom of the mountains. his nose is now released from the smell of all that is human. there sits zarathustra with old broken tables of the law around him and new half-written tables, awaiting his hour; the hour when the lion shall come with the flock of doves, strength in company with gentleness, to do homage to him. and he holds out to men a new table, upon which such maxims as these are written-- spare not thy neighbour! my great love for the remotest ones commands it. thy neighbour is something that must be surpassed. say not: i will do unto others as i would they should do unto me. what _thou_ doest, that can no man do to thee again. there is no requital. do not believe that thou mayst not rob. a right which thou canst seize upon, shalt thou never allow to be given thee. beware of good men. they never speak the truth. for all that they call evil--the daring venture, the prolonged distrust, the cruel nay, the deep disgust with men, the will and the power to cut into the quick--all this must be present where a truth is to be born. all the past is at man's mercy. but, this being so, it might happen that the rabble became master and drowned all time in its shallow waters, or that a tyrant usurped it all. therefore we need a new nobility, to be the adversary of all rabble and all tyranny, and to inscribe on new tables the word "noble." certainly not a nobility that can be bought, nor a nobility whose virtue is love of country. no, teaches zarathustra, exiles shall ye be from your fatherlands and forefatherlands. not the land of your fathers shall ye love, but your children's land. this love is the new nobility--love of that new land, the undiscovered, far-off country in the remotest sea. to your children shall ye make amends for the misfortune of being your fathers' children. thus shall ye redeem all the past. zarathustra is full of lenity. others have said: thou shalt not commit adultery. zarathustra teaches: the honest should say to each other, "let us see whether our love continue; let us fix a term, that we may find out whether we desire a longer term." what cannot be bent, will be broken. a woman said to zarathustra, "indeed, i broke the marriage, but first did the marriage break me." zarathustra is without mercy. it has been said: push not a leaning waggon. but zarathustra says: that which is ready to fall, shall ye also push. all that belongs to our day is falling and decaying. no one can preserve it, but zarathustra will even help it to fall faster. zarathustra loves the brave. but not the bravery that takes up every challenge. there is often more bravery in holding back and passing by and reserving one's self for a worthier foe. zarathustra does not teach: ye shall love your enemies, but: ye shall not engage in combat with enemies ye despise. why so hard? men cry to zarathustra. he replies: why so hard, once said the charcoal to the diamond; are we not near of kin? the creators are hard. their blessedness it is to press their hand upon future centuries as upon wax. no doctrine revolts zarathustra more than that of the vanity and senselessness of life. this is in his eyes ancient babbling, old wives' babbling. and the pessimists who sum up life with a balance of aversion, and assert the badness of existence, are the objects of his positive loathing. he prefers pain to annihilation. the same extravagant love of life is expressed in the _hymn to life_, written by his friend, lou von salomé, which nietzsche set for chorus and orchestra. we read here-- "so truly loves a friend his friend as i love thee, o life in myst'ry hidden! if joy or grief to me thou send; if loud i laugh or else to weep am bidden, yet love i thee with all thy changeful faces; and should'st thou doom me to depart, so would i tear myself from thy embraces, as comrade from a comrade's heart." and the poem concludes-- "and if thou hast now left no bliss to crown me. lead on i thou hast thy sorrow still!"[ ] when achilles chose to be a day-labourer on earth rather than a king in the realm of the shades, the expression was a weak one in comparison with this passionate outburst, which paradoxically thirsts even for the cup of pain. eduard von hartmann believes in a beginning and end of the "world process." he concludes that no eternity can lie behind us; otherwise everything possible must already have happened, which--according to his contention--is not the case. in sharp contrast to him, on this point as on others, zarathustra teaches, with, be it said, a somewhat shallow mysticism--which is derived from the ancient pythagoreans' idea of the circular course of history and is influenced by cohelet's hebrew philosophy of life--the eternal recurrence; that is to say, that all things eternally return and we ourselves with them, that we have already existed an infinite number of times and all things with us. the great clock of the universe is to him an hour-glass, which is constantly turned and runs out again and again. this is the direct antithesis of hartmann's doctrine of universal destruction, and curiously enough it was put forward at about the same time by two french thinkers: by blanqui in _l'Éternité par les astres_ ( ), and by gustave le bon in _l'homme et les sociétés_ ( ). at his death zarathustra will say: now i disappear and die; in a moment i shall be nothing, for the soul is mortal as the body; but the complex of causes in which i am involved will return, and it will continually reproduce me. at the close of the third part of _zarathustra_ there is a chapter headed "the second dance song." dance, in nietzsche's language, is always an expression for the lofty lightness of mind, which is exalted above the gravity of earth and above all stupid seriousness. this song, extremely remarkable in its language, is a good specimen of the style of the work, when it soars into its highest flights of poetry. life appears to zarathustra as a woman; she strikes her castanets and he dances with her, flinging out all his wrath with life and all his love of life. "lately looked i into thine eyes, o life! gold saw i gleaming in thy night-eye--my heart stood still with the joy of it. "a golden skiff saw i gleaming upon shadowy waters, a sinking, drinking, reblinking, golden swinging-skiff. "at my foot, dancing-mad, didst thou cast a glance, a laughing, questioning, melting, swinging-glance. "twice only did thy little hands strike the castanets --then was my foot swinging in the madness of the dance. ********************************************************* "i fear thee near, i love thee far; thy flight allureth me, thy seeking secureth me; i suffer, but for thee, what would i not gladly bear! "for thee, whose coldness inflameth, whose hatred mis-leadeth, whose flight enchaineth, whose mockery pleadeth! "who would not hate thee, thou great bindress, inwindress, temptress, seekress, findress! who would not love thee, thou innocent, impatient, wind-swift, child-eyed sinner!" in this dialogue between the dancers, life and her lover, these words occur: o zarathustra, thou art far from loving me as dearly as thou sayest; thou art not faithful enough to me. there is an old, heavy booming-clock; it boometh by night up to thy cave. when thou hearest this clock at midnight, then dost thou think until noon that soon thou wilt forsake me. and then follows, in conclusion, the song of the old midnight clock. but in the fourth part of the work, in the section called "the sleepwalker's song," this short strophe is interpreted line by line; in form half like a mediæval watchman's chant, half like the hymn of a mystic, it contains the mysterious spirit of nietzsche's esoteric doctrine concentrated in the shortest formula-- midnight is drawing on, and as mysteriously, as terribly, and as cordially as the midnight bell speaketh to zarathustra, so calleth he to the higher men: at midnight many a thing is heard which may not be heard by day; and the midnight speaketh: _o man, take heed_! whither hath time gone? have i not sunk into deep wells? the world sleepeth. and shuddering it asketh: who is to be master of the world? _what saith the deep midnight_? the bell boometh, the wood-worm burroweth, the heart-worm gnaweth: _ah! the world is deep_. but the old bell is like a sonorous instrument; all pain hath bitten into its heart, the pain of fathers and forefathers; and all joy hath set it swinging, the joy of fathers and forefathers--there riseth from the bell an odour of eternity, a rosy-blessed, golden-wine perfume of old happiness, and this song: the world is deep, _and deeper than the day had thought_. i am too pure for the rude hands of the day. the purest shall be masters of the world, the unacknowledged, the strongest, the midnight-souls, who are brighter and deeper than any day. _deep is its woe_. but joy goeth deeper than heart's grief. for grief saith: break, my heart! fly away, my pain! _woe saith: begone_! but, ye higher men, said ye ever yea to a single joy, then said ye also yea unto all woe. for joy and woe are linked, enamoured, inseparable. and all beginneth again, all is eternal. _all joys desire eternity, deep, deep, eternity_. this, then, is the midnight song-- "oh mensch! gieb acht! was spricht die tiefe mitternacht? 'ich schlief, ich schlief-- aus tiefem traum bin ich erwacht:-- die welt ist tief, und tiefer als der tag gedacht. tief ist ihr weh-- lust--tiefer noch als herzeleid: weh spricht: vergeh! doch alle lust will ewigkeit-- --will tiefe, tiefe ewigkeit!'" [ ] translated by herman scheffauer. text and pianoforte score are given in vol. xvii (_ecce homo_) of the english edition of nietzsche's works. . such is he, then, this warlike mystic, poet and thinker, this immoralist who is never tired of preaching. coming to him fresh from the english philosophers, one feels transported to another world. the englishmen are all patient spirits, whose natural bent is towards the accumulation and investigation of a mass of small facts in order thereby to discover a law. the best of them are aristotelian minds. few of them fascinate us personally or seem to be of very complex personality. their influence lies more in what they do than in what they are. nietzsche, on the other hand, like schopenhauer, is a guesser, a seer, an artist, less interesting in what he does than in what he is. little as he feels himself a german, he nevertheless continues the metaphysical and intuitive tradition of german philosophy and has the german thinker's profound dislike of any utilitarian point of view. in his passionate aphoristical form he is unquestionably original; in the substance of his thought he reminds one here and there of many another writer, both of contemporary germany and of france; but he evidently regards, it as perfectly absurd that he should have to thank a contemporary for anything, and storms like a german at all those who resemble him in any point. i have already mentioned how strongly he reminds one of ernest renan in his conception of culture and in his hope of an aristocracy of intellect that could seize the dominion of the world. nevertheless he has not one appreciative word to say for renan. i have also alluded to the fact that eduard von hartmann was his predecessor in his fight against schopenhauer's morality of pity. in this author, whose talent is indisputable, even though his importance may not correspond with his extraordinary reputation, nietzsche, with the uncritical injustice of a german university professor, would only see a charlatan. hartmann's nature is of heavier stuff than nietzsche's. he is ponderous, self-complacent, fundamentally teutonic, and, in contrast to nietzsche, entirely unaffected by french spirit and southern sunshine. but there are points of resemblance between them, which are due to historical conditions in the germany that reared them both. in the first place, there was something analogous in their positions in life, since both as artillerymen had gone through a similar schooling; and in the second place, in their culture, inasmuch as the starting-point of both is schopenhauer and both nevertheless retain a great respect for hegel, thus uniting these two hostile brothers in their veneration. they are further in agreement in their equally estranged attitude to christian piety and christian morality, as well as in their contempt, so characteristic of modern germany, for every kind of democracy. nietzsche resembles hartmann in his attacks on socialists and anarchists, with the difference that hartmann's attitude is here more that of the savant, while nietzsche has the bad taste to delight in talking about "anarchist dogs," expressing in the same breath his own loathing of the state. nietzsche further resembles hartmann in his repeated demonstration of the impossibility of the ideals of equality and of peace, since life is nothing but inequality and war: "what is good? to be brave is good. i do not say, the good cause sanctifies war, but the good war sanctifies every cause." like his predecessor, he dwells on the necessity of the struggle for power and on the supposed value of war to culture. in both these authors, comparatively independent as they are, the one a mystical natural philosopher, the other a mystical immoralist, is reflected the all-dominating militarism of the new german empire. hartmann approaches on many points the german snobbish national feeling. nietzsche is opposed to it on principle, as he is to the statesman "who has piled up for the germans a new tower of babel, a monster in extent of territory and power and for that reason called great," but something of bismarck's spirit broods nevertheless over the works of both. as regards the question of war, the only difference between them is that nietzsche does not desire war for the sake of a fantastic redemption of the world, but in order that manliness may not become extinct. in his contempt for woman and his abuse of her efforts for emancipation nietzsche again agrees with hartmann, though only in so far as both here recall schopenhauer, whose echo hartmann is in this connection. but whereas hartmann is here only a moralising doctrinaire with a somewhat offensive dash of pedantry, one can trace beneath nietzsche's attacks on the female sex that subtle sense of woman's dangerousness which points to painful experience. he does not seem to have known many women, but those he did know, he evidently loved and hated, but above all despised. again and again he returns to the unfitness of the free and great spirit for marriage. in many of these utterances there is a strongly personal note, especially in those which persistently assert the necessity of a solitary life for a thinker. but as regards the less personal arguments about woman, old-world germany here speaks through the mouth of nietzsche, as through that of hartmann; the germany whose women, in contrast to those of france and england, have for centuries been relegated to the domestic and strictly private life. we may recognise in these german writers generally that they have an eye for the profound antagonism and perpetual war between the sexes, which stuart mill neither saw nor understood. but the injustice to man and the rather tame fairness to woman, in which mill's admirable emancipatory attempt occasionally results, is nevertheless greatly to be preferred to nietzsche's brutal unfairness, which asserts that in our treatment of women we ought to return to "the vast common sense of old asia." finally, in his conflict with pessimism nietzsche had eugen dühring (especially in his _werth des lebens_) as a forerunner, and this circumstance seems to have inspired him with so much ill-will, so much exasperation indeed, that in a polemic now open, now disguised, he calls dühring his ape. dühring is a horror to him as a plebeian, as an antisemite, as the apostle of revenge, and as the disciple of the englishmen and of comte; but nietzsche has not a word to say about dühring's very remarkable qualities, to which such epithets as these do not apply. but we can easily understand, taking nietzsche's own destiny into consideration, that dühring, the blind man, the neglected thinker who despises official scholars, the philosopher who teaches outside the universities, who, in spite of being so little pampered by life, loudly proclaims his love of life--should appear to nietzsche as a caricature of himself. this was, however, no reason for his now and then adopting dühring's abusive tone. and it must be confessed that, much as nietzsche wished to be what, for that matter, he was--a polish _szlachcic_, a european man of the world and a cosmopolitan thinker--in one respect he always remained the german professor: in the rude abuse in which his uncontrolled hatred of rivals found vent; and, after all, his only rivals as a modern german philosopher were hartmann and dühring. it is strange that this man, who learned such an immense amount from french moralists and psychologists like la rochefoucauld, chamfort and stendhal, was able to acquire so little of the self-control of their form. he was never subjected to the restraint which the literary tone of france imposes upon every writer as regards the mention and exhibition of his own person. for a long time he seems to have striven to discover himself and to become completely himself. in order to find himself he crept into his solitude, as zarathustra into his cave. by the time he had succeeded in arriving at full independent development and felt the rich flow of individual thought within him, he had lost all external standards for measuring his own value; all bridges to the world around him were broken down. the fact that no recognition came from without only aggravated his self-esteem. the first glimmer of recognition further exalted this self-esteem. at last it closed above his head and darkened this rare and commanding intellect. as he stands disclosed in his incompleted life-work, he is a writer well worth studying. my principal reason for calling attention to him is that scandinavian literature appears to me to have been living quite long enough on the ideas that were put forward and discussed in the last decade. it looks as though the power of conceiving great ideas were on the wane, and even as though receptivity for them were fast vanishing; people are still busy with the same doctrines, certain theories of heredity, a little darwinism, a little emancipation of woman, a little morality of happiness, a little freethought, a little worship of democracy, etc. and as to the culture of our "cultured" people, the level represented approximately by the revue des deux mondes threatens to become the high-water mark of taste. it does not seem yet to have dawned on the best among us that the finer, the only true culture begins on the far side of the _revue des deux mondes_ in the great personality, rich in ideas. the intellectual development of scandinavia has advanced comparatively rapidly in its literature. we have seen great authors rise above all orthodoxy, though they began by being perfectly simple-hearted believers. this is very honourable, but in the case of those who cannot rise higher still, it is nevertheless rather meagre. in the course of the 'seventies it became clear to almost all scandinavian authors that it would no longer do to go on writing on the basis of the augsburg confession. some quietly dropped it, others opposed it more or less noisily; while most of those who abandoned it entrenched themselves against the public, and to some extent against the bad conscience of their own childhood, behind the established protestant morality; now and then, indeed, behind a good, everyday soup-stock morality--i call it thus because so many a soup has been served from it. but be that as it may, attacks on existing prejudices and defence of existing institutions threaten at present to sink into one and the same commonplace familiarity. soon, i believe, we shall once more receive a lively impression that art cannot rest content with ideas and ideals for the average mediocrity, any more than with remnants of the old' catechisms; but that great art demands intellects that stand on a level with the most individual personalities of contemporary thought, in exceptionality, in independence, in defiance and in aristocratic self-supremacy. ii december more than ten years have gone by since i first called attention to friedrich nietzsche. my essay on "aristocratic radicalism" was the first study of any length to be devoted, in the whole of europe, to this man, whose name has since flown round the world and is at this moment one of the most famous among our contemporaries. this thinker, then almost unknown and seldom mentioned, became, a few years later, the fashionable philosopher in every country of europe, and this while the great man, to whose lot had suddenly fallen the universal fame he had so passionately desired, lived on without a suspicion of it all, a living corpse cut off from the world by incurable insanity. beginning with his native land, which so long as he retained his powers never gave him a sign of recognition, his writings have now made their way in every country. even in france, usually so loth to admit foreign, and especially german, influence, his character and his doctrine have been studied and expounded again and again. in germany, as well as outside it, a sort of school has been formed, which appeals to his authority and not unfrequently compromises him, or rather itself, a good deal. the opposition to him is conducted sometimes (as by ludwig stein) on serious and scientific lines, although from narrow pedagogic premises; sometimes (as by herr max nordau) with sorry weapons and with the assumed superiority of presumptuous mediocrity. interesting articles and books on nietzsche have been written by peter gast and lou von salomé in german and by henri lichtenberger in french; and in addition nietzsche's sister, frau elisabeth förster-nietzsche, has not only published an excellent edition of his collected works (including his youthful sketches), but has written his life (and published his correspondence). my old essay on nietzsche has thus long ago been outstripped by later works, the writers of which were able to take a knowledge of nietzsche's work for granted and therefore to examine his writings without at the same time having to acquaint the reader with their contents. that essay, it may be remembered, occasioned an exchange of words between prof. höffding and myself, in the course of which i had the opportunity of expressing my own views more clearly and of showing what points they had in common with nietzsche's, and where they diverged from his.[ ] as, of course, these polemical utterances of mine were not translated into foreign languages, no notice was taken of them anywhere abroad. the first essay itself, on the other hand, which was soon translated, brought me in a number of attacks, which gradually acquired a perfectly stereotyped formula. in an article by a germanised swede, who wanted to be specially spiteful, i was praised for having in that essay broken with my past and resolutely renounced the set of liberal opinions and ideas i had hitherto championed. whatever else i might be blamed for, it had to be acknowledged that twice in my life i had been the spokesman of german ideas, in my youth of hegel's and in my maturer years of nietzsche's. in a book by a noisy german charlatan living in paris, herr nordau, it was shortly afterwards asserted that if danish parents could guess what i was really teaching their children at the university of copenhagen, they would kill me in the street--a downright incitement to murder, which was all the more comic in its pretext, as admission to my lectures has always been open to everybody, the greater part of these lectures has appeared in print, and, finally, twenty years ago the parents used very frequently to come and hear me. it was repeated in the same quarter that after being a follower of stuart mill, i had in that essay turned my back on my past, since i had now appeared as an adherent of nietzsche. this last statement was afterwards copied in a very childish book by a viennese lady who, without a notion of the actual facts, writes away, year in, year out, on scandinavian literature for the benefit of the german public. this nonsense was finally disgorged once more in by mr. alfred ipsen, who contributed to the london _athenæum_ surveys of danish literature, among the virtues of which impartiality did not find a place. in the face of these constantly repeated assertions from abroad, i may be permitted to make it clear once more--as i have already shown in _tilskueren_ in (p. )--that my principles have not been in the slightest way modified through contact with nietzsche. when i became acquainted with him i was long past the age at which it is possible to change one's fundamental view of life. moreover, i maintained many years ago, in reply to my danish opponents, that my first thought with regard to a philosophical book was by no means to ask whether what it contains is right or wrong: "i go straight through the book to the man behind it. and my first question is this: what is the value of this man, is he interesting, or not? if he is, then his books are undoubtedly worth knowing. questions of right or wrong are seldom applicable in the highest intellectual spheres, and their answering is not unfrequently of relatively small importance. the first lines i wrote about nietzsche were therefore to the effect that he deserved to be studied and _contested_. i rejoiced in him, as i rejoice in every powerful and uncommon individuality." and three years later i replied to the attack of a worthy and able swiss professor, who had branded nietzsche as a reactionary and a cynic, in these words, amongst others: "no mature reader studies nietzsche with the latent design of adopting his opinions, still less with that of propagating them. we are not children in search of instruction, but sceptics in search of men, and we rejoice when we have found a man--the rarest thing there is." it seems to me that this is not exactly the language of an adherent, and that my critics might spare some of their powder and shot as regards my renunciation of ideas. it is a nuisance to be forced now and then to reply in person to all the allegations that are accumulated against one year by year in the european press; but when others never write a sensible word about one, it becomes an obligation at times to stand up for one's self. my personal connection with nietzsche began with his sending me his book, _beyond good and evil_. i read it, received a strong impression, though not a clear or decided one, and did nothing further about it--for one reason, because i receive every day far too many books to be able to acknowledge them. but as in the following year _the genealogy of morals_ was sent me by the author, and as this book was not only much clearer in itself, but also threw new light on the earlier one, i wrote nietzsche a few lines of thanks, and this led to a correspondence which was interrupted by nietzsche's attack of insanity thirteen months later. the letters he sent me in that last year of his conscious life appear to me to be of no little psychological and biographical interest. [ ] see _tilskueren_ (copenhagen) for august and november-december , january, february-march, april and may . correspondence between friedrich nietzsche and george brandes . brandes to nietzsche. _copenhagen_, nov. , . dear sir, a year ago i received through your publisher your work _beyond good and evil_; the other day your latest book reached me in the same way. of your other books i have _human, all-too-human_. i had just sent the two volumes i possess to the binder, when _the genealogy of morals_ arrived, so that i have not been able to compare it with the earlier works, as i mean to do. by degrees i shall read everything of yours attentively. this time, however, i am anxious to express at once my sincere thanks for the book sent. it is an honour to me to be known to you, and known in such a way that you should wish to gain me as a reader. a new and original spirit breathes to me from your books. i do not yet fully understand what i have read; i cannot always see your intention. but i find much that harmonises with my own ideas and sympathies, the depreciation of the ascetic ideals and the profound disgust with democratic mediocrity, your aristocratic radicalism. your contempt for the morality of pity is not yet clear to me. there were also in the other work some reflections on women in general which did not agree with my own line of thought. your nature is so absolutely different from mine that it is not easy for me to feel at home. in spite of your universality you are very german in your mode of thinking and writing. you are one of the few people with whom i should enjoy a talk. i know nothing about you. i see with astonishment that you are a professor and doctor. i congratulate you in any case on being intellectually so little of a professor. i do not know what you have read of mine. my writings only attempt the solution of modest problems. for the most part they are only to be had in danish. for many years i have not written german. i have my best public in the slavonic countries, i believe. i have lectured in warsaw for two years in succession, and this year in petersburg and moscow, in french. thus i endeavour to break through the narrow limits of my native land. although no longer young, i am still one of the most inquisitive of men and one of the most eager to learn. you will therefore not find me closed against your ideas, even when i differ from you in thought and feeling. i am often stupid, but never in the least narrow. let me have the pleasure of a few lines if you think it worth the trouble. yours gratefully, george brandes. . nietzsche to brandes. _nice_, dec. , . my dear sir, a few readers whom one honours and beyond them no readers at all--that is really what i desire. as regards the latter part of this wish, i am bound to say my hope of its realisation is growing less and less. all the more happy am i _in satis sunt pauci_, that the _pauci_ do not fail and have never failed me. of the living amongst them i will mention (to name only those whom you are certain to know) my distinguished friend jakob burkhardt, hans von bülow, h. taine, and the swiss poet keller; of the dead, the old hegelian bruno bauer and richard wagner. it gives me sincere pleasure that so good a european and missionary of culture as yourself will in future be numbered amongst them; i thank you with all my heart for this proof of your goodwill. i am afraid you will find it a difficult position. i myself have no doubt that my writings in one way or another are still "very german." you will, i am sure, feel this all the more markedly, being so spoilt by yourself; i mean, by the free and graceful french way in which you handle the language (a more familiar way than mine). with me a great many words have acquired an incrustation of foreign salts and taste differently on my tongue and on those of my readers. on the scale of my experiences and circumstances the predominance is given to the rarer, remoter, more attenuated tones as against the normal, medial ones. besides (as an old musician, which is what i really am), i have an ear for quarter-tones. finally--and this probably does most to make my books obscure--there is in me a distrust of dialectics, even of reasons. what a person already holds "true" or has not yet acknowledged as true; seems to me to depend mainly on his courage, on the relative strength of his courage (i seldom have the courage for what i really know). the expression _aristocratic radicalism_, which you employ, is very good. it is, permit me to say, the cleverest thing i have yet read about myself. how far this mode of thought has carried me already, how far it will carry me yet--i am almost afraid to imagine. but there are certain paths which do not allow one to go backward and so i go forward, because i _must_. that i may not neglect anything on my part that might facilitate your access to my cave--that is, my philosophy--my leipzig publisher shall send you all my older books _en bloc_. i recommend you especially to read the new prefaces to them (they have nearly all been republished); these prefaces, if read in order, will perhaps throw some light upon me, assuming that i am not obscurity in itself (obscure in myself) as _obscurissimus obscurorum virorum_. for that is quite possible. are you a musician? a work of mine for chorus and orchestra is just being published, a "hymn to life." this is intended to represent my music to posterity and one day to be sung "in my memory"; assuming that there is enough left of me for that. you see what posthumous thoughts i have. but a philosophy like mine is like a grave--it takes one from among the living. _bene vixit qui bene latuit_--was inscribed on descartes' tombstone. what an epitaph, to be sure! i too hope we may meet some day, yours, nietzsche. n.b.--i am staying this winter at nice. my summer address is sils-maria, upper-engadine, switzerland--i have resigned my professorship at the university. i am three parts blind. . brandes to nietzsche. _copenhagen_, dec. , . my dear sir, the last words of your letter are those that have made most impression on me; those in which you tell me that your eyes are seriously affected. have you consulted good oculists, the best? it alters one's whole psychological life if one cannot see well. you owe it to all who honour you to do everything possible for the preservation and improvement of your sight. i have put off answering your letter because you announced the sending of a parcel of books, and i wished to thank you for them at the same time. but as the parcel has not yet arrived i will send you a few words to-day. i have your books back from the binder and have gone into them as deeply as i was able amid the stress of preparing lectures and all kinds of literary and political work. december . i am quite willing to be called a "good european," less so to be called a "missionary of culture." i have a horror of all missionary effort--because i have come across none but moralising missionaries--and i am afraid i do not altogether believe in what is called culture. our culture as a whole cannot inspire enthusiasm, can it? and what would a missionary be without _enthusiasm_! in other words, i am more isolated than you think. all i meant by being german was that you write more for yourself, think more of yourself in writing, than for the general public; whereas most non--german writers have been obliged to force themselves into a certain discipline of style, which no doubt makes the latter clearer and more plastic, but necessarily deprives it of all profundity and compels the writer to keep to himself his most intimate and best individuality, the anonymous in him. i have thus been horrified at times to see how little of my inmost self is more than hinted at in my writings. i am no connoisseur in music. the arts of which i have some notion are sculpture and painting; i have to thank them for my deepest artistic impressions. my ear is undeveloped. in my young days this was a great grief to me. i used to play a good deal and worked at thorough-bass for a few years, but nothing came of it. i can enjoy good music keenly, but still am one of the uninitiated. i think i can trace in your works certain points of agreement with my own taste: your predilection for beyle, for instance, and for taine; but the latter i have not seen for seventeen years. i am not so enthusiastic about his work on the revolution as you seem to be. he deplores and harangues an earthquake. i used the expression "aristocratic radicalism" because it so exactly defines my own political convictions. i am a little hurt, however, at the offhand and impetuous pronouncements against such--phenomena as socialism and anarchism in your works. the anarchism of prince kropotkin, for instance, is no stupidity. the name, of course, is nothing. your intellect, which is usually so dazzling, seems to me to fall a trifle short where truth is to be found in a nuance. your views on the origin of the moral ideas interest me in the highest degree. you share--to my delighted astonishment--a certain repugnance which i feel for herbert spencer. with us he passes for the god of philosophy. however, it is as a rule a distinct merit with these englishmen that their not very high-soaring intellect shuns hypotheses, whereas hypothesis has destroyed the supremacy of german philosophy. is not there a great deal that is hypothetical in your ideas of caste distinctions as the source of various moral concepts? i know rée whom you attack, have met him in berlin; he was a quiet man, rather distinguished in his bearing, but a somewhat dry and limited intellect. he was living--according to his own account, as brother and sister--with a quite young and intelligent russian lady, who published a year or two ago a book called _der kampf um gott_, but this gives no idea of her genuine gifts. i am looking forward to receiving the books you promise me. i hope in future you will not lose sight of me. yours, george brandes. . nietzsche to brandes. _nice_, jan. , . you should not object to the expression "missionary of culture." what better way is there of being one in our day than that of "missionising" one's disbelief in culture? to have understood that our european culture is a vast problem and by no means a solution--is not such a degree of introspection and self-conquest nowadays culture itself? i am surprised my books have not yet reached you. i shall not omit to send a reminder to leipzig. at christmas time messieurs the publishers are apt to lose their heads. meanwhile may i be allowed to bring to your notice a daring curiosity over which no publisher has authority, an _ineditum_ of mine that is among the most personal things i can show. it is the fourth part of my _zarathustra_; its proper title, with regard to what precedes and follows it, should be-- _zarathustra's temptation_ an interlude. perhaps this is my best answer to your question about my problem of pity. besides which, there are excellent reasons for gaining admission to "me" by this particular secret door; provided that one crosses the threshold with your eyes and ears. your essay on zola reminded me once more, like everything i have met with of yours (the last was an essay in the goethe year-book), in the most agreeable way of your natural tendency towards every kind of psychological optics. when working out the most difficult mathematical problems of the _âme moderne_ you are as much in your element as a german scholar in such case is apt to be out of his. or do you perhaps think more favourably of present-day germans? it seems to me that they become year by year more clumsy and rectangular _in rebus psychologicis_ (in direct contrast to the parisians, with whom everything is becoming _nuance_ and mosaic), so that all events below the surface escape their notice. for example, my _beyond good and evil_--what an awkward position it has put them in! not one intelligent word has reached me about this book, let alone an intelligent sentiment. i do not believe even the most well-disposed of my readers has discovered that he has here to deal with the logical results of a perfectly definite philosophical _sensibility_, and not with a medley of a hundred promiscuous paradoxes and heterodoxies. nothing of the kind has been "experienced"; my readers do not bring to it a thousandth part of the passion and suffering that is needed. an "immoralist!" this does not suggest anything to them. by the way, the goncourts in one of their prefaces claim to have invented the phrase _document humain_. but for all that m. taine may well be its real originator. you are right in what you say about "haranguing an earthquake "; but such quixotism is among the most honourable things on this earth. with the greatest respect, yours, nietzsche. . brandes to nietzsche. _copenhagen_, jan. , . my dear sir, your publisher has apparently forgotten to send me your books, but i have to-day received your letter with thanks. i take the liberty of sending you herewith one of my books in proof (because unfortunately i have no other copy at hand), a collection of essays intended for _export_, therefore not my best wares. they date from various times and are all too polite, too laudatory, too idealistic in tone. i never really say all i think in them. the paper on ibsen is no doubt the best, but the translation of the verses, which i had done for me, is unfortunately wretched. there is one scandinavian writer whose works would interest you, if only they were translated: _sören kierkegaard_; he lived from to , and is in my opinion one of the profoundest psychologists that have ever existed. a little book i wrote about him (translated, leipzig, ) gives no adequate idea of his genius, as it is a sort of polemical pamphlet written to counteract his influence. but in a psychological respect it is, i think, the most subtle thing i have published. the essay in the goethe year-book was unfortunately shortened by more than a third, as the space had been reserved for me. it is a good deal better in danish. if you happen to read polish, i will send you a little book that i have published only in that language. i see the new _rivista contemporanea_ of florence has printed a paper of mine on danish literature. you must not read it. it is full of the most ridiculous mistakes. it is translated from the russian, i must tell you. i had allowed it to be translated into russian from my french text, but could not check this translation; now it appears in italian from the russian with fresh absurdities; amongst others in the names (on account of the russian pronunciation), g for h throughout. i am glad you find in me something serviceable to yourself. for the last four years i have been the most detested man in scandinavia. every day the papers rage against me, especially since my last long quarrel with björnson, in which the moral german papers all took part against me. i dare say you know his absurd play, _a gauntlet_, his propaganda for male virginity and his covenant with the spokeswomen of "the demand for equality in morals." anything like it was certainly unheard of till now. in sweden these insane women have formed great leagues in which they vow "only to marry virgin men." i suppose they get a guarantee with them, like watches, only the guarantee for the future is not likely to be forthcoming. i have read the three books of yours that i know again and again. there are two or three bridges leading from my inner world to yours: cæsarism, hatred of pedantry, a sense for beyle, etc., but still most of it is strange to me. our experiences appear to be so infinitely dissimilar. you are without doubt the most suggestive of all german writers. your german literature! i don't know what is the matter with it. i fancy all the brains must go into the general staff or the administration. the whole life of germany and all your institutions are spreading the _most hideous uniformity_, and even authorship is stifled by publishing. your obliged and respectful, george brandes. . nietzsche to brandes. _nice_, feb. , . you have laid me under a most agreeable obligation with your contribution to the idea of "modernity," for it happens that this winter i am circling round this paramount problem of values, very much from above and in the manner of a bird, and with the best intention of looking down upon the modern world with as unmodern an eye as possible. i admire--let me confess it--the tolerance of your judgment, as much as the moderation of your sentences. how you suffer these "little children" to come unto you! even heyse! on my next visit to germany i propose to take up the psychological problem of kierkegaard and at the same time to renew acquaintance with your older literature. it will be of use to me in the best sense of the word--and will serve to restore good humour to my own severity and arrogance of judgment. my publisher telegraphed to me yesterday that the books had gone to you. i will spare you and myself the story of why they were delayed. now, my dear sir, may you put a good face on a bad bargain, i mean on this nietzsche literature. i myself cherish the notion of having given the "new germans" the richest, most actual and most independent books of any they possess; also of being in my own person a capital event in the crisis of the determination of values. but this may be an error; and, what is more, a piece of foolishness--i do not want to have to believe anything [of the sort] about myself. one or two further remarks: they concern my firstlings (the _juvenilia_ and _juvenalia_). the pamphlet against strauss, the wicked merrymaking of a "very free spirit" at the expense of one who thought himself such, led to a terrific scandal; i was already a _professor ordinarius_ at the time, therefore in spite of my twenty-seven years a kind of authority and something acknowledged. the most unbiassed view of this affair, in which almost every "notability" took part for or against me, and in which an insane quantity of paper was covered with printer's ink, is to be found in karl hillebrand's _zeiten, völker und menschen_, second volume. the trouble was not that i had jeered at the senile bungling of an eminent critic, but that i had caught german taste _in flagranti_ in compromising tastelessness; for in spite of all party differences of religion and theology it had unanimously admired strauss's _alten und neuen glauben_ as a masterpiece of freedom and subtlety of thought (even the style!). my pamphlet was the first onslaught on german culture (that "culture" which they imagined to have gained the victory over france). the word "culture-philistine," which i then invented, has remained in the language as a survival of the raging turmoil of that polemic. the two papers on schopenhauer and richard wagner appear to me to-day to contain self-confessions, above all promises to myself, rather than any real psychology of those two masters, who are at the same time profoundly related and profoundly antagonistic to me--(i was the first to distill a sort of unity out of them both; at present this superstition is much to the fore in german culture--that all wagnerites are followers of schopenhauer. it was otherwise when i was young. then it was the last of the hegelians who adhered to wagner, and "wagner and hegel" was still the watchword of the 'fifties). between _thoughts out of season_ and _human, all-too-human_ there lies a crisis and a skin-casting. physically too: i lived for years in extreme proximity to death. this was my great good fortune: i forgot myself, i outlived myself ... i have performed the same trick once again. so now we have each presented gifts to the other: two travellers, it seems to me, who are glad to have met. i remain, yours most sincerely, nietzsche. . brandes to nietzsche. _copenhagen_, march , . my dear sir, i imagine you to be living in fine spring weather; up here we are buried in abominable snowdrifts and have been cut off from europe for several days. to make things worse, i have this evening been talking to some hundred imbeciles, and everything looks grey and dreary around me, so to revive my spirits a little i will thank you for your letter of february and your generous present of books. as i was too busy to write to you at once, i sent you a volume on german romanticism which i found on my shelves. i should be very sorry, however, that you should interpret my sending it otherwise than as a silent expression of thanks. the book was written in and revised in ; but my german publisher has permitted himself a number of linguistic and other alterations, so that the first two pages, for instance, are hardly mine at all. wherever he does not understand my meaning, he puts something else, and declares that what i have written is not german. moreover, the man promised to buy the rights of the old translation of my book, but from very foolish economy has not done so; the consequence is that the german courts have suppressed my book in two instances as pirated(!)--because i had included in it fragments of the old translation--while the real pirate is allowed to sell my works freely. the probable result of this will be that i shall withdraw entirely from german literature. i sent that volume because i had no other. but the first one on the _émigrés_, the fourth on the english and the fifth on the french romanticists are all far, far better; written _con amore_. the title of the book, _moderne geister_, is fortuitous. i have written some twenty volumes. i wanted to put together for abroad a volume on personalities whose names would be familiar. that is how it came about. some things in it have cost a good deal of study, such as the paper on tegnér, which tells the truth about him for the first time. ibsen will certainly interest you as a personality. unfortunately as a man he does not stand on the same level that he reaches as a poet. intellectually he owes much to kierkegaard, and he is still strongly permeated by theology. björnson in his latest phase has become just an ordinary lay-preacher. for more than three years i have not published a book; i felt too unhappy. these three years have been among the hardest of my life, and i see no sign of the approach of better times. however, i am now going to set about the publication of the sixth volume of my work and another book besides. it will take a deal of time. i was delighted with all the fresh books, turning them over and reading them. the youthful books are of great value to me; they make it far easier to understand you; i am now leisurely ascending the steps that lead up to your intellect. with _zarathustra_ i began too precipitately. i prefer to advance upwards rather than to dive head first as though into a sea. i knew hillebrand's essay and read years ago some bitter attacks on the book about strauss. i am grateful to you for the word culture-philistine; i had no idea it was yours. i take no offence at the criticism of strauss, although i have feelings of piety for the old gentleman. yet he was always the tübingen collegian. of the other works i have at present only studied _the dawn of day_ at all closely. i believe i understand the book thoroughly, many of its ideas have also been mine, others are new to me or put into a new shape, but not on that account _strange_ to me. one solitary remark, so as not to make this letter too long. i am delighted with the aphorism on the hazard of marriage (aphorism ). but why do you not _dig_ deeper here? you speak somewhere with a certain reverence of marriage, which by implying an emotional ideal has idealised emotion--here, however, you are more blunt and forcible. why not for once say the _full_ truth about it? i am of opinion that the institution of marriage, which may have been very useful in taming brutes, causes more misery to mankind than even the church has done. church, monarchy, marriage, property, these are to my mind four old venerable institutions which mankind will have to reform _from the foundations_ in order to be able to breathe freely. and of these marriage alone kills the individuality, paralyses liberty and is the embodiment of a paradox. but the shocking thing about it is that humanity is still too coarse to be able to shake it off. the most emancipated writers, so called, still speak of marriage with a devout and virtuous air which maddens me. and they gain their point, since it is impossible to say what one could put in its place for the mob. there is nothing else to be done but slowly to transform opinion. what do you think about it? i should like very much to hear how it is with your eyes. i was glad to see how plain and clear your writing is. externally, i suppose, you lead a calm and peaceful life down there? mine is a life of conflict which wears one out. in these realms i am even more hated now than i was seventeen years ago; this is not pleasant in itself, though it is gratifying in so far as it proves to me that i have not yet lost my vigour nor come to terms on any point with sovereign mediocrity. your attentive and grateful reader, george brandes. . nietzsche to brandes. _nice_, march , . my dear sir, i should much have liked to thank you before this for so rich and thoughtful a letter: but my health has been troubling me, so that i have fallen badly into arrears with all good things. in my eyes, i may say in passing, i have a dynamometer for my general state; since my health in the main has once more improved, they have become stronger than i had ever believed possible--they have put to shame the prophecies of the very best german oculists. if messieurs gräfe _et hoc genus omne_ had turned out right, i should long ago have been blind. as it is, i have come to no. spectacles--bad enough!--_but i still see_. i speak of this worry because you were sympathetic enough to inquire about it, and because during the last few weeks my eyes have been particularly weak and irritable. i feel for you in the north, now so wintry and gloomy; how does one manage to keep one's soul erect there? i admire almost every man who does not lose faith in himself under a cloudy sky, to say nothing of his faith in "humanity," in "marriage," in "property," in the "state." ... in petersburg i should be a nihilist: here i believe as a plant believes, in the sun. the sun of nice--you cannot call that a prejudice. we have had it at the expense of all the rest of europe. god, with the cynicism peculiar to him, lets it shine upon us idlers, "philosophers" and sharpers more brightly than upon the far worthier military heroes of the "fatherland." but then, with the instinct of the northerner, you have chosen the strongest of all stimulants to help you to endure life in the north: war, the excitement of aggression, the viking raid. i divine in your writings the practised soldier; and not only "mediocrity," but perhaps especially the more independent or individual characters of the northern mind may be constantly challenging you to fight. how much of the "parson," how much theology is still left behind in all this idealism!... to me it would be still worse than a cloudy sky, to have to make oneself angry over things _which do not concern one_. so much for this time; it is little enough. your _german romanticism_ has set me thinking, how this whole movement actually only reached its goal as music (schumann, mendelssohn, weber, wagner, brahms); as literature it remained a great promise. the french were more fortunate. i am afraid i am too much of a musician not to be a romanticist. without music life to me would be a mistake. with cordial and grateful regards i remain, dear sir, yours, nietzsche. . brandes to nietzsche. _copenhagen_, april , . my dear sir, you have called the postman the medium of ill-mannered invasions. that is very true as a rule, and should be _sat. sapienti_ not to trouble you. i am not an intruder by nature, so little in fact that i lead an almost isolated life, am indeed loth to write letters and, like all authors, loth to write at all. yesterday, however, when i had received your letter and taken up one of your books, i suddenly felt a sort of vexation at the idea that nobody here in scandinavia knew anything about you, and i soon determined to make you known at a stroke. the newspaper cutting will tell you that (having just finished a series of lectures on russia) i am announcing fresh lectures on your writings. for many years i have been obliged to repeat all my lectures, as the university cannot hold the audiences; that is not likely to be the case this time, as your name is so absolutely new, but the people who will come and get an impression of your works will not be of the dullest. as i should very much like to have an idea of your appearance, _i beg you to give me a portrait of yourself_. i enclose my last photograph. i would also ask you to tell me quite briefly when and where you were born and in what years you published (or better, wrote) your works, as they are not dated. if you have any newspaper that contains these details, there will be no need to write. i am an unmethodical person and possess neither dictionaries of authors nor other books of reference in which your name might be found. the youthful works--the _thoughts out of season_--have been very useful to me. how young you were and enthusiastic, how frank and naïve i there is much in the maturer books that i do not yet understand; you appear to me often to hint at or generalise about entirely intimate, personal data, giving the reader a beautiful casket without the key. but most of it i understand. i was enchanted by the youthful work on schopenhauer; although personally i owe little to schopenhauer, it seemed to speak to me from the soul. one or two pedantic corrections: _joyful wisdom_, p. . the words quoted are not chamfort's last, they are to be found in his _caractères et anecdotes_: dialogue between m. d. and m. l. in explanation of the sentence: _peu de personnes et pen de choses m'intéressent, mais rien ne m'intéresse moins que moi_. the concluding words are: en vivant et _en voyant les hommes, il faut que le cour se brise ou se bronze_. on p. you speak of the elevation "in which shakespeare places cæsar." i find shakespeare's cæsar pitiable. an act of high treason. and this glorification of the miserable fellow whose only achievement was to plunge a knife into a great man! _human, all-too-human_, ii, p. . a holy lie. "it is the only holy lie that has become famous." no, desdemona's last words are perhaps still more beautiful and just as famous, often quoted in germany at the time when jacobi was writing on lessing. am i not right? these trifles are only to show you that i read you attentively. of course, there are very different matters that i might discuss with you, but a letter is not the place for them. if you read danish, i should like to send you a handsomely got-up little book on holberg, which will appear in a week. let me know whether you understand our language. if you read swedish, i call your attention to sweden's only genius, august strindberg. when you write about women you are very like him. i hope you will have nothing but good to tell me of your eyes. yours sincerely, george brandes. . nietzsche to brandes. _torino (italia) ferma in posta_, april , . but, my dear sir, what a surprise is this!--where have you found the courage to propose to speak in public of a _vir obscurissimus_?... do you imagine that i am known in the beloved fatherland? they treat me there as if i were something singular and absurd, something that for the present need not be _taken seriously_.... evidently they have an inkling that i do not take them seriously either: and how could i, nowadays, when "german intellect" has become a _contradictio in adjecto_!--my best thanks for the photograph. unfortunately i have none to send in return: my sister, who is married and lives in south america, took with her the last portraits i possessed. enclosed is a little _vita_, the first i have ever written. as regards the dates of composition of the different books, they are to be found on the back of the cover of _beyond good and evil_. perhaps you no longer have this cover. _the birth of tragedy_ was written between the summer of and the winter of (finished at lugano, where i was living with the family of field-marshal moltke). the _thoughts out of season_ between and the summer of (there were to have been thirteen; luckily my health said no!). what you say about schopenhauer as educator gives me great pleasure. this little work serves me as a touchstone; he to whom it says nothing personal has probably nothing to do with me either. in reality it contains the whole plan according to which i have hitherto lived; it is a rigorous promise. _human, all-too-human_, with its two continuations, summer of - . _the dawn of day_, . _the joyful wisdom_, january . _zarathustra_, - (each part in about ten days. perfect state of "inspiration." all conceived in the course of rapid walks: absolute certainty, as though each sentence were shouted to one. while writing the book, the greatest physical elasticity and sense of power). _beyond good and evil_, summer of in the upper engadine and the following winter at nice. _the genealogy_ decided on, carried out and sent ready for press to the printer at leipzig, all between july and , . (of course there are also _philologica_ of mine, but they do not concern you and me.) i am now making an experiment with turin; i shall stay here till june and then go to the engadine. the weather so far is wintry, harsh and unpleasant. but the town superbly calm and favourable to my instincts. the finest pavement in the world. sincere greetings from yours gratefully, nietzsche. a pity i understand neither danish nor swedish. _vita_.--i was born on october , , on the battlefield of lützen. the first name i heard was that of gustavus adolphus. my ancestors were polish noblemen (niëzky); it seems the type has been well maintained, in spite of three generations of german mothers. abroad i am usually taken for a pole; this very winter the visitors' list at nice entered me _comme polonais_. i am told my head occurs in matejko's pictures. my grandmother belonged to the schiller-goethe circles of weimar; her brother was herder's successor in the position of general superintendent at weimar. i had the good fortune to be a pupil of the venerable pforta school, from which so many who have made a name in german literature have proceeded (klopstock, fichte, schlegel, ranke, etc., etc.). we had masters who would have (or have) done honour to any university. i studied at bonn, afterwards at leipzig; old ritschl, then the first philologist in germany, singled me out almost from the first. at twenty-two i was a contributor to the _litterarisches centralblatt_ (zarncke). the foundation of the philological society of leipzig, which still exists, is due to me. in the winter of - the university of basle offered me a professorship; i was as yet not even a doctor. the university of leipzig afterwards conferred the doctor's degree on me, in a very honourable way, without any examination, and even without a dissertation. from easter to i was at basle; i was obliged to give up my rights as a german subject, since as an officer (horse artillery) i should have been called up too frequently and my academic duties would have been interfered with. i am none the less master of two weapons, the sabre and the cannon--and perhaps of a third as well.... at basle everything went very well, in spite of my youth; it sometimes happened, especially with candidates for the doctor's degree, that the examinee was older than the examiner. i had the great good fortune to form a cordial friendship with jakob burkhardt, an unusual thing with that very hermit-like and secluded thinker. a still greater piece of good fortune was that from the earliest days of my basle existence an indescribably close intimacy sprang up between me and richard and cosima wagner, who were then living on their estate of triebschen, near lucerne, as though on an island, and were cut off from all former ties. for some years we had everything, great and small, in common, a confidence without bounds. (you will find printed in volume vii of wagner's complete works a "message" to me, referring to _the birth of tragedy_.) as a result of these relations i came to know a large circle of persons (and "personesses"), in fact pretty nearly everything that grows between paris and petersburg. by about my health became worse. i then spent a winter at sorrento, with my old friend, baroness meysenbug (_memoirs of an idealist_) and the sympathetic dr. rée. there was no improvement. i suffered from an extremely painful and persistent headache, which exhausted all my strength. this went on for a number of years, till it reached such a climax of habitual suffering, that at that time i had days of torment in the year. the trouble must have been due entirely to local causes, there is no neuropathic basis for it of any sort. i have never had a symptom of mental disturbance; not even of fever, nor of fainting. my pulse was at that time as slow as that of the first napoleon (= ). my speciality was to endure extreme pain, _cru, vert_, with perfect clarity, for two or three consecutive days, accompanied by constant vomiting of bile. the report has been put about that i was in a madhouse (and indeed that i died there). nothing is further from the truth. as a matter of fact my intellect only came to maturity during that terrible time: witness the _dawn of day_, which i wrote in during a winter of incredible suffering at genoa, away from doctors, friends or relations. this book serves me as a sort of "dynamometer": i composed it with a minimum of strength and health. from on i went forward again, very slowly, it is true: the crisis was past (my father died very young, just at the age at which i was myself so near to death). i have to use extreme care even to-day; certain conditions of a climatic and meteorological order are indispensable to me. it is not from choice but from necessity that i spend the summer in the upper engadine and the winter at nice.... after all, my illness has been of the greatest use to me: it has released me, it has restored to me the courage to be myself.... and, indeed, in virtue of my instincts, i am a brave animal, a military one even. the long resistance has somewhat exasperated my pride. am i a philosopher, do you ask?--but what does that matter!... . brandes to nietzsche. _copenhagen_, april , . my dear sir, the first time i lectured on your works, the hall was not quite full, an audience of perhaps a hundred and fifty, since no one knew who and what you are. but as an important newspaper reported my first lecture, and as i have myself written an article on you, interest was roused, and next time the hall was full to bursting. some three hundred people listened with the greatest attention to my exposition of your works. nevertheless, i have not ventured to repeat the lectures, as has been my practice for many years, since the subject is hardly of a popular nature. i hope the result will be to get you some good readers in the north. your books now stand on one of my shelves, very handsomely bound. i should be very glad to possess everything you have published. when, in your first letter, you offered me a musical work of yours, a _hymn to life_, i declined the gift from modesty, being no great judge of music. now i think i have deserved the work through my interest in it and should be much obliged if you would have it sent to me. i believe i may sum up the impression of my audience in the feeling of a young painter, who said to me: "what makes this so interesting is that it has not to do with books, _but with life_." if any objection is taken to your ideas, it is that they are "too out-and-out." it was unkind of you not to send me a photograph; i really only sent mine to put you under an obligation. it is so little trouble to sit to a photographer for a minute or two, and one knows a man far better when one has an idea of his appearance. yours very sincerely, george brandes. . nietzsche to brandes. _turin_, may , . my dear sir, what you tell me gives me great pleasure and--let me confess it--still more surprise. be sure i shall owe you for it: you know, hermits are not given to forgetting. meanwhile i hope my photograph will have reached you. it goes without saying that i took steps, not exactly to be photographed (for i am extremely distrustful of haphazard photographs), but to abstract a photograph from somebody who had one of me. perhaps i have succeeded; i have not yet heard. if not, i shall avail myself of my next visit to munich (this autumn probably) to be taken again. _the hymn to life_ will start on its journey to copenhagen one of these days. we philosophers are never more grateful than when we are mistaken for artists. i am assured, moreover, by the best judges that the hymn is thoroughly fit for performance, singable, and sure in its effect (--clear in form; this praise gave me the greatest pleasure). mottl, the excellent court conductor at carlsruhe (the conductor of the bayreuth festival performances, you know), has given me hopes of a performance. i have just heard from italy that the point of view of my second _thought out of season_ has been very honourably mentioned in a survey of german literature contributed by the viennese scholar, dr. von zackauer, at the invitation of the _archivio storico_ of florence. he concludes his paper with it. these last weeks at turin, where i shall stay till june , have turned out better than any i have known for years, above all more philosophic. almost every day for one or two hours i have reached such a pitch of energy as to be able to view my whole conception from top to bottom; so that the immense multiplicity of problems lies spread out beneath me, as though in relief and clear in its outlines. this requires a maximum of strength, for which i had almost given up hope. it all hangs together; years ago it was already on the right course; one builds one's philosophy like a beaver, one is forced to and does not know it: but one has to _see_ all this, as i have now seen it, in order to believe it. i am so relieved, so strengthened, in such good humour--i hang a little farcical tail on to the most serious things. what is the reason of all this? have i not the good _north winds_ to thank for it, the north winds which do not always come from the alps?--they come now and then even from _copenhagen_! with greetings, your gratefully devoted, nietzsche. . nietzsche to brandes. _turin_, may , . my dear sir, i should not like to leave turin without telling you once more what a great share you have had in my first _successful_ spring. the history of my springs, for the last fifteen years at least, has been, i must tell you, a tale of horror, a fatality of decadence and infirmity. places made no difference; it was as though no prescription, no diet, no climate could change the essentially depressing character of this time of year. but behold, turin! and the first good news, _your_ news, my dear sir, which proved to me that i am alive.... for i am sometimes apt to forget that i am alive. an accident, a question reminded me the other day that one of life's leading ideas is positively quenched in me, the idea of the _future_. no, wish, not the smallest cloudlet of a wish before me! a bare expanse! why should not a day from my seventieth year be exactly like my day to-day? have i lived too long in proximity to death to be able any longer to open my eyes to fair possibilities. --but certain it is that i now limit myself to thinking from day to day--that i settle to-day what is to be done to-morrow--and not for a single day beyond it! this may be irrational, unpractical, perhaps also unchristian--that preacher on the mount forbade this very "taking thought for the morrow"--but it seems to me in the highest degree philosophical. i gained more respect for myself than i had before:--i understood that i had unlearnt how to wish, without even wanting to do so. these weeks i have employed in "transvaluing values."--you understand this trope?--after all, the alchemist is the most deserving kind of man there is! i mean the man who makes of what is base and despised something valuable, even gold. he alone confers wealth, the others merely give change. my problem this time is rather a curious one: i have asked myself what hitherto has been best hated, feared, despised by mankind--and of that and nothing else i have made my "gold".... if only i am not accused of false-coining! or rather; that is what will happen. has my photograph reached you? my mother has shown me the great kindness of relieving me from the appearance of ungratefulness in such a special case. it is to be hoped the leipzig publisher, e. w. fritzsch, has also done his duty and sent off the hymn. in conclusion i confess to a feeling of curiosity. as it was denied me to listen at the crack of the door to learn something about myself, i should like to hear something in another way. three words to characterise the subjects of your different lectures--how much should i learn from three words! with cordial and devoted greetings, your nietzsche. . brandes to nietzsche. _copenhagen_ may , . my dear sir, for letter, portrait and music i send you my best thanks. the letter and the music were an unqualified pleasure, the portrait might have been better. it is a profile taken at _naumburg_, characteristic in its attitude, but with too little expression. you _must_ look different from this; the writer of _zarathustra_ must have many more secrets written in his own face. i concluded my lectures on fr. nietzsche before whitsuntide. they ended, as the papers say, in applause "which took the form of an ovation." the ovation is yours almost entirely. i take the liberty of communicating it to you herewith in writing. for i can only claim the credit of reproducing, clearly and connectedly, and intelligibly to a northern audience, what you had originated. i also tried to indicate your relation to various contemporaries, to introduce my hearers into the workshop of your thought, to put forward my own favourite ideas, where they coincided with yours, to define the points on which i differed from you, and to give a psychological portrait of nietzsche the author. thus much i may say without exaggeration: your name is now very popular in all intelligent circles in copenhagen, and all over scandinavia it is at least _known_. you have nothing to thank me for; it has been a _pleasure_ to me to penetrate into the world of your thoughts. my lectures are not worth printing, as i do not regard pure philosophy as my special province and am unwilling to print anything dealing with a subject in which i do not feel sufficiently competent. i am very glad you feel so invigorated physically and so well disposed mentally. here, after a long winter, we have mild spring weather. we are rejoicing in the first green leaves and in a very well-arranged northern exhibition that has been opened at copenhagen. all the french artists of eminence (painters and sculptors) are also exhibiting here. nevertheless, i am longing to get away, but have to stay. but this cannot interest you. i forgot to tell you: if you do not know the icelandic sagas, you must study them. you will find there a great deal to confirm your hypotheses and theories about the morality of a master race. in one trifling detail you seem to have missed the mark. _gothic_ has certainly nothing to do with _good_ or _god_. it is connected with giessen, he who emits the seed, and means stallion, man. on the other hand, our philologists here think your suggestion of _bonus--duonus_ is much to the point. i hope that in future we shall never become entirely strangers to one another. i remain your faithful reader and admirer, george brandes. . nietzsche to brandes. (post-card.) _turin_, may , . what eyes you have! you are right, the nietzsche of the photograph is not yet the author of _zarathustra_--he is a few years too young for that. i am very grateful for the etymology of _goth_; it is simply godlike. i presume you are reading another letter of mine to-day. your gratefully attached n. . nietzsche to brandes. _sils-maria_, sept. , . my dear sir, herewith i do myself a pleasure--that of recalling myself to your memory, by sending you a wicked little book, but one that is none the less very seriously meant; the product of the _good_ days of turin. for i must tell you that since then there have been _evil_ days in superfluity; such a decline in health, courage and "will to life," to talk schopenhauer, that the little spring idyll scarcely seemed credible any longer. fortunately i still possessed a document belonging to it, the _case of wagner. a musician's problem_. spiteful tongues will prefer to call it _the fall of wagner_. much as you may disclaim music (--the most importunate of all the muses), and with however good reason, yet pray look at this piece of musician's psychology. you, my dear mr. cosmopolitan, are far too european in your ideas not to hear in it a hundred times more than my so-called countrymen, the "musical" germans. after all, in this case i am a connoisseur _in rebus et personis_--and, fortunately, enough of a musician by instinct to see that in this ultimate question of values, the problem is accessible and _soluble_ through music. in reality this pamphlet is almost written in french--i dare say it would be easier to translate it into french than into german. could you give me one or two more russian or french addresses to which there would be some _sense_ in sending the pamphlet? in a month or two something _philosophical_ may be expected; under the very inoffensive title of _leisure hours of à psychologist_ i am saying agreeable and disagreeable things to the world at large--including that intelligent nation, the germans. but all this is in the main nothing but recreation beside the main thing: the name of the latter is _transvaluation of all values_. europe will have to discover a new siberia, to which to consign the author of these experiments with values. i hope this high-spirited letter will find you in one of your usual _resolute_ moods. with kind remembrances, yours, dr. nietzsche. address till middle of november: torino (italia) ferma in posta. . brandes to nietzsche. _copenhagen_, oct. , . my dear sir, your letter and valued gift found me in a raging fever of work. this accounts for my delay in answering. the mere sight of your handwriting gave me pleasurable excitement. it is sad news that you have had a bad summer. i was foolish enough to think that you had already got over all your physical troubles. i have read the pamphlet with the greatest attention and much enjoyment. i am not so unmusical that i cannot enter into the fun of it. i am merely not an expert. a few days before receiving the little book i heard a very fine performance of _carmen_; what glorious music! however, at the risk of exciting your wrath i confess that wagner's _tristan und isolde_ made an indelible impression on me. i once heard this opera in berlin, in a despondent, altogether shattered state of mind, and i felt every note. i do not know whether the impression was so deep because i was so ill. do you know bizet's widow? you ought to send her the pamphlet. she would like it. she is the sweetest, most charming of women, with a nervous _tic_ that is curiously becoming, but perfectly genuine, perfectly sincere and full of fire. only she has married again (an excellent man, a barrister named straus, of paris). i believe she knows some german. i could get you her address, if it does not put you against her that she has not remained true to her god--any more than the virgin mary, mozart's widow or marie louise. bizet's child is ideally beautiful and charming.--but i am gossiping. i have given a copy of the book to the greatest of swedish writers, august strindberg, whom i have entirely won over to you. he is a true genius, only a trifle mad like most geniuses (and non-geniuses). the other copy i shall also place with care. paris i am not well acquainted with now. but send a copy to the following address: madame la princesse anna dmitrievna ténicheff, quai anglais , petersburg. this lady is a friend of mine; she is also acquainted with the musical world of petersburg and will make you known there. i have asked her before now to buy your works, but they were all forbidden in russia, even _human, all-too-human_. it would also be as well to send a copy to prince urussov (who is mentioned in turgeniev's letters). he is greatly interested in everything german, and is a man of rich gifts, an intellectual gourmet. i do not remember his address for the moment, but can find it out. i am glad that in spite of all bodily ills you are working so vigorously and keenly. i am looking forward to all the things you promise me. it would give me great pleasure to be read by you, but unfortunately you do not understand my language. i have produced an enormous amount this summer. i have written two long new books (of twenty-four and twenty-eight sheets), _impressions of poland and impressions of russia_, besides entirely rewriting one of my oldest books, _Æsthetic studies_, for a new edition and correcting the proofs of all three books myself. in another week or so i shall have finished this work; then i give a series of lectures, writing at the same time another series in french, and leave for russia in the depth of winter to revive there. that is the plan i propose for my winter campaign. may it not be a russian campaign in the bad sense. i hope you will continue your friendly interest in me. i remain, your faithfully devoted, george brandes. . nietzsche to brandes. _turin_, oct. , . my dear sir, once more your letter brought me a pleasant wind from the north; it is in fact so far the only letter that puts a "good face," or any face at all on my attack on wagner. for people do not write to me. i have irreparably offended even my nearest and dearest. there is, for instance, my old friend, baron seydlitz of munich, who unfortunately happens to be president of the munich wagner society; my still older friend, _justizrath_ krug of cologne, president of the local wagner society; my brother-in-law, dr. bernhard förster in south america, the not unknown anti--semite, one of the keenest contributors to the _bayreuther blätter_--and my respected friend, malwida von meysenbug, the authoress of _memoirs of an idealist_, who continues to confuse wagner with michel angelo.... on the other side i have been given to understand that i must be on my guard against the female wagnerite: in certain cases she is said to be without scruple. perhaps bayreuth will defend itself in the german imperial manner, by the prohibition of my writings--as "dangerous to public morals"; for here the emperor is a party to the case. my dictum, "we all know the inæsthetic concept of the christian _junker_," might even be interpreted as _lèse-majesté_. your intervention on behalf of bizet's widow gave me great pleasure. please let me have her address; also that of prince urussov. a copy has been sent to your friend, the princess dmitrievna ténicheff. when my next book is published, which will be before very long (the title is now _the twilight of the idols. or, how to philosophise with the hammer_), i should much like to send a copy to the swede you introduce to me in such laudatory terms. but i do not know where he lives. this book is my philosophy _in nuce_--radical to the point of criminality.... as to the effect of _tristan_, i, too, could tell strange tales. a regular dose of mental anguish seems to me a splendid tonic before a wagnerian repast. the _reichsgerichtsrath_ dr. wiener of leipzig gave me to understand that a carlsbad cure was also a good thing.... ah, how industrious you are! and idiot that i am, not to understand danish! i am quite willing to take your word for it that one can "revive" in russia better than elsewhere; i count any russian book, above all dostoievsky (translated into french, for heaven's sake not german!!) among my greatest sources of relief. cordially and, with good reason, gratefully, yours, nietzsche. . brandes to nietzsche. _copenhagen,_ nov. , . my dear sir, i have waited in vain for an answer from paris to learn the address of madame bizet. on the other hand, i now have the address of prince urussov. he lives in petersburg, sergievskaia . my three books are now out. i have begun my lectures here. curious it is how something in your letter and in your book about dostoievsky coincides with my own impressions of him. i have mentioned you, too, in my work on russia, when dealing with dostoievsky. he is a great poet, but an abominable creature, quite christian in his emotions and at the same time quite _sadique_. his whole morality is what you have baptised slave-morality. the mad swede's name is august strindberg; he lives here. his address is holte, near copenhagen. he is particularly fond of you, because he thinks he finds in you his own hatred of women. on this account he calls you "modern" (irony of fate). on reading the newspaper reports of my spring lectures, he said: "it is an astonishing thing about this nietzsche; much of what he says is just what i might have written." his drama, _père_, has appeared in french with a preface by zola. i feel mournful whenever i think of germany. what a development is now going on there! how sad to think that to all appearance one will never in one's lifetime be a historical witness of the smallest good thing. what a pity that so learned a philologist as you should not understand danish. i am doing all i can to prevent my books on poland and russia being translated, so that i may not be expelled, or at least refused the right of speaking when i next go there. hoping that these lines will find you still at turin or will be forwarded to you, i am, yours very sincerely, george brandes. . nietzsche to brandes. _torino, via carlo alberto_, , iii. nov. , . my dear sir, forgive me for answering at once. curious things are now happening in my life, things that are without precedent. first the day before yesterday; now again. ah, if you knew what i had just written when your letter paid me its visit. with a cynicism that will become famous in the world's history, i have now related myself. the book is called _ecce homo_, and is an attack on the crucified without the slightest reservation; it ends in thunders and lightnings against everything that is christian or infected with christianity, till one is blinded and deafened. i am in fact the first psychologist of christianity and, as an old artilleryman, can bring heavy guns into action, the existence of which no opponent of christianity has even suspected. the whole is the prelude to the _transvaluation of all values_, the work that lies ready before me: i swear to you that in two years we shall have the whole world in convulsions. i am a fate. guess who come off worst in _ecce homo_? messieurs the germans! i have told them terrible things.... the germans, for instance, have it on their conscience that they deprived the last _great_ epoch of history, the renaissance, of its meaning--at a moment when the christian values, the _décadence_ values, were worsted, when they were conquered in the instincts even of the highest ranks of the clergy by the opposite instincts, the instincts of life. to _attack_ the church--that meant to re-establish christianity. (cesare borgia as pope--that would have been the meaning of the renaissance, its proper symbol.) you must not be angry either, to find yourself brought forward at a critical passage in the book--i wrote it just now--where i stigmatise the conduct of my german friends towards me, their absolute leaving me in the lurch as regards both fame and philosophy. then you suddenly appear, surrounded by a halo.... i believe implicitly what you say about dostoievsky; i esteem him, on the other hand, as the most valuable psychological material i know--i am grateful to him in an extraordinary way, however antagonistic he may be to my deepest instincts. much the same as my relation to pascal, whom i almost love, since he has taught me such an infinite amount; the only _logical_ christian. the day before yesterday i read, with delight and with a feeling of being thoroughly at home, les mariés, by herr august strindberg. my sincerest admiration, which is only prejudiced by the feeling that i am admiring myself a little at the same time. turin is still my residence. your nietzsche, now a monster. where may i send you the _twilight of the idols_? if you will be at copenhagen another fortnight, no answer is necessary. . brandes to nietzsche. _copenhagen_, nov. , . my dear sir, your letter found me to-day in full fever of work; i am lecturing here on goethe, repeat each lecture twice and yet people wait in line for three quarters of an hour in the square before the university to get standing-room. it amuses me to study the greatest of the great before so many. i must stay here till the end of the year. but on the other side there is the unfortunate circumstance that--as i am informed--one of my old books, lately translated into russian, has been condemned in russia to be publicly _burnt_ as "irreligious." i already had to fear expulsion on account of my two last works on poland and russia; now i must try to set in motion all the influence i can command, in order to obtain permission to lecture in russia this winter. to make matters worse, nearly all letters to and from me are now confiscated. there is great anxiety since the disaster at borki. it was just the same shortly after the famous attempts. every letter was snapped up. it gives me lively satisfaction to see that you have again got through so much. believe me, i spread your propaganda wherever i can. so late as last week i earnestly recommended henrik ibsen to study your works. with him too you have some kinship, even if it is a very distant kinship. great and strong and unamiable, but yet _worthy_ of love, is this singular person. strindberg will be glad to hear of your appreciation. i do not know the french translation you mention; but they say here that all the best things in _giftas_ (_mariés_) have been left out, especially the witty polemic against ibsen. but read his drama _père_; there is a great scene in it. i am sure he would gladly send it you. but i see him so seldom; he is so shy on account of an extremely unhappy marriage. imagine it, he abhors his wife _intellectually_ and cannot get away from her _physically_. he is a monogamous misogynist! it seems curious to me that the polemical trait is still so strong in you. in my early days i was passionately polemical; now i can only expound; silence is my only weapon of offence. i should as soon think of attacking christianity as of writing a pamphlet against werewolves, i mean against the belief in werewolves. but i see we understand one another. i too _love_ pascal. but even as a young man i was _for_ the jesuits against pascal (in the _provinciales_). the worldly-wise, they were right, of course; he did not understand them; but they understood him and--what a master-stroke of impudence and sagacity!--they themselves published his _provinciales_ with notes. the best edition is that of the jesuits. luther against the pope, there we have the same collision. victor hugo in the preface to the _feuilles d'automne_ has this fine saying: _on convoque la diète de worms mais on peint la chapelle sixtine. il y a luther, mais il y a michel-ange ... et remarquons en passant que luther est dans les vieilleries qui croulent autour de nous et que michel-ange n'y est pas._ study the face of dostoievsky: half a russian peasant's face, half a criminal physiognomy, flat nose, little piercing eyes under lids quivering with nervousness, this lofty and well-formed forehead, this expressive mouth that speaks of torments innumerable, of abysmal melancholy, of unhealthy appetites, of infinite pity, passionate envy! an epileptic genius, whose exterior alone speaks of the stream of gentleness that filled his spirit, of the wave of acuteness almost amounting to madness that mounted to his head, and finally of the ambition, the immense effort, and of the ill-will that results from pettiness of soul. his heroes are not only poor and pitiable creatures, but simple-minded sensitive ones, noble strumpets, often victims of hallucination, gifted epileptics, enthusiastic candidates for martyrdom--just those types which we should suspect in the apostles and disciples of the early days of christianity. certainly nothing could be farther removed from the renaissance. i am excited to know how i can come into your book. i remain your faithfully devoted george brandes. . unstamped. without further address, undated. written in a large hand on a piece of paper (not note-paper) ruled in pencil, such as children use. post-mark: turin, january , . to the friend georg when once you had discovered me, it was easy enough to find me: the difficulty now is to get rid of me ... _the crucified_. as herr max nordau has attempted with incredible coarseness to brand nietzsche's whole life-work as the production of a madman, i call attention to the fact that signs of powerful exaltation only appear in the last letter but one, and that insanity is only evident in the last letter of all, and then not in an unqualified form. but at the close of the year this dear and masterly mind began to be deranged. his self-esteem, which had always been very great, acquired a morbid character. his light and delicate self-irony, which appears not unfrequently in the letters here given, gave place to constantly recurring outbursts of anger with the german public's failure to appreciate the value of his works. it ill became a man of nietzsche's intellect, who only a year before (see letter no. ) had desired a small number of intelligent readers, to take such offence at the indifference of the mob. he now gave expression to the most exalted ideas about himself. in his last book but one he had said: "i have given the germans the profoundest books of any they possess "; in his last he wrote: "i have given mankind the profoundest book it possesses." at the same time he yielded to an impulse to describe the fame he hoped to attain in the future as already his. as the reader will see, he had asked me to furnish him with the addresses of persons in paris and petersburg who might be able to make his name known in france and russia. i chose them to the best of my judgment. but even before the books he sent had reached their destinations, nietzsche wrote in a german review: "and thus i am treated in germany, i who am already _studied_ in petersburg and paris." that his sense of propriety was beginning to be deranged was already shown when sending the book to princess ténicheff (see letter no. ). this lady wrote to me in astonishment, asking what kind of a strange friend i had recommended to her: he had been sufficiently wanting in taste to give the sender's name on the parcel itself as "the antichrist." some time after i had received the last deranged and touching letter, another was shown me, which nietzsche had presumably sent the same day, and in which he wrote that he intended to summon a meeting of sovereigns in rome to have the young german emperor shot there; this was signed "nietzsche-cæsar." the letter to me was signed "the crucified." it was thus evident that this great mind in its final megalomania had oscillated between attributing to itself the two greatest names in history, so strongly contrasted. it was exceedingly sad thus to witness the change that in the course of a few weeks reduced a genius without equal to a poor helpless creature, in whom almost the last gleam of mental life was extinguished for ever. iii (august ) it sometimes happens that the death of a great individual recalls a half-forgotten name to our memory, and we then disinter for a brief moment the circumstances, events, writings or achievements which gave that name its renown. although friedrich nietzsche in his silent madness had survived himself for eleven and a half years, there is no need at his death to resuscitate his works or his fame. for during those very years in which he lived on in the night of insanity, his name has acquired a lustre unsurpassed by any contemporary reputation, and his works have been translated into every language and are known all over the world. to the older among us, who have followed nietzsche from the time of his arduous and embittered struggle against the total indifference of the reading world, this prodigiously rapid attainment of the most absolute and world-wide renown has in it something in the highest degree surprising. no one in our time has experienced anything like it. in the course of five or six years nietzsche's intellectual tendency --now more or less understood, now misunderstood, now involuntarily caricatured--became the ruling tendency of a great part of the literature of france, germany, england, italy, norway, sweden and russia. note, for example, the influence of this spirit on gabriele d'annunzio. to all that was tragic in nietzsche's life was added this--that, after thirsting for recognition to the point of morbidity, he attained it in an altogether fantastic degree when, though still living, he was shut out from life. but certain it is that in the decade - no one engaged and impressed the minds of his contemporaries as did this son of a north german clergyman, who tried so hard to be taken for a polish nobleman, and whose pride it was that his works were conceived in french, though written in german. the little weaknesses of his character were forgotten in the grandeur of the style he imparted to his life and his production. to be able to explain nietzsche's rapid and overwhelming triumph, one would want the key to the secret of the psychological life of our time. he bewitched the age, though he seems opposed to all its instincts. the age is ultra-democratic; he won its favour as an aristocrat. the age is borne on a rising wave of religious reaction; he conquered with his pronounced irreligion. the age is struggling with social questions of the most difficult and far-reaching kind; he, the thinker of the age, left all these questions on one side as of secondary importance. he was an enemy of the humanitarianism of the present day and of its doctrine of happiness; he had a passion for proving how much that is base and mean may conceal itself beneath the guise of pity, love of one's neighbour and unselfishness; he assailed pessimism and scorned optimism; he attacked the ethics of the philosophers with the same violence as the thinkers of the eighteenth century had attacked the dogmas of the theologians. as he became an atheist from religion, so did he become an immoralist from morality. nevertheless the voltairians of the age could not claim him, since he was a mystic; and contemporary anarchists had to reject him as an enthusiast for rulers and castes. for all that, he must in some hidden way have been in accord with much that is fermenting in our time, otherwise it would not have adopted him as it has done. the fact of having known nietzsche, or having been in any way connected with him, is enough at present to make an author famous--more famous, sometimes, than all his writings have made him. what nietzsche, as a young man admired more than anything else in schopenhauer and richard wagner was "the indomitable energy with which they maintained their self-reliance in the midst of the hue and cry raised against them by the whole cultured world." he made this self-reliance his own, and this was no doubt the first thing to make an impression. in the next place the artist in him won over those to whom the aphorisms of the thinker were obscure. with all his mental acuteness he was a pronounced lyricist. in the autumn of he wrote of heine: "how he handled german! one day it will be said that heine and i were without comparison the supreme artists of the german language." one who is not a german is but an imperfect judge of nietzsche's treatment of language; but in our day all german connoisseurs are agreed in calling him the greatest stylist of german prose. he further impressed his contemporaries by his psychological profundity and abstruseness. his spiritual life has its abysses and labyrinths. self-contemplation provides him with immense material for investigation. and he is not content with self-contemplation. his craving for knowledge is a passion; covetousness he calls it: "in this soul there dwells no unselfishness; on the contrary, an all-desiring self that would see by the help of many as with its own eyes and grasp as with its _own_ hands; this soul of mine would even choose to bring back all the past and not lose anything that might belong to it. what a flame is this covetousness of mine!" the equally strong development of his lyrical and critical qualities made a fascinating combination. but it was the cause of those reversals of his personal relations which deprive his career (in much the same way as sören kierkegaard's) of some of the dignity it might have possessed. when a great personality crossed his path he called all his lyricism to arms and with clash of sword on shield hailed the person in question as a demigod or a god (schopenhauer and richard wagner). when later on he discovered the limitations of his hero, his enthusiasm was apt to turn to hatred, and this hatred found vent without the smallest regard to his former worship. this characteristic is offensively conspicuous in nietzsche's behaviour to wagner. but who knows whether this very lack of dignity has not contributed to increase the number of nietzsche's admirers in an age that is somewhat undignified on this point! in the last period of his life nietzsche appeared rather as a prophet than as a thinker. he predicts the superman. and he makes no attempt at logical proof, but proceeds from a reliance on the correctness and sureness of his instinct, convinced that he himself represents a life-promoting principle and his opponents one hostile to life. to him the object of existence is, everywhere the production of genius. the higher man in our day is like a vessel in which the future of the race is fermenting in an impenetrable way, and more than one of these vessels is burst or broken in the process. but the human race is not ruined by the failure of a single creature. man, as we know him, is only a bridge, a transition from the animal to the superman. what the ape is in relation to man, a laughingstock or a thing of shame, that will man be to the superman. hitherto every species has produced something superior to itself. nietzsche teaches that man too will and must do the same. he has drawn a conclusion from darwinism which darwin himself did not see. in the last decade of the nineteenth century nietzsche and tolstoy appeared as the two opposite poles. nietzsche's morality is aristocratic as tolstoy's is popular, individualistic as tolstoy's is evangelical; it asserts the self-majesty of the individual, where tolstoy's proclaims the necessity of self-sacrifice. in the same decade nietzsche and ibsen were sometimes compared. ibsen, like nietzsche, was a combative spirit and held entirely aloof from political and practical life. a first point of agreement between them is that they both laid stress on not having come of small folk. ibsen made known to me in a letter that his parents, both on the father's and the mother's side, belonged to the most esteemed families of their day in skien in norway, related to all the patrician families of the place and country. skien is no world-city, and the aristocracy of skien is quite unknown outside it; but ibsen wanted to make it clear that his bitterness against the upper class in norway was in no wise due to the rancour and envy of the outsider. nietzsche always made it known to his acquaintances that he was descended from a polish noble family, although he possessed no pedigree. his correspondents took this for an aristocratic whim, all the more because the name given out by him, niëzky, by its very spelling betrayed itself as not polish. but the fact is otherwise. the true spelling of the name is nicki, and a young polish admirer of nietzsche, mr. bernard scharlitt, has succeeded in proving nietzsche's descent from the nicki family, by pointing out that its crest is to be found in a signet which for centuries has been an heirloom in the family of nietzsche. perhaps not quite without reason, scharlitt therefore sees in nietzsche's master-morality and his whole aristocratising of the view of the world an expression of the szlachcic spirit inherited from polish ancestors. nietzsche and ibsen, independently of each other but like renan, have sifted the thought of breeding moral aristocrats. it is the favourite idea of ibsen's rosmer; it remains dr. stockmann's. thus nietzsche speaks of the higher man as the preliminary aim of the race, before zarathustra announces the superman. they meet now and then on the territory of psychology. ibsen speaks in _the wild duck_ of the necessity of falsehood to life. nietzsche loved life so greatly that even truth appeared to him of worth only in the case of its acting for the preservation and advancement of life. falsehood is to him an injurious and destructive power only in so far as it is life-constricting. it is not objectionable where it is necessary to life. it is strange that a thinker who abhorred jesuitism as nietzsche did should arrive at this standpoint, which leads directly to jesuitism. nietzsche agrees here with many of his opponents. ibsen and nietzsche were both solitary, even if they were not at all careless as to the fate of their works. it is the strongest man, says dr. stockmann, who is most isolated. who was most isolated, ibsen or nietzsche? ibsen, who held back from every alliance with others, but exposed his work to the masses of the theatre-going public, or nietzsche, who stood alone as a thinker but as a man continually--even if, as a rule, in vain--spied after the like-minded and after heralds, and whose works, in the time of his conscious life, remained unread by the great public, or in any case misunderstood. decision does not fall lightly to one who, by a whim of fate, was regarded by both as an ally. still more difficult is the decision as to which of them has had the deepest effect on the contemporary mind and which will longest retain his fame. but this need not concern us. wherever nietzsche's teaching extends, and wherever his great and rare personality is mastered, its attraction and repulsion will alike be powerful; but everywhere it will contribute to the development and moulding of the individual personality. iv ( ) since the publication of nietzsche's collected works was completed, frau förster-nietzsche has allowed the insel-verlag of leipzig to issue, at a high price and for subscribers only, friedrich nietzsche's posthumous work _ecce homo_, which has been lying in manuscript for more than twenty years, and which she herself had formerly excluded from his works, considering that the german reading public was not ripe to receive it in the proper way--which we may doubtless interpret as a fear on her part that the attitude of the book towards germanism and christianity would raise a terrible outcry. now that nietzsche holds undisputed sway over german minds and exercises an immense influence in the rest of europe and in america, it will certainly be read with emotion and discreetly criticised. it gives us an autobiography, written during nietzsche's last productive months, almost immediately before the collapse of his powers, between october and november , ; and in the course of this autobiography each of his books is briefly characterised. here as elsewhere nietzsche's thoughts are centred on the primary conceptions of ascent and descent, growth and decay. bringing himself into relation with them, he finds that, as the victim of stubborn illness and chronically recurring pain, he is a decadent; but at the same time, as one who in his inmost self is unaffected by his illness, nay, whose strength and fulness of life even increase during its attacks, he is the very reverse of a decadent, a being who is in process of raising himself to a higher form of life. he once more emphasises the fact that the years in which his vitality was lowest were just those in which he threw off all melancholy and recovered his joy in life, his enthusiasm for life, since he had a keen sense that a sick man has no right to pessimism. he begins by giving us plain, matter-of-fact information about himself, speaking warmly and proudly of his father. the latter had been tutor to four princesses of altenburg before he was appointed to his living. out of respect-for friedrich wilhelm iv. he gave his son the hohenzollern names of friedrich wilhelm, and he felt the events of very keenly. his father only reached the age of thirty-six, and nietzsche lost him when he was himself five years old. but he ascribes to paternal heredity his ability to feel at home in a world of high and delicate things (_in einer welt hoher und zarter dinge_). for all that, nietzsche does not forget to bring in, here as elsewhere, the supposition of his descent from polish noblemen; but he did not know this for a fact, and it was only established by scharlitt's investigation of the family seal. he describes himself as what we should call a winning personality. he has "never understood the art of arousing ill-feeling against himself." he can tame every bear; he even makes clowns behave decently. however out of tune the instrument "man" may be, he can coax a pleasing tone out of it. during his years of teaching, even the laziest became diligent under him. whatever offence has been done him, has not been the result of ill-will. the pitiful have wounded him more deeply than the malicious. nor has he given vent to feelings of revenge or rancour. his conflict with christianity is only one instance among many of his antagonism to resentful feelings. it is an altogether different matter that his very nature is that of a warrior. but he confers distinction on the objects of his attacks, and he has never waged war on private individuals, only on types; thus in strauss he saw nothing but the culture-philistine. he attributes to himself an extremely vivid and sensitive instinct of cleanliness. at the first contact the filth lying at the base of another's nature is revealed to him. the unclean are therefore ill at ease in his presence; nor does the sense of being seen through make them any more fragrant. and with true psychology he adds that his greatest danger--he means to his spiritual health and balance--is loathing of mankind. the loathing of mankind is doubtless the best modern expression for what the ancients called misanthropy. no one knows what it is till he has experienced it. when we read, for instance, in our youth of frederick the great that in his later years he was possessed and fettered by contempt for men, this appears to us an unfortunate peculiarity which the king ought to have overcome; for of course he must have seen other men about him besides those who flattered him for the sake of advantage. but the loathing of mankind is a force that surprises and overwhelms one, fed by hundreds of springs concealed in subconsciousness. one only detects its presence after having long entertained it unawares. nietzsche cannot be said to have overcome it; he fled from it, took refuge in solitude, and lived outside the world of men, alone in the mountains among cold, fresh springs. and even if he felt no loathing for individuals, his disgust with men found a collective outlet, since he entertained, or rather worked up, a positive horror of his countrymen, so powerful that at last it breaks out in everything he writes. it reminds us dimly of byron's dislike of englishmen, stendhal's of frenchmen, and heine's of germans. but it is of a more violent character than stendhal's or heine's, and it has a pathos and contempt of its own. he shows none of it at the outset. in his first book, _the birth of tragedy_, he is no less partial to germany than heine was in his first, romantically teutonic period. but nietzsche's development carried him with a rush away from germanism, and in this last book of his the word "german" has become something like his worst term of abuse. he believes only in french culture; all other culture is a misunderstanding. it makes him angry to see those frenchmen he values most, infected by german spirit. thus taine is, in his opinion, corrupted by hegel's influence. this impression is right in so far as hegel deprived taine of some of the essentially french element which he originally possessed, and of which certain of his admirers before now have painfully felt the loss. but he overlooks the effect of the study of hegel in promoting at the same time what one might call the extension of taine's intellectual horizon. and nietzsche is satisfied with no narrower generalisation of the case than this: wherever germany extends, she ruins culture. as though to make sure of wounding german national pride, he declares that heinrich heine (not goethe) gave him the highest idea of lyric poetry, and that as concerns byron's _manfred_, he has no words, only a look, for those who in the presence of this work dare to utter the name of _faust_. the germans, he maintains in connection with _manfred_, are incapable of any conception of greatness. so uncritical has he become that he puts _manfred_ above _faust_. in his deepest instincts nietzsche is now, as he asserts, so foreign to everything german, that the mere presence of a german "retards his digestion." german intellect is to him indigestion; it can never be finished with anything. if he has been so enthusiastic in his devotion to wagner, if he still regards his intimate relationship with wagner as the most profound refreshment of his life, this was because in wagner he honoured the foreigner, because in him he saw the incarnate protest against all german virtues. in his book, _the case of wagner_, he had already hinted that richard wagner, the glory of german nationalism, was of jewish descent, since his real father seems to have been the step-father, geyer. i could not have survived my youth without wagner, he says; i was condemned to the society of germans and had to take a counter-poison; wagner was the counter-poison. here, by way of exception, he generalises his feeling. we who were children in the 'fifties, he says, necessarily became pessimists in regard to the concept "german." we cannot be anything else than revolutionaries. and he explains this expression thus: we can assent to no state of affairs which allows the canting bigot to be at the top. (höffding's protest against the use of the word "radicalism" applied to nietzsche, in _moderne filosofer_, is thus beside the mark.) wagner was a revolutionary; he fled from the germans. and, nietzsche adds, as an artist, a man has no other home than paris--the city which, strangely enough, he was never, to see. he ranks wagner among the later masters of french romanticism--delacroix, berlioz, baudelaire--and wisely says nothing about the reception of wagnerian opera in paris under the empire. in everything nietzsche now adopts the french stand-point--the old and narrow french standpoint--that, for instance, of the elderly voltaire towards shakespeare. he declares here, as he has done before, that his artist's taste defends molière, corneille and racine, not without bitterness (_nicht ohne ingrimm_) against such a wild (_wüstes_) genius as shakespeare. strangely enough he repeats here his estimate of shakespeare's cæsar as his finest creation, weak as it is: "my highest formula for shakespeare is that he conceived the type of cæsar." it must be added that here again nietzsche assents to the unhappy delusion that shakespeare never wrote the works that bear his name. nietzsche is "instinctively" certain that they are due to bacon, and, ignoring repeated demonstrations of the impossibility of this fatuous notion, he supports his conjecture by the grotesque assertion that if he himself had christened his zarathustra by a name not his own--by wagner's, for instance--the acumen of two thousand years would not have sufficed to guess who was its originator; no one would have believed it possible that the author of _human, all-too-human_ had conceived the visions of zarathustra. he allows the germans no honour as philosophers: leibniz and kant were "the two greatest clogs upon the intellectual integrity of europe." just when a perfectly scientific attitude of mind had been attained, they managed to find byways back to "the old ideal." and no less passionately does he deny to the germans all honour as musicians: "a german _cannot_ know what music is. the men who pass as german musicians are foreigners, slavs, croats, italians, dutchmen or jews. i am pole enough to give up all other music for chopin--except wagner's _siegfried-idyll_, some things of liszt, and the italians rossini and pietro gasti" (by this last name he appears to mean his favourite disciple, köselitz, who wrote under the pseudonym of peter gast). he abhors the germans as "idealists." all idealism is falsehood in the face of necessity. he finds a pernicious idealism in henrik ibsen too, "that typical old maid," as well, as in others whose object it is to poison the clean conscience, the natural spirit, of sexual love. and he gives us a clause of his moral code, in which, under the head of vice, he combats every kind of opposition to nature, or if fine words are preferred, every kind of idealism. the clause runs: "preaching of chastity is a public incitement to unnatural practices. all, depreciation of the sexual life, all sullying of it with the word 'impure,' is a crime against life itself--is the real sin against the holy spirit of life." finally he attacks what he calls the "licentiousness" of the germans in historical matters. german historians, he declares, have lost all eye for the values of culture; in fact, they have put this power of vision under the ban of the empire. they claim that a man must in the first place be a german, must belong to the race. if he does, he is in a position to determine values or their absence: the germans are thus the "moral order of the universe" in history; compared with the power of the roman empire they are the champions of liberty; compared with the eighteenth century they are the restorers of morality and of the categorical imperative. "history is actually written on imperial german and antisemitic lines--and herr von treitschke is not ashamed of himself." the germans have on their conscience every crime against culture committed in the last four centuries. as nietzsche in his later years was never tired of asserting, they deprived the renaissance of its meaning, they wrecked it by the reformation; that is, by luther, an impossible monk who, owing to his impossibility, attacked the church and in so doing restored it. the catholics would have every reason to honour luther's name. and when, upon the bridge between two centuries of decadence, a _force majeure_ of genius and will revealed itself, strong enough to weld europe into political and economic unity, the germans finally, with their "wars of liberation," robbed europe of the meaning of napoleon's existence, a prodigy of meaning. thus they have upon their conscience all that followed, nationalism, the _névrose nationale_ from which europe is suffering, and the perpetuation of the system of little states, of petty politics. last of all, the germans have upon their conscience their attitude to himself, their indifference, their lack of recognition, the silence in which they buried his life's work. the germans are bad company. and although his autobiography ends with a poem in which he affects a scorn of fame, "that coin in which the whole world pays, but which he receives with gloved hands and tramples underfoot with loathing "--yet his failure to win renown in germany during his lifetime contributed powerfully to foster his antipathy. the exaltation that marks the whole tone of the work, the unrestrained self-esteem which animates it and is ominous of the near approach of madness, have not deprived _ecce homo_ of its character of surpassing greatness. the letters of william james [illustration: william james from a photograph taken about ] the letters of william james edited by his son henry james in two volumes volume ii [illustration] the atlantic monthly press boston copyright, , by henry james contents xi. - - _turning to philosophy--a student's impressions--popular lecturing--chautauqua._ letters:-- to dickinson s. miller to henry holt to henry james to henry james to mrs. henry whitman to g. h. howison to theodore flournoy to his daughter to e. l. godkin to f. w. h. myers to f. w. h. myers to henry holt to his class at radcliffe college to henry james to henry james to benjamin p. blood to mrs. james to miss rosina h. emmet to charles renouvier to theodore flournoy to dickinson s. miller to henry james xii. - (continued) - _the will to believe--talks to teachers--defense of mental healers--excessive climbing in the adirondacks._ letters:-- to theodore flournoy to henry w. rankin to benjamin p. blood to henry james to miss ellen emmet to e. l. godkin to f. c. s. schiller to james j. putnam to james j. putnam to françois pillon to mrs. james to g. h. howison to henry james to his son alexander to miss rosina h. emmet to dickinson s. miller to dickinson s. miller to henry rutgers marshall to henry rutgers marshall to mrs. henry whitman xiii. - - _two years of illness in europe--retirement from active duty at harvard--the first and second series of the gifford lectures._ letters:-- to miss pauline goldmark to mrs. e. p. gibbens to william m. salter to miss frances r. morse to mrs. henry whitman to thomas davidson to john c. gray to miss frances r. morse to mrs. glendower evans to dickinson s. miller to francis boott to hugo münsterberg to g. h. palmer to miss frances r. morse to his son alexander to his daughter to miss frances r. morse to miss frances r. morse to josiah royce to miss frances r. morse to james sully to miss frances r. morse to f. c. s. schiller to miss frances r. morse to miss frances r. morse to henry w. rankin to charles eliot norton to n. s. shaler to miss frances r. morse to henry james to e. l. godkin to e. l. godkin to miss pauline goldmark to h. n. gardiner to f. c. s. schiller to charles eliot norton to mrs. henry whitman xiv. - - _the last period (i)--statements of religious belief--philosophical writing._ letters:-- to henry l. higginson to miss grace norton to miss frances r. morse to henry l. higginson to henri bergson to mrs. louis agassiz to henry l. higginson to henri bergson to theodore flournoy to henry james to his daughter to miss frances r. morse to henry james to henry w. rankin to dickinson s. miller to mrs. henry whitman to miss frances r. morse to mrs. henry whitman to henry james to françois pillon to henry james to charles eliot norton to l. t. hobhouse to edwin d. starbuck to james henry leuba answers to the pratt questionnaire on religious belief to miss pauline goldmark to f. c. s. schiller to f. j. e. woodbridge to edwin d. starbuck to f. j. e. woodbridge xv. - - _the last period (ii)--italy and greece--philosophical congress in rome--stanford university--the earthquake--resignation of professorship._ letters:-- to mrs. james to his daughter to mrs. james to george santayana to mrs. james to mrs. james to h. g. wells to henry l. higginson to t. s. perry to dickinson s. miller to dickinson s. miller to dickinson s. miller to daniel merriman to miss pauline goldmark to henry james to theodore flournoy to f. c. s. schiller to miss frances r. morse to henry james and w. james, jr. to w. lutoslawski to john jay chapman to henry james to h. g. wells to miss theodora sedgwick to his daughter to henry james and w. james, jr. to moorfield storey to theodore flournoy to charles a. strong to f. c. s. schiller to clifford w. beers to william james, jr. to henry james to f. c. s. schiller xvi. - - _the last period (iii)--hibbert lectures in oxford--the hodgson report._ letters:-- to charles lewis slattery to henry l. higginson to w. cameron forbes to f. c. s. schiller to henri bergson to t. s. perry to dickinson s. miller to miss pauline goldmark to w. jerusalem to henry james to theodore flournoy to norman kemp smith to his daughter to henry james to henry james to miss pauline goldmark to charles eliot norton to henri bergson to john dewey to theodore flournoy to shadworth h. hodgson to theodore flournoy to henri bergson to h. g. wells to henry james to t. s. perry to hugo münsterberg to john jay chapman to g. h. palmer to theodore flournoy to miss theodora sedgwick to f. c. s. schiller to theodore flournoy to shadworth h. hodgson to john jay chapman to john jay chapman to john jay chapman to dickinson s. miller xvii. - _final months--the end._ letters:-- to henry l. higginson to miss frances r. morse to t. s. perry to françois pillon to theodore flournoy to his daughter to henry p. bowditch to françois pillon to henry adams to henry adams to henry adams to benjamin p. blood to theodore flournoy appendix i. three criticisms for students. appendix ii. books by william james. index list of illustrations william james in middle life _frontispiece_ "damn the absolute": two snapshots of william james and josiah royce william james and henry james posing for a kodak in william james and henry clement at the "putnam shanty" in the adirondacks ( ?) facsimile of post-card addressed to henry adams the letters of william james xi - _turning to philosophy--a student's impressions--popular lecturing--chautauqua_ when james returned from europe, he was fifty-two years old. if he had been another man, he might have settled down to the intensive cultivation of the field in which he had already achieved renown and influence. he would then have spent the rest of his life in working out special problems in psychology, in deducing a few theories, in making particular applications of his conclusions, in administering a growing laboratory, in surrounding himself with assistants and disciples--in weeding and gathering where he had tilled. but the fact was that the publication of his two books on psychology operated for him as a welcome release from the subject. he had no illusion of finality about what he had written.[ ] but he would have said that whatever original contribution he was capable of making to psychology had already been made; that he must pass on and leave addition and revision to others. he gradually disencumbered himself of responsibility for teaching the subject in the college. the laboratory had already been placed under professor münsterberg's charge. for one year, during which münsterberg returned to germany, james was compelled to direct its conduct; but he let it be known that he would resign his professorship rather than concern himself with it indefinitely. readers of this book will have seen that the centre of his interest had always been religious and philosophical. to be sure, the currents by which science was being carried forward during the sixties and seventies had supported him in his distrust of conclusions based largely on introspection and _a priori_ reasoning. as early as he had said, apropos of agassiz, "no one sees farther into a generalization than his own knowledge of details extends." in the spirit of that remark he had spent years on brain-physiology, on the theory of the emotions, on the feeling of effort in mental processes, in studying the measurements and exact experiments by means of which the science of the mind was being brought into quickening relation with the physical and biological sciences. but all the while he had been driven on by a curiosity that embraced ulterior problems. in half of the field of his consciousness questions had been stirring which now held his attention completely. does consciousness really exist? could a radically empirical conception of the universe be formulated? what is knowledge? what truth? where is freedom? and where is there room for faith? metaphysical problems haunted his mind; discussions that ran in strictly psychological channels bored him. he called psychology "a nasty little subject," according to professor palmer, and added, "all one cares to know lies outside." he would not consider spending time on a revised edition of his textbook (the "briefer course") except for a bribe that was too great ever to be urged upon him. as time went on, he became more and more irritated at being addressed or referred to as a "psychologist." in june, , when he became aware that harvard was intending to confer an honorary degree on him, he went about for days before commencement in a half-serious state of dread lest, at the fatal moment, he should hear president eliot's voice naming him "psychologist, psychical researcher, willer-to-believe, religious experiencer." he could not say whether the impossible last epithets would be less to his taste than "psychologist." only along the borderland between normal and pathological mental states, and particularly in the region of "religious experience," did he continue to collect psychological data and to explore them. the new subjects which he offered at harvard during the nineties are indicative of the directions in which his mind was moving. in the first winter after his return he gave a course on cosmology, which he had never taught before and which he described in the department announcement as "a study of the fundamental conceptions of natural science with especial reference to the theories of evolution and materialism," and for the first time announced that his graduate "seminar" would be wholly devoted to questions in mental pathology "embracing a review of the principal forms of abnormal or exceptional mental life." in the second half of his psychological seminar was announced as "a discussion of certain theoretic problems, as consciousness, knowledge, self, the relations of mind and body." in he offered a course on the philosophy of kant for the first time. in the announcement of his "elective" on metaphysics explained that the class would consider "the unity or pluralism of the world ground, and its knowability or unknowability; realism and idealism, freedom, teleology and theism."[ ] but there is another aspect of the nineties which must be touched upon. after getting back "to harness" in james took up, not only his full college duties, but an amount of outside lecturing such as he had never done before. in so doing he overburdened himself and postponed the attainment of his true purpose; but the temptation to accept the requests which now poured in on him was made irresistible by practical considerations. he not only repeated some of his harvard courses at radcliffe college, and gave instruction in the harvard summer school in addition to the regular work of the term; but delivered lectures at teachers' meetings and before other special audiences in places as far from cambridge as colorado and california. a number of the papers that are included in "the will to believe and other essays in popular philosophy" ( ) and "talks to teachers and students on some of life's ideals" ( ) were thus prepared as lectures. some of them were read many times before they were published. when he stopped for a rest in , he was exhausted to the verge of a formidable break-down. even a glance at this period tempts one to wonder whether this record would not have been richer if it had been different. might-have-beens can never be measured or verified; and yet sometimes it cannot be doubted that possibilities never realized were actual possibilities once. by james was inwardly eager, as has already been said, to devote all his thought and working time to metaphysical and religious questions. more than that--he had already conceived the important terms of his own _welt-anschauung_. "the will to believe" was written by . in the preface to the "talks to teachers" he said of the essay called "a certain blindness in human beings," "it connects itself with a definite view of the world and our moral relations to the same.... i mean the pluralistic or individualistic philosophy." this was no more than a statement of a general philosophic attitude which had for some years been familiar to his students and to readers of his occasional papers. the lecture on "philosophical conceptions and practical results," delivered at the university of california in , forecast "pragmatism" and the "meaning of truth." if his time and energy had not been otherwise consumed, the nineties might well have witnessed the appearance of papers which were not written until the next decade. if he had been able to apply an undistracted attention to what his spirit was all the while straining toward, the disastrous breakdown of - might not have happened. but instead, these best years of his maturity were largely sacrificed to the practical business of supporting his family. his salary as a harvard professor was insufficient to his needs. on his salary alone he could not educate his four children as he wanted to, and make provision for his old age and their future and his wife's, except by denying himself movement and social and professional contacts and by withdrawing into isolation that would have been utterly paralyzing and depressing to his genius. he possessed private means, to be sure; but, considering his family, these amounted to no more than a partial insurance against accident and a moderate supplement to his salary. his books had not yet begun to yield him a substantial increase of income. it is true that he made certain lecture engagements serve as the occasion for casting philosophical conceptions in more or less popular form, and that he frequently paid the expenses of refreshing travels by means of these lectures. but after he had economized in every direction,--as for instance, by giving up horse and hired man at chocorua,--the bald fact remained that for six years he spent most of the time that he could spare from regular college duties, and about all his vacations, in carrying the fruits of the previous fifteen years of psychological work into the popular market. his public reputation was increased thereby. teachers, audiences, and the "general reader" had reason to be thankful. but science and philosophy paid for the gain. his case was no worse than that of plenty of other men of productive genius who were enmeshed in an inadequately supported academic system. it would have been much more distressing under the conditions that prevail today. so james took the limitations of the situation as a matter of course and made no complaint. but when he died, the systematic statement of his philosophy had not been "rounded out" and he knew that he was leaving it "too much like an arch built only on one side." * * * * * james's appearance at this period is well shown by the frontispiece of this volume. almost anyone who was at harvard in the nineties can recall him as he went back and forth in kirkland street between the college and his irving street house, and can in memory see again that erect figure walking with a step that was somehow firm and light without being particularly rapid, two or three thick volumes and a note-book under one arm, and on his face a look of abstraction that used suddenly to give way to an expression of delighted and friendly curiosity. sometimes it was an acquaintance who caught his eye and received a cordial word; sometimes it was an occurrence in the street that arrested him; sometimes the terrier dog, who had been roving along unwatched and forgotten, embroiled himself in an adventure or a fight and brought james out of his thoughts. one day he would have worn the norfolk jacket that he usually worked in at home to his lecture-room; the next, he would have forgotten to change the black coat that he had put on for a formal occasion. at twenty minutes before nine in the morning he could usually be seen going to the college chapel for the fifteen-minute service with which the college day began. if he was returning home for lunch, he was likely to be hurrying; for he had probably let himself be detained after a lecture to discuss some question with a few of his class. he was apt then to have some student with him whom he was bringing home to lunch and to finish the discussion at the family table, or merely for the purpose of establishing more personal relations than were possible in the class-room. at the end of the afternoon, or in the early evening, he would frequently be bicycling or walking again. he would then have been working until his head was tired, and would have laid his spectacles down on his desk and have started out again to get a breath of air and perhaps to drop in on a cambridge neighbor. in his own house it seemed as if he was always at work; all the more, perhaps, because it was obvious that he possessed no instinct for arranging his day and protecting himself from interruptions. he managed reasonably well to keep his mornings clear; or rather he allowed his wife to stand guard over them with fair success. but soon after he had taken an essential after-lunch nap, he was pretty sure to be "caught" by callers and visitors. from six o'clock on, he usually had one or two of the children sitting, more or less subdued, in the library, while he himself read or dashed off letters, or (if his eyes were tired) dictated them to mrs. james. he always had letters and post-cards to write. at any odd time--with his overcoat on and during a last moment before hurrying off to an appointment or a train--he would sit down at his desk and do one more note or card--always in the beautiful and flowing hand that hardly changed between his eighteenth and his sixty-eighth years. he seemed to feel no need of solitude except when he was reading technical literature or writing philosophy. if other members of the household were talking and laughing in the room that adjoined his study, he used to keep the door open and occasionally pop in for a word, or to talk for a quarter of an hour. it was with the greatest difficulty that mrs. james finally persuaded him to let the door be closed up. he never struck an equilibrium between wishing to see his students and neighbors freely and often, and wishing not to be interrupted by even the most agreeable reminder of the existence of anyone or anything outside the matter in which he was absorbed. it was customary for each member of the harvard faculty to announce in the college catalogue at what hour of the day he could be consulted by students. year after year james assigned the hour of his evening meal for such calls. sometimes he left the table to deal with the caller in private; sometimes a student, who had pretty certainly eaten already and was visibly abashed at finding himself walking in on a second dinner, would be brought into the dining-room and made to talk about other things than his business. he allowed his conscience to be constantly burdened with a sense of obligation to all sorts of people. the list of neighbors, students, strangers visiting cambridge, to whom he and mrs. james felt responsible for civilities, was never closed, and the cordiality which animated his intentions kept him reminded of every one on it. and yet, whenever his wife wisely prepared for a suitable time and made engagements for some sort of hospitality otherwise than by hap-hazard, it was perversely likely to be the case, when the appointed hour arrived, that james was "going on his nerves" and in no mood for "being entertaining." the most comradely of men, nothing galled him like _having to be_ sociable. the "hollow mockery of our social conventions" would then be described in furious and lurid speech. luckily the guests were not yet there to hear him. but they did not always get away without catching a glimpse of his state of mind. on one such occasion,--an evening reception for his graduate class had been arranged,--mrs. james encountered a young man in the hall whose expression was so perturbed that she asked him what had happened to him. "i've come in again," he replied, "to get my hat. i was trying to find my way to the dining-room when mr. james swooped at me and said, 'here, smith, you want to get out of this _hell_, don't you? i'll show you how. there!' and before i could answer, he'd popped me out through a back-door. but, really, i do not want to go!" the dinners of a club to which allusions will occur in this volume, (in letters to henry l. higginson, t. s. perry, and john c. gray) were occasions apart from all others; for james could go to them at the last moment, without any sense of responsibility and knowing that he would find congenial company and old friends. so he continued to go to these dinners, even after he had stopped accepting all invitations to dine. the club (for it never had any name) had been started in . james had been one of the original group who agreed to dine together once a month during the winter. among the other early members had been his brother henry, w. d. howells, o. w. holmes, jr., john fiske, john c. gray, henry adams, t. s. perry, john c. ropes, a. g. sedgwick, and f. parkman. the more faithful diners, who constituted the nucleus of the club during the later years, included henry l. higginson, sturgis bigelow, john c. ropes, john t. morse, charles grinnell, james ford rhodes, moorfield storey, james w. crafts, and h. p. walcott. * * * * * every little while james's sleep would "go to pieces," and he would go off to newport, the adirondacks, or elsewhere, for a few days. this happened both summer and winter. it was not the effect of the place or climate in which he was living, but simply that his dangerously high average of nervous tension had been momentarily raised to the snapping point. writing was almost certain to bring on this result. when he had an essay or a lecture to prepare, he could not do it by bits. in order to begin such a task, he tried to seize upon a free day--more often a sunday than any other. then he would shut himself into his library, or disappear into a room at the top of the house, and remain hidden all day. if things went well, twenty or thirty sheets of much-corrected manuscript (about twenty-five hundred words in his free hand) might result from such a day. as many more would have gone into the waste-basket. two or three successive days of such writing "took it out of him" visibly. short holidays, or intervals in college lecturing, were often employed for writing in this way, the longer vacations of the latter nineties being filled, as has been said, with traveling and lecture engagements. in the intervals there would be a few days, or sometimes two or three whole weeks, at chocorua. or, one evening, all the windows of the deserted irving street house would suddenly be wide open to the night air, and passers on the sidewalk could see james sitting in his shirt-sleeves within the circle of the bright light that stood on his library table. he was writing letters, making notes, and skirmishing through the piles of journals and pamphlets that had accumulated during an absence. * * * * * the impression which he made on a student who sat under him in several classes shortly before the date at which this volume begins have been set down in a form in which they can be given here. "i have a vivid recollection" (writes dr. dickinson s. miller) "of james's lectures, classes, conferences, seminars, laboratory interests, and the side that students saw of him generally. fellow-manliness seemed to me a good name for his quality. the one thing apparently impossible to him was to speak _ex cathedra_ from heights of scientific erudition and attainment. there were not a few 'if's' and 'maybe's' in his remarks. moreover he seldom followed for long an orderly system of argument or unfolding of a theory, but was always apt to puncture such systematic pretensions when in the midst of them with some entirely unaffected doubt or question that put the matter upon a basis of common sense at once. he had drawn from his laboratory experience in chemistry and his study of medicine a keen sense that the imposing formulas of science that impress laymen are not so 'exact' as they sound. he was not, in my time at least, much of a believer in lecturing in the sense of continuous exposition. "i can well remember the first meeting of the course in psychology in , in a ground-floor room of the old lawrence scientific school. he took a considerable part of the hour by reading extracts from henry sidgwick's lecture against lecturing, proceeding to explain that we should use as a textbook his own 'principles of psychology,' appearing for the first time that very week from the press, and should spend the hours in conference, in which we should discuss and ask questions, on both sides. so during the year's course we read the two volumes through, with some amount of running commentary and controversy. there were four or five men of previous psychological training in a class of (i think) between twenty and thirty, two of whom were disposed to take up cudgels for the british associational psychology and were particularly troubled by the repeated doctrine of the 'principles' that a state of consciousness had no parts or elements, but was one indivisible fact. he bore questions that really were criticisms with inexhaustible patience and what i may call (the subject invites the word often) _human_ attention; invited written questions as well, and would often return them with a reply penciled on the back when he thought the discussion too special in interest to be pursued before the class. moreover, he bore with us with never a sign of impatience if we lingered after class, and even walked up kirkland street with him on his way home. yet he was really not argumentative, not inclined to dialectic or pertinacious debate of any sort. it must always have required an effort of self-control to put up with it. he almost never, even in private conversation, contended for his own opinion. he had a way of often falling back on the language of perception, insight, sensibility, vision of possibilities. i recall how on one occasion after class, as i parted with him at the gate of the memorial hall triangle, his last words were something like these: 'well, miller, that theory's not a warm reality to me yet--still a cold conception'; and the charm of the comradely smile with which he said it! the disinclination to formal logical system and the more prolonged purely intellectual analyses was felt by some men as a lack in his classroom work, though they recognized that these analyses were present in the 'psychology.' on the other hand, the very tendency to _feel_ ideas lent a kind of emotional or æsthetic color which deepened the interest. "in the course of the year he asked the men each to write some word of suggestion, if he were so inclined, for improvement in the method with which the course was conducted; and, if i remember rightly, there were not a few respectful suggestions that too much time was allowed to the few wrangling disputants. in a pretty full and varied experience of lecture-rooms at home and abroad i cannot recall another where the class was asked to criticize the methods of the lecturer. "another class of twelve or fourteen, in the same year, on descartes, spinoza, and leibnitz, met in one of the 'tower rooms' of sever hall, sitting around a table. here we had to do mostly with pure metaphysics. and more striking still was the prominence of humanity and sensibility in his way of taking philosophic problems. i can see him now, sitting at the head of that heavy table of light-colored oak near the bow-window that formed the end of the room. my brother, a visitor at cambridge, dropping in for an hour and seeing him with his vigorous air, bronzed and sanguine complexion, and brown tweeds, said, 'he looks more like a sportsman than a professor.' i think that the sporting men in college always felt a certain affinity to themselves on one side in the freshness and manhood that distinguished him in mind, appearance, and diction. it was, by the way, in this latter course that i first heard some of the philosophic phrases now identified with him. there was a great deal about the monist and pluralist views of the universe. the world of the monist was described as a 'block-universe' and the monist himself as 'wallowing in a sense of unbridled unity,' or something of the sort. he always wanted the men to write one or two 'theses' in the course of the year and to get to work early on them. he made a great deal of bibliography. he would say, 'i am no man for editions and references, no exact bibliographer.' but none the less he would put upon the blackboard full lists of books, english, french, german, and italian, on our subject. his own reading was immense and systematic. no one has ever done justice to it, partly because he spoke with unaffected modesty of that side of his equipment. "of course this knowledge came to the foreground in his 'seminar.' in my second year i was with him in one of these for both terms, the first half-year studying the psychology of pleasure and pain, and the second, mental pathology. here each of us undertook a special topic, the reading for which was suggested by him. the students were an interesting group, including professor santayana, then an instructor, dr. herbert nichols, messrs. mezes (now president of the city college, new york), pierce (late professor at smith college), angell (professor of psychology at chicago, and now president of the carnegie corporation), bakewell (professor at yale), and alfred hodder (who became instructor at bryn mawr college, then abandoned academic life for literature and politics). in this seminar i was deeply impressed by his judicious and often judicial quality. his range of intellectual experience, his profound cultivation in literature, in science and in art (has there been in our generation a more cultivated man?), his absolutely unfettered and untrammeled mind, ready to do sympathetic justice to the most unaccredited, audacious, or despised hypotheses, yet always keeping his own sense of proportion and the balance of evidence--merely to know these qualities, as we sat about that council-board, was to receive, so far as we were capable of absorbing it, in a heightened sense of the good old adjective, 'liberal' education. of all the services he did us in this seminar perhaps the greatest was his running commentary on the students' reports on such authors as lombroso and nordau, and all theories of degeneracy and morbid human types. his thought was that there is no sharp line to be drawn between 'healthy' and 'unhealthy' minds, that all have something of both. once when we were returning from two insane asylums which he had arranged for the class to visit, and at one of which we had seen a dangerous, almost naked maniac, i remember his saying, 'president eliot might not like to admit that there is no sharp line between himself and the men we have just seen, but it is true.' he would emphasize that people who had great nervous burdens to carry, hereditary perhaps, could order their lives fruitfully and perhaps derive some gain from their 'degenerate' sensitiveness, whatever it might be. the doctrine is set forth with regard to religion in an early chapter of his 'varieties of religious experience,' but for us it was applied to life at large. "in private conversation he had a mastery of words, a voice, a vigor, a freedom, a dignity, and therefore what one might call an authority, in which he stood quite alone. yet brilliant man as he was, he never quite outgrew a perceptible shyness or diffidence in the lecture-room, which showed sometimes in a heightened color. going to lecture in one of the last courses he ever gave at harvard, he said to a colleague whom he met on the way, 'i have lectured so and so many years, and yet here am i on the way to my class in trepidation!' "professor royce's style of exposition was continuous, even, unfailing, composed. professor james was more conversational, varied, broken, at times struggling for expression--in spite of what has been mentioned as his mastery of words. this was natural, for the one was deeply and comfortably installed in a theory (to be sure a great theory), and the other was peering out in quest of something greater which he did not distinctly see. james's method gave us in the classroom more of his own exploration and _aperçu_. we felt his mind at work. "royce in lecturing sat immovable. james would rise with a peculiar suddenness and make bold and rapid strokes for a diagram on the black-board--i can remember his abstracted air as he wrestled with some idea, standing by his chair with one foot upon it, elbow on knee, hand to chin. a friend has described a scene at a little class that, in a still earlier year, met in james's own study. in the effort to illustrate he brought out a black-board. he stood it on a chair and in various other positions, but could not at once write upon it, hold it steady, and keep it in the class's vision. entirely bent on what he was doing, his efforts resulted at last in his standing it on the floor while he lay down at full length, holding it with one hand, drawing with the other, and continuing the flow of his commentary. i can myself remember how, after one of his lectures on pragmatism in the horace mann auditorium in new york, being assailed with questions by people who came up to the edge of the platform, he ended by sitting on that edge himself, all in his frock-coat as he was, his feet hanging down, with his usual complete absorption in the subject, and the look of human and mellow consideration which distinguished him at such moments, meeting the thoughts of the inquirers, whose attention also was entirely riveted. if this suggests a lack of dignity, it misleads, for dignity never forsook him, such was the inherent strength of tone and bearing. in one respect these particular lectures (afterwards published as his book on pragmatism) stand alone in my recollection. an audience may easily be large the first time, but if there is a change it usually falls away more or less on the subsequent occasions. these lectures were announced for one of the larger lecture-halls. this was so crowded before the lecture began, some not being able to gain admittance, that the audience had to be asked to move to the large 'auditorium' i have mentioned. but in it also the numbers grew, till on the last day it presented much the same appearance as the other hall on the first." _to dickinson s. miller._ cambridge, _nov._ , . my dear miller,--i have found the work of recommencing teaching unexpectedly formidable after our year of gentlemanly irresponsibility. i seem to have forgotten everything, especially psychology, and the subjects themselves have become so paltry and insignificant-seeming that each lecture has appeared a ghastly farce. of late things are getting more real; but the experience brings startlingly near to one the wild desert of old-age which lies ahead, and makes me feel like impressing on all chicken-professors like you the paramount urgency of providing for the time when you'll be old fogies, by laying by from your very first year of service a fund on which you may be enabled to "retire" before you're sixty and incapable of any cognitive operation that wasn't ground into you twenty years before, or of any emotion save bewilderment and jealousy of the thinkers of the rising generation. i am glad to hear that you have more writings on the stocks. i read your paper on "truth and error" with bewilderment and jealousy. either it is dr. johnson _redivivus_ striking the earth with his stick and saying, "matter exists and there's an end on 't," or it is a new david hume, reincarnated in your form, and so subtle in his simplicity that a decaying mind like mine fails to seize any of the deeper import of his words. the trouble is, i can't tell which it is. but with the help of god i will go at it again this winter, when i settle down to my final bout with royce's theory, which must result in my either _actively_ becoming a propagator thereof, or actively its enemy and destroyer. it is high time that this more decisive attitude were generated in me, and it ought to take place this winter. i hardly see more of my colleagues this winter than i did last year. each of us lies in his burrow, and we meet on the street. münsterberg is going really _splendidly_ and the laboratory is a bower of delight. but i do not work there. royce is in powerful condition.... yours ever, w. j. although, in the next letter, james poked fun at reformed spelling, he was really in sympathy with the movement to which his correspondent was giving an outspoken support--as mr. holt of course understood. "isn't it abominable"--professor palmer has quoted james as exclaiming--"that everybody is expected to spell the same way!" he lent his name to mr. carnegie's simplified spelling program, and used to wax honestly indignant when people opposed spelling reform with purely conservative arguments. he cared little about etymology, and saw clearly enough that mere accident and fashion have helped to determine orthography. but in his own writing he never put himself to great pains to reëducate his reflexes. he let his hand write _through_ as often as _thro'_ or _thru_, and only occasionally bethought him to write 'filosofy' and 'telefone.' when he published, the text of his books showed very few reforms. _to henry holt._ cambridge, _march_ [ ]. _autographically written, and spelt spontaneously._ dear holt,--the introduction to filosofy is what i ment--i dont no the other book. i will try nordau's entartung this summer--as a rule however it duzn't profit me to read jeremiads against evil--the example of a little good has more effect. a propo of kitchen ranges, i wish you wood remoov your recommendation from that boynton furnace company's affair. we have struggld with it for five years--lost cooks in consequens--burnt countless tons of extra coal, never had anything decently baikt, and now, having got rid of it for dollars, are having a happy kitchen for the st time in our experience--all through your unprinsipld recommendation! you ought to hear my wife sware when she hears your name! i will try about a translator for nordau--though the only man i can think of needs munny more than fame, and coodn't do the job for pure love of the publisher or author, or on an unsertainty. yours affectionately, william james. _to henry james_. princeton, _dec. , _. dear h.,--i have been here for three days at my co-psychologist baldwin's house, presiding over a meeting of the american association of psychologists, which has proved a very solid and successful affair.[ ] strange to say, we are getting to be veterans, and the brunt of the discussions was borne by former students of mine. it is a very healthy movement. alice is with me, the weather is frosty clear and cold, touching zero this a.m. and the country robed in snow. princeton is a beautiful place.... _to henry james._ cambridge, _apr. , _. ...i have been reading balfour's "foundations of belief" with immense gusto. it almost makes me a liberal-unionist! if i mistake not, it will have a profound effect eventually, and it is a pleasure to see old england coming to the fore every time with some big stroke. there is more real philosophy in such a book than in fifty german ones of which the eminence consists in heaping up subtleties and technicalities about the subject. the english genius makes the vitals plain by scuffing the technicalities away. b. is a great man.... _to mrs. henry whitman._ springfield centre, n.y., _june , _. my dear friend,--about the nd! i will come if you command it; but reflect on my situation ere you do so. just reviving from the addled and corrupted condition in which the cambridge year has left me; just at the portals of that adirondack wilderness for the breath of which i have sighed for years, unable to escape the cares of domesticity and get there; just about to get a little health into me, a little simplification and solidification and purification and sanification--things which will never come again if this one chance be lost; just filled to satiety with all the simpering conventions and vacuous excitements of so-called civilization; hungering for their opposite, the smell of the spruce, the feel of the moss, the sound of the cataract, the bath in its waters, the divine outlook from the cliff or hill-top over the unbroken forest--oh, madam, madam! do you know what medicinal things you ask me to give up? alas! i aspire downwards, and really _am_ nothing, _not becoming_ a savage as i would be, and failing to be the civilizee that i really ought to be content with being! but i wish that _you_ also aspired to the wilderness. there are some nooks and summits in that adirondack region where one can really "recline on one's divine composure," and, as long as one stays up there, seem for a while to enjoy one's birth-right of freedom and relief from every fever and falsity. stretched out on such a shelf,--with thee beside me singing in the wilderness,--what babblings might go on, what judgment-day discourse! command me to give it up and return, if you will, by telegram addressed "adirondack lodge, north elba, n.y." in any case i shall return before the end of the month, and later shall be hanging about cambridge some time in july, giving lectures (for my sins) in the summer school. i am staying now with a cousin on otsego lake, a dear old country-place that has been in their family for a century, and is rich and ample and reposeful. the kipling visit went off splendidly--he's a regular little brick of a man; but it's strange that with so much sympathy with the insides of every living thing, brute or human, drunk or sober, he should have so little sympathy with those of a yankee--who also is, in the last analysis, one of god's creatures. i have stopped at williamstown, at albany, at amsterdam, at utica, at syracuse, and finally here, each time to visit human beings with whom i had business of some sort or other. the best was benj. paul blood at amsterdam, a son of the soil, but a man with extraordinary power over the english tongue, of whom i will tell you more some day. i will by the way enclose some clippings from his latest "effort." "yes, paul is quite a _correspondent_!" as a citizen remarked to me from whom i inquired the way to his dwelling. don't you think "correspondent" rather a good generic term for "man of letters," from the point of view of the country-town newspaper reader?... now, dear, noble, incredibly perfect madam, you won't take ill my reluctance about going to beverly, even to your abode, so soon. i am a badly mixed critter, and i experience a certain organic need for simplification and solitude that is quite imperious, and so vital as actually to be respectable even by others. so be indulgent to your ever faithful and worshipful, w. j. _to g. h. howison._ cambridge, _july , _. my dear howison,--how you _have_ misunderstood the application of my word "trivial" as being discriminatively applied to your pluralistic idealism! quite the reverse--if there be a philosophy that i believe in, it's that. the word came out of one who is unfit to be a philosopher because at bottom he hates philosophy, especially at the beginning of a vacation, with the fragrance of the spruces and sweet ferns all soaking him through with the conviction that it is better to _be_ than to define your being. i am a victim of neurasthenia and of the sense of hollowness and unreality that goes with it. and philosophic literature _will_ often seem to me the hollowest thing. my word trivial was a general reflection exhaling from this mood, vile indeed in a supposed professor. where it will end with me, i do not know. i wish i could give it all up. but perhaps it is a grand climacteric and will pass away. at present i am philosophizing as little as possible, in order to do it the better next year, if i can do it at all. and i envy you your stalwart and steadfast enthusiasm and faith. always devotedly yours, wm. james. _to theodore flournoy._ glenwood springs, colorado, _aug. , _. my dear flournoy,--ever since last january an envelope addressed to you has been lying before my eyes on my library table. i mention this to assure you that you have not been absent from my thoughts; but i will waste no time or paper in making excuses. as the sage emerson says, when you visit a man do not degrade the occasion with apologies for not having visited him before. visit him now! make him feel that the highest truth has come to see him in you its lowliest organ. i don't know about the highest truth transpiring through this letter, but i feel as if there were plenty of affection and personal gossip to express themselves. to begin with, your photograph and mrs. flournoy's were splendid. what we need now is the photographs of those fair _demoiselles_! i may say that one reason of my long silence has been the hope that when i wrote i should have my wife's photograph to send you. but alas! it has not been taken yet. she is well, very well, and is now in our little new hampshire country-place with the children, living very quietly and happily. we have had a rather large _train de maison_ hitherto, and this summer we are shrunken to our bare essentials--a very pleasant change. i, you see, am farther away from home than i have ever been before on this side of the atlantic, namely, in the state of colorado, and just now in the heart of the rocky mountains. i have been giving a course of six lectures on psychology "for teachers" at a so-called "summer-school" in colorado springs. i had to remain for three nights and three days in the train to get there, and it has made me understand the vastness of my dear native land better than i ever did before.... the trouble with all this new civilization is that it is based, not on saving, but on borrowing; and when hard times come, as they did come three years ago, everyone goes bankrupt. but the vision of the future, the dreams of the possible, keep everyone enthusiastic, and so the work goes on. such conditions have never existed before on so enormous a scale. but i must not write you a treatise on national economy!--i got through the year very well in regard to health, and gave in the course of it, what i had never done before, a number of lectures to teachers in boston and new york. i also repeated my course in cosmology in the new woman's college which has lately been established in connection with our university. the consequence is that i laid by more than a thousand dollars, an absolutely new and proportionately pleasant experience for me. to make up for it, i haven't had an idea or written anything to speak of except the "presidential address" which i sent you, and which really contained nothing new.... and now is not that enough gossip about ourselves? i wish i could, by telephone, at this moment, hear just where and how you all are, and what you are all doing. in the mountains somewhere, of course, and i trust all well; but it is perhaps fifteen or twenty years too soon for transatlantic telephone. my surroundings here, so much like those of switzerland, bring you before me in a lively manner. i enclose a picture of one of the streets at colorado springs for madame flournoy, and another one of a "cowboy" for that one of the _demoiselles_ who is most _romanesque_. alice, blanche--but i have actually gone and been and forgotten the name of the magnificent third one, whose resplendent face i so well remember notwithstanding. _dulcissima mundi nomina_, all of them; and i do hope that they are being educated in a thoroughly emancipated way, just like true american girls, with no laws except those imposed by their own sense of fitness. i am sure it produces the best results! how did the teaching go last year? i mean your own teaching. have you started any new lines? and how is chantre? and how ritter? and how monsieur gowd? please give my best regards to all round, especially to ritter. have you a copy left of your "métaphysique et psychologie"? in some inscrutable way my copy has disappeared, and the book is reported _épuisé_. with warmest possible regards to both of you, and to all five of the descendants, believe me ever faithfully yours, w. james. _to his daughter._ el paso, colo., _aug. , _. sweetest of living pegs,--your letter made glad my heart the day before yesterday, and i marveled to see what an improvement had come over your handwriting in the short space of six weeks. "orphly" and "ofly" are good ways to spell "awfully," too. i went up a high mountain yesterday and saw all the kingdoms of the world spread out before me, on the illimitable prairie which looked like a map. the sky glowed and made the earth look like a stained-glass window. the mountains are bright red. all the flowers and plants are different from those at home. there is an immense mastiff in my house here. i think that even you would like him, he is so tender and gentle and mild, although fully as big as a calf. his ears and face are black, his eyes are yellow, his paws are magnificent, his tail keeps wagging _all_ the time, and he makes on me the impression of an angel hid in a cloud. he longs to do good. i must now go and hear two other men lecture. many kisses, also to tweedy, from your ever loving, dad. * * * * * on december , , president cleveland's venezuela message startled the world and created a situation with which the next three letters are concerned. the boundary dispute between venezuela and british guiana had been dragging along for years. the public had no reason to suppose that it was becoming acute, or that the united states was particularly interested in it, and had, in fact, not been giving the matter so much as a thought. all at once the president sent a message to congress in which he announced that it was incumbent upon the united states to "take measures to determine ... the true" boundary line, and then to "resist by every means in its power as a willful aggression upon its rights and interests" any appropriation by great britain of territory not thus determined to be hers. in addition he sent to congress, and thus published, the diplomatic despatches which had already passed between mr. olney and lord salisbury. in these mr. olney had informed the representative of the empire which was sovereign in british guiana "that distance and three thousand miles of intervening ocean make any permanent political union between a european and an american state unnatural and inexpedient," and that "today the united states is practically sovereign on this continent, and its fiat is law upon the subjects to which it confines its interposition." lord salisbury had squarely declined to concede that the united states could, of its own initiative, assume to settle the boundary dispute. it was difficult to see how either great britain or the united states could with dignity alter the position which its minister had assumed. james was a warm admirer of the president, but this seemingly wanton provocation of a friendly nation horrified him. he considered that no blunder in statesmanship could be more dangerous than a premature appeal to a people's fighting pride, and that no perils inherent in the venezuela boundary dispute were as grave as was the danger that popular explosions on one or both sides of the atlantic would make it impossible for the two governments to proceed moderately. he was appalled at the outburst of anglophobia and war-talk which followed the message. the war-cloud hung in the heavens for several weeks. then, suddenly, a breeze from a strange quarter relieved the atmosphere. the jameson raid occurred in africa, and the kaiser sent his famous message to president kruger.[ ] the english press turned its fire upon the kaiser. the world's attention was diverted from venezuela, and the boundary dispute was quietly and amicably disposed of. _to e. l. godkin._ cambridge, _christmas eve [ ]_. darling old godkin,--the only christmas present i can send you is a word of thanks and a _bravo bravissimo_ for your glorious fight against the powers of darkness. i swear it brings back the days of ' again, when the worst enemies of our country were in our own borders. but now that defervescence has set in, and the long, long campaign of discussion and education is about to begin, you will have to bear the leading part in it, and i beseech you to be as non-expletive and patiently explanatory as you can, for thus will you be the more effective. father, forgive them for they know not what they do! the insincere propaganda of jingoism as a mere weapon of attack on the president was diabolic. but in the rally of the country to the president's message lay that instinct of obedience to leaders which is the prime condition of all effective greatness in a nation. and after all, when one thinks that the only england most americans are taught to conceive of is the bugaboo coward-england, ready to invade the globe wherever there is no danger, the rally does not necessarily show savagery, but only ignorance. we are all ready to be savage in _some_ cause. the difference between a good man and a bad one is the choice of the cause. two things are, however, _désormais_ certain: three days of fighting mob-hysteria at washington can at any time undo peace habits of a hundred years; and the only permanent safeguard against irrational explosions of the fighting instinct is absence of armament and opportunity. since this country has absolutely nothing to fear, or any other country anything to gain from its invasion, it seems to me that the party of civilization ought immediately, at any cost of discredit, to begin to agitate against any increase of either army, navy, or coast defense. that is the one form of protection against the internal enemy on which we can most rely. we live and learn: the labor of civilizing ourselves is for the next thirty years going to be complicated with this other abominable new issue of which the seed was sown last week. _you_ saw the new kind of danger, as you always do, before anyone else; but it grew gigantic much more suddenly than even you conceived to be possible. olney's jefferson brick style makes of our foreign office a laughing-stock, of course. but why, oh why, couldn't he and cleveland and congress between them have left out the infernal war-threat and simply asked for $ , for a judicial commission to enable us to see exactly to what effect we ought, in justice, to exert our influence. that commission, if its decision were adverse, would have put england "in a hole," awakened allies for us in all countries, been a solemn step forward in the line of national righteousness, covered us with dignity, and all the rest. but no--_omnia ademit una dies infesta tibi tot præmia vitæ!_--still, the campaign of education may raise us out of it all yet. distrust of each other must not be suffered to go too far, for that way lies destruction. dear old godkin--i don't know whether you will have read more than the first page--i didn't expect to write more than one and a half, but the steam will work off. i haven't slept right for a week. i have just given my harry, now a freshman, your "comments and reflections," and have been renewing my youth in some of its admirable pages. but why the dickens did you leave out some of the most delectable of the old sentences in the cottager and boarder essay?[ ] don't curse god and die, dear old fellow. live and be patient and fight for us a long time yet in this new war. best regards to mrs. godkin and to lawrence, and a merry christmas. yours ever affectionately, wm. james. _to f. w. h. myers._ cambridge, _jan. , _. my dear myers,--here is a happy new year to you with my presidential address for a gift.[ ] _valeat quantum._ the end could have been expanded, but probably this is enough to set the s. p. r. against a lofty _kultur-historisch_ background; and where we have to do so much champing of the jaws on minute details of cases, that seems to me a good point in a president's address. in the first half, it has just come over me that what i say of one line of fact being "strengthened in the flank" by another is an "uprush" from my subliminal memory of words of gurney's--but that does no harm.... well, our countries will soon be soaked in each other's gore. you will be disemboweling me, and hodgson cleaving lodge's skull. it will be a war of extermination when it comes, for neither side can tell when it is beaten, and the last man will bury the penultimate one, and then die himself. the french will then occupy england and the spaniards america. both will unite against the germans, and no one can foretell the end. but seriously, all true patriots here have had a hell of a time. it has been a most instructive thing for the dispassionate student of history to see how near the surface in all of us the old fighting instinct lies, and how slight an appeal will wake it up. once _really_ waked, there is no retreat. so the whole wisdom of governors should be to avoid the direct appeals. this your european governments know; but we in our bottomless innocence and ignorance over here know nothing, and cleveland in my opinion, by his explicit allusion to war, has committed the biggest political crime i have ever seen here. the secession of the southern states had more excuse. there was absolutely no need of it. a commission solemnly appointed to pronounce justice in the venezuela case would, if its decision were adverse to your country, have doubtless aroused the liberal party in england to espouse the policy of arbitrating, and would have covered us with dignity, if no threat of war had been uttered. but as it is, who can see the way out? every one goes about now saying war is not to be. but with these volcanic forces who can tell? i suppose that the offices of germany or italy might in any case, however, save us from what would be the worst disaster to civilization that our time could bring forth. the astounding thing is the latent anglophobia now revealed. it is most of it directly traceable to the diabolic machinations of the party of protection for the past twenty years. they have lived by every sort of infamous sophistication, and hatred of england has been one of their most conspicuous notes.... i hope _you'll_ read my address--unless indeed gladstone will consent!! ever thine--i hate to think of "embruing" my hands in (or with?) your blood. w. j. [s. p. r.] _proceedings xxix_ just in--hurrah for your -odd pages! i have been ultra non-committal as to our evidence,--thinking it to be good presidential policy,--but i may have overdone the impartiality business. _to f. w. h. myers._ cambridge, _feb. , _. dear myers,--_voici_ the proof! pray _send me a revise_--cattell wants to print it simultaneously _in extenso_ in "science," which i judge to be a very good piece of luck for it. when will the next "proceedings" be likely to appear? i hope your rich tones were those that rolled off its periods, and that you didn't flinch, but rather raised your voice, when your own genius was mentioned. i read it both in new york and boston to full houses, but heard no comments on the spot.... as for venezuela, ach! of that be silent! as carlyle would have said. it is a sickening business, but some good may come out of it yet. don't feel too badly about the anglophobia here. it doesn't mean so much. remember by what words the country was roused: "supine submission to wrong and injustice and the consequent loss of national self-respect and honor."[ ] if any other country's ruler had expressed himself with equal moral ponderosity wouldn't the population have gone twice as fighting-mad as ours? of course it would; the wolf would have been aroused; and when the wolf once gets going, we know that there is no crime of which it doesn't sincerely begin to believe its oppressor, the lamb down-stream, to be guilty. the great proof that civilization _does_ move, however, is the magnificent conduct of the british press. yours everlastingly, w. j. _to henry holt, esq._ cambridge, _jan. , _. my dear holt,--at the risk of displeasing you, i think i won't have my photograph taken, even at no cost to myself. i abhor this hawking about of everybody's phiz which is growing on every hand, and don't see why having written a book should expose one to it. i am sorry that you should have succumbed to the supposed trade necessity. in any case, i will stand on my rights as a free man. you may kill me, but you shan't publish my photograph. put a blank "thumbnail" in its place. very very sorry to displease a man whom i love so much. always lovingly yours, wm. james. _to his class at radcliffe college which had sent a potted azalea to him at easter._ cambridge, _apr. , _. dear young ladies,--i am deeply touched by your remembrance. it is the first time anyone ever treated me so kindly, so you may well believe that the impression on the heart of the lonely sufferer will be even more durable than the impression on your minds of all the teachings of philosophy a. i now perceive one immense omission in my psychology,--the deepest principle of human nature is the _craving to be appreciated_, and i left it out altogether from the book, because i had never had it gratified till now. i fear you have let loose a demon in me, and that all my actions will now be for the sake of such rewards. however, i will try to be faithful to this one unique and beautiful azalea tree, the pride of my life and delight of my existence. winter and summer will i tend and water it--even with my tears. mrs. james shall never go near it or touch it. if it dies, i will die too; and if i die, it shall be planted on my grave. don't take all this too jocosely, but believe in the extreme pleasure you have caused me, and in the affectionate feelings with which i am and shall always be faithfully your friend, wm. james. _to henry james._ [cambridge] _apr. , _. dear h.,--too busy to live almost, lectures and laboratory, dentists and dinner-parties, so that i am much played out, but get off today for eight days' vacation _via_ new haven, where i deliver an "address" tonight, to the yale philosophy club. i shall make it the title of a small volume of collected things called "the will to believe, and other essays in popular philosophy," and then i think write no more addresses, of which the form takes it out of one unduly. if i do anything more, it will be a book on general philosophy. i have been having a bad conscience about not writing to you, when your letter of the th came yesterday expressing a bad conscience of your own. you certainly do your duty best. i am glad to think of you in the country and hope it will succeed with you and make you thrive. i look forward with much excitement to the fruit of all this work.... just a word of good-will and good wish. i think i shall go to the hot springs of virginia for next week. the spring has burst upon us, hot and droughtily, after a glorious burly winter-playing march. yours ever, w. j. * * * * * the next letter begins by acknowledging one which had alluded to the death of a cambridge gentleman who had been run over in the street, almost under william james's eyes. henry james had closed his allusion by exclaiming, "what melancholy, what terrible duties _vous incombent_ when your neighbours are destroyed. and telling that poor man's wife!--life _is_ heroic--however we 'fix' it! even as i write these words the st. louis horror bursts in upon me in the evening paper. inconceivable--i can't try; and i _won't_. strange how practically all one's sense of news from the u. s. here is huge horrors and catastrophes. it's a terrible country _not_ to live in." he would have exclaimed even more if he had witnessed the mescal experiment, that is briefly mentioned in the letter that follows. he might then have gone on to remark that the "fixing" of life seemed, in william's neighborhood, to be quite gratuitously heroic. william james and his wife and the youngest child were alone in the chocorua cottage for a few days, picnicking by themselves without any servant. they had no horse; at that season of the year hours often went by without any one passing the house; there was no telephone, no neighbor within a mile, no good doctor within eighteen miles. it was quite characteristic of james that he should think such conditions ideal for testing an unknown drug on himself. there would be no interruptions. he had no fear. he was impatient to satisfy his curiosity about the promised hallucinations of color. but the effects of one dose were, for a while, much more alarming than his letter would give one to understand. _to henry james._ chocorua, _june , _. your long letter of whitsuntide week in london came yesterday evening, and was read by me aloud to alice and harry as we sat at tea in the window to get the last rays of the sunday's [sun]. you have too much feeling of duty about corresponding with us, and, i imagine, with everyone. i think you have behaved most handsomely of late--and always, and though your letters are the great _fête_ of our lives, i won't be "on your mind" for worlds. your general feeling of unfulfilled obligations is one that runs in the family--i at least am often afflicted by it--but it is "morbid." the horrors of _not_ living in america, as you so well put it, are not shared by those who do live here. all that the telegraph imparts are the shocks; the "happy homes," good husbands and fathers, fine weather, honest business men, neat new houses, punctual meetings of engagements, etc., of which the country mainly consists, are never cabled over. of course, the saint louis disaster is dreadful, but it will very likely end by "improving" the city. the really bad thing here is the silly wave that has gone over the public mind--protection humbug, silver, jingoism, etc. it is a case of "mob-psychology." any country is liable to it if circumstances conspire, and our circumstances have conspired. it is very hard to get them out of the rut. it _may_ take another financial crash to get them out--which, of course, will be an expensive method. it is no more foolish and considerably less damnable than the russophobia of england, which would seem to have been responsible for the armenian massacres. that to me is the biggest indictment "of our boasted civilization"!! it _requires_ england, i say nothing of the other powers, to maintain the turks at that business. we have let our little place, our tenant arrives the day after tomorrow, and alice and i and tweedie have been here a week enjoying it and cleaning house and place. she has worked like a beaver. i had two days spoiled by a psychological experiment with _mescal_, an intoxicant used by some of our southwestern indians in their religious ceremonies, a sort of cactus bud, of which the u. s. government had distributed a supply to certain medical men, including weir mitchell, who sent me some to try. he had himself been "in fairyland." it gives the most glorious visions of color--every object thought of appears in a jeweled splendor unknown to the natural world. it disturbs the stomach somewhat, but that, according to w. m., was a cheap price, etc. i took one bud three days ago, was violently sick for hours, and had no other symptom whatever except that and the _katzenjammer_ the following day. i will take the visions on trust! we have had three days of delicious rain--it all soaks into the sandy soil here and leaves no mud whatever. the little place is the most curious mixture of sadness with delight. the sadness of _things_--things every one of which was done either by our hands or by our planning, old furniture renovated, there isn't an object in the house that isn't associated with past life, old summers, dead people, people who will never come again, etc., and the way it catches you round the heart when you first come and open the house from its long winter sleep is most extraordinary. i have been reading bourget's "idylle tragique," which he very kindly sent me, and since then have been reading in tolstoy's "war and peace," which i never read before, strange to say. i must say that t. rather kills b., for my mind. b.'s moral atmosphere is anyhow so foreign to me, a lewdness so obligatory that it hardly seems as if it were part of a moral _donnée_ at all; and then his overlabored descriptions, and excessive explanations. but with it all an earnestness and enthusiasm for getting it said as well as possible, a richness of epithet, and a warmth of heart that makes you like him, in spite of the unmanliness of all the things he writes about. i suppose there is a stratum in france to whom it is all manly and ideal, but he and i are, as rosina says, a bad combination.... tolstoy is immense! i am glad _you_ are in a writing vein again, to go still higher up the scale! i have abstained on principle from the "atlantic" serial, wishing to get it all at once. i am not going abroad; i can't afford it. i have a chance to give $ worth of summer lectures here, which won't recur. i have a heavy year of work next year, and shall very likely _need_ to go the following summer, which will anyhow be after a more becoming interval than this, so, _somme toute_, it is postponed. if i went i should certainly enjoy seeing you at rye more than in london, which i confess tempts me little now. i love to _see_ it, but staying there doesn't seem to agree with me, and only suggests constraint and money-spending, apart from seeing you. i wish you could see how comfortable our cambridge house has got at last to be. alice who is upstairs sewing whilst i write below by the lamp--a great wood fire hissing in the fireplace--sings out her thanks and love to you.... _to benjamin paul blood._ chatham, mass., _june , _. my dear blood,--your letter was an "event," as anything always is from your pen--though of course i never expected any acknowledgment of my booklet. fear of life in one form or other is the great thing to exorcise; but it isn't reason that will ever do it. impulse without reason is enough, and reason without impulse is a poor makeshift. i take it that no man is educated who has never dallied with the thought of suicide. barely more than a year ago i was sitting at your table and dallying with the thought of publishing an anthology of your works. but, like many other projects, it has been postponed in indefinition. the hour never came last year, and pretty surely will not come next. nevertheless i shall work for your fame some time! count on w. j.[ ] i wound up my "seminary" in speculative psychology a month ago by reading some passages from the "flaw in supremacy"--"game flavored as a hawk's wing." "ever not quite" covers a deal of truth--yet it seems a very simple thing to have said. "there is no _absolute_" were my last words. whereupon a number of students asked where they could get "that pamphlet" and i distributed nearly all the copies i had from you. i wish you would keep on writing, but i see you are a man of discontinuity and insights, and not a philosophic pack-horse, or pack-mule.... i rejoice that ten hours a day of toil makes you feel so hearty. verily mr. rindge says truly. he is a cambridge boy, who made a fortune in california, and then gave a lot of public buildings to his native town. unfortunately he insisted on bedecking them with "mottoes" of his own composition, and over the manual training school near my house one reads: "_work is one of our greatest blessings. every man should have an honest occupation_"--which, if not lapidary in style, is at least what my father once said. swedenborg's writings were, viz., "insipid with veracity," as your case now again demonstrates. have you read tolstoy's "war and peace"? i am just about finishing it. it is undoubtedly the greatest novel ever written--also insipid with veracity. the man is infallible--and the anesthetic revelation[ ] plays a part as in no writer. you have very likely read it. if you haven't, sell all you have and buy the book, for i know it will speak to your very gizzard. pray thank mrs. blood for her appreciation of my "booklet" (such things encourage a writer!), and believe me ever sincerely yours, wm. james. in july, , james delivered, in buffalo and at the chautauqua assembly, the substance of the lectures that were later published as "talks to teachers." his impressions of chautauqua were so characteristic and so lively that they must be included here, even though they duplicate in some measure a well-known passage in the essay called "a certain blindness in human beings." _to mrs. james._ chautauqua, _july , _. ...the audience is some , in an open-air auditorium where (strange to say) everyone seems to hear well; and it is very good-looking--mostly teachers and women, but they make the best impression of any audience of that sort that i have seen except the brooklyn one. so here i go again!... _july _, . p.m. ...x---- departed after breakfast--a good inarticulate man, farmer's boy, four years soldier from private to major, business man in various states, great reader, editor of a "handbook of facts," full of swelling and bursting _weltschmerz_ and religious melancholy, yet no more flexibility or self-power in his mind than in a boot-jack. altogether, what with the teachers, him and others whom i've met, i'm put in conceit of college training. it certainly gives glibness and flexibility, if it doesn't give earnestness and depth. i've been meeting minds so earnest and helpless that it takes them half an hour to get from one idea to its immediately adjacent next neighbor, and that with infinite creaking and groaning. and when they've got to the next idea, they lie down on it with their whole weight and can get no farther, like a cow on a door-mat, so that you can get neither in nor out with them. still, glibness is not all. weight is something, even cow-weight. tolstoy feels these things so--i am still in "anna karenina," volume i, a book almost incredible and supernatural for veracity. i wish we were reading it aloud together. it has rained at intervals all day. young vincent, a powerful fellow, took me over and into the whole vast college side of the institution this a.m. i have heard - / lectures, including the one i gave myself at o'clock, to about or more in the vast open amphitheatre, which seats and which has very good acoustic properties. i think my voice sufficed. i can't judge of the effect. of course i left out all that gossip about my medical degree, etc. but i don't want any more sporadic lecturing--i must stick to more inward things. _july _, : p.m. ...'t is the sabbath and i am just in from the amphitheatre, where the rev.---- has been chanting, calling and bellowing his hour-and-a-quarter-long sermon to people at least--a sad audition. the music was bully, a chorus of some , splendidly drilled, with the audience to help. i have myself been asked to lead, or, if not to lead, at least to do something prominent--i declined so quick that i didn't fully gather what it was--in the exercise which i have marked on the program i enclose. young vincent, whom i take to be a splendid young fellow, told me it was the characteristically "chautauquan" event of the day. i would give anything to have you here. i didn't write yesterday because there is no mail till tomorrow. i went to four lectures, in whole or in part. all to hundreds of human beings, a large proportion unable to get seats, who transport themselves from one lecture-room to another _en masse_. one was on bread-making, with practical demonstrations. one was on _walking_, by a graceful young delsartian, who showed us a lot. one was on telling stories to children, the psychology and pedagogy of it. the audiences interrupt and ask questions occasionally in spite of their size. there is hardly a pretty woman's face in the lot, and they seem to have little or no humor in their composition. no _epicureanism_ of any sort! yesterday was a beautiful day, and i sailed an hour and a half down the lake again to "celoron," "america's greatest pleasure resort,"--in other words popcorn and peep-show place. a sort of midway-pleasance in the wilderness--supported heaven knows how, so far from any human habitation except the odd little jamestown from which a tramway leads to it. good monkeys, bears, foxes, etc. endless peanuts, popcorn, bananas, and soft drinks; crowds of people, a ferris wheel, a balloon ascension, with a man dropping by a parachute, a theatre, a vast concert hall, and all sorts of peep-shows. i feel as if i were in a foreign land; even as far east as this the accent of everyone is terrific. the "nation" is no more known than the london "times." i see no need of going to europe when such wonders are close by. i breakfasted with a methodist parson with false teeth, at the x's table, and discoursed of demoniacal possession. the wife said she had my portrait in her bedroom with the words written under it, "i want to bring a balm to human lives"!!!!! supposed to be a quotation from me!!! after breakfast an extremely interesting lady who has suffered from half-possessional insanity gave me a long account of her case. life _is_ heroic indeed, as harry wrote. i shall stay through tomorrow, and get to syracuse on tuesday.... _july ._ ...it rained hard last night, and today a part of the time. i took a lesson in roasting, in delsarte, and i made with my own fair hands a beautiful loaf of graham bread with some rolls, long, flute-like, and delicious. i should have sent them to you by express, only it seemed unnecessary, since i can keep the family in bread easily after my return home. please tell this, with amplifications, to peggy and tweedy.... buffalo, n.y., _july _. ...the chautauqua week, or rather six and a half days, has been a real success. i have learned a lot, but i'm glad to get into something less blameless but more admiration-worthy. the flash of a pistol, a dagger, or a devilish eye, anything to break the unlovely level of , good people--a crime, murder, rape, elopement, anything would do. i don't see how the younger vincents stand it, because they are people of such spirit.... syracuse, n.y., _july _. ...now for utica and lake placid by rail, with east hill in prospect for tomorrow. you bet i rejoice at the outlook--i long to escape from tepidity. even an armenian massacre, whether to be killer or killed, would seem an agreeable change from the blamelessness of chautauqua as she lies soaking year after year in her lakeside sun and showers. man wants to be _stretched_ to his utmost, if not in one way then in another!... _to miss rosina h. emmet._ burlington, vt., _aug. , _. ...i have seen more women and less beauty, heard more voices and less sweetness, perceived more earnestness and less triumph than i ever supposed possible. most of the american nation (and probably all nations) is white-trash,--but tolstoy has borne me up--and i say unto _you_: "_smooth out your voices_ if you want to be saved"!!... _to charles renouvier._ burlington, vt., _aug. , _. dear mr. renouvier,--my wife announces to me from cambridge the reception of two immense volumes from you on the philosophy of history. i thank you most heartily for the gift, and am more and more amazed at your intellectual and moral power--physical power, too, for the nervous energy required for your work has to be extremely great. my own nervous energy is a small teacup-full, and is more than consumed by my duties of teaching, so that almost none is left over for writing. i sent you a "new world" the other day, however, with an article in it called "the will to believe," in which (if you took the trouble to glance at it) you probably recognized how completely i am still your disciple. in this point perhaps more fully than in any other; and this point is central! i have to lecture on general "psychology" and "morbid psychology," "the philosophy of nature" and the "philosophy of kant," thirteen lectures a week for half the year and eight for the rest. our university moreover inflicts a monstrous amount of routine business on one, faculty meetings and committees of every sort,[ ] so that during term-time one can do no continuous reading at all--reading of books, i mean. when vacation comes, my brain is so tired that i can read nothing serious for a month. during the past month i have only read tolstoy's two great novels, which, strange to say, i had never attacked before. i don't like his fatalism and semi-pessimism, but for infallible veracity concerning human nature, and absolute simplicity of method, he makes all the other writers of novels and plays seem like children. all this proves that i shall be slow in attaining to the reading of your book. i have not yet read pillon's last _année_ except some of the book notices and danriac's article. how admirably clear p. is in style, and what a power of reading he possesses. i hope, dear mr. renouvier, that the years are not weighing heavily upon you, and that this letter will find you well in body and in mind. yours gratefully and faithfully, wm. james. _to theodore flournoy._ lake geneva, wisconsin, _aug. , _. my dear flournoy,--you see the electric current of sympathy that binds the world together--i turn towards you, and the place i write from repeats the name of your lake leman. i was informed yesterday, however, that the lake here was named after lake geneva _in the state of new york_! and _that_ lake only has leman for its godmother. still you see how dependent, whether immediately or remotely, america is on europe. i was at niagara some three weeks ago, and bought a photograph as souvenir and addressed it to you after getting back to cambridge. possibly madame flournoy will deign to accept it. i have thought of you a great deal without writing, for truly, my dear flournoy, there is hardly a human being with whom i feel as much sympathy of aims and character, or feel as much "at home," as i do with you. it is as if we were of the same stock, and i often mentally turn and make a remark to you, which the pressure of life's occupations prevents from ever finding its way to paper. i am hoping that you may have figured, or at any rate _been_, at the munich "congress"--that apparently stupendous affair. if they keep growing at this rate, the next paris one will be altogether too heavy. i have heard no details of the meeting as yet. but whether you have been at munich or not, i trust that you have been having a salubrious and happy vacation so far, and that mrs. flournoy and the young people are all well. i will venture to suppose that your illness of last year has left no bad effects whatever behind. i myself have had a rather busy and instructive, though possibly not very hygienic summer, making money (in moderate amounts) by lecturing on psychology to teachers at different "summer schools" in this land. there is a great fermentation in "pædagogy" at present in the u.s., and my wares come in for their share of patronage. but although i learn a good deal and become a better american for having all the travel and social experience, it has ended by being too tiresome; and when i give the lectures at chicago, which i begin tomorrow, i shall have them stenographed and very likely published in a very small volume, and so remove from myself the temptation ever to give them again. last year was a year of hard work, and before the end of the term came, i was in a state of bad neurasthenic fatigue, but i got through outwardly all right. i have definitely given up the laboratory, for which i am more and more unfit, and shall probably devote what little ability i may hereafter have to purely "speculative" work. my inability to read troubles me a good deal: i am in arrears of several years with psychological literature, which, to tell the truth, does grow now at a pace too rapid for anyone to follow. i was engaged to review stout's new book (which i fancy is very good) for "mind," and after keeping it two months had to back out, from sheer inability to read it, and to ask permission to hand it over to my colleague royce. have you seen the colossal renouvier's two vast volumes on the philosophy of history?--that will be another thing worth reading no doubt, yet very difficult to read. i give a course in kant for the first time in my life (!) next year, and at present and for many months to come shall have to put most of my reading to the service of that overgrown subject.... of course you have read tolstoy's "war and peace" and "anna karenina." i never had that exquisite felicity before this summer, and now i feel as if i knew _perfection_ in the representation of human life. life indeed seems less real than his tale of it. such infallible veracity! the impression haunts me as nothing literary ever haunted me before. i imagine you lounging on some steep mountainside, with those demoiselles all grown too tall and beautiful and proud to think otherwise than with disdain of their elderly _commensal_ who spoke such difficult french when he took walks with them at vers-chez-les-blanc. but i hope that they are happy as they were then. cannot we all pass some summer near each other again, and can't it next time be in tyrol rather than in switzerland, for the purpose of increasing in all of us that "knowledge of the world" which is so desirable? i think it would be a splendid plan. at any rate, wherever you are, take my most affectionate regards for yourself and madame flournoy and all of yours, and believe me ever sincerely your friend, wm. james. _to dickinson s. miller._ lake geneva, wisconsin, _aug. , _. dear miller,--your letter from halle of june nd came duly, but treating of things eternal as it did, i thought it called for no reply till i should have caught up with more temporal matters, of which there has been no lack to press on my attention. to tell the truth, regarding you as my most penetrating critic and intimate enemy, i was greatly relieved to find that you had nothing worse to say about "the will to believe." you say you are no "rationalist," and yet you speak of the "sharp" distinction between beliefs based on "inner evidence" and beliefs based on "craving." i can find _nothing_ sharp (or susceptible of schoolmaster's codification) in the different degrees of "liveliness" in hypotheses concerning the universe, or distinguish _a priori_ between legitimate and illegitimate cravings. and when an hypothesis _is_ once a live one, one _risks_ something in one's practical relations towards truth and error, _whichever_ of the three positions (affirmation, doubt, or negation) one may take up towards it. _the individual himself is the only rightful chooser of his risk._ hence respectful toleration, as the only law that logic can lay down. you don't say a word against my _logic_, which seems to me to cover your cases entirely in its compartments. i class you as one to whom the religious hypothesis is _von vornherein_ so dead, that the risk of error in espousing it now far outweighs for you the chance of truth, so you simply stake your money on the field as against it. if you _say_ this, of course i can, as logician, have no quarrel with you, even though my own choice of risk (determined by the irrational impressions, suspicions, cravings, senses of direction in nature, or what not, that make religion for me a more live hypothesis than for you) leads me to an opposite methodical decision. of course if any one comes along and says that men at large don't need to have facility of faith in their inner convictions preached to them, [that] they have only too much readiness in that way already, and the one thing needful to preach is that they should hesitate with their convictions, and take their faiths out for an airing into the howling wilderness of nature, i should also agree. but my paper wasn't addressed to mankind at large but to a limited set of studious persons, badly under the ban just now of certain authorities whose simple-minded faith in "naturalism" also is sorely in need of an airing--and an airing, as it seems to me, of the sort i tried to give. but all this is unimportant; and i still await criticism of my _auseinandersetzung_ of the _logical situation_ of man's mind _gegenüber_ the universe, in respect to the risks it runs. i wish i could have been with you at munich and heard the deep-lunged germans roar at each other. i care not for the matters uttered, if i only could hear the voice. i hope you met [henry] sidgwick there. i sent him the american hallucination-census results, after considerable toil over them, but s. never acknowledges or answers anything, so i'll have to wait to hear from someone else whether he "got them off." i have had a somewhat unwholesome summer. much lecturing to teachers and sitting up to talk with strangers. but it is instructive and makes one patriotic, and in six days i shall have finished the chicago lectures, which begin tomorrow, and get straight to keene valley for the rest of september. my conditions just now are materially splendid, as i am the guest of a charming elderly lady, mrs. wilmarth, here at her country house, and in town at the finest hotel of the place. the political campaign is a bully one. everyone outdoing himself in sweet reasonableness and persuasive argument--hardly an undignified note anywhere. it shows the deepening and elevating influence of a big topic of debate. it is difficult to doubt of a people part of whose life such an experience is. but imagine the country being saved by a mckinley! if only reed had been the candidate! there have been some really splendid speeches and documents.... ever thine, w. j. _to henry james._ burlington, vt., _sept. , _. dear henry,--the summer is over! alas! alas! i left keene valley this a.m. where i have had three life-and-health-giving weeks in the forest and the mountain air, crossed lake champlain in the steamer, not a cloud in the sky, and sleep here tonight, meaning to take the train for boston in the a.m. and read kant's life all day, so as to be able to lecture on it when i first meet my class. school begins on thursday--this being monday night. it has been a rather cultivating summer for me, and an active one, of which the best impression (after that of the adirondack woods, or even before it) was that of the greatness of chicago. it needs a victor hugo to celebrate it. but as you won't appreciate it without demonstration, and i can't give the demonstration (at least not now and on paper), i will say no more on that score! alice came up for a week, but went down and through last night. she brought me up your letter of i don't remember now what date (after your return to london, about wendell holmes, baldwin and royalty, etc.) which was very delightful and for which i thank. but don't take your epistolary duties hard! letter-writing becomes to me more and more of an affliction, i get so many business letters now. at chicago, i tried a stenographer and type-writer with an alleviation that seemed almost miraculous. i think that i shall have to go in for one some hours a week in cambridge. it just goes "whiff" and six or eight long letters are _done_, so far as you're concerned. i hear great reports of your "old things," and await the book. my great literary impression this summer has been tolstoy. on the whole his atmosphere absorbs me into it as no one's else has ever done, and even his religious and melancholy stuff, his insanity, is probably more significant than the sanity of men who haven't been through that phase at all. but i am forgetting to tell you (strange to say, since it has hung over me like a cloud ever since it happened) of dear old professor child's death. we shall never see his curly head and thickset figure more. he had aged greatly in the past three years, since being thrown out of a carriage, and went to the hospital in july to be treated surgically. he never recovered and died in three weeks, after much suffering, his family not being called down from the country till the last days. he had a moral delicacy and a richness of heart that i never saw and never expect to see equaled.[ ] the children bear it well, but i fear it will be a bad blow for dear mrs. child. she and alice, i am glad to say, are great friends.... good-night. _leb' wohl!_ w. j. xii - (continued) _the will to believe--talks to teachers--defense of mental healers--excessive climbing in the adirondacks_ _to theodore flournoy._ [dictated] cambridge, _dec. , _. my dear flournoy,--your altogether precious and delightful letter reached me duly, and you see i am making a not altogether too dilatory reply. in the first place, we congratulate you upon the new-comer, and think if she only proves as satisfactory a damsel as her charming elder sisters, you will never have any occasion to regret that she is not a boy. i hope that madame flournoy is by this time thoroughly strong and well, and that everything is perfect with the baby. i should like to have been at munich with you; i have heard a good many accounts of the jollity of the proceedings there, but on the whole i did a more wholesome thing to stay in my own country, of which the dangers and dark sides are singularly exaggerated in europe. your lamentations on your cerebral state make me smile, knowing, as i do, under all your subjective feelings, how great your vigor is. of course i sympathize with you about the laboratory, and advise you, since it seems to me you are in a position to make conditions rather than have them imposed on you, simply to drop it and teach what you prefer. whatever the latter may be, it will be as good for the students as if they had something else from you in its place, and i see no need in this world, when there is someone provided somewhere to do everything, for anyone of us to do what he does least willingly and well. _i_ have got rid of the laboratory forever, and should resign my place immediately if they reimposed its duties upon me. the results that come from all this laboratory work seem to me to grow more and more disappointing and trivial. what is most needed is new ideas. for every man who has one of them one may find a hundred who are willing to drudge patiently at some unimportant experiment. the atmosphere of your mind is in an extraordinary degree sane and balanced on philosophical matters. that is where your forte lies, and where your university ought to see that its best interests lie in having you employed. don't consider this advice impertinent. your temperament is such that i think you need to be strengthened from without in asserting your right to carry out your true vocation. everything goes well with us here. the boys are developing finely; both of them taller than i am, and peggy healthy and well. i have just been giving a course of public lectures of which i enclose you a ticket to amuse you.[ ] the audience, a thousand in number, kept its numbers to the last. i was careful not to tread upon the domains of psychical research, although many of my hearers were eager that i should do so. _i am teaching kant for the first time in my life_, and it gives me much satisfaction. i am also sending a collection of old essays through the press, of which i will send you a copy as soon as they appear; i am sure of your sympathy in advance for much of their contents. but i am afraid that what you never will appreciate is their wonderful english style! shakespeare is a little street-boy in comparison! our political crisis is over, but the hard times still endure. lack of confidence is a disease from which convalescence is not quick. i doubt, notwithstanding certain appearances, whether the country was ever morally in as sound a state as it now is, after all this discussion. and the very silver men, who have been treated as a party of dishonesty, are anything but that. they very likely are victims of the economic delusion, but their intentions are just as good as those of the other side.... if you meet my friend ritter, please give him my love. i shall write to you again ere long _eigenhändig_. meanwhile believe me, with lots of love to you all, especially to _ces demoiselles_, and felicitations to their mother, always yours, wm. james. my wife wishes to convey to madame flournoy her most loving regards and hopes for the little one. * * * * * james had already been invited to deliver a course of "gifford lectures on natural religion" at the university of edinburgh. he had not yet accepted for a definite date; but he had begun to collect illustrative material for the proposed lectures. a large number of references to such material were supplied to him by mr. henry w. rankin of east northfield. _to henry w. rankin._ newport, r.i., _feb. , _. dear mr. rankin,--a pause in lecturing, consequent upon our midyear examinations having begun, has given me a little respite, and i am paying a three-days' visit upon an old friend here, meaning to leave for new york tomorrow where i have a couple of lectures to give. it is an agreeable moment of quiet and enables me to write a letter or two which i have long postponed, and chiefly one to you, who have given me so much without asking anything in return. one of my lectures in new york is at the academy of medicine before the neurological society, the subject being "demoniacal possession." i shall of course duly advertise the nevius book.[ ] i am not as positive as you are in the belief that the obsessing agency is really demonic individuals. i am perfectly willing to adopt that theory if the facts lend themselves best to it; for who can trace limits to the hierarchies of personal existence in the world? but the lower stages of mere automatism shade off so continuously into the highest supernormal manifestations, through the intermediary ones of imitative hysteria and "suggestibility," that i feel as if no _general theory_ as yet would cover all the facts. so that the most i shall plead for before the neurologists is the recognition of demon possession as a regular "morbid-entity" whose commonest homologue today is the "spirit-control" observed in test-mediumship, and which tends to become the more benignant and less alarming, the less pessimistically it is regarded. this last remark seems certainly to be true. of course i shall not ignore the sporadic cases of old-fashioned malignant possession which still occur today. i am convinced that we stand with all these things at the threshold of a long inquiry, of which the end appears as yet to no one, least of all to myself. and i believe that the best theoretic work yet done in the subject is the beginning made by f. w. h. myers in his papers in the s. p. r. proceedings. the first thing is to start the medical profession out of its idiotically _conceited ignorance_ of all such matters--matters which have everywhere and at all times played a vital part in human history. you have written me at different times about conversion, and about miracles, getting as usual no reply, but not because i failed to heed your words, which come from a deep life-experience of your own evidently, and from a deep acquaintance with the experiences of others. in the matter of conversion i am quite willing to believe that a new truth may be supernaturally revealed to a subject when he really _asks_. but i am sure that in many cases of conversion it is less a new truth than a new power gained over life by a truth always known. it is a case of the conflict of two _self-systems_ in a personality up to that time heterogeneously divided, but in which, after the conversion-crisis, the higher loves and powers come definitively to gain the upper-hand and expel the forces which up to that time had kept them down in the position of mere grumblers and protesters and agents of remorse and discontent. this broader view will cover an enormous number of cases _psychologically_, and leaves all the _religious importance_ to the result which it has on any other theory. as to true and false miracles, i don't know that i can follow you so well, for in any case the notion of a miracle as a mere attestation of superior power is one that i cannot espouse. a miracle must in any case be an expression of personal purpose, but the demon-purpose of antagonizing god and winning away his adherents has never yet taken hold of my imagination. i prefer an open mind of inquiry, first _about the facts_, in all these matters; and i believe that the s. p. r. methods, if pertinaciously stuck to, will eventually do much to clear things up.--you see that, although religion is the great interest of my life, i am rather hopelessly non-evangelical, and take the whole thing too impersonally. but my college work is lightening in a way. psychology is being handed over to others more and more, and i see a chance ahead for reading and study in other directions from those to which my very feeble powers in that line have hitherto been confined. i am going to give all the fragments of time i can get, after this year is over, to religious biography and philosophy. shield's book, steenstra's, gratry's, and harris's, i don't yet know, but can easily get at them. i hope your health is better in this beautiful winter which we are having. i am very well, and so is all my family. believe me, with affectionate regards, truly yours, wm. james. _to benjamin paul blood._ cambridge, _apr. , _. dear blood,--your letter is delectable. from your not having yet acknowledged the book,[ ] i began to wonder whether you had got it, but this acknowledgment is almost too good. your thought is obscure--lightning flashes darting gleams--but that's the way truth is. and altho' i "put pluralism in the place of philosophy," i do it only so far as philosophy means the articulate and the scientific. life and mysticism exceed the articulable, and if there is a _one_ (and surely men will never be weaned from the idea of it), it must remain only mystically expressed. i have been roaring over and quoting some of the passages of your letter, in which my wife takes as much delight as i do. as for your strictures on my english, i accept them humbly. i have a tendency towards too great colloquiality, i know, and i trust your sense of english better than any man's in the country. i have a fearful job on hand just now: an address on the unveiling of a military statue. three thousand people, governor and troops, etc. why they fell upon me, god knows; but being challenged, i could not funk. the task is a mechanical one, and the result somewhat of a school-boy composition. if i thought it wouldn't bore you, i should send you a copy for you to go carefully over and correct or rewrite as to the english. i should probably adopt every one of your corrections. what do you say to this? yours ever, wm. james. _p.s._ please don't betitle _me_! * * * * * the "copy" which was offered for correction with so much humility was the "oration" on the unveiling of st. gaudens's monument to colonel robert gould shaw of the th massachusetts infantry (the first colored regiment). james was quite accustomed to lecturing from brief notes and to reading from a complete manuscript; but on this occasion he thought it necessary to commit his address to memory. he had never done this before and he never tried to do it again. he memorized with great difficulty, found himself placed in an entirely unfamiliar relation to his audience, and felt as much nervous trepidation as any inexperienced speaker.[ ] _to henry james._ cambridge, _june , _. dear h.,--alice wrote you (i think) a brief word after the crisis of last monday. it took it out of me nervously a good deal, for it came at the end of the month of may, when i am always fagged to death; and for a week previous i had almost lost my voice with hoarseness. at nine o'clock the night before i ran in to a laryngologist in boston, who sprayed and cauterized and otherwise tuned up my throat, giving me pellets to suck all the morning. by a sort of miracle i spoke for three-quarters of an hour without becoming perceptibly hoarse. but it is a curious kind of physical effort to fill a hall as large as boston music hall, unless you are trained to the work. you have to shout and bellow, and you seem to yourself wholly unnatural. the day was an extraordinary occasion for sentiment. the streets were thronged with people, and i was toted around for two hours in a barouche at the tail end of the procession. there were seven such carriages in all, and i had the great pleasure of being with st. gaudens, who is a most charming and modest man. the weather was cool and the skies were weeping, but not enough to cause any serious discomfort. they simply formed a harmonious background to the pathetic sentiment that reigned over the day. it was very peculiar, and people have been speaking about it ever since--the last wave of the war breaking over boston, everything softened and made poetic and unreal by distance, poor little robert shaw erected into a great symbol of deeper things than he ever realized himself,--"the tender grace of a day that is dead,"--etc. we shall never have anything like it again. the monument is really superb, certainly one of the finest things of this century. read the darkey [booker t.] washington's speech, a model of elevation and brevity. the thing that struck me most in the day was the faces of the old th soldiers, of whom there were perhaps about thirty or forty present, with such respectable old darkey faces, the heavy animal look entirely absent, and in its place the wrinkled, patient, good old darkey citizen. as for myself, i will never accept such a job again. it is entirely outside of my legitimate line of business, although my speech seems to have been a great success, if i can judge by the encomiums which are pouring in upon me on every hand. i brought in some mugwumpery at the end, but it was very difficult to manage it.... always affectionately yours, wm. james. * * * * * letters to ellen and rosina emmet, which now enter the series, will be the better understood for a word of reminder. "elly" temple, one of the newport cousins referred to in the very first letters, had married, and gone with her husband, temple emmet, to california. but in , after his death, she had returned to the east to place her daughters in a cambridge school. in and ellen and rosina had made several visits to the house in irving street; and thus the comradely cousinship of the sixties had been maintained and reëstablished with the younger generation. at the date now reached, ellen, or "bay" as she was usually called, was studying painting. she and rosina had been in paris during the preceding winter. now they and their mother were spending the summer on the south coast of england, at iden, quite close to rye, where henry james was already becoming established. _to miss ellen emmet (mrs. blanchard rand)._ bar harbor, me., _aug. , _. dear old bay (and dear rosina),--for i have letters from both of you and my heart inclines to both so that i can't write to either without the other--i hope you are enjoying the english coast. a rumor reached me not long since that my brother henry had given up his trip to the continent in order to be near to you, and i hope for the sakes of all concerned that it is true. he will find in you both that eager and vivid artistic sense, and that direct swoop at the vital facts of human character from which i am sure he has been weaned for fifteen years at least. and i am sure it will rejuvenate him again. it is more celtic than english, and when joined with those faculties of soul, conscience, or whatever they be that make england rule the waves, as they are joined in you, bay, they leave no room for any anxiety about the creature's destiny. but rosina, who is all senses and intelligence, alarms me by her recital of midnight walks on the boulevard des italiens with bohemian artists.... you can't live by gaslight and excitement, nor can naked intelligence run a _jeune fille's_ life. affections, pieties, and prejudices must play their part, and only let the intelligence get an occasional peep at things from the midst of their smothering embrace. that again is what makes the british nation so great. intelligence doesn't flaunt itself there quite naked as in france. as for the macmonnies bacchante,[ ] i only saw her faintly looming through the moon-light one night when she was _sub judice_, so can frame no opinion. the place certainly calls for a lightsome capricious figure, but the solemn boston mind declared that anything but a solemn figure would be desecration. as to her immodesty, opinions got very hot. my knowledge of macmonnies is confined to one statue, that of sir henry vane, also in our public library, an impressionist sketch in bronze (i think), sculpture treated like painting--and i must say i don't admire the result _at all_. but you _know_; and i wish i could see other things of his also. how i wish i could _talk_ with rosina, or rather hear her talk, about paris, _talk in her french_ which i doubt not is by this time admirable. the only book she has vouchsafed news of having read, to me, is the d'annunzio one, which i have ordered in most choice italian; but of lemaître, france, etc., she writes never a word. nor of v. hugo. she ought to read "la légende des siècles." for the picturesque pure and simple, go there! laid on with a trowel so generous that you really get your glut. but the things in french literature that i have gained most from--the next most to tolstoy, in the last few years--are the whole cycle of geo. sand's life: her "histoire," her letters, and now lately these revelations of the de musset episode. the whole thing is beautiful and uplifting--an absolute "liver" harmoniously leading her own life and _neither_ obedient nor defiant to what others expected or thought. we are passing the summer very quietly at chocorua, with our bare feet on the ground. children growing up bullily, a pride to the parental heart.... alice and i have just spent a rich week at north conway, at a beautiful "place," the merrimans'. i am now here at a really grand place, the dorrs'--tell rosina that i went to a domino party last night but was so afraid that some one of the weird and sinister sisters would speak to me that i came home at o'clock, when it had hardly begun. i am so sensitive! tell her that a lady from michigan was recently shown the sights of cambridge by one of my radcliffe girls. she took her to the longfellow house, and as the visitor went into the gate, said, "i will just wait here." to her surprise, the visitor went up to the house, looked in to one window after the other, then rang the bell, and the door closed upon her. she soon emerged, and said that the servant had shown her the house. "i'm so sensitive that at first i thought i would only peep in at the windows. but then i said to myself, 'what's the use of being so sensitive?' so i rang the bell." pray be happy this summer. i see nothing more of rosina's in the papers. how is that sort of thing going on?... as for your mother, give her my old-fashioned love. for some unexplained reason, i find it very hard to write to her--probably it is the same reason that makes it hard for her to write to me--so we can sympathize over so strange a mystery. anyhow, give her my best love, and with plenty for yourself, old bay, and for rosina, believe me, yours ever, wm. james. _to e. l. godkin._ chocorua, _aug. , _. dear godkin,--thanks for your kind note _in re_ "will to believe." i suppose you expect as little a reply to it as i expected one from you to the book; but since you ask what i _du_ mean by religion, and add that until i define that word my essay cannot be effective, i can't forbear sending you a word to clear up that point. i mean by religion for a man _anything_ that for _him_ is a live hypothesis in that line, altho' it may be a dead one for anyone else. and what i try to show is that whether the man believes, disbelieves, or doubts his hypothesis, the moment he does either, on principle and methodically, he runs a risk of one sort or the other from his own point of view. there is no escaping the risk; why not then admit that one's human function is to run it? by settling down on that basis, and respecting each other's choice of risk to run, it seems to me that we should be in a clearer-headed condition than we now are in, postulating as most all of us do a rational certitude which doesn't exist and disowning the semi-voluntary mental action by which we continue in our own severally characteristic attitudes of belief. since our willing natures are active here, why not face squarely the fact without humbug and get the benefits of the admission? i passed a day lately with the [james] bryces at bar harbor, and we spoke--not altogether unkindly--of you. i hope you are enjoying, both of you, the summer. all goes well with us. yours always truly, wm. james. _to f. c. s. schiller_ [corpus christi, oxford]. cambridge, _oct. , _. dear schiller,--did you ever hear of the famous international prize fight between tom sayers and heenan the benicia boy, or were you too small a baby in [ ?] the "times" devoted a couple of pages of report and one or more eulogistic editorials to the english champion, and the latter, brimming over with emotion, wrote a letter to the "times" in which he touchingly said that he would live in future as one who had been once deemed worthy of commemoration in its leaders. after reading your review of me in the october "mind" (which only reached me two days ago) i feel as the noble sayers felt, and think i ought to write to stout to say i will try to live up to such a character. my past has not deserved such words, but my future shall. seriously, your review has given me the keenest possible pleasure. this philosophy must be thickened up most decidedly--your review represents it as something to rally to, so we must fly a banner and start a school. some of your phrases are bully: "reckless rationalism," "pure science is pure bosh," "infallible _a priori_ test of truth to screen us from the consequences of our choice," etc., etc. thank you from the bottom of my heart! the enclosed document [a returned letter addressed to christ church] explains itself. the church and the body of christ are easily confused and i haven't a scholarly memory. i wrote you a post-card recently to the same address, patting you on the back for your article on immortality in the "new world." a staving good thing. i am myself to give the "ingersoll lecture on human immortality" here in november--the second lecturer on the foundation. i treat the matter very inferiorly to you, but use your conception of the brain as a sifting agency, which explains my question in the letter. young [r. b.] merriman is at balliol and a really good fellow in all possible respects. pray be good to him if he calls on you. i hope things have a peacock hue for you now that term has begun. they are all going well here. yours always gratefully, w. j. _to james j. putnam._ cambridge, _mar. , _. dear jim,--on page of the "transcript" tonight you will find a manifestation of me at the state house, protesting against the proposed medical license bill. if you think i _enjoy_ that sort of thing you are mistaken. i never did anything that required as much moral effort in my life. my vocation is to treat of things in an all-round manner and not make _ex-parte_ pleas to influence (or seek to) a peculiar jury. _aussi_, why do the medical brethren force an unoffending citizen like me into such a position? legislative license is sheer humbug--mere abstract paper thunder under which every ignorance and abuse can still go on. why this mania for more laws? why seek to stop the really extremely important experiences which these peculiar creatures are rolling up? bah! i'm sick of the whole business, and i well know how all my colleagues at the medical school, who go only by the label, will view me and my efforts. but if zola and col. picquart can face the whole french army, can't i face their disapproval?--much more easily than that of my own conscience! you, i fancy, are not one of the fully disciplined demanders of more legislation. so i write to you, as on the whole my dearest friend hereabouts, to explain just what my state of mind is. ever yours, w. j. james was not indulging in empty rhetoric when he said that his conscience drove him to face the disapproval of his medical colleagues. some of them never forgave him, and to this day references to his "appearance" at the state house in boston are marked by partisanship rather than understanding. what happened cannot be understood without recalling that thirty-odd years ago the licensing of medical practitioners was just being inaugurated in the united states. today it is evident that everyone must be qualified and licensed before he can be permitted to write prescriptions, to sign statements upon which public records, inquests, and health statistics are to be based, and to go about the community calling himself a doctor. on the other hand, experience has proved that those people who do not pretend to be physicians, who do not use drugs or the knife, and who attempt to heal only by mental or spiritual influence, cannot be regulated by the clumsy machinery of the criminal law. but either because the whole question of medical registration was new, or because professional men are seldom masters of the science of lawmaking, the sponsors of the bills proposed to the massachusetts legislature in and ignored these distinctions. james did not name them, although his argument implied them and rested upon them. the bills included clauses which attempted to abolish the faith-curers by requiring them to become doctors of medicine. the "spiritualists" and christian scientists were a numerous element in the population and claimed a religious sanction for their beliefs. the gentlemen who mixed an anti-spiritualist program in their effort to have doctors examined and licensed by a state board were either innocent of political discretion or blind to the facts. for it was idle to argue that faith-curers would be able to continue in their own ways as soon as they had passed the medical examinations of the state board, and that accordingly the proposed law could not be said to involve their suppression. obviously, medical examinations were barriers which the faith-curers could not climb over. this was the feature of the proposed law which roused james to opposition, and led him to take sides for the moment with all the spokesmen of all the-isms and-opathies. "i will confine myself to a class of diseases" (he wrote to the boston "transcript" in ) "with which my occupation has made me somewhat conversant. i mean the diseases of the nervous system and the mind.... of all the new agencies that our day has seen, there is but one that tends steadily to assume a more and more commanding importance, and that is the agency of the patient's mind itself. whoever can produce effects there holds the key of the situation in a number of morbid conditions of which we do not yet know the extent; for systematic experiments in this direction are in their merest infancy. they began in europe fifteen years ago, when the medical world so tardily admitted the facts of hypnotism to be true; and in this country they have been carried on in a much bolder and more radical fashion by all those 'mind-curers' and 'christian scientists' with whose results the public, and even the profession, are growing gradually familiar. "i assuredly hold no brief for any of these healers, and must confess that my intellect has been unable to assimilate their theories, so far as i have heard them given. but their _facts_ are patent and startling; and anything that interferes with the multiplication of such facts, and with our freest opportunity of observing and studying them, will, i believe, be a public calamity. the law now proposed will so interfere, simply because the mind-curers will not take the examinations.... nothing would please some of them better than such a taste of imprisonment as might, by the public outcry it would occasion, bring the law rattling down about the ears of the mandarins who should have enacted it. "and whatever one may think of the narrowness of the mind-curers, their logical position is impregnable. they are proving by the most brilliant new results that the therapeutic relation may be what we can at present describe only as a relation of one person to another person; and they are consistent in resisting to the uttermost any legislation that would make 'examinable' information the root of medical virtue, and hamper the free play of personal force and affinity by mechanically imposed conditions." james knew as well as anyone that in the ranks of the healers there were many who could fairly be described as preying on superstition and ignorance. "x---- personally is a rapacious humbug" was his privately expressed opinion of one of them who had a very large following. he had no reverence for the preposterous theories with which their minds were befogged; but "every good thing like _science_ in medicine," as he once said, "has to be imitated and grimaced by a rabble of people who would be at the required height; and the folly, humbug and mendacity is pitiful." furthermore he saw a quackery quite as odious and much more dangerous than that of the "healers" in the patent-medicine business, which was allowed to advertise its lies and secret nostrums in the newspapers and on the bill-boards, and which flourished behind the counter of every apothecary and village store-keeper at that time. (the federal pure food and drug act was still many years off.) the spokesmen of the medical profession were ignoring what he believed to be instructive phenomena. "what the real interests of medicine require is that mental therapeutics should _not_ be stamped out, but studied, and its laws ascertained. for that the mind-curers must at least be suffered to make their experiments. if they cannot interpret their results aright, why then let the orthodox m.d.'s follow up their facts, and study and interpret them? but to force the mind-curers to a state examination is to kill the experiments outright." but instead of the open-minded attitude which he thus advocated, he saw doctors who "had no more exact science in them than a fox terrier"[ ] invoking the holy name of science and blundering ahead with an air of moral superiority. "one would suppose," he exclaimed again in the hearing, "that any set of sane persons interested in the growth of medical truth would rejoice if other persons were found willing to push out their experiences in the mental-healing direction, and provide a mass of material out of which the conditions and limits of such therapeutic methods may at last become clear. one would suppose that our orthodox medical brethren might so rejoice; but instead of rejoicing they adopt the fiercely partisan attitude of a powerful trades-union, demanding legislation against the competition of the 'scabs.' ... the mind-curers and their public return the scorn of the regular profession with an equal scorn, and will never come up for the examination. their movement is a religious or quasi-religious movement; personality is one condition of success there, and impressions and intuitions seem to accomplish more than chemical, anatomical or physiological information.... pray do not fail, mr. chairman, to catch my point. you are not to ask yourselves whether these mind-curers do really achieve the successes that are claimed. it is enough for you as legislators to ascertain that a large number of our citizens, persons as intelligent and well-educated as yourself, or i, persons whose number seems daily to increase, are convinced that they do achieve them, are persuaded that a valuable new department of medical experience is by them opening up. here is a purely medical question, regarding which our general court, not being a well-spring and source of medical virtue, not having any private test of therapeutic truth, must remain strictly neutral under penalty of making the confusion worse.... above all things, mr. chairman, let us not be infected with the gallic spirit of regulation and reglementation for their own abstract sakes. let us not grow hysterical about law-making. let us not fall in love with enactments and penalties because they are so logical and sound so pretty, and look so nice on paper."[ ] _to james j. putnam._ cambridge, _mar. [ ?] _. dear jim,--thanks for your noble-hearted letter, which makes me feel warm again. i am glad to learn that you feel positively _agin_ the proposed law, and hope that you will express yourself freely towards the professional brethren to that effect. dr. russell sturgis has written me a similar letter. once more, thanks! w. j. p.s. _march ._ the "transcript" report, i am sorry to say, was a good deal cut. i send you another copy, to keep and use where it will do most good. the rhetorical problem with me was to say things to the committee that might neutralize the influence of their medical advisers, who, i supposed, had the inside track, and all the _prestige_. i being banded with the spiritists, faith-curers, magnetic healers, etc., etc. strange affinities![ ] w. j. _to françois pillon._ cambridge, _june , _. my dear pillon,--i have just received your pleasant letter and the _année_, volume , and shall immediately proceed to read the latter, having finished reading my examinations yesterday, and being now free to enjoy the vacation, but excessively tired. i grieve to learn of poor mrs. pillon's continued ill health. how much patience both of you require. i think of you also as spending most of the summer in paris, when the country contains so many more elements that are good for body and soul. how much has happened since i last heard from you! to say nothing of the zola trial, we now have the cuban war! a curious episode of history, showing how a nation's ideals can be changed in the twinkling of an eye, by a succession of outward events partly accidental. it is quite possible that, without the explosion of the maine, we should still be at peace, though, since the _basis_ of the whole american attitude is the persuasion on the part of the people that the cruelty and misrule of spain in cuba call for her expulsion (so that in that sense our war is just what a war of "the powers" against turkey for the armenian atrocities would have been), it is hardly possible that peace could have been maintained indefinitely longer, unless spain had gone out--a consummation hardly to be expected by peaceful means. the actual declaration of war by congress, however, was a case of _psychologie des foules_, a genuine hysteric stampede at the last moment, which shows how unfortunate that provision of our written constitution is which takes the power of declaring war from the executive and places it in congress. our executive has behaved very well. the european nations of the continent cannot believe that our pretense of humanity, and our disclaiming of all ideas of conquest, is sincere. it has been _absolutely_ sincere! the self-conscious feeling of our people has been entirely based in a sense of philanthropic duty, without which not a step would have been taken. and when, in its ultimatum to spain, congress denied any project of conquest in cuba, it genuinely meant every word it said. but here comes in the psychologic factor: once the excitement of action gets loose, the taxes levied, the victories achieved, etc., the old human instincts will get into play with all their old strength, and the ambition and sense of mastery which our nation has will set up new demands. we shall never take cuba; i imagine that to be very certain--unless indeed after years of unsuccessful police duty there, for that is what we have made ourselves responsible for. but porto rico, and even the philippines, are not so sure. we had supposed ourselves (with all our crudity and barbarity in certain ways) a better nation morally than the rest, safe at home, and without the old savage ambition, destined to exert great international influence by throwing in our "moral weight," etc. dreams! human nature is everywhere the same; and at the least temptation all the old military passions rise, and sweep everything before them. it will be interesting to see how it will end. but enough of this!--it all shows by what short steps progress is made, and it confirms the "criticist" views of the philosophy of history. i am going to a great popular meeting in boston today where a lot of my friends are to protest against the new "imperialism." in august i go for two months to california to do some lecturing. as i have never crossed the continent or seen the pacific ocean or those beautiful _parages_, i am very glad of the opportunity. the year after next (_i.e._ one year from now) begins a new year of absence from my college duties. i _may_ spend it in europe again. in any case i shall hope to see you, for i am appointed to give the "gifford lectures" at edinburgh during - --two courses of each on the philosophy of religion. a great honor.--i have also received the honor of an election as "correspondent" of the académie des sciences morales et politiques. have i _your_ influence to thank for this? believe me, with most sympathetic regards to mrs. pillon and affectionate greetings to yourself, yours most truly wm. james. before starting for california, james went to the adirondack lodge to snatch a brief holiday. one episode in this holiday can best be described by an extract from a letter to mrs. james. _to mrs. james._ st. hubert's inn, keene valley, _july , _. ...i have had an eventful hours, and my hands are so stiff after it that my fingers can hardly hold the pen. i left, as i informed you by post-card, the lodge at seven, and five hours of walking brought us to the top of marcy--i carrying lbs. of weight in my pack. as usual, i met two cambridge acquaintances on the mountain top--"appalachians" from beede's. at four, hearing an axe below, i went down (an hour's walk) to panther lodge camp, and there found charles and pauline goldmark, waldo adler and another schoolboy, and two bryn mawr girls--the girls all dressed in boys' breeches, and cutaneously desecrated in the extreme from seven of them having been camping without a male on loon lake to the north of this. my guide had to serve for the party, and quite unexpectedly to me the night turned out one of the most memorable of all my memorable experiences. i was in a wakeful mood before starting, having been awake since three, and i may have slept a little during this night; but i was not aware of sleeping at all. my companions, except waldo adler, were all motionless. the guide had got a magnificent provision of firewood, the sky swept itself clear of every trace of cloud or vapor, the wind entirely ceased, so that the fire-smoke rose straight up to heaven. the temperature was perfect either inside or outside the cabin, the moon rose and hung above the scene before midnight, leaving only a few of the larger stars visible, and i got into a state of spiritual alertness of the most vital description. the influences of nature, the wholesomeness of the people round me, especially the good pauline, the thought of you and the children, dear harry on the wave, the problem of the edinburgh lectures, all fermented within me till it became a regular walpurgis nacht. i spent a good deal of it in the woods, where the streaming moonlight lit up things in a magical checkered play, and it seemed as if the gods of all the nature-mythologies were holding an indescribable meeting in my breast with the moral gods of the inner life. the two kinds of gods have nothing in common--the edinburgh lectures made quite a hitch ahead. the intense significance of some sort, of the whole scene, if one could only _tell_ the significance; the intense inhuman remoteness of its inner life, and yet the intense _appeal_ of it; its everlasting freshness and its immemorial antiquity and decay; its utter americanism, and every sort of patriotic suggestiveness, and you, and my relation to you part and parcel of it all, and beaten up with it, so that memory and sensation all whirled inexplicably together; it was indeed worth coming for, and worth repeating year by year, if repetition could only procure what in its nature i suppose must be all unplanned for and unexpected. it was one of the happiest lonesome nights of my existence, and i understand now what a poet is. he is a person who can feel the immense complexity of influences that i felt, and make some partial tracks in them for verbal statement. in point of fact, i can't find a single word for all that significance, and don't know what it was significant of, so there it remains, a mere boulder of _impression_. doubtless in more ways than one, though, things in the edinburgh lectures will be traceable to it. in the morning at six, i shouldered my undiminished pack and went up marcy, ahead of the party, who arrived half an hour later, and we got in here at eight [p.m.] after - / hours of the solidest walking i ever made, and i, i think, more fatigued than i have been after any walk. we plunged down marcy, and up bason mountain, led by c. goldmark, who had, with mr. white, blazed a trail the year before;[ ] then down again, away down, and up the gothics, not counting a third down-and-up over an intermediate spur. it was the steepest sort of work, and, as one looked from the summits, seemed sheer impossible, but the girls kept up splendidly, and were all fresher than i. it was true that they had slept like logs all night, whereas i was "on my nerves." i lost my norfolk jacket at the last third of the course--high time to say good-bye to that possession--and staggered up to the putnams to find hatty shaw[ ] taking me for a tramp. not a soul was there, but everything spotless and ready for the arrival today. i got a bath at bowditch's bath-house, slept in my old room, and slept soundly and well, and save for the unwashable staining of my hands and a certain stiffness in my thighs, am entirely rested and well. but i don't believe in keeping it up too long, and at the willey house will lead a comparatively sedentary life, and cultivate sleep, if i can.... w. j. the intense experience which james thus described had consequences that were not foreseen at the time. he had gone to the adirondacks at the close of the college term in a much fatigued condition. he had been sleeping badly for some weeks, and when he started up mount marcy he had neuralgia in one foot; but he had characteristically determined to ignore and "bully" this ailment. under such conditions the prolonged physical exertion of the two days' climb, aggravated by the fact that he carried a pack all the second day, was too much for a man of his years and sedentary occupations. as the summer wore on, pain or discomfort in the region of his heart became constant. he tried to persuade himself that it signified nothing and would pass away, and concealed it from his wife until mid-winter. to howison--who was himself a confessed heart case--he wrote, "my heart has been kicking about terribly of late, stopping, and hurrying and aching and so forth, but i do not propose to give up to it too much." the fact was that the strain of the two days' climb had caused a valvular lesion that was irreparable, although not great enough seriously to curtail his activities if he had given heed to his general condition and avoided straining himself again. in august james went to california to give the lectures which have already been mentioned in a letter to pillon. again, these lectures were in substance the "talks to teachers." the next letter, written just before he left cambridge, answers a request to him to address the philosophical club at the university of california. _to g. h. howison._ cambridge, _july , _. dear howison,--your kind letter greeted me on my arrival here three days ago--but i have waited to answer it in order to determine just what my lecture's title should be. i wanted to make something entirely popular, and as it were emotional, for technicality seems to me to spell "failure" in philosophy. but the subject in the margin of my consciousness failed to make connexion with the centre, and i have fallen back on something less vital, but still, i think, sufficiently popular and practical, which you can advertise under the rather ill-chosen title of "philosophical conceptions and practical results," if you wish. i am just back from a month of practical idleness in the adirondacks, but such is the infirmity of my complexion that i am not yet in proper working trim. you ask me, like an angel, in what form i like to take my sociability. the spirit is willing to take it in any form, but the flesh is weak, and it runs to destruction of nerve-tissue and madness in me to go to big stand-up receptions where the people scream and breathe in each other's faces. but i know my duties; and one such reception i will gladly face. for the rest, i should infinitely prefer a chosen few at dinner. but this enterprise is going, my friend, to give you and mrs. howison a heap of trouble. my purpose is to arrive on the eve of the th. i will telegraph you the hour and train. when the lectures to the teachers are over, i will make for the yosemite valley, where i want to spend a fortnight if i can, and come home.... yours ever truly, wm. james. _to henry james._ occidental hotel, san francisco, _aug. , _. dear old henry,--you see i have worked my way across the continent, and, full of the impressions of this queer place, i must overflow for a page or two to you. i saw some really grand and ferocious scenery on the canadian pacific, and wish i could go right back to see it again. but it doesn't mean much, on the whole, for human habitation, and the british empire's investment in canada is in so far forth but _scenic_. it is grand, though, in its vastness and simplicity. in washington and oregon the whole foreground consisted of desolation by fire. the magnificent coniferous forests burnt and burning, as they have been for years and years back. northern california one pulverous earth-colored mass of hills and heat, with green spots produced by irrigation hardly showing on the background. i drove through a wheatfield at harry's uncle christopher's on a machine, drawn by mules, which cut a swathe feet wide through the wheat and threw it out in bags to be taken home, as fast as the leisurely mules could walk. it is like egypt. down here, splendid air, and a city so indescribably odd and unique in its suggestions that i have been saying to myself all day that _you_ ought to have taken it in when you were under and added it to your portraits of places. so remote and terminal, so full of the sea-port nakedness, yet so new and american, with its queer suggestions of a history based on the fifties and the sixties. but at my age those impressions are curiously weak to what they once were, and the time to travel is between one's th and th year. this hotel--an old house cleaned into newness--is redolent of ' or ' , when it must have been built. hideous vast stuccoed thing, with long undulating balustrades and wells and lace curtains. the fare is very good, but the servants all irish, who seem cowed in the dining-room, and go about as if they had corns on their feet and for that reason had given up the pick and shovel.... tomorrow, in spite of drouth and dust, i leave for the yosemite valley, with a young californian philosopher, named [charles m.] bakewell, as companion. on the whole i prefer the works of god to those of man, and the alternative, a trip down the coast, beauties as it would doubtless show, would include too much humanity.... _to his son alexander._ berkeley, cal., _aug. , _. darling old cherubini,--see how brave this girl and boy are in the yosemite valley![ ] i saw a moving sight the other morning before breakfast in a little hotel where i slept in the dusty fields. the young man of the house had shot a little wolf called a coyote in the early morning. the heroic little animal lay on the ground, with his big furry ears, and his clean white teeth, and his jolly cheerful little body, but his brave little life was gone. it made me think how brave all these living things are. here little coyote was, without any clothes or house or books or anything, with nothing but his own naked self to pay his way with, and risking his life so cheerfully--and losing it--just to see if he could pick up a meal near the hotel. he was doing his coyote-business like a hero, and you must do your boy-business, and i my man-business bravely too, or else we won't be worth as much as that little coyote. your mother can find a picture of him in those green books of animals, and i want you to copy it. your loving dad. _to miss rosina h. emmet._ monterey, _sept. , _. dear old rosina,--i have seen your native state and even been driven by dear, good, sweet hal dibblee (who is turning into a perfectly ideal fellow) through the charming and utterly lovable place in which you all passed your childhood. (how your mother must sometimes long for it again!) of california and its greatness, the half can never be told. i have been on a ranch in the white, bare dryness of siskiyou county, and reaped wheat with a swathe of feet wide on a machine drawn by a procession of mules. i've been to yosemite, and camped for five days in the high sierras; i've lectured at the two universities of the state, and seen the youths and maidens lounge together at stanford in cloisters whose architecture is purer and more lovely than aught that italy can show. i've heard mrs. dibblee read letter after letter from anita concerning your life together; and even one letter to anita from bay, which the former enclosed. (dear bay!) all this, dear old rosina, is a "summation of stimuli" which at last carries me over the dam that has so long obstructed all my epistolary efforts in your direction. over and over again i have been on the point of writing to you, more than once i have actually written a page or two, but something has always checked the flow, and arrested the current of the soul. what is it? i think it is this: i naturally tend, when "familiar" with what the authors of the beginning of the century used to call "a refined female," to indulge in chaffing personalities in writing to her. there is something in you that doubtfully enjoys the chaffing; and subtly feeling that, i stop. but some day, when experience shall have winnowed you with her wing; when the illusions and the hopes of youth alike are faded; when eternal principles of order are more to you than sensations that pass in a day, however exciting; when friends that know you and your roots and derivations are more satisfactory, however humdrum and hoary they be, than the handsome recent acquaintances that know nothing of you but the hour; when, in short, your being is mellowed, dulled and harmonized by time so as to be a grave, wise, deep, and discerning moral and intellectual unity (as mine is already from the height of my centuries!), then, rosina, we two shall be the most perfect of combinations, and i shall write to you every week of my life and you will be utterly unable to resist replying. that will not be, however, before you are forty years old. you are sure to come to it! for you see the truth, irrespective of persons, as few people see it; and after all, you care for that more than for anything else--and that means a rare and unusual destiny, and ultimate salvation.--but here i am, chaffing, quite against my intentions and altogether in spite of myself. the ruling passion is irresistible. let me stop! but still i must be personal, and not write merely of the climate and productions of california, as i have been doing to others for the past four weeks. how i do wish i could be dropped amongst you for but hours! what talk i should hear! what perceptions of truth from you and bay (and probably young leslie) would pour into my receptive soul. how i _should_ like to hear you hold forth about the french, their art, their literature, their nature, and all else about them! how i should like to hear you _talk_ french! how i should like to note the changes wrought in you by all this experience, and take all sorts of excursions in your company! don't come home for one more year if you can help it. stay and let the impressions set and tie themselves in with a hard knot, so that they will be worth something and definitive. i am so glad to hear that bay is doing so well, and doubly glad (as mrs. dibblee tells me from anita) that h. j. is going to sit to her for his portrait. i am a bit sorry that the youthful harry didn't accept your invitation, but his time was after all so short that it has been perhaps good for him to get the massive english impression. what times we live in! dreyfus, cuba, and khartoum!--i keep well, though fragile as a worker. you will have heard of my edinburgh appointment and my election to the institut de france as _correspondant_. the latter is silly, but the former a serious scrape out of which i am praying all the gods to help me, as the time for preparation is so short. all cambridge friends are well. you heard of dear child's death, last summer, i suppose. good-bye! write to me, dear old rosina. kiss bay and leslie--even _effleurez_ your own cheek, for me. give my best love to your mother, and believe me always your affectionate w. j. _to dickinson s. miller._ cambridge, _dec. , _. illustrious friend and joy of my liver,--i am much pleased to hear from you, for i have wished to know of your destinies, and bakewell couldn't give me a very precise account. i congratulate you on getting your review of me off your hands--you must experience a relief similar to that of christian when he lost his bag of sin. i imagine your account of its unsatisfactoriness is a little hyperæsthetic, and that what you have brooded over so long will, in spite of anything in the accidents of its production, prove solid and deep, and reveal _ex pede_ the hercules. of course, if you do not unconditionally subscribe to my "will to believe" essay, it shows that you still are groping in the darkness of misunderstanding either of my meaning or of the truth; for in spite of "the bludgeonings of fate," my head is "bloody but unbowed" as to the rightness of my contention there, in both its parts. but we shall see; and i hope you are now free for more distant flights. i am extremely sorry to hear you have been not well again, even though you say you are so much better now. you ought to be _entirely_ well and every inch a king. remember that, _whenever_ you need a change, your bed is made in this house for as many weeks as you care to stay. i know there will come feelings of disconsolateness over you occasionally, from being so out of the academic swim. but that is nothing! and while this time is on, you should think exclusively of its unique characteristics of blessedness, which will be irrecoverable when you are in the harness again. i spent the first six weeks after term began in trying to clear my table of encumbering tasks, in order to get at my own reading for the gifford lectures. in vain. each day brought its cargo, and i never got at my own work, until a fortnight ago the brilliant resolve was communicated to me, by divine inspiration, of not doing anything for anybody else, not writing a letter or looking at a ms., on any day until i should have done at least one hour of work for _myself_. if you spend your time preparing to be ready, you _never_ will be ready. since that wonderful insight into the truth, despair has given way to happiness. i do my hour or hour and a half of free reading; and don't care what extraneous interest suffers.... good-night, dear old miller. your ever loving, w. j. _to dickinson s. miller._ cambridge, _jan. , _. ...your account of josiah royce is adorable--we have both gloated over it all day. the best intellectual character-painting ever limned by an english pen! since teaching the "conception of god," i have come to perceive what i didn't trust myself to believe before, that looseness of thought is r.'s _essential_ element. he _wants_ it. there isn't a tight joint in his system; not one. and yet i thought that a mind that could talk me blind and black and numb on mathematics and logic, and whose favorite recreation is works on those subjects, must necessarily conceal closeness and exactitudes of ratiocination that i hadn't the wit to find out. but no! he is the rubens of philosophy. richness, abundance, boldness, color, but a sharp contour never, and never any _perfection_. but isn't fertility better than perfection? deary me! ever thine, w. j. _to henry rutgers marshall._ cambridge [_feb. , _?]. dear marshall,--i will hand your paper to eliot, though i am sure that nothing will come of it in _this_ university. moreover, it strikes me that no good will ever come to art as such from the analytic study of Æsthetics--harm rather, if the abstractions could in any way be made the basis of practice. we should get stark things done on system with all the intangible personal _je ne sçais quaw_ left out. the difference between the first-and second-best things in art absolutely seems to escape verbal definition--it is a matter of a hair, a shade, an inward quiver of some kind--yet what miles away in point of preciousness! absolutely the same verbal formula applies to the supreme success and to the thing that just misses it, and yet verbal formulas are all that your aesthetics will give. surely imitation in the concrete is better for results than any amount of gabble in the abstract. let the rest of us philosophers gabble, but don't mix us up with the interests of the art department as such! them's my sentiments. thanks for the "cudgels" you are taking up for the "will to believe." miller's article seems to be based solely on my little catchpenny _title_. where would he have been if i had called my article "a critique of pure faith" or words to that effect? as it is, he doesn't touch a _single_ one of my points, and slays a mere abstraction. i shall greedily read what you write. i have been too lazy and hard pressed to write to you about your "instinct and reason," which contains many good things in the way of psychology and morals, but which--i tremble to say it before you--on the whole _does_ disappoint me. the religious part especially seems to me to rest on too narrow a phenomenal base, and the formula to be too simple and abstract. but it is a good contribution to american scholarship all the same, and i hope the philippine islanders will be forced to study it. forgive my brevity and levity. yours ever, w. j. _to henry rutgers marshall._ cambridge, _feb. [ ]_. dear marshall,--your invitation was perhaps the finest "tribute" the jameses have ever received, but it is plumb impossible that either of us should accept. pinned down, by ten thousand jobs and duties, like two gullivers by the threads of the lilliputians. i should "admire" to see the kiplings again, but it is no go. now that by his song-making power he is the mightiest force in the formation of the "anglo-saxon" character, i wish he would hearken a bit more to his deeper human self and a bit less to his shallower jingo self. if the anglo-saxon race would drop its sniveling cant it would have a good deal less of a "burden" to carry. we're the most loathsomely canting crew that god ever made. kipling knows perfectly well that our camps in the tropics are not college settlements or our armies bands of philanthropists, slumming it; and i think it a shame that he should represent us to ourselves in that light. i wish he would try a bit interpreting the savage _soul_ to us, as he _could_, instead of using such official and conventional phrases as "half-devil and half-child," which leaves the whole insides out. heigh ho! i have only had time to glance at the first / of your paper on miller. i am delighted you are thus going for him. his whole paper is an _ignoratio elenchi_, and he doesn't touch a single one of my positions. believe me with great regrets and thanks, yours ever, wm. james. _to mrs. henry whitman._ chocorua, _june , _. dear mrs. whitman,--i got your penciled letter the day before leaving. the r.r. train seems to be a great stimulus to the acts of the higher epistolary activity and correspondential amicality in you--a fact for which i have (occasional) reason to be duly grateful. so here, in the cool darkness of my road-side "sitting-room," with no pen in the house, with the soft tap of the carpenter's hammer and the pensive scrape of the distant wood-saw stealing through the open wire-netting door, along with the fragrant air of the morning woods, i get stimulus responsive, and send you penciled return. yes, the daylight that now seems shining through the dreyfus case is glorious, and if the president only gets his back up a bit, and mows down the whole gang of satan, or as much of it as can be touched, it will perhaps be a great day for the distracted france. i mean it may be one of those moral crises that become starting points and high-water marks and leave traditions and rallying cries and new forces behind them. one thing is certain, that no other alternative form of government possible to france in this century could have stood the strain as this democracy seems to be standing it. apropos of which, a word about woodberry's book.[ ] i didn't know him to be that kind of a creature at all. the essays are grave and noble in the extreme. i hail another american author. they can't be popular, and for cause. the respect of him for the queen's english, the classic leisureliness and explicitness, which give so rare a dignity to his style, also take from it that which our generation seems to need, the sudden word, the unmediated transition, the flash of perception that makes reasonings unnecessary. poor woodberry, so high, so true, so good, so original in his total make-up, and yet so unoriginal if you take him spot-wise--and therefore so ineffective. his paper on democracy is very fine indeed, though somewhat too abstract. i haven't yet read the first and last essays in the book, which i shall buy and keep, and even send a word of gratulation to the author for it. as for me, my bed is made: i am against bigness and greatness in all their forms, and with the invisible molecular moral forces that work from individual to individual, stealing in through the crannies of the world like so many soft rootlets, or like the capillary oozing of water, and yet rending the hardest monuments of man's pride, if you give them time. the bigger the unit you deal with, the hollower, the more brutal, the more mendacious is the life displayed. so i am against all big organizations as such, national ones first and foremost; against all big successes and big results; and in favor of the eternal forces of truth which always work in the individual and immediately unsuccessful way, under-dogs always, till history comes, after they are long dead, and puts them on the top.--you need take no notice of these ebullitions of spleen, which are probably quite unintelligible to anyone but myself. ever your w. j. when the college term ended in june, , the sailing date of the european steamer on which james had taken passage for his wife and daughter and himself was still three weeks away. he turned again to the adirondack lodge and there persuaded himself, to his intense satisfaction, that if he walked slowly and alone, so that there was no temptation to talk while walking, or to keep on when he felt like stopping, he could still spend several hours a day on the mountain sides without inconvenience to his heart. but one afternoon he took a wrong path and did not discover his mistake until he had gone so far that it seemed safer to go on than to turn back. so he kept on. but the "trail" he was following was not the one he supposed it to be and led him farther and farther. he fainted twice; it grew dark; but having neither food, coat, nor matches, he stumbled along until at last he came out on the keene valley road and, at nearly eleven o'clock at night, reached a house where he could get food and a conveyance. he ought to have avoided all exertion for weeks thereafter, but he tried again to make light of what had occurred, and, on getting back to cambridge, spent a very active few days over final arrangements for his year of absence. when his boat had sailed and the stimulus which his last duties supplied had been withdrawn, he began to discover what condition he was in. xiii - _two years of illness in europe--retirement from active duty at harvard--the first and second series of the gifford lectures_ when james sailed for hamburg on july , he planned quite definitely to devote the summer to rest and the treatment of his heart, then to write out the gifford lectures during the winter, and to deliver them by the following spring; and, happily, could not foresee that he was to spend nearly two years in exile and idleness. for nearly six years he had driven himself beyond the true limits of his strength. now it became evident that the strain of his second over-exertion in the adirondacks had precipitated a complete collapse. he had been advised during the winter to go to nauheim for a course of baths. but when he got there, the eminent specialists who examined his heart ignored his nervous prostration. he was doubtless a difficult patient to diagnose or prescribe for. matters went from bad to worse; little by little all his plans had to be abandoned. a year went by, and a return to regular work in cambridge was unthinkable. he was no better in the summer of than when he landed in germany in july of . his daughter had been sent to school in england. the three other children remained in america. he and mrs. james moved about between england, nauheim, the south of france, switzerland and rome, consulting a specialist in one place or trying the baths or the climate in another--with how much homesickness, and with how much courage none the less, the letters will indicate. his only systematic reading was a persistent, though frequently intermitted, exploration of religious biographies and the literature of religious conversion, in preparation for the gifford lectures. during the second year he managed to get one course of these lectures written out. not until he had delivered them in edinburgh, in may, , did he know that he had turned the corner and feel as if he had begun to live again. every letter that came to him from his family and friends at home was comforting beyond measure, and he poured out a stream of acknowledgment in long replies, which he dictated to mrs. james. his own writing was usually limited to jottings in a note-book and to post-cards. he always had a fountain-pen and a few post-cards in his pocket, and often, when sitting in a chair in the open air, or at a little table in one of the outdoor restaurants that abound in nauheim and in southern europe, he would compress more news and messages into one of these little missives than most men ever get into a letter. a few of his friends at home divined his situation, and were at pains to write him regularly and fully. letters that follow show how grateful he was for such devotion. * * * * * in this state of enforced idleness he browsed through newspapers and journals more than he had before or than he ever did again, and so his letters contained more comments on daily events. it will be clear that what was happening did not always please him. he was an individualist and a liberal, both by temperament and by reason of having grown up with the generation which accepted the doctrines of the _laissez-faire_ school in a thoroughgoing way. the philippine policy of the mckinley administration seemed to him a humiliating desertion of the principles that america had fought for in the revolution and the war of emancipation. the military occupation of the philippines, described by the president as "benevolent assimilation," and what he once called the "cold pot-grease of mckinley's eloquence" filled him with loathing. he saw the republican party in the light in which mr. dooley portrayed it when he represented its leaders as praying "that providence might remain under the benevolent influence of the present administration." when mckinley and roosevelt were nominated by the republicans in , he called them "a combination of slime and grit, soap and sand, that ought to scour anything away, even the moral sense of the country." he was ready to vote for bryan if there were no other way of turning out the administration responsible for the history of our first years in the philippines, "although it would doubtless have been a premature victory of a very mongrel kind of reform." in the same way, the cant with which many of the supporters of england's program in south africa extolled the boer war in the british press provoked his irony. the uproar over the dreyfus case was at its height. the "intellectuels," as they were called in france, the "little englanders" as they were nicknamed in england, and the anti-imperialists in his own country had his entire sympathy. the state of mind of a member of the liberal minority, observing the phase of history that was disclosing itself at the end of the century, is admirably indicated in his correspondence. * * * * * miss pauline goldmark, next addressed, and her family were in the habit of spending their summers in keene valley, where they had a cottage that was not far from the putnam shanty. james had often joined forces with them for a day's climb when he was staying at the shanty. the reader will recall that it was their party that he had joined on mt. marcy the year before. _to miss pauline goldmark._ bad-nauheim, _aug. , _. my dear pauline,--i am afraid we are stuck here till the latter half of september. once a donkey, always a donkey; at the lodge in june, after some slow walks which seemed to do me no harm at all, i drifted one day up to the top of marcy, and then (thanks to the trail improvement society!) found myself in the johns brook valley instead of on the lodge trail back; and converted what would have been a three-hours' downward saunter into a seven-hours' scramble, emerging in keene valley at . p.m. this did me no good--quite the contrary; so i have come to nauheim just in time. my carelessness was due to the belief that there was only one trail in the lodge direction, so i didn't attend particularly, and when i found myself off the track (the trail soon stopped) i thought i was going to south meadow, and didn't reascend. anyhow i was an ass, and you ought to have been along to steer me straight. i fear we shall ascend no more acclivities together. "bent is the tree that should have grown full straight!" you have no idea of the moral repulsiveness of this _curort_ life. everybody fairly revelling in disease, and abandoning themselves to it with a sort of _gusto_. "heart," "heart," "heart," the sole topic of attention and conversation. as a "phase," however, one ought to be able to live through it, and the extraordinary nerve-rest, crawling round as we do, is beneficial. man is never satisfied! perhaps i shall be when the baths, etc., have had their effect. we go then straight to england.--i do hope that you are all getting what you wish in switzerland, and that for all of you the entire adventure is proving golden. mrs. james sends her love, and i am, as always, yours most affectionately, wm. james. _to mrs. e. p. gibbens._ villa luise, bad-nauheim, _aug. , _. darling belle-mÈre,--the day seems to have come for another letter to you, though my fingers are so cold that i can hardly write. we have had a most conveniently dry season--convenient in that it doesn't coop us up in the house--but a deal of cloud and cold. today is sunny but frigid--like late october. altogether the difference of weather is very striking. european weather is stagnant and immovable. it is as if it got stuck, and needed a kick to start it; and although it is doubtless better for the nerves than ours, i find my soul thinking most kindly from this distance of our glorious quick passionate american climate, with its transparency and its impulsive extremes. this weather is as if fed on solid pudding. we inhabit one richly and heavily furnished bedroom, x , with good beds and a balcony, and are rapidly making up for all our estrangement, locally speaking, in the past. it is a great "nerve-rest," though the listlessness that goes with all nerve-rest makes itself felt. alice seems very well.... the place has wonderful adaptation to its purposes in the possession of a vast park with noble trees and avenues and incessant benches for rest; restaurants with out-of-door tables everywhere in sight; music morning, afternoon and night; and charming points to go to out of town. cab-fare is cheap. but nothing else.... the gifford lectures are in complete abeyance. i have word from seth that under the circumstances the academic senate will be sure to grant me any delay or indulgence i may ask for; so this relieves tension. i can make nothing out yet about my heart.... so i _try_ to take long views and not fuss about temporary feelings, though i dare say i keep dear alice worried enough by the fuss i imagine myself _not_ to make. it is a loathsome world, this medical world; and i confess that the thought of another six weeks here next year doesn't exhilarate me, in spite of the decency of all our physical conditions. i still remain faithful to irving st. ( and ),[ ] chocorua, silver lake, and keene valley! we get almost no syllable of american news, in spite of the fact that we take the london "chronicle." pray send the "nation" and the "literary digest." _don't_ send the "sciences" as heretofore. let them accumulate. i think that after reception of this you had better address us care of h. j., rye, sussex. we shall probably be off by the th or th of sept. i hope that public opinion is gathering black against the philippine policy--in spite of my absence! i hope that salter will pitch in well in the fall. the still blacker nightmare of a dreyfus case hangs over us; and there is little time in the day save for reading the "figaro's" full reports of the trial. like all french happenings, it is as if they were edited expressly for literary purpose. every "witness" so-called has a power of statement equal to that of a first-class lawyer; and the various human types that succeed each other, exhibiting their several peculiarities in full blossom, make the thing like a novel. esterhazy seems to me the _great_ hero. how shakespeare would have enjoyed such a fantastic scoundrel,--knowing all the secrets, saying what he pleases, mystifying all europe, leading the whole french army (except apparently picquart) by the nose,--a regular shakespearean type of villain, with an insane exuberance of rhetoric and fancy about his vanities and hatreds, that literature has never given yet. it would seem incredible that the court-martial should condemn. henry was evidently the spy, employed by esterhazy, and afterwards du paty helped their machinations, in order not to stultify his own record at the original trial--at least this seems the plausible theory. the older generals seem merely to have been passive connivers, stupidly and obstinately holding to the original official mistake rather than surrender under fire. and such is the prestige of caste-opinion, such the solidity of the professional spirit, that, incredible as it may seem, it is still quite probable that the officers will obey the lead of their superiors, and condemn dreyfus again. the president, jouaust, who was supposed to be impartial, is showing an apparently bad animus against picquart. p. is a real _hero_--a precious possession for any country. he ought to be made minister of war; though that would doubtless produce a revolution. i suppose that loubet will pardon dreyfus immediately if he is recondemned. then dreyfus, and perhaps loubet, will be assassinated by some anti-semite, and who knows what will follow? but before you get this, you will know far more about the trial than i can tell you. we long for news from the boys--not a word from billy since he left tacoma. i am glad their season promises to be shorter! enough is as good as a feast! what a scattered lot we are! i hope that margaret will be happy in montreal. as for you in your desolation, i could almost weep for you. my only advice is that you should cling to aleck as to a life-preserver. i trust you got the $ i told higginson to send you. i am mortified beyond measure by that overdrawn bank account, and do not understand it at all. oceans of love from your affectionate son, william. _to william m. salter._ bad-nauheim, _sept. , _. dear mackintire,--the incredible has happened, and dreyfus, without one may say a single particle of _positive_ evidence that he was guilty, has been condemned again. the french republic, which seemed about to turn the most dangerous corner in her career and enter on the line of political health, laying down the finest set of political precedents in her history to serve as standards for future imitation and habit, has slipped hell-ward and all the forces of hell in the country will proceed to fresh excesses of insolence. but i don't believe the game is lost. "les intellectuels," thanks to the republic, are now aggressively militant as they never were before, and will grow stronger and stronger; so we may hope. i have sent you the "figaro" daily; but of course the reports are too long for you to have read through. the most grotesque thing about the whole trial is the pretension of awful holiness, of semi-divinity in the diplomatic documents and waste-paper-basket scraps from the embassies--a farce kept up to the very end--these same documents being, so far as they were anything (and most of them were nothing), mere records of treason, lying, theft, bribery, corruption, and every crime on the part of the diplomatic agents. either the german and italian governments will now publish or not publish all the details of their transactions--give the exact documents meant by the _bordereaux_ and the exact names of the french traitors. if they do not, there will be only two possible explanations: either dreyfus's guilt, or the pride of their own sacrosanct etiquette. as it is scarcely conceivable that dreyfus can have been guilty, their silences will be due to the latter cause. (of course it can't be due to what they owe in honor to esterhazy and whoever their other allies and servants may have been. e. is safe over the border, and a pension for his services will heal all his wounds. any other person can quickly be put in similar conditions of happiness.) and they and esterhazy will then be exactly on a par morally, actively conspiring to have an innocent man bear the burden of their own sins. by their carelessness with the documents they got dreyfus accused, and now they abandon him, for the sake of their own divine etiquette. the breath of the nostrils of all these big institutions is crime--that is the long and short of it. we must thank god for america; and hold fast to every advantage of our position. talk about our corruption! it is a mere fly-speck of superficiality compared with the rooted and permanent forces of corruption that exist in the european states. the only serious permanent force of corruption in america is party spirit. all the other forces are shifting like the clouds, and have no partnerships with any permanently organized ideal. millionaires and syndicates have their immediate cash to pay, but they have no intrenched prestige to work with, like the church sentiment, the army sentiment, the aristocracy and royalty sentiment, which here can be brought to bear in favor of every kind of individual and collective crime--appealing not only to the immediate pocket of the persons to be corrupted, but to the ideals of their imagination as well.... my dear mack, we "intellectuals" in america must all work to keep our precious birthright of individualism, and freedom from these institutions. _every_ great institution is perforce a means of corruption--whatever good it may also do. only in the free personal relation is full ideality to be found.--i have vomited all this out upon you in the hope that it may wake a responsive echo. one must do _something_ to work off the effect of the dreyfus sentence. i rejoice immensely in the purchase [on our behalf] of the two pieces of land [near chocorua], and pine for the day when i can get back to see them. if all the same to you, i wish that you would buy burke's in your name, and mother-in-law forrest's in her name. but let this be exactly as each of you severally prefers. we leave here in a couple of days, i imagine. i am better; but i can't tell how much better for a few weeks yet. i hope that you will smite the ungodly next winter. what a glorious gathering together of the forces for the great fight there will be. it seems to me as if the proper tactics were to pound mckinley--put the whole responsibility on him. it is he who by his purely drifting "non-entanglement" policy converted a splendid opportunity into this present necessity of a conquest of extermination. it is he who has warped us from our continuous national habit, which, if we repudiate him, it will not be impossible to resume. affectionately thine, mary's, aleck's, dinah's, augusta's,[ ] and everyone's, w. j. p.s. damn it, america doesn't know the meaning of the word corruption compared with europe! corruption is so permanently organized here that it isn't thought of as such--it is so transient and shifting in america as to make an outcry whenever it appears. _to miss frances r. morse._ bad-nauheim, _sept. , _. ...in two or three days more i shall be discharged (in very decent shape, i trust) and after ten days or so of rigorously prescribed "nachkur" in the cold and rain of switzerland (we have seen the sun only in short but entrancing glimpses since sept. , and you know what bad weather is when it once begins in europe), we shall pick up our peggy at vevey, and proceed to lamb house, rye, _über_ paris, with all possible speed. god bless the american climate, with its transparent, passionate, impulsive variety and headlong fling. there are deeper, slower tones of earnestness and moral gravity here, no doubt, but ours is more like youth and youth's infinite and touching promise. god bless america in general! _conspuez_ mckinley and the republican party and the philippine war, and the methodists, and the voices, etc., as much as you please, but bless the innocence. talk of corruption! we don't know what the word corruption means at home, with our improvised and shifting agencies of crude pecuniary bribery, compared with the solidly intrenched and permanently organized corruptive geniuses of monarchy, nobility, church, army, that penetrate the very bosom of the higher kind as well as the lower kind of people in all the european states (except switzerland) and sophisticate their motives away from the impulse to straightforward handling of any simple case. _temoin_ the dreyfus case! but no matter! of all the forms of mental crudity, that of growing earnest over international comparisons is probably the most childish. every nation has its ideals which are a dead secret to other nations, and it has to develop in its own way, in touch with them. it can only be judged by itself. if each of us does as well as he can in his own sphere at home, he will do all he _can_ do; that is why i hate to remain so long abroad.... we have been having a visit from an extraordinary pole named lutoslawski, years old, author of philosophical writings in seven different languages,--"plato's logic," in english (longmans) being his chief work,--and knower of several more, handsome, and to the last degree genial. he has a singular philosophy--the philosophy of friendship. he takes in dead seriousness what most people admit, but only half-believe, viz., that we are _souls_ (zoolss, he pronounces it), that souls are immortal, and agents of the world's destinies, and that the chief concern of a soul is to get ahead by the help of other souls with whom it can establish confidential relations. so he spends most of his time writing letters, and will send sheets of reply to a post-card--that is the exact proportion of my correspondence with him. shall i rope you in, fanny? he has a great chain of friends and correspondents in all the countries of europe. the worst of them is that they think a secret imparted to one may at his or her discretion become, _de proche en proche_, the property of all. he is a _wunderlicher mensch_: abstractly his scheme is divine, but there is something on which i can't yet just lay my defining finger that makes one feel that there is some need of the corrective and critical and arresting judgment in his manner of carrying it out. these slavs seem to be the great radical livers-out of their theories. good-bye, dearest fanny.... your affectionate w. j. _to mrs. henry whitman._ lamb house, rye, _oct. , _. dear mrs. whitman,--you see where at last we have arrived, at the end of the first _étape_ of this pilgrimage--the second station of the cross, so to speak--with the continent over, and england about to begin. the land is bathed in greenish-yellow light and misty drizzle of rain. the little town, with its miniature brick walls and houses and nooks and coves and gardens, makes a curiously vivid and quaint picture, alternately suggesting english, dutch, and japanese effects that one has seen in pictures--all exceedingly tiny (so that one wonders how _families_ ever could have been reared in most of the houses) and neat and _zierlich_ to the last degree. _refinement_ in architecture certainly consists in narrow trim and the absence of heavy mouldings. modern germany is incredibly bad from that point of view--much worse, apparently, than america. but the german people are a good safe fact for great powers to be intrusted to--earnest and serious, and pleasant to be with, as we found them, though it was humiliating enough to find how awfully imperfect were one's powers of conversing in their language. french not much better. i remember nothing of this extreme mortification in old times, and am inclined to think that it is due less to loss of ability to speak, than to the fact that, as you grow older, you speak better english, and expect more of yourself in the way of accomplishment. i am sure _you_ spoke no such english as now, in the seventies, when you came to cambridge! and how could i, as yet untrained by conversation with you? seven mortal weeks did we spend at the _curort_, nauheim, for an infirmity of the heart which i contracted, apparently, not much more than a year ago, and which now must be borne, along with the rest of the white man's burden, until additional visits to nauheim have removed it altogether for ordinary practical purposes. n. was a sweetly pretty spot, but i longed for more activity. a glorious week in switzerland, solid in its sometimes awful, sometimes beefy beauty; two days in paris, where i could gladly have stayed the winter out, merely for the fun of the sight of the intelligent and interesting streets; then hither, where h. j. has a real little _bijou_ of a house and garden, and seems absolutely adapted to his environment, and very well and contented in the leisure to write and to read which the place affords. in a few days we go almost certainly to the said h. j.'s apartment, still unlet, in london, where we shall in all probability stay till january, the world forgetting, by the world forgot, or till such later date as shall witness the completion of the awful gifford job, at which i have not been able to write one line since last january. i long for the definitive settlement and ability to get to work. i am very glad indeed, too, to be in an english atmosphere again. of course it will conspire better with my writing tasks, and after all it is more congruous with one's nature and one's inner ideals. still, one loves america above all things, for her youth, her greenness, her plasticity, innocence, good intentions, friends, everything. je veux que mes cendres reposent sur les bords du charles, au milieu de ce bon peuple de harvarr squerre que j'ai tant aimé. that is what i say, and what napoleon b. would have said, had his life been enriched by your and my educational and other experiences--poor man, he knew too little of life, had never even heard of us, whilst we have heard of him! seriously speaking, though, i believe that international comparisons are a great waste of time--at any rate, international judgments and passings of sentence are. every nation has ideals and difficulties and sentiments which are an impenetrable secret to one not of the blood. let them alone, let each one work out its own salvation on its own lines. they talk of the decadence of france. the hatreds, and the _coups de gueule_ of the newspapers there are awful. but i doubt if the better ideals were ever so aggressively strong; and i fancy it is the fruit of the much decried republican régime that they have become so. my brother represents english popular opinion as less cock-a-whoop for war than newspaper accounts would lead one to imagine; but i don't know that he is in a good position for judging. i hope if they do go to war that the boers will give them fits, and i heartily emit an analogous prayer on behalf of the philippinos. i have had pleasant news of beverly, having had letters both from fanny morse and paulina smith. i hope that your summer has been a good one, that work has prospered and that society has been less _énervante_ and more nutritious for the higher life of the soul than it sometimes is. _we_ have met but one person of any accomplishments or interest all summer. but i have managed to read a good deal about religion, and religious people, and care less for accomplishments, except where (as in you) they go with a sanctified heart. abundance of accomplishments, in an unsanctified heart, only make one a more accomplished devil. good bye, angelic friend! we both send love and best wishes, both to you and mr. whitman, and i am as ever yours affectionately, w. j. _to thomas davidson._ de vere gardens, london, _nov. , _. dear old t. d.,--a recent letter from margaret gibbens says that you have gone to new york in order to undergo a most "radical operation." i need not say that my thoughts have been with you, and that i have felt anxiety mixed with my hopes for you, ever since. i do indeed hope that, whatever the treatment was, it has gone off with perfect success, and that by this time you are in the durable enjoyment of relief, and nerves and everything upon the upward track. it has always seemed to me that, were i in a similar plight, i should choose a kill-or-cure operation rather than anything merely palliative--so poisonous to one's whole mental and moral being is the irritation and worry of the complaint. it would truly be a spectacle for the gods to see you rising like a phoenix from your ashes again, and shaking off even the memory of disaster like dew-drops from a lion's mane, etc.--and i hope the spectacle will be vouchsafed to us men also, and that you will be presiding over glenmore as if nothing had happened, different from the first years, save a certain softening of your native ferocity of heart, and gentleness towards the shortcomings of weaker people. dear old east hill![ ] i shall never forget the beauty of the morning (it had rained the night before) when i took my bath in the brook, before driving down to westport one day last june. we got your letter at nauheim, a sweet safe little place, made for invalids, to which it took long to reconcile me on that account. but nous en avons vu bien d'autres depuis, and from my present retirement in my brother's still unlet flat (he living at rye), nauheim seems to me like new york for bustle and energy. my heart, in short, has gone back upon me badly since i was there, and my doctor, bezley thorne, the first specialist here, and a man who inspires me with great confidence, is trying to tide me over the crisis, by great quiet, in addition to a dietary of the strictest sort, and more nauheim baths, _à domicile_. provided i can only get safely out of the gifford scrape, the deluge has leave to come.--write, dear old t. d., and tell how you are, and let it be good news if possible. give much love to the warrens, and believe me always affectionately yours, wm. james. the woman thou gavest unto me comes out strong as a nurse, and treats me much better than i deserve. _to john c. gray._ [dictated to mrs. james] london, _nov. , _. dear john,--a week ago i learnt from the "nation"--strange to have heard it in no directer way!--that dear old john ropes had turned his back on us and all this mortal tragi-comedy. no sooner does one get abroad than that sort of thing begins. i am deeply grieved to think of never seeing or hearing old j. c. r. again, with his manliness, good-fellowship, and cheeriness, and idealism of the right sort, and can't hold in any longer from expression. you, dear john, seem the only fitting person for me to condole with, for you will miss him most tremendously. pray write and tell me some details of the manner of his death. i hope he didn't suffer much. write also of your own personal and family fortunes and give my love to the members of our dining club collectively and individually, when you next meet. i have myself been shut up in a sick room for five weeks past, seeing hardly anyone but my wife and the doctor, a bad state of the heart being the cause. we shall be at west malvern in ten days, where i hope to begin to mend. hurrah for henry higginson and his gift[ ] to the university! i think the club cannot fail to be useful if they make it democratic enough. i hope that roland is enjoying washington, but not so far transubstantiated into a politician as to think that mckinley & co. are the high-water mark of human greatness up to date. john ropes, more than most men, seems as if he would be natural to meet again. please give our love to mrs. gray, and believe me, affectionately yours, wm. james. _to miss frances r. morse._ lamb house, _dec. , _. dearest fanny,--about a week ago i found myself thinking a good deal about you. i may possibly have begun by wondering how it came that, after showing such a spontaneous tendency towards that "clandestine correspondence" early in the season, you should recently, in spite of pathetic news about me, and direct personal appeals, be showing such great epistolary reserve. i went on to great lengths about you; and ended by realizing your existence, and its significance, as it were, very acutely. i composed a letter to you in my mind, whilst lying awake, dwelling in a feeling manner on the fact that human beings are born into this little span of life of which the best thing is its friendships and intimacies, and soon their places will know them no more, and yet they leave their friendships and intimacies with no cultivation, to grow as they will by the roadside, expecting them to "keep" by force of mere inertia; they contribute nothing empirical to the relation, treating it as something transcendental and metaphysical altogether; whereas in truth it deserves from hour to hour the most active care and nurture and devotion. "there's that fanny," thought i, "the rarest and most precious, perhaps, of all the phenomena that enter into the circle of my experience. i take her for granted; i seldom see her--she _has never passed a night in our house!_[ ] and yet of all things she is the one that probably deserves the closest and most unremitting attention on my part. this transcendental relation of persons to each other in the absolute won't do! i must write to fanny and tell her, in spite of her deprecations, just how perfect and rare and priceless a fact i know her existence in this universe eternally to be. this very morrow i will dictate such a letter to alice." the morrow came, and several days succeeded, and brought each its impediment with it, so that letter doesn't get written till today. and now alice, who had suddenly to take peggy (who is with us for ten days) out to see a neighbor's little girl, comes in; so i will give the pen to her. [remainder of letter dictated to mrs. james] sunday, th. brother harry and peggy came in with alice last evening, so my letter got postponed till this morning. what i was going to say was this. the day before yesterday we received in one bunch seven letters from you, dating from the th of october to the th of december, and showing that you, at any rate, had been alive to the duty of actively nourishing friendship by deeds.... your letters were sent to baring brothers, instead of brown, shipley and co., and it was a mercy that we ever got them at all. you are a great letter-writer inasmuch as your pen flows on, giving out easily such facts and feelings and thoughts as form the actual contents of your day, so that one gets a live impression of concrete reality. _my_ letters, i find, tend to escape into humorisms, abstractions and flights of fancy, which are not nutritious things to impart to friends thousands of miles away who wish to realize the facts of your private existence. we are now received into the shelter of h. j.'s "lamb house," where we have been a week, having found west malvern (where the doctor sent me after my course of baths) rather too bleak a retreat for the drear-nighted december. (heaven be praised! we have just lived down the solstice after which the year always seems a brighter, hopefuller thing.) harry's place is a most exquisite collection of quaint little stage properties, three quarters of an acre of brick-walled english garden, little brick courts and out-houses, old-time kitchen and offices, paneled chambers and tiled fire-places, but all very simple and on a small scale. its host, soon to become its proprietor, leads a very lonely life but seems in perfect equilibrium therewith, placing apparently his interest more and more in the operations of his fancy. his health is good, his face calm, his spirits equable, and he will doubtless remain here for many years to come, with an occasional visit to london. he has spoken of you with warm affection and is grateful for the letters which you send him in spite of the lapse of years.... i have resigned my gifford lectureship, but they will undoubtedly grant me indefinite postponement. i have also asked for a second year of absence from harvard, which of course will be accorded. if i improve, i may be able to give my first gifford course next year. i can do no work whatsoever at present, but through the summer and half through the fall was able to do a good deal of reading in religious biography. since july, in fact, my only companions have been saints, most excellent, though sometimes rather lop-sided company. in a general manner i can see my way to a perfectly bully pair of volumes, the first an objective study of the "varieties of religious experience," the second, my own last will and testament, setting forth the philosophy best adapted to normal religious needs. i hope i may be spared to get the thing down on paper. so far my progress has been rather downhill, but the last couple of days have shown a change which possibly may be the beginning of better things. i mean to take great care of myself from this time on. in another week or two we hope to move to a climate (possibly near hyères) where i may sit more out of doors. gathering some strength there, i trust to make for nauheim in may. if i am benefited there, we shall stay over next winter; otherwise we return by midsummer. were alice not holding the pen, i should celebrate her unselfish devotion, etc., and were i not myself dictating, i should celebrate my own uncomplaining patience and fortitude. as it is, i leave you to imagine both. both are simply beautiful! ...there, dear fanny, this is all i can do today in return for your seven glorious epistles. take a heartful of love and gratitude from both of us. remember us most affectionately to your mother and mary. write again soon, i pray you, but always to _brown, shipley and co._ stir up jim putnam to write when he can, and believe me, lovingly yours, wm. james. _to mrs. glendower evans._ [dictated to mrs. james] costebelle, hyÈres, _jan. , _. dear bessie,--don't think that this is the first time that my spirit has turned towards you since our departure. away back in nauheim i began meaning to write to you, and although that meaning was "fulfilled" long before you were born, in royce's absolute, yet there was a hitch about it in the finite which gave me perplexity. i think that the real reason why i kept finding myself able to dictate letters to other persons--not many, 't is true--and yet postponing ever until next time my letter unto you, was that my sense of your value was so much greater than almost anybody else's--though i wouldn't have anything in this construed prejudicial to fanny morse. bowed as i am by the heaviest of matrimonial chains, ever dependent for expression on alice here, how can my spirit move with perfect spontaneity, or "voice itself" with the careless freedom it would wish for in the channels of its choice? i am sure you understand, and under present conditions of communication anything more explicit might be imprudent. she has told you correctly all the outward facts. i feel within a week past as if i might really be taking a turn for the better, and i know you will be glad. i have, in the last days, gone so far as to read royce's book[ ] from cover to cover, a task made easy by the familiarity of the thought, as well as the flow of the style. it is a charming production--it is odd that the adjectives "charming" and "pretty" emerge so strongly to characterize my impression. r. has got himself much more organically together than he ever did before, the result being, in its _ensemble_, a highly individual and original _weltanschauung_, well-fitted to be the storm-centre of much discussion, and to form a wellspring of suggestion and education for the next generation of thought in america. but it makes youthful anew the paradox of philosophy--so trivial and so ponderous at once. the book leaves a total effect on you like a picture--a summary impression of charm and grace as light as a breath; yet to bring forth that light nothing less than royce's enormous organic temperament and technical equipment, and preliminary attempts, were required. the book consolidates an impression which i have never before got except by glimpses, that royce's system is through and through to be classed as a light production. it is a charming, romantic sketch; and it is only by handling it after the manner of a sketch, keeping it within sketch technique, that r. can make it very impressive. in the few places where he tries to grip and reason close, the effect is rather disastrous, to my mind. but i do think of royce now in a more or less settled way as primarily a sketcher in philosophy. of course the sketches of some masters are worth more than the finished pictures of others. but stop! if this was the kind of letter i meant to write to you, it is no wonder that i found myself unable to begin weeks ago. my excuse is that i only finished the book two hours ago, and my mind was full to overflowing. next monday we are expecting to move into the neighboring château de carqueiranne, which my friend professor richet of paris has offered conjointly to us and the fred myerses, who will soon arrive. a whole country house in splendid grounds and a perfect godsend under the conditions. if i can only bear the talking to the myerses without too much fatigue! but that also i am sure will come. our present situation is enviable enough. a large bedroom with a balcony high up on the vast hotel façade; a terrace below it graveled with white pebbles containing beds of palms and oranges and roses; below that a downward sloping garden full of plants and winding walks and seats; then a wide hillside continuing southward to the plain below, with its gray-green olive groves bordered by great salt marshes with salt works on them, shut in from the sea by the causeways which lead to a long rocky island, perhaps three miles away, that limits the middle of our view due south, and beyond which to the east and west appears the boundless mediterranean. but delightful as this is, there is no place like home; otis place is better than languedoc and irving street than provence. and i am sure, dear bessie, that there is no maid, wife or widow in either of these countries that is half as good as you. but here i must absolutely stop; so with a good-night and a happy new year to you, i am as ever, affectionately your friend, wm. james. _to dickinson s. miller._ [dictated to mrs. james] hotel d' albion, costebelle, hyÈres, _jan. , _. darling miller,--last night arrived your pathetically sympathetic letter in comment on the news you had just received of my dropping out for the present from the active career. i want you to understand how deeply i value your unflagging feeling of friendship, and how much we have been touched by this new expression of it.... my strength and spirits are coming back to me with the open-air life, and i begin to feel quite differently towards the future. even if this amelioration does not develop fast, it is a check to the deterioration, and shows that curative forces are still there. i look perfectly well at present, and that of itself is a very favorable sign. in a couple of weeks i mean to begin the gifford lectures, writing, say, a page a day, and having all next year before me empty, am very likely to get, at any rate, the first course finished. a letter from seth last night told me that the committee [on the gifford lectureship] had refused my resignation and simply shoved my appointment forward by one year. so be of good cheer, miller; we shall yet fight the good fight, sometimes side by side, sometimes agin one another, as merrily as if no interruption had occurred. show this to harry, to whom his mother will write today. we enjoyed royce's visit very much, and yesterday i finished reading his book, which i find perfectly charming as a composition, though as far as cogent reasoning goes, it leaks at every joint. it is, nevertheless, a big achievement in the line of philosophic fancy-work, perhaps the most important of all except religious fancy-work. he has got himself together far more intricately than ever before, and ought, after this, to be recognized by the world according to the measure of his real importance. to me, however, the book has brought about a curious settlement in my way of classing royce. in spite of the great technical freight he carries, and his extraordinary mental vigor, he belongs essentially among the lighter skirmishers of philosophy. a sketcher and popularizer, not a pile-driver, foundation-layer, or wall-builder. within his class, of course, he is simply magnificent. it all goes with his easy temperament and rare good-nature in discussion. the subject is not really vital to him, it is just fancy-work. all the same i do hope that this book and its successor will prove a great ferment in our philosophic schools. only with schools and living masters can philosophy _bloom_ in a country, in a generation. no more, dear miller, but endless thanks. all you tell me of yourself deeply interests me. i am deeply sorry about the eyes. are you sure it is not a matter for glasses? with much love from both of us. your ever affectionate, w. j. _to francis boott._ [dictated to mrs. james] chÂteau de carqueiranne, _jan. , _. dear old friend,--every day for a month past i have said to alice, "today we must get off a letter to mr. boott"; but every day the available strength was less than the call upon it. yours of the th december reached us duly at rye and was read at the cheerful little breakfast table. i must say that you are the only person who has caught the proper tone for sympathizing with an invalid's feelings. everyone else says, "we are glad to think that you are by this time in splendid condition, richly enjoying your rest, and having a great success at edinburgh"--this, where what one craves is mere pity for one's unmerited sufferings! _you_ say, "it is a great disappointment, more i should think than you can well bear. i wish you could give up the whole affair and turn your prow toward home." that, dear sir, is the proper note to strike--la voix du coeur qui seul au coeur arrive; and i thank you for recognizing that it is a case of agony and patience. i, for one, should be too glad to turn my prow homewards, in spite of all our present privileges in the way of simplified life, and glorious climate. what wouldn't i give at this moment to be partaking of one of your recherchés déjeuners à la fourchette, ministered to by the good kate. from the bed on which i lie i can "sense" it as if present--the succulent roast pork, the apple sauce, the canned asparagus, the cranberry pie, the dates, the "to kalon,"[ ]--above all the _rire en barbe_ of the ever-youthful host. will they ever come again? don't understand me to be disparaging our present meals which, cooked by a broadbuilt sexagenarian provençale, leave nothing to be desired. especially is the fish good and the artichokes, and the stewed lettuce. our _commensaux_, the myerses, form a good combination. the house is vast and comfortable and the air just right for one in my condition, neither relaxing nor exciting, and floods of sunshine. do you care much about the war? for my part i think jehovah has run the thing about right, so far; though on utilitarian grounds it will be very likely better if the english win. when we were at rye an interminable controversy raged about a national day of humiliation and prayer. i wrote to the "times" to suggest, in my character of traveling american, that both sides to the controversy might be satisfied by a service arranged on principles suggested by the anecdote of the montana settler who met a grizzly so formidable that he fell on his knees, saying, "o lord, i hain't never yet asked ye for help, and ain't agoin' to ask ye for none now. but for pity's sake, o lord, don't help the bear." the solemn "times" never printed my letter and thus the world lost an admirable epigram. you, i know, will appreciate it. mrs. gibbens speaks with great pleasure of your friendly visits, and i should think you might find mrs. merriman good company. i hope you are getting through the winter without any bronchial trouble, and i hope that neither the influenza nor the bubonic plague has got to cambridge yet. the former is devastating europe. if you see dear dr. driver, give him our warmest regards. one ought to stay among one's own people. i seem to be mending--though very slowly, and the least thing knocks me down. this noon i am still in bed, a little too much talking with the myerses yesterday giving me a strong pectoral distress which is not yet over. this dictation begins to hurt me, so i will stop. my spirits now are first-rate, which is a great point gained. good-bye, dear old man! we both send our warmest love and are, ever affectionately yours, wm. james. _to hugo münsterberg._ carqueianne, _march , _. dear mÜnsterberg,--your letter of the th "ult." was a most delightful surprise--all but the part of it which told of your being ill again--and of course the news of poor solomons's death was a severe shock.... as regards solomons, it is pathetically tragic, and i hope that you will send me full details. there was something so lonely and self-sustaining about poor little s., that to be snuffed out like this before he had fairly begun to live in the eyes of the world adds a sort of tragic dramatic unity to his young career. certainly the _keenest_ intellect we ever had, and one of the loftiest characters! but there was always a mysterious side to me about his mind: he appeared so critical and destructive, and yet kept alluding all the while to ethical and religious ideals of his own which he wished to live for, and of which he never vouchsafed a glimpse to anyone else. he was the only student i have ever had of whose criticisms i felt afraid: and that was partly because i never quite understood the region from which they came, and with the authority of which he spoke. his surface thoughts, however, of a scientific order, were extraordinarily _treffend_ and clearly expressed; in fact, the way in which he went to the heart of a subject in a few words was masterly. of course he must have left, apart from his thesis, a good deal of ms. fit for publication. i have not seen our philosophical periodicals since leaving home. have any parts of his thesis already appeared? if not, the whole thing should be published as "monograph supplement" to the "psychological review," and his papers gone over to see what else there may be. an adequate obituary of him ought also to be written. who knew him most intimately? i think the obituary and a portrait ought also to be posted in the laboratory. can you send me the address of his mother?--i think his father is dead. i should also like to write a word about him to miss s----, if you can give me her address. if we had foreseen this early end to poor little solomons, how much more we should have made of him, and how considerate we should have been! it pleases me much to think of so many other good young fellows, as you report them, in the laboratory this year. how many candidates for ph.d.? how glad i am to be clear of those examinations, certainly the most disagreeable part of the year's work.... _to george h. palmer._ carqueiranne, _apr. , _. glorious old palmer,--i had come to the point of feeling that my next letter _must_ be to you, when in comes your delightful "favor" of the th, with all its news, its convincing clipping, and its enclosures from bakewell and sheldon. i have had many impulses to write to bakewell, but they have all aborted--my powers being so small and so much _in anspruch genommen_ by correspondence already under way. i judge him to be well and happy. what think you of his wife? i suppose she is no relation of yours. i shouldn't think any of your three candidates would do for that conventional bryn mawr. she stoneth the prophets, and i wish she would get x---- and get stung. he made a _deplorable_ impression on me many years ago. the only comment _i_ heard when i gave my address there lately (the last one in my "talks") was that a---- had hoped for something more technical and psychological! nevertheless, some good girls seem to come out at bryn mawr. i am awfully sorry that perry is out of place. unless he gets something good, it seems to me that we ought to get him for a course in kant. he is certainly the soundest, most normal all-round man of our recent production. your list for next year interests me muchly. i am glad of münsterberg's and santayana's new courses, and hope they'll be good. i'm glad you're back in ethics and glad that royce has "epistemology"--portentous name, and small result, in my opinion, but a substantive _discipline_ which ought, _par le temps qui court_, to be treated with due formality. i look forward with eagerness to his new volume.[ ] what a colossal feat he has performed in these two years--all thrown in by the way, as it were. certainly gifford lectures are a good institution for stimulating production. they have stimulated me so far to produce two lectures of wishy-washy generalities. what is that for a "showing" in six months of absolute leisure? the second lecture used me up so that i must be off a good while again. no! dear palmer, the best i can possibly hope for at cambridge after my return is to be able to carry one half-course. so make all calculations accordingly. as for windelband, how can i ascertain anything except by writing to him? i shall see no one, nor go to any university environment. my impression is that we must go in for budding genius, if we seek a european. if an american, we can get a _sommité_! but who? in either case? verily there is room at the top. s---- seems to be the only britisher worth thinking of. i imagine we had better train up our own men. a----, b----, c----, either would no doubt do, especially a---- if his health improves. d---- is our last card, from the point of view of policy, no doubt, but from that of inner organization it seems to me that he may have too many points of coalescence with both münsterberg and royce, especially the latter. the great event in my life recently has been the reading of santayana's book.[ ] although i absolutely reject the platonism of it, i have literally squealed with delight at the imperturbable perfection with which the position is laid down on page after page; and grunted with delight at such a thickening up of our harvard atmosphere. if our students now could begin really to understand what royce means with his voluntaristic-pluralistic monism, what münsterberg means with his dualistic scientificism and platonism, what santayana means by his pessimistic platonism (i wonder if he and mg. have had any close mutually encouraging intercourse in this line?), what i mean by my crass pluralism, what you mean by your ethereal idealism, that these are so many religions, ways of fronting life, and worth fighting for, we should have a genuine philosophic universe at harvard. the best condition of it would be an open conflict and rivalry of the diverse systems. (alas! that i should be out of it, just as my chance begins!) the world might ring with the struggle, if we devoted ourselves exclusively to belaboring each other. i now understand santayana, the man. i never understood him before. but what a perfection of rottenness in a philosophy! i don't think i ever knew the anti-realistic view to be propounded with so impudently superior an air. it is refreshing to see a representative of moribund latinity rise up and administer such reproof to us barbarians in the hour of our triumph. i imagine santayana's _style_ to be entirely spontaneous. but it has curious classic echoes. whole pages of pure hume in style; others of pure renan. nevertheless, how fantastic a philosophy!--as if the "world of values" _were_ independent of existence. it is only as _being_, that one thing is better than another. the idea of darkness is as good as that of light, as ideas. there is more value in light's _being_. and the exquisite consolation, when you have ascertained the badness of all fact, in knowing that badness is inferior to goodness, to the end--it only rubs the pessimism in. a man whose egg at breakfast turns out always bad says to himself, "well, bad and good are not the same, anyhow." that is just the trouble! moreover, when you come down to the facts, what do your harmonious and integral ideal systems prove to be? in the concrete? always things burst by the growing content of experience. dramatic unities; laws of versification; ecclesiastical systems; scholastic doctrines. bah! give me walt whitman and browning ten times over, much as the perverse ugliness of the latter at times irritates me, and intensely as i have enjoyed santayana's attack. the barbarians are in the line of mental growth, and those who do insist that the ideal and the real are dynamically continuous are those by whom the world is to be saved. but i'm nevertheless delighted that the other view, always existing in the world, should at last have found so splendidly impertinent an expression among ourselves. i have meant to write to santayana; but on second thoughts, and to save myself, i will just ask you to send him this. it saves him from what might be the nuisance of having to reply, and on my part it has the advantage of being more free-spoken and direct. he is certainly an _extraordinarily distingué_ writer. thank him for existing! as a contrast, read jack chapman's "practical agitation." the other pole of thought, and a style all splinters--but a gospel for our rising generation--i hope it will have its effect. send me your noble lectures. i don't see how you could risk it without a ms. if you did fail (which i doubt) you deserved to. anyhow the printed page makes everything good. i can no more! adieu! how is mrs. palmer this winter? i hope entirely herself again. you are impartially silent of her and of my wife! the "transcript" continues to bless us. we move from this hospitable roof to the hotel at costebelle today. thence after a fortnight to geneva, and in may to nauheim once more, to be reëxamined and sentenced by schott. affectionately yours, w. j. _to miss frances r. morse._ costebelle, _apr. , _. dearest fanny,--your letters continue to rain down upon us with a fidelity which makes me sure that, however it may once have been, _now_, on the principle of the immortal monsieur perrichon, we must be firmly rooted in your affections. you can never "throw over" anybody for whom you have made such sacrifices. all qualms which i might have in the abstract about the injury we must be inflicting on so busy a being by making her, through our complaints of poverty, agony, and exile, keep us so much "on her mind" as to tune us up every two or three days by a long letter to which she sacrifices all her duties to the family and state, disappear, moreover, when i consider the character of the letters themselves. they are so easy, the facts are so much the immediate out-bubblings of the moment, and the delicious philosophical reflexions so much like the spontaneous breathings of the soul, that the _effort_ is manifestly at the zero-point, and into the complex state of affection which necessarily arises in you for the objects of so much loving care, there enter none of those curious momentary arrows of impatience and vengefulness which might make others say, if they were doing what you do for us, that they wished we were dead or in some way put beyond reach, so that our eternal "appeal" might stop. no, fanny! we have no repinings and feel no responsibilities towards you, but accept you and your letters as the gifts you are. the infrequency of our answering proves this fact; to which you in turn must furnish the correlative, if the occasion comes. on the day when you temporarily hate us, or don't "feel like" the usual letter, don't let any thought of inconsistency with your past acts worry you about not taking up the pen. let us go; though it be for weeks and months--i shall know you will come round again. "neither heat nor frost nor thunder shall ever do away, i ween, the marks of that which once hath been." and to think that you should never have spent a night, and only once taken a meal, in our house! when we get back, we must see each other daily, and may the days of both of us be right long in the state of massachusetts! bless her! i got a letter from j. j. chapman praising her strongly the other day. and sooth to say the "transcript" and the "springfield republican," the reception of whose "weeklies" has become one of the solaces of my life, do make a first-rate showing for her civilization. one can't just say what "tone" consists in, but these papers hold their own excellently in comparison with the english papers. there is far less alertness of mind in the general make-up of the latter; and the "respectability" of the english editorial columns, though it shows a correcter literary drill, is apt to be due to a remorseless longitude of commonplace conventionality that makes them deadly dull. (the "spectator" appears to be the only paper with a nervous system, in england--that of a _carnassier_ at present!) the english people seem to have positively a passionate hunger for this mass of prosy stupidity, never less than a column and a quarter long. the continental papers of course are "nowhere." as for our yellow papers--every country has its criminal classes, and with us and in france, they have simply got into journalism as part of their professional evolution, and they must be got out. mr. bosanquet somewhere says that so far from the "dark ages" being over, we are just at the beginning of a new dark-age period. he means that ignorance and unculture, which then were merely brutal, are now articulate and possessed of a literary voice, and the fight is transferred from fields and castles and town walls to "organs of publicity"; but it is the same fight, of reason and goodness against stupidity and passions; and it must be fought through to the same kind of success. but it means the reëducating of perhaps twenty more generations; and by that time some altogether new kind of institutional opportunity for the devil will have been evolved. _april_ th. i had to stop yesterday.... six months ago, i shouldn't have thought it possible that a life deliberately founded on pottering about and dawdling through the day would be endurable or even possible. i have attained such skill that i doubt if my days ever at any time seemed to glide by so fast. but it corrodes one's soul nevertheless. i scribble a little in bed every morning, and have reached page of my third gifford lecture--though lecture ii, alas! must be rewritten entirely. the conditions don't conduce to an energetic grip of the subject, and i am afraid that what i write is pretty slack and not what it would be if my vital tone were different. the problem i have set myself is a hard one: _first_, to defend (against all the prejudices of my "class") "experience" against "philosophy" as being the real backbone of the world's religious life--i mean prayer, guidance, and all that sort of thing immediately and privately felt, as against high and noble general views of our destiny and the world's meaning; and _second_, to make the hearer or reader believe, what i myself invincibly do believe, that, although all the special manifestations of religion may have been absurd (i mean its creeds and theories), yet the life of it as a whole is mankind's most important function. a task well-nigh impossible, i fear, and in which i shall fail; but to attempt it is _my_ religious act. we got a visit the other day from [a scottish couple here who have heard that i am to give the gifford lectures]; and two days ago went to afternoon tea with them at their hotel, next door. _she_ enclosed a tract (by herself) in the invitation, and proved to be a [mass] of holy egotism and conceit based on professional invalidism and self-worship. i wish my sister alice were there to "react" on her with a description! her husband, apparently weak, and the slave of her. no talk but evangelical talk. it seemed assumed that a gifford lecturer must be one of moody's partners, and it gave me rather a foretaste of what the edinburgh atmosphere may be like. well, i shall enjoy sticking a knife into its gizzard--if atmospheres have gizzards? blessed be boston--probably the freest place on earth, that isn't merely heathen and sensual. i have been supposing, as one always does, that you "ran in" to the putnams' every hour or so, and likewise they to no. . but your late allusion to the telephone and the rarity of your seeing jim [putnam] reminded me of the actual conditions--absurd as they are. (really you and we are nearer together now at this distance than we have ever been.) well, let jim see this letter, if you care to, flattering him by saying that it is more written for him than for you (which it certainly has not been till this moment!), and thanking him for existing in this naughty world. his account of the copernican revolution (studento-centric) in the medical school is highly exciting, and i am glad to hear of the excellent little cannon becoming so prominent a reformer. speaking of reformers, do you see jack chapman's "political nursery"? of which the april number has just come. (i have read it and taken my bed-breakfast during the previous page of this letter, though you may not have perceived the fact.) if not, _do_ subscribe to it; it is awful fun. he just looks at things, and tells the truth about them--a strange thing even to _try_ to do, and he doesn't always succeed. office broadway, $ . a year. fanny, you won't be reading as far as this in this interminable letter, so i stop, though pent-up things are seeking to be said. the weather has still been so cold whenever the sun is withdrawn that we have delayed our departure for geneva to the nd--a week later. we make a short visit to our friends the flournoys (a couple of days) and then proceed towards nauheim _via_ heidelberg, where i wish to consult the great erb about the advisability of more baths in view of my nervous complications, before the great schott examines me again. i do wish i could send for jim for a consultation. good-bye, dearest and best of fannys. i hope your mother is wholly well again. much love to her and to mary elliot. it interested me to hear of jack e.'s great operation. yours ever, w. j. _to his son alexander._ [geneva, _circa may , _.] dear franÇois,--here we are in geneva, at the flournoys'--dear people and splendid children. i wish harry could marry alice, billy marry marguerite, and you marry ariane-dorothée--the absolutely jolliest and beautifullest -year old i ever saw. i am trying to get you engaged! i enclose pictures of the dog. ariane-dorothée r-r-r-olls her r-r-r's like fury. i got your picture of the elephant--very good. draw everything you see, no matter how badly, trying to notice how the lines run--one line every day!--just notice it and draw it, no matter how badly, and at the end of the year you'll be s'prised to see how well you can draw. tell billy to get you a big blank book at the coöp., and every day take one page, just drawing down on it some _thing_, or _dog_, or _horse_, or _man_ or _woman_, or _part_ of a man or woman, which you have looked at that day just for the purpose, to see how the lines run. i bet the last page of that book will be better than the first! do this for my sake. kiss your dear old grandma. p'r'aps, we shall get home this summer after all. in two or three days i shall see a doctor and know more about myself. will let you know. keep motionless and listen as much as you can. take in things without speaking--it'll make you a better man. your ma thinks you'll grow up into a filosopher like me and write books. it is easy enuff, all but the writing. you just get it out of other books, and write it down. always your loving, dad. at this time james's thirteen-year-old daughter was living with family friends--the joseph thatcher clarkes--in harrow, and was going to an english school with their children. she had been passing through such miseries as a homesick child often suffers, and had written letters which evoked the following response. _to his daughter._ villa luise, bad-nauheim, _may , _. darling peg,--your letter came last night and explained sufficiently the cause of your long silence. you have evidently been in a bad state of spirits again, and dissatisfied with your environment; and i judge that you have been still more dissatisfied with the inner state of trying to consume your own smoke, and grin and bear it, so as to carry out your mother's behests made after the time when you scared us so by your inexplicable tragic outcries in those earlier letters. well! i believe you have been trying to do the manly thing under difficult circumstances, but one learns only gradually to do the _best_ thing; and the best thing for you would be to write at least weekly, if only a post-card, and say just how things are going. if you are in bad spirits, there is no harm whatever in communicating that fact, and defining the character of it, or describing it as exactly as you like. the bad thing is to pour out the _contents_ of one's bad spirits on others and leave them with it, as it were, on their hands, as if it was for them to do something about it. that was what you did in your other letter which alarmed us so, for your shrieks of anguish were so excessive, and so unexplained by anything you told us in the way of facts, that we didn't know but what you had suddenly gone crazy. that is the _worst_ sort of thing you can do. the middle sort of thing is what you do this time--namely, keep silent for more than a fortnight, and when you do write, still write rather mysteriously about your sorrows, not being quite open enough. now, my dear little girl, you have come to an age when the inward life develops and when some people (and on the whole those who have most of a destiny) find that all is not a bed of roses. among other things there will be waves of terrible sadness, which last sometimes for days; and dissatisfaction with one's self, and irritation at others, and anger at circumstances and stony insensibility, etc., etc., which taken together form a melancholy. now, painful as it is, this is sent to us for an enlightenment. it always passes off, and we learn about life from it, and we ought to learn a great many good things if we react on it rightly. [_from margin._] (for instance, you learn how good a thing your home is, and your country, and your brothers, and you may learn to be more considerate of other people, who, you now learn, may have their inner weaknesses and sufferings, too.) many persons take a kind of sickly delight in hugging it; and some sentimental ones may even be proud of it, as showing a fine sorrowful kind of sensibility. such persons make a regular habit of the luxury of woe. that is the worst possible reaction on it. it is usually a sort of disease, when we get it strong, arising from the organism having generated some poison in the blood; and we mustn't submit to it an hour longer than we can help, but jump at every chance to attend to anything cheerful or comic or take part in anything active that will divert us from our mean, pining inward state of feeling. when it passes off, as i said, we know more than we did before. and we must try to make it last as short a time as possible. the worst of it often is that, while we are in it, we don't _want_ to get out of it. we hate it, and yet we prefer staying in it--that is a part of the disease. if we find ourselves like that, we must make ourselves do something different, go with people, speak cheerfully, set ourselves to some hard work, make ourselves sweat, etc.; and that is the good way of reacting that makes of us a valuable character. the disease makes you think of _yourself_ all the time; and the way out of it is to keep as busy as we can thinking of _things_ and of _other people_--no matter what's the matter with our self. i have no doubt you are doing as well as you know how, darling little peg; but we have to learn everything, and i also have no doubt that you'll manage it better and better if you ever have any more of it, and soon it will fade away, simply leaving you with more experience. the great thing for you _now_, i should suppose, would be to enter as friendlily as possible into the interest of the clarke children. if you like them, or acted as if you liked them, you needn't trouble about the question of whether they like you or not. they probably will, fast enough; and if they don't, it will be their funeral, not yours. but this is a great lecture, so i will stop. the great thing about it is that it is all true. the baths are threatening to disagree with me again, so i may stop them soon. will let you know as quick as anything is decided. good news from home: the merrimans have taken the irving street house for another year, and the wambaughs (of the law school) have taken chocorua, though at a reduced rent. the weather here is almost continuously cold and sunless. your mother is sleeping, and will doubtless add a word to this when she wakes. keep a merry heart--"time and the hour run through the roughest day"--and believe me ever your most loving w. j. _to miss frances r. morse._ [post-card] altdorf, lake luzern, _july , [ ]_. your last letter was, if anything, a more unmitigated blessing than its predecessors; and i, with my curious inertia to overcome, sit _thinking of letters_, and of the soul-music with which they might be filled if my tongue could only utter the thoughts that arise in me to youward, the beauty of the world, the conflict of life and death and youth and age and man and woman and righteousness and evil, etc., and europe and america! but it stays all caked within and gets no articulation, the power of speech being so non-natural a function of our race. we are staying above luzern, near a big spruce wood, at "gutsch," and today being hot and passivity advisable, we came down and took the boat, for a whole day on the lake. the works both of nature and of man in this region seem too perfect to be credible almost, and were i not a bitter yankee, i would, without a moment's hesitation, be a swiss, and probably then glad of the change. the _goodliness_ of this land is one of the things i ache to utter to you, but can't. some day i will write, also to jim p. my condition baffles me. i have lately felt better, but been bad again, and altogether can _do_ nothing without repentance afterwards. we have just lunched in this bowery back verandah, water trickling, beautiful old convent sleeping up the hillside. love to you all! w. j. _to miss frances r. morse._ bad-nauheim, _sept. , _. dearest fanny,-- ...here i am having a little private picnic all by myself, on this effulgent sunday morning--real american september weather, by way of a miracle. i ordered my bath-chair man to wheel me out to the "hochwald," where, he having been dismissed for three hours, until two o'clock, i am lying in the said luxurious throne, writing this on my knee, with nothing between but a number of kuno fischer's "hegel's leben, werke und lehre," now in process of publication, and the flexibility of which accounts for the poor handwriting. i am alone, save for the inevitable restaurant which hovers on the near horizon, in a beautiful grove of old oak trees averaging some or feet apart, through whose leaves the sunshine filters and dapples the clear ground or grass that lies between them. alice is still in england, having finally at my command had to give up her long-cherished plan of a run home to see her mother, the children, you, and all the other _dulcissima mundi nomina_ that make of life a thing worth living for. i _funked_ the idea of being alone so long when i came to the point. it is not that i am worse, but there will be cold weather in the next couple of months; and, unable to sit out of doors then, as here and now, i shall probably either have to over-walk or over-read, and both things will be bad for me. [illustration] [illustration: "damn the absolute!" chocorua, september, . one morning james and royce strolled into the road and sat down on a wall in earnest discussion. when james heard the camera click, as his daughter took the upper snap-shot, he cried, "royce, you're being photographed! look, out! i say _damn the absolute_!"] as things are _now_, i get on well enough, for the bath business (especially the "bath-chair") carries one through a good deal of the day. the great schott has positively forbidden me to go to england as i did last year; so, early in october, our faces will be turned towards italy, and by nov. we shall, i hope, be ensconced in a _pension_ close to the pincian garden in rome, to see how long _that_ resource will last. i confess i am in the mood of it, and that there is a suggestion of more richness about the name of rome than about that of rye, which, until schott's veto, was the plan. how the gifford lectures will fare, remains to be seen. i have felt strong movings towards home this fall, but reflection says: "stay another winter," and i confess that now that october is approaching, it feels like the home-stretch and as if the time were getting short and the limbs of "next summer" in america burning through the veil which seems to hide them in the shape of the second european winter months. who knows? perhaps i may be spry and active by that time! i have still one untried card up my sleeve, that may work wonders. all i can say of this third course of baths is that so far it seems to be doing me no harm. that it will do me any substantial good, after the previous experiences, seems decidedly doubtful. but one must suffer some inconvenience to please the doctors! just as in most women there is a wife that craves to suffer and submit and be bullied, so in most men there is a _patient_ that needs to have a doctor and obey his orders, whether they be believed in or not.... don't take the malwida book[ ] too seriously. i sent it _faute de mieux_. i don't think i ever told you how much i enjoyed hearing the lesley volume[ ] read aloud by alice. we were just in the exactly right condition for enjoying that breath of old new england. good-bye, dearest fanny. give my love to your mother, mary, j. j. p., and all your circle. _leb' wohl_ yourself, and believe me, your ever affectionate, w. j. _to josiah royce._ nauheim, _sept. , _. beloved royce,--great was my, was _our_ pleasure in receiving your long and delightful letter last night. like the lioness in Æsop's fable, you give birth to one young one only in the year, but that one is a lion. i give birth mainly to guinea-pigs in the shape of post-cards; but despite such diversities of epistolary expression, the heart of each of us is in the right place. i need not say, my dear old boy, how touched i am at your expressions of affection, or how it pleases me to hear that you have missed me. i too miss you profoundly. i do not find in the hotel waiters, chambermaids and bath-attendants with whom my lot is chiefly cast, that unique mixture of erudition, originality, profundity and vastness, and human wit and leisureliness, by accustoming me to which during all these years you have spoilt me for inferior kinds of intercourse. you are still the centre of my gaze, the pole of my mental magnet. when i write, 'tis with one eye on the page, and one on you. when i compose my gifford lectures mentally, 'tis with the design exclusively of overthrowing your system, and ruining your peace. i lead a parasitic life upon you, for my highest flight of ambitious ideality is to become your conqueror, and go down into history as such, you and i rolled in one another's arms and silent (or rather loquacious still) in one last death-grapple of an embrace. how then, o my dear royce, can i forget you, or be contented out of your close neighborhood? different as our minds are, yours has nourished mine, as no other social influence ever has, and in converse with you i have always felt that my life was being lived importantly. our minds, too, are not different in the _object_ which they envisage. it is the whole paradoxical physico-moral-spiritual fatness, of which most people single out some skinny fragment, which we both cover with our eye. we "aim at him generally"--and most others don't. i don't believe that we shall dwell apart forever, though our formulas may. home and irving street look very near when seen through these few winter months, and tho' it is still doubtful what i may be able to do in college, for social purposes i shall be available for probably numerous years to come. i haven't got at work yet--only four lectures of the first course written (strange to say)--but i am decidedly better today than i have been for the past ten months, and the matter is all ready in my mind; so that when, a month hence, i get settled down in rome, i think the rest will go off fairly quickly. the second course i shall have to resign from, and write it out at home as a book. it must seem strange to you that the way from the mind to the pen should be as intraversable as it has been in this case of mine--you in whom it always seems so easily pervious. but miller will be able to tell you all about my condition, both mental and physical, so i will waste no more words on that to me decidedly musty subject. i fully understand your great aversion to letters and other off-writing. you have done a perfectly herculean amount of the most difficult productive work, and i believe you to be much more tired than you probably yourself suppose or know. both mentally and physically, i imagine that a long vacation, in other scenes, with no sense of duty, would do you a world of good. i don't say the full fifteen months--for i imagine that one summer and one academic half-year would perhaps do the business better--you could preserve the relaxed and desultory condition as long as that probably, whilst later you'd begin to chafe, and _then_ you'd better be back in your own library. if _my_ continuing abroad is hindering this, my sorrow will be extreme. of course i must some time come to a definite decision about my own relations to the college, but i am reserving that till the end of , when i shall write to eliot in full. there is still a therapeutic card to play, of which i will say nothing just now, and i don't want to commit myself before that has been tried. you say nothing of the second course of aberdeen lectures, nor do you speak at all of the dublin course. strange omissions, like your not sending me your ingersoll lecture! i assume that the publication of [your] gifford volume ii will not be very long delayed. i am eager to read them. i can read philosophy now, and have just read the first three _lieferungen_ of k. fischer's "hegel." i must say i prefer the original text. fischer's paraphrases always flatten and dry things out; and he gives no rich sauce of his own to compensate. i have been sorry to hear from palmer that he also has been very tired. one can't keep going forever! p. has been like an archangel in his letters to me, and i am inexpressibly grateful. well! everybody has been kinder than i deserve.... _to miss frances r. morse._ rome, _dec. , _. ...rome is simply the most satisfying lake of picturesqueness and guilty suggestiveness known to this child. other places have single features better than anything in rome, perhaps, but for an _ensemble_ rome seems to beat the world. just a feast for the eye from the moment you leave your hotel door to the moment you return. those who say that beauty is all made up of suggestion are well disproved here. for the things the eyes most gloat on, the inconceivably corrupted, besmeared and ulcerated surfaces, and black and cavernous glimpses of interiors, have no suggestions save of moral horror, and their "tactile values," as berenson would say, are pure gooseflesh. nevertheless the sight of them delights. and then there is such a geologic stratification of history! i dote on the fine equestrian statue of garibaldi, on the janiculum, quietly bending his head with a look half-meditative, half-strategical, but wholly victorious, upon saint peter's and the vatican. what luck for a man and a party to have opposed to it an enemy that stood up for _nothing_ that was ideal, for _everything_ that was mean in life. austria, naples, and the mother of harlots here, were enough to deify anyone who defied them. what glorious things are some of these italian inscriptions--for example on giordano bruno's statue:-- a bruno _il secolo da lui divinato qui dove il rogo arse_. --"here, where the faggots burned." it makes the tears come, for the poetic justice; though i imagine b. to have been a very pesky sort of a crank, worthy of little sympathy had not the "rogo" done its work on him. of the awful corruptions and cruelties which this place suggests there is no end. our neighbors in rooms and _commensaux_ at meals are the j. g. frazers--he of the "golden bough," "pausanias," and other three-and six-volume works of anthropological erudition, fellow of trinity college, cambridge, and a sucking babe of humility, unworldliness and molelike sightlessness to everything except _print_.... he, after tylor, is the greatest authority now in england on the religious ideas and superstitions of primitive peoples, and he knows nothing of psychical research and thinks that the trances, etc., of savage soothsayers, oracles and the like, are all _feigned_! verily science is amusing! but he is conscience incarnate, and i have been stirring him up so that i imagine he will now proceed to put in big loads of work in the morbid psychological direction. dear fanny ... i can write no more this morning. i hope your christmas is "merry," and that the new year will be "happy" for you all. pray take our warmest love, give it to your mother and mary, and some of it to the brothers. i will write better soon. your ever grateful and affectionate w. j. don't let up on your own writing, so say we both! your letters are pure blessings. _to james sully._ rome, _mar. , _. dear sully,--your letter of feb. th arrived duly and gave me much pleasure _qua_ epistolary manifestation of sympathy, but less _qua_ revelation of depression on your own part. i have been so floundering up and down, now above and now below the line of bad nervous prostration, that i have written no letters for three weeks past, hoping thereby the better to accomplish certain other writing; but the other writing had to be stopped so letters and post-cards may begin. i see you take the war still very much to heart, and i myself think that the blundering way in which the colonial office drove the dutchmen into it, with no conception whatever of the psychological situation, is only outdone by our still more anti-psychological blundering in the philippines. both countries have lost their moral prestige--we far more completely than you, because for our conduct there is literally _no_ excuse to be made except _absolute_ stupidity, whilst you can make out a very fair case, as such cases go. but we can, and undoubtedly shall, draw back, whereas that for an empire like yours seems politically impossible. empire anyhow is half crime by necessity of nature, and to see a country like the united states, lucky enough to be born outside of it and its fatal traditions and inheritances, perversely rushing to wallow in the mire of it, shows how strong these ancient race instincts be. and that is my consolation! we are no worse than the best of men have ever been. we are simply not superhuman; and the loud reaction against the brutal business, in both countries, shows how the _theory_ of the matter has really advanced during the last century. yes! h. sidgwick is a sad loss, with all his remaining philosophic wisdom unwritten. i feel greatly f. w. h. myers's loss also. he suffered terribly with suffocation, but bore it stunningly well. he died in this very hotel, where he had been not more than a fortnight. i don't know _how_ tolerant (or intolerant) you are towards his pursuits and speculations. i regard them as fragmentary and conjectural--of course; but as most laborious and praiseworthy; and knowing how much psychologists as a rule have counted him out from their profession, i have thought it my duty to write a little tribute to his service to psychology to be read on march th, at a memorial meeting of the s. p. r. in his honor. it will appear, whether read or not, in the proceedings, and i hope may not appear to you exaggerated. i seriously believe that the general problem of the subliminal, as myers propounds it, promises to be one of the _great_ problems, possibly even the greatest problem, of psychology.... we leave rome in three days, booked for rye the first of april. i _must_ get into the _country!_ if i do more than just pass through london, i will arrange for a meeting. my edinburgh lectures begin early in may--after that i shall have freedom. ever truly yours, wm. james. _to miss frances r. morse._ [post-card] florence, _march , _. thus far towards home, thank heaven! after a week at perugia and assisi. glorious air, memorable scenes. made acquaintance of sabatier, author of st. francis's life--very jolly. best of all, made acquaintance with francis's retreat in the mountain. _navrant!_--it makes one see medieval christianity face to face. the lair of the individual wild animal, and that animal the saint! i hope you saw it. thanks for your last letter to alice. lots of love. w. j. _to f. c. s. schiller._ rye, _april , _. dear schiller,--you are showering benedictions on me. i return the bulky ones, keeping the lighter weights. i think the parody on bradley amazingly good--if i had his book here i would probably revive my memory of his discouraged style and scribble a marginal contribution of my own. he is, really, an extra humble-minded man, i think, but even more humble-minded about his reader than about himself, which gives him that false air of arrogance. how you concocted those epigrams, _à la_ preface of b., i don't see. in general i don't see how an epigram, being a pure bolt from the blue, with no introduction or cue, ever gets itself writ. on the limericks, as you call them, i set less store, much less. if everybody is to come in for a share of allusion, i am willing, but i don't want my name to figure in the ghostly ballet with but few companions. royce wrote a _very_ funny thing in pedantic german some years ago, purporting to be the proof by a distant-future professor that i was an habitual drunkard, based on passages culled from my writings. he may have it yet. if i ever get any animal spirits again, i may get warmed up, by your example, into making jokes, and may then contribute. but i beg you let this thing mull till you get a _lot_ of matter--and then _sift_. it's the only way. but oxford seems a better climate for epigram than is the rest of the world. i shall stay here--i find myself much more comfortable thoracically already than when i came--until my edinburgh lectures begin on may th, though i shall have to run up to london towards the end of the month to get some clothes made, and to meet my son who arrives from home. i much regret that it will be quite impossible for me to go either to oxford or cambridge--though, if things took an unexpectedly good turn, i might indeed do so after june th, when my lecture course ends. do you meanwhile keep hearty and "funny"! i stopped at gersau half a day and found it a sweet little place. fondly yours, w. j. _to miss frances r. morse._ roxburghe hotel, edinburgh, _may , _. dearest fanny,--you see where we are! i give _you_ the first news of life's journey being so far advanced! it is a deadly enterprise, i'm afraid, with the social entanglements that lie ahead, and i feel a cake of ice in my epigastrium at the prospect, but _le vin est versé, il faut le boire_, and from the other point of view, that it is real life beginning once more, it is perfectly glorious, and i feel as if yesterday in leaving london i had said good-bye to a rather dreadful and death-bound segment of life. as regards the sociability, it is fortunately a time of year in which only the medical part of the university is present. the professors of the other faculties are already in large part scattered, i think,--at least the two seths (who are the only ones i directly know) are away, and i have written to the secretary of the academic senate, sir ludovic grant of the law faculty, that i am unable to "dine out" or attend afternoon receptions, so we may be pretty well left alone. i always hated lecturing except as regular instruction to students, of whom there will probably be none now in the audience. but to compensate, there begins next week a big convocation here of all ministers in scotland, and there will doubtless be a number of them present, which, considering the matter to be offered, is probably better. we had a splendid journey yesterday in an american (almost!) train, first-class, and had the pleasure of some talk with our cambridge neighbor, mrs. ole bull, on her way to norway to the unveiling of a monument to her husband. she was accompanied by an extraordinarily fine character and mind--odd way of expressing myself!--a young englishwoman named noble, who has hinduized herself (converted by vivekananda to his philosophy) and lives now for the hindu people. these free individuals who live their own life, no matter what domestic prejudices have to be snapped, are on the whole a refreshing sight to me, who can do nothing of the kind myself. and miss noble[ ] is a most deliberate and balanced person--no frothy enthusiast in point of character, though i believe her philosophy to be more or less false. perhaps no more so than anyone else's! we are in one of those deadly respectable hotels where you have to ring the front-door-bell. give me a cheerful, blackguardly place like the charing cross, where we were in london. the london tailor and shirtmaker, it being in the height of the season, didn't fulfill their promises; and as i sloughed my ancient cocoon at rye, trusting to pick up my iridescent wings the day before yesterday in passing through the metropolis, i am here with but two _chemises_ at present (one of them now in the wash) and fear that tomorrow, in spite of tailors' promises to send, i may have to lecture in my pyjamas--that would give a cachet of american originality. the weather is fine--we have just finished breakfast. our son harry ... and his mother will soon sally out to explore the town, whilst i lie low till about noon, when i shall report my presence and receive instructions from my boss, grant, and prepare to meet the storm. it is astonishing how pusillanimous two years of invalidism can make one. alice and harry both send love, and so do i in heaps and steamer-loads, dear fanny, begging your mother to take of it as much as she requires for her share. i will write again--doubtless--tomorrow. _may ._ it proved quite impossible to write to you yesterday, so i do it the first thing this morning. i have made my plunge and the foregoing chill has given place to the warm "reaction." the audience was more numerous than had been expected, some , and exceedingly sympathetic, laughing at everything, even whenever i used a polysyllabic word. i send you the "scotsman," with a skeleton report which might have been much worse made. i am all right this morning again, so have no doubts of putting the job through, if only i don't have too much sociability. i have got a week free of invitations so far, and all things considered, fancy that we shan't be persecuted. edinburgh is surely the noblest city ever built by man. the weather has been splendid so far, and cold and bracing as the top of mount washington in early april. everyone here speaks of it however as "hot." one needs fires at night and an overcoat out of the sun. the full-bodied air, half misty and half smoky, holds the sunshine in that way which one sees only in these islands, making the shadowy side of everything quite black, so that all perspectives and vistas appear with objects cut blackly against each other according to their nearness, and plane rising behind plane of flat dark relieved against flat light in ever-receding gradation. it is magnificent. but i mustn't become a ruskin!--the purpose of this letter being merely to acquaint you with our well-being and success so far. we have found bully lodgings, spacious to one's heart's content, upon a cheerful square, and actually with a book-shelf fully two feet wide and two stories high, upon the wall, the first we have seen for two years! (there were of course book-cases enough at lamb house, but all tight packed already.) we now go out to take the air. i feel as if a decidedly bad interlude in the journey of my life were closed, and the real honest thing gradually beginning again. love to you all! your ever affectionate w. j. _to miss frances r. morse._ edinburgh, _may , _. dearest fanny,-- ...beautiful as the spring is here, the words you so often let drop about american weather make me homesick for that article. it is blasphemous, however, to pine for anything when one is in edinburgh in may, and takes an open drive every afternoon in the surrounding country by way of a constitutional. the green is of the vividest, splendid trees and acres, and the air itself an _object_, holding watery vapor, tenuous smoke, and ancient sunshine in solution, so as to yield the most exquisite minglings and gradations of silvery brown and blue and pearly gray. as for the city, its vistas are magnificent. we are _comblés_ with civilities, which harry and alice are to a certain extent enjoying, though i have to hang back and spend much of the time between my lectures in bed, to rest off the aortic distress which that operation gives. i call it aortic because it feels like that, but i can get no information from the drs., so i won't swear i'm right. my heart, under the influence of that magical juice, tincture of digitalis,--only drops daily,--is performing _beautifully_ and gives no trouble at all. the audiences grow instead of dwindling, and in spite of rain, being about and just crowding the room. they sit as still as death and then applaud magnificently, so i am sure the lectures are a success. previous gifford lectures have had audiences beginning with and dwindling to . in an hour and a half (i write this in bed) i shall be beginning the fifth lecture, which will, when finished, put me half way through the arduous job. i know you will relish these details, which please pass on to jim p. i would send you the reports in the "scotsman," but they distort so much by their sham continuity with vast omission (the reporters get my ms.), that the result is caricature. edinburgh is _spiritually_ much like boston, only stronger and with more temperament in the people. but we're all growing into much of a sameness everywhere. i have dined out once--an almost fatal experiment! i was introduced to lord somebody: "how often do you lecture?"--"twice a week."--"what do you do between?--play golf?" another invitation: "come at --the dinner at . --and we can walk or play bowls till dinner so as not to fatigue you"--i having pleaded my delicacy of constitution. i rejoice in the prospect of booker w.'s[ ] book, and thank your mother heartily. my mouth had been watering for just that volume. autobiographies take the cake. i mean to read nothing else. strange to say, i am now for the first time reading marie bashkirtseff. it takes hold of me tremenjus. i feel as if i had lived inside of her, and in spite of her hatefulness, esteem and even like her for her incorruptible way of telling the truth. i have not seen huxley's life yet. it must be delightful, only i can't agree to what seems to be becoming the conventionally accepted view of him, that he possessed the exclusive specialty of living for the truth. a good deal of humbug about that!--at least when it becomes a professional and heroic attitude. your base remark about aguinaldo is clean forgotten, if ever heard. i know you wouldn't harm the poor man, who, unless malay human nature is weaker than human nature elsewhere, has pretty surely some surprises up his sleeve for us yet. best love to you all. your affectionate wm. james. _to henry w. rankin._ edinburgh, _june , _. dear mr. rankin,--i have received all your letters and missives, inclusive of the letter which you think i must have lost, some months back. i professor-ed you because i had read your name printed with that title in a newspaper letter from east northfield, and supposed that, by courtesy at any rate, that title was conferred on you by a public opinion to which i liked to conform. i have given nine of my lectures and am to give the tenth tomorrow. they have been a success, to judge by the numbers of the audience ( -odd) and their non-diminution towards the end. no previous "giffords" have drawn near so many. it will please you to know that i am stronger and tougher than when i began, too; so a great load is off my mind. you have been so extraordinarily brotherly to me in writing of your convictions and in furnishing me ideas, that i feel ashamed of my churlish and chary replies. you, however, have forgiven me. now, at the end of this first course, i feel my "matter" taking firmer shape, and it will please you less to hear me say that i believe myself to be (probably) permanently incapable of believing the christian scheme of vicarious salvation, and wedded to a more continuously evolutionary mode of thought. the reasons you from time to time have given me, never better expressed than in your letter before the last, have somehow failed to convince. in these lectures the ground i am taking is this: the mother sea and fountain-head of all religions lie in the mystical experiences of the individual, taking the word mystical in a very wide sense. all theologies and all ecclesiasticisms are secondary growths superimposed; and the experiences make such flexible combinations with the intellectual prepossessions of their subjects, that one may almost say that they have no proper _intellectual_ deliverance of their own, but belong to a region deeper, and more vital and practical, than that which the intellect inhabits. for this they are also indestructible by intellectual arguments and criticisms. i attach the mystical or religious consciousness to the possession of an extended subliminal self, with a thin partition through which messages make irruption. we are thus made convincingly aware of the presence of a sphere of life larger and more powerful than our usual consciousness, with which the latter is nevertheless continuous. the impressions and impulsions and emotions and excitements which we thence receive help us to live, they found invincible assurance of a world beyond the sense, they melt our hearts and communicate significance and value to everything and make us happy. they do this for the individual who has them, and other individuals follow him. religion in this way is absolutely indestructible. philosophy and theology give their conceptual interpretations of this experiential life. the farther margin of the subliminal field being unknown, it can be treated as by transcendental idealism, as an absolute mind with a part of which we coalesce, or by christian theology, as a distinct deity acting on us. something, not our immediate self, does act on our life! so i seem doubtless to my audience to be blowing hot and cold, explaining away christianity, yet defending the more general basis from which i say it proceeds. i fear that these brief words may be misleading, but let them go! when the book comes out, you will get a truer idea. believe me, with profound regards, your always truly, wm. james. _to charles eliot norton._ rye, _june , _. dear charles norton,--your delightful letter of june st has added one more item to my debt of gratitude to you; and now that the edinburgh strain is over, i can sit down and make you a reply a little more adequate than heretofore has been possible. the lectures went off most successfully, and though i got tired enough, i feel that i am essentially tougher and stronger for the old familiar functional activity. my _tone_ is changed immensely, and that is the main point. to be actually earning one's salt again, after so many months of listless waiting and wondering whether such a thing will ever again become possible, puts a new heart into one, and i now look towards the future with aggressive and hopeful eyes again, though perhaps not with quite the cannibalistic ones of the youth of the new century. edinburgh is great. a strong broad city, and, in its spiritual essence, almost exactly feeling to me like old boston, _nuclear_ boston, though on a larger, more important scale. people were very friendly, but we had to dodge invitations--_hoffentlich_ i may be able to accept more of them next year. the audience was extraordinarily attentive and reactive--i never had an audience so keen to catch every point. i flatter myself that by blowing alternately hot and cold on their christian prejudices i succeeded in baffling them completely till the final quarter-hour, when i satisfied their curiosity by showing more plainly my hand. then, i think, i permanently dissatisfied both extremes, and pleased a mean numerically quite small. _qui vivra verra_. london seemed curiously profane and free-and-easy, not exactly _shabby_, but go-as-you-please, in aspect, as we came down five days ago. since then i spent a day with poor mrs. myers.... i mailed you yesterday a notice i wrote in rome of him.[ ] he "looms" upon me after death more than he did in life, and i think that his forthcoming book about "human personality" will probably rank hereafter as "epoch-making." at london i saw theodora [sedgwick] and the w. darwins. theodora was as good and genial as ever, and sara [darwin] looked, i thought, wonderfully "distinguished" and wonderfully little changed considering the length of intervening years and the advance of the enemy. i was too tired to look up leslie stephen, or anyone else save mrs. john bancroft when in london, although i wanted much to see l. s. the first volume of his "utilitarians" seems to me a wonderfully spirited performance--i haven't yet got at the other two. i am hoping to get off to nauheim tomorrow, leaving alice and harry to follow a little later. i confess that the continent "draws" me again. i don't know whether it be the essential identity of soul that expresses itself in english things, and makes them seem known by heart already and intellectually dead and unexciting, or whether it is the singular lack of visible _sentiment_ in england, and absence of "charm," or the oppressive ponderosity and superfluity and prominence of the unnecessary, or what it is, but i'm blest if i ever wish to be in england again. any continental country whatever stimulates and refreshes vastly more, in spite of so much strong picturesqueness here, and so beautiful a nature. england is ungracious, unamiable and heavy; whilst the continent is everywhere light and amiably quaint, even where it is ugly, as in many elements it is in germany. to tell the truth, i long to steep myself in america again and let the broken rootlets make new adhesions to the native soil. a man coquetting with too many countries is as bad as a bigamist, and loses his soul altogether. i suppose you are at ashfield and i hope surrounded, or soon to be so, by more children than of late, and all well and happy. don't feel too bad about the country. we've thrown away our old privileged and prerogative position among the nations, but it only showed we were less sincere about it than we supposed we were. the eternal fight of liberalism has now to be fought by us on much the same terms as in the older countries. we have still the better chance in our freedom from all the corrupting influences from on top from which they suffer.--good-bye and love from both of us, to you all. yours ever faithfully, wm. james. _to nathaniel s. shaler._ [ ?] dear shaler,--being a man of methodical sequence in my reading, which in these days is anyhow rather slower than it used to be, i have only just got at your book.[ ] once begun, it slipped along "like a novel," and i must confess to you that it leaves a good taste behind; in fact a sort of _haunting_ flavor due to its individuality, which i find it hard to explain or define. to begin with, it doesn't seem exactly like you, but rather like some quiet and conscientious old passive contemplator of life, not bristling as you are with "points," and vivacity. its light is dampened and suffused--and all the better perhaps for that. then it is essentially a confession of faith and a religious attitude--which one doesn't get so much from you upon the street, although even there 'tis clear that you have that within which passeth show. the optimism and healthy-mindedness are yours through and through, so is the wide imagination. but the moderate and non-emphatic way of putting things is not; nor is the absence of any "american humor." so i don't know just when or where or how you wrote it. i can't place it in the museum or university hall. probably it was in quincy street, and in a sort of piperio-armadan trance! anyhow it is a sincere book, and tremendously impressive by the gravity and dignity and peacefulness with which it suggests rather than proclaims conclusions on these eternal themes. no more than you can i believe that death is due to selection; yet i wish you had framed some hypothesis as to the physico-chemical necessity thereof, or discussed such hypotheses as have been made. i think you deduce a little too easily from the facts the existence of a general guiding tendency toward ends like those which our mind sets. we never know what ends may have been kept from realization, for the dead tell no tales. the surviving witness would in any case, and whatever he were, draw the conclusion that the universe was planned to make him and the like of him succeed, for it actually did so. but your argument that it is millions to one that it didn't do so by chance doesn't apply. it would apply if the witness had preëxisted in an independent form and framed his scheme, and then the world had realized it. such a coincidence would prove the world to have a kindred mind to his. but there has been no such coincidence. the world has come but once; the witness is there after the fact and simply approves, dependently. as i understand improbability, it only exists where independents coincide. where only one fact is in question, there is no relation of "probability" at all. i think, therefore, that the excellences we have reached and now approve may be due to no general design but merely to a succession of the short designs we actually know of, taking advantage of opportunity, and adding themselves together from point to point. we are all you say we are, as heirs; we are a mystery of condensation, and yet of extrication and individuation, and we must worship the soil we have so wonderfully sprung from. yet i don't think we are necessitated to worship it as the theists do, in the shape of one all-inclusive and all-operative designing power, but rather like polytheists, in the shape of a collection of beings who have each contributed and are now contributing to the realization of ideals more or less like those for which we live ourselves. this more pluralistic style of feeling seems to me both to allow of a warmer sort of loyalty to our past helpers, and to tally more exactly with the mixed condition in which we find the world as to its ideals. what if we did come where we are by chance, or by mere fact, with no one general design? what is gained, is gained, all the same. as to what may have been lost, who knows of it, in any case? or whether it might not have been much better than what came? but if it might, that need not prevent _us_ from building on what _we_ have. there are lots of impressive passages in the book, which certainly will live and be an influence of a high order. chapters , , , have struck me most particularly. i gave at edinburgh two lectures on "the religion of healthy-mindedness," contrasting it with that of "the sick soul." i shall soon have to quote your book as a healthy-minded document of the first importance, though i believe myself that the sick soul must have its say, and probably carries authority too.... ever yours, wm. james. _to miss frances r. morse._ nauheim, _july , _. dearest fanny,--your letter of june th comes just as i was working myself up to a last european farewell to you, anyhow, the which has far more instigative spur now, with your magnificent effusion in my hands. dear fanny, whatever you do, don't _die_ before our return! in these two short years so many of my best friends have been mown down, that i feel uncertainty everywhere, and gasp till the interval is over. john ropes, henry sidgwick, f. myers, t. davidson, carroll everett, edward hooper, john fiske, all intimate and valuable, some of them extremely so, and the circle grows ever smaller and will grow so to the end of one's own life. now comes whitman, whom i never knew very well, but whom i always liked thoroughly, and wish i had known better.... it will be interesting to know what new turn it will give to s. w.'s existence. i haven't the least idea how it will affect her outward life. doubtless she will be freer to come abroad; but i hope and trust she will not be taking to staying any time in london or paris, in the brutal cynical atmosphere of which places her little eagerness and efflorescences and cordialities would receive no such sympathetic treatment as they do with us, until she had stayed long enough for people to know her thoroughly and conquered a position by living down the first impression. nothing so _anti-english_ as s. w.'s whole "sphere." so keep her at home--with occasional sallies abroad; and if she must ever winter abroad, let it be in delightful slipshod old rome! all which, as you perceive, is somewhat confidential. i trust that the present failure of health with her is something altogether transient, and that she will keep swimming long after everyone else has put into shore. which simile reminds me of mrs. holmes's panel, with its superb inscription.[ ] what a sense she has for such things! and how i thank you for quoting it! with your and her permission, i shall make a vital use of it in a future book. it sums up the attitude towards life of a good philosophic pluralist, and that is what, in my capacity of author of that book, i am to be. i thank you also for the reference to i corinthians, , , etc.[ ] i had never expressly noticed that text; but it will make the splendidest motto for myers's two posthumous volumes, and i am going to write to mrs. myers to suggest the same. i thank you also for your sympathetic remarks about my paper on myers. fifty or a hundred years hence, people will know better than now whether his instinct for truth was a sound one; and perhaps will then pat me on the back for backing him. at present they give us the cold shoulder. we are righter, in any event, than the münsterbergs and jastrows are, because we don't undertake, as a condition of our investigating phenomena, to bargain with them that they shan't upset our "presuppositions." it is a beautiful summer morning, and i write under an awning on the high-perched corner balcony of the bedroom in which we live, of a corner house on the edge of the little town, with houses on the west of us and the fertile country spreading towards the east and south. a lovely region, though a climate terribly _flat_. i expect to take my last bath today, and to get my absolution from the terrible schott; whereupon we shall leave tomorrow morning for strassburg and the vosges, for a week of touring up in higher air, and thence, _über_ paris, as straight as may be for rye. i keep in a state of subliminal excitement over our sailing on the st. it seems too good to be really possible. yet the ratchet of time will work along its daily cogs, and doubtless bring it safe within our grasp. last year i felt no distinctly beneficial effect from the baths. this year it is distinct. i have, in other words, continued pretty steadily getting better for four months past; so it is evident that i am in a genuinely ameliorative phase of my existence, of which the acquired momentum may carry me beyond any living man of my age. at any rate, i set no limits now! when we return i shall go straight up to chocorua to the salters'. what i _crave_ most is some wild american country. it is a curious organic-feeling need. one's social relations with european landscape are entirely different, everything being so fenced or planted that you can't lie down and sprawl. kipling, alluding to the "bleeding raw" appearance of some of our outskirt settlements, says, "americans don't mix much with their landscape as yet." but we mix a darned sight more than europeans, so far as our individual organisms go, with our camping and general wild-animal personal relations. thank heaven that our nature is so much less "redeemed"!... you see, fanny, that we are in good spirits on the whole, although my poor dear alice has long sick-headaches that consume a good many days--she is just emerging from a bad one. happiness, i have lately discovered, is no positive feeling, but a negative condition of freedom from a number of restrictive sensations of which our organism usually seems to be the seat. when they are wiped out, the clearness and cleanness of the contrast is happiness. this is why anesthetics make us so happy. but don't you take to drink on that account! love to your mother, mary, and all. write to us no more. how happy _that_ responsibility gone must make you! we both send warmest love, w. j. _to henry james._ [post-card] bad-nauheim, _july , [ ]_. your letter and paper, with the shock of john fiske's death, came yesterday. it is too bad, for he had lots of good work in him yet, and is a loss to american letters as well as to his family. singularly simple, solid, honest creature, he will be hugely missed by many! everybody seems to be going! _we_ stay. life here is absolutely monotonous, but very sweet. the country is so innocently pretty. i sit up here on a terrace-restaurant, looking down on park and town, with the leaves playing in the warm breeze above me, and the little gothic town of friedberg only a mile off, in the midst of the great fertile plain all chequer-boarded with the different tinted crops and framed in a far-off horizon of low hills and woods. alice and harry, kept in by the heat, come later. he went for a distant walk yesterday p.m. and, not returning till near eleven, we thought he might have got lost in the woods. yale beat the university race, _but_ bill's four[-oared crew] beat the yale four. on such things is human contentment based. the baths stir up my aortic feeling and make me depressed, but i've had of them, and the rest will pass quickly. love. w. j. _to e. l. godkin._ bad-nauheim, _july , _. dear godkin,--yours of the th, which came duly, gave me great pleasure, first because it showed that your love for me had not grown cold, and, second, because it seemed to reveal in you tendencies towards sociability at large which are incompatible with a very alarming condition of health. nothing can give us greater pleasure than to come and see you before we sail. we shall stick here, probably, for a fortnight longer, then go for a week to the hartz mountains to brace up a little--the baths being very debilitating and the air of nauheim sedative. then straight to rye until we sail--on august st. i hope that you enjoy the "new forest"--the "children" thereof, by capt. mayne reid, i think, was one of my most mysteriously impressive books about the age of ten. but i fear that there is not much primeval forest to be seen there nowadays. nauheim is a sweet little place. one never sees a soldier and wouldn't know that _militarismus_ existed. there are two policemen, one of them an old fellow of who shuffles along to keep his weak knees from giving way. i went on business to the police office t' other day. the building stood in a fine cabbage garden, and over the first door one met on entering stood the word _küche_[ ] in large letters. quite like the old idyllic pre-sadowan german days. my heart is getting _well_! i made an excursion to homburg yesterday, with j. b. warner of cambridge, counsellor at law, and general disputant. for about six hours we discussed the philippine question, he damning the anti-imperialists--yet my thoracic contents remained as solid as if cast in portland cement. six months ago i should have had the wildest commotion there. congratulate me! kindest regards to you both, in which my wife joins. yours ever affectionately, wm. james. it should perhaps be explained that e. l. godkin had had a cerebral hemorrhage the year before. it had left him clear in mind, but a permanent invalid, with little power of locomotion. james spent several days with him at castle malwood near stony cross before he sailed for home; and when he was in england again the next year, he repeated the visit. [illustration: william james and henry james posing for a kodak in .] _to e. l. godkin._ lamb house, _aug. , _. my dear godkin,--just a line to bid you both farewell! we leave for london tomorrow morning and at four on saturday we shall be ploughing the deep. all goes well, save that the wife has sprained her ankle, and with the "firmness" that characterizes her lovely sex insists on hobbling about and doing all the packing. i shan't be aisy till i see her in her berth. after all, in spite of you and henry, and all americo-phobes, i'm glad i'm going back to my own country again. notwithstanding its "humble"ness, its fatigues, and its complications, there's no place like home--though i think the new forest might come near it as a substitute. england in general is too padded and cushioned for my rustic taste. the most elevating _moral_ thing i've seen during these two years abroad, after myers's heroic exit from this world at rome last winter, has been the gentleness and cheerful spirit with which you are still able to remain in it after such a blow as you have received. who could suppose so much public ferocity to cover so much private sweetness? seriously speaking, it is more edifying to us others, dear godkin, than you yourself can understand it to be, and i for one have learned by the example. i pray that your winter problems may gradually solve themselves without perplexity, and that next spring may find you relieved of all this helplessness. it is a very slow progress, with many steps backwards, but if the length of the forward steps preponderates, one may be well content. good-bye and bless you both. affectionately yours, wm. james. james returned to america in early september, in advance of the beginning of the college term. but from this time on he limited his teaching to one half-course during the year. his intention was to husband his strength for writing. the course which he offered during the first half of the college year was accordingly announced as a course on "the psychological elements of religious life." by the end of the winter, the second series of gifford lectures, constituting the last half of the "varieties," had been written out. _to miss pauline goldmark._ silver lake, n. h., _sept. , _. dear pauline,--your kind letter (excuse pencil--pen won't write) appears to have reached london after our departure and has just followed us hither. i had hoped for a word from you, first at nauheim, then on the steamer, then at cambridge; but this makes everything right. how good to think of you as the same old loveress of woods and skies and waters, and of your bryn-mawr friends. may none of the lot of you ever grow insufficient or forsake each other! the sight of you sporting in nature's bosom once lifted me into a sympathetic region, and made a better boy of me in ways which it would probably amuse and surprise you to learn of, so strangely are characters useful to each other, and so subtly are destinies intermixed. but with you on the mountain-tops of existence still, and me apparently destined to remain grubbing in the cellar, we seem far enough apart at present and may have to remain so. alas! how brief is life's glory, at the best. i can't get to keene valley this year, and [may] possibly never get there. give a kindly thought, my friend, to the spectre who once for a few times trudged by your side, and who would do so again if he could. i'm a "motor," and morally ill-adapted to the game of patience. i have reached home in pretty poor case, but i think it's mainly "nerves" at present, and therefore remediable; so i live on the future, but keep my expectations modest. two years away has been too long, and the "strangeness" which i dreaded (from past experience of it) covers all things american as with a veil. pathetic and poverty-stricken is all i see! this will pass away, but i don't want good things to pass away also, so i beseech you, pauline, to sit down and write me a good intimate letter telling me what your life and interest were in new york last winter. i am very sorry to hear of your sister susan's illness, and pray that the summer will set her right. did you see much of miller this summer? i hate to think of his having grown so delicate! did you see perry again? he was at the putnam camp? how is adler after his _cur_?--or is he not yet back? what have you read? what have you cared for? be indulgent to me, and write to me here--i stay for days longer--the family--all well--remain in cambridge. i find letters a great thing to keep one from slipping out of life. love to you all! your w. j. the next letter was written across the back of a circular invitation to join the american philosophical association, then being formed, of which professor gardiner was secretary. _to h. n. gardiner._ cambridge, _nov. , _. dear gardiner,--i am still pretty poorly and can't "jine" anything--but, apart from that, i don't foresee much good from a philosophical society. philosophical discussion proper only succeeds between intimates who have learned how to converse by months of weary trials and failure. the philosopher is a lone beast dwelling in his individual burrow.--count me _out_!--i hope all goes well with you. i expect to get well, but it needs _patience_. wm. james. on april , , james sailed for england, to deliver the second "course" of his series of gifford lectures in edinburgh. _to f. c. s. schiller._ hatley st. george, torquay, _apr. , _. my dear schiller,--i could shed tears that you should have been so near me and yet been missed. i got your big envelope on thursday at the hotel, and your two other missives here this morning. of the axioms paper i have only read a sheet and a half at the beginning and the superb conclusion which has just arrived. i shall fairly _gloat_ upon the whole of it, and will write you my impressions and criticisms, if criticisms there be. it is an uplifting thought that truth is to be told at last in a radical and attention-compelling manner. i think i know, though, how the attention of many will find a way not to be compelled--their will is so set on having a technically and artificially and _professionally_ expressed system, that all talk carried on as yours is on principles of common-sense activity is as remote and little worthy of being listened to as the slanging each other of boys in the street as we pass. men disdain to notice that. it is only after our (_i.e._ your and my) general way of thinking gets organized enough to become a regular part of the _bureaucracy_ of philosophy that we shall get a serious hearing. then, i feel inwardly convinced, our day will have come. but then, you may well say, the brains will be out and the man will be dead. anyhow, _vive_ the anglo-saxon amateur, disciple of locke and hume, and _pereat_ the german professional! we are here for a week with the godkins--poor old g., once such a power, and now an utter wreck after a stroke of paralysis three years ago. beautiful place, southeast gale, volleying rain and streaming panes and volumes of soft sea-laden wind. i hope you are not serious about an oxford degree for your humble servant. if you are, pray drop the thought! i am out of the race for all such vanities. write me a degree on parchment and send it yourself--in any case it would be but your award!--and it will be cheaper and more veracious. i _had_ to take the edinburgh one, and accepted the durham one to please my wife. thank you, no coronation either! i am a poor new hampshire rustic, in bad health, and long to get back, after four summers' absence, to my own cottage and children, and never come away again for lectures or degrees or anything else. it all depends on a man's age; and after sixty, if ever, one feels as if one ought to come to some sort of equilibrium with one's native environment, and by means of a regular life get one's small message to mankind on paper. that nowadays is my only aspiration. the gifford lectures are all facts and no philosophy--i trust that you may receive the volume by the middle of june. when, oh, when is your volume to appear? the sheet you send me leaves off just at the point where boyle-gibson begins to me to be most interesting! ever fondly yours, wm. james. your ancient president, schurman, was also at edinburgh getting ll.d'd. he is conducting a campaign in favor of philippino independence with masterly tactics, which reconcile me completely to him, laying his finger on just the right and telling points. _to charles eliot norton._ lamb house, rye, _may , _. dear norton,--i hear with grief and concern that you have had a bad fall. in a letter received this morning you are described as better, so i hope it will have had no untoward consequences beyond the immediate shock. we need you long to abide with us in undiminished vigor and health. our voyage was smooth, though cloudy, and we found miss ward a very honest and lovable girl. henry d. lloyd, whose name you know as that of a state-socialist writer, sat opposite to us, and proved one of the most "winning" men it was ever my fortune to know. we went to stratford for the first time. the absolute extermination and obliteration of every record of shakespeare save a few sordid material details, and the general suggestion of narrowness and niggardliness which ancient stratford makes, taken in comparison with the way in which the spiritual quantity "shakespeare" has mingled into the soul of the world, was most uncanny, and i feel ready to believe in almost any mythical story of the authorship. in fact a visit to stratford now seems to me the strongest appeal a baconian can make. the country round about was exquisite. still more so the country round about torquay, where we stayed with the godkins for eight days--he holding his own, as it seemed to me, but hardly improving, she earning palms of glory by her strength and virtue. a regular little trump! they have taken for the next two months the most beautiful country place i ever saw, occupying an elbow of the dart, and commanding a view up and down. we are here for but a week, my lectures beginning on the th. h. j. seems tranquil and happy in his work, though he has been much pestered of late by gout. i suppose you are rejoicing as much as i in the public interest finally aroused in the philippine conquest. a personal scandal, it seems, is really the only thing that will wake the ordinary man's attention up. it should be the first aim of every good leader of opinion to rake up one on the opposite side. it should be introduced among our faculty methods! don't think, dear norton, that you must answer this letter, which only your accident has made me write. we shall be home so soon that i shall see you face to face. the wife sends love, as i do, to you all. no warm weather whatever as yet--i am having chilblains!! ever affectionately yours, wm. james. _to mrs. henry whitman._ r.m.s. ivernia, _june , _. dear mrs. whitman,--we ought to be off boston tonight. after a cold and wet voyage, including two days of head-gale and heavy sea, and one of unbroken fog with lugubriously moo-ing fog-horn, the sun has risen upon american weather, a strong west wind like champagne, blowing out of a saturated blue sky right in our teeth, the sea all effervescing and sparkling with white caps and lace, the strong sun lording it in the sky, and hope presiding in the heart. what more natural than to report all this happy turn of affairs to you, buried as you probably still are in the blankets of the london atmosphere, beautiful opalescent blankets though they be, and (when one's vitals once are acclimated) yielding more wonderful artistic effects than anything to be seen in america. "c'est le pays de la couleur," as my brother is fond of saying in the words of alphonse daudet! but no matter for international comparisons, which are the least profitable of human employments. christ died for us all, so let us all be as we are, save where we want to reform ourselves. (the only unpardonable crime is that of wanting to reform _one another_, after the fashion of the u. s. in the philippines.) ... your sweet letter of several dates reached us just before we left edinburgh--excuse the insipid adjective "sweet," which after all does express something which less simple vocables may easily miss--and gave an impression of harmony and inner health which it warms the heart to become sensible of. i understand your temptation to stay over, but i also understand your temptation to get back; and i imagine that more and more you will solve the problem by a good deal of alternation in future years. it is curious how utterly distinct the three countries of england, ireland and scotland are, which we so summarily lump together--scotland so democratic and so much like new england in many respects. but it would be a waste of time for you to go there. keep to the south and spend one winter in rome, before you die, and a spring in the smaller italian cities! i hope that henry will have managed to get you and miss tuckerman to rye for a day--it is so curiously quaint and characteristic. i had a bad conscience about leaving him, for i think he feels lonely as he grows old, and friends pass over to the majority. he and i are so utterly different in all our observances and springs of action, that we can't rightly judge each other. i even feel great shrinking from urging him to pay us a visit, fearing it might yield him little besides painful shocks--and, after all, what besides pain and shock _is_ the right reaction for anyone to make upon our vocalization and pronunciation? the careful consonants and musical cadences of the scotchwomen were such a balm to the ear! i wish that you and poor henry could become really intimate. he is at bottom a very tender-hearted and generous being! no more paper! so i cross! i wish when we once get settled again at chocorua that we might enclose you under our roof, even if only for one night, on your way to or from the merrimans. i should like to show you true simplicity. [_no signature_.] the gifford lectures were published as "the varieties of religious experience, a study in human nature," in june, . the immediate "popularity" of this psychological survey of man's religious propensities was great; and the continued sales of the book contributed not a little to relieve james of financial anxiety during the last years of his life. the cordiality with which theological journals and private correspondents of many creeds greeted the "varieties," as containing a fair treatment of facts which other writers had approached with a sectarian or anti-theological bias, was striking. james was amused at being told that the book had "supplied the protestant pulpits with sermons for a twelve-month." regarding himself as "a most protestant protestant," as he once said, he was especially pleased by the manner in which it was received by roman catholic reviewers. certain philosophical conclusions were indicated broadly in the "varieties" without being elaborated. the book was a survey, an examination, of the facts. james had originally conceived of the gifford appointment as giving him "an opportunity for a certain amount of psychology and a certain amount of metaphysics," and so had thought of making the first series of lectures descriptive of man's religious propensities and the second series a metaphysical study of their satisfaction through philosophy. the psychological material had grown to unforeseen dimensions, and it ended by filling the book. the metaphysical study remained to be elaborated; and to such work james now turned. xiv - _the last period (i)--philosophical writing--statements of religious relief_ james now limited his teaching in harvard university, as has been said, to half a course a year and tried to devote his working energies to formulating a statement of his philosophical conceptions. for two years he published almost nothing; then the essays which were subsequently collected in the volumes called "pragmatism," "the pluralistic universe," "the meaning of truth," and "essays in radical empiricism," began to appear in the philosophic journals, or were delivered as special lectures. whenever he accepted invitations to lecture outside the college, as he still did occasionally, it was with the purpose of getting these conceptions expressed and of throwing them into the arena of discussion. but demands which correspondents and callers from all parts of the globe now made on his time and sympathy were formidable, for he could not rid himself of the habit of treating the most trivial of these with consideration, or acquire the habit of using a secretary. in this way there continued to be a constant drain on his strength. "it is probably difficult [thus he wrote wearily to mr. lutoslawski, who had begged him to collaborate with him on a book in ] for a man whose cerebral machine works with such facility as yours does to imagine the kind of consciousness of men like flournoy and myself. the background of my consciousness, so far as my own achievements go, is composed of a _sense of impossibility_--a sense well warranted by the facts. for instance, two years ago, the 'varieties' being published, i decided that everything was cleared and that my duty was immediately to begin writing my metaphysical system. up to last october, when the academic year began, i had written some pages of _notes_, _i.e._ disconnected _brouillons_. i hoped this year to write or pages of straight composition, and could have done so without the interruptions. as a matter of fact, with the best will in the world, i have written exactly pages! for an academic year's work, that is not brilliant! you see that, when i refuse your request, it is, after a fashion, in order to save my own life. my working day is anyhow, _at best_, only three hours long--by working i mean writing and reading philosophy." this estimate of his "notes" was, as always, self-deprecatory; but there was no denying a great measure of truth to the statement. frequently his health made it necessary for him to escape from cambridge and his desk. these incidents will be noted separately wherever the context requires. yet in spite of these difficulties and notwithstanding his complaints of constant frustration, the spirit with which james still did his work emerges from the essays of this time as well as from his letters. it was as if the years that had preceded had been years of preparation for just what he was now doing. at the age of sixty-three he turned to the formulation of his empirical philosophy with the eagerness of a schoolboy let out to play. misunderstanding disturbed him only momentarily, opposition stimulated him, he rejoiced openly in the controversies which he provoked, and engaged in polemics with the good humor and vigor that were the essence of his genius. his "truth" must prevail! the absolute should suffer its death-blow! flournoy, bergson, schiller, papini, and others too were "on his side." he made merry at the expense of his critics, or bewailed the perversity of their opposition; but he always encouraged them to "lay on." the imagery of contest and battle appeared in the letters which he threw off, and he expressed himself as freely as only a man can who has outgrown the reserves of his youth. _to henry l. higginson._ chocorua, _july , _. dear henry,--thanks for your letter of the other day, etc. alice tells me of a queer conversation you and she had upon the cars. i am not anxious about money, beyond wishing not to live on capital.... as i have frequently said, i mean to support you in your old age. in fact the hope of that is about all that i now live for, being surfeited with the glory of academic degrees just escaped, like this last one which, in the friendliness of its heart, your [harvard] corporation designed sponging upon me at commencement.[ ] boil it and solder it up from the microbes, and it may do for another year, if i am not in prison! the friendliness of such recognition is a delightful thing to a man about to graduate from the season of his usefulness. "la renommé vient," as i have heard john la farge quote, "à ceux qui ont la patience d'attendre, et s'accroit à raison de leur imbecillité." best wishes to you all. yours ever, wm. james. _to miss grace norton._ chocorua, _aug. , _. my dear grace,--will you kindly let me know, by the method of effacement, on the accompanying post-card, whether the box from germany of which i wrote you some time ago has or has not yet been left at your house. i paid the express, over twenty dollars, on it three weeks ago, directing it to be left with you. the ice being thus broken, let me ramble on! how do-ist thou? and how is the moist and cool summer suiting thee? i hope, well! it has certainly been a boon to most people. our house has been full of company of which tomorrow the last boys will leave, and i confess i shall enjoy the change to no responsibility. the scourge of life is _responsibility_--always there with its scowling face, and when it ceases to someone else, it begins to yourself, or to your god, if you have one. consider the lilies, how free they are from it, and yet how beautiful the expression of their face. especially should those emerging from "nervous prostration" be suffered to be without it--they have trouble enough in any case. i am getting on famously, but for that drawback, on which my temper is liable to break; but i _walk_ somewhat as in old times, and that is the main corner to have turned. the country seems as beautiful as ever--it is good that, when age takes away the zest from so many things, it seems to make no difference at all in one's capacity for enjoying landscape and the aspects of nature. we are all well, and shall very soon be buzzing about irving street as of yore. keep well yourself, dear grace; and believe me ever your friend, wm. james. to this word about enjoying the aspects of nature may be added a few lines from a letter to his son william, which james wrote from europe in :-- "scenery seems to wear in one's consciousness better than any other element in life. in this year of much solemn and idle meditation, i have often been surprised to find what a predominant part in my own spiritual experience it has played, and how it stands out as almost the only thing the memory of which i should like to carry over with me beyond the veil, unamended and unaltered. from the midst of every thing else, almost, _surgit amari aliquid_; but from the days in the open air, never any bitter whiff, save that they are gone forever." _to miss frances r. morse._ stonehurst, intervale, n. h., _sept. , _. dearest fanny,--how long it is since we have exchanged salutations and reported progress! happy the country which is without a history! _i_ have had no history to communicate, and i hope that you have had none either, and that the summer has glided away as happily for you as it has for us. now it begins to fade towards the horizon over which so many ancient summers have slipped, and our household is on the point of "breaking up" just when the season invites one most imperiously to stay. _dang_ all schools and colleges, say i. alice goes down tomorrow (i being up here with the merrimans only for one day) to start billy for europe--he will spend the winter at geneva university--and to get "the house" ready for our general reception on the th. i may possibly make out to stay up here till the monday following, and spend the interval of a few days by myself among the mountains, having stuck to the domestic hearth unusually tight all summer.... we have had guests--too many of them, rather, at one time, for me--and a little reading has been done, mostly philosophical technics, which, by the strange curse laid upon adam, certain of his descendants have been doomed to invent and others, still more damned, to learn. but i've also read stevenson's letters, which everybody ought to read just to know how charming a human being can be, and i've read a good part of goethe's _gedichte_ once again, which are also to be read, so that one may realize how absolutely healthy an organization may every now and then eventuate into this world. to have such a lyrical gift and to treat it with so little solemnity, so that most of the output consists of mere escape of the over-tension into bits of occasional verse, irresponsible, unchained, like smoke-wreaths!--it _du_ give one a great impression of personal power. in general, though i'm a traitor for saying so, it seems to me that the german race has been a more massive organ of expression for the travail of the almighty than the anglo-saxon, though we did seem to have something more like it in elizabethan times. or are clearness and dapperness the absolutely final shape of creation? good-bye! dear fanny--you see how mouldy i am temporarily become. the moment i take my pen, i can write in no other way. write thou, and let me know that things are greener and more vernal where you are. alice would send much love to you, were she here. give mine to your mother, brother, and sister-in-law, and all. your loving, w. j. _to henry l. higginson._ cambridge, mass., _nov. , _. dear henry,--i am emboldened to the step i am taking by the consciousness that though we are both at least sixty years old and have known each other from the cradle, i have never but once (or possibly twice) traded on your well-known lavishness of disposition to swell any "subscription" which i was trying to raise. now the doomful hour has struck. the altar is ready, and i take the victim by the ear. i choose you for a victim because you still have some undesiccated human feeling about you and can think in terms of pure charity--for the love of god, without ulterior hopes of returns from the investment. the subject is a man of fifty who can be recommended to no other kind of a benefactor. his story is a long one, but it amounts to this, that heaven made him with no other power than that of thinking and writing, and he has proved by this time a truly pathological inability to keep body and soul together. he is abstemious to an incredible degree, is the most innocent and harmless of human beings, isn't propagating his kind, has never had a dime to spend except for vital necessities, and never has had in his life an hour of what such as _we_ call freedom from care or of "pleasure" in the ordinary exuberant sense of the term. he is refinement itself mentally and morally; and his writings have all been printed in first-rate periodicals, but are too scanty to "pay." there's no excuse for him, i admit. but god made him; and after kicking and cuffing and prodding him for twenty years, i have now come to believe that he ought to be treated in charity pure and simple (even though that be a vice) and i want to guarantee him $ a year as a pension to be paid to the mills hotel in bleecker street, new york, for board and lodging and a few cents weekly over and above. i will put in $ . i have secured $ more. can i squeeze £ a year out of you for such a non-public cause? if not, don't reply and forget this letter. if "ja" and you think you really can afford it, and it isn't wicked, let me know, and i will dun you regularly every year for the $ . yours as ever, wm. james. it is a great compliment that i address you. most men say of such a case, "is the man deserving?" whereas the real point is, "does he need us?" what is deserving nowadays? * * * * * the beneficiary of this appeal was that same unfulfilled promise of a metaphysician who appeared as "x" on page of the first volume--a man upon whom, in cicero's phrase, none but a philosopher could look without a groan. there were more parallels to x's case than it would be permissible to cite here. james did not often appeal to others to help such men with money, but he did things for them himself, even after it had become evident that they could give nothing to the world in return, and even when they had exhausted his patience. "damn your half-successes, your imperfect geniuses!" he exclaimed of another who shall be called z. "i'm tired of making allowances for them and propping them up.... z has never constrained himself in his life. selfish, conceited, affected, a monster of desultory intellect, he has become now a seedy, almost sordid, old man without even any intellectual residuum from his work that can be called a finished construction; only 'suggestions' and a begging old age." but z, too, was helped to the end. _to henri bergson._ cambridge, _dec. , _. my dear sir,--i read the copy of your "matière et mémoire" which you so kindly sent me, immediately on receiving it, four years ago or more. i saw its great originality, but found your ideas so new and vast that i could not be sure that i fully understood them, although the _style_, heaven knows, was lucid enough. so i laid the book aside for a second reading, which i have just accomplished, slowly and carefully, along with that of the "données immédiates," etc. i think i understand the main lines of your system very well at present--though of course i can't yet trace its proper relations to the aspects of experience of which you do not treat. it needs much building out in the direction of ethics, cosmology and cosmogony, psychogenesis, etc., before one can apprehend it fully. that i should take it in so much more easily than i did four years ago shows that even at the age of sixty one's mind can grow--a pleasant thought. it is a work of exquisite genius. it makes a sort of copernican revolution as much as berkeley's "principles" or kant's "critique" did, and will probably, as it gets better and better known, open a new era of philosophical discussion. it fills _my_ mind with all sorts of new questions and hypotheses and brings the old into a most agreeable liquefaction. i thank you from the bottom of my heart. the _hauptpunkt_ acquired for me is your conclusive demolition of the dualism of object and subject in perception. i believe that the "transcendency" of the object will not recover from your treatment, and as i myself have been working for many years past on the same line, only with other general conceptions than yours, i find myself most agreeably corroborated. my health is so poor now that work goes on very slowly; but i am going, if i live, to write a general system of metaphysics which, in many of its fundamental ideas, agrees closely with what you have set forth and the agreement inspires and encourages me more than you can well imagine. it would take far too many words to attempt any detail, but some day i hope to send you the book.[ ] how good it is sometimes simply to _break away_ from all old categories, deny old worn-out beliefs, and restate things _ab initio_, making the lines of division fall into entirely new places! i send you a little popular lecture of mine on immortality,[ ]--no positive theory but merely an _argumentum ad hominem_ for the ordinary cerebralistic objection,--in which it may amuse you to see a formulation like your own that the brain is an organ of _filtration_ for spiritual life. i also send you my last book, the "varieties of religious experience," which may some time beguile an hour. believe, dear professor bergson, the high admiration and regard with which i remain, always sincerely yours, wm. james. _to mrs. louis agassiz._ cambridge, _dec. , _. dear mrs. agassiz,--i never dreamed of your replying to that note of mine (of dec. th). if you are replying to all the notes you received on that eventful day, it seems to me a rather heavy penalty for becoming an octogenarian.[ ] but glad i am that you replied to mine, and so beautifully. indeed i do remember the meeting of those two canoes, and the dance, over the river from manaos; and many another incident and hour of that wonderful voyage.[ ] i remember your freshness of interest, and readiness to take hold of everything, and what a blessing to me it was to have one civilized lady in sight, to keep the memory of cultivated conversation from growing extinct. i remember my own folly in wishing to return home after i came out of the hospital at rio; and my general greenness and incapacity as a naturalist afterwards, with my eyes gone to pieces. it was all because my destiny was to be a "philosopher"--a fact which then i didn't know, but which only means, i think, that, if a man is good for nothing else, he can at least teach philosophy. but i'm going to write one book worthy of you, dear mrs. agassiz, and of the thayer expedition, if i am spared a couple of years longer. i hope you were not displeased at the _applause_ the other night, as you went out. _i_ started it; if i hadn't, someone else would a moment later, for the tension had grown intolerable. how delightful about the radcliffe building! well, once more, dear mrs. agassiz, we both thank you for this beautiful and truly affectionate letter. your affectionate, wm. james. e. l. godkin had recently died, and at the date of the next letter a movement was on foot to raise money for a memorial in commemoration of his public services. the money was soon subscribed and the memorial took shape in the endowment of the godkin lectureship at harvard. james had started discussion of the project at a meeting of the dinner club and henry l. higginson had continued it in a letter to which the following replied. _to henry l. higginson._ cambridge, _feb. , _. dear henry,--i am sorry to have given a wrong impression, and made you take the trouble of writing--nutritious though your letters be to receive. my motive in mentioning the godkin testimonial was pure curiosity, and not desire to promote it. we were ten "liberals" together, and i wanted to learn how many of us had been alienated from godkin by his temper in spite of having been influenced by his writing. i found that it was just about half and half. i never said--heaven bear me witness--that i had learned more from g. than from anyone. i said i had got more _political_ education from him. you see the "nation" took me at the age of --you were already older and wickeder. if you follow my advice now, you don't subscribe a cent to this memorial. _i_ shall subscribe $ , for mixed reasons. godkin's "home life" was very different from his life against the world. when a man differed in type from him, and consequently reacted differently on public matters; he thought him a preposterous monster, pure and simple, and so treated him. he couldn't imagine a different kind of creature from himself in politics. but in private relations he was simplicity and sociability and affectionateness incarnate, and playful as a young opossum. i never knew his first wife well, but i admire the pluck and fidelity of the second, and i note your chivalrous remarks about the sex, including mrs. w. j., to whom report has been made of them, making her blush with pleasure. don't subscribe, dear henry. i am not trying to raise subscriptions. you left too early friday eve. ever affectionately yours, w. j. james's college class finished its work at the end of the first half of the academic year, and in early february he turned for a few days to the thought of a mediterranean voyage, as a vacation and a means of escape from cambridge during the bad weather of march. while considering this plan, he cabled m. bergson to inquire as to the possibility of a meeting in paris or elsewhere. _to henri bergson._ cambridge, _feb. , _. dear professor bergson,--your most obliging cablegram (with words instead of four!) arrived duly a week ago, and now i am repenting that i ever asked you to send it, for i have been feeling so much less fatigued than i did a month ago, that i have given up my passage to the mediterranean, and am seriously doubting whether it will be necessary to leave home at all. i _ought_ not to, on many grounds, unless my health imperatively requires it. pardon me for having so frivolously stirred you up, and permit me at least to pay the cost (as far as i can ascertain it) of the despatch which you were so liberal as to send. there is still a bare possibility (for i am so strongly tempted) that i may, after the middle of march, take a cheaper vessel direct to england or to france, and spend ten days or so in paris and return almost immediately. in that case, we could still have our interview. i think there must be great portions of your philosophy which you have not yet published, and i want to see how well they combine with mine. _writing_ is too long and laborious a process, and i would not inflict on you the task of answering my questions by letter, so i will still wait in the hope of a personal interview some time. i am convinced that a philosophy of _pure experience_, such as i conceive yours to be, can be made to work, and will reconcile many of the old inveterate oppositions of the schools. i think that your radical denial (the manner of it at any rate) of the notion that the brain can be in any way the _causa fiendi_ of consciousness, has introduced a very sudden clearness, and eliminated a part of the idealistic paradox. but your unconscious or subconscious permanence of memories is in its turn a notion that offers difficulties, seeming in fact to be the equivalent of the "soul" in another shape, and the manner in which these memories "insert" themselves into the brain action, and in fact the whole conception of the difference between the outer and inner worlds in your philosophy, still need to me a great deal of elucidation. but behold me challenging you to answer me _par écrit_! i have read with great delight your article in the "revue de métaphysique" for january, agree thoroughly with all its critical part, and wish that i might see in your _intuition métaphysique_ the full equivalent for a philosophy of concepts. _neither_ seems to be a full equivalent for the other, unless indeed the intuition becomes completely mystical (and that i am willing to believe), but i don't think that that is just what _you_ mean. the _syllabus_[ ] which i sent you the other day is (i fear), from its great abbreviation, somewhat unintelligible, but it will show you the sort of lines upon which i have been working. i think that a normal philosophy, like a science, must live by hypotheses--i think that the indispensable hypothesis in a philosophy of pure experience is that of many kinds of other experience than ours, { co-consciousness } that the question of { } (its conditions, etc.) { conscious synthesis } becomes a most urgent question, as does also the question of the relations of what is possible only to what is actual, what is past or future to what is present. these are all urgent matters in your philosophy also, i imagine. how exquisitely you do _write_! believe me, with renewed thanks for the telegram, yours most sincerely, wm. james. _to theodore flournoy._ cambridge, _apr. , _. my dear flournoy,--i forget whether i wrote you my applause or not, on reading your chapter on religious psychology in the "archives." i thought it a splendid thing, and well adapted to set the subject in the proper light before students. abauzit has written to me for authorization to translate my book, and both he and w. j., junior, have quoted you as assured of his competency. i myself feel confident of it, and have given him the authorization required. possibly you may supply him with as much of your own translation as you have executed, so that the time you have spent on the latter may not be absolutely lost. "billy" also says that you have executed a review of myers's book,[ ] finding it a more difficult task than you had anticipated. i am highly curious to see what you have found to say. i, also, wrote a notice of the volumes, and found it exceeding difficult to know how to go at the job. at last i decided just to skeletonize the points of his reasoning, but on correcting the proof just now, what i have written seems deadly flat and unprofitable and makes me wish that i had stuck to my original intention of refusing to review the book at all. the fact is, such a book need not be _criticized_ at all at present. it is obviously too soon for it to be either refuted or established by mere criticism. it is a hypothetical construction of genius which must be kept hanging up, as it were, for new observations to be referred to. as the years accumulate these in a more favorable or in a more unfavorable sense, it will tend to stand or to fall. i confess that reading the volumes has given me a higher opinion than ever of myers's constructive gifts, but on the whole a lower opinion of the objective solidity of the system. so many of the facts which form its pillars are still dubious.[ ] bill says that you were again convinced by eusapia,[ ] but that the conditions were not satisfactory enough (so i understood) to make the experiments likely to convince absent hearers. forever baffling is all this subject, and i confess that i begin to lose my interest. believe me, in whatever difficulties your review of myers may have occasioned you, you have my fullest sympathy! bill has had a perfectly splendid winter in geneva, thanks almost entirely to your introductions, and to the generous manner in which you took him into your own family. i wish we could ever requite you by similar treatment of henri, or of _ces demoiselles_. he seems to labor under an apprehension of not being able to make you all believe how appreciative and grateful he is, and he urges me to "make you understand it" when i write. i imagine that you understand it anyhow, so far as he is concerned, so i simply assure you that _our_ gratitude here is of the strongest and sincerest kind. i imagine that this has been by far the most profitable and educative winter of his life, and i rejoice exceedingly that he has obtained in so short a time so complete a sense of being at home in, and so lively an affection for, the swiss people and country. (as for _your_ family he has written more than once that the flournoy family seems to be "the finest family" he has ever seen in his life.) his experience is a good measure of the improvement in the world's conditions. thirty years ago _i_ spent nine months in geneva--but in how inferior an "academy," and with what inferior privileges and experiences! never inside a private house, and only after three months or more familiar enough with other students to be admitted to zofingue.[ ] ignorant of things which have come to my son and yours in the course of education. it _is_ a more evolved world, and no mistake. i find myself very tired and unable to work this spring, but i think it will depart when i get to the country, as we soon shall. i am neither writing nor lecturing, and reading nothing heavy, only emerson's works again (divine things, some of them!) in order to make a fifteen-minute address about him on his centennial birthday. what i want to get at, and let no interruptions interfere, is (at last) my _system of tychistic and pluralistic philosophy of pure experience_. i wish, and even more ardently does alice wish, that you and mrs. flournoy, and all the children, or any of them, might pay us a visit. i don't _urge_ you, for there is so little in america that pays one to come, except sociological observation. but in the big slow steamers, the voyage is always interesting--and once here, how happy we should be to harbor you. in any case, perhaps henri and one of his sisters will come and spend a year. from the point of view of education, cambridge is first-rate. love to you all from us both. wm. james. late in april came a letter from henry james in which he spoke, as if with many misgivings, of returning to america for a six months' visit. "i should wish," he said, "to write a book of 'impressions' and to that end get quite away from boston and new york--really _see_ the country at large. on the other hand i don't see myself prowling alone in western cities and hotels or finding my way about by myself, and it is all darksome and tangled. some light may break--but meanwhile next wednesday (awful fact) is my th birthday." he had not been in america for more than twenty years, and had never known anything of the country outside of new england and new york. _to henry james._ cambridge, _may , _. ...your long and _inhaltsvoll_ letter of april th arrived duly, and constituted, as usual, an "event." theodora had already given us your message of an intended visit to these shores; and your letter made alice positively overflow with joyous anticipations. on my part they are less unmixed, for i feel more keenly a good many of the _désagréments_ to which you will inevitably be subjected, and imagine the sort of physical loathing with which many features of our national life will inspire you. it takes a long time to notice such things no longer. one thing, for example, which would reconcile _me_ most easily to abandoning my native country forever would be the certainty of immunity, when traveling, from the sight of my fellow beings at hotels and dining-cars having their boiled eggs brought to them, broken by a negro, two in a cup, and eaten with butter. how irrational this dislike is, is proved both by logic, and by the pleasure taken in the custom by the élite of mankind over here.... yet of such irrational sympathies and aversions (quite conventional for the most part) does our pleasure in a country depend, and in your case far more than in that of most men. the _vocalization_ of our countrymen is really, and not conventionally, so ignobly awful that the process of hardening oneself thereto is very slow, and would in your case be impossible. it is simply incredibly loathsome. i should hate to have you come and, as a result, feel that you had now _done_ with america forever, even in an ideal and imaginative sense, which after a fashion you can still indulge in. as far as your copyright interests go, couldn't they be even more effectually and just as cheaply or more cheaply attended to by your [engaging an agent] over here. alice foresees lowell [institute] lectures; but lectures have such an awful side (when not academic) that i myself have foresworn them--it is a sort of prostitution of one's person. this is rather a throwing of cold water; but it is well to realize both sides, and i think i can realize certain things for you better than the sanguine and hospitable alice does. now for the other side, there are things in the american out-of-door nature, as well as comforts indoors that can't be beat, and from which _i_ get an infinite pleasure. if you avoided the _banalité_ of the eastern cities, and traveled far and wide, to the south, the colorado, over the canadian pacific to that coast, possibly to the hawaiian islands, etc., you would get some reward, at the expense, it is true, of a considerable amount of cash. i think you ought to come in march or april and stay till the end of october or into november. the hot summer months you could pass in an absolutely quiet way--if you wished to--at chocorua with us, where you could do as much writing as you liked, continuous, and undisturbed, and would (i am sure) grow fond of, as you grew more and more intimate with, the sweet rough country there. after june, , _i_ shall be free, to go and come as i like, for i have fully decided to resign, and nothing would please me so well (if i found then that i could afford it) as to do some of that proposed traveling along with you. i could take you into certain places that perhaps you wouldn't see alone. don't come therefore, if you do come, before the spring of ! i have been doing nothing in the way of work of late, and consequently have kept my fatigue somewhat at bay. the reading of the divine emerson, volume after volume, has done me a lot of good, and, strange to say, has thrown a strong practical light on my own path. the incorruptible way in which he followed his own vocation, of seeing such truths as the universal soul vouchsafed to him from day to day and month to month, and reporting them in the right literary form, and thereafter kept his limits absolutely, refusing to be entangled with irrelevancies however urging and tempting, knowing both his strength and its limits, and clinging unchangeably to the rural environment which he once for all found to be most propitious, seems to me a moral lesson to all men who have any genius, however small, to foster. i see now with absolute clearness, that greatly as i have been helped and enlarged by my university business hitherto, the time has come when the remnant of my life must be passed in a different manner, contemplatively namely, and with leisure and simplification for the one remaining thing, which is to report in one book, at least, such impression as my own intellect has received from the universe. this i mean to stick to, and am only sorry that i am obliged to stay in the university one other year. it is giving up the inessentials which have grown beyond one's powers, for the sake of the duties which, after all, are most essentially imposed on one by the nature of one's powers. emerson is exquisite! i think i told you that i have to hold forth in praise of him at concord on the th--in company with senator hoar, t. w. higginson, and charles norton--quite a _vieille garde_, to which i now seem to belong. you too have been leading an emersonian life--though the environment differs to suit the needs of the different psychophysical organism which you present. i have but little other news to tell you. charles peirce is lecturing here--queer being.... boott is in good spirits, and as sociable as ever. grace norton ditto. i breakfasted this sunday morning, as of yore, with theodora [sedgwick], who had a bad voyage in length but not in quality, though she lay in her berth the whole time. i can hardly conceive of being willing to travel under such conditions. otherwise we are well enough, except peggy, whose poor condition i imagine to result from influenza. aleck has been regenerated through and through by "bird lore," happy as the day is long, and growing acquainted with the country all about boston. all in consequence of a neighboring boy on the street, years old and an ornithological genius, having taken him under his protection. yesterday, all day long in the open air, from seven to seven, at wayland, spying and listening to birds, counting them, and writing down their names! i shall go off tomorrow or next day to the country again, by myself, joining henry higginson and a colleague at the end of the week, and returning by the th for ph.d. examinations which i hate profoundly. h. h. has bought some five miles of the shore of lake champlain adjoining his own place there, and thinks of handing it over to the university for the surveying, engineering, forestry and mining school. he is as liberal-hearted a man as the lord ever walloped entrails into.... what a devil of a bore your forced purchase of the unnecessary neighboring land must have been. _i_ am just buying acres more at chocorua, to round off our second estate there. keep well and prolific--everyone speaks praise of your "better sort," which i am keeping for the country.... _to his daughter._ fabyans, n. h., _may , _. sweet mary,--although i wrote to thy mother this p.m. i can't refrain from writing to thee ere i go up to bed. i left intervale at . under a cloudy sky and slight rain, passing through the gloomy notch to crawford's and then here, where i am lodged in a house full of working men, though with a good clean bedroom. i write this in the office, with an enormous air-tight stove, a parrot and some gold-fish as my companions. i took a slow walk of an hour and a half before supper over this great dreary mountain plateau, pent in by hills and woods still free from buds. although it is only feet high, the air is real mountain air, soft and strong at once. i wish that you could have taken that four-hour drive with topsy[ ] and me this morning. you would already be well--it had so healing an influence. poverty-stricken this new hampshire country may be--weak in a certain sense, shabby, thin, pathetic--say all that, yet, like "jenny," it _kissed_ me; and it is not _vulgar_--even h. j. can't accuse it of that--or of "stodginess," especially at this emaciated season. it remains pure, and clear and distinguished--bless it! once more, would thou hadst been along! i have just been reading emerson's "representative men." what luminous truths he communicates about their home-life--for instance: "nature never sends a great man into the planet without confiding the secret to another soul"--namely your mother's! how he hits her off, and how i recognized whom he meant immediately. kiss the dear tender-hearted thing. common men also have their advantages. i have seen all day long such a succession of handsome, stalwart, burnt-faced, out-of-door workers as made me glad to be, however degenerate myself, one of their tribe. splendid, honest, good-natured fellows. good-night! i'm now going to bed, to read myself to sleep with a tiptop novel sent me by one barry, an old pupil of mine. 't is called "a daughter of thespis." is this the day of your mother's great and noble lunch? if so, i pray that it may have gone off well. kisses to her, and all. your loving papa. the next letter describes the emerson centenary at concord. the address which james delivered was published in the special volume commemorative of the proceedings, and also in "memories and studies." _to miss frances r. morse._ cambridge, _may , _. dearest fanny,--on friday i called at your house and to my sorrow found the blinds all down. i had not supposed that you would leave so soon, though i might well have done so if i had reflected. it has been a sorrow to me to have seen so little of you lately, but so goes the _train du monde_. collapsed condition, absences, interruptions of all sorts, have made the year end with most of the desiderata postponed to next year. i meant to write to you on friday evening, then on saturday morning. but i went to lincoln on saturday p.m. and stayed over the emerson racket, without returning home, and have been packing and winding up affairs all day in order to get off to chocorua tomorrow at . . these windings up of unfinished years continue till the unfinished life winds up. i wish that you had been at concord. it was the most harmoniously æsthetic or æsthetically harmonious thing! the weather, the beauty of the village, the charming old meeting-house, the descendants of the grand old man in such profusion, the mixture of concord and boston heads, so many of them of our own circle, the allusions to great thoughts and things, and the old-time new england rusticity and rurality, the silver polls and ancient voices of the _vieille garde_ who did the orating (including this 'yer child), all made a matchless combination, took one back to one's childhood, and made that rarely realized marriage of reality with ideality, that usually only occurs in fiction or poetry. it was a sweet and memorable day, and i am glad that i had an active share in it. i thank you for your sweet words to alice about my address. i let r. w. e. speak for himself, and i find now, hearing so much from others of him, that there are only a few things that _can_ be said of him; he was so squarely and simply himself as to impress every one in the same manner. reading the whole of him over again continuously has made me feel his real greatness as i never did before. he's really a critter to be thankful for. good-night, dear fanny. i shall be back here by commencement, and somehow we must see you at chocorua this summer. love to your mother as well as to yourself, from your ever affectionate wm. james. the letter of may rd drew from henry james a long reply which may be found in the "letters of henry james," under date of may th; the reply, in its turn, elicited this response:-- _to henry james._ chocorua, _june , _. dearest henry,--your long and excitingly interesting type-written letter about coming hither arrived yesterday, and i hasten to retract all my dampening remarks, now that i understand the motives fully. the only ones i had imagined, blindling that i am, were fraternal piety and patriotic duty. against those i thought i ought to proffer the thought of "eggs" and other shocks, so that when they came i might be able to say that you went not unwarned. but the moment it appears that what you crave is millions of just such shocks, and that a new lease of artistic life, with the lamp of genius fed by the oil of twentieth-century american life, is to be the end and aim of the voyage, all my stingy doubts wither and are replaced by enthusiasm that you are still so young-feeling, receptive and hungry for more raw material and experience. it cheers me immensely, and makes me feel more so myself. it is pathetic to hear you talk so about your career and its going to seed without the contact of new material; but feeling as you do about the new material, i augur a great revival of energy and internal effervescence from the execution of your project. drop your english ideas and take america and americans as they take themselves, and you will certainly experience a rejuvenation. this is all i have to say _today_--merely to let you see how the prospect exhilarates us. august, , will be an excellent time to begin. i should like to go south with you,--possibly to cuba,--but as for california, i fear the expense. i am sending you a decidedly moving book by a mulatto ex-student of mine, du bois, professor of history at atlanta (georgia) negro college.[ ] read chapters vii to xi for local color, etc. we have been up here for ten days; the physical luxury of the simplification is something that money can't buy. every breath is a pleasure--this in spite of the fact that the whole country is drying up and burning up--it makes one ashamed that one can be so happy. the smoke here has been so thick for five days that the opposite shore [of the lake] is hidden. we have a first-rate hired man, a good cow, nice horse, dog, cook, second-girl, etc. come up and see us in august, ! your ever loving w. j. _to henry w. rankin._ chocorua, _june , _. my dear rankin,--once more has my graphophobia placed me heavily in your debt. your two long letters, though unanswered, were and are appreciated, in spite of the fact that, as you know, i do not (and i fear cannot) follow the gospel scheme as you do, and that the bible itself, in both its testaments (omitting parts of john and the apocalypse) seems to me, by its intense naturalness and humanness, the most fatal document that one can read against the orthodox theology, in so far as the latter claims the words of the bible to be its basis. i myself believe that the orthodox theology contains elements that are permanently true, and that such writers as emerson, by reason of their extraordinary healthy-mindedness and "once-born"-ness, are incapable of appreciating. i believe that they will have to be expressed in any ultimately valid religious philosophy; and i see in the temper of friendliness of such a man as you for such writings as emerson's and mine (_magnus comp. parvo_) a foretaste of the day when the abstract essentials of belief will be the basis of communion more than the particular forms and concrete doctrines in which they articulate themselves. your letter about emerson seemed to me so admirably written that i was on the point of sending it back to you, thinking it might be well that you should publish it somewhere. i will still do so, if you ask me. i have myself been a little scandalized at the non-resisting manner in which orthodox sheets have celebrated his anniversary. an "emerson number" of "zion's herald" strikes me as _tant soit peu_ of an anomaly, and yet i am told that such a number appeared. rereading him _in extenso_, almost _in toto_, lately, has made him loom larger than ever to me as a human being, but i feel the distinct lack in him of too little understanding of the morbid side of life. i have been in the country two weeks, delicious in spite of drought and smoke, and still more delicious now that rain has come, and i cannot bear to think of you still lingering in brooklyn. perhaps you are already at northfield. indeed i hope so, and that the long brooklyn winter will have put you in a condition for its better enjoyment, and for better cooperation with its work. i shall get at shields some day--but i'm slow in getting round! yours ever faithfully, wm. james. _to dickinson s. miller._ cambridge, _aug. , _. dear m.,-- ...i am in good condition, but in somewhat of a funk about my lectures,[ ] now that the audience draws near. i have got my mind working on the infernal old problem of mind and brain, and how to construct the world out of pure experiences, and feel foiled again and inwardly sick with the fever. but i verily believe that it is only work that makes one sick in that way that has any chance of breaking old shells and getting a step ahead. it is a sort of madness however when it is on you. the total result is to make me admire "common sense" as having done by far the biggest stroke of genius ever made in philosophy when it reduced the chaos of crude experience to order by its luminous _denkmittel_ of the stable "thing," and its dualism of thought and matter. i find strong's book charming and a wonderful piece of clear and thorough work--quite classical in fact, and surely destined to renown. the clifford-prince-strong theory has now full rights to citizenship. nevertheless, in spite of his so carefully blocking every avenue which leads sideways from his conclusion, he has not convinced me yet. but i can[not] say briefly why.... yours in haste, w. j. _to mrs. henry whitman._ hotel ----, port henry, n.y., _aug. , _. dear friend,--obliged to "stop over" for the night at this loathsome spot, for lack of train connexion, what is more natural than that i should seek to escape the odious actual by turning to the distant ideal--by which term you will easily recognize _yourself_. i didn't write the conventional letter to you after leaving your house in june, preferring to wait till the tension should accumulate, and knowing your indulgence of my unfashionable ways. i haven't heard a word about you since that day, but i hope that the times have treated you kindly, and that you have not been "overdoing" in your usual naughty way. i, with the exception of six days lately with the merrimans, have been sitting solidly at home, and have found myself in much better condition than i was in last summer, and consequently better than for several years. it is pleasant to find that one's organism has such reparative capacities even after sixty years have been told out. but i feel as if the remainder couldn't be very long, at least for "creative" purposes, and i find myself eager to get ahead with work which unfortunately won't allow itself to be done in too much of a hurry. i am convinced that the desire to formulate truths is a virulent disease. it has contracted an alliance lately in me with a feverish personal ambition, which i never had before, and which i recognize as an unholy thing in such a connexion. i actually dread to die until i have settled the universe's hash in one more book, which shall be _epoch-machend_ at last, and a title of honor to my children! childish idiot--as if formulas about the universe could ruffle its majesty, and as if the common-sense world and its duties were not eternally the really real!--i am on my way from ashfield, where i was a guest at the annual dinner, to _feu_ davidson's "school" at glenmore, where, in a sanguine hour, i agreed to give five discourses. apparently they are having a good season there. mrs. booker washington was the hero of the ashfield occasion--a big hearty handsome natural creature, quite worthy to be her husband's mate. fred pollock made a tip-top speech.... charles norton appeared to great advantage as a benignant patriarch, and the place was very pretty. have you read loti's "inde sans les anglais"? if not, then begin. i seem to myself to have been doing some pretty good reading this summer, but when i try to recall it, nothing but philosophic works come up. good-bye! and heaven keep you! yours affectionately, w. j. _to miss frances r. morse._ chocorua, _sept. , _. dearest fanny,--it is so long since we have held communion that i think it is time to recommence. our summer is ending quietly enough, not only you, but theodora and mary tappan, having all together conspired to leave us in september solitude, and some young fellows, companions of harry and billy, having just gone down. the cook goes tomorrow for a fortnight of vacation, but alice and i, and probably both the older boys, hope to stay up here more or less until the middle of october. my "seminary" begins on friday, october nd, and for the rest of the year friday is my only day with a college exercise in it--an arrangement which leaves me extraordinarily free, and of which i intend to take advantage by making excursions. hitherto, during the entire years of my college service, i have had a midday exercise every day in the week. this has always kept me tied too tight to cambridge. i am _vastly_ better in nervous tone than i was a year ago, my work is simplified down to the exact thing i want to do, and i ought to be happy in spite of the lopping off of so many faculties of activity. the only thing to do, as with the process of the suns one finds one's faculties dropping away one by one, is to be good-natured about it, remember that the next generation is as young as ever, and try to live and have a sympathetic share in their activities. i spent three days lately (only three, alas!) at the "shanty" [in keene valley], and was moved to admiration at the foundation for a consciousness that was being laid in the children by the bare-headed and bare-legged existence "close to nature" of which the memory was being stored up in them in these years. they lay around the camp-fire at night at the feet of their elders, in every attitude of soft recumbency, heads on stomachs and legs mixed up, happy and dreamy, just like the young of some prolific carnivorous species. the coming generation ought to reap the benefit of all this healthy animality. what wouldn't i give to have been educated in it!... _to mrs. henry whitman._ cambridge, _oct. , _. my dear "s. w.,"--on inquiry at your studio last monday i was told that you would be in the country for ten days or a fortnight more. i confess that this pleased me much for it showed you both happy and prudent. surely the winter is long enough, however much we cut off of this end--the city winter i mean; and the country this month has been little short of divine. we came down on the th, and i have to get mine (my country, i mean) from the "norton woods." but they are very good indeed,--indeed, indeed! i am better, both physically and morally, than for years past. the whole james family thrives; and were it not for one's "duties" one could be happy. but that things should give pain proves that something is being _effected_, so i take that consolation. i have the duty on monday of reporting at a "philosophical conference" on the chicago school of thought. chicago university has during the past six months given birth to the fruit of its ten years of gestation under john dewey. the result is wonderful--a _real school_, and _real thought_. important thought, too! did you ever hear of such a city or such a university? here we have thought, but no school. at yale a school, but no thought. chicago has both.... but this, dear madam, is not intended as a letter--only a word of greeting and congratulation at your absence. i don't know why it makes me so happy to hear of anyone being in the country. i suppose _they_ must be happy. your last letter went to the right spot--but i don't expect to hear from you now until i see you. ever affectionately yours, w. j. _to henry james._ newport, _jan. , _. ...i came down here the night before last, to see if a change of air might loosen the grip of my influenza, now in its sixth week and me still weak as a baby, almost, from its virulent effects.... yesterday a.m. the thermometer fell to below zero. i walked as far as tweedy's (i am staying at a boarding-house, mrs. robinson's, catherine st., close to touro avenue, daisy waring being the only other boarder)--the snow loudly creaking under foot and under teams however distant, the sky luminously white and dazzling, no distance, everything equally near to the eye, and the architecture in the town more huddled, discordant, cheap, ugly and contemptible than i had ever seen it. it brought back old times so vividly. so it did in the evening, when i went after sunset down kay street to the termination. that low west that i've so often fed on, with a sombre but intense crimson vestige smouldering close to the horizon-line, economical but profound, and the western well of sky shading upward from it through infinite shades of transparent luminosity in darkness to the deep blue darkness overhead. it was purely american. you never see that western sky anywhere else. solemn and wonderful. i should think you'd like to see it again, if only for the sake of shuddering at it!... _to françois pillon._ cambridge, _june , _. dear pillon,--once more i get your faithful and indefatigable "année" and feel almost ashamed of receiving it thus from you, year after year, when i make nothing of a return! so you are years old--i had no idea of it, but thought that you were much younger. i am only(!) , and wish that i could expect another years of such activity as you have shown. i fear i cannot. my arteries are senile, and none of my ancestors, so far as i know of them, have lived past , many of them dying much earlier. this is my last day in cambridge; tomorrow i get away into the country, where "the family" already is, for my vacation. i shall take your "année" with me, and shall be greatly interested in both danriac's article and yours. what a mercy it is that your eyes, in spite of cataract-operations, are still good for reading. i have had a very bad winter for work--two attacks of influenza, one very long and bad, three of gout, one of erysipelas, etc., etc. i expected to have written at least or pages of my magnum opus,--a general treatise on philosophy which has been slowly maturing in my mind,--but i have written only pages! that tells the whole story. i resigned from my professorship, but they would not accept my resignation, and owing to certain peculiarities in the financial situation of our university just now, i felt myself obliged in honor to remain. my philosophy is what i call a radical empiricism, a pluralism, a "tychism," which represents order as being gradually won and always in the making. it is theistic, but not _essentially_ so. it rejects all doctrines of the absolute. it is finitist; but it does not attribute to the question of the infinite the great methodological importance which you and renouvier attribute to it. i fear that you may find my system too _bottomless_ and romantic. i am sure that, be it in the end judged true or false, it is essential to the evolution of clearness in philosophic thought that _someone_ should defend a pluralistic empiricism radically. and all that i fear is that, with the impairment of my working powers from which i suffer, the angel of death may overtake me before i can get my thoughts on to paper. life here in the university consists altogether of _interruptions_. i thought much of you at the time of renouvier's death, and i wanted to write; but i let that go, with a thousand other things that had to go. what a life! and what touching and memorable last words were those which m. pratt published in the "revue de métaphysique"--memorable, i mean from the mere fact that the old man could dictate them at all. i have left unread his last publications, except for some parts of the "monadologie" and the "personalisme." he will remain a great figure in philosophic history; and the sense of his absence must make a great difference to your consciousness and to that of madame pillon. my own wife and children are well.... ever affectionately yours, wm. james. _to henry james._ cambridge, _june , _. dear h.,--i came down from chocorua yesterday a.m. to go to-- mrs. whitman's funeral! she had lost ground steadily during the winter. the last time i saw her was five weeks ago, when at noon i went up to her studio thinking she might be there.... she told me that she was to go on the following day to the massachusetts general hospital, for a cure of rest and seclusion. there she died last friday evening, having improved in her cardiac symptoms, but pneumonia supervening a week ago. it's a great mercy that the end was so unexpectedly quick. what i had feared was a slow deterioration for a year or more to come, with all the nameless misery--peculiarly so in her case--of death by heart disease. as it was, she may be said to have died standing, a thing she always wished to do. she went to every dinner-party and evening party last winter, had an extension, a sort of ball-room, built to her mount vernon house, etc. the funeral was beautiful both in trinity church and at the grave in mt. auburn. i was one of the eight pall-bearers--the others of whom you would hardly know. the flowers and greenery had been arranged in absolutely whitmanian style by mrs. jack gardner, mrs. henry parkman, and sally fairchild. the scene at the grave was _beautiful_. she had no blood relatives, and all boston--i mean the few whom we know--had gone out, and seemed swayed by an overpowering emotion which abolished all estrangement and self-consciousness. it was the sort of ending that would please her, could she know of it. an extraordinary and indefinable creature! i used often to feel coldly towards her on account of her way of taking people as a great society "business" proceeding, but now that her agitated life of tip-toe reaching in so many directions, of genuinest amiability, is over, pure tenderness asserts its own. against that dark background of natural annihilation she seems to have been a pathetic little slender worm, writhing and curving blindly through its little day, expending such intensities of consciousness to terminate in that small grave. she was a most peculiar person. i wish that you had known her whole life here more intimately, and understood its significance. you might then write a worthy article about her. for me, it is impossible to define her. she leaves a dreadful vacuum in boston. i have often wondered whether i should survive her--and here it has come in the night, without the sound of a footstep, and the same world is here--but without her as its witness.... _to charles eliot norton._ cambridge, _june , _. dear charles,--i have just read the july "atlantic," and am so moved by your ruskin letters that i can't refrain from overflowing. they seem to me immortal documents--as the clouds clear away he will surely take his stable place as one of the noblest of the sons of men. mere sanity is the most philistine and (at bottom) unimportant of a man's attributes. the chief "cloud" is the bulk of "modern painters" and the other artistic writings, which have made us take him primarily as an art-connoisseur and critic. regard all that as inessential, and his inconsistencies and extravagances fall out of sight and leave the great heart alone visible. do you suppose that there are many other correspondents of r. who will yield up their treasures in our time to the light? i wish that your modesty had not suppressed certain passages which evidently expressed too much regard for yourself. the point should have been _his_ expression of that sort of thing--no matter to whom addressed! i understand and sympathize fully with his attitude about our war. granted him and his date, that is the way he ought to have felt, and i revere him perhaps the more for it.... s. w.'s sudden defection is a pathetic thing! it makes one feel like closing the ranks. affectionately--to all of you--including theodora, w. j. _to l. t. hobhouse._ chocorua, _aug. , _. dear brother hobhouse,--don't you think it a _tant soit peu_ scurvy trick to play on me ('tis true that you don't name me, but to the informed reader the reference is transparent--i say nothing of poor schiller's case) to print in the "aristotelian proceedings" (pages _ff_.)[ ] a beautiful duplicate of my own theses in the "will to believe" essay (which should have been called by the less unlucky title the _right_ to believe) in the guise of an _alternative and substitute_ for my doctrine, for which latter you, in the earlier pages of your charmingly written essay, _substitute a travesty_ for which i defy any candid reader to find a single justification in my text? my essay hedged the license to indulge in private over-beliefs with so many restrictions and signboards of danger that the outlet was narrow enough. it made of tolerance the essence of the situation; it defined the permissible cases; it treated the faith-attitude as a necessity for individuals, because the total "evidence," which only the race can draw, has to include their experiments among its data. it tended to show only that faith could not be absolutely _vetoed_, as certain champions of "science" (clifford, huxley, etc.) had claimed it ought to be. it was a function that might lead, and probably does lead, into a wider world. you say identically the same things; only, from your special polemic point of view, you emphasize more the dangers; while i, from _my_ polemic point of view, emphasized more the right to run their risk. your essay, granting that emphasis and barring the injustice to me, seems to me exquisite, and, taking it as a unit, i subscribe unreservedly to almost every positive word.--i say "positive," for i doubt whether you have seen enough of the extraordinarily invigorating effect of mind-_cum_-philosophy on certain people to justify your somewhat negative treatment of that subject; and i say "almost" because your distinction between "spurious" and "genuine" courage (page ) reminds me a bit too much of "true" and "false" freedom, and other sanctimonious come-offs.--could you not have made an equally sympathetic reading of _me_? i shouldn't have cared a copper for the misrepresentation were it not a "summation of stimuli" affair. i have just been reading bradley on schiller in the july "mind," and a. e. taylor on the will to believe in the "mcgill quarterly" of montreal. both are vastly worse than you; and i cry to heaven to tell me of what insane root my "leading contemporaries" have eaten, that they are so smitten with blindness as to the meaning of printed texts. or are we others absolutely incapable of making our meaning clear? i imagine that there is neither insane root nor unclear writing, but that in these matters each man writes from out of a field of consciousness of which the bogey in the background is the chief object. your bogey is superstition; my bogey is desiccation; and each, for his contrast-effect, clutches at any text that can be used to represent the enemy, regardless of exegetical proprieties. in my essay the evil shape was a vision of "science" in the form of abstraction, priggishness and sawdust, lording it over all. take the sterilest scientific prig and cad you know, compare him with the richest religious intellect you know, and you would not, any more than i would, give the former the exclusive right of way. but up to page of your essay he will deem you altogether on his side. pardon the familiarity of this epistle. i like and admire your theory of knowledge so much, and you re-duplicate (i _don't_ mean _copy_) my views so beautifully in this article, that i hate to let you go unchidden. believe me, with the highest esteem (plus some indignation, for you ought to know better!), yours faithfully, wm. james. _to edwin d. starbuck._ salisbury, conn. _aug, , _. dear starbuck,-- ...of the strictures you make [in your review of my "varieties"], the first one (undue emphasis on extreme case) is, i find, almost universally made; so it must in some sense be correct. yet it would never do to study the passion of love on examples of ordinary liking or friendly affection, or that of homicidal pugnacity on examples of our ordinary impatiences with our kind. so here it must be that the extreme examples let us more deeply into the secrets of the religious life, explain why the tamer ones value their religion so much, tame though it be, because it is so continuous with a so much acuter ideal. but i have long been conscious that there is on this matter something to be said which neither my critics have said, nor i can say, and which i must therefore commit to the future. the second stricture (in your paragraph on pages _ff_.) is of course deeply important, if true. at present i can see but vaguely just what sort of outer relations our inner organism might respond to, which our feelings and intellect interpret by religious thought. you ought to work your program for all it is worth in the way of growth in definiteness. i look forward with great eagerness to your forthcoming book, and meanwhile urge strongly that you should publish the advance article you speak of in hall's new journal. i can't see any possible risk. it will objectify a part of your material for you, and possibly, by arousing criticism, enable you to strengthen your points. your third stricture, about higher powers, is also very important, and i am not at all sure that you may not be right. i have frankly to confess that my "varieties" carried "theory" as far as i could then carry it, and that i can carry it no farther today. i can't see clearly over that edge. yet i am sure that tracks have got to be made there--i think that the fixed point with me is the conviction that our "rational" consciousness touches but a portion of the real universe and that our life is fed by the "mystical" region as well. i have no mystical experience of my own, but just enough of the germ of mysticism in me to recognize the region from which their voice comes when i hear it. i was much disappointed in leuba's review of my book in the "international journal of ethics." ... i confess that the way in which he stamps out all mysticism whatever, using the common pathological arguments, seemed to me unduly crude. i wrote him an expostulatory letter, which evidently made no impression at all, and which he possibly might send you if you had the curiosity to apply. i am having a happy summer, feeling quite hearty again. i congratulate you on being settled, though i know nothing of the place. i congratulate you and mrs. starbuck also on airy fairy lilian, who makes, i believe, the third. long may they live and make their parents proud. with best regards to you both, i am yours ever truly, wm. james. the "expostulatory" letter to professor leuba began with a series of objections to statements which he had made, and continued with the passage which follows. _to james henry leuba._ cambridge, _apr. , _. ...my personal position is simple. i have no living sense of commerce with a god. i envy those who have, for i know the addition of such a sense would help me immensely. the divine, for my _active_ life, is limited to abstract concepts which, as ideals, interest and determine me, but do so but faintly, in comparison with what a feeling of god might effect, if i had one. it is largely a question of intensity, but differences of intensity may make one's whole centre of energy shift. now, although i am so devoid of _gottesbewustsein_ in the directer and stronger sense, yet there is _something in me_ which _makes response_ when i hear utterances made from that lead by others. i recognize the deeper voice. something tells me, "_thither lies truth_"--and i am _sure_ it is not old theistic habits and prejudices of infancy. those are christian; and i have grown so out of christianity that entanglement therewith on the part of a mystical utterance has to be abstracted from and overcome, before i can listen. call this, if you like, my mystical _germ_. it is a very common germ. it creates the rank and file of believers. as it withstands in my case, so it will withstand in most cases, all purely atheistic criticism, but _interpretative_ criticism (not of the mere "hysteria" and "nerves" order) it can energetically combine with. your criticism seems to amount to a pure _non possumus_: "mystical deliverances must be infallible revelations in every particular, or nothing. therefore they are _nothing_, for anyone else than their owner." why may they not be _something_, although not everything? your only consistent position, it strikes me, would be a dogmatic atheistic naturalism; and, without any mystical germ in us, that, i believe, is where we all should _unhesitatingly_ be today. once allow the mystical germ to influence our beliefs, and i believe that we are in my position. of course the "subliminal" theory is an inessential hypothesis, and the question of pluralism or monism is equally inessential. i am letting loose a deluge on you! don't reply at length, or at all. _i_ hate to reply to anybody, and will sympathize with your silence. but i had to restate my position more clearly. yours truly, wm. james. the following document is not a letter, but a series of answers to a questionnaire upon the subject of religious belief, which was sent out in by professor james b. pratt of williams college, and to which james filled out a reply at an unascertained date in the autumn of that year. questionnaire[ ] it is being realized as never before that religion, as one of the most important things in the life both of the community and of the individual, deserves close and extended study. such study can be of value only if based upon the personal experiences of many individuals. if you are in sympathy with such study and are willing to assist in it, will you kindly write out the answers to the following questions and return them with this questionnaire, as soon as you conveniently can, to james b. pratt, shepard street, cambridge, mass. please answer the questions at length and in detail. do not give philosophical generalizations, but your own personal experience. . what does religion mean to you personally? is it ( ) a belief that something exists? _yes._ ( ) an emotional experience? _not powerfully so, yet a_ social _reality_. ( ) a general attitude of the will toward god or toward righteousness! _it involves these._ ( ) or something else? if it has several elements, which is for you the most important? _the social appeal for corroboration, consolation, etc., when things are going wrong with my causes (my truth denied)_, etc. . what do you mean by god? _a combination of ideality and (final) efficacity._ ( ) is he a person--if so, what do you mean by his being a person? _he must be cognizant and responsive in some way._ ( ) or is he only a force? _he must_ do. ( ) or is god an attitude of the universe toward you? _yes, but more conscious. "god" to me, is not the only spiritual reality to believe in. religion means primarily a universe of spiritual relations surrounding the earthly practical ones, not merely relations of "value," but agencies and their activities. i suppose that the chief premise for my hospitality towards the religious testimony of others is my conviction that "normal" or "sane" consciousness is so small a part of actual experience. what e'er be true, it is not true exclusively, as philistine scientific opinion assumes. the other kinds of consciousness bear witness to a much wider universe of experiences, from which our belief selects and emphasizes such parts as best satisfy our needs._ how do you apprehend his relation to mankind } and to you personally? } } _uncertain._ if your position on any of these matters is uncertain, } please state the fact. } . why do you believe in god? is it ( ) from some argument? _emphatically, no._ or ( ) because you have experienced his presence? _no, but rather because i need it so that it "must" be true._ or ( ) from authority, such as that of the bible or of some prophetic person? _only the whole tradition of religious people, to which something in me makes admiring response._ or ( ) from any other reason? _only for the social reasons._ if from several of these reasons, please indicate carefully the order of their importance. . or do you not so much _believe_ in god as want to _use_ him? _i can't use him very definitely, yet i believe._ do you accept him not so much as a real existent being, but rather as an ideal to live by? _more as a more powerful ally of my own ideals._ if you should become thoroughly convinced that there was no god, would it make any great difference in your life--either in happiness, morality, or in other respects? _hard to say. it would surely make some difference._ . is god very real to you, as real as an earthly friend, though different? _dimly [real]; not [as an earthly friend]._ do you feel that you have experienced his presence? if so, please describe what you mean by such an experience. _never._ how vague or how distinct is it? how does it affect you mentally and physically? if you have had no such experience, do you accept the testimony of others who claim to have felt god's presence directly? please answer this question with special care and in as great detail as possible. _yes! the whole line of testimony on this point is so strong that i am unable to pooh-pooh it away. no doubt there is a germ in me of something similar that makes response._ . do you pray, and if so, why? that is, is it purely from habit, and social custom, or do you really believe that god hears your prayers? _i can't possibly pray--i feel foolish and artificial._ is prayer with you one-sided or two-sided--_i.e._, do you sometimes feel that in prayer you receive something--such as strength or the divine spirit--from god? is it a real communion? . what do you mean by "spirituality"? _susceptibility to ideals, but with a certain freedom to indulge in imagination about them. a certain amount of "other worldly" fancy. otherwise you have mere morality, or "taste."_ describe a typical spiritual person. _phillips brooks._ . do you believe in personal immortality? _never keenly; but more strongly as i grow older._ if so, why? _because i am just getting fit to live._ . do you accept the bible as _authority_ in religious matters? are your religious faith and your religious life based on it? if so, how would your belief in god and your life toward him and your fellow men be affected by loss of faith in the _authority_ of the bible? _no. no. no. it is so human a book that i don't see how belief in its divine authorship can survive the reading of it._ . what do you mean by a "religious experience"? _any moment of life that brings the reality of spiritual things more "home" to one._ _to miss pauline goldmark._ chocorua, _sept. , _. dear pauline,--alice went off this morning to cambridge, to get the house ready for the advent of the rest of us a week hence--viz., wednesday the th. having breakfasted at : to bid her god speed, the weather was so lordly fine (after a heavy rain in the night) that i trudged across lots to our hill-top, which you never saw, and now lie there with my back against a stone, scribbling you these lines at half-past nine. the vacation has run down with an appalling rapidity, but all has gone well with us, and i have been extraordinarily well and happy, and mean to be a good boy all next winter, to say nothing of remoter futures. my brother henry stayed a delightful fortnight, and seemed to enjoy nature here intensely--found so much _sentiment_ and feminine delicacy in it all. it is a pleasure to be with anyone who takes in things through the eyes. most people don't. the two "savans" who were here noticed _absolutely nothing_, though they had never been in america before. naturally i have wondered what things your eyes have been falling on. many views from hill-tops? many magic dells and brooks? i hope so, and that it has all done you endless good. such a green and gold and scarlet morn as this would raise the dead. i hope that your sister susan has also got great good from the summer, and that the fair josephine is glad to be at home again, and your mother reconciled to losing you. perhaps even now you are preparing to go down. i have only written as a _lebenszeichen_ and to tell you of our dates. i expect no reply, till you write a word to say when you are to come to boston. unhappily we can't ask you to irving st, being mortgaged three deep to foreigners. ever yours, w. j. it will be recalled that the st. louis exposition had occurred shortly before the date of the last letter and had led a number of learned and scientific associations to hold international congresses in america. james kept away from st. louis, but asked several foreign colleagues to visit him at chocorua or in cambridge before their return to europe. among them were dr. pierre janet of paris and his wife, professor c. lloyd morgan of bristol, and professor harold höffding of copenhagen. _to f. c. s. schiller._ cambridge, _oct. , _. dear schiller,-- ...last night the janets left us--a few days previous, lloyd morgan. i am glad to possess my soul for a while alone. make much of dear old höffding, who is a good pluralist and irrationalist. i took to him immensely and so did everybody. lecturing to my class, he told against the absolutists an anecdote of an "american" child who asked his mother if god made the world in six days. "yes."--"the whole of it?"--"yes."--"then it is finished, all done?"--"yes."--"then in what business now is god?" if he tells it in oxford you must reply: "sitting for his portrait to royce, bradley, and taylor." don't return the "mcgill quarterly"!--i have another copy. good-bye! w. j. _to f. j. e. woodbridge._ cambridge, _feb. , _. dear woodbridge,--i appear to be growing into a graphomaniac. truth boils over from my organism as muddy water from a yellowstone geyser. here is another contribution to my radical empiricism, which i send hot on the heels of the last one. i promise that, with the possible exception of one post-scriptual thing, not more than eight pages of ms. long, i shall do no more writing this academic year. so if you accept this,[ ] you have not much more to fear.... i think, on the whole, that though the present article directly hitches on to the last words of my last article, "the thing and its relations," the article called the "essence of humanism" had better appear before it.... always truly yours wm. james. _to edwin d. starbuck._ cambridge, _feb. , _. dear starbuck,--i have read your article in no. of hall's journal with great interest and profit. it makes me eager for the book, but pray take great care of your style in that--it seems to me that this article is less well written than your "psychology of religion" was, less clear, more involved, more technical in language--probably the result of rapidity. our american philosophic literature is dreadful from a literary point of view. pierre janet told me he thought it was much worse than german stuff--and i begin to believe so; technical and semi-technical language, half-clear thought, fluency, and no composition! turn your face resolutely the other way! but i didn't start to say this. your thought in this article is both important and original, and ought to be worked out in the clearest possible manner.... your thesis needs to be worked out with great care, and as concretely as possible. it is a difficult one to put successfully, on account of the vague character of all its terms. one point you should drive home is that the anti-religious attitudes (leuba's, huxley's, clifford's), so far as there is any "pathos" in them, obey exactly the same logic. the real crux is when you come to define objectively the ideals to which feeling reacts. "god is a spirit"--_darauf geht es an_--on the last available definition of the term spirit. it may be very abstract. love to mrs. starbuck. yours always truly, wm. james. _to f. j. e. woodbridge._ [_feb. , ._] dear woodbridge,--here's another! but i solemnly swear to you that this shall be my very last offense for some months to come. this is the "postscriptual" article[ ] of which i recently wrote you, and i have now cleaned up the pure-experience philosophy from all the objections immediately in sight.... truly yours, wm. james. xv - _the last period (ii)--italy and greece--philosophical congress in rome--stanford university--the earthquake--resignation of professorship_ in the spring of an escape from influenza, from cambridge duties, and from correspondents, became imperative. james had long wanted to see athens with his own eyes, and he sailed on april for a short southern holiday. during the journey he wrote letters to almost no one except his wife. on his way back from athens he stopped in rome with the purpose of seeing certain young italian philosophers. a philosophical congress was being held there at the time; and james, though he had originally declined the invitation to attend it, inevitably became involved in its proceedings and ended by seizing the occasion to discuss his theory of consciousness. it was obvious that the appropriate language in which to address a full meeting of the congress would be french, and so he shut himself up in his hotel and composed "la notion de conscience." his experience in writing this paper threw an instructive sidelight on his process of composition. ordinarily--when he was writing in english--twenty-five sheets of manuscript, written in a large hand and corrected, were a maximum achievement for one day. the address in rome was not composed in english and then translated, but was written out in french. when he had finished the last lines of one day's work, james found to his astonishment that he had completed and corrected over forty pages of manuscript. the inhibitions which a habit of careful attention to points of style ordinarily called into play were largely inoperative when he wrote in a language which presented to his mind a smaller variety of possible expressions, and thus imposed limits upon his self-criticism. in the following year ( ), james took leave of absence from harvard in january and accepted an invitation from stanford university to give a course during its spring term. he planned the course as a general introduction to philosophy. had he not been interrupted by the san francisco earthquake, he would have rehearsed much of the projected "introductory textbook of philosophy," in which he meant to outline his metaphysical system. but the earthquake put an end to the stanford lectures in april, as the reader will learn more fully. in the ensuing autumn and winter ( ), james made the same material the basis of a half-year's work with his last harvard class. in november, , the lectures which compose the volume called "pragmatism" were written out and delivered in november at the lowell institute in boston. in january, , they were repeated at columbia university, and then james published them in the spring. the time had now come for him to stop regular teaching altogether. he had been continuing to teach, partly in deference to the wishes of the college; but it had become evident that he must have complete freedom to use his strength and time for writing when he could write, for special lectures, like the series on pragmatism, when such might serve his ends, and for rest and change when recuperation became necessary. so, in february, , he sent his resignation to the harvard corporation. the last meeting of his class ended in a way for which he was quite unprepared. his undergraduate students presented him with a silver loving-cup, the graduate students and assistants with an inkwell. there were a couple of short speeches, and words were spoken by which he was very much moved. unfortunately there was no record of what was said. _to mrs. james._ amalfi, _mar. , _. ...it is good to get something in full measure, without haggling or stint, and today i have had the picturesque ladled out in buckets full, heaped up and running over. i never realized the beauties of this shore, and forget (in my habit of never noticing proper names till i have been there) whether you have ever told me of the drive from sorrento to this place. anyhow, i wish that you could have taken it with me this day. "thank god for this day!" we came to sorrento by steamer, and at : got away in a carriage, lunching at the half-way village of positano; and proceeding through amalfi to ravello, high up on the mountain side, whence back here in time for a : o'clock dinner. practically six hours driving through a scenery of which i had never realized the beauty, or rather the interest, from previous descriptions. the lime-stone mountains are as _strong_ as anything in switzerland, though of course much smaller. the road, a _cornice_ affair cut for the most part on the face of cliffs, and crossing little ravines (with beaches) on the side of which nestle hamlets, is positively ferocious in its grandeur, and on the side of it the azure sea, dreaming and blooming like a bed of violets. i didn't look for such swiss strength, having heard of naught but beauty. it seems as if this were a race such that, when anyone wished to express an emotion of any kind, he went and built a bit of stone-wall and limed it onto the rock, so that now, when they have accumulated, the works of god and man are inextricably mixed, and it is as if mankind had been a kind of immemorial coral insect. every possible square yard is terraced up, reclaimed and planted, and the human dwellings are the fiercest examples of cliff-building, cave-habitation, staircase and foot-path you can imagine. how i do wish that you could have been along today.... _mar. , _. from half-past four to half-past six i walked alone through the _old_ naples, hilly streets, paved from house to house and swarming with the very poor, vocal with them too (their voices carry so that every child seems to be calling to the whole street, goats, donkeys, chickens, and an occasional cow mixed in), and no light of heaven getting indoors. the street floor composed of cave-like shops, the people doing their work on chairs in the street for the sake of light, and in the black inside, beds and a stove visible among the implements of trade. such light and shade, and grease and grime, and swarm, and apparent amiability would be hard to match. i have come here too late in life, when the picturesque has lost its serious reality. time was when hunger for it haunted me like a passion, and such sights would have then been the solidest of mental food. i put up then with such inferior substitutional suggestions as geneva and paris afforded--but these black old naples streets are not suggestions, they are the reality itself--full orchestra. i have got such an impression of the essential sociability of this race, especially in the country. a smile will go so far with them--even without the accompanying copper. and the children are so sweet. tell aleck to drop his other studies, learn _italian_ (real italian, not the awful gibberish i try to speak), cultivate his beautiful smile, learn a sentimental song or two, bring a tambourine or banjo, and come down here and fraternize with the common people along the coast--he can go far, and make friends, and be a social success, even if he should go back to a clean hotel of some sort for sleep every night.... _to his daughter._ on board s.s. orénogne, approaching pirÆus, greece, _apr. , _. darling peg,--your loving dad is surely in luck sailing over this almost oily sea, under the awning on deck, past the coast of greece (whose snow-capped mountains can be seen on the horizon), towards the piræus, where we are due to arrive at about two. i had some misgivings about the steamer from marseilles, but she has turned out splendid, and the voyage perfect. a -ton boat, bran new as to all her surface equipment, stateroom all to myself, by a happy stroke of luck (the boat being full), clean absolutely, large open window, sea like lake champlain, with the color of lake leman, about a hundred and twenty first-class passengers of the most interesting description, one sixth english archeologists, one sixth english tourists, one third french archeologists, etc.,--an international archeological congress opens at athens this week,--the rest dagoes _quelconques_, many distinguished men, almost all educated and pronounced individualities, and so much acquaintance and sociability, that the somewhat small upper deck on which i write resounds with conversation like an afternoon tea. the meals are tip-top, and the whole thing almost absurdly ideal in its kind. i only wish your mother could be wafted here for one hour, to sit by my side and enjoy the scene. the best feature of the boat is little miss boyd, the cretan excavatress, from smith college, a perfect little trump of a thing, who has been through the greco-turkish war as nurse (as well as being nurse at tampa during our cuban war), and is the simplest, most generally intelligent little thing, who knows greece by heart and can smooth one's path beautifully. waldstein of cambridge is on board, also m. sylvain of the théâtre français, and his daughter--going to recite prologues or something at the representation of sophocles's "antigone," which is to take place--he looking just like your uncle henry--both eminent comedians--i mean the two sylvains. on the bench opposite me is the most beautiful woman on board, a sort of mary salter translated into french, though she is with rather common men. well, now i will stop, and use my zeiss glass on the land, which is getting nearer. my heart wells over with love and gratitude at having such a family--meaning alice, you, harry, bill, aleck, and mother-in-law--and resolutions to live so as to be more worthy of them. i will finish this on land. * * * * * well, dear family,--we got in duly in an indescribable _embrouillement_ of small boats (our boatman, by the way, when miss boyd asked him his name, replied "dionysos"; our wine-bottle was labelled "john solon and co."), sailing past the island of Ægina and the bay of salamis, with the parthenon visible ahead--a worthy termination to a delightful voyage. we drove the three miles from the piræus in a carriage, common and very dusty country road, also close by the parthenon, through the cheap little town to this hotel, after which george putnam and i, washing our hands, strolled forth to see what we could, the first thing being mrs. sam hoar at the theatre of bacchus. then the rest of the acropolis, which is all and more than all the talk. there is a mystery of _rightness_ about that parthenon that i cannot understand. it sets a standard for other human things, showing that absolute rightness is not out of reach. but i am not in descriptive mood, so i spare you. suffice it that i couldn't keep the tears from welling into my eyes. "j'ai vu la beauté parfaite." santayana is in a neighboring hotel, but we have missed each other thrice. the forbeses are on the peloponnesus, but expected back tomorrow. well, dear ones all, good-night! thus far, and no farther! hence i turn westward again. the greek lower orders seem far less avid and rapacious than the southern italians. god bless you all. i must get to another hotel, and be more to myself. good and dear as the putnams are and extremely helpful as they've been, it keeps me too much in company. good-night again. your loving father, _respective_ husband, w. j. _to mrs. james._ rome, _apr. , _. ...strong telegraphed me yesterday from lausanne that he ... expected to be at cannes on the th of may. i was glad of this, for i had been feeling more and more as if i ought to stay here, and it makes everything square out well. this morning i went to the meeting-place of the congress to inscribe myself definitely, and when i gave my name, the lady who was taking them almost fainted, saying that all italy loved me, or words to that effect, and called in poor professor de sanctis, the vice president or secretary or whatever, who treated me in the same manner, and finally got me to consent to make an address at one of the general meetings, of which there are four, in place of sully, flournoy, richet, lipps, and brentano, who were announced but are not to come. i fancy they have been pretty unscrupulous with their program here, printing conditional futures as categorical ones. so i'm in for it again, having no power to resist flattery. i shall try to express my "does consciousness exist?" in twenty minutes--and possibly in the french tongue! strange after the deep sense of nothingness that has been besetting me the last two weeks (mere fatigue symptom) to be told that _my_ name was attracting many of the young professors to the congress! then i went to the museum in the baths of diocletian or whatever it is, off there by the r. r., then to the capitol, and then to lunch off the corso, at a restaurant, after buying a french book whose author says in his preface that sully, w. j., and bergson are his masters. and i am absolute in my own home!... _apr. , ._ p.m. ...if you never had a tired husband, at least you've got one now! the _ideer_ of being in such delightful conditions and interesting surroundings, and being conscious of nothing but one's preposterous physical distress, is too ridiculous! i have just said good-bye to my circle of admirers, relatively youthful, at the hotel door, under the pretext (a truth until this morning) that i had to get ready to go to lausanne tonight, and i taper off my activity by subsiding upon you. yesterday till three, and the day before till five, i was writing my address, which this morning i gave--in french. i wrote it carefully and surprised myself by the ease with which i slung the gallic accent and intonation, being excited by the occasion.[ ] janet expressed himself as _stupéfait_, from the linguistic point of view. the thing lasted minutes, and was followed by a discussion which showed that the critics with one exception had wholly failed to catch the point of view; but that was quite _en régle_, so i don't care; and i have given the thing to claparède to print in flournoy's "archives." the congress was far too vast, but filled with strange and interesting creatures of all sorts, and socially _very_ nutritious to anyone who can stand sociability without distress. a fête of some sort every day--this p.m. i have just returned from a great afternoon tea given us by some "minister" at the borghese palace--in the museum. (the king, you know, has bought the splendid borghese park and given it to the city of rome as a democratic possession _in perpetuo_. a splendid gift.) the pictures too! tonight there is a great banquet with speeches, to which of course i can't go. i lunched at the da vitis,--a big table full, she very simple and nice,--and i have been having this afternoon a very good and rather intimate talk with the little band of "pragmatists," papini, vailati, calderoni, amendola, etc., most of whom inhabit florence, publish the monthly journal "leonardo" at their own expense, and carry on a very serious philosophic movement, apparently _really_ inspired by schiller and myself (i never could believe it before, although ferrari had assured me), and show an enthusiasm, and also a literary swing and activity that i know nothing of in our own land, and that probably our damned academic technics and ph.d.-machinery and university organization prevents from ever coming to a birth. these men, of whom ferrari is one, are none of them _fach-philosophers_, and few of them teachers at all. it has given me a certain new idea of the way in which truth ought to find its way into the world. i have seen such a lot of _important_-looking faces,--probably everything in the stock in the shop-window,--and witnessed such charmingly gracious manners, that it is a lesson. the woodenness of our anglo-saxon social ways! i had a really splendid audience for quality this a.m. (about ), even though they didn't understand.... _to george santayana._ orvieto, _may , _. dear santayana,--i came here yesterday from rome and have been enjoying the solitude. i stayed at the exquisite albergo de russie, and didn't shirk the congress--in fact they stuck me for a "general" address, to fill the vacuum left by flournoy and sully, who had been announced and came not (i spoke _agin_ "consciousness," but nobody understood) and i got _fearfully tired_. on the whole it was an agreeable nightmare--agreeable on account of the perfectly charming _gentillezza_ of the bloody dagoes, the way they caress and flatter you--"il piu grand psicologo del mondo," etc., and of the elaborate provisions for general entertainment--nightmare, because of my absurd bodily fatigue. however, these things are "neither here nor there." what i really write to you for is to tell you to send (if not sent already) your "life of reason" to the "revue de philosophie," or rather to its editor, m. peillaube, rue des revues , and to the editor of "leonardo" (the great little florentine philosophical journal), sig. giovanni papini, borgo albizi, florence. the most interesting, and in fact genuinely edifying, part of my trip has been meeting this little _cénacle_, who have taken my own writings, _entre autres, au grand sérieux_, but who are carrying on their philosophical mission in anything but a technically serious way, inasmuch as "leonardo" (of which i have hitherto only known a few odd numbers) is devoted to good and lively literary form. the sight of their belligerent young enthusiasm has given me a queer sense of the gray-plaster temperament of our bald-headed young ph.d.'s, boring each other at seminaries, writing those direful reports of literature in the "philosophical review" and elsewhere, fed on "books of reference," and never confounding "Æsthetik" with "erkentnisstheorie." faugh! i shall never deal with them again--on _those_ terms! can't you and i, who in spite of such divergence have yet so much in common in our _weltanschauung_, start a systematic movement at harvard against the desiccating and pedantifying process? i have been cracking you up greatly to both peillaube and papini, and quoted you twice in my speech, which was in french and will be published in flournoy's "archives de psychologie." i hope you're enjoying the eastern empire to the full, and that you had some grecian "country life." münsterberg has been called to koenigsberg and has refused. better be america's ancestor than kant's successor! ostwald, to my great delight, is coming to us next year, not as your replacer, but in exchange with germany for f. g. peabody. i go now to cannes, to meet strong, back from his operation. ever truly yours, wm. james. _to mrs. james._ cannes, _may , _. ...i came sunday night, and this is saturday. the six days have been busy ones in one sense, but have rested me very much in another. no sight-seeing fatigues, but more usual, and therefore more normal occupations.... i have written some letters, long and short, to european correspondents since being here, have walked and driven with strong, and have had philosophy hot and heavy with him almost all the time. i never knew such an unremitting, untiring, monotonous addiction as that of his mind to truth. he goes by points, pinning each one definitely, and has, i think, the very clearest mind i ever knew. add to it his absolute sincerity and candor and it is no wonder that he is a "growing" man. i suspect that he will outgrow us all, for his rate accelerates, and he never stands still. he is an admirable philosophic figure, and i am glad to say that in most things he and i are fully in accord. he gains a great deal from such talks, noting every point down afterwards, and i gain great stimulation, though in a vaguer way. i shall be glad, however, on monday afternoon, to relax.... _to mrs. james._ [post-card] geneva, _may , _. so far, thank heaven, on my way towards home! a rather useful time with the superior, but sticky x----, at marseilles, and as far as lyons in the train, into which an hour beyond lyons there came (till then i was alone in my compartment) a spanish bishop, canon and "familar," an aged holy woman, sister of the bishop, a lay-brother and sister, a dog, and more baggage than i ever saw before, including a feather-bed. they spoke no french--the bishop about as much italian as i, and the lay-sister as much of english as i of spanish. they took out their rosaries and began mumbling their litanies forthwith, whereon i took off my hat, which seemed to touch them so, when they discovered i was a protestant, that we all grew very affectionate and i soon felt ashamed of the way in which i had at first regarded their black and superstitious invasion of my privacy. good, saintly people on their way to rome. i go now to our old haunts and to the flournoys'.... w. _to h. g. wells._ s. s. cedric, _june , _. my dear mr. wells,--i have just read your "utopia" (given me by f. c. s. schiller on the one day that i spent in oxford on my way back to cambridge, mass., after a few weeks on the continent), and "anticipations," and "mankind in the making" having duly preceded, together with numerous other lighter volumes of yours, the "summation of stimuli" reaches the threshold of discharge and i can't help overflowing in a note of gratitude. you "have your faults, as who has not?" but your virtues are unparalleled and transcendent, and i believe that you will prove to have given a shove to the practical thought of the next generation that will be amongst the greatest of its influences for good. all in the line of the english genius too, no wire-drawn french doctrines, and no german shop technicalities inflicted in an _unerbittlich consequent_ manner, but everywhere the sense of the full concrete, and the air of freedom playing through all the joints of your argument. you have a tri-dimensional human heart, and to use your own metaphor, don't see different levels projected on one plane. in this last book you beautifully soften cocksureness by the penumbra of the outlines--in fact you're a trump and a jewel, and for human perception you beat kipling, and for hitting off a thing with the right word, you are unique. heaven bless and preserve you!--you are now an eccentric; perhaps years hence you will figure as a classic! your samurai chapter is magnificent, though i find myself wondering what developments in the way of partisan politics those same samurai would develop, when it came to questions of appointment and running this or that man in. _that_ i believe to be human nature's ruling passion. live long! and keep writing; and believe me, yours admiringly and sincerely, wm. james. _to henry l. higginson._ cambridge, _july [ ]_. dear h.,--you asked me how rich i was getting by my own (as distinguished from _your_) exertions.... i find on reaching home today a letter from longmans, green & co. with a check ... which i have mailed to your house in state street.... this ought to please you slightly; but don't reply! instead, think of the virtues of roosevelt, either as permanent sovereign of this great country, or as president of harvard university. i've been having a discussion with fanny morse about him, which has resulted in making me his faithful henchman for life, fanny was so violent. think of the mighty good-will of him, of his enjoyment of his post, of his power as a preacher, of the number of things to which he gives his attention, of the safety of his second thoughts, of the increased courage he is showing, and above all of the fact that he is an open, instead of an underground leader, whom the voters can control once in four years, when he runs away, whose heart is in the right place, who is an enemy of red tape and quibbling and everything that in general the word "politician" stands for. that significance of him in the popular mind is a great national asset, and it would be a shame to let it run to waste until it has done a lot more work for us. his ambitions are not selfish--he wants to do good only! bless him--and damn all his detractors like you and f. m.![ ] don't reply, but vote! your affectionately wm. james. _to t. s. perry._ cambridge, _aug. , _. dear thos!--you're a _philosophe sans le savoir_ and, when you write your treatise against philosophy, you will be classed as the arch-metaphysician. every philosopher (w. j., _e.g._) pretends that all the others are metaphysicians against whom he is simply defending the rights of common sense. as for nietzsche, the worst break of his i recall was in a posthumous article in one of the french reviews a few months back. in his high and mighty way he was laying down the law about all the european countries. russia, he said, is "the only one that has any possible future--and that she owes to the strength of the principle of autocracy to which she alone remains faithful," unfortunately one can't appeal to the principle of democracy to explain japan's recent successes. i am very glad you've done something about poor dear old john fiske, and i should think that you would have no difficulty in swelling it up to the full "beacon biography" size. if you want an extra anecdote, you might tell how, when chauncey wright, chas. peirce, st. john green, warner and i appointed an evening to discuss the "cosmic philosophy," just out, j. f. went to sleep under our noses. i hope that life as a farmer agrees with you, and that your "womenkind" wish nothing better than to be farmers' wives, daughters or other relatives. unluckily we let our farm this summer; so i am here in cambridge with alice, both of us a prey to as bad an attack of grippe as the winter solstice ever brought forth. today, the th day, i am weaker than any kitten. don't ever let _your_ farm! affectionately, w. j. _to dickinson s. miller._ cambridge, _nov. , _. dear miller,--w. r. warren has just been here and says he has just seen you; the which precipitates me into a letter to you which has long hung fire. i hope that all goes well. you must be in a rather cheerful quarter of the city. do you go home sundays, or not? i hope that the work is congenial. how do you like your students as compared with those here? i reckon you get more out of your colleagues than you did here--barring of course _der einzige_. we are all such old stories to each other that we say nothing. santayana is the only [one] about whom we had any curiosity, and he has now quenched that. perry and holt have some ideas in reserve.... the fact is that the classroom exhausts our powers of speech. royce has never made a syllable of reference to all the stuff i wrote last year--to me, i mean. he may have spoken of it to others, if he has read, it, which i doubt. so we live in parallel trenches and hardly show our heads. santayana's book[ ] is a great one, if the inclusion of opposites is a measure of greatness. i think it will probably be reckoned great by posterity. it has no _rational_ foundation, being merely one man's way of viewing things: so much of experience admitted and no more, so much criticism and questioning admitted and no more. he is a paragon of emersonianism.--declare your intuitions, though no other man share them; and the integrity with which he does it is as fine as it is rare. and his naturalism, materialism, platonism, and atheism form a combination of which the centre of gravity is, i think, very deep. but there is something profoundly alienating in his unsympathetic tone, his "preciousness" and superciliousness. the book is emerson's first rival and successor, but how different the reader's feeling! the same things in emerson's mouth would sound entirely different. e. receptive, expansive, as if handling life through a wide funnel with a great indraught; s. as if through a pin-point orifice that emits his cooling spray outward over the universe like a nose-disinfectant from an "atomizer." ... i fear that the real originality of the book will be lost on nineteen-twentieths of the members of the philosophical and psychological association!! the enemies of harvard will find lots of blasphemous texts in him to injure us withal. but it is a great feather in our cap to harbor such an absolutely free expresser of individual convictions. but enough! "phil. " is going well. i think i _lecture_ better than i ever did; in fact i know i do. but this professional evolution goes with an involution of all miscellaneous faculty. i am well, and efficient enough, but purposely going slow so as to keep efficient into the palo alto summer, which means that i have written nothing. i am pestered by doubts as to whether to put my resignation through this year, in spite of opposition, or to drag along another year or two. i think it is inertia against energy, energy in my case meaning being my own man absolutely. american philosophers, young and old, seem scratching where the wool is short. important things are being published; but all of them too technical. the thing will never clear up satisfactorily till someone writes out its resultant in decent english.... * * * * * the reader will have understood "the palo alto summer" to refer to the lectures to be delivered at stanford university during the coming spring. the stanford engagement was again in james's mind when he spoke, in the next letter, of "dreading the prospect of lecturing till mid-may." _to dickinson s. miller._ cambridge, _dec. , _. dear miller,-- ...you seem to take radical empiricism more simply than i can. what i mean by it is the thesis that there is no fact "not actually experienced to be such." in other words, the concept of "being" or "fact" is not wider than or prior to the concept "content of experience"; and you can't talk of _experiences being_ this or that, but only of _things experienced as being_ this or that. but such a thesis would, it seems to me, if literally taken, force one to drop the notion that in point of fact one experience is _ex_ another, so long as the _ex_-ness is not itself a "content" of experience. in the matter of two minds not having the same content, it seems to me that your view commits you to an assertion _about their experiences_; and such an assertion assumes a realm in which the experiences lie, which overlaps and surrounds the "content" of them. this, it seems to me, breaks down radical empiricism, which i hate to do; and i can't yet clearly see my way out of the quandary. i am much boggled and muddled; and the total upshot with me is to see that all the hoary errors and prejudices of man in matters philosophical are based on something pretty inevitable in the structure of our thinking, and to distrust summary executions by conviction of contradiction. i suspect your execution of being too summary; but i have copied the last paragraph of the sheets (which i return with heartiest thanks) for the extraordinarily neat statement.... i dread the prospect of lecturing till mid-may, but the wine being ordered, i must drink it. i dislike lecturing more and more. have just definitely withdrawn my candidacy for the sorbonne job, with great internal relief, and wish i could withdraw from the whole business, and get at writing.[ ] not a line of writing possible this year--except of course occasional note-making. all the things that one is really concerned with are too nice and fine to use in lectures. you remember the definition of t. h. greene's student: "the universe is a thick complexus of intelligible relations." yesterday i got _my_ system similarly defined in an examination-book, by a student whom i appear to have converted to the view that "the universe is a vague pulsating mass of next-to-next movement, always feeling its way along to a good purpose, or trying to." that is about as far as lectures can carry them. i particularly like the "trying to." i wish i could have been at your recent discussion. i am getting impatient with the awful abstract rigmarole in which our american philosophers obscure the truth. it will be fatal. it revives the palmy days of hegelianism. it means utter relaxation of intellectual duty, and god will smite it. if there's anything he hates, it is that kind of oozy writing. i have just read busse's book, in which i find a lot of reality by the way, but a pathetic waste of work on side issues--for against the strong-heymans view of things, it seems to me that he brings no solid objection whatever. heymans's book is a wonder.[ ] good-bye, dear miller. _come to us_, if you can, as soon as your lectures are over. your affectionate w. j. _to dickinson s. miller._ [post-card] cambridge, _dec. . _. "my idea of algebra," says a non-mathematically-minded student, "is that it is a sort of form of low cunning." w. j. _to daniel merriman._ cambridge, _dec. , _. no, dear merriman, not "e'en for thy sake." after an unblemished record of declining to give addresses, successfully maintained for four years (i have certainly declined in the past twelve-month), i am not going to break down now, for abbot academy, and go dishonored to my grave. it is better, as the "bhagavat-gita" says, to lead your own life, however bad, than to lead another's, however good. emerson teaches the same doctrine, and i live by it as bad and congenial a life as i can. if there is anything that god despises more than a man who is constantly making speeches, it is another man who is constantly accepting invitations. what must he think, when they are both rolled into one? get thee behind me, merriman,--i 'm sure that your saintly partner would never have sent me such a request,--and believe me, as ever, fondly yours, wm. james. _to miss pauline goldmark._ el tovar, grand canyon, arizona, _jan. , _. dear paolina,--i am breaking my journey by a day here, and it seems a good place from which to date my new year's greeting to you. but we correspond so rarely that when it comes to the point of tracing actual words with the pen, the last impressions of one's day and the more permanent interest of one's life block the way for each other. i think, however, that a word about the canyon may fitly take precedence. it certainly is equal to the brag; and, like so many of the more stupendous freaks of nature, seems at first-sight smaller and more manageable than one had supposed. but it grows in immensity as the eye penetrates it more intimately. it is so entirely alone in character, that one has no habits of association with "the likes" of it, and at first it seems a foreign curiosity; but already in this one day i am feeling myself grow nearer, and can well imagine that, with greater intimacy, it might become the passion of one's life--so far as "nature" goes. the conditions have been unfavorable for intimate communion. three degrees above zero, and a spring overcoat, prevent that forgetting of "self" which is said to be indispensable to absorption in beauty. moreover, i have kept upon the "rim," seeing the canyon from several points some miles apart. i meant to go down, having but this day; but they couldn't send me or any one today; and i confess that, with my precipice-disliking soul, i was relieved, though it very likely would have proved less uncomfortable than i have been told. (i resolved to go, in order to be worthy of being your correspondent.) as chas. lamb says, there is nothing so nice as doing good by stealth and being found out by accident, so i now say it is even nicer to make heroic decisions and to be prevented by "circumstances beyond your control" from even trying to execute them. but if ever i get here in summer, i shall go straight down and live there. i'm sure that it is indispensable. but it is vain to waste descriptive words on the wondrous apparition, with its symphonies of architecture and of color. i have just been watching its peaks blush in the setting sun, and slowly lose their fire. night nestling in the depths. solemn, solemn! and a unity of design that makes it seem like an individual, an animated being. good-night, old chasm!... _to henry james._ stanford university, _feb. , _. beloved h.,--verily 'tis long since i have written to thee, but i have had many and mighty things to do, and lately many business letters to write, so i came not at it. your last was your delightful reply to my remarks about your "third manner," wherein you said that you would consider your bald head dishonored if you ever came to pleasing _me_ by what you wrote, so shocking was my taste.[ ] well! only write _for_ me, and leave the question of pleasing open! i have to admit that in "the golden bowl" and "the wings of the dove," you have succeeded _in getting there_ after a fashion, in spite of the perversity of the method and its _longness_, which i am not the only one to deplore. but enough! let me tell you of my own fortunes! i got here (after five pestilentially close-aired days in the train, and one entrancing one off at the grand canyon of the colorado) on the th, and have now given nine lectures, to enrolled students and about visitors, partly colleagues. i take great pains, prepare a printed syllabus, very fully; and really feel for the first time in my life, as if i were lecturing _well_. high time, after years of practice! it earns me $ , if i can keep it up till may th; but apart from that, i think it is a bad way of expending energy. i ought to be writing my everlastingly postponed book, which this job again absolutely adjourns. i can't write a line of it while doing this other thing. (a propos to which, i got a telegram from eliot this a.m., asking if i would be harvard professor for the first half of next year at the university of berlin. i had no difficulty in declining that, but i probably shall not decline _paris_, if they offer it to me year after next.) i am expecting alice to arrive in a fortnight. i have got a very decent little second story, just enough for the two of us, or rather amply enough, sunny, good fire-place, bathroom, little kitchen, etc., on one of the three residential streets of the university land, and with a boarding-house for meals just opposite, we shall have a sort of honeymoon picnic time. and, sooth to say, alice must need the simplification.... you've seen this wonderful spot, so i needn't describe it. it is really a miracle; and so simple the life and so benign the elements, that for a young ambitious professor who wishes to leave his mark on pacific civilization while it is most plastic, or for _any one_ who wants to teach and work under the most perfect conditions for eight or nine months, and _who is able to get to the east, or europe, for the remaining three_, i can't imagine anything finer. it is utopian. perfection of weather. cold nights, though above freezing. fire pleasant until o'clock a.m., then unpleasant. in short, the "simple life" with all the essential higher elements thrown in as communal possessions. the drawback is, of course, the great surrounding human vacuum--the historic silence fairly rings in your ears when you listen--and the social insipidity. i'm glad i came, and with god's blessing i may pull through. one calendar month is over, anyway. do you know aught of g. k. chesterton? i've just read his "heretics." a tremendously strong writer and true thinker, despite his mannerism of paradox. wells's "kipps" is good. good-bye. of course you 're breathing the fog of london while i am bathed in warmest lucency. keep well. your loving, w. j. _to theodore flournoy._ stanford university, _feb. , _. dear flournoy.--your post-card of jan. nd arrives and reminds me how little i have communicated with you during the past twelve months.... let me begin by congratulating mlle. alice, but more particularly mr. werner, on the engagement which you announce. surely she is a splendid prize for anyone to capture. i hope that it has been a romantic love-affair, and will remain so to the end. may her paternal and maternal example be the model which their married life will follow! they could find no better model. you do not tell the day of the wedding--probably it is not yet appointed. yes! [richard] hodgson's death was ultra-sudden. he fell dead while playing a violent game of "hand-ball." he was tremendously athletic and had said to a friend only a week before that he thought he could reasonably count on twenty-five years more of life. none of his work was finished, vast materials amassed, which no one can ever get acquainted with as he had gradually got acquainted; so now good-bye forever to at least two unusually solid and instructive books which he would have soon begun to write on "psychic" subjects. as a _man_, hodgson was splendid, a real man; as an investigator, it is my private impression that he lately got into a sort of obsession about mrs. piper, cared too little for other clues, and continued working with her when all the sides of her mediumship were amply exhibited. i suspect that our american branch of the s.p.r. will have to dissolve this year, for lack of a competent secretary. hodgson was our only worker, except hyslop, and _he_ is engaged in founding an "institute" of his own, which will employ more popular methods. to tell the truth, i 'm rather glad of the prospect of the branch ending, for the piper-investigation--and nothing else--had begun to bore me to extinction.... to change the subject--you ought to see this extraordinary little university. it was founded only fourteen years ago in the absolute wilderness, by a pair of rich californians named stanford, as a memorial to their only child, a son who died at . endowed with i know not how many square miles of land, which some day will come into the market and yield a big income, it has already funds that yield $ , yearly, and buildings, of really _beautiful_ architecture, that have been paid for out of income, and have cost over $ , , . (i mention the cost to let you see that they must be solid.) there are now students of both sexes, who pay nothing for tuition, and a town of , inhabitants has grown up a mile away, beyond the gates. the landscape is exquisite and classical, san francisco only an hour and a quarter away by train; the climate is one of the most perfect in the world, life is absolutely simple, no one being rich, servants almost unattainable (most of the house-work being done by students who come in at odd hours), many of them japanese, and the professors' wives, i fear, having in great measure to do their own cooking. no social excesses or complications therefore. in fact, nothing but essentials, and _all_ the essentials. fine music, for example, every afternoon, in the church of the university. there couldn't be imagined a better environment for an intellectual man to teach and work in, for eight or nine months in the year, if he were then free to spend three or four months in the crowded centres of civilization--for the social insipidity is great here, and the historic vacuum and silence appalling, and one ought to be free to change. unfortunately the authorities of the university seem not to be gifted with imagination enough to see its proper rôle. its geographical environment and material basis being unique, they ought to aim at unique quality all through, and get _sommités_ to come here to work and teach, by offering large stipends. they might, i think, thus easily build up something very distinguished. instead of which, they pay small sums to young men who chafe at not being able to travel, and whose wives get worn out with domestic drudgery. the whole thing _might_ be utopian; it _is_ only half-utopian. a characteristic american affair! but the half-success is great enough to make one see the great advantages that come to this country from encouraging public-spirited millionaires to indulge their freaks, however eccentric. in what the stanfords have already done, there is an assured potentiality of great things of _some_ sort for all future time. my coming here is an exception. they have had psychology well represented from the first by frank angell and miss martin; but no philosophy except for a year at a time. i start a new régime--next year they will have two good professors. i lecture three times a week to listeners, printing a syllabus daily, and making them read paulsen's textbook for examinations. i find it hard work,[ ] and only pray that i may have strength to run till june without collapsing. the students, though rustic, are very earnest and wholesome. i am pleased, but also amused, by what you say of woodbridge's journal: "la palme est maintenant à l'amérique." it is true that a lot of youngsters in that journal are doing some real thinking, but of all the _bad writing_ that the world has seen, i think that our american writing is getting to be the worst. x----'s ideas have unchained formlessness of expression that beats the bad writing of the hegelian epoch in germany. i can hardly believe you sincere when you praise that journal as you do. i am so busy teaching that i do no writing and but little reading this year. i have declined to go to paris next year, and also declined an invitation to berlin, as "international exchange" [professor]. the year after, if asked, i _may_ go to paris--but never to berlin. we have had ostwald, a most delightful human _erscheinung_, as international exchange at harvard this year. but i don't believe in the system.... _to f. c. s. schiller._ hotel del monte, monterey, cal., _apr. , _. ...what i really want to write about is papini, the concluding chapter of his "crepuscolo dei filosofi," and the february number of the "leonardo." likewise dewey's "beliefs and realities," in the "philosophical review" for march. i must be very damp powder, slow to burn, and i must be terribly respectful of other people, for i confess that it is only after reading these things (in spite of all you have written to the same effect, and in spite of your tone of announcing judgment to a sinful world), that i seem to have grasped the full import for life and regeneration, the _great_ perspective of the programme, and the renovating character for _all things_, of humanism; and the outwornness as of a scarecrow's garments, simulating life by flapping in the wind of nightfall, of all intellectualism, and the blindness and deadness of all who worship intellectualist idols, the royces and taylors, and, worse than all, their followers, who, with no inward excuse of nature (being too unoriginal really to _prefer_ anything), just blunder on to the wrong scent, when it is so easy to catch the right one, and then stick to it with the fidelity of inorganic matter. ha! ha! would that i were young again with this inspiration! papini is a jewel! to think of that little dago putting himself ahead of every one of us (even of you, with his _uomo-dio_) at a single stride. and what a writer! and what fecundity! and what courage (careless of nicknames, for it is so easy to call him now the cyrano de bergerac of philosophy)! and what humor and what truth! dewey's powerful stuff seems also to ring the death-knell of a sentenced world. yet none of _them_ will see it--taylor will still write his refutations, etc., etc., when the living world will all be drifting after _us_. it is queer to be assisting at the _éclosion_ of a great new mental epoch, life, religion, and philosophy in one--i wish i didn't have to lecture, so that i might bear some part of the burden of writing it all out, as we must do, pushing it into all sort of details. but i must for one year longer. we don't get back till june, but pray tell wells (whose address _fehlt mir_) to make our house his headquarters if he gets to boston and finds it the least convenient to do so. our boys will hug him to their bosoms. ever thine, w. j. the san francisco earthquake occurred at about five o'clock in the morning on april . rumors of the destruction wrought in the city reached stanford within a couple of hours and were easily credited, for buildings had been shaken down at stanford. miss l. j. martin, a member of the philosophical department, was thrown into great anxiety about relatives of hers who were in the city, and james offered to accompany her in a search for them, and left stanford with her by an early morning train. he also promised mrs. wm. f. snow to try to get her news of her husband. miss martin found her relatives, and james met dr. snow early in the afternoon, and then spent several hours in wandering about the stricken city. he subsequently wrote an account of the disaster, which may be found in "memories and studies."[ ] _to miss frances r. morse._ stanford university, _apr. , _. dearest fanny,--three letters from you and nary one from us in all these weeks! well, i have been heavily burdened, and although disposed to write, have kept postponing; and with alice--cooking, washing dishes and doing housework, as well as keeping up a large social life--it has been very much the same. all is now over, since the earthquake; i mean that lectures and syllabuses are called off, and no more exams to be held ("ill-wind," etc.), so one can write. we shall get east again as soon as we can manage it, and tell you face to face. we can now pose as experts on earthquakes--pardon the egotistic form of talking about the latter, but it makes it more real. the last thing bakewell said to me, while i was leaving cambridge, was: "i hope they'll treat you to a little bit of an earthquake while you're there. it's a pity you shouldn't have that local experience." well, when i lay in bed at about half-past five that morning, wide-awake, and the room began to sway, my first thought was, "here's bakewell's earthquake, after all"; and when it went crescendo and reached fortissimo in less than half a minute, and the room was shaken like a rat by a terrier, with the most vicious expression you can possibly imagine, it was to my mind absolutely an _entity_ that had been waiting all this time holding back its activity, but at last saying, "now, _go_ it!" and it was impossible not to conceive it as animated by a will, so vicious was the temper displayed--everything _down_, in the room, that could go down, bureaus, etc., etc., and the shaking so rapid and vehement. all the while no fear, only admiration for the way a wooden house could prove its elasticity, and glee over the vividness of the manner in which such an "abstract idea" as "earthquake" could verify itself into sensible reality. in a couple of minutes everybody was in the street, and then we saw, what i hadn't suspected in my room, the extent of the damage. wooden houses almost all intact, but every chimney down but one or two, and the higher university buildings largely piles of ruins. gabble and babble, till at last automobiles brought the dreadful news from san francisco. i boarded the only train that went to the city, and got out in the evening on the only train that left. i shouldn't have done it, but that our co-habitant here, miss martin, became obsessed by the idea that she _must_ see what had become of her sister, and i had to stand by her. was very glad i did; for the spectacle was memorable, of a whole population in the streets with what baggage they could rescue from their houses about to burn, while the flames and the explosions were steadily advancing and making everyone move farther. the fires most beautiful in the effulgent sunshine. every vacant space was occupied by trunks and furniture and people, and thousands have been sitting by them now for four nights and will have to longer. the fire seems now controlled, but the city is practically wiped out (thank heaven, as to much of its architecture!). the order has been wonderful, even the criminals struck solemn by the disaster, and the military has done great service. but you will know all these details by the papers better than i know them now, before this reaches you, and in three weeks we shall be back. i am very glad that jim's [putnam] lectures went off so well. he wrote me himself a good letter--won't you, by the way, send him this one as a partial answer?--and his syllabus was first-rate and the stuff must have been helpful. it is jolly to think of both him and marian really getting off together to enjoy themselves! but between vesuvius and san francisco enjoyment has small elbow-room. love to your mother, dearest fanny, to mary and the men folks, from us both. your ever affectionate, w. j. a few days after the earthquake, train-service from stanford to the east was reëstablished and james and his wife returned to cambridge. the reader will infer correctly from the next letter that henry james (and william james, jr., who was staying with him in rye) had been in great anxiety and had been by no means reassured by the brief cablegram which was the only personal communication that it was possible to send them during the days immediately following the disaster. _to henry james and william james, jr._ cambridge, _may , _. dearest brother and son,--your cablegram of response was duly received, and we have been also "joyous" in the thought of your being together. i knew, of course, henry, that you would be solicitous about us in the earthquake, but didn't reckon at all on the extremity of your anguish as evinced by your frequent cablegrams home, and finally by the letter to harry which arrived a couple of days ago and told how you were unable to settle down to any other occupation, the thought of our mangled forms, hollow eyes, starving bodies, minds insane with fear, haunting you so. we never reckoned on this extremity of anxiety on your part, i say, and so never thought of cabling you direct, as we might well have done from oakland on the day we left, namely april th. i much regret this callousness on our part. for _all_ the anguish was yours; and in general this experience only rubs in what i have always known, that in battles, sieges and other great calamities, the pathos and agony is in general solely felt by those at a distance; and although physical pain is suffered most by its immediate victims, those at the _scene of action_ have no _sentimental_ suffering whatever. everyone at san francisco seemed in a good hearty frame of mind; there was work for every moment of the day and a kind of uplift in the sense of a "common lot" that took away the sense of loneliness that (i imagine) gives the sharpest edge to the more usual kind of misfortune that may befall a man. but it was a queer sight, on our journey through the city on the th (eight days after the disaster), to see the inmates of the houses of the quarter left standing, all cooking their dinners at little brick camp-fires in the middle of the streets, the chimneys being condemned. if such a disaster had to happen, somehow it couldn't have chosen a better place than san francisco (where everyone knew about camping, and was familiar with the creation of civilizations out of the bare ground), and at five-thirty in the morning, when few fires were lighted and everyone, after a good sleep, was in bed. later, there would have been great loss of life in the streets, and the more numerous foci of conflagration would have burned the city in one day instead of four, and made things vastly worse. in general you may be sure that when any disaster befalls our country it will be _you_ only who are wringing of hands, and we who are smiling with "interest or laughing with gleeful excitement." i didn't hear one pathetic word uttered at the scene of disaster, though of course the crop of "nervous wrecks" is very likely to come in a month or so. although we have been home six days, such has been the stream of broken occupations, people to see, and small urgent jobs to attend to, that i have written no letter till now. today, one sees more clearly and begins to rest. "home" looks extraordinarily pleasant, and though damp and chilly, it is the divine budding moment of the year. not, however, the lustrous light and sky of stanford university.... i have just read your paper on boston in the "north american review." i am glad you threw away the scabbard and made your critical remarks so straight. what you say about "pay" here being the easily won "salve" for privations, in view of which we cease to "mind" them, is as true as it is strikingly pat. _les intellectuels_, wedged between the millionaires and the handworkers, are the really pinched class here. they feel the frustrations and they can't get the salve. _my_ attainment of so much pay in the past few years brings home to me what an all-benumbing salve it is. that whole article is of your best. we long to hear from w., jr. no word yet. your ever loving, w. j. in "the energies of men" there is a long quotation from an unnamed european correspondent who had been subjecting himself to yoga disciplinary exercise. what follows is a comment written upon the first receipt of the report quoted in the "energies." _to w. lutoslawski._ cambridge, _may , _. ...your long and beautiful letter about yoga, etc., greets me on my return from california. it is a most precious human document, and some day, along with that sketch of your religious evolution and other shorter letters of yours, it must see the light of day. what strikes me first in it is the evidence of improved moral "tone"--a calm, firm, sustained joyousness, hard to describe, and striking a new note in your epistles--which is already a convincing argument of the genuineness of the improvement wrought in you by yoga practices.... you are mistaken about my having tried yoga discipline--i never meant to suggest that. i have read several books (a. b., by the way, used to be a student of mine, but in spite of many noble qualities, he always had an unbalanced mind--obsessed by certain morbid ideas, etc.), and in the slightest possible way tried breathing exercises. these go terribly against the grain with me, are extremely disagreeable, and, even when tried this winter (somewhat perseveringly), to put myself asleep, after lying awake at night, failed to have any soporific effect. what impresses me most in your narrative is the obstinate strength of will shown by yourself and your chela in your methodical abstentions and exercises. when could i hope for such will-power? i find, when my general energy is _in anspruch genommen_ by hard lecturing and other professional work, that then particularly what little _ascetic_ energy i have has to be remitted, because the exertion of inhibitory and stimulative will required increases my general fatigue instead of "tonifying" me. but your sober experience gives me new hopes. your whole narrative suggests in me the wonder whether the yoga discipline may not be, after all, in all its phases, simply a methodical way of _waking up deeper levels of will-power than are habitually used_, and thereby increasing the individual's vital tone and energy. i have no doubt whatever that most people live, whether physically, intellectually or morally, in a very restricted circle of their potential being. they _make use_ of a very small portion of their possible consciousness, and of their soul's resources in general, much like a man who, out of his whole bodily organism, should get into a habit of using and moving only his little finger. great emergencies and crises show us how much greater our vital resources are than we had supposed. pierre janet discussed lately some cases of pathological impulsion or obsession in what he has called the "psychasthenic" type of individual, bulimia, exaggerated walking, morbid love of feeling pain, and explains the phenomenon as based on the underlying _sentiment d'incomplétude_, as he calls it, or _sentiment de l'irréel_ with which these patients are habitually afflicted, and which they find is abolished by the violent appeal to some exaggerated activity or other, discovered accidentally perhaps, and then used habitually. i was reminded of his article in reading your descriptions and prescriptions. may the yoga practices not be, after all, methods of getting at our deeper functional levels? and thus only be substitutes for entirely different crises that may occur in other individuals, religious crises, indignation-crises, love-crises, etc.? what you say of diet is in striking accordance with the views lately made popular by horace fletcher--i dare say you have heard of them. you see i am trying to generalize the yoga idea, and redeem it from the pretension that, for example, there is something intrinsically holy in the various grotesque postures of hatha yoga. i have spoken with various hindus, particularly with three last winter, one a yogi and apostle of vedanta; one a "christian" of scientific training; one a bramo-somaj professor. the former made great claims of increase of "power," but admitted that those who had it could in no way demonstrate it _ad oculos_, to outsiders. the other two both said that yoga was less and less frequently practised by the more intellectual, and that the old-fashioned _guru_ was becoming quite a rarity. i believe with you, fully, that the so-called "normal man" of commerce, so to speak, the healthy philistine, is a mere extract from the potentially realizable individual whom he represents, and that we all have reservoirs of life to draw upon, of which we do not dream. the practical problem is "how to get at them." and the answer varies with the individual. most of us never can, or never do get at them. _you_ have indubitably got at your own deeper levels by the yoga methods. i hope that what you have gained will never again be lost to you. you must keep there! _my_ deeper levels seem very hard to find--i am so rebellious at all formal and prescriptive methods--a dry and bony _individual_, repelling fusion, and avoiding voluntary exertion. no matter, art is long! and _qui vivra verra_. i shall try fasting and again try breathing--discovering perhaps some individual rhythm that is more tolerable.... _to john jay chapman._ cambridge, _may , _. dear old jack c.,--having this minute come into the possession of a new type-writer, what can i do better than express my pride in the same by writing to you?[ ] i spent last night at george dorr's and he read me several letters from you, telling me also of your visit, and of how well you seemed. for years past i have been on the point of writing to you to assure [you] of my continued love and to express my commiseration for your poor wife, who has had so long to bear the brunt of your temper--you see i have been there already and i know how one's irritability is exasperated by conditions of nervous prostration--but now i can write and congratulate you on having recovered, temper and all. (as i write, it bethinks me that in a previous letter i have made identical jokes about your temper which, i fear, will give mrs. chapman a very low opinion of my humoristic resources, and in sooth they are small; but we are as god makes us and must not try to be anything else, so pray condone the silliness and let it pass.) the main thing is that you seem practically to have recovered, in spite of everything; and i am heartily glad. i too am well enough for all practical purposes, but i have to go slow and not try to do too many things in a day. simplification of life and consciousness i find to be the great thing, but a hard thing to compass when one lives in city conditions. how our dear sarah whitman lived in the sort of railroad station she made of her life--i confess it's a mystery to me. if i lived at a place called barrytown, it would probably go better--don't you ever go back to new york to live! alice and i had a jovial time at sweet little stanford university. it was the simple life in the best sense of the term. i am glad for once to have been part of the working machine of california, and a pretty deep part too, as it afterwards turned out. the earthquake also was a memorable bit of experience, and altogether we have found it mind-enlarging and are very glad we ben there. but the whole intermediate west is awful--a sort of penal doom to have to live there; and in general the result with me of having lived years in america is to make me feel as if i had at least bought the right to a certain capriciousness, and were free now to live for the remainder of my days wherever i prefer and can make my wife and children consent--it is more likely to be in rural than in urban surroundings, and in the maturer than in the _rawrer_ parts of the world. but the first thing is to get out of the treadmill of teaching, which i hate and shall resign from next year. after that, i can use my small available store of energy in writing, which is not only a much more economical way of working it, but more satisfactory in point of quality, and more lucrative as well. now, j. c., when are you going to get at writing again? the world is hungry for your wares. no one touches certain deep notes of moral truth as you do, and your humor is _köstlich_ and _impayable_. you ought to join the band of "pragmatistic" or "humanistic" philosophers. i almost fear that barrytown may not yet have begun to be disturbed by the rumor of their achievements, the which are of the greatest, and seriously i du think that the world of thought is on the eve of a renovation no less important than that contributed by locke. the leaders of the new movement are dewey, schiller of oxford, in a sense bergson of paris, a young florentine named papini, and last and least worthy, w. j. h. g. wells ought to be counted in, and if i mistake not g. k. chesterton as well.[ ] i hope you know and love the last-named writer, who seems to me a great teller of the truth. his systematic preference for contradictions and paradoxical forms of statement seems to me a mannerism somewhat to be regretted in so wealthy a mind; but that is a blemish from which some of our very greatest intellects are not altogether free--the philosopher of barrytown himself being not wholly exempt. join us, o jack, and in the historic and perspective sense your fame will be secure. all future histories of philosophy will print your name. but although my love for you is not exhausted, my type-writing energy is. it communicates stiffness and cramps, both to the body and the mind. nevertheless i think i have been doing pretty well for a first attempt, don't you? if you return me a good long letter telling me more particularly about the process of your recovery, i will write again, even if i have to take a pen to do it, and in any case i will do it much better than this time. believe me, dear old j. c., with hearty affection and delight at your recovery--all these months i have been on the brink of writing to find out how you were--and with very best regards to your wife, whom some day i wish we may be permitted to know better. yours very truly, wm. james. everyone dead! hodgson, shaler, james peirce this winter--to go no further afield! _resserrons les rangs!_ _to henry james._ cambridge, _sept. , _. dearest h.,--i got back from the adirondacks, where i had spent a fortnight, the night before last, and in three or four hours alice, aleck and i will be spinning towards chocorua, it being now five a.m. elly [temple] hunter will join us, with grenville, in a few days; but for the most part, thank heaven, we shall be alone till the end of the month. i found two letters from you awaiting me, and two from bill. they all breathed a spirit of happiness, and brought a waft of the beautiful european summer with them. it has been a beautiful summer here too; and now, sad to say, it is counting the last beads of its chaplet of hot days out--the hot days which are really the absolutely friendly ones to man--you wish they would get cooler when you have them, and when they are departed, you wish you could have their exquisite gentleness again. i have just been reading in the volume by richard jefferies called the "life of the fields" a wonderful rhapsody, "the pageant of summer." it needs to be read twice over and very attentively, being nothing but an enumeration of all the details visible in the corner of an old field with a hedge and ditch. but rightly taken in, it is probably the highest flight of human genius in the direction of nature-worship. i don't see why it should not count as an immortal thing. you missed it, when here, in not getting to keene valley, where i have just been, and of which the sylvan beauty, especially by moonlight, is probably unlike aught that europe has to show. imperishable freshness!... this is definitely my last year of lecturing, but i wish it were my first of non-lecturing. simplification of the field of duties i find more and more to be the _summum bonum_ for me; and i live in apprehension lest the avenger should cut me off before i get my message out. not that the message is particularly needed by the human race, which can live along perfectly well without any one philosopher; but objectively i hate to leave the volumes i have already published without their logical complement. it is an esthetic tragedy to have a bridge begun, and stopped in the middle of an arch. but i hear alice stirring upstairs, so i must go up and finish packing. i hope that you and w. j., jr., will again form a harmonious combination. i hope also that he will stop painting for a time. he will do all the better, when he gets home, for having had a fallow interval. good-bye! and my blessing upon both of you. your ever loving, w. j. _to h. g. wells._ chocorua, _sept. , _. dear mr. wells,--i've read your "two studies in disappointment" in "harper's weekly," and must thank you from the bottom of my heart. _rem acu tetegisti!_ exactly that callousness to abstract justice is _the_ sinister feature and, to me as well as to you, the incomprehensible feature, of our u. s. civilization. how you hit upon it so neatly and singled it out so truly (and talked of it so tactfully!) god only knows: he evidently created you to do such things! i never heard of the macqueen case before, but i've known of plenty of others. when the ordinary american hears of them, instead of the idealist within him beginning to "see red" with the higher indignation, instead of the spirit of english history growing alive in his breast, he begins to pooh-pooh and minimize and tone down the thing, and breed excuses from his general fund of optimism and respect for expediency. "it's probably right enough"; "scoundrelly, as you say," but understandable, "from the point of view of parties interested"--but understandable in onlooking citizens only as a symptom of the moral flabbiness born of the exclusive worship of the bitch-goddess success. that--with the squalid cash interpretation put on the word success--is our national disease. hit it hard! your book _must_ have a great effect. do you remember the glorious remarks about success in chesterton's "heretics"? you will undoubtedly have written _the_ medicinal book about america. and what good humor! and what tact! sincerely yours, wm. james. _to miss theodora sedgwick._ chocorua, _sept. , _. dear theodora,--here we are in this sweet delicate little place, after a pretty agitated summer, and the quiet seems very nice. likewise the stillness. i have thought often of you, and _almost_ written; but there never seemed exactly to be time or place for it, so i let the sally of the heart to-you-ward suffice. a week ago, i spent a night with h. l. higginson, whom i found all alone at his house by the lake, and he told me your improvement had been continuous and great, which i heartily hope has really been the case. i don't see why it should not have been the case, under such delightful conditions. what good things friends are! and what better thing than lend it, can one do with one's house? i was struck by henry higginson's high level of mental tension, so to call it, which made him talk, incessantly and passionately about one subject after another, never running dry, and reminding me more of myself when i was twenty years old. it isn't so much a man's eminence of elementary faculties that pulls him through. they may be rare, and he do nothing. it is the steam pressure to the square inch behind that moves the machine. the amount of that is what makes the great difference between us. henry has it high. previous to seeing him i had spent ten days in beautiful keene valley, dividing them between the two ends. the st. hubert's end is, i verily believe, one of the most beautiful things in this beautiful world--too dissimilar to anything in europe to be compared therewith, and consequently able to stand on its merits all alone. but the great [forest] fire of four years ago came to the very edge of wiping it out! and any year it may go. i also had a delightful week all alone on the maine coast, among the islands. back here, one is oppressed by sadness at the amount of work waiting to be done on the place and no one to be hired to do it. the entire meaning and essence of "land" is something to be worked over--even if it be only a wood-lot, it must be kept trimmed and cleaned. and for one who _can_ work and who _likes_ work with his arms and hands, there is nothing so delightful as a piece of land to work over--it responds to every hour you give it, and smiles with the "improvement" year by year. i neither can work now, nor do i like it, so an irremediable bad conscience afflicts my ownership of this place. with cambridge as headquarters for august, and a little lot of land there, i think i could almost be ready to give up this place, and trust to the luck of hotels, and other opportunities of rustication without responsibility. but perhaps we can get this place [taken care of?] some day! i don't know how much you read. i've taken great pleasure this summer in bielshowski's "life of goethe" (a wonderful piece of art) and in birukoff's "life of tolstoy." alice is very well and happy in the stillness here. elly hunter is coming this evening, tomorrow the merrimans for a day, and then mrs. hodder till the end of the month. faithful love from both of us, dear theodora. your affectionate w. j. _to his daughter._ cambridge, _jan. , _, . p.m. sweet peglein,--just before tea! and your grandam, mar, and i going to hear the revd. percy grant in the college chapel just after. we are getting to be great church-goers. 't will have to be crothers next. he, sweet man, is staying with the brookses. after him, the christian science church, and after that the deluge! i have spent all day preparing next tuesday's lecture, which is my last before a class in harvard university, so help me god amen! i am almost _afraid_ at so much freedom. three quarters of an hour ago aleck and i went for a walk in somerville; warm, young moon, bare trees, clearing in the west, stars out, old-fashioned streets, not sordid--a beautiful walk. last night to bernard shaw's ex-_quis_-ite play of "cæsar and cleopatra"--exquisitely acted too, by f. robertson and maxine elliot's sister gert. your mar will have told you that, after these weeks of persistent labor, culminating in new york, i am going to take sanctuary on saturday the nd of feb. in your arms at bryn mawr. i do not want, wish, or desire to "talk" to the crowd, but your mother pushing so, if you and the philosophy club also pull, i mean pull _hard_, jimmy[ ] will try to articulate something not too technical. but it will have to be, if ever, on that saturday night. it will also have to be very short; and the less of a "reception," the better, after it. your two last letters were tiptop. i never seen such _growth_! i go to n. y., to be at the harvard club, on monday the th. kühnemann left yesterday. a most dear man. your loving dad. _to henry james and william james, jr._ cambridge, _feb. , _. dear brother and son,--i dare say that you will be together in paris when you get this, but i address it to lamb house all the same. you twain are more "blessed" than i, in the way of correspondence this winter, for you give more than you receive, bill's letters being as remarkable for wit and humor as henry's are for copiousness, considering that the market value of what he either writes or types is so many shillings a word. when _i_ write other things, i find it almost impossible to write letters. i've been at it _stiddy_, however, for three days, since my return from new york, finding, as i did, a great stack of correspondence to attend to. the first impression of new york, if you stay there not more than hours, which has been my limit for twenty years past, is one of repulsion at the clangor, disorder, and permanent earthquake conditions. but this time, installed as i was at the harvard club ( th st.) in the centre of the cyclone, i caught the pulse of the machine, took up the rhythm, and vibrated _mit_, and found it simply magnificent. i'm surprised at you, henry, not having been more enthusiastic, but perhaps that superbly powerful and beautiful subway was not opened when you were there. it is an _entirely_ new new york, in soul as well as in body, from the old one, which looks like a village in retrospect. the courage, the heaven-scaling audacity of it all, and the _lightness_ withal, as if there was nothing that was not easy, and the great pulses and bounds of progress, so many in directions all simultaneous that the coördination is indefinitely future, give a kind of _drumming background_ of life that i never felt before. i'm sure that once _in_ that movement, and at home, all other places would seem insipid. i observe that your book,--"the american scene,"--dear h., is just out. i must get it and devour again the chapters relative to new york. on my last night, i dined with norman hapgood, along with men who were successfully and happily in the vibration. h. and his most winning-faced young partner, collier, jerome, peter dunne, f. m. colby, and mark twain. (the latter, poor man, is only good for monologue, in his old age, or for dialogue at best, but he's a dear little genius all the same.) i got such an impression of easy efficiency in the midst of their bewildering conditions of speed and complexity of adjustment. jerome, particularly, with the world's eyes on his court-room, in the very crux of the thaw trial, as if he had nothing serious to do. balzac ought to come to life again. his rastignac imagination sketched the possibility of it long ago. i lunched, dined, and sometimes breakfasted, out, every day of my stay, vibrated between th st., seldom going lower, and th, with columbia university at th as my chief relay station, the magnificent space-devouring subway roaring me back and forth, lecturing to a thousand daily,[ ] and having four separate dinners at the columbia faculty club, where colleagues severally compassed me about, many of them being old students of mine, wagged their tongues at me and made me explain.[ ] it was certainly the high tide of my existence, so far as _energizing_ and being "recognized" were concerned, but i took it all very "easy" and am hardly a bit tired. total abstinence from every stimulant whatever is the one condition of living at a rapid pace. i am now going whack at the writing of the rest of the lectures, which will be more original and (i believe) important than my previous works.... _to moorfield storey._ cambridge, _feb._ , . dear moorfield,--your letter of three weeks ago has inadvertently lain unnoticed--not because it didn't do me good, but because i went to new york for a fortnight, and since coming home have been too druv to pay any tributes to friendship. i haven't got many letters either of condolence or congratulation on my retirement,--which, by the way, doesn't take place till the end of the year,--the papers have railroaded me out too soon.[ ] but i confess that the thought is sweet to me of being able to hear the college bell ring without any tendency to "move" in consequence, and of seeing the last thursday in september go by, and remaining in the country careless of what becomes of its youth. it's the _harness_ and the _hours_ that are so galling! i expect to shed truths in dazzling profusion on the world for many years. as for you, retire too! let you, eliot, roosevelt and me, first relax; then take to landscape painting, which has a very soothing effect; then write out all the truths which a long life of intimacy with mankind has recommended to each of us as most useful. i think we can use the ebb tide of our energies best in that way. i'm sure that _your_ contributions would be the most useful of all. affectionately yours, wm. james. _to theodore flournoy._ cambridge, _mar._ , . dear flournoy,--your dilectissime letter of the th arrived this morning and i must scribble a word of reply. that's the way to write to a man! caress him! flatter him! tell him that all switzerland is hanging on his lips! you have made me really _happy_ for at least twenty-four hours! my dry and businesslike compatriots never write letters like that. they write about themselves--you write about _me_. you know the definition of an egotist: "a person who insists on talking about _himself_, when you want to talk about _yourself_." reverdin has told me of the success of your lectures on pragmatism, and if you have been communing in spirit with me this winter, so have i with you. i have grown more and more deeply into pragmatism, and i rejoice immensely to hear you say, "je m'y sens tout gagné." it is absolutely the only philosophy with _no_ humbug in it, and i am certain that it is _your_ philosophy. have you read papini's article in the february "leonardo"? that seems to me really splendid. you say that my ideas have formed the real _centre de ralliment_ of the pragmatist tendencies. to me it is the youthful and _empanaché_ papini who has best put himself at the centre of equilibrium whence all the motor tendencies start. he (and schiller) has given me great confidence and courage. i shall dedicate my book, however, to the memory of j. s. mill. i hope that you are careful to distinguish in my own work between the pragmatism and the "radical empiricism" (conception de conscience,[ ] etc.) which to my own mind have no necessary connexion with each other. my first proofs came in this morning, along with your letter, and the little book ought to be out by the first of june. you shall have a very early copy. it is exceedingly untechnical, and i can't help suspecting that it will make a real impression. münsterberg, who hitherto has been rather pooh-poohing my thought, now, after reading the lecture on truth which i sent you a while ago, says i seem to be ignorant that kant ever wrote, kant having already said all that i say. i regard this as a very good symptom. the third stage of opinion about a new idea, already arrived: _ st_: absurd! _ nd_: trivial! _ rd_: _we_ discovered it! i don't suppose you mean to print these lectures of yours, but i wish you would. if you would translate my lectures, what could make me happier? but, as i said apropos of the "varieties," i hate to think of you doing that drudgery when you might be formulating your own ideas. but, in one way or the other, i hope you will join in the great strategic combination against the forces of rationalism and bad abstractionism! a good _coup de collier_ all round, and i verily believe that a new philosophic movement will begin.... i thank you for your congratulations on my retirement. it makes me very happy. a professor has two functions: ( ) to be learned and distribute bibliographical information; ( ) to communicate truth. the _ st_ function is the essential one, officially considered. the _ nd_ is the only one i care for. hitherto i have always felt like a humbug as a professor, for i am weak in the first requirement. now i can live for the second with a free conscience. i envy you now at the italian lakes! but good-bye! i have already written you a long letter, though i only _meant_ to write a line! love to you all from w. j. _to charles a. strong._ cambridge, _apr._ , . dear strong,--your tightly woven little letter reached me this a.m., just as i was about writing to you to find out how you are. your long silence had made me apprehensive about your condition, and this news cheers me up very much. rome is great; and i like to think of you there; if i spend another winter in europe, it shall be mainly in rome. you don't say where you're staying, however, so my imagination is at fault, i hope it may be at the _russie_, that most delightful of hotels. i am overwhelmed with duties, so i must be very brief _in re religionis_. your warnings against my superstitious tendencies, for such i suppose they are,--this is the second heavy one i remember,--touch me, but not in the prophetic way, for they don't weaken my trust in the healthiness of my own attitude, which in part (i fancy) is less remote from your own than you suppose. for instance, my "god of things as they are," being part of a pluralistic system, is responsible for only such of them as he knows enough and has enough power to have accomplished. for the rest he is identical with your "ideal" god. the "omniscient" and "omnipotent" god of theology i regard as a disease of the philosophy-shop. but, having thrown away so much of the philosophy-shop, you may ask me why i don't throw away the whole? that would mean too strong a negative will-to-believe for me. it would mean a dogmatic disbelief in any extant consciousness higher than that of the "normal" human mind; and this in the teeth of the extraordinary vivacity of man's psychological commerce with something ideal that _feels as if it_ were also actual (i have no such commerce--i wish i had, but i can't close my eyes to its vitality in others); and in the teeth of such analogies as fechner uses to show that there may be other-consciousness than man's. if other, then why not higher and bigger? why _may_ we not be in the universe as our dogs and cats are in our drawing-rooms and libraries? it's a will-to-believe on both sides: i am perfectly willing that others should disbelieve: why should you not be tolerantly interested in the spectacle of my belief? what harm does the little residuum or germ of actuality that i leave in god do? if ideal, why (except on epiphenomenist principles) may he not have got himself at least partly real by this time? i do not believe it to be healthy-minded to nurse the notion that ideals are self-sufficient and require no actualization to make us content. it is a quite unnecessarily heroic form of resignation and sour grapes. ideals ought to aim at the _transformation of reality_--no less! when you defer to what you suppose a certain authority in scientists as confirming these negations, i am surprised. of all insufficient authorities as to the total nature of reality, give me the "scientists," from münsterberg up, or down. their interests are most incomplete and their professional conceit and bigotry immense. i know no narrower sect or club, in spite of their excellent authority in the lines of fact they have explored, and their splendid achievement there. their only authority _at large_ is for _method_--and the pragmatic method completes and enlarges them there. when you shall have read my whole set of lectures (now with the printer, to be out by june st) i doubt whether you will find any great harm in the god i patronize--the poor thing is so largely an ideal possibility. meanwhile i take delight, or _shall_ take delight, in any efforts you may make to negate all superhuman consciousness, for only by these counter-attempts can a finally satisfactory modus vivendi be reached. i don't feel sure that i know just what you mean by "freedom,"--but no matter. have you read in schiller's new studies in humanism what seem to me two excellent chapters, one on "freedom," and the other on the "making of reality"?... _to f. c. s. schiller._ cambridge, _apr._ , . dear schiller,--two letters and a card from you within ten days is pretty good. i have been in new york for a week, so haven't written as promptly as i should have done. all right for the gilbert murrays! we shall be glad to see them. too late for "humanism" in my book--all in type! i dislike "pragmatism," but it seems to have the _international_ right of way at present. let's both go ahead--god will know his own! when your book first came i lent it to my student kallen (who was writing a thesis on the subject), thereby losing it for three weeks. then the grippe, and my own proofs followed, along with much other business, so that i've only read about a quarter of it even now. the essays on freedom and the making of reality seem to be written with my own heart's blood--it's startling that two people should be found to think so exactly alike. a great argument for the truth of what they say, too! i find that my own chapter on truth printed in the j. of p. already,[ ] convinces no one as yet, not even my most _gleichgesinnten_ cronies. it will have to be worked in by much future labor, for i _know_ that i see all round the subject and they don't, and i think that the theory of truth is the key to all the rest of our positions. you ask what i am going to "reply" to bradley. but why need one reply to everything and everybody? b.'s article is constructive rather than polemic, is evidently sincere, softens much of his old outline, is difficult to read, and ought, i should think, to be left to its own destiny. how sweetly, by the way, he feels towards me as compared with you! all because you have been too bumptious. i confess i think that your _gaudium certaminis_ injures your influence. _we_'ve got a thing big enough to set forth now affirmatively, and i think that readers generally hate _minute_ polemics and recriminations. all polemic of ours should, i believe, be either very broad statements of contrast, or fine points treated singly, and as far as possible impersonally. inborn rationalists and inborn pragmatists will never convert each other. we shall always look on them as spectral and they on us as trashy--irredeemably both! as far as the rising generation goes, why not simply express ourselves positively, and trust that the truer view quietly will displace the other. here again "god will know his own." false views don't need much direct refutation--they get superseded, and i feel absolutely certain of the supersessive power of pragmato-humanism, if persuasively enough set forth.... the world is wide enough to harbor various ways of thinking, and the present bradley's units of mental operation are so diverse from ours that the labor of reckoning over from one set of terms to the other doesn't bring reward enough to pay for it. of course his way of treating "truth" as an entity trying all the while to identify herself with reality, while reality is equally trying to identify herself with the more ideal entity truth, isn't _false_. it's one way, very remote and allegorical, of stating the facts, and it "agrees" with a good deal of reality, but it has so little pragmatic value that its tottering form can be left for time to deal with. the good it does him is small, for it leaves him in this queer, surly, grumbling state about the best that can be done by it for philosophy. his great vice seems to me his perversity in logical activities, his bad reasonings. i vote to go on, from now on, not trying to keep account of the relations of his with our system. he can't be influencing disciples, being himself nowadays so difficult. and once for all, there _will_ be minds who _cannot_ _help_ regarding our growing universe as _sheer trash_, metaphysically considered. yours ever, w. j. the next letter is addressed to an active promoter of reform in the treatment of the insane, the author of "a mind that found itself." the connecticut society for mental hygiene and the national committee for mental hygiene have already performed so great a public service, that anyone may now see that in the time had come to employ such instrumentalities in improving the care of the insane. but when mr. beers, just out of an asylum himself, appeared with the manuscript of his own story in his hands, it was not so clear that these agencies were needed, nor yet evident to anyone that he was a person who could bring about their organization. james's own opinion as to the treatment of the insane is not in the least overstated in the following letter. he recognized the genuineness of mr. beers's personal experience and its value for propaganda, and he immediately helped to get it published. from his first acquaintance with mr. beers, he gave time, counsel, and money to further the organization of the mental hygiene committee; and he even departed, in its interest, from his fixed policy of "keeping out of committees and societies." he lived long enough to know that the movement had begun to gather momentum; and he drew great satisfaction from the knowledge. _to clifford w. beers._ cambridge, _apr. , _. dear mr. beers,--you ask for my opinion as to the advisability and feasibility of a national society, such as you propose, for the improvement of conditions among the insane. i have never ceased to believe that such improvement is one of the most "crying" needs of civilization; and the functions of such a society seem to me to be well drawn up by you. your plea for its being founded before your book appears is well grounded, you being an author who naturally would like to cast seed upon a ground already prepared for it to germinate practically without delay. i have to confess to being myself a very impractical man, with no experience whatever in the details, difficulties, etc., of philanthropic or charity organization, so my opinion as to the _feasibility_ of your plan is worth nothing, and is undecided. of course the first consideration is to get your money, the second, your secretary and trustees. all that _i_ wish to bear witness to is the great need of a national society such as you describe, or failing that, of a state society somewhere that might serve as a model in other states. nowhere is there massed together as much suffering as in the asylums. nowhere is there so much sodden routine, and fatalistic insensibility in those who have to treat it. nowhere is an ideal treatment more costly. the officials in charge grow resigned to the conditions under which they have to labor. they cannot plead their cause as an auxiliary organization can plead it for them. public opinion is too glad to remain ignorant. as mediator between officials, patients, and the public conscience, a society such as you sketch is absolutely required, and the sooner it gets under way the better.[ ] sincerely yours, william james. at the date of the next letter william james, jr., was studying painting in paris. _to his son william._ cambridge, _apr. , _. dearest bill,--i haven't written to you for ages, yet you keep showering the most masterly and charming epistles upon all of us in turn, including the fair rosamund.[ ] be sure they are appreciated! your ma and i dined last night at ellen and loulie hooper's to meet rosalind huidekoper and her swain. loulie had heard from bancel [la farge] of your getting a "mention"--if for the model, i'm not surprised; if for the composition, i'm immensely pleased. of course you'll tell us of it! we've had a very raw cold april, and today it's blowing great guns from all quarters of the sky, preparatory to clearing from the n.w., i think. we are rooting up the entire lawn to a depth of inches to try to regenerate it. four diggers and two carts have been at it for a week, with your mother, bareheaded and cloaked, and ruddy-cheeked, sticking to them like a burr. she doesn't handle pick or shovel, but she stands there all day long in a way it would do your heart good to see; and so democratic and hearty withal that i'm sure they like it, though working under such a great taskmaster's eye deprives them of those intervals of stolen leisure so dear to "workers" of every description. she makes it up to them by inviting them to an afternoon tea daily, with piles of cake and doughnuts. i fancy they like her well. we've let chocorua to the goldmarks. aleck took his april recess along with his schoolmate henderson and gerald thayer, partly on the summit, partly around the base, of monadnock. the weather was fiercely wintry, and your mother and i said "poor blind little aleck--he's got to learn thru experience." [she said "through"!] he came back happier and more exultant than i've ever seen him, and six months older morally and intellectually for the week with gerald and abbott thayer. a great step forward. they burglarized the thayer house, and were tracked and arrested by the posse, and had a paragraph in the boston "globe" about the robbery. as the thing involved an ascent of monadnock after dark, with their packs, in deep snow, a day and a night there in snowstorm, a -mile walk and out of bed till a.m.. the night of the burglary, a "lying low" indoors all the next day at the hendersons' empty house, three in a bed and the police waking them at dawn, i ventured to suggest a doubt as to whether the thayer household were the greatest victims of the illustrious practical joke. "what," cries aleck, starting to his feet, "nine men with revolvers and guns around your bed, and a revolver pointed close to your ear as you wake--don't you call that a success, i should like to know?" the tom sawyer phase of evolution is immortal! gerald, who is staying with us now, is really a splendid fellow. i'm so glad he's taken to aleck, who now is aflame with plans for being an artist. i wish he might--it would certainly suit his temperament better than "business." there 's the lunch bell. i have got my "pragmatism" proofs all corrected. the most important thing i've written yet, and bound, i am sure, to stir up a lot of attention. but i'm dog-tired; and, in order to escape the social engagements that at this time of year grow more frequent than ever, i'm going off on friday (this is wednesday) to the country somewhere for ten days. if only there might be warm weather! we've just backed out from a dinner to william leonard darwin and his wife, and the geo. hodgeses, etc. w. t. stead spent three hours here on sunday and lectured in the union on monday--a splendid fellow whom i could get along with after a fashion. let no one run him down to you. i've been to new york to the peace congress. interesting but tiresome. mary salter is with us. margaret and rosamund just arrived at . no news else! yours, w. j. _to henry james._ salisbury, conn., _may , _. dearest h.-- ...i've been so overwhelmed with work, and the mountain of the _unread_ has piled up so, that only in these days here have i really been able to settle down to your "american scene," which in its peculiar way seems to me _supremely great_. you know how opposed your whole "third manner" of execution is to the literary ideals which animate my crude and orson-like breast, mine being to say a thing in one sentence as straight and explicit as it can be made, and then to drop it forever; yours being to avoid naming it straight, but by dint of breathing and sighing all round and round it, to arouse in the reader who may have had a similar perception already (heaven help him if he hasn't!) the illusion of a solid object, made (like the "ghost" at the polytechnic) wholly out of impalpable materials, air, and the prismatic interferences of light, ingeniously focused by mirrors upon empty space. but you _do_ it, that's the queerness! and the complication of innuendo and associative reference on the enormous scale to which you give way to it does so _build out_ the matter for the reader that the result is to solidify, by the mere bulk of the process, the like perception from which _he_ has to start. as air, by dint of its volume, will weigh like a corporeal body; so his own poor little initial perception, swathed in this gigantic envelopment of suggestive atmosphere, grows like a germ into something vastly bigger and more substantial. but it's the rummest method for one to employ systematically as you do nowadays; and you employ it at your peril. in this crowded and hurried reading age, pages that require such close attention remain unread and neglected. you can't skip a word if you are to get the effect, and out of worthy readers grow intolerant. the method seems perverse: "say it _out_, for god's sake," they cry, "and have done with it." and so i say now, give us _one_ thing in your older directer manner, just to show that, in spite of your paradoxical success in this unheard-of method, you _can_ still write according to accepted canons. give us that interlude; and then continue like the "curiosity of literature" which you have become. for gleams and innuendoes and felicitous verbal insinuations you are unapproachable, but the _core_ of literature is solid. give it to us _once_ again! the bare perfume of things will not support existence, and the effect of solidity you reach is but perfume and simulacrum. for god's sake don't _answer_ these remarks, which (as uncle howard used to say of father's writings) are but the peristaltic belchings of my own crabbed organism. for one thing, your account of america is largely one of its omissions, silences, vacancies. you work them up like solids, for those readers who already germinally perceive them (to others you are _totally_ incomprehensible). i said to myself over and over in reading: "how much greater the triumph, if instead of dwelling thus only upon america's vacuities, he could make positive suggestion of what in 'europe' or asia may exist to fill them." that would be nutritious to so many american readers whose souls are only too ready to leap to suggestion, but who are now too inexperienced to know what is meant by the contrast-effect from which alone your book is written. if you could supply the background which is the foil, in terms more full and positive! at present it is supplied only by the abstract geographic term "europe." but of course anything of that kind is excessively difficult; and you will probably say that you _are_ supplying it all along by your novels. well, the verve and animal spirits with which you can keep your method going, first on one place then on another, through all those tightly printed pages is something marvelous; and there are pages surely doomed to be immortal, those on the "drummers," _e.g._, at the beginning of "florida." they are in the best sense rabelaisian. but a truce, a truce! i had no idea, when i sat down, of pouring such a bath of my own subjectivity over you. forgive! forgive! and don't reply, don't at any rate in the sense of defending yourself, but only in that of attacking _me_, if you feel so minded. i have just finished the proofs of a little book called "pragmatism" which even you _may_ enjoy reading. it is a very "sincere" and, from the point of view of ordinary philosophy-professorial manners, a very unconventional utterance, not particularly original at any one point, yet, in the midst of the literature of the way of thinking which it represents, with just that amount of squeak or shrillness in the voice that enables one book to _tell_, when others don't, to supersede its brethren, and be treated later as "representative." i shouldn't be surprised if ten years hence it should be rated as "epoch-making," for of the definitive triumph of that general way of thinking i can entertain no doubt whatever--i believe it to be something quite like the protestant reformation. you can't tell how happy i am at having thrown off the nightmare of my "professorship." as a "professor" i always felt myself a sham, with its chief duties of being a walking encyclopedia of erudition. i am now at liberty to be a _reality_, and the comfort is unspeakable--literally unspeakable, to be my own man, after years of being owned by others. i can now live for truth pure and simple, instead of for truth accommodated to the most unheard-of requirements set by others.... your affectionate w. j. this letter appears never to have been answered, although henry james wrote on may , : "you shall have, after a little more patience, a reply to your so rich and luminous reflections on my book--a reply almost as interesting as, and far more illuminating than, your letter itself." _to f. c. s. schiller._ cambridge, _may , _. ...one word about the said proof [of your article]. it convinces me that you ought to be an academic personage, a "professor." for thirty-five years i have been suffering from the exigencies of being one, the pretension and the duty, namely, of meeting the mental needs and difficulties of other persons, needs that i couldn't possibly imagine and difficulties that i couldn't possibly understand; and now that i have shuffled off the professorial coil, the sense of freedom that comes to me is as surprising as it is exquisite. i wake up every morning with it. what! not to have to accommodate myself to this mass of alien and recalcitrant humanity, not to think under resistance, not to have to square myself with others at every step i make--hurrah! it is too good to be true. to be alone with truth and god! _es ist nicht zu glauben!_ what a future! what a vision of ease! but here you are loving it and courting it unnecessarily. you're fit to continue a professor in all your successive reincarnations, with never a release. it was so easy to let bradley with his approximations and grumblings alone. so few people would find these last statements of his seductive enough to build them into their own thought. but you, for the pure pleasure of the operation, chase him up and down his windings, flog him into and out of his corners, stop him and cross-reference him and counter on him, as if required to do so by your office. it makes very difficult reading, it obliges one to re-read bradley, and i don't believe there are three persons living who will take it in with the pains required to estimate its value. b. himself will very likely not read it with any care. it is subtle and clear, like everything you write, but it is too minute. and where a few broad comments would have sufficed, it is too complex, and too much like a criminal conviction in tone and temper. leave him in his _dunklem drange_--he is drifting in the right direction evidently, and when a certain amount of positive construction on our side has been added, he will say that that was what he had meant all along--and the world will be the better for containing so much difficult polemic reading the less. i admit that your remarks are penetrating, and let air into the joints of the subject; but i respectfully submit that they are not _called for_ in the interests of the final triumph of truth. that will come by the way of displacement of error, quite effortlessly. i can't help suspecting that you unduly magnify the influence of bradleyan absolutism on the undergraduate mind. taylor is the only fruit so far--at least within my purview. one practical point: i don't quite like your first paragraph, and wonder if it be too late to have the references to me at least expunged. i can't recognize the truth of the ten-years' change of opinion about my "will to believe." i don't find anyone--not even my dearest friends, as miller and strong--one whit persuaded. taylor's and hobhouse's attacks are of recent date, etc. moreover, the reference to bradley's relation to me in this article is too ironical not to seem a little "nasty" to some readers; therefore out with it, if it be not too late. see how different our methods are! all that humanism needs now is to make applications of itself to special problems. get a school of youngsters at work. refutations of error should be left to the rationalists alone. they are a stock function of that school.... i'm fearfully _tired_, but expect the summer to get me right again. affectionately thine, w. j. xvi - _the last period (iii)--hibbert lectures in oxford--the hodgson report_ the story of the remaining years is written so fully in the letters themselves as to require little explanation. angina pectoris and such minor ailments as are only too likely to afflict a man of sixty-five years and impaired constitution interrupted the progress of reading and writing more and more. physical exertion, particularly that involved in talking long to many people, now brought on pain and difficulty in breathing. but james still carried himself erect, still walked with a light step, and until a few weeks before his death wore the appearance of a much younger and stronger man than he really was. none but those near to him realized how often he was in discomfort or pain, or how constantly he was using himself to the limit of his endurance. he bore his ills without complaint and ordinarily without mention; although he finally made up his mind to try to discourage the appeals and requests of all sorts that still harassed him, by proclaiming the fact that he was an invalid. as his power of work became more and more reduced, frustrations became harder to bear, and the sense that they were unavoidable oppressed him. when an invitation to deliver a course of lectures on the hibbert foundation at manchester college, oxford, arrived, he was torn between an impulse to clutch at this engagement as a means of hastening the writing-out of certain material that was in his mind, and the fear, only too reasonable, that the obligation to have the lectures ready by a certain date would strain him to the snapping point. after some hesitation he agreed, however, and the lectures were, ultimately, prepared and delivered successfully. in proportion as the number of hours a day that he could spend on literary work and professional reading decreased, james's general reading increased again. he began for the first time to browse in military biographies, and commenced to collect material for a study which he sometimes spoke of as a "psychology of jingoism," sometimes as a "varieties of military experience." what such a work would have been, had he ever completed it, it is impossible to tell. it was never more than a rather vague project, turned to occasionally as a diversion. but it is safe to reckon that two remarkable papers--the "energies of men" (written in ) and the "moral equivalent of war" (written in )--would have appeared to be related to this study. that it would not have been a utopian flight in the direction of pacifism need hardly be said. however he might have described it, james was not disposed to underestimate the "fighting instinct." he saw it as a persistent and highly irritable force, underlying the society of all the dominant races; and he advocated international courts, reduction of armaments, and any other measures that might prevent appeals to the war-waging passion as commendable devices for getting along without arousing it. "the fatalistic view of the war-function is to me nonsense, for i know that war-making is due to definite motives and subject to prudential checks and reasonable criticisms, just like any other form of enterprise.... all these beliefs of mine put me squarely into the anti-militarist party. but i do not believe that peace either ought to be or will be permanent on this globe, unless the states pacifically organized preserve some of the old elements of army-discipline.... in the more or less socialistic future towards which mankind seems drifting, we must still subject ourselves collectively to those severities which answer to our real position upon this only partly hospitable globe. we must make new energies and hardihoods continue the manliness to which the military mind so faithfully clings. martial virtues must be the enduring cement; intrepidity, contempt of softness, surrender of private interest, obedience to command, must still remain the rock upon which states are built--unless, indeed, we wish for dangerous reactions against commonwealths fit only for contempt, and liable to invite attack whenever a centre of crystallization for military-minded enterprise gets formed anywhere in their neighborhood."[ ] any utterances about war, arbitration, and disarmament, are now likely to have their original meaning distorted by reason of what may justly be called the present fevered state of public opinion on such questions. it should be clear that the foregoing sentences were not directed to any particular question of domestic or foreign policy. they were part of a broad picture of the fighting instinct, and led up to a suggestion for diverting it into non-destructive channels. as to particular instances, circumstances were always to be reckoned with. james believed in organizing and strengthening the machinery of arbitration, but did not think that the day for universal arbitration had yet come. he saw a danger in military establishments, went so far--in the presence of the "jingoism" aroused by cleveland's venezuela message--as to urge opposition to any increase of the american army and navy, encouraged peace-societies, and was willing to challenge attention by calling himself a pacifist.[ ] "the first thing to learn in intercourse with others is non-interference with their own peculiar ways of being happy, provided those ways do not presume to interfere by violence with ours."[ ] tolerance--social, religious, and political--was fundamental in his scheme of belief; but he took pains to make a proviso, and drew the line at tolerating interference or oppression. where he recognized a military danger, there he would have had matters so governed as to meet it, not evade it. writing of the british garrison in halifax in , he said: "by jove, if england should ever be licked by a continental army, it would only be divine justice upon her for keeping up the tommy atkins recruiting system when the others have compulsory service." * * * * * in the case of one undertaking, which was much too troublesome to be reckoned as a diversion, he let himself be drawn away from his metaphysical work. he had taken no active part in the work of the society for psychical research since . in december, , richard hodgson, the secretary of the american branch, had died suddenly, and almost immediately thereafter mrs. piper, the medium whose trances hodgson had spent years in studying, had purported to give communications from hodgson's departed spirit. in james made a report to the s. p. r. on "mrs. piper's hodgson control." the full report will be found in its proceedings for o ,[ ] and the concluding pages, in which james stated, more analytically than elsewhere, the hypotheses which the phenomena suggested to him, have been reprinted in the volume of "collected essays and reviews." at the same time he wrote out a more popular statement, in a paper which will be found in "memories and studies." as to his final opinion of the spirit-theory, the following letter, given somewhat out of its chronological place, states what was still james's opinion in . _to charles lewis slattery._ cambridge, _apr. , _. dear mr. slattery,--my state of mind is this: mrs. piper has supernormal knowledge in her trances; but whether it comes from "tapping the minds" of living people, or from some common cosmic reservoir of memories, or from surviving "spirits" of the departed, is a question impossible for _me_ to answer just now to my own satisfaction. the spirit-theory is undoubtedly not only the most natural, but the simplest, and i have great respect for hodgson's and hyslop's arguments when they adopt it. at the same time the electric current called _belief_ has not yet closed in my mind. whatever the explanation be, trance-mediumship is an excessively complex phenomenon, in which many concurrent factors are engaged. that is why interpretation is so hard. make any use, public or private, that you like of this. in great haste, yours, wm. james. the next letter should be understood as referring to the abandonment of an excursion to lake champlain with henry l. higginson. the celebration alluded to in the last part of the letter had been arranged by the cambridge historical society in honor of the hundredth anniversary of the birth of louis agassiz. _to henry l. higginson._ chocorua, n. h., _circa, june , _. dear henry,--on getting your resignation by telephone, i came straight up here instead, without having time to write you my acceptance as i meant to; and now comes your note of the fourth, before i have done so. i am exceedingly sorry, my dear old boy, that it is the doctor's advice that has made you fear to go. i hope the liability to relapse will soon fade out and leave you free again; for say what they will of _alters schwäche_ and resignation to decay, and _entbehren sollst du, sollst entbehren_, it means only sour grapes, and the insides of one always want to be doing the free and active things. however, a river can still be lively in a shrunken bed, and we must not pay too much attention to the difference of level. if you should summon me again this summer, i can probably respond. i shall be here for a fortnight, then back to cambridge again for a short time. i thought the agassiz celebration went off very nicely indeed, didn't you?--john gray's part in it being of course the best. x---- was heavy, but respectable, and the heavy respectable _ought_ to be one ingredient in anything of the kind. but how well shaler would have done that part of the job had he been there! love to both of you! w. j. _to w. cameron forbes._ chocorua, _june , _. dear cameron forbes,--your letter from baguio of the th of april touches me by its genuine friendliness, and is a tremendous temptation. why am i not ten years younger? even now i hesitate to say no, and the only reason why i don't say yes, with a roar, is that certain rather serious drawbacks in the way of health of late seem to make me unfit for the various activities which such a visit ought to carry in its train. i am afraid my program from now onwards ought to be sedentary. i ought to be getting out a book next winter. last winter i could hardly do any walking, owing to a trouble with my heart. does your invitation mean to include my wife? and have you a good crematory so that she might bring home my ashes in case of need? i think if you had me on the spot you would find me a less impractical kind of an anti-imperialist than you have supposed me to be. i think that the manner in which the mckinley administration railroaded the country into its policy of conquest was abominable, and the way the country pucked up its ancient soul at the first touch of temptation, and followed, was sickening. but with the establishment of the civil commission mckinley did what he could to redeem things and now what the islands want is continuity of administration to form new habits that may to some degree be hoped to last when we, as controllers, are gone. when? that is the question. and much difference of opinion may be fair as to the answer. that we can't stay forever seems to follow from the fact that the educated philippinos differ from all previous colonials in having been inoculated before our occupation with the ideas of the french revolution; and that is a virus to which history shows as yet no anti-toxine. as i am at present influenced, i think that the u. s. ought to solemnly proclaim a date for our going (or at least for a plebiscitum as to whether we should go) and stand by all the risks. _some_ date, rather than indefinitely drift. and shape the whole interval towards securing things in view of the change. as to this, i may be wrong, and am always willing to be convinced. i wish i could go, and see you all at work. heaven knows i admire the spirit with which you are animated--a new thing in colonial work. it must have been a great pleasure to you to see so many of the family at once. i have seen none of them since their return, but hope to do so ere the summer speeds. the only dark spot was poor f----'s death. believe me, with affectionate regards, yours truly, wm. james. i am ordering a little book of mine, just out, to be sent to you. some one of your circle may find entertainment in it. _to f. c. s. schiller._ [post-card] chocorua, _june_ , . yours of the th ult. received and highly appreciated. i'm glad you relish my book so well. you go on playing the boreas and i shedding the sunbeams, and between us we'll get the cloak off the philosophic traveler! but _have_ you read bergson's new book?[ ]it seems to me that nothing is important in comparison with that divine apparition. all _our_ positions, real time, a growing world, asserted magisterially, and the beast intellectualism killed absolutely _dead_! the whole flowed round by a style incomparable as it seems to me. read it, and digest it if you can. much of it i can't yet assimilate. [_no signature._] _to henri bergson._ chocorua, _june , _. o my bergson, you are a magician, and your book is a marvel, a real wonder in the history of philosophy, making, if i mistake not, an entirely new era in respect of matter, but unlike the works of genius of the "transcendentalist" movement (which are so obscurely and abominably and inaccessibly written), a pure classic in point of form. you may be amused at the comparison, but in finishing it i found the same after-taste remaining as after finishing "madame bovary," such a flavor of persistent _euphony_, as of a rich river that never foamed or ran thin, but steadily and firmly proceeded with its banks full to the brim. then the aptness of your illustrations, that never scratch or stand out at right angles, but invariably simplify the thought and help to pour it along! oh, indeed you are a magician! and if your next book proves to be as great an advance on this one as this is on its two predecessors, your name will surely go down as one of the great creative names in philosophy. there! have i praised you enough? what every genuine philosopher (every genuine man, in fact) craves most is _praise_--although the philosophers generally call it "recognition"! if you want still more praise, let me know, and i will send it, for my features have been on a broad smile from the first page to the last, at the chain of felicities that never stopped. i feel rejuvenated. as to the content of it, i am not in a mood at present to make any definite reaction. there is so much that is absolutely new that it will take a long time for your contemporaries to assimilate it, and i imagine that much of the development of detail will have to be performed by younger men whom your ideas will stimulate to coruscate in manners unexpected by yourself. to me at present the vital achievement of the book is that it inflicts an irrecoverable death-wound upon intellectualism. it can never resuscitate! but it will die hard, for all the inertia of the past is in it, and the spirit of professionalism and pedantry as well as the æsthetic-intellectual delight of dealing with categories logically distinct yet logically connected, will rally for a desperate defense. the _élan vital_, all contentless and vague as you are obliged to leave it, will be an easy substitute to make fun of. but the beast _has_ its death-wound now, and the manner in which you have inflicted it (interval _versus_ temps d'arrêt, etc.) is masterly in the extreme. i don't know why this later _rédaction_ of your critique of the mathematics of movement has seemed to me so much more telling than the early statement--i suppose it is because of the wider _use_ made of the principle in the book. you will be receiving my own little "pragmatism" book simultaneously with this letter. how jejune and inconsiderable it seems in comparison with your great system! but it is so congruent with parts of your system, fits so well into interstices thereof, that you will easily understand why i am so enthusiastic. i feel that at bottom we are fighting the same fight, you a commander, i in the ranks. the position we are rescuing is "tychism" and a really growing world. but whereas i have hitherto found no better way of defending tychism than by affirming the spontaneous addition of _discrete_ elements of being (or their subtraction), thereby playing the game with intellectualist weapons, you set things straight at a single stroke by your fundamental conception of the continuously creative nature of reality. i think that one of your happiest strokes is your reduction of "finality," as usually taken, to its status alongside of efficient causality, as the twin-daughters of intellectualism. but this vaguer and truer finality restored to its rights will be a difficult thing to give content to. altogether your reality lurks so in the background, in this book, that i am wondering whether you _couldn't_ give it any more development _in concreto_ here, or whether you perhaps were holding back developments, already in your possession, for a future volume. they are sure to come to you later anyhow, and to make a new volume; and altogether, the clash of these ideas of yours with the traditional ones will be sure to make sparks fly that will illuminate all sorts of dark places and bring innumerable new considerations into view. but the process may be slow, for the ideas are so revolutionary. were it not for your style, your book might last years unnoticed; but your way of writing is so absolutely commanding that your theories have to be attended to immediately. i feel very much in the dark still about the relations of the progressive to the regressive movement, and this great precipitate of nature subject to static categories. with a frank pluralism of _beings_ endowed with vital impulses you can get oppositions and compromises easily enough, and a stagnant deposit; but after my one reading i don't exactly "catch on" to the way in which the continuum of reality resists itself so as to have to act, etc., etc. the only part of the work which i felt like positively criticising was the discussion of the idea of nonentity, which seemed to me somewhat overelaborated, and yet didn't leave me with a sense that the last word had been said on the subject. but all these things must be very slowly digested by me. i can see that, when the tide turns in your favor, many previous tendencies in philosophy will start up, crying "this is nothing but what _we_ have contended for all along." schopenhauer's blind will, hartmann's unconscious, fichte's aboriginal freedom (reëdited at harvard in the most "unreal" possible way by münsterberg) will all be claimants for priority. but no matter--all the better if you are in some ancient lines of tendency. mysticism also must make claims and doubtless just ones. i say nothing more now--this is just my first reaction; but i am so enthusiastic as to have said only two days ago, "i thank heaven that i have lived to this date--that i have witnessed the russo-japanese war, and seen bergson's new book appear--the two great modern turning-points of history and of thought!" best congratulations and cordialest regards! wm. james. _to t. s. perry._ silver lake, n.h., _june , _. dear thos.,--yours of the th is at hand, true philosopher that you are. no one but one bawn & bred in the philosophic briar-patch could appreciate bergson as you do, without in the least understanding him. i am in an identical predicament. this last of his is the _divinest_ book that has appeared in _my_ life-time, and (unless i am the falsest prophet) it is destined to rank with the greatest works of all time. the style of it is as wonderful as the matter. by all means send it to chas. peirce, but address him prescott hall, cambridge. i am sending you my "pragmatism," which bergson's work makes seem like small potatoes enough. are you going to russia to take stolypin's place? or to head the revolution? i would i were at giverny to talk metaphysics with you, and enjoy a country where i am not responsible for the droughts and the garden. have been here two weeks at chocorua, getting our place ready for a tenant. affectionate regards to you all. w. j. _to dickinson s. miller._ lincoln, mass., _aug. , _. dear miller,--i got your letter about "pragmatism," etc., some time ago. i hear that you are booked to review it for the "hibbert journal." lay on, macduff! as hard as you can--i want to have the weak places pointed out. i sent you a week ago a "journal of philosophy"[ ] with a word more about truth in it, written _at_ you mainly; but i hardly dare hope that i have cleared up my position. a letter from strong, two days ago, written after receiving a proof of that paper, still thinks that i deny the existence of realities outside of the thinker; and [r. b.] perry, who seems to me to have written far and away the most important critical remarks on pragmatism (possibly the _only_ important ones), accused pragmatists (though he doesn't name _me_) of ignoring or denying that the real object plays any part in deciding what ideas are true. i confess that such misunderstandings seem to me hardly credible, and cast a "lurid light" on the mutual understandings of philosophers generally. apparently it all comes from the _word_ pragmatism--and a most unlucky word it may prove to have been. i am a natural realist. the world _per se_ may be likened to a cast of beans on a table. by themselves they spell nothing. an onlooker may group them as he likes. he may simply count them all and map them. he may select groups and name these capriciously, or name them to suit certain extrinsic purposes of his. whatever he does, so long as he _takes account_ of them, his account is neither false nor irrelevant. if neither, why not call it true? it _fits_ the beans-_minus_-him, and _expresses_ the _total_ fact, of beans-_plus_-him. truth in this total sense is partially ambiguous, then. if he simply counts or maps, he obeys a subjective interest as much as if he traces figures. let that stand for pure "intellectual" treatment of the beans, while grouping them variously stands for non-intellectual interests. all that schiller and i contend for is that there is _no_ "truth" without _some_ interest, and that non-intellectual interests play a part as well as intellectual ones. whereupon we are accused of denying the beans, or denying being in anyway constrained by them! it's too silly!... _to miss pauline goldmark._ putnam shanty, keene valley, _sept. , _. dear pauline,-- ...no "camping" for me this side the grave! a party of fourteen left here yesterday for panther gorge, meaning to return by the range, as they call your "summit trail." apparently it is easier than when on that to me memorable day we took it, for charley putnam swears he has done it in five and a half hours. i don't well understand the difference, except that they don't reach haystack over marcy as we did, and there is now a good trail. past and future play such a part in the way one feels the present. to these youngsters, as to me long ago, and to you today, the rapture of the connexion with these hills is partly made of the sense of future power over them and their like. that being removed from me, i can only mix memories of past power over them with the present. but i have always observed a curious _fading_ in what tennyson calls the "passion" of the past. memories awaken little or no sentiment when they are too old; and i have taken everything here so prosily this summer that i find myself wondering whether the time-limit has been exceeded, and whether for emotional purpose i am a new self. we know not what we shall become; and that is what makes life so interesting. always a turn of the kaleidoscope; and when one is utterly maimed for action, then the glorious time for _reading_ other men's lives! i fairly revel in that prospect, which in its full richness has to be postponed, for i'm not sufficiently maimed-for-action yet. by going slowly and alone, i find i can compass such things as the giant's washbowl, beaver meadow falls, etc., and they make me feel very good. i have even been dallying with the temptation to visit cameron forbes at manila; but i have put it behind me for this year at least. i think i shall probably give some more lectures (of a much less "popular" sort) at columbia next winter--so you see there's life in the old dog yet. nevertheless, how different from the life that courses through _your_ arteries and capillaries! today is the first honestly fine day there has been since i arrived here on the nd. (they must have been heavily rained on at panther gorge yesterday evening.) after writing a couple more letters i will take a book and repair to "mosso's ledge" for the enjoyment of the prospect.... _to w. jerusalem_ (vienna). st. hubert's, n.y. _sept._ , . dear professor jerusalem,--your letter of the st of september, forwarded from cambridge, reaches me here in the adirondack mountains today. i am glad the publisher is found, and that you are enjoying the drudgery of translating ["pragmatism"]. also that you find the book more and more in agreement with your own philosophy. i fear that its untechnicality of style--or rather its deliberate _anti_-technicality--will make the german _gelehrtes publikum_,[ ] as well as the professors, consider it _oberflächliches zeug_[ ]--which it assuredly is not, although, being only a sketch, it ought to be followed by something _tighter_ and abounding in discriminations. pragmatism is an unlucky word in some respects, and the two meanings i give for it are somewhat heterogeneous. but it was already in vogue in france and italy as well as in england and america, and it was _tactically_ advantageous to use it.... _to henry james._ stonehurst, intervale, n.h., _oct._ , . dearest brother,--i write this at the [james] bryces', who have taken the merrimans' house for the summer, and whither i came the day before yesterday, after closing our chocorua house, and seeing alice leave for home. we had been there a fortnight, trying to get some work done, and having to do most of it with our own hands, or rather with alice's heroic hands, for mine are worth almost nothing in these degenerate days. it is enough to make your heart break to see the scarcity of "labor," and the whole country tells the same story. our future at chocorua is a somewhat problematic one, though i think we shall manage to pass next summer there and get it into better shape for good renting, thereafter, at any cost (not the renting but the shaping). after that what _i_ want is a free foot, and the children are now not dependent on a family summer any longer.... i spent the first three weeks of september--warm ones--in my beloved and exquisite keene valley, where i was able to do a good deal of uphill walking, with good rather than bad effects, much to my joy. yesterday i took a three hours walk here, three quarters of an hour of it uphill. i have to go alone, and slowly; but it's none the worse for that and makes one feel like old times. i leave this p.m. for two more days at chocorua--at the hotel. the fall is late, but the woods are beginning to redden beautifully. with the sun behind them, some maples look like stained-glass windows. but the penury of the human part of this region is depressing, and i begin to have an appetite for europe again. alice too! to be at cambridge with no lecturing and no students to nurse along with their thesis-work is an almost incredibly delightful prospect. i am going to settle down to the composition of another small book, more original and ground-breaking than anything i have yet put forth(!), which i expect to print by the spring; after which i can lie back and write at leisure more routine things for the rest of my days. the bryces are wholly unchanged, excellent friends and hosts, and i like her as much as him. the trouble with him is that his insatiable love of information makes him try to pump _you_ all the time instead of letting you pump _him_, and i have let my own tongue wag so, that, when gone, i shall feel like a fool, and remember all kinds of things that i have forgotten to ask him. i have just been reading to mrs. b., with great gusto on her part and renewed gusto on mine, the first few pages of your chapter on florida in "the american scene." _köstlich_ stuff! i had just been reading to myself almost pages of the new england part of the book, and fairly melting with delight over the chocorua portion. evidently that book will last, and bear reading over and over again--a few pages at a time, which is the right way for "literature" fitly so called. it all makes me wish that we had you here again, and you will doubtless soon come. i mustn't forget to thank you for the gold pencil-case souvenir. i have had a plated silver one for a year past, now worn through, and experienced what a "comfort" they are. good-bye, and heaven bless you. your loving w. j. _to theodore flournoy._ cambridge, _jan._ , . ...i am just back from the american philosophical association, which had a really delightful meeting at cornell university in the state of new york. mostly epistemological. we are getting to know each other and understand each other better, and shall do so year by year, everyone cursed my doctrine and schiller's about "truth." i think it largely is misunderstanding, but it is also due to our having expressed our meaning very ill. the general blanket-word pragmatism covers so many different opinions, that it naturally arouses irritation to see it flourished as a revolutionary flag. i am also partly to blame here; but it was _tactically_ wise to use it as a title. far more persons have had their attention attracted, and the result has been that everybody has been forced to think. substantially i have nothing to alter in what i have said.... i have just read the first half of fechner's "zend-avesta," a wonderful book, by a wonderful genius. he had his vision and he knows how to discuss it, as no one's vision ever was discussed. i may tell you in confidence (i don't talk of it here because my damned arteries may in the end make me give it up--for a year past i have a sort of angina when i make efforts) that i have accepted an invitation to give eight public lectures at oxford next may. i was ashamed to refuse; but the work of preparing them will be hard (the title is "the present situation in philosophy"[ ]) and they doom me to relapse into the "popular lecture" form just as i thought i had done with it forever. (what i wished to write this winter was something ultra dry in form, impersonal and exact.) i find that my free and easy and personal way of writing, especially in "pragmatism," has made me an object of loathing to many respectable academic minds, and i am rather tired of awakening that feeling, which more popular lecturing on my part will probably destine me to increase. ...i have been with strong, who goes to rome this month. good, truth-loving man! and a very penetrating mind. i think he will write a great book. we greatly enjoyed seeing your friend schwarz, the teacher. a fine fellow who will, i hope, succeed. a happy new year to you now, dear flournoy, and loving regards from us all to you all. yours as ever wm. james. _to norman kemp smith._ [post-card] cambridge, _jan._ , . i have only just "got round" to your singularly solid and compact study of avenarius in "mind." i find it clear and very clarifying, after the innumerable hours i have spent in trying to dishevel him. i have read the "weltbegriff" three times, and have half expected to have to read both books over again to assimilate his immortal message to man, of which i have hitherto been able to make nothing. you set me free! i shall not re-read him! but leave him to his spiritual dryness and preposterous pedantry. his only really original idea seems to be that of the _vitalreihe_, and that, so far as i can see, is quite false, certainly no improvement on the notion of adaptive reflex actions. wm. james. _to his daughter._ cambridge, _apr._ , , darling peg,--you must have wondered at my silence since your dear mother returned. i hoped to write to you each day, but the strict routine of my hours now crowded it out. i write on my oxford job till one, then lunch, then nap, then to my ... doctor at four daily, and from then till dinner-time making calls, and keeping "out" as much as possible. to bed as soon after as possible--all my odd reading done between and a.m., an hour not favorable for letter-writing--so that my necessary business notes have to get in just before dinner (as now) or after dinner, which i hate and try to avoid. i think i see my way clear to go [to oxford] now, if i don't get more fatigued than at present. four and a quarter lectures are fully written, and the rest are down-hill work, much raw material being ready now.... _to henry james._ cambridge, _april_ , . dearest henry,--your good letter to harry has brought news of your play, of which i had only seen an enigmatic paragraph in the papers. i'm right glad it is a success, and that such good artists as the robertsons are in it. i hope it will have a first-rate run in london. your apologies for not writing are the most uncalled-for things--your assiduity and the length of your letters to this family are a standing marvel--especially considering the market-value of your "copy"! so waste no more in that direction. 'tis i who should be prostrating myself--silent as i've been for months in spite of the fact that i'm so soon to descend upon you. the fact is i've been trying to compose the accursed lectures in a state of abominable brain-fatigue--a race between myself and time. i've got six now done out of the eight, so i'm safe, but sorry that the infernal nervous condition that with me always accompanies literary production must continue at oxford and add itself to the other fatigues--a fixed habit of wakefulness, etc. i ought not to have accepted, but they've panned out good, so far, and if i get through them successfully, i shall be very glad that the opportunity came. they will be a good thing to _have done_. previously, in such states of fatigue, i have had a break and got away, but this time no day without its half dozen pages--but the thing hangs on so long!... _to henry james._ r. m. s. ivernia, [arriving at liverpool], _apr. , _. dear h.,--your letter of the th, unstamped or post-marked, has just been wafted into our lap--i suppose mailed under another cover to the agent's care. i'm glad you're not hurrying from paris--i feared you might be awaiting us in london, and wrote you a letter yesterday to the reform club, which you will doubtless get ere you get this, telling you of our prosperous though tedious voyage in good condition. we cut out london and go straight to oxford, _via_ chester. i have been sleeping like a top, and feel in good fighting trim again, eager for the scalp of the absolute. my lectures will put his wretched clerical defenders fairly on the defensive. they begin on monday. since you'll have the whole months of may and june, if you urge it, to see us, i pray you not to hasten back from "gay paree" for the purpose.... up since two a.m. w. j. _to miss pauline goldmark._ patterdale, england, _july , _. your letter, beloved pauline, greeted me on my arrival here three hours ago.... how i _do wish_ that i could be in italy alongside of you now, now or any time! you could do me so much good, and your ardor of enjoyment of the country, the towns and the folk would warm up my cold soul. i might even learn to speak italian by conversing in that tongue with you. but i fear that you'd find me betraying the coldness of my soul by complaining of the heat of my body--a most unworthy attitude to strike. dear paolina, never, never think of whether your body is hot or cold; live in the _objective_ world, above such miserable considerations. i have been up here eight days, alice having gone down last saturday, the th, to meet peggy and harry at london, after only two days of it. after all the social and other fever of the past six and a half weeks (save for the blessed nine days at bibury), it looked like the beginning of a real vacation, and it would be such but for the extreme heat, and the accident of one of my recent malignant "colds" beginning. i have been riding about on stage-coaches for five days past, but the hills are so treeless that one gets little shade, and the sun's glare is tremendous. it is a lovely country, however, for pedestrianizing in cooler weather. mountains and valleys compressed together as in the adirondacks, great reaches of pink and green hillside and lovely lakes, the higher parts quite fully alpine in character but for the fact that no snow mountains form the distant background. a strong and noble region, well worthy of one's life-long devotion, if one were a briton. and on the whole, what a magnificent land and race is this britain! every thing about them is of better quality than the corresponding thing in the u.s.--with but few exceptions, i imagine. and the equilibrium is so well achieved, and the human tone so cheery, blithe and manly! and the manners so delightfully good. not one _unwholesome_-looking man or woman does one meet here for that one meets in america. yet i believe (or suspect) that ours is eventually the bigger destiny, if we can only succeed in living up to it, and thou in nd st. and i in irving st. must do our respective strokes, which after years will help to have made the glorious collective resultant. meanwhile, as my brother henry once wrote, thank god for a world that holds so rich an england, so rare an italy! alice is entirely _aufgegangen_ in her idealization of it. and truly enough, the gardens, the manners, the manliness are an excuse. but profound as is my own moral respect and admiration, for a _vacation_ give me the continent! the civilization here is too heavy, too _stodgy_, if one could use so unamiable a word. the very stability and good-nature of all things (of course we are leaving out the slum-life!) rest on the basis of the national stupidity, or rather unintellectuality, on which as on a safe foundation of non-explosible material, the magnificent minds of the élite of the race can coruscate as they will, safely. not until those weeks at oxford, and these days at durham, have i had any sense of what a part the church plays in the national life. so massive and all-pervasive, so authoritative, and on the whole so decent, in spite of the iniquity and farcicality of the whole thing. never were incompatibles so happily yoked together. talk about the genius of romanism! it's nothing to the genius of anglicanism, for catholicism still contains some haggard elements, that ally it with the palestinian desert, whereas anglicanism remains obese and round and comfortable and decent with this world's decencies, without an _acute_ note in its whole life or history, in spite of the shrill jewish words on which its ears are fed, and the nitro-glycerine of the gospels and epistles which has been injected into its veins. strange feat to have achieved! yet the success is great--the whole church-machine makes for all sorts of graces and decencies, and is not incompatible with a high type of churchman, high, that is, on the side of moral and worldly virtue.... how i wish you were beside me at this moment! a breeze has arisen on the lake which is spread out before the "smoking-room" window at which i write, and is very grateful. the lake much resembles lake george. your ever grateful and loving w. j. _to charles eliot norton._ patterdale, england, _july , _. dear charles,--going to coniston lake the other day and seeing the moving little ruskin museum at coniston (admission a penny) made me think rather vividly of you, and make a resolution to write to you on the earliest opportunity. it was truly moving to see such a collection of r.'s busy handiwork, exquisite and loving, in the way of drawing, sketching, engraving and note-taking, and also such a varied lot of photographs of him, especially in his old age. glorious old don quixote that he was! at durham, where alice and i spent three and a half delightful days at the house of f. b. jevons, principal of one of the two colleges of which the university is composed, i had a good deal of talk with the very remarkable octogenarian dean of the cathedral and lord of the university, a thorough liberal, or rather radical, in his mind, with a voice like a bell, and an alertness to match, who had been a college friend of ruskin's and known him intimately all his life, and loved him. he knew not of his correspondence with you, of which i have been happy to be able to order kent of harvard square to send him a copy. his name is kitchin. the whole scene at durham was tremendously impressive (though york cathedral made the stronger impression on me). it was so unlike oxford, so much more american in its personnel, in a way, yet nestling in the very bosom of those mediæval stage-properties and ecclesiastical-principality suggestions. oxford is all spread out in length and breadth, durham concentrated in depth and thickness. there is a great deal of flummery about oxford, but i think if i were an oxonian, in spite of my radicalism generally, i might vote against all change there. it is an absolutely unique fruit of human endeavor, and like the cathedrals, can never to the end of time be reproduced, when the conditions that once made it are changed. let other places of learning go in for all the improvements! the world can afford to keep her one oxford unreformed. i know that this is a superficial judgment in both ways, for oxford does manage to keep pace with the utilitarian spirit, and at the same time preserve lots of her flummery unchanged. on the whole it is a thoroughly _democratic_ place, so far as aristocracy in the strict sense goes. but i'm out of it, and doubt whether i want ever to put foot into it again.... england has changed in many respects. the west end of london, which used at this season to be so impressive from its splendor, is now a mixed and mongrel horde of straw hats and cads of every description. motor-buses of the most brutal sort have replaced the old carriages, bond and regent streets are cheap-jack shows, everything is tumultuous and confused and has run down in quality. i have been "motoring" a good deal through this "lake district," owing to the kindness of some excellent people in the hotel, dissenters who rejoice in the name of squance and inhabit the neighborhood of durham. it is wondrous fine, but especially adapted to trampers, which i no longer am. altogether england seems to have got itself into a magnificently fine state of civilization, especially in regard to the cheery and wholesome tone of manners of the people, improved as it is getting to be by the greater infusion of the democratic temper. everything here seems about twice as good as the corresponding thing with us. but i suspect we have the bigger eventual destiny after all; and give us a thousand years and we may catch up in many details. i think of you as still at cambridge, and i do hope that physical ills are bearing on more gently. lily, too, i hope is her well self again. you mustn't think of answering this, which is only an ejaculation of friendship--i shall be home almost before you can get an answer over. love to all your circle, including theodora, whom i miss greatly. affectionately yours, wm. james. _to henri bergson._ lamb house, _july , _. dear bergson,--(can't we cease "professor"-ing each other?--that title establishes a "disjunctive relation" between man and man, and our relation should be "endosmotic" socially as well as intellectually, i think),-- _jacta est alea_, i am not to go to switzerland! i find, after a week or more here, that the monotony and simplification is doing my nervous centres so much good, that my wife has decided to go off with our daughter to geneva, and to leave me alone with my brother here, for repairs. it is a great disappointment in other ways than in not seeing you, but i know that it is best. perhaps later in the season the _zusammenkunft_ may take place, for nothing is decided beyond the next three weeks. meanwhile let me say how rarely delighted your letter made me. there are many points in your philosophy which i don't yet grasp, but i have seemed to myself to understand your anti-intellectualistic campaign very clearly, and that i have really done it so well in your opinion makes me proud. i am sending your letter to strong, partly out of vanity, partly because of your reference to him. it does seem to me that philosophy is turning towards a new orientation. are you a reader of fechner? i wish that you would read his "zend-avesta," which in the second edition ( , i think) is better printed and much easier to read than it looks at the first glance. he seems to me of the real race of prophets, and i cannot help thinking that _you_, in particular, if not already acquainted with this book, would find it very stimulating and suggestive. his day, i fancy, is yet to come. i will write no more now, but merely express my regret (and hope) and sign myself, yours most warmly and sincerely, wm. james. the subject of the next letter was a volume of "essays philosophical and psychological, in honor of william james,"[ ] by nineteen contributors, which had been issued by columbia university in the spring of . a note at the beginning of the book said: "this volume is intended to mark in some degree its authors' sense of professor james's memorable services in philosophy and psychology, the vitality he has added to those studies, and the encouragement that has flowed from him to colleagues without number. early in , at the invitation of columbia university, he delivered a course of lectures there, and met the members of the philosophical and psychological departments on several occasions for social discussion. they have an added motive for the present work in the recollections of this visit." _to john dewey._ rye, sussex, _aug. , _. dear dewey,--i don't know whether this will find you in the adirondacks or elsewhere, but i hope 'twill be on east hill. my own copy of the essays in my "honor," which took me by complete surprise on the eve of my departure, was too handsome to take along, so i have but just got round to reading the book, which i find at my brother henry's, where i have recently come. it is a masterly set of essays of which we may all be proud, distinguished by good style, direct dealing with the facts, and hot running on the trail of truth, regardless of previous conventions and categories. i am sure it hitches the subject of epistemology a good day's journey ahead, and proud indeed am i that it should be dedicated to my memory. your own contribution is to my mind the most _weighty_--unless perhaps strong's should prove to be so. i rejoice exceedingly that you should have got it out. no one yet has succeeded, it seems to me, in jumping into the centre of your vision. once there, all the perspectives are clear and open; and when you or some one else of us shall have spoken the exact word that opens the centre to everyone, mediating between it and the old categories and prejudices, people will wonder that there ever could have been any other philosophy. that it is the philosophy of the future, i'll bet my life. admiringly and affectionately yours, wm. james. _to theodore flournoy._ lamb house, rye, _aug. , _. dear flournoy,--i can't make out from my wife's letters whether she has seen you face to face, or only heard accounts of you from madame flournoy. she reports you very tired from the "congress"--but i don't know what congress has been meeting at geneva just now. i don't suppose that you will go to the philosophical congress at heidelberg--i certainly shall not. i doubt whether philosophers will gain so much by talking with each other as other classes of _gelehrten_ do. one needs to _frequenter_ a colleague daily for a month before one can begin to understand him. it seems to me that the collective life of philosophers is little more than an organization of misunderstandings. i gave eight lectures at oxford, but besides schiller and one other tutor, only two persons ever _mentioned_ them to me, and those were the two heads of manchester college by whom i had been invited. philosophical work it seems to me must go on in silence and in print exclusively. you will have heard (either directly or indirectly) from my wife of my reasons for not accompanying them to geneva. i have been for more than three weeks now at my brother's, and am much better for the simplification. i am very sorry not to have met with you, but i think i took the prudent course in staying away. i have just read miss johnson's report in the last s. p. r. "proceedings," and a good bit of the proofs of piddington's on cross-correspondences between mrs. piper, mrs. verrall, and mrs. holland, which is to appear in the next number. you will be much interested, if you can gather the philosophical energy, to go through such an amount of tiresome detail. it seems to me that these reports open a new chapter in the history of automatism; and piddington's and johnson's ability is of the highest order. evidently "automatism" is a word that covers an extraordinary variety of fact. i suppose that you have on the whole been gratified by the "vindication" of eusapia [paladino] at the hands of morselli _et al._ in italy. physical phenomena also seem to be entering upon a new phase in their history. well, i will stop, this is only a word of greeting and regret at not seeing you. i got your letter of many weeks ago when we were at oxford. don't take the trouble to _write_ now--my wife will bring me all the news of you and your family, and will have given you all mine. love to madame f. and all the young ones, too, please. your ever affectionate w. j. _to shadworth h. hodgson._ paignton, s. devon, _oct. , _. dear hodgson,--i have been five months in england (you have doubtless heard of my lecturing at oxford) yet never given you a sign of life. the reason is that i have sedulously kept away from london, which i admire, but at my present time of life abhor, and only touched it two or three times for thirty-six hours to help my wife do her "shopping" (strange use for an elderly philosopher to be put to). the last time i was in london, about a month ago, i called at your affectionately remembered no. , only to find you gone to yorkshire, as i feared i should. i go back in an hour, en route for liverpool, whence, with wife and daughter, i sail for boston in the saxonia. i am literally enchanted with rural england, yet i doubt whether i ever return. i never had a fair chance of getting acquainted with the country here, and if i were a stout pedestrian, which i no longer am, i think i should frequent this land every summer. but in my decrepitude i must make the best of the more effortless relations which i enjoy with nature in my own country. i have seen many philosophers, at oxford, especially, and james ward at cambridge; but, apart from _very_ few conversations, didn't get at close quarters with any of them, and they probably gained as little from me as i from them. "we are columns left alone, of a temple once complete." the power of mutual misunderstanding in philosophy seems infinite, and grows discouraging. schiller of course, and his pragmatic friend captain knox, james ward, and mcdougall, stand out as the most satisfactory talkers. but there is too much fencing and scoring of "points" at oxford to make construction active. good-bye! dear hodgson, and pray think of me with a little of the affection and intellectual interest with which i always think of you. my oxford lectures won't appear till next april. don't read the extracts which the "hibbert journal" is publishing. they are torn out of their natural setting. i have, as you probably know, ceased teaching and am enjoying a carnegie pension. yours ever fondly, wm. james. _to theodore flournoy._ london, _oct. , _. dear flournoy,--i got your delightful letter duly two weeks ago, or more. i always have a bad conscience on receiving a letter from you, because i feel as if i _forced_ you to write it, and i know too well by your own confessions (as well as by my own far less extreme experience of reluctance to write) what a nuisance and an effort letters are apt to be. but no matter! this letter of yours was a good one indeed.... we sail from liverpool the day after tomorrow, and tomorrow will be a busy day winding up our affairs and making some last purchases of small things. alice has an insatiable desire (as mrs. flournoy may have noticed at geneva) to increase her possessions, whilst i, like an american tolstoy, wish to diminish them. the most convenient arrangement for a tolstoy is to have an anti-tolstoyan wife to "run the house" for him. we have been for three days in devonshire, and for four days at oxford previous to that. extraordinary warm summer weather, with exquisite atmospheric effects. i am extremely glad to leave england with my last optical images so beautiful. in any case the harmony and softness of the landscape of rural england probably excels everything in the world in that line. at oxford i saw mcdougall and schiller quite intimately, also schiller's friend, capt. knox, who, retired from the army, lives at gründelwald, and is an extremely acute mind, and fine character, i should think. he is a militant "pragmatist." before that i spent three days at cambridge, where again i saw james ward intimately. i prophesy that if he gets his health again ... he will become also a militant pluralist of some sort. i think he has worked out his original monistic-theistic vein and is steering straight towards a "critical point" where the umbrella will turn inside out, and not go back. i hope so! i made the acquaintance of boutroux here last week. he came to the "moral education congress" where he made a very fine address. i find him very _simpatico_. [illustration: william james and henry clement, at the "putnam shanty," in the adirondacks ( ?).] but the best of all these meetings has been one of three hours this very morning with bergson, who is here visiting his relatives. so modest and unpretending a man, but such a genius intellectually! we talked very easily together, or rather _he_ talked easily, for he talked much more than i did, and although i can't say that i follow the folds of his system much more clearly than i did before, he has made some points much plainer. i have the strongest suspicions that the tendency which he has brought to a focus will end by prevailing, and that the present epoch will be a sort of turning-point in the history of philosophy. so many things converge towards an anti-rationalistic crystallization. _qui vivra verra!_ i am very glad indeed to go on board ship. for two months i have been more than ready to get back to my own habits, my own library and writing-table and bed.... i wish you, and all of you, a prosperous and healthy and resultful winter, and am, with old-time affection, your ever faithful friend, wm. james. if the duty of writing weighs so heavily on you, why obey it? why, for example, write any more reviews? i absolutely refuse to, and find that one great alleviation. _to henri bergson._ london, _oct. , _. dear bergson,--my brother was sorry that you couldn't come. he wishes me to say that he is returning to rye the day after tomorrow and is so engaged tomorrow that he will postpone the pleasure of meeting you to some future opportunity. i need hardly repeat how much i enjoyed our talk today. you must take care of yourself and economize all your energies for your own creative work. i want very much to see what you will have to say on the _substanzbegriff_! why should life be so short? i wish that you and i and strong and flournoy and mcdougall and ward could live on some mountain-top for a month, together, and whenever we got tired of philosophizing, calm our minds by taking refuge in the scenery. always truly yours, wm. james. _to h. g. wells._ cambridge, _nov. , _. dear wells,--"first and last things" is a great achievement. the first two "books" should be entitled "philosophy without humbug" and used as a textbook in all the colleges of the world. you have put your finger accurately on the true emphases, and--in the main--on what seem to me the true solutions (you are more monistic in your faith than i should be, but as long as you only call it "faith," that's your right and privilege), and the simplicity of your statements ought to make us "professionals" blush. i have been years on the way to similar conclusions--simply because i started as a professional and had to _débrouiller_ them from all the traditional school rubbish. the other two books exhibit you in the character of the tolstoy of the english world. a sunny and healthy-minded tolstoy, as he is a pessimistic and morbid-minded wells. where the "higher synthesis" will be born, who shall combine the pair of you, heaven only knows. but you are carrying on the same function, not only in that neither of your minds is boxed and boarded up like the mind of an ordinary human being, but all the contents down to the very bottom come out freely and unreservedly and simply, but in that you both have the power of contagious speech, and set the similar mood vibrating in the reader. be happy in that such power has been put into your hands! this book is worth any volumes on metaphysics and any of ethics, of the ordinary sort. yours, with friendliest regards to mrs. wells, most sincerely, wm. james. _to henry james._ cambridge, _dec. , _. dearest h.,-- ...i write this at . [a.m.], in the library, which the blessed hard-coal fire has kept warm all night. the night has been still, thermometer °, and the dawn is breaking in a pure red line behind grace norton's house, into a sky empty save for a big morning star and the crescent of the waning moon. not a cloud--a true american winter effect. but somehow "le grand puits de l'aurore" doesn't appeal to my sense of life, or challenge my spirits as formerly. it suggests no more enterprises to the decrepitude of age, which vegetates along, drawing interest merely on the investment of its earlier enterprises. the accursed "thoracic symptom" is a killer of enterprise with me, and i dare say that it is little better with you. but the less said of it the better--it doesn't diminish! my time has been consumed by interruptions almost totally, until a week ago, when i finally got down seriously to work upon my hodgson report. it means much more labor than one would suppose, and very little result. i wish that i had never undertaken it. i am sending off a preliminary installment of it to be read at the s. p. r. meeting in january. that done, the rest will run off easily, and in a month i expect to actually begin the "introduction to philosophy," which has been postponed so long, and which i hope will add to income for a number of years to come. your volumes xiii and xiv arrived the other day--many thanks. we're subscribing to two copies of the work, sending them as wedding presents. i hope it will sell. very enticing-looking, but i can't settle down to the prefaces as yet, the only thing i have been able to read lately being lowes dickinson's last book, "justice and liberty," which seems to me a decidedly big achievement from every point of view, and probably destined to have a considerable influence in moulding the opinion of the educated. stroke upon stroke, from pens of genius, the competitive régime, so idolized years ago, seems to be getting wounded to death. what will follow will be something better, but i never saw so clearly the slow effect of [the] accumulation of the influence of successive individuals in changing prevalent ideals. wells and dickinson will undoubtedly make the biggest steps of change.... well dear brother! a merry christmas to you--to you both, i trust, for i fancy aleck will be with you when this arrives--and a happy new year at its tail! your loving w. j. _to t. s. perry._ cambridge, _jan. , _. beloved thomas, cher maître et confrère,--your delightful letter about my fechner article and about your having become a professional philosopher yourself came to hand duly, four days ago, and filled the heart of self and wife with joy. i always knew you was one, for to be a real philosopher all that is necessary is to _hate_ some one else's type of thinking, and if that some one else be a representative of the "classic" type of thought, then one is a pragmatist and owns the fulness of the truth. fechner is indeed a dear, and i am glad to have introduced, so to speak, his speculations to the english world, although the revd. elwood worcester has done so in a somewhat more limited manner in a recent book of his called "the living word"-(worcester of emmanuel church, i mean, whom everyone has now begun to fall foul of for trying to reanimate the church's healing virtue). another case of newspaper crime! the reporters all got hold of it with their megaphones, and made the nation sick of the sound of its name. whereas in former ages men strove hard for fame, obscurity is now the one thing to be _striven_ for. for _fame_, all one need do is to exist; and the reporter will do the rest--especially if you give them the address of your fotographer. i hope you're a spelling reformer--i send you the last publication from that quarter. i'm sure that simple spelling will make a page look better, just as a crowd looks better if everyone's clothes fit. apropos of pragmatism, a learned theban named---- has written a circus-performance of which he is the clown, called "anti-pragmatisme." it has so much verve and good spirit that i feel like patting him on the back, and "sicking him on," but lord! what a fool! i think i shall leave it unnoticed. i'm tired of reëxplaining what is already explained to satiety. let _them_ say, now, for it is their turn, what the relation called truth consists in, what it is known as! i have had you on my mind ever since jan. st, when we had our friday evening club-dinner, and i was deputed to cable you a happy new year. the next day i couldn't get to the telegraph office; the day after i said to myself, "i'll save the money, and save him the money, for if he gets a cable, he'll be sure to cable back; so i'll write"; the following day, i forgot to; the next day i postponed the act; so from postponement to postponement, here i am. forgive, forgive! most affectionate remarks were made about you at the dinner, which generally doesn't err by wasting words on absentees, even on those gone to eternity.... i have just got off my report on the hodgson control, which has stuck to my fingers all this time. it is a hedging sort of an affair, and i don't know what the perry family will think of it. the truth is that the "case" is a particularly poor one for testing mrs. piper's claim to bring back spirits. it is _leakier_ than any other case, and intrinsically, i think, no stronger than many of her other good cases, certainly weaker than the g. p. case. i am also now engaged in writing a popular article, "the avowals of a psychical researcher," for the "american magazine," in which i simply state without argument my own convictions, and put myself on record. i think that public opinion is just now taking a step forward in these matters--_vide_ the eusapian boom! and possibly both these _schriften_ of mine will add their influence. thank you for the charmes reception and for the earthquake correspondence! i envy you in clean and intelligent paris, though our winter is treating us very mildly. a lovely sunny day today! love to all of you! yours fondly, w. j. the "charmes reception" was a report of the speeches at the french academy's reception of francis charmes. the "eusapian boom" will have been understood to refer to current discussions of the medium eusapia paladino. * * * * * the next letter refers to a paper in which both james and münsterberg had been "attacked" in such a manner that münsterberg proposed to send a protest to the american psychological association. _to hugo münsterberg._ cambridge, _mar. , _. dear mÜnsterberg,--witmer has sent me the _corpus delicti_, and i find myself curiously unmoved. in fact he takes so much trouble over me, and goes at the job with such zest that i feel like "sicking him on," as they say to dogs. perhaps the honor of so many pages devoted to one makes up for the dishonor of their content. it is really a great compliment to have anyone take so much trouble about one. think of copying all wundt's notes! but, dear münsterberg, i hope you'll withdraw a second time your protest. i think it undignified to take such an attack seriously. its excessive dimensions (in my case at any rate), and the smallness and remoteness of the provocation, stamp it as simply eccentric, and to show sensitiveness only gives it importance in the eyes of readers who otherwise would only smile at its extravagance. besides, since these temperamental antipathies exist--why isn't it healthy that they should express themselves? for my part, i feel rather glad than otherwise that psychology is so live a subject that psychologists should "go for" each other in this way, and i think it all ought to happen _inside_ of our association. we ought to cultivate tough hides there, so i hope that you will withdraw the protest. i have mentioned it only to royce, and will mention it to no one else. i don't like the notion of harvard people seeming "touchy"! your fellow victim, w. j. _to john jay chapman._ cambridge, _apr. , _. dear jack c.,--i'm not expecting you to _read_ my book, but only to "give me a thought" when you look at the cover. a certain witness at a poisoning case was asked how the corpse looked. "pleasant-like and foaming at the mouth," was the reply. a good description of you, describing philosophy, in your letter. all that you say is true, and yet the conspiracy has to be carried on by us professors. reality has to be _returned to_, after this long circumbendibus, though _gavroche_ has it already. there _are_ concepts, anyhow. i am glad you lost the volume. it makes one less in existence and ought to send up the price of the remainder. blessed spring! blessed spring! love to you both from yours, wm. james. the next post-card was written in acknowledgment of professor palmer's comments on "a pluralistic universe." _to g. h. palmer._ [post-card] cambridge, _may , _. "the finest critical mind of our time!" no one can mix the honey and the gall as you do! my conceit appropriates the honey--for the gall it makes indulgent allowance, as the inevitable watering of a pair of aged rationalist eyes at the effulgent sunrise of a new philosophic day! thanks! thanks! for the honey. w. j. to theodore flournoy. chocorua, june , . my dear flournoy,--you must have been wondering during all these weeks what has been the explanation of my silence. it has had two simple causes; st, laziness; and nd, uncertainty, until within a couple of days, about whether or not i was myself going to geneva for the university jubilee. i have been strongly tempted, not only by the "doctorate of theology," which you confidentially told me of (and which would have been a fertile subject of triumph over my dear friend royce on my part, and of sarcasm on his part about academic distinctions, as well as a diverting episode generally among my friends,--i being so essentially profane a character), but by the hope of seeing you, and by the prospect of a few weeks in dear old switzerland again. but the economical, hygienic and domestic reasons were all against the journey; so a few days ago i ceased coquetting with the idea of it, and have finally given it up. this postpones any possible meeting with you till next summer, when i think it pretty certain that alice and i and peggy will go to europe again, and probably stay there for two years.... what with the jubilee and the congress, dear flournoy, i fear that your own summer will not yield much healing repose. "go through it like an automaton" is the best advice i can give you. i find that it is possible, on occasions of great strain, to get relief by ceasing all voluntary control. _do_ nothing, and i find that something will do itself! and not so stupidly in the eyes of outsiders as in one's own. claparède will, i suppose, be the chief executive officer at the congress. it is a pleasure to see how he is rising to the top among psychologists, how large a field he covers, and with both originality and "humanity" (in the sense of the omission of the superfluous and technical, and preference for the probable). when will the germans learn that part? i have just been reading driesch's gifford lectures, volume ii. very exact and careful, and the work of a most powerful intellect. but why lug in, as he does, all that kantian apparatus, when the questions he treats of are real enough and important enough to be handled directly and not smothered in that opaque and artificial veil? i find the book extremely suggestive, and should like to believe in its thesis, but i can't help suspecting that driesch is unjust to the possibilities of purely mechanical action. candle-flames, waterfalls, eddies in streams, to say nothing of "vortex atoms," seem to perpetuate themselves and repair their injuries. you ought to receive very soon my report on mrs. piper's hodgson control. some theoretic remarks i make at the end may interest you. i rejoice in the triumph of eusapia all along the line--also in ochorowicz's young polish medium, whom you have seen. it looks at last as if something definitive and positive were in sight. i am correcting the proofs of a collection of what i have written on the subject of "truth"--it will appear in september under the title of "the meaning of truth, a sequel to pragmatism." it is already evident from the letters i am getting about the "pluralistic universe" that that book will st, be _read_; nd, be _rejected_ almost unanimously at first, and for very diverse reasons; but, rd, will continue to be bought and referred to, and will end by strongly influencing english philosophy. and now, dear flournoy, good-bye! and believe me with sincerest affection for mrs. flournoy and the young people as well as for yourself, yours faithfully, wm. james. _to miss theodora sedgwick._ chocorua, _july , _. dear theodora,--we got your letter a week ago, and were very glad to hear of your prosperous installation, and good impressions of the place. i am sorry that harry couldn't go to see you the first sunday, but hope, if he didn't go for yesterday, that he will do so yet. when your social circle gets established, and routine life set up, i am sure that you will like newport very much. as for ourselves, the place is only just beginning to smooth out. the instruments of labor had well-nigh all disappeared, and had to come piecemeal, each forty-eight hours after being ordered, so we have been using the cow as a lawn-mower, silver knives to carve with, and finger-nails for technical purposes generally. there is no labor known to man in which alice has not indulged, and i have sought safety among the mosquitoes in the woods rather than remain to shirk my responsibilities in full view of them. we have hired a little mare, fearless of automobiles, we get our mail dally, we had company to dinner yesterday, relatives of alice, the children will be here by the middle of the week, the woods are deliciously fragrant, and the weather, so far, cool--in fact we are _launched_ and the regular summer equilibrium will soon set in. the place is both pathetic and irresistible; i want to sell it, alice wants to enlarge it--we shall end by doing neither, but discuss it to the end of our days. i have just read shaler's autobiography, and it has fairly haunted me with the overflowing impression of his myriad-minded character. full of excesses as he was, due to his intense vivacity, impulsiveness, and imaginativeness, his centre of gravity was absolutely steady, and i knew no man whose sense of the larger relation of things was always so true and right. of all the minds i have known, his leaves the largest impression, and i miss him more than i have missed anyone before. you ought to read the book, especially the autobiographic half. good-bye, dear theodora. alice joins her love to mine, and i am, as ever, yours affectionately, wm. james. _to f. c. s. schiller._ _chocorua_, _aug. , _. dear schiller,-- ...i got the other day a very candid letter from a. s. pringle-pattison, about my "pluralistic universe," in which he said: "it is supremely difficult to accept the conclusion of an actually growing universe, an actual addition to the sum of being or (if that expression be objectionable) to the intensity and scope of existence, to a growing god, in fact."--this seems to me very significant. on such minute little snags and hooks, do all the "difficulties" of philosophy hang. call them categories, and sacred laws, principles of reason, etc., and you have the actual state of metaphysics, calling all the analogies of phenomenal life impossibilities. no more lecturing from w. j., thank you! either at oxford or elsewhere. affectionately thine, w. j. _to theodore flournoy._ chocorua, s_ept. , _. dear flournoy,--we had fondly hoped that before now you might both, accepting my half-invitation, half-suggestion, be with us in this uncared-for-nature, so different from switzerland, and you getting strengthened and refreshed by the change. _dieu dispose_, indeed! the fact that _is_ never entered into our imagination! i give up all hope of you this year, unless it be for cambridge, where, however, the conditions of repose will be less favorable for you.... i am myself going down to cambridge on the fifth of october for two days of "inauguration" ceremonies of our new president, lawrence lowell.... there are so many rival universities in our country that advantage has to be taken of such changes to make the newspaper talk, and keep the name of harvard in the public ear, so the occasion is to be almost as elaborate as a "jubilee"; but i shall keep as much out of it as is officially possible, and come back to chocorua on the th, to stay as late into october as we can, though probably not later than the th, after which the cambridge winter will begin. it hasn't gone well with my health this summer, and beyond a little reading, i have done no work at all. i have, however, succeeded during the past year in preparing a volume on the "meaning of truth"--already printed papers for the most part--which you will receive in a few days after getting this letter, and which i think may help you to set the "pragmatic" account of knowledge in a clearer light. i will also send you a magazine article on the mediums, which has just appeared, and which may divert you.[ ] eusapia paladino, i understand, has just signed a contract to come to new york to be at the disposition of hereward carrington, an expert in medium's tricks, and author of a book on the same, who, together with fielding and bagally, also experts, formed the committee of the london s. p. r., who saw her at naples.... after courtier's report on eusapia, i don't think any "investigation" here will be worth much "scientifically"--the only advantage of her coming may possibly be to get some scientific men to believe that there is really a problem. two other cases have been reported to me lately, which are worth looking up, and i shall hope to do so. how much your interests and mine keep step with each other, dear flournoy. "functional psychology," and the twilight region that surrounds the clearly lighted centre of experience! speaking of "functional" psychology, clark university, of which stanley hall is president, had a little international congress the other day in honor of the twentieth year of its existence. i went there for one day in order to see what freud was like, and met also yung of zürich, who professed great esteem for you, and made a very pleasant impression. i hope that freud and his pupils will push their ideas to their utmost limits, so that we may learn what they are. they can't fail to throw light on human nature; but i confess that he made on me personally the impression of a man obsessed with fixed ideas. i can make nothing in my own case with his dream theories, and obviously "symbolism" is a most dangerous method. a newspaper report of the congress said that freud had condemned the american religious therapy (which has such extensive results) as very "dangerous" because so "unscientific." bah! well, it is pouring rain and so dark that i must close. alice joins me, dear flournoy, in sending you our united love, in which all your children have a share. ever yours, w. j. _to shadworth h. hodgson._ cambridge, _jan._ , . a happy new year to you, dear hodgson, and may it bring a state of mind more recognizant of truth when you see it! your jocose salutation of my account of truth is an epigrammatic commentary on the cross-purposes of philosophers, considering that on the very day (yesterday) of its reaching me, i had replied to a belgian student writing a thesis on pragmatism, who had asked me to name my sources of inspiration, that i could only recognize two, peirce, as quoted, and "s. h. h." with his method of attacking problems, by asking what their terms are "known-as." unhappy world, where grandfathers can't recognize their own grandchildren! let us love each other all the same, dear hodgson, though the grandchild be in your eyes a "prodigal." affectionately yours, wm. james. * * * * * the news of james's election as _associé étranger_ of the académie des sciences morales et politiques, which had appeared in the boston "journal" a day or two before the next letter, had, of course, reached the american newspapers directly from paris. the unread book by bergson of which mr. chapman was to forward his manuscript-review was obviously "le rire," and mr. chapman's review may be found, not where the next letter but one might lead one to seek it, but in the files of the "hibbert journal." _to john jay chapman._ cambridge, _jan._ , . dear jack,--invincible epistolary laziness and a conscience humbled to the dust have conspired to retard this letter. god sent me straight to you with my story about bergson's cablegram--the only other person to whom i have told it was henry higginson. _one_ of you must have put it into the boston "journal" of the next day,--_you_ of course, to humiliate me still the more,--so now i lie in the dust, spurning all the decorations and honors under which the powers and principalities are trying to bury me, and seeking to manifest the naked truth in my uncomely form. never again, never again! naked came i into life, and this world's vanities are not for me! you, dear jack, are the only reincarnation of isaiah and job, and i praise god that he has let me live in your day. _real_ values are known only to _you_! as for bergson, i think your change of the word "comic" into the word "tragic" throughout his book is _impayable_, and i have no doubt it is true. i have only read half of him, so don't know how he is coming out. meanwhile send me your own foolishness on the same subject, commend me to your liege lady, and believe me, shamefully yours, w. j. _to john jay chapman._ cambridge, _feb._ , . dear jack,--wonderful! wonderful! shallow, incoherent, obnoxious to its own criticism of chesterton and shaw, off its balance, accidental, whimsical, false; but with central fires of truth "blazing fuliginous mid murkiest confusion," telling the reader nothing of the comic except that it's smaller than the tragic, but _readable_ and splendid, showing that the _man who wrote it_ is more than anything he can write! pray patch some kind of a finale to it and send it to the "atlantic"! yours ever fondly, w. j. (membre de i'institut!) * * * * * the "specimen" which was enclosed with the following note has been lost. it was perhaps a bit of adulatory verse. what is said about "harris and shakespeare," as also in a later letter to mr. t. s. perry on the same subject, was written apropos of a book entitled "the man shakespeare, his tragic life-story."[ ] _to john jay chapman._ cambridge, _feb._ , . dear jack,--just a word to say that it pleases me to hear you write this about harris and shakespeare. h. is surely false in much that he claims; yet 'tis the only way in which shakespeare ought to be handled, so his _is_ the best book. the trouble with s. was his intolerable fluency. he improvised so easily that it kept down his level. it is hard to see how the man that wrote his best things could possibly have let himself do ranting bombast and complication on such a large scale elsewhere. 't is mighty fun to read him through in order. i send you a specimen of the kind of thing that tends to hang upon me as the ivy on the oak. when will the day come? never till, like me, you give yourself out as a poetry-hater. thine ever, [illustration: signature my new signature] _to dickinson s. miller._ cambridge, _mar. , _. dear miller,--your study of me arrives! and i have pantingly turned the pages to find the eulogistic adjectives, and find them in such abundance that my head swims. glory to god that i have lived to see this day! to have so much said about me, and to be embalmed in literature like the great ones of the past! i didn't know i was so much, was all these things, and yet, as i read, i see that i was (or am?), and shall boldly assert myself when i go abroad. to speak in all dull soberness, dear miller, it touches me to the quick that you should have hatched out this elaborate description of me with such patient and loving incubation. i have only spent five minutes over it so far, meaning to take it on the steamer, but i get the impression that it is almost unexampled in our literature as a piece of profound analysis of an individual mind. i'm sorry you stick so much to my psychological phase, which i care little for, now, and never cared much. this epistemological and metaphysical phase seems to me more original and important, and i haven't lost hopes of converting you entirely yet. meanwhile, thanks! thanks! [Émile] boutroux, who is a regular angel, has just left our house. i've written an account of his lectures which the "nation" will print on the st. i should like you to look it over, hasty as it is. ...i hope that all these lectures on contemporaries (what a live place columbia is!) will appear together in a volume. i can't easily believe that any will compare with yours as a thorough piece of interpretative work. we sail on tuesday next. my thorax has been going the wrong way badly this winter, and i hope that nauheim may patch it up. strength to your elbow! affectionately and gratefully yours, wm. james. xvii _final months--the end_ several reasons combined to take james to europe in the early spring of . his heart had been giving him more discomfort. he wished to consult a specialist in paris from whom an acquaintance of his, similarly afflicted, had received great benefit. he believed that another course of nauheim baths would be helpful. last, and not least, he wished to be within reach of his brother henry, who was ill and concerning whose condition he was much distressed. in reality it was he, not his brother, who already stood in the shadow of death's door. accordingly he sailed for england with mrs. james, and went first to lamb house. thence he crossed alone to paris, and thence went on to nauheim, leaving mrs. james to bring his brother to nauheim to join him. the parisian specialist could do nothing but confirm previous diagnoses. too much "sitting up and talking" with friends in paris exhausted him seriously, and, after leaving paris, he failed for the first time to shake off his fatigue. the immediate effect of the nauheim baths proved to be very debilitating, and, again, he failed to rally and improve when he had finished them. by july, after trying the air of lucerne and geneva, only to find that the altitude caused him unbearable distress, he despaired of any relief beyond what now looked like the incomparable consolations of being at rest in his own home. so he turned his face westward. the next letters bid good-bye for the summer to two tried friends. five months later it seemed as if james had been at more pains to make his adieus than he usually put himself to on account of a summer's absence. when mrs. james returned to the cambridge house in the autumn, after he had died, and had occasion to open his desk copy of the harvard catalogue, she found these words jotted at the head of the faculty list: "a thousand regrets cover every beloved name." it grieved him that life was too short and too full for him to see many of them as often as he wanted to. one day before he sailed, his eye had been caught by the familiar names and, as a throng of comradely intentions filled his heart, he had had a moment of foreboding, and he had let his hand trace the words that cried this needless "forgive me!" and recorded an incommunicable farewell. _to henry l. higginson._ cambridge, _mar. , _. beloved henry,--i had most positive hopes of driving in to see you ere the deep engulfs us, but the press is too great here, and it remains impossible. this is just a word to say that you are not forgotten, or ever to be forgotten, and that (after what mrs. higginson said) i am hoping you may sail yourself pretty soon, and have a refreshing time, and cross our path. we go straight to rye, expecting to be in paris for the beginning of april for a week, and then to nauheim, whence alice, after seeing me safely settled, will probably return to rye for the heft of the summer. it would pay you to turn up both there and at nauheim and see the mode of life. hoping you'll have a good [club] dinner friday night, and never need any surgery again, i am ever thine, w. j. _to miss frances r. morse._ cambridge, _march , _. dearest fanny,--your beautiful roses and your card arrived duly--the roses were not deserved, not at least by w. j. i have about given up all visits to boston this winter, and the racket has been so incessant in the house, owing to foreigners of late, that we haven't had the strength to send for you. i sail on the th in the megantic, first to see henry, who has been ill, not dangerously, but very miserably. our harry is with him now. i shall then go to paris for a certain medical experiment, and after that report at nauheim, where they probably will keep me for some weeks. i hope that i may get home again next fall with my organism in better shape, and be able to see more of my friends. after thursday, when the good boutrouxs go, i shall try to arrange a meeting with you, dear fanny. at present we are "contemporaries," that is all, and the one of us who becomes survivor will have regrets that we were no more! what a lugubrious ending! with love to your mother, and love from alice, believe me, dearest fanny, most affectionately yours, w. j. _to t, s. perry._ bad-nauheim, _may , _. beloved thos.,--i have two letters from you--one about ... harris on shakespeare. _re_ harris, i did think you were a bit supercilious _a priori_, but i thought of your youth and excused you. harris himself is horrid, young and crude. much of his talk seems to me absurd, but nevertheless _that's the way to write about shakespeare_, and i am sure that, if shakespeare were a piper-control, he would say that he relished harris far more than the pack of reverent commentators who treat him as a classic moralist. he seems to me to have been a professional _amuser_, in the first instance, with a productivity like that of a dumas, or a scribe; but possessing what no other amuser has possessed, a lyric splendor added to his rhetorical fluency, which has made people take him for a more essentially serious human being than he was. neurotically and erotically, he was hyperæsthetic, with a playful graciousness of character never surpassed. he could be profoundly melancholy; but even then was controlled by the audience's needs. a cork in the rapids, with no ballast of his own, without religious or ethical ideals, accepting uncritically every theatrical and social convention, he was simply an æolian harp passively resounding to the stage's call. was there ever an author of such emotional importance whose reaction against false conventions of life was such an absolute zero as his? i know nothing of the other elizabethans, but could they have been as soulless in this respect?--but _halte-la_! or i shall become a harris myself!... with love to you all, believe me ever thine, w. j. read daniel halévy's exquisitely discreet "vie de nietzsche," if you haven't already done so. do you know g. courtelines' "les marionettes de la vie" (flammarion)? it beats labiche. _to françois pillon._ bad-nauheim, _may , _. my dear pillon,--i have been here a week, taking the baths for my unfortunate cardiac complications, and shall probably stay six weeks longer. i passed through paris, where i spent a week, partly with my friend the philosopher strong, partly at the fondation thiers with the boutrouxs, who had been our guests in america when he lectured a few months ago at harvard. every day i said: "i will get to the pillons this afternoon"; but every day i found it impossible to attempt your four flights of stairs, and finally had to run away from the boutrouxs' to save my life from the fatigue and pectoral pain which resulted from my seeing so many people. i have a dilatation of the aorta, which causes anginoid pain of a bad kind whenever i make any exertion, muscular, intellectual, or social, and i should not have thought at all of going through paris were it not that i wished to consult a certain dr. moutier there, who is strong on arteries, but who told me that he could do nothing for my case. i hope that these baths may arrest the disagreeable tendency to _pejoration_ from which i have suffered in the past year. this is why i didn't come to see the dear pillons; a loss for which i felt, and shall always feel, deep regret. the sight of the new "année philosophique" at boutroux's showed me how valiant and solid you still are for literary work. i read a number of the book reviews, but none of the articles, which seemed uncommonly varied and interesting. your short notice of schinz's really _bouffon_ book showed me to my regret that even you have not yet caught the true inwardness of my notion of truth. you speak as if i allowed no _valeur de connaissance proprement dite_, which is a quite false accusation. when an idea "works" successfully among _all the other ideas_ which relate to the object of which it is our mental substitute, associating and comparing itself with them harmoniously, the workings are wholly inside of the intellectual world, and the idea's value purely intellectual, for the time, at least. this is my doctrine and schiller's, but it seems very hard to express it so as to get it understood! i hope that, in spite of the devouring years, dear madame pillon's state of health may be less deplorable than it has been so long. in particular i wish that the neuritis may have ceased. i wish! i wish! but what's the use of wishing, against the universal law that "youth's a stuff will not endure," and that we must simply make the best of it? boutroux gave some beautiful lectures at harvard, and is the gentlest and most lovable of characters. believe me, dear pillon, and dear madame pillon, your ever affectionate old friend, wm. james. _to theodore flournoy._ bad-nauheim, _may , _. ...paris was splendid, but fatiguing. among other things i was introduced to the académie des sciences morales, of which you may likely have heard that i am now an _associé étranger_(!!). boutroux says that renan, when he took his seat after being received at the académie française, said: "qu'on est bien dans ce fauteuil" (it is nothing but a cushioned bench with no back!). "peut-être n'y a-t-il que cela de vrai!" delicious renanesque remark!... w. j. * * * * * the arrangement by which mrs. james and henry james were to have arrived at nauheim had been upset. the two, who were to come from england together, were delayed by henry's condition; and for a while james was at nauheim alone. _to his daughter._ _bad-nauheim_, _may , _. beloved pÉguy,--the very _fust_ thing i want you to do is to look in the drawer marked "blood" in my tall filing case in the library closet, and find the _date_ of a number of the "journal of speculative philosophy" there that contains an article called "philosophic reveries." send this _date_ (not the article) to the revd. prof. l. p. jacks, holywell, oxford, if you find it, _immediately_. he will understand what to do with it. if you don't find the article, do nothing! jacks is notified. i have just corrected the proofs of an article on blood for the "hibbert journal," which, i think, will make people sit up and rub their eyes at the apparition of a new great writer of english. i want blood himself to get it as a surprise. _i_ got as a surprise your finely typed copy of the rest of my ms., the other day. i thank you for it; also for your delightful letters. the type-writing seems to set free both your and aleck's genius more than the pen. (if you need a new ribbon it must be got from the agency in milk st. just above devonshire--but you'll find it hard work to get it into its place.) you seem to be leading a very handsome and domestic life, avoiding social excitements, and hearing of them only from the brethren. it is good sometimes to face the naked ribs of reality as it reveals itself in homes. i face them _here_ with no one but the blackbirds and the trees for my companions, save some rather odd americans at the _mittagstisch_ and _abendessen_, and the good smiling _dienstmädchen_ who brings me my breakfast in the morning.... i went to my bath at o'clock this morning, and had the park all to the blackbirds and myself. this was because i am expecting a certain prof. goldstein from darmstadt to come to see me this morning, and i had to get the bath out of the way. he is a powerful young writer, and is translating my "pluralistic universe." but the weather has grown so threatening that i hope now that he won't come till next sunday. it is a shame to converse here and not be in the open air. i would to heaven _thou_ wert _mit_--i think thou wouldst enjoy it very much for a week or more. the german civilization is _good_! only this place would give a very false impression of our wicked earth to a mars-_bewohner_ who should descend and leave and see nothing else. not a dark spot (save what the patients' hearts individually conceal), no poverty, no vice, nothing but prettiness and simplicity of life. i snip out a concert-program (the afternoon one unusually good) which i find lying on my table. the like is given free in the open air every day. the baths weaken one so that i have little brain for reading, and must write letters to all kinds of people every day. a big quarrel is on in paris between my would-be translators and publishers. i wish translators would let my books alone--they are written for my own people exclusively! you will have received hewlett's delightful "halfway house," sent to our steamer by pauline goldmark, i think. i have been reading a charmingly discreet life of nietzsche by d. halévy, and have invested in a couple more of his (n.'s) books, but haven't yet begun to read them. i am half through "waffen-nieder!" a _first-rate_ anti-war novel by baroness von suttner. it has been translated, and i recommend it as in many ways instructive. how are rebecca and maggie [the cook and house-maid]? you don't say how you enjoy ordering the bill of fare every day. you can't vary it properly unless you make a _list_ and keep it. a good sweet dish is _rothe grütze_, a form of fine sago consolidated by currant-jelly juice, and sauced with custard, or, i suppose, cream. well! no more today! give no end of love to the good boys, and to your grandam, and believe me, ever thy affectionate, w. j. _to henry p. bowditch._ bad-nauheim, _june , _. dearest heinrich,--the envelope in which this letter goes was addrest in cambridge, mass., and expected to go towards you with a letter in it, long before now. but better late than never, so here goes! i came over, as you may remember, for the double purpose of seeing my brother henry, who had been having a sort of nervous breakdown, and of getting my heart, if possible, tuned up by foreign experts. i stayed upwards of a month with henry, and then came hither _über_ paris, where i stayed ten days. i have been here two and a half weeks, taking the baths, and enjoying the feeling of the strong, calm, successful, new german civilization all about me. germany is _great_, and no mistake! but what a contrast, in the well-set-up, well-groomed, smart-looking german man of today, and his rather clumsily drest, dingy, and unworldly-looking father of forty years ago! but something of the old _gemüthlichkeit_ remains, the friendly manners, and the disposition to talk with you and take you seriously and to respect the serious side of whatever comes along. but i can write you more interestingly of physiology than i can of sociology.... the baths may or may not arrest for a while the downward tendency which has been so marked in the past year--but at any rate it is a comfort to know that my sufferings have a respectable organic basis, and are not, as so many of my friends tell me, due to pure "nervousness." dear henry, you see that you are not the only pebble on the beach, or toad in the puddle, of senile degeneration! i admit that the form of your tragedy beats that of that of most of us; but youth's a stuff that won't endure, in any one, and to have had it, as you and i have had it, is a good deal gained anyhow, while to see the daylight still under _any_ conditions is perhaps also better than nothing, and meanwhile the good months are sure to bring the final relief after which, "when you and i behind the veil are passed, oh, but the long, long time the world shall last!" etc., etc. rather gloomy moralizing, this, to end an affectionate family letter with; but the circumstances seem to justify it, and i know that you won't take it amiss. alice is staying with henry, but they will both be here in a fortnight or less. i find it pretty lonely all by myself, and the german language doesn't run as trippingly off the tongue as it did forty years ago. passage back is taken for august th.... well, i must stop! pray give my love to selma, the faithful one. also to fanny, harold, and friedel. with harold's engagement you are more and more of a patriarch. heaven keep you, dear henry. believe me, ever your affectionately sympathetic old friend, wm. james. _to françois pillon._ bad-nauheim, _june , _. my dear pillon,--i have your good letter of the th--which i finally had to take a magnifying-glass to read (!)--and remained full of admiration for the nervous centres which, after years of work, could still guide the fingers to execute, without slipping or trembling, that masterpiece of microscopic calligraphy! truly your nervous centres are "well preserved"--the optical ones also, in spite of the cataracts and loss of accommodation! how proud i should be if now, at the comparatively youthful age of , i could flatter _myself_ with the hope of doing what you have done, and living down victoriously twelve more devouring enemies of years! with a fresh volume produced, to mark each year by! i give you leave, as a garland and reward, to misinterpret my doctrine of truth _ad libitum_ and to your heart's content, in all your future writings. i will never think the worse of you for it. what you say of dear madame pillon awakens in me very different feelings. she has led, indeed, a life of suffering for many years, and it seems to me a real tragedy that she should now be confined to the house so absolutely. if only you might inhabit the country, where, on fine days, with no stairs to mount or descend, she could sit with flowers and trees around her! the city is not good when one is confined to one's apartment. pray give madame pillon my sincerest love--i never think of her without affection--i am almost ashamed to accept year after year your "année philosophique," and to give you so little in return for it. i am expecting my wife and brother to arrive here from england this afternoon, and we shall _probably_ all return together through paris, by the middle of july. i will then come and see you, with the wife, so please keep the "année" till then, and put it into my hands. i can read nothing serious here--the baths destroy one's strength so. whether they will do any good to my circulatory organs remains to be seen--there is no good effect perceptible so far. believe me, dear old friend, with every message of affection to you both, yours ever faithfully, wm. james. * * * * * the letters which follow concern henry adams's "letter to american teachers," originally printed for private circulation, but recently published, with a preface by mr. brooks adams, under the title: "the degradation of democratic dogma." _to henry adams._ bad-nauheim, _june , _. dear henry adams,--i have been so "slim" since seeing you, and the baths here have so weakened my brain, that i have been unable to do any reading except trash, and have only just got round to finishing your "letter," which i had but half-read when i was with you at paris. to tell the truth, it doesn't impress me at all, save by its wit and erudition; and i ask you whether an old man soon about to meet his maker can hope to save himself from the consequences of his life by pointing to the wit and learning he has shown in treating a tragic subject. no, sir, you can't do it, can't impress god in that way. so far as our scientific conceptions go, it may be admitted that your creator (and mine) started the universe with a certain amount of "energy" latent in it, and decreed that everything that should happen thereafter should be a result of parts of that energy falling to lower levels; raising other parts higher, to be sure, in so doing, but never in equivalent amount, owing to the constant radiation of unrecoverable warmth incidental to the process. it is customary for gentlemen to pretend to believe one another, and until some one hits upon a newer revolutionary concept (which may be tomorrow) all physicists must play the game by holding religiously to the above doctrine. it involves of course the ultimate cessation of all perceptible happening, and the end of human history. with this general conception as _surrounding_ everything you say in your "letter," no one can find any fault--in the present stage of scientific conventions and fashions. but i protest against your interpretation of some of the specifications of the great statistical drift downwards of the original high-level energy. if, instead of criticizing what you seem to me to say, i express my own interpretation dogmatically, and leave you to make the comparison, it will doubtless conduce to brevity and economize recrimination. to begin with, the _amount_ of cosmic energy it costs to buy a certain distribution of fact which humanly we regard as precious, seems to me to be an altogether secondary matter as regards the question of history and progress. certain arrangements of matter _on the same energy-level_ are, from the point of view of man's appreciation, superior, while others are inferior. physically a dinosaur's brain may show as much intensity of energy-exchange as a man's, but it can do infinitely fewer things, because as a force of detent it can only unlock the dinosaur's muscles, while the man's brain, by unlocking far feebler muscles, indirectly can by their means issue proclamations, write books, describe chartres cathedral, etc., and guide the energies of the shrinking sun into channels which never would have been entered otherwise--in short, _make_ history. therefore the man's brain and muscles are, from the point of view of the historian, the more important place of energy-exchange, small as this may be when measured in absolute physical units. the "second law" is wholly irrelevant to "history"--save that it sets a terminus--for history is the course of things before that terminus, and all that the second law says is that, whatever the history, it must invest itself between that initial maximum and that terminal minimum of difference in energy-level. as the great irrigation-reservoir empties itself, the whole question for us is that of the distribution of its effects, of _which_ rills to guide it into; and the size of the rills has nothing to do with their significance. human cerebration is the most important rill we know of, and both the "capacity" and the "intensity" factor thereof may be treated as infinitesimal. yet the filling of such rills would be cheaply bought by the waste of whole sums spent in getting a little of the down-flowing torrent to enter them. just so of human institutions--their value has in strict theory nothing whatever to do with their energy-budget--being wholly a question of the form the energy flows through. though the _ultimate_ state of the universe may be its vital and psychical extinction, there is nothing in physics to interfere with the hypothesis that the penultimate state might be the millennium--in other words a state in which a minimum of difference of energy-level might have its exchanges so skillfully _canalisés_ that a maximum of happy and virtuous consciousness would be the only result. in short, the last expiring pulsation of the universe's life might be, "i am so happy and perfect that i can stand it no longer." you don't believe this and i don't say i do. but i can find nothing in "energetik" to conflict with its possibility. you seem to me not to discriminate, but to treat quantity and distribution of energy as if they formed one question. there! that's pretty good for a brain after nauheim baths--so i won't write another line, nor ask you to reply to me. in case you can't help doing so, however, i will gratify you now by saying that i probably won't jaw back.--it was pleasant at paris to hear your identically unchanged and "undegraded" voice after so many years of loss of solar energy. yours ever truly, wm. james. [illustration: facsimile of post-card addressed to henry adams.] [post-card] nauheim, _june , _. p. s. another illustration of my meaning: the clock of the universe is running down, and by so doing makes the hands move. the energy absorbed by the hands and the _mechanical_ work they do is the same day after day, no matter how far the weights have descended from the position they were originally wound up to. the _history_ which the hands perpetrate has nothing to do with the _quantity_ of this work, but follows the _significance_ of the figures which they cover on the dial. if they move from o to xii, there is "progress," if from xii to o, there is "decay," etc. etc. w. j. _to henry adams._ [post-card] constance, _june , [ ]_. yours of the th, just arriving, pleases me by its docility of spirit and passive subjection to philosophic opinion. never, never pretend to an opinion of your own! that way lies every annoyance and madness! you tempt me to offer you another illustration--that of the _hydraulic ram_ (thrown back to me in an exam, as a "hydraulic goat" by an insufficiently intelligent student). let this arrangement of metal, placed in the course of a brook, symbolize the machine of human life. it works, clap, clap, clap, day and night, so long as the brook runs _at all_, and no matter how full the brook (which symbolizes the descending cosmic energy) may be, it works always to the same effect, of raising so many kilogrammeters of water. what the _value_ of this work as history may be, depends on the uses to which the water is put in the house which the ram serves. w. j. _to benjamin paul blood._ constance, _june , _. my dear blood,--about the time you will receive this, you will also be surprised by receiving the "hibbert journal" for july, with an article signed by me, but written mainly by yourself.[ ] tired of waiting for your final synthetic pronunciamento, and fearing i might be cut off ere it came, i took time by the forelock, and at the risk of making ducks and drakes of your thoughts, i resolved to save at any rate some of your rhetoric, and the result is what you see. forgive! forgive! forgive! it will at any rate have made you famous, for the circulation of the h. j. is choice, as well as large ( , or more, i'm told), and the print and paper the best ever yet, i seem to have lost the editor's letter, or i would send it to you. he wrote, in accepting the article in may, "i have already articles accepted, and some of the writers threaten lawsuits for non-publication, yet such was the exquisite refreshment blood's writing gave me, under the cataract of sawdust in which editorially i live, that i have this day sent the article to the printer. actions speak louder than words! blood is simply _great_, and you are to be thanked for having dug him out. l. p. jacks." of course i've used you for my own purposes, and probably misused you; but i'm sure you will feel more pleasure than pain, and perhaps write again in the "hibbert" to set yourself right. you're sure of being printed, whatever you may send. how i wish that i too could write poetry, for pluralism is in its _sturm und drang_ period, and verse is the only way to express certain things, i've just been taking the "cure" at nauheim for my unlucky heart--no results so far! sail for home again on august th. address always cambridge, mass.; things are forwarded. warm regards, fellow pluralist. yours ever, wm. james. _to theodore flournoy._ geneva, _july , _. dearest flournoy,--your two letters, of yesterday, and of july th sent to nauheim, came this morning. i am sorry that the nauheim one was not written earlier, since you had the trouble of writing it at all. i thank you for all the considerateness you show--you understand entirely my situation. my dyspnoea gets worse at an accelerated rate, and all i care for now is to get home--doing _nothing_ on the way. it is partly a spasmodic phenomenon i am sure, for the aeration of my tissues, judging by the color of my lips, seems to be sufficient. i will leave geneva now without seeing you again--better not come, unless just to shake hands with my wife! through all these years i have wished i might live nearer to you and see more of you and exchange more ideas, for we seem two men particularly well _faits pour nous comprendre_. particularly, now, as my own intellectual house-keeping has seemed on the point of working out some good results, would it have been good to work out the less unworthy parts of it in your company. but that is impossible!--i doubt if i ever do any more writing of a serious sort; and as i am able to look upon my life rather lightly, i can truly say that "i don't care"--don't care in the least pathetically or tragically, at any rate.--i hope that ragacz will be a success, or at any rate a wholesome way of passing the month, and that little by little you will reach your new equilibrium. those dear daughters, at any rate, are something to live for--to show them italy should be rejuvenating. i can write no more, my very dear old friend, but only ask you to think of me as ever lovingly yours, w. j. after leaving geneva james rested at lamb house for a few days before going to liverpool to embark. walking, talking and writing had all become impossible or painful. the short northern route to quebec was chosen for the home voyage. when he and mrs. james and his brother henry landed there, they went straight to chocorua. the afternoon light was fading from the familiar hills on august th, when the motor brought them to the little house, and james sank into a chair beside the fire, and sobbed, "it's so good to get home!" a change for the worse occurred within forty-eight hours and the true situation became apparent. the effort by which he had kept up a certain interest in what was going on about him during the last weeks of his journey, and a certain semblance of strength, had spent itself. he had been clinging to life only in order to get home. death occurred without pain in the early afternoon of august th. his body was taken to cambridge, where there was a funeral service in the college chapel. after cremation, his ashes were placed beside the graves of his parents in the cambridge cemetery. the end appendixes appendix i three criticisms for students in his smaller classes, made up of advanced students, james found it possible to comment in detail on the work of individuals. three letters have come into the hands of the editor, from which extracts may be taken to illustrate such comments. they were written for persons with whom he could communicate only by letter, and are extended enough to suggest the _viva voce_ comments which many a student recalls, but of which there is no record. the first is from a letter to a former pupil and refers to work of bertrand russell and others which the pupil was studying at the time. the second and third comment on manuscripts that had been prepared as "theses" and had been submitted to james for unofficial criticism. they exhibit him, characteristically, as encouraging the student to formulate something more positive. _jan. , ._ those propositions or supposals which [russell, moore and meinong] make the exclusive vehicles of truth are mongrel curs that have no real place between realities on the one hand and beliefs on the other. the negative, disjunctive and hypothetic truths which they so conveniently express can all, perfectly well (so far as i see), be translated into relations between beliefs and positive realities. "propositions" are expressly devised for quibbling between realities and beliefs. they seem to have the objectivity of the one and the subjectivity of the other, and he who uses them can straddle as he likes, owing to the ambiguity of the word _that_, which is essential to them. "_that_ cæsar existed" is "true," sometimes means the _fact that_ be existed is real, sometimes the _belief that_ he existed is true. you can get no honest discussion out of such terms.... _aug. , ._ dear k----, ...[i have] read your thesis once through. i only finished it yesterday. it is a big effort, hard to grasp at a single reading, and i'm too lazy to go over it a second time in its present physically inconvenient shape. it is obvious that parts of it have been written rapidly and not boiled down; and my impression is that you have left over in it too much of the complication of form in which our ideas, our critical ideas especially, first come to us, and which has, with much rewriting, to be straightened out. you were dealing with dialecticians and logic-choppers, and you have met them on their own ground with a logic-chopping even more diseased than theirs. so far as i can see, you _have_ met them, though your own expressions are often far from lucid (--result of haste?); but in some cases i doubt whether they themselves would think that they were met at all. i fear a little that both bradley and royce will think that your _reductiones ad absurdum_ are too fine spun and ingenious to have real force. too complicated, too complicated! is the verdict of my horse-like mind on much of this thesis. your defense will be, of course, that it is a thesis, and as such, expected to be barbaric. but then i point to the careless, hasty writing of much of it. you _must_ simplify yourself, if you hope to have any influence in print. the writing becomes more careful and the style clearer, the moment you tackle russell in the th part. and when you come to your own dogmatic statement of your vision of things in the last pages or so, i think the thesis splendid, prophetic in tone and _very_ felicitous, often, in expression. this is indeed the _philosophie de l'avenir_, and a dogmatic expression of it will be far more effective than critical demolition of its alternatives. it will render that unnecessary if able enough. one will simply _feel_ them to be diseased. my total impression is that the critter k---- has a _really magnificent vision_ of the lay of the land in philosophy,--of the land of bondage, as well as of that of promise,--but that he has a tremendous lot of work to do yet in the way of getting himself into straight and effective literary shape. he has _elements_ of extraordinary literary power, but they are buried in much sand and shingle.... _may. , ._ dear miss s----, i am a caitiff! i have left your essay on my poor self unanswered.... it is a great compliment to me to be taken so philologically and importantly; and i must say that from the technical point of view you may be proud of your production. i like greatly the objective and dispassionate key in which you keep everything, and the number of subdivisions and articulations which you make gives me vertiginous admiration. nevertheless, the tragic fact remains that i don't feel wounded at all by all that output of ability, and for reasons which i think i can set down briefly enough. it all comes, in my eyes, from too much philological method--as a ph.d. thesis your essay is supreme, but why don't you go farther? you take utterances of mine written at different dates, for different audiences belonging to different universes of discourse, and string them together as the abstract elements of a total philosophy which you then show to be inwardly incoherent. this is splendid philology, but is it live criticism of anyone's _weltanschauung_? your use of the method only strengthens the impression i have got from reading criticisms of my "pragmatic" account of "truth," that the whole ph.d. industry of building up an author's meaning out of separate texts leads nowhere, unless you have first grasped his centre of vision, by an act of imagination. that, it seems to me, you lack in my case. for instance: [seven examples are next dealt with in two and a half pages of type-writing. these pages are omitted.] ...i have been unpardonably long; and if you were a man, i should assuredly not expect to influence you a jot by what i write. being a woman, there may be yet a gleam of hope!--which may serve as the excuse for my prolixity. (it is not for the likes of _you_, however, to hurl accusations of prolixity!) now if i may presume to give a word of advice to one so much more accomplished than myself in dialectic technique, may i urge, since you have shown what a superb mistress you are in that difficult art of discriminating abstractions and opposing them to each other one by one, since in short there is no university extant that wouldn't give you its _summa cum laude_,--i should certainly so reward your thesis at harvard,--may i urge, i say, that you should now turn your back upon that academic sort of artificiality altogether, and devote your great talents to the study of reality in its concreteness? in other words, do some _positive_ work at the problem of what truth signifies, substitute a definitive alternative for the humanism which i present, as the latter's substitute. not by proving their inward incoherence does one refute philosophies--every human being is incoherent--but only by superseding them by other philosophies more satisfactory. your wonderful technical skill ought to serve you in good stead if you would exchange the philological kind of criticism for constructive work. i fear however that you won't--the iron may have bitten too deeply into your soul!! have you seen knox's paper on pragmatism in the "quarterly review" for april--perhaps the deepest-cutting thing yet written on the pragmatist side? on the other side read bertrand russell's paper in the "edinburgh review" just out. a thing after your own heart, but ruined in my eyes by the same kind of vicious abstractionism which your thesis shows. it is amusing to see the critics of the will to believe furnish such exquisite instances of it in their own persons. _e.g._, russell's own splendid atheistic-titanic confession of faith in that volume of essays on "ideals of science and of faith" edited by one hand. x----, whom you quote, has recently worked himself up to the pass of being ordained in the episcopal church.... i justify them both; for only by such experiments on the part of individuals will social man gain the evidence required. they meanwhile seem to think that the only "true" position to hold is that everything not imposed upon a will-less and non-coöperant intellect must count as false--a preposterous principle which no human being follows in real life. well! there! that is all! but, dear madam, i should like to know where you come from, who you are, what your present "situation" is, etc., etc.--it is natural to have some personal curiosity about a lady who has taken such an extraordinary amount of pains for me! believe me, dear miss s----, with renewed apologies for the extreme tardiness of this acknowledgment, yours with mingled admiration and abhorrence, wm. james. appendix ii books by william james the following chronological list includes books only, but it gives the essays and chapters contained in each. professor r. b. perry's "bibliography" (see below) lists a great number of contributions to periodicals, which have never been reprinted, and includes notes indicative of the matter of each. (no attempt has been made to compile a list of references to literature about william james, but the following may be mentioned as easily obtainable: _william james_, by Émile boutroux. paris, . translation: longmans, green & co., new york and london, . _la philosophie de william james_, by theodore flournoy. st. blaise, . translation: _the philosophy of william james._ henry holt & co., new york, .) _literary remains of henry james, sr._, with an introduction by william james. boston: houghton, mifflin & co., . _the principles of psychology._ new york: henry holt & co.; london: macmillan & co., . _volume i._ scope of psychology--functions of the brain--conditions of brain activity--habit--the automaton theory--the mind-stuff theory--methods and snares of psychology--relations of minds to other things--the stream of thought--the consciousness of self--attention--conception--discrimination and comparison--association--the perception of time--memory. _volume ii._ sensation--imagination--perception of things--the perception of space--the perception of reality--reasoning--the production of movement--instinct--the emotions--will--hypnotism--necessary truth and the effects of experience. _a text-book of psychology._ briefer course. new york: henry holt & co.; london: macmillan & co., . introductory--sensation--sight--hearing--touch--sensations of motion--structure of the brain--functions of the brain--some general conditions of neural activity--habit--stream of consciousness--the self--attention--conception--discrimination--association--sense of time--memory--imagination--perception--the perception of space--reasoning--consciousness and movement--emotion--instinct--will--psychology and philosophy. _the will to believe, and other essays in popular philosophy._ new york and london: longmans, green & co., . the will to believe--is life worth living?--the sentiment of rationality--reflex action and theism--the dilemma of determinism--the moral philosopher and the moral life--great men and their environment--the importance of individuals--on some hegelisms--what psychical research has accomplished. _human immortality, two supposed objections to the doctrine._ london: constable & co., also dent & sons; boston: houghton, mifflin & co., . _the same._ a new edition with preface in reply to his critics. boston: houghton, mifflin & co., . _talks to teachers on psychology, and to students on some of life's ideals._ new york: henry holt & co.; london: longmans, green & co., . psychology and the teaching art--the stream of consciousness--the child as a behaving organism--education and behavior--the necessity of reactions--native and acquired reactions--what the native reactions are--the laws of habit--association of ideas--interest--attention--memory--acquisition of ideas--apperception--the will. talks to students: the gospel of relaxation--on a certain blindness in human beings--what makes life significant? _the varieties of religious experience._ a study in human nature. the gifford lectures on natural religion, edinburgh, - . new york and london: longmans, green & co., . religion and neurology--circumscription of the topic--the reality of the unseen--the religion of healthy-mindedness--the sick soul--the divided self, and the process of its unification--conversion--saintliness--the value of saintliness--mysticism--philosophy--other characteristics--conclusions--postscript. _pragmatism._ a new name for some old ways of thinking. new york and london: longmans, green & co., . the present dilemma in philosophy--what pragmatism means--some metaphysical problems pragmatically considered--the one and the many--pragmatism and common sense--pragmatism's conception of truth--pragmatism and humanism--pragmatism and religion. _a pluralistic universe._ hibbert lectures at manchester college. new york and london: longmans, green & co., . the types of philosophic thinking--monistic idealism--hegel and his method--concerning fechner--compounding of consciousness--bergson and his critique of intellectualism--the continuity of experience--conclusions---- appendixes: _a._ the thing and its relations. _b._ the experience of activity. _c._ on the notion of reality as changing. _the meaning of truth._ a sequel to _pragmatism_. new york and london: longmans, green & co., . the function of cognition--the tigers in india--humanism and truth--the relation between knower and known--the essence of humanism--a word more about truth--professor pratt on truth--the pragmatist account of truth and its misunderstanders--the meaning of the word truth--the existence of julius cæsar--the absolute and the strenuous life--hébert on pragmatism--abstractionism and "relativismus"--two english critics--a dialogue. _some problems of philosophy._ a beginning of an introduction to philosophy. new york and london: longmans, green & co., . philosophy and its critics--the problems of metaphysics--the problem of being--percept and concept--the one and the many--the problem of novelty--novelty and the infinite--novelty and causation---- appendix: faith and the right to believe. _memories and studies._ new york and london: longmans, green & co., . louis agassiz--address at the emerson centenary in concord--robert gould shaw--francis boott--thomas davidson--herbert spencer's autobiography--frederick myers's services to psychology--final impressions of a psychical researcher--on some mental effects of the earthquake--the energies of men--the moral equivalent of war--remarks at the peace banquet--the social value of the college-bred--the ph.d. octopus--the true harvard--stanford's ideal destiny--a pluralistic mystic (b. p. blood). _essays in radical empiricism._ edited by ralph barton perry. new york and london: longmans, green & co., . introduction--does consciousness exist?--a world of pure experience--the thing and its relations--how two minds can know one thing--the place of affectional facts in a world of pure experience--the experience of activity--the essence of humanism--_la notion de conscience_--is radical empiricism solipsistic?--mr. pitkin's refutation of radical empiricism--humanism and truth once more--absolutism and empiricism. _collected essays and reviews._ edited by _ralph barton perry_. new york and london: longmans, green & co., . review of e. sargent's _planchette_ ( )--review of g. h. lewes's _problems of life and mind_ ( )--review entitled "german pessimism" ( )--chauncey wright ( )--review of "bain and renouvier" ( )--review of renan's _dialogues_ ( )--review of g. h. lewes's _physical basis of mind_ ( )--remarks on spencer's definition of mind as correspondence ( )--quelques considérations sur la méthode subjective ( )--the sentiment of rationality ( )--review (unsigned) of w. k. clifford's _lectures and essays_ ( )--review of herbert spencer's _data of ethics_ ( )--the feeling of effort ( )--the sense of dizziness in deaf mutes ( )--what is an emotion? ( )--review of royce's _the religious aspect of philosophy_ ( )--the consciousness of lost limbs ( )--réponse de w. james aux remarques de m. renouvier sur sa théorie de la volonté ( )--the psychological theory of extension ( )--a plea for psychology as a natural science ( )--the original datum of space consciousness ( )--mr. bradley on immediate resemblance ( )--immediate resemblance--review of g. t. ladd's _psychology_ ( )--the physical basis of emotion ( )--the knowing of things together ( )--review of w. hirsch's _genie und entartung_ ( )--philosophical conceptions and practical results ( )--review of r. hodgson's _a further record of observations of certain phenomena of trance_ ( )--review of sturt's _personal idealism_ ( )--the chicago school ( )--review of f. c. s. schiller's _humanism_ ( )--laura bridgman ( )--g. papini and the pragmatist movement in italy ( )--the mad absolute ( )--controversy about truth with john e. russell ( )--report on mrs. piper's hodgson control; conclusion ( )--bradley or bergson? ( )--a suggestion about mysticism ( ). _a list of the published writings of william james_, with notes, and an index; by ralph barton perry. new york and london: longmans, green & co., . index throughout the index the initial =j.= stands for william james. in the list of references to his own writings, arranged alphabetically at the end of the entries under his name, the titles of separate papers are set in roman and quoted, those of volumes in italics. the words "see contents" under a name indicate that letters addressed to the person in question are to be sought in the table of contents, where all letters are listed. abauzit, f., = =, , = =, . abbot, f. e., _scientific theism_, = =, . absolute, philosophy of the, = =, . absolute unity, = =, . académie française, = =, . académie des sciences morales, et politiques, =j.= a corresponding member of, = =, ; =j.= an _associé étranger_ of, , , . adams, brooks, = =, . adams, henry, _letter to american teachers_, = =, _ff._; mentioned, . _see contents._ adirondack range, = =, , . adirondacks. _see_ keene valley. adler, waldo, = =, , , . Æsthetics, study of, and art, = =, . agassiz, alexander, = =, . agassiz, louis, =j.= joins his brazilian expedition, = =, _ff._, =j.= quoted on, ; quoted, on =j.=, ; on the brazilian expedition, , , , , , , ; described by =j.=, , ; centenary of, = =, , ; mentioned, = =, , , , = =, , , , = =, . agassiz, mrs. louis, her th birthday, = =, and _n._, ; mentioned, = =, , , . _see contents_. aguinaldo, emilio, = =, . alcott, a. bronson, = =, _n._ allen, john a., = =, . amalfi, sorrento to, = =, = =, . amazon, the, agassiz's expedition to. _see_ brazil. america, general aspect of the country, = =, , and _n._ and _see_ united states. american philosophical association, = =, , , . americans, in germany, = =, . angell, james r., = =, , = =, . anglican church, = =, . anglicanism and romanism, = =, . anglophobia in u. s. revealed by venezuela incident, = =, , , . annunzio, gabriele d', = =, . "anti-pragmatisme," = =, . aristotle, = =, . _aristotelian society proceedings_, = =, . arnim, gisela von. _see_ grimm, mrs. herman. ashburner, anne, = =, , , . ashburner, grace, = =, , . _see contents_. ashfield, annual dinner at, = =, . athens, = =, , . and _see_ parthenon, the. atkinson, charles, = =, . ausable lakes, = =, . austria, political conditions in ( ), = =, . avenarius, = =, . baginsky, dr., = =, . bain, alexander, = =, , . bakewell, charles m., = =, , , , , . baldwin, james m., = =, . baldwin, william, = =, . balfour, a. j., _foundations of belief_, = =, . balzac, honoré de, = =, , = =, . bancroft, george, = =, , . bancroft, mrs. george, = =, . bancroft, john c., = =, . baring bros., = =, . barber, catherine, marries william james i, = =, ; her ancestry, and _n._ and _see_ james, mrs. catherine (barber). barber, francis, = =, . barber, jannet, = =, _n._ barber, john, =j.='s great-grandfather, in the revolutionary army, = =, and _n._; h. james, senior, on, . barber, mrs. john, = =, . barber, patrick, = =, _n._ barber family, the, = =, , . bashkirtseff, marie, diary of, = =, , = =, . bastien-lepage, jules, = =, and _n._ "bay." _see_ emmet, ellen. bayard, thomas f., = =, _n._ beers, clifford w., _a mind that found itself_, = =, , and _n._ _see contents_. beethoven, ludwig von, _fidelio_, = =, . belgium, philosophers in, = =, . benn, a. w., = =, , . berenson, bernhard, = =, . bergson, henri, _matière et mémoire_, = =, , ; his system, ; =j.='s enthusiasm for, , _n._; _l'evolution créatrice_, _ff._; _le rire_, ; mentioned, = =, , , , . _see contents._ berkeley, sir w., _principles_, = =, . berlin, = =, , , , = =, . berlin, university of, = =, , , . bernard, claude, = =, , . bhagavat-gita, the, = =, . bible, the, and orthodox theology, = =, . bielshowski, a., _life of goethe_, = =, . bigelow, henry j., = =, . bigelow, w., sturgis, = =, . birukoff, _life of tolstoy_, = =, . black, w., _strange adventures of a phaeton_, = =, . blood, benjamin paul, _the flaw in supremacy_, = =, ; j.'s article on, in _hibbert journal_, _n._, , ; his _anæsthetic revolution_ reviewed by =j.=, and _n._; his strictures on =j.='s english, ; mentioned, , , . _see contents._ bôcher, ferdinand, = =, . boer war, the, = =, , . bonn-am-rhein, = =, . boott, elizabeth (mrs. frank duveneck), = =, , . boott, francis, j.'s commemorative address on, = =, ; mentioned, , _n._, = =, . _see contents._ bornemann, fraülein, = =, , . bosanquet, b., quoted, = =, . boston _journal_, = =, . boston _transcript_, j.'s letter to, on medical license bill, = =, - ; and _n._, , . boulogne, collège de, = =, . bourget, paul, _idylle tragique_, = =, ; and tolstoy, , ; mentioned, = =, . bourget, mme. paul, = =, . bourkhardt, james, = =, , . bourne, ansel, = =, . boutroux, Émile, = =, , = =, , , . bowditch, henry i., = =, . bowditch, henry p., = =, = =, = =, , , , , , . _see contents._ bowen, francis, = =, . boyd, harriet a. (mrs. c. h. hawes), = =, , . bradley, francis h., _logic_, = =, ; mentioned, = =, , , , , , , . brazil, agassiz's expedition to, = =, _ff._; letters written by =j.=, - ; recalled, on mrs. agassiz's th birthday, = =, . brazilians, the, = =, , . brighton (england) aquarium, = =, . british guiana, = =, . british intellectuality, = =, . brown-séquard, charles e., = =, . browning, robert, "a grammarian's funeral," = =, , ; mentioned, = =, . bruno, giordano, inscription on statue of, = =, , bryce, james, = =, , , = =, , , . bryce, mrs. james, = =, , . bryn mawr college, = =, , . bull, mrs. ole, = =, . bunch, a dog, = =, . burkhardt, jacob, _renaissance in italy_, = =, . busse, _leib und seele, geist and körper_, = =, and _n._ butler, joseph, _analogy_, = =, . butler, samuel, = =, . cabot, j. elliot, = =, . caird, edward, = =, , . california, impressions of, = =, . california, northern, = =, . california, university of, = =, . california champagne, gift of, = =, . canadian pacific ry., = =, . carlyle, "jenny," = =, . carlyle, thomas, and h. james, senior, compared, = =, ; mentioned, . carnegie, andrew, = =, . carpenter, william b., = =, . carqueiranne, château de, = =, . carrington, hereward, = =, . cams, karl g., = =, . casey, silas, = =, . castle malwood, = =, . catholic church, =j.='s attitude toward, = =, , . catholics, "concrete," differentiated from their church, = =, . cattell, j. m., quoted, = =, ; mentioned, = =, . census of hallucinations in america, conducted by =j.=, = =, , , = =, . chamberlain, joseph, = =, . chambers, dr., _clinical lectures_, = =, . chanzy, antoine e. a., = =, . chapman, john j., _practical agitation_, = =, ; _political nursery_, ; mentioned, , . _see contents._ chapman, mrs. john j., = =, . charmes, francis, = =, . chatrian, l. g. c. a. _see_ erckmann-chatrian. chautauqua, =j.='s lectures at, and impressions of, = =, _ff._ chesterton, gilbert k., _heretics_, = =, , ; mentioned, and =n.=, . chicago, anarchist riot in, and english newspapers, = =, . chicago university, school of thought, = =, , . child, francis j., death of, = =, ; mentioned, = =, , , , , and _n._, . _see contents._ child, mrs. f. j., = =, , , = =, . chocorua, =j.='s summer home at, = =, , ; life at, , ; =j.='s life ends at, = =, ; = =, , . christian scientists, and the medical license bill, = =, , . christian theology, position with reference to, = =, , . clairvoyance. _see_ psychic phenomena. claparède, edward, = =, , , . clark university, = =, . clarke, joseph thatcher, = =, . clemens, samuel l. _see_ twain, mark. cleveland, grover, his venezuela message, and its reaction on =j.=, = =, _ff._, , , , = =, . clifford, w. k., = =, . club, the, = =, , . colby, f. m., = =, . collier, robert j. f., = =, . colorado springs, summer school at, = =, . columbia faculty club, =j.='s talks at, = =, and _n._ columbia university, = =, . columbus, christopher, and dr. bowditch, = =, . common sense, = =, . concord, mass., emerson centenary at, = =, . concord summer school of philosophy, = =, , . congress of the u. s., and the spanish war, = =, , . coniston, ruskin museum at, = =, . continent, the, and england, contrasts between, = =, , . conversion, = =, . correggio, antonio de, his shepherds' adoration, = =, ; and rafael, . corruption, in europe and america, = =, . courtelines, g., _les marionettes de la vie_, = =, . courtier, m., = =, . cousin, victor, = =, . crafts, james w., = =, . cranch, christopher p., = =, . _critique philosophique_, = =, , . crothers, samuel m., = =, . cuba, and the spanish war, = =, , . danriac, lionel, = =, , . dante alighieri, = =, . darwin, charles r., = =, . darwin, mrs. w. e. (sara sedgwick), = =, , , = =, . darwin, william e., = =, . darwin, william leonard, = =, . daudet, alphonse, = =, . davidson. thomas, =j.='s essay on, = =, _n._; =j.= lectures at his summer school, , ; mentioned, = =, , , , , , = =, . _see contents._ davis, jefferson, = =, , . death, reflections concerning, = =, . delboeuf, j., = =, , . demoniacal possession, = =, , . derby, richard, = =, . descartes, rené c., = =, , = =, . determinism, = =, , . dewey, john, _beliefs and realities_, = =, , ; mentioned, , . _see contents._ dexter, newton, = =, , . dibblee, anita, = =, , . dibblee, b. h., = =, . dibblee, mrs., = =, , . dickinson, g. lowes, _justice and liberty_, = =, , . diderot, denis, _oeuvres choisis_, = =, , ; mentioned, . dilthey, w., = =, , , . divonne, = =, , . dixwell, epes s., = =, . dixwell, fanny, = =, and _n._ and _see_ holmes, mrs. fanny dixwell. dooley, mr. _see_ dunne, finley p. dorr, george b., = =, . dorrs, the, = =, . dresden, = =, , = =, , . dresden gallery, = =, . dreyfus case, the, = =, , _ff._, . driesch, hans, _gifford lectures_, = =, . driver, dr., = =, . du bois, w. e. b., _the souls of black folk_, = =, and _n._ du bois-raymond, emil, = =, . dudevant, mme. aurore. _see_ sand, george. du maurier, george, _peter ibbetson_, = =, . dunne, finley p., = =, , . durham, = =, , . duveneck, frank, = =, , and _n._, . duveneck, mrs. frank. _see_ boott, elizabeth. dwight, thomas, = =, , , , , , , . edinburgh, praise of, = =, , , ; social amenities in, , . education, importance of, = =, . eliot, charles w., quoted, on =j.= in scientific school, = =, , and _n._; on j. wyman, , ; on courses given by =j.=, = =, _n._; mentioned, = =, , , , , , = =, , , , , . eliot, george, _daniel deronda_, = =, . elliot, gertrude, = =, . elliot, john w., = =, . elliot, mrs. john w. (mary morse), = =, , , = =, . ellis, rufus, = =, . emerson, edward w., on h. james, senior, = =, , and _n._; mentioned, . emerson, mary moody, and h. james, senior, = =, _n._ emerson, ralph waldo, letters of h. james, senior, to, quoted, = =, ; centenary of, = =, , , , (=j.='s address at); "the divine," , ; his devotion to truth, ; _representative men_, , ; and santayana, , ; mentioned, = =, , _n._, , = =, , , . emmet, ellen, = =, , = =, , , , . _see contents._ emmet, mrs. temple (ellen temple), = =, . emmet, rosina h., = =, , , , . _see contents._ emmet, temple, = =, . empiricism, = =, . and _see_ radical empiricism. england, in , = =, ; gardens in, ; impressions of, in , = =, ; contrasted with continental countries, , ; and the u. s., , ; changes in, ; high state of civilization in, , . english, in germany, = =, . english language, the teaching of the, = =, . english newspapers, and the anarchist riot in chicago, = =, ; attitude of, on venezuela message, = =, ; mentioned, , . english people, one aspect of the greatness of, = =, . english social and political system, = =, , . erb, dr., = =, . erckmann (Émile)-chatrian (l. g. c. a.), _l'ami fritz_, = =, ; _les confessions d'un joueur de clarinette_, ; _histoire d'un sous-maître_, ; mentioned, , . erdmann, johann e., = =, . erie canal, the, = =, . _essays philosophical and philological in honor of william james_, = =, , . esterhazy m. (dreyfus case), = =, , . evans, mrs. glendower. _see contents._ evans, mary anne. _see_ eliot, george. everett, charles carroll, = =, , = =, . everett, william, = =, . experience, the philosophy of, = =, , , . faidherbe, louis l. c., = =, . fairchild, sally, = =, . faith-curers, and the medical license bill, = =, , , , . farlow, william g., = =, . fechner, gustav t., _zend-avesta_, = =, , ; mentioned, = =, , = =, , . fichte, johann g., = =, , = =, . field, kate, _washington_, = =, . _figaro_, = =, , . fischer, kuno, essay on lessing's _nathan der weise_, = =, ; _hegel's leben, werke und lehre_, = =, , , . fiske, john, death of, = =, , ; _cosmic philosophy_, = =, ; mentioned, = =, , = =, . fitz, reginald h., = =, . flaubert, gustave, _madame bovary_, = =, ; mentioned, = =, . fletcher, horace, = =, . flint, austin, = =, . florence, boboli garden, = =, ; , , _ff._, , . flournoy, theodore, _william james_, = =, and _n._; beginnings of =j.='s friendship with, ; _métaphysique et psychologie_, = =, ; on religious psychology, ; reviews myers's _human personality_, ; lectures on pragmatism, ; mentioned, , , _n._, , , . his children referred to: alice, = =, , , ; ariane-dorothée, ; henri, , ; marguerite, . _see contents._ flournoy, mme. theodore, = =, , , = =, , , , , , , , , , . foote, henry w., = =, , , , . forbes, w. cameron, = =, . _see contents._ forbes-robertson, j., = =, . fouillée, alfred, renouvier's articles on, = =, ; mentioned, . france, and prussia ( ), = =, ; religious and revolutionary parties in, , ; influence of catholic education in, ; and the dreyfus case, = =, ; decadence of, , . france, anatole, = =, . francis of assisi, st., = =, . francis joseph, emperor, = =, . franco-prussian war, =j.='s views on, = =, , , . frazer, j. g., = =, . free will, influence on =j.= of renouvier's writings on, = =, , , , ; and determinism, ; s. h, hodgson's paper on, , . french language, = =, . freud, sigmund, = =, , . galileo, = =, =n.= galileo anniversary at padua, = =, . gardiner, h. n., = =, . _see contents._ gardner, mrs. john l., = =, . garibaldi, statue of, = =, . gautier, théophile, = =, . geneva, "academy" of, = =, , = =, ; museum at, . german art, = =, . german character, = =, . german education, = =, . german essayists, discussed, = =, , . german genius, its massiveness, = =, . german language, =j.='s progress in learning, = =, , , , , ; mentioned, , , , , . german motto, the, = =, . german universities, and harvard, = =, , and _n._ germans, =j.='s opinion of, = =, , , , , = =, . germany, =j.='s impressions of, = =, , ; peasant-women in, ; philosophers in, , ; in , = =, . gibbens, alice h., early life, = =, ; marries =j.=, . and _see_ james, mrs. william. gibbens, mrs. e. p., = =, , , , , , , = =, . _see contents._ gibbens, margaret, = =, , , , = =, . and _see_ gregor, mrs. leigh r. _see contents._ gibbens, mary, marries w. m. salter, = =, . gifford lectures. _see_ this title under james, william, works of. gilman, daniel coit, = =, , . gizycki, herr von, = =, , . gladstone, william e., = =, . glenmore, davidson's summer school of philosophy at, = =, _n._, . god, conceptions of, = =, , , , . goddard, george a., = =, . godkin, e. l., life of, quoted, = =, , _n._; =j.='s opinion of, , ; _comments and reflections_, = =, ; illness of, , ; his death, ; proposed memorial to, = =, ; his home life and his "life against the world," ; mentioned, = =, , , = =, . _see contents._ godkin, mrs. e. l., = =, , , = =, , . godkin, lawrence, = =, . goethe, johann w. von, quoted, = =, ; _italienische reise_, ; vischer on faust, ; _gedichte_, = =, ; mentioned, = =, , . goldmark, charles, = =, , . goldmark, josephine, = =, . goldmark, pauline, = =, , , . _see contents._ goldmarks, the, = =, . goldstein, julius, = =, . goodwin, william w., = =, . gordon, george a., = =, . grand canyon of arizona, = =, , . grandfather mountain, = =, , . grant, sir ludovic, = =, . grant, percy, = =, . grant, ulysses s., = =, . gray, john c., jr., = =, , , , , , , = =, , , . _see contents._ gray, roland, = =, . great britain, and venezuela, = =, , ; and the boer war, , . and _see_ england. greeks, the, = =, . green, st. john, = =, . greene, t. h., = =, . gregor, mrs. leigh r. (margaret gibbens), = =, , = =, . and _see_ gibbens, margaret. gregor, rosamund, = =, and _n._ grimm, herman, his _unüberwindliche mächte_, reviewed by =j.=, = =, , and _n._; his arrant moralism, ; "suckled by goethe," ; j. dines with, _ff._; his costume, ; on homer, ; mentioned, , , . grimm, mrs. herman (gisela von arnim), = =, , . grimm brothers, = =, , . grinnell, charles e., = =, . gryon, switzerland, = =, , . gurney, edmund, _phantasms of the living_, = =, ; his death, ; =j.='s regard for, and _n._; mentioned, , _n._, , = =, , = =, . gurney, mrs. edmund, = =, , . gurney, ephraim w., = =, _n._, . gurney, mrs. ephraim w. (ellen hooper), = =, _n._ habit, chapter on, in the _psychology_, = =, . halévy, daniel, _vie de nietzsche_, = =, , . hall, g. stanley, quoted, = =, , , ; his new journal, = =, , ; mentioned, = =, , , = =, . hallucinations, census of. _see_ census. hamilton, alexander, = =, . hamilton, sir w., = =, . hampton court, = =, . hapgood, norman, = =, . harris, frank, _the man shakespeare_, = =, , , . harris, william t., = =, , , . hartmann, karl r. e. von, = =, = =, = =, . harvard medical school, in the sixties, = =, _ff._; and the medical license bill, = =, . harvard psychological laboratory, beginning of, = =, _n._; münsterberg in charge of, , . harvard summer school, = =, . harvard university, beginning of =j.='s service in, = =, ; courses in philosophy offered by, ; hegelism at, ; contrasted with german universities, , and _n._; department of philosophy, =j.= on the future of, , ; =j.='s new courses at, = =, , ; routine business of professors, and _n._; a possible genuine philosophic universe at, ; confers ll.d. on =j.=, and _n._; =j.= resigns professorship at, , and _n._; roosevelt as possible president of, and _n._ havens, kate, = =, _n._ hawthorne julian, _bressant_, = =, . hay, john, = =, . hegel, georg w. f., _aesthetik_, = =, ; mentioned, , , , . hegelianism (hegelism), at harvard, = =, ; in the _psychology_, and _n._, ; mentioned, = =, . hegelians, = =, . heidelberg, = =, . helmholtz, h. l. f. von, _optics_, = =, ; mentioned, , , , , , , . helmholtz, frau von, = =, . henderson, gerard c., = =, . henry, joseph, = =, . henry, colonel (dreyfus case), = =, . herder, johann g. von, = =, . hering, ewald, = =, . hewlett, maurice, _halfway house_, = =, . heymans, g., _einführung in die metaphysik_, = =, and _n._ hibbert foundation lectures (manchester college), = =, , . _hibbert journal_, = =, , , higginson, henry l., takes charge of =j.='s patrimony, = =, ; and the harvard union, = =, and _n._; mentioned, , , = =, = =, = =, , . _see contents._ higginson, james j., = =, , . higginson, storrow, = =, . higginson, t. w., = =, . hildreth, j. l., = =, , . hildreth, mrs. j. l., = =, . hoar, george f., = =, . hobhouse, l. t., and "the will to believe," = =, , ; mentioned, . _see contents._ hodder, alfred, = =, . hodges, george, = =, , hodgson, richard, death of, = =, , ; his work and character, ; and mrs. piper, ; =j.= investigates mrs. piper's claim to give communications from his spirit, , ; =j.='s report thereon, , , ; mentioned, = =, , _n._, , . hodgson, shadworth h., "time and space," = =, ; "theory of practice," ; "philosophy and experience," and "dialogue on the will," - ; mentioned, , , , , , , , . _see contents._ höffding, harold, = =, . holland, mrs. _see_ mediums. holmes, o. w., = =, . holmes, o. w., jr., = =, , , , , , , = =, , . _see contents._ holmes, mrs. o. w., jr. (fanny dixwell), her "panel" and its inscription, = =, and _n._, . holt, edwin b., = =, . holt, henry, = =, . _see contents._ holt, henry, & co., j. contracts to write volume on psychology for, = =, . homer, = =, . hooper, edward w., = =, . hooper, ellen, = =, and _n._ hooper, ellen (mrs. john potter), = =, . hooper, louisa, = =, . hopkins, woolsey r., describes accident to h. james, senior, = =, , . horace mann auditorium, = =, . horse-swapping, = =, . house of commons, = =, , . howells, w. d., _indian summer_, = =, ; _shadow of a dream_, ; _hazard of new fortunes_, , ; _rise of silas lapham_, ; _minister's charge_, , ; _lemuel barker_, ; _criticism and fiction_, ; mentioned, = =, , = =, . _see contents._ howells, mrs. w. d., = =, , , . howison, george h., = =, _n._, , = =, . _see contents._ hugo, victor, _les misérables_, = =, ; _la légende des siècles_, = =, ; mentioned, = =, , = =, . huidekoper, rosamund, = =, . humanism, = =, , . humboldt, h. a. von, _travels_, = =, . humboldt, w., letters of, = =, . hume, david, = =, , = =, , , . hunnewell, walter, = =, . hunt, william m., = =, . hunter, ellen (temple), = =, , . huxley, thomas h., =j.= quoted on, = =, _n._; his _life and letters_, _n._, = =, ; mentioned, = =, . hyatt, alpheus, = =, . hyslop, james h., = =, , . ideal, the, = =, . idealism, absolute, royce's argument for, = =, . immortality, = =, , = =, , . imperialism, = =, . indians, in brazil, = =, , , . indifferentism, = =, . insane, proposed national society to improve condition of, = =, , . intellectualism, = =, , . italian language, = =, , = =, . italy, = =, , , . jacks, l. p., = =, , . jackson henry, = =, , . jacobi, friedrich h., = =, . james, alexander r. (=j.='s son), = =, , , . _see contents._ james, alice (=j.='s sister), her diary quoted, = =, ; in england with h. james, jr., from on, ; her illness, , , ; her diary quoted, _n._; quoted, on =j.='s european trip in , , ; her death, ; mentioned, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , = =, . _see contents._ james, mrs. catherine (barber), third wife of w. james i, (=j.='s paternal grandmother), "a dear gentle lady," = =, ; her house in albany, ; mentioned, , _n._, . james, garth wilkinson (=j.='s brother), wounded at fort wagner, = =, , , ; mentioned, = =, , , , , , , , , , , , , , _n._, , . james, henry, senior (=j.='s father), quoted, on his father, = =, , his grandfather, , and his mother, and _n._; his habit of thought expressed in his description of his mother, _n._; sketch of his life and character, - ; maimed for life by accident, , ; his discontent with orthodox dispensation, ; marries mary walsh, ; =j.='s striking resemblance to, ; relations with his children, , , ; =j.='s introduction to his _literary remains_, , ; letters of, to emerson, ; effect of swedenborg's works on, ; the only business of his later life, = =, ; =j.='s estimate of, ; henry james quoted on, ; letter of, to editor of _new jerusalem messenger_, - ; his directions regarding his funeral service, ; godkin quoted on, ; e. w. emerson quoted on, , and _n._; and miss emerson, _n._; influence of his "full and homely idiom" on the conversation of his sons, ; his philosophy, discussed by =j.=, , ; his essay on swedenborg, ; letter of, to henry james, ; dangerously ill, ; =j.='s last letter to, - ; his _secret of swedenborg_, ; his death, ; =j.='s memories of, , ; his mentality described, , ; compared with carlyle, ; mentioned, = =, , , , , , , , , , , and _n._, , _n._, , , and _n._, , , , , , , = =, , . _see contents._ _literary remains_ of, edited by =j.=, = =, and _n._, _n._, , , , , , . james, mrs. henry, senior (mary walsh), (=j.='s mother), her character, = =, ; her death, ; mentioned, , , , , , , , , , . _see contents._ james, henry, jr. (=j.='s brother), impressions of an elder generation reflected in _the wings of the dove_, = =, ; and his mother, ; his birth, ; quoted, on his father, ; influence of his father's "idiom" on his speech, ; at the collège de boulogne, ; early secret passion for authorship, ; his "meteorological blunder," ; quoted, on =j.=, as "he sits drawing," , ; letter of his father to, ; his feeling for europe, ; its reaction on him and on =j.=, contrasted, , ; described by =j.=, ; his "third manner" of writing criticized by =j.=, = =, , - ; his paper on boston, ; mentioned, = =, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , _n._, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , = =, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . _see contents._ works of: _the american_, = =, ; _the american scene_, = =, , , ; _the bostonians_, = =, , = =, = =, ; _the golden bowl_, = =, ; notes _of a son and brother_, = =, , _n._, , , , _n._; _partial portraits_, ; _the portrait of a lady_, ; _princess cassamassima_, ; _the reverberator_, ; _roderick hudson_, ; _w. w. story, life of_, _n._; _the tragic muse_, ; _a small boy and others_, _n._, _n._, , , , , , , ; _the wings of the dove_, , , = =, . james, henry, d (=j.='s son), = =, , , , , , , , , = =, , , , , , , , , . _see contents._ james, hermann (j.'s son), birth of, = =, , ; death of, . james, margaret m. (=j.='s daughter), birth of, = =, ; mentioned, , , , , , , , = =, , , , , , , . _see contents._ james, robertson (=j.='s brother), in union army, = =, , ; mentioned, , , , , , , , , , . james, william, =j.='s grandfather, his career, from penury to great wealth, = =, , ; a leading citizen of albany, ; personal appearance, ; anecdotes of, , ; h. james, senior, quoted on, ; his stiff presbyterianism and its results, ; his will disallowed by court, , ; marries catherine barber, . james, william, (=j.='s uncle), = =, . james, william. his ancestors in america, = =, ; recurrence of his father's habit of thought in, _n._; and his mother, ; resemblance of, to his father, ; quoted, on his father, ; influence of his father's "idiom," and _n._; frequent changes of schools and tutors, ; in europe, to , ; at the collège de boulogne, and the "academy" of geneva, ; quoted, on his education, ; interest in exact knowledge, ; begins study of anatomy at geneva, ; his cosmopolitanism of consciousness, ; widely read in three languages, ; effect of his early training, ; takes up painting, - ; portrait of katharine temple, ; physique, personal appearance and dress, , ; temperament and conversation, ; "smiting" quality of his best talk, ; keen about new things, ; disadvantage of being too encouraging to "little geniuses," , ; freer criticism of those who had arrived, ; influence as a teacher at harvard, , ; in lawrence scientific school, and _n._; physical condition keeps him out of army in civil war, ; transfers from chemistry to comparative anatomy, ; and jeffries wyman, , ; begins course at medical school, ; philosophy begins to beckon, ; joins agassiz's expedition to the amazon, ; his nine months with agassiz not wasted, , ; has small-pox at rio, , , and _n._; interne at mass. general hospital, ; again in medical school, - . impaired health causes his visit to germany, , ; in dresden, berlin and teplitz, , ; describes his condition in letter to his father, , ; returns to u. s., ; takes degree of m.d. ( ), ; eye-weakness, , ; scope of his reading, , and _n._, ; his note-books, , ; relation between earlier and later writings, and _n._; morbid depression, ; chapter on the "sick soul" the story of his own case, - ; return of resolution and self-confidence, , ; instructor in physiology, ; his real subject, physiological psychology, , ; his deepest inclination always toward philosophy, ; h. james, senior's, letter on the change in =j.='s mental tone and outlook, , ; decides to devote himself to biology, ; europe again, ; end of the period of morbid depression, ; gives course in psychology and organizes psychological laboratory, and _n_,; contributions to periodicals, ; on teaching of philosophy in american colleges, _ff._ marries alice h. gibbens, ; effect of his new domesticity, ; importance of his wife's companionship and understanding, ; contracts to write a volume on psychology, ; vacations in keene valley, ; his mode of life there, ; a bit of self-analysis, , ; first work on _psychology_, , ; declines invitation to teach at johns hopkins, ; in europe, - , _ff._; and henry james, , ; "reaction" on europe, , ; death of his mother, , and of his father, ; his memories of them, , ; corresponding member of english society for psychical research, ; an organizer and officer of the american society, ; investigates psychic phenomena, _ff._; conducts american census of hallucinations, , ; edits his father's _literary remains_, , _ff._; his life at chocorua, , , . abroad in , _ff._; at international congress of physiological psychology, , , ; his new house in cambridge, , ; his inclination toward the under-dog, , , = =, ; completion of the _psychology_, = =, _ff._; effect of its publication on his reputation, ; prepares an abridgment (_briefer course_), , ; turns his attention more fully toward philosophy, ; raises money for harvard laboratory, , and recommends münsterberg as its head, ; his sabbatical year abroad, , _ff._; beginning of his friendship with flournoy, ; receives honorary degree at padua, . how his mind was moving during the nineties, = =, _ff._; his opinion of psychology, ; new courses at harvard, , ; outside lecturing, ; would devote his thought and work to metaphysical and religious questions, ; frustrations, , ; personal appearance, , ; his daily round, - ; the club, , ; nervous break-down, ; d. s. miller quoted on, - ; attitude toward spelling reform, , ; and cleveland's venezuela message, _ff._; experiments with mescal, , ; chautauqua lectures, _ff._; work on college committees, _n._, at faculty meetings, _n._, lectures at lowell institute, and _n._, ; invited to deliver gifford lectures at edinburgh, ; blood's strictures on his english, ; on a proposed medical license bill, _ff._; on the spanish war, , ; corresponding member of académie des sciences morales et politiques, ; a memorable night in the adirondacks, - . effect on his health of misadventures in the adirondack, , , , ; two years of exile and illness, _ff._; an individualist and a liberal, ; opposed to philippine policy of mckinley administration, , ; his teaching limited to a half-course a year, ; lectures and contributions to philosophic journals, ; strain on his strength, ; the spirit in which he did his work, , ; receives ll.d. from harvard, and _n._; replies to prof. pratt's _questionnaire_, - ; at philosophical congress at rome, , , _ff._; lectures at stanford university, , , , and _n._; and the san francisco earthquake, , _ff._; _pragmatism_, ; resigns his professorship, , and _n._; the last meeting of his class, , , . declining health, , ; lectures on hibbert foundation at oxford, , ; uncompleted projects, ; his attitude toward war, , , and universal arbitration, ; tolerance fundamental in his scheme of belief, ; his report on "mrs. piper's hodgson control," , ; last months in europe, _ff._; farewell to harvard faculty, ; returns to chocorua, ; the end, . letters containing moral counsel, or touching upon problems of _belief_, = =, , , , , , , , , , , - , , , - ; _conduct_, = =, - , , _ff._, , , , = =, , ; _life and death_, = =, - , - , = =, , . works of:-- "address of the president before the society for psychical research," = =, and _n._ "bain and renouvier," , . _briefer course_ (abridgment of the _principles of psychology_), = =, , , , . "brute and human intellect," = =, . "certain blindness in human beings, a," = =, . _collected essays and reviews_, = =, _n._, = =, _n._, , _n_. "confidences of a psychical researcher," = =, and _n._ "dilemma of determinism, the," = =, and _n._, . "does consciousness exist?" _see_ "notion de conscience, la." "energies of men, the," = =, , . "feeling of effort, the," = =, . "frederick myers's service to psychology," = =, and _n._ "german-american novel, a." = =, _n._ gifford lectures on natural religion, =j.= invited to deliver, = =, ; preparing for, , , ; delivered, _ff._; success of, , , , ; outline of, ; published as _varieties of religious experience_, ; mentioned, , , , , , , , , , = =, , , . and _see_ _varieties of religious experience_, _infra_. "how two minds can know one thing," = =, and _n._ _human immortality_, = =, and _n._ "introspective psychology, on some omissions of," = =, . "knight-errant of the intellectual life, a," = =, _n._ lowell institute lectures, = =, and _n._, . _meaning of truth, the_, = =, _n._, . _memories and studies_, = =, , _n._, _n._, = =, _n._, _n._, _n._, _n._, , , _n._, , _n._ "moral equivalent of war, the," = =, . "notion de conscience, la," = =, and _n._, and _n._ "perception of space, the," = =, _n._ "perception of time, the," = =, . "philosophic reveries," = =, . "philosophical conceptions and practical results," = =, . _philosophy, some problems of_, = =, _n._, . _pluralistic mystic, a._ (lectures on hibbert foundation), = =, _n._, , , , , , , , . _pragmatism_, = =, , , , , , , ; translated by w. jerusalem, . "pragmatism's conception of truth," = =, and _n._ "proposed shortening of the college course," = =, _n._ _psychology, principles of_, = =, , , , , , , , , _ff._, , , , , and _n._, , , , = =, , . "quelques considérations sur la méthode subjective," = =, . _radical empiricism, essays in_, = =, _n._ "radical empiricism, is it solipsistic?" = =, . "radical empiricism as a philosophy," = =, _n._ _selected essays and reviews_, = =, . "sentiment of rationality, the," = =, and _n._ "shaw monument, oration on unveiling of," = =, , . "spatial quale, the," = =, and _n._ "spencer's definition of mind as correspondence," = =, . _talks to teachers and students on some of life's problems_, = =, , , , , . "tigers in india, the," = =, _n._ _varieties of religious experience._ (gifford lectures), = =, - , , = =, , , , , . "what psychical research has accomplished," = =, and _n._, . "_will to believe, the_," = =, , , , , , , , , . _will to believe, the, and other essays in popular philosophy_, = =, _n._, _n._, _n._, = =, , , , _n._, . "word more about truth, a," = =, . _see_ also list of dates at the beginning of volume i, and the partial bibliography (appendix ii, _infra_). james, mrs. william (alice gibbens), = =, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , = =, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . _see contents._ james, william (=j.='s son), birth of, = =, ; mentioned, , , , , , , , , , , = =, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . _see contents._ jameson raid, = =, . janet, pierre, = =, , , , . janet, mme. pierre, = =, . jap, a dog, = =, , , , , . jefferies, richard, _the life of the fields_, = =, , . jeffries, b. joy, = =, . jerome, w. t., = =, . jerusalem, w. _see contents._ jevons, f. b., = =, . "jimmy," students' name for the _briefer course_, = =, . johns hopkins university, =j.= declines invitation to teach at, = =, . johnson, alice, = =, . _journal of speculative philosophy_, = =, , = =, . jung-stilling, johann k., _autobiography_, = =, . kallen, horace m., = =, . kant, immanuel, _kritik der reinen vernunft_, = =, , = =, ; =j.= lectures on, , , , ; mentioned, = =, , , , , , = =, . kaulbach, w. von, = =, . keane, bishop, = =, . keene valley, adirondacks, =j.='s summer holidays in, = =, , , ; an eventful hours, and its effect, = =, - , ; his further misadventure, , ; mentioned, = =, , = =, , , , , . kipling, rudyard, _the light that failed_, = =, ; mentioned, = =, , , . kitchin, george w., = =, . knox, h. v., = =, , . kruger, paul, = =, . kolliker, r. a. von, = =, . kosmos, the startling discoveries concerning, = =, . kühnemann, eugen, = =, . la farge, bancel, = =, . la farge, john, = =, , , = =, . lamar, lucuis q. c., = =, . lamb, charles, = =, . lamb house, rye, henry james's english home, = =, , . lawrence scientific school, chemical laboratory in, = =, ; c. w. eliot quoted on =j.='s course in, , and _n._ leibnitz, baron g. w. von, = =, . lemaître, jules, = =, . _leonardo_, = =, , , . leopardi, giacomo, "to sylvia," = =, and _n._ lesley, susan i., _recollections of my mother_, = =, and _n._ lessing, gotthold e., _emilia galotti_, = =, ; fischer's essay on _nathan der weise_, . leuba, james h., = =, , , . _see contents._ lincoln, abraham, effect of his death, = =, , ; characterized by =j.=, . linville, n. c., = =, , . lister, sir joseph, = =, . lloyd, henry d., = =, . locke, john, = =, , = =, , . lodge, henry cabot, = =, . lodge, sir oliver, = =, _n._ loeser, charles a., = =, , . lombroso, cesar, = =, . london, = =, , = =, . london, _times_, = =, , , . long, george, = =, . loring, katharine p., = =, , , , . lotze, rudolf h., = =, , . loubet, Émile, president of france, = =, , . lowell, a. lawrence, = =, . lowell, james russell, death of, = =, , _n._; =j.='s memory of, ; mentioned, . lucerne, = =, . ludwig, karl f. w., = =, , , . lutoslawski, w., = =, , . _see contents._ mcdougall, william, = =, , , . mckinley, william, and the spanish war, = =, ; philippine policy of his administration disapproved by =j.=, , , ; and roosevelt, =j.='s description of, ; mentioned, , , , . macmonnies, f. w., bacchante, = =, and _n._, . macaulay, thomas b., lord, = =, . mach, ernst, = =, , . maine, u. s. s., explosion of, = =, . manchester college. _see_ hibbert foundation. marcus aurelius, = =, , . marshall, henry rutgers, _instinct and reason_, = =, . _see contents_. martin, l. j., = =, , . martineau, james, = =, . mascagni, pietro, _i rantzau_, = =, , . massachusetts general hospital, = =, , . materialism, = =, , . maudsley, henry, = =, . maupassant, guy de, = =, . medical license bill (proposed), in mass., = =, _ff._ mediums, = =, , = =, , . and _see_ paladino, eusapia, and piper, mrs. mental hygiene, connecticut society for, = =, ; national committee for, . merriman, daniel. _see contents._ merriman, mrs. daniel, = =, . merriman, r. b., = =, , , , . mescal, =j.='s experiment with, = =, , . metaphysical problems, =j.='s mind haunted by, = =, . metaphysics, outline of course offered by =j.= in, = =, , ; =j.='s proposed system of, , . meysenbug, malwida von, _memoiren einer idealistin_, = =, and _n._ mezes, sidney e., = =, . mill, john stuart, = =, , = =, . miller, dickinson s., quoted, on =j.= as a teacher and lecturer, = =, - ; "truth and error," ; quoted, on =j.='s talks with columbia faculty club, _n._; his "study" of =j.=, , ; mentioned, , , , , _n._, . _see contents._ _mind_, = =, , . mind-curers. _see_ faith-curers. miracles, = =, , . mitchell, s. weir, = =, . monism, = =, , , . montgomery, edmund, = =, , . morgan, c. lloyd, = =, . moritz, c. p., = =, . morley, john, _voltaire_, = =, _n._ morse, frances r., = =, , = =, , , . _see contents._ morse, mary. _see_ elliot, mrs. john w. morse, john t., = =, . motterone, monte, = =, . müller, g. e., = =, , . munich congress, = =, , . munk, h., = =, , . münsterberg, hugo, recommended by =j.= as head of harvard psychological laboratory, = =, , ; "the rudyard kipling of philosophy," ; "an immense success," ; criticizes =j.=, = =, , ; mentioned, = =, , = =, , , , , , , . _see contents._ murray, gilbert, = =, . musset, alfred de, = =, . myers, f. w. h., _human personality_, = =, _n._, = =, , and _n._; death of, ; =j.='s tribute to, , , ; mentioned, = =, , , = =, , , , , , . _see contents._ myers, mrs. f. w. h., = =, , , = =, , . naples, = =, . _nation, the_, review of _literary remains of henry james_ in, = =, , ; =j.='s comments on, ; and cleveland's venezuela message, = =, ; mentioned, = =, , , and _n._, , , , , , , = =, , , . nauheim (bad), = =, , , , , , , , , , , , . neilson, adelaide, = =, . nevins, john c., _demon possession and allied themes_, = =, and _n._ new forest, the, = =, , . _new jerusalem messenger_, h. james, senior's, letter to editor of, = =, - . _new world, the_, = =, , = =, . new york city, = =, , . newcomb, simon, = =, . newport, r. i., = =, , . newton, sir isaac, = =, _n._ nichols, herbert, = =, , = =, . nietzsche, friedrich w., = =, . nivedita, sister, = =, . nonentity, idea of, = =, . nordau, max s., _entartung_, = =, ; mentioned, . norton, charles eliot, ruskin's letters to, = =, ; mentioned, = =, , , , , , = =, , . _see contents._ norton, grace, = =, , = =, . _see contents._ norton, mrs. charles e. (susan sedgwick), = =, . norton woods, the, = =, . olney, richard, and the venezuela message, = =, , . optimism, = =, , . oregon, forest fires in, = =, . ostensacken, baron, = =, , . ostwald, w., = =, . oxford, = =, . padua, galileo anniversary at, = =, and _n._; university of, confers degree on =j.=, . pædagogy, = =, . paladino, eusapia, = =, and _n._, , , . paley, william, = =, . pallanza, italy, = =, . palmer, george h., a hegelian, = =, , ; investigates psychic phenomena with =j.=, ; mentioned, , , , = =, , . _see contents._ palmer, mrs. alice freeman, = =, . papini, giovanni, _crepuscolo dei filosofi_, = =, , ; mentioned, , , , , , . paris, = =, , , . paris commune ( ), = =, . parkman, francis, = =, . parkman, mrs. henry, = =, . parthenon, the, = =, , . party spirit, the only permanent force of corruption in the u. s., = =, . pasteur, louis, = =, , . paty du clam, colonel du, = =, . paulsen, friederich, _einleitung_, = =, , = =, . peabody, elizabeth, = =, . peabody, frances g., = =, . peace congress, = =, . peillaube, m., = =, , . peirce, benjamin, = =, . peirce, charles s., = =, , , , , , = =, , , , . peirce, james m., = =, . perry, ralph barton, his _list of published writings_ of =j.=, = =, , , ; mentioned, = =, , , , . perry, thomas s., with =j.= in berlin, = =, , , , , , , ; mentioned, _n._, , , , , , , , , , = =, . _see contents._ pertz, mrs. emma (wilkinson), = =, and _n._ pessimism, = =, . peterson, ellis, = =, . pflüger, dr., = =, . phelps, edward j., = =, _n._ philippine question, the, = =, , . philippines, policy of mckinley administration concerning, = =, , ; duty of u. s. with regard to, . philosophical club, university of california, =j.='s lectures to, = =, . _philosophical review_, = =, . philosophical society, =j.= refuses to join, = =, . philosophy, =j.= begins to feel the pull of, = =, , ; difficulties attending teaching of, in american colleges, , , . physiological psychology, = =, , , . physiological psychology, international congress of, = =, , , . physiology, =j.= attends lectures on, in berlin, = =, , , ; =j.='s first teaching subject, . picquart, m. g. (dreyfus case), = =, , . piddington, j. g., = =, . pierce, george w., = =, . pillon, françois, = =, , , , , = =, , . _see contents._ pillon, mme. françois, = =, , , , . pinkham, lydia e., "the venus of medicine," = =, and _n._ piper, mrs. william, =j.= quoted on, = =, , ; mentioned, = =, , , , . and _see_ hodgson, r. plato, = =, . pluralism, = =, , = =, . pluralistic idealism, = =, . pollock, sir frederick, = =, , = =, . pomfret, conn., = =, , . _popular science monthly_, = =, . porter, noah, = =, , . porter, samuel, = =, . porto rico, = =, . potter, horatio, = =, . powderly, terence v., = =, . pragmatism, and radical empiricism, distinction between, = =, ; disadvantages of the word as a title, , , . prague, = =, , , . pratt, james b., =j.='s replies to his questionnaire on religious belief, = =, - . pratt, m., = =, . prince, william h., = =, , , , . prince, mrs. william h. (katharine james), = =, . _see contents._ princeton theological seminary, h. james, senior, at, = =, . pringle-pattison, a. s., = =, , . and _see_ seth, andrew. profession, choice of, = =, , , . prussia, political conditions in ( ), = =, ; and france, . prussians, = =, . psychic phenomena, investigated by =j.= and palmer, = =, _ff._; mentioned, , , , , = =, , , . psychical research, american society for, =j.= active in organizing, = =, ; amalgamated with english society, ; =j.= on its function, , , = =, , , . psychical research, english society for, founded, = =, ; =j.= a corresponding member, vice-president, and president of, , _n._, . psychologists, american association of, = =, . psychology, =j.= begins to read on, = =, , ; =j.= gives course in, ; =j.= helps to make it a modern science, , ; "a nasty little subject," = =, . psychology, experimental, in u. s., history of, = =, _n._ psychology, physiological. _see_ physiological psychology. putnam, charles p., = =, , , , , = =, . putnam, frederick w., = =, . putnam, george, = =, , . putnam, james j., letter to =j.= on medical license bill, = =, _n._; mentioned, = =, , , , , = =, , , , . _see contents._ putnam, marian (mrs. james j.), = =, . quincy, henry p., = =, , . radcliffe college, = =, , , _n._, . radcliffe college, =j.='s class at. _see contents._ radical empiricism and pragmatism, distinction between, = =, ; mentioned, , . rafael sanzio, the sistine madonna, = =, . raffaello, florentine cook, = =, , . rankin, henry w., = =, . _see contents._ reed, thomas b., = =, . reid, carveth, = =, , . religion, =j.='s views on, = =, , , , , , _ff._, . renan, ernest, death of, = =, ; mentioned, , = =, , . renouvier, charles, the _année philosophique_, = =, , ; influence on =j.= of his writings on free will, , ; =j.='s first acquaintance with his work, ; =j.='s correspondence with, ; translates some of =j.='s papers, ; his articles on fouillée, ; _principes de la nature_, ; his _philosophy of history_, = =, , ; his death, ; _monadologie_ and _personalisme_, ; mentioned, = =, , . _see contents._ republican party, the, in , = =, . reverdin, m., = =, . rhea, jannet, = =, _n._ rhea, matthew, = =, _n._ rhodes, james f., _history of the u. s._, = =, _n._; mentioned, . richet, charles, = =, _n._, = =, , . richter, jean paul, = =, . rindge, frederick h., = =, , = =, . rio de janeiro, = =, _ff._ risks, choice of, = =, , . ritter, charles, = =, , = =, , . robertson, alexander, = =, , . robertson, g. croom, editor of _mind_, = =, , . _see contents._ robeson, andrew r., = =, . romanism and anglicanism, = =, . romanticism, = =, . rome, philosophical congress at, = =, _ff._, ; mentioned, = =, , , = =, , , . roosevelt, theodore, as possible president of harvard, = =, and _n._; mentioned, , . ropes, john c., death of, = =, , ; mentioned, = =, , = =, , . rosmini-serbati, antonio, = =, . rousseau, jean-jacques, = =, . royce, josiah, early life, = =, , ; quoted, on his first acquaintance with =j.=, , ; brought to harvard through =j.='s influence, ; his _religious aspect of philosophy_, , , ; "a perfect little socrates," ; made professor, ; and =j.=, as teachers, compared by miller, = =, ; "the rubens of philosophy," ; _the world and the individual_, and _n._, , , and _n._; his system, ; a sketcher in philosophy, , ; mentioned, = =, , , , , , , , , = =, , , , , , , . _see contents._ ruskin, john, his letters to c. e. norton, = =, , ; characterized by =j.=, ; _modern painters_, ; mentioned, = =, , = =, . rye (england), = =, . and _see_ lamb house. sabatier, paul, = =, . st. gaudens, augustus, his monument to r. g. shaw unveiled, = =, - . st. louis, hurricane at, = =, , . st. louis exposition ( ), = =, . sainte-beuve, c. a., = =, . salisbury, robert cecil, marquis of, = =, . salter, c. c., = =, . salter, w. m., = =, , , = =, . _see contents._ salter, mrs. w. m. (mary gibbens), = =, . san francisco, earthquake at, = =, _ff._, , ; mentioned, , . sanctis, professor di, = =, . sand, george, and a. de musset, = =, ; mentioned, = =, , , . santayana, george, _interpretations of poetry and religion_, = =, - ; _life of reason_, , ; mentioned, = =, , = =, , , . _see contents._ sardou, victorien, _agnes_, = =, . sargent, epes, _planchette_, reviewed by =j.=, = =, _n._ sargent, john s., = =, . _saturday club, early years of the_. _see_ emerson, edward w. saxons, the, = =, . scenery, part played by, in =j.='s spiritual experience, = =, , . schelling, friedrich w. j. von, = =, . schiller, f. c. s., his article on =j.= in _mind_, = =, , ; _studies in humanism_, ; mentioned, , _n._, , , , , , , , , , . _see contents._ schiller, j. c. friedrich von, = =, , , . schinz, herr, = =, . schlegel, august w. von, = =, . schlegel, karl w. f. von, = =, . schmidt, heinrich j., _history of german literature_, = =, . schopenhauer, arthur, = =, , = =, . schott, dr. (nauheim), = =, , , , . schurman, jacob g., = =, , = =, . scotland, =j.= strongly attracted by, = =, . scott, sir walter, his _journal_, = =, . scripture, edward w., = =, . scudder, samuel h., = =, . sea, =j.='s views of traveling by, = =, . seals, trained, = =, . sécretan, charles, = =, . sedgwick, arthur g., = =, and _n._, = =, . sedgwick, lucy (mrs. arthur g.), = =, and _n._ sedgwick, sara, = =, and _n._ and _see_ darwin, mrs. w. e. sedgwick, theodora, = =, , , , , , , = =, , , , , , . _see contents._ selberg, "a swell young jew," = =, , , . semler, dr., = =, . seth, andrew, = =, , , . and _see_ pringle-pattison, a. s. seth, james, = =, . shakespeare: h. grimm on _hamlet_, = =, ; _as you like it_, _n._, ; at stratford, = =, ; mentioned, , , . shaler, nathaniel s., quoted, on j. wyman, = =, ; _the individual_, = =, and _n._, ; _autobiography_, ; mentioned, = =, , = =, , . _see contents._ shaw, g. bernard, _cæsar and cleopatra_, = =, ; mentioned, . shaw, robert g., unveiling of st. gaudens's monument to, = =, - ; mentioned, = =, . sherman, william t., = =, , . sidgwick, henry, "lecture against lecturing," = =, ; death of, ; mentioned, = =, _n._, , , , = =, , . slattery, charles l. _see contents._ smith, adam, = =, . smith, norman k. _see contents._ smith, paulina c., = =, . smith, pearsall, = =, . snow, william f., quoted, on =j.= and the san francisco earthquake, = =, _n._ snow, mrs. w. f., = =, . society for psychical research. _see_ psychical research, society for. solomons, leon m., death of, = =, ; his character and work, , . sorbonne, the, =j.= declines appointment as exchange professor at, = =, and _n._ sorrento, to amalfi, = =, , . spain, misrule of, in cuba, = =, . spanish war, the, = =, , . spannenberg, frau, = =, . _spectator, the_, = =, . spelling reform, =j.='s attitude toward, = =, , . spencer, herbert, _psychology_, = =, ; _data of ethics_, ; mentioned, , , , . spinoza, baruch, = =, , = =, . spirit-theory, the. _see_ psychic phenomena. spiritualism. _see_ psychic phenomena. spiritualists, and the medical license bill, = =, . springfield _republican_, = =, . stanford, leland, = =, , . stanford, mrs. leland, = =, , . stanford, leland, jr.,= =, . stanford university, =j.='s lectures at, = =, , , and _n._; a miracle, ; its history, , ; what it might be made, , . stanley, sir henry m., = =, . stanley, lady, = =, . starbuck, e. d., _psychology of religion_, = =, . _see contents._ stead, w. t., = =, , . steffens, heinrich, = =, . stephen. sir james fitz-james, "essay on spirit-rapping," = =, _n._ stephen, sir leslie, _utilitarians_, = =, ; his letters, . steuben, baron von, = =, . storey, moorfield, = =, , = =, . _see contents._ stout, g. f., = =, , . strasburg, = =, , . stratford-on-avon, and the baconian theory, = =, . strong, charles a., = =, , , , , , , , , , , . _see contents._ stumpf, carl, _tonpsychologie_, = =, , ; mentioned, , , , , . _see contents._ sturgis, james, = =, . style in philosophic writing, = =, , , , , , , , , , . subjectivism, tendency to, = =, . subliminal, problem of the, = =, , , , . success, worship of, = =, . sully, james, = =, _n._, , , . _see contents._ "supernatural" matters. _see_ psychic phenomena. suttner, baroness von, _waffennieder_, = =, . swedenborg, emmanuel, influence of his works on h. james, senior, = =, , , ; _society of the redeemed form of man_, quoted, and _n._; h. james, senior's, essay on, ; mentioned, = =, . switzerland, = =, , , , , . sylvain, mlle., = =, . sylvain, m., = =, . tappan, mary, = =, . _see contents._ tappan, mrs., = =, . taylor, a. e., = =, , , , . temple, ellen, = =, , , , = =, , . and _see_ emmet, mrs. temple. temple, henrietta, = =, . temple, katharine, =j.='s portrait of, = =, ; mentioned, , , , . _see contents._ temple, "minny," the original of two of henry james's heroines, = =, ; =j.= quoted on, , ; her "madness," ; mentioned, , , , , . temple, mrs. robert (=j.='s aunt), = =, . tennyson, alfred, lord, = =, . teplitz, = =, , , . thames, the, = =, . thatness. _see_ whatness. thaw, henry, trial of, = =, . thayer, abbott, = =, . thayer, gerald, = =, , . thayer, joseph henry, = =, . thayer, miriam, = =, . thayer expedition. _see_ brazil, agassiz's expedition to. thies, louis, = =, , , . thies, miss, = =, . thompson, daniel g., = =, . tieck, ludwig, = =, . tolstoy, leo, _war and peace_, = =, , , ; and p. bourget, , ; _anna karenina_, , ; and h. g. wells, ; mentioned, , , , , . torquay, = =, . townsend, henry e., = =, . truth, the, obscured by american philosophers, = =, , , . tuck, henry, = =, , . tuckerman, emily, = =, . turgenieff, ivan, = =, , , . twain, mark, = =, , , , = =, . tweedie, mrs. edmund, = =, . tweedies, the, = =, , . tychism, = =, , . tychistic and pluralistic philosophy of pure experience, = =, . union college, h. james, senior, graduates at, = =, . _unitarian review_, davidson's article in, = =, . unitarianism (boston), the "bloodless pallor" of, = =, . united states, =j.='s remarks on, = =, , ; and the philippines, = =, , ; rushing to wallow in the mire of empire, ; manner of eating boiled eggs in, ; vocalization of people of, ; and england, , . upham, miss, = =, , . uphues, = =, , . van buren, "elly," = =, , , . van rensselaer, stephen, = =, . venezuela message, cleveland's, = =, _ff._ venus de milo, = =, . verne, jules, _tour of the world in eighty days_, = =, . veronese, paul, = =, . verrall, mrs. a. w. _see_ mediums. vers-chez-les-blanc, = =, , , = =, . victor emmanuel iii, king of italy, = =, . victoria, queen, her jubilee, = =, . vienna, exhibition of french paintings at, = =, . villari, pasquale, = =, , , . villari, mrs., = =, , , . vincent, george e., = =, , . virchow, rudolf, = =, . vischer, f. t., essays, = =, ; _aesthetik_, . viti, signor da, = =, . vivekananda, = =, . voltaire, = =, _n._ vulpian, a., = =, . walcott, henry p., = =, , = =, . waldstein, charles, = =, , = =, . _see contents._ walsh, catherine (=j.='s 'aunt kate'), = =, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . walsh, hugh, = =, . walsh, rev. hugh, = =, _n._ walsh, james (=j.='s maternal grandfather), = =, . walsh, mary, marries h. james, senior, = =, ; her ancestry, , . and _see_ james, mrs. william. walsh, mrs. mary (robertson), = =, . walston, sir charles. _see_ waldstein, charles. wambaugh, eugene, = =, . ward, james, = =, , , , . ward, samuel, = =, . ward, thomas w., on the brazilian expedition, = =, , , ; mentioned, . _see contents._ ward, dorothy, = =, . ware, william r., = =, , . waring, daisy, = =, . waring, george e., quoted, on henry james, = =, , . warner, joseph b., = =, , . warren, w. r., = =, . washington, booker t., _up from slavery_, = =, ; mentioned, , . washington, mrs. booker t., at ashfield, = =, . washington, george, = =, , . washington, state of, forest fires in, = =, . wells, h. g., _utopia_, = =, , ; _anticipations_, ; _mankind in the making_, ; =j.='s appreciation of, ; _kipps_, ; "two studies in disappointment," , ; _first and last things_, ; the tolstoy of the english world, ; mentioned, , , . _see contents._ werner, g., = =, . whatness and thatness, = =, , . "white man's burden," cant about the, = =, . whitman, henry, death of, = =, ; mentioned, = =, , . whitman, sarah (mrs. henry), her character and accomplishments, = =, , = =, , ; last illness and death, , , ; mentioned, = =, _n._, , = =, , . _see contents._ whitman, walt, = =, . whole, idolatry of the, = =, , . wilkinson, emma. _see_ pertz, mrs. emma. wilkinson, j. j. garth, = =, _n._ william ii of germany, his message to kruger, = =, , . wilmarth, mrs., = =, . witmer, lightner, = =, . wolff, christian, = =, . woodberry, george e., _the heart of man._ = =, , . woodbridge, f. j. e., _journal_, = =, . _see contents._ worcester, elwood, _the living world_, = =, . wordsworth, w., _the excursion_, = =, , . wright, chauncy, and =j.=, = =, _n._; mentioned, = =, . wundt, wilhelm m., as a type of the german professor, = =, ; his _system_, ; mentioned, , , , , , , = =, . wyman, jeffries, influence as a teacher, = =, ; c. w. eliot and n. s. shaler quoted on, , ; =j.= quoted on, , ; mentioned, , , , , , , , , , . yale university, = =, . yankees, a german lady's idea of, = =, , . yoga practices, = =, _ff._ yosemite valley, = =, . zennig's restaurant (berlin), = =, , . _zion's herald_, emerson number of, = =, . zola, Émile, _germinal_, = =, ; mentioned, = =, , . mcgrath-sherrill press graphic arts bldg. boston * * * * * the following typographical errors have been corrected by the etext transcriber: mutally encouraging=>mutually encouraging malvida von meysenbug, stuttgart, =>malwida von meysenbug, stuttgart, meysenbug, malvida von, _memoiren einer idealistin_=>meysenbug, malwida von, _memoiren einer idealistin_ rome eems to beat=>rome seems to beat qu'on est bien dans çe fauteuil=>qu'on est bien dans ce fauteuil * * * * * footnotes: [ ] "it seems to me that psychology is like physics before galileo's time--not a single elementary law yet caught a glimpse of. a great chance for some future psychologue to make a greater name than newton's; but who then will read the books of this generation? not many, i trow. meanwhile they must be written." to james sully, july , . [ ] president eliot, in a memorandum already referred to (vol. , p. , note), calls attention to these courses and remarks: "these frequent changes were highly characteristic of james's whole career as a teacher. he changed topics, textbooks and methods frequently, thus utilizing his own wide range of reading and interest and his own progress in philosophy, and experimenting from year to year on the mutual contacts and relations with his students." james continued to be titular professor of psychology until , just as he had been nominally assistant professor of physiology for several years during which the original and important part of his teaching was psychological. his title never indicated exactly what he was teaching. [ ] at this meeting he delivered a presidential address "on the knowing of things together," a part of which is reprinted in _the meaning of truth_, p. , under the title, "the tigers in india." _vide_, also, _collected essays and reviews_. [ ] in a brief letter to the _harvard crimson_ (jan. , ), james urged the right and duty of individuals to stand up for their opinions publicly during such crises, even though in opposition to the administration. mr. rhodes, in his _history of the united states, - _, makes the following observation: "cleveland, in his chapter on the 'venezuelan boundary controversy,' rates the un-americans who lauded 'the extreme forbearance and kindness of england.' ... the reference ... need trouble no one who allows himself to be guided by two of cleveland's trusted servants and friends. thomas f. bayard, secretary of state during the first administration, and actual ambassador to great britain, wrote in a private letter on may , , 'there is no question now open between the united states and great britain that needs any but frank, amicable and just treatment.' edward j. phelps, his first minister to england, in a public address on march , , condemned emphatically the president's venezuela policy." see rhodes, _history_, vol. viii, p. ; also p. _et seq._ [ ] "the evolution of the summer resort." [ ] "address of the president before the society for psychical research." proc. of the (eng.) soc. for psych. res. , vol. xii, pp. - ; also in _science_, , n. s., vol. iv, pp. - . [ ] from the last paragraph of cleveland's venezuela message. [ ] in --during his final illness, in fact--james fulfilled this promise. see "a pluralistic mystic," included in memories and studies; also letter of june , , p. _infra_. [ ] cf. william james's unsigned review of blood's _anæsthetic revelation_ in the _atlantic monthly_, , vol. xxxiv, p. . [ ] james always did a reasonable share of college committee work, especially for the committee of his own department. but although he had exercised a determining influence in the selection of every member of the philosophical department who contributed to its fame in his time (except professor palmer, who was his senior in service), he never consented to be chairman of the department. he attended the weekly meetings of the whole faculty for any business in which he was concerned; otherwise irregularly. he spoke seldom in faculty. occasionally he served on special committees. he usually formed an opinion of his own quite quickly, but his habitual tolerance in matters of judgment showed itself in good-natured patience with discussion--this despite the fact that he often chafed at the amount of time consumed. "now although i happen accidentally to have been on all the committees which have had to do with the proposed reform, and have listened to the interminable faculty debates last winter, i disclaim all powers or right to speak in the _name_ of the majority. members of our dear faculty have a way of discovering reasons fitted exclusively for their idiosyncratic use, and though voting with their neighbors, will often do so on incommunicable grounds. this is doubtless the effect of much learning upon originally ingenious minds; and the result is that the abundance of different points and aspects which a simple question ends by presenting, after a long faculty discussion, beggars both calculation beforehand and enumeration after the fact."--"the proposed shortening of the college course." _harvard monthly_, jan., . [ ] "i _loved_ child more than any man i know." sept. , ' . [ ] eight lectures on "abnormal mental states" were delivered at the lowell institute in boston, but were never published. their several titles were "dreams and hypnotism," "hysteria," "automatisms," "multiple personality," "demoniacal possession," "witchcraft," "degeneration," "genius." in a letter to professor howison (apr. , ) james said, "in these lectures i did not go into psychical research so-called, and although the subjects were decidedly morbid, i tried to shape them towards optimistic and hygienic conclusions, and the audience regarded them as decidedly anti-morbid in their tone." [ ] _demon possession and allied themes_, by john c. nevius. [ ] _the will to believe and other essays in popular philosophy_ had just appeared. [ ] the address has been reprinted in _memories and studies_. [ ] for a short while macmonnies's bacchante stood in the court of the boston public library. [ ] these words were not employed in public, but were once applied to a well-known professor in a private letter. [ ] a full report of the speech made at the legislative hearing was printed in the _banner of light_, mar. , . the letter to the boston _transcript_ in appeared in the issue of mar. . [ ] _james j. putnam to william james_ boston, _mar. , _. dear william,--we have thought and talked a good deal about the subject of your speech in the course of the last week. i prepared with infinite labor a letter intended for the _transcript_ of last saturday, but it was not a weighty contribution and i am rather glad it was too late to get in. i think it is generally felt among the best doctors that your position was the liberal one, and that it would be a mistake to try to exact an examination of the mind-healers and christian scientists. on the other hand, i am afraid most of the doctors, even including myself, do not have any great feeling of fondness for them, and we are more in the way of seeing the fanatical spirit in which they proceed and the harm that they sometimes do than you are. of course they do also good things which would remain otherwise not done, and that is the important point, and sincere fanatics are almost always, and in this case i think certainly, of real value. always affectionately, james j. p. [ ] that is, there was here no path to follow, only "blazes" on the trees. [ ] the housekeeper at the putnam-bowditch "shanty." [ ] photograph of a boy and girl standing on a rock which hangs dizzily over a great precipice above the yosemite valley. [ ] g. e. woodberry: _the heart of man_; . [ ] james's house was number , his mother-in-law's number . [ ] augusta was the house-maid; dinah, a bull-terrier. [ ] it will be recalled that davidson had a summer school of philosophy at his place called glenmore on east hill, and that east hill is at one end of keene valley. see also james's essay on thomas davidson, "a knight errant of the intellectual life," in _memories and studies_. [ ] a gift which provided for building the "harvard union." [ ] "you have never spent a night under our roof, or eaten a meal in our house!" this fictitious charge had become the recognized theme of frequent elaborations. [ ] _the world and the individual_, vol. i. mrs. evans was inclined to contend for royce's philosophy. [ ] the name of an american claret which his correspondent had "discovered" and in which it also pleased james to find merit. [ ] the second volume of _the world and the individual_. (gifford lectures at the university of aberdeen.) [ ] _interpretations of poetry and religion._ new york, . [ ] _memoiren einer idealistin_, by malwida von meysenbug, stuttgart, . [ ] _recollections of my mother_ [anne jean lyman], by susan i. lesley, boston, . [ ] sister nivedita. [ ] booker t. washington's _up from slavery_. [ ] "frederick myers's services to psychology." reprinted in _memories and studies_. [ ] _the individual, a study of life and death_. new york, . this letter is reproduced from the _autobiography_ of n. s. shaler, where it has already been published. [ ] mrs. o. w. holmes had used the following translation of an epitaph in the greek anthology:-- a shipwrecked sailor buried on this coast bids thee take sail. full many a gallant ship, when we were lost, weathered the gale. [ ] "and base things of the world and things which are despised hath god chosen, yes, and things which are not, to bring to naught things that are." [ ] kitchen. [ ] although james had received the usual hint that harvard intended to confer an honorary degree upon him, he had absented himself from both the honors and fatigues of commencement time. the next year he was present, and the ll.d. was conferred. [ ] "i have been re-reading bergson's books, and nothing that i have read in years has so excited and stimulated my thought. four years ago i couldn't understand him at all, though i felt his power. i am sure that that philosophy has a great future. it breaks through old _cadres_ and brings things into a solution from which new crystals can be got." (from a letter to flournoy, jan. , .) [ ] the ingersoll lecture on human immortality. [ ] there had been a celebration of mrs. agassiz's eightieth birthday at radcliffe college, of which she was president. [ ] on the amazon in - . [ ] an -page _syllabus_ printed for the use of his students in the course on the "philosophy of nature" which james was giving during the first half of the college year. [ ] _human personality and its survival of bodily death_, by f. w. h. myers. [ ] "the piles driven into the quicksand are too few for such a structure. but it is essential as a preliminary attempt at methodizing, and will doubtless keep a very honorable place in history." to f. c. s. schiller, april , . [ ] eusapia paladino, the italian "medium." the physical manifestations which occurred during her trance had excited much discussion. [ ] the name of a student-society. [ ] the horse. [ ] w. e. b. du bois: _the souls of black folk_. [ ] these five lectures were delivered at the summer school at "glenmore," which thomas davidson had founded. their subject was "radical empiricism as a philosophy"; but they were neither written out nor reported. [ ] _aristotelian society proceedings_, vol. iv, pp. - . [ ] james's answers are printed in italics. [ ] "how two minds can know one thing," _journal of philosophy, psychology, and scientific methods_, , vol. ii, p. . [ ] "is radical empiricism solipsistic?" _journal of philosophy, psychology, and scientific methods_, , vol. ii, p. . [ ] this address, "la notion de conscience," was printed first in the _archives de psychologie_, , vol. v, p. . it will also be found in the _essays in radical empiricism_. [ ] "my own desire to see roosevelt president here for a limited term of years was quenched by a speech he made at the harvard union a couple of years ago." (to d. s. miller, jan. , .) [ ] _the life of reason._ new york, . [ ] he had been "sounded" regarding an appointment as harvard exchange lecturer at the sorbonne, and had at first been inclined to accept. [ ] busse, _leib und seele, geist und körper_; heymans, _einführung in die metaphysik_. [ ] _vide letters of henry james_, vol. ii, p. . [ ] "also outside 'addresses,' impossible to refuse. damn them! four in this hotel [in san francisco] where i was one of four orators who spoke for two hours on 'reason and faith,' before a unitarian association of pacific coasters. consequence: _gout_ on waking this morning! _unitarian gout_--was such a thing ever heard of?" (to t. s. perry, feb. , .) [ ] dr. snow kindly wrote an account of the afternoon that he spent in james's company in the city and it may here be given in part. "when i met professor james in san francisco early in the afternoon of the day of the earthquake, he was full of questions about my personal feelings and reactions and my observations concerning the conduct and evidences of self-control and fear or other emotions of individuals with whom i had been closely thrown, not only in the medical work which i did, but in the experiences i had on the fire-lines in dragging hose and clearing buildings in advance of the dynamiting squads. "i described to him an incident concerning a great crowd of people who desired to make a short cut to the open space of a park at a time when there was danger of all of them not getting across before certain buildings were dynamited. several of the city's police had stretched a rope across this street and were volubly and vigorously combating the onrush of the crowd, using their clubs rather freely. some one cut the rope. at that instant, a lieutenant of the regular army with three privates appeared to take up guard duty. the lieutenant placed his guard and passed on. the three soldiers immediately began their beat, dividing the width of the street among themselves. the crowd waited, breathless, to see what the leaders of the charge upon the police would now do. one man started to run across the street and was knocked down cleverly by the sentry, with the butt of his gun. this sentry coolly continued his patrol and the man sat up, apparently thinking himself wounded, then scuttled back into the crowd, drawing from every one a laugh which was evidently with the soldiers. immediately, the crowd began to melt away and proceed up a side street in the direction laid out for them. "in connection with this story professor james casually mentioned that not long before, where there were no soldiers or police, he had run on to a crowd stringing a man to a lamp-post because of his endeavor to rob the body of a woman of some rings. at the time, i did not learn other details of this particular incident, us professor james was so full of the many scenes he had witnessed and was particularly intent on gathering from me impressions of what i had seen. i suppose he had similarly been gathering observations from others whom he met, "an incident which struck me as humorous at the time was that he should have gathered up a box of "zu-zu gingersnaps," and, as i recall it, some small pieces of cheese. i do not now recall his comment on where he had obtained these, but there was some humorous incident connected with the transaction, and he was quite happy and of opinion that he was enjoying a nourishing meal. "professor james told me vividly and in a few words the circumstances of the damage done by the earthquake at stanford university, and i left him to make arrangements for going down to the university that night to provide for my family. as it turned out, professor james returned to the campus before i did, and true to his promise thoughtfully hunted up mrs. snow and told her that he had seen me and that i was alive and well." [ ] james had not used a type-writer since the time when his eyes troubled him in the seventies. the machine now had the fascination of a strange toy again. [ ] he did mistake, as mr. chesterton's subsequent utterances showed. [ ] as to "jimmy," _vide_ vol. i, p. _supra_. [ ] _cf._ pp. , , and _supra_. [ ] dr. miller writes: "these four evenings at the faculty club were singularly interesting occasions. one was a meeting of the philosophical club of new york, whose members, about a dozen in number, were of different institutions. the others were impromptu meetings arranged either by members of the department of philosophy at columbia or a wider group. at one of them mr. james sat in a literal circle of chairs, with professors of biology, mathematics, etc., as well as philosophy, and answered in a particularly friendly and charming way the frank objections of a group that were by no means all opponents. at the close, when he was thanked for his patience, he remarked in his humorously disclaiming manner that he was not accustomed to be taken so seriously. privately he remarked how pleasantly such an unaffected, easy meeting contrasted with a certain formal and august dinner club, the exaggerated amusement of the diners at each other's jokes, etc." [ ] his resignation did not take effect until the end of the academic year, although his last meeting with the class to which he was giving a "half-course," occurred at the mid-year. [ ] "la notion de conscience," _archives de psychologie_, vol. v, no. , june, . later included in _essays in radical empiricism_. [ ] "pragmatism's conception of truth." included in _selected essays and reviews_. [ ] the story of the committee for mental hygiene is interestingly told in part v of the th edition of c. w. beers's _a mind that found itself_. several letters from james are incorporated in the story. _vide_ pp. and ; also pp. , . [ ] mrs. james's niece, rosamund gregor, age . [ ] _memories and studies_, pp. _et seq._ [ ] the reader need hardly be reminded that new meanings and associations have attached themselves to this word in particular. [ ] _talks to teachers_, p. . [ ] proceedings of (english) s.p.r., vol. xxiii, pp. - . also, proc. american s.p.r., vol. iii, p. . [ ] _l'Évolution créatrice._ [ ] "a word more about truth," reprinted in _collected essays and reviews_. [ ] learned public. [ ] superficial stuff. [ ] the lectures were published as _a pluralistic universe_. [ ] new york: longmans, green & co., . [ ] "the confidences of a psychical researcher," reprinted in _memories and studies_ under the title "final impressions of a psychical researcher." [ ] by frank harris; new york: . [ ] see the footnote on p. _supra_. the semantic war by bill clothier illustrated by wes [transcriber's note: this etext was produced from galaxy science fiction november . extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the u.s. copyright on this publication was renewed.] perhaps there have been causes for slaughter just as silly as this was--but try to find one! the rain pours down chill out of a sullen sky. my pace quickens as i try to regain the relative warmth and shelter of the cavern before i become thoroughly drenched. i cannot afford to catch a cold. all alone as i am and with no medicine, i would stand too great a chance of a quick death. these lowering oregon skies still hold traces of nameless disease in their writhing cloud tendrils. i am not just afraid of a cold. that would only be the key for some other malady to use and strike me down forever. i see the cave up ahead and feel a sense of contentment as i draw near and then duck inside its stony mouth. the rain hisses without, but inside it is dry. there is a heavy cow-hide hanging on a peg in the wall and i take it down and wrap it around me. soon i will be warm. once more i may stave off my ultimate end. sometimes i wonder why i wish to put it off. certainly, according to my old standards, there is no point in living. but somehow i feel that the mere fact of living is justification in itself. even for such a life as mine. i didn't always feel this way. but then circumstances change and people change with them. i changed my circumstances more than myself, but i had no alternative. so now i exist. i suppose i should be content. after all, i am alive and, in my own simple way, i enjoy life. i can remember people who asked nothing more than to be allowed to live--to exist. ironically enough, i always considered them sub-normal. i felt that a man should strive to do something that would not only perpetuate the happiness of his own life but that of his fellow-men. something that would make life more beautiful, and easier, and more kind. * * * * * it was with this feeling that i applied myself as a student of philosophy at stanford university. and the strengthening of this same belief led me to take up teaching and embrace it as the only way of obtaining genuine happiness. my personal philosophy was simple. i would learn about life in all its real and symbolic meanings and then teach it to my pupils, each of whom, i felt sure, were thirsting for the knowledge that i was extracting from my cultural environment. i would show them the meaning behind things. that, i felt, was the key to successful living. now it seems strangely pathetic that i should have essayed such an impossible task. but even a professor of philosophy can be mistaken and become confused. i remember when i first became aware of the movement. for years, we had been drilling certain precepts into the soft, impressionable heads of those students who came under our influence. liberalism, some called it, the right to take the values accumulated by society over a period of hundreds of years and bend them to fit whatever idea or act was contemplated. by such methods, it was possible to fit the mores to the deed, not the deed to the mores. oh, it was a wonderful theory, one that promised to project all human activities entirely beyond good and evil. however, i digress. it was a spring morning at berkeley, california, when i had my first inkling of the movement. i was sitting in my office gazing out the window and considering life in my usual contemplative fashion. i might say i was being rather smug. i was thinking how fortunate i was to have been graduated from stanford with such high honors, and how my good luck had stayed with me until i received my doctor's degree in a famous eastern university and came out to take an associate professorship at the berkeley campus. i was watching the hurrying figures below on the crosswalks and idly noting the brilliant green of the shrubbery and the trees and the lawn. i was mixing up keats with a bit of philosophy and thoroughly enjoying myself. knowledge is truth, truth beauty, i mused, that is all we know on earth, and all we need to know. there was a knock on my door and i said come in, reluctantly abandoning my train of thought which had just picked up shakespeare, whom i was going to consider as two-thirds philosopher and one-third poet. i have never felt that the field of literature had the sole claim to shakespeare's greatness. * * * * * professor lillick came in, visibly perturbed. lillick was a somewhat erratic individual (for a professor, at least) and he was often perturbed. once he became excited about the possibilities of the campus shrubbery being stunted and discolored by the actions of certain dogs living on campus. he was not a philosophy professor, of course, but a member of the political science group. "carlson," he asked nervously, "have you heard about it yet?" "i have no idea," i returned good-naturedly. "heard about what?" he looked behind him as if he thought he might be followed. then he whirled around, his sharp-featured face alight with feeling. "carlson--the wistick dufels the moraddy!" and he stared at me intently, his gimlet eyes almost blazing. i stared back at him blankly. "you haven't heard!" he exclaimed. "i thought surely you would know about it. you're always talking about freedom to apply thought for the good of humanity. well, we're finally going to do something about it. you'll see. keep your ears open, carlson." then he turned and started out of the room. he paused at the threshold and fixed me again with his ferretlike eyes. "the wistick dufels the moraddy!" he said, and vanished through the door. and that was my first unheeded omen of what was to come. i paid little attention to it. lillick wasn't the sort of man who inspired attention. as a matter of fact, i considered reporting him to the head of his department as being on the verge of a nervous breakdown. but i didn't. in those days, nervous breakdowns were a common occurrence around college campuses. the educational profession was a very hazardous occupation. one southern university, for example, reported five faculty suicides during spring quarter. * * * * * in the days that followed, however, i began to realize that there was some sort of movement being fostered by the student body. it couldn't be defined, but it could be felt and seen. the students began to form groups and hold meetings--often without official sanction. what they were about could not be discovered, but some of the results soon became evident. for one thing, certain students began to walk on one side of the street and the other students walked on the other side. the ones who used the north side of the street wore green sweaters with white trousers or skirts, and the south-side students wore white sweaters with green trousers or skirts. it even got to the point where those in green sweaters went only to classes in the morning and those in white attended the afternoon sessions. then the little white cards began to appear. they were sent through the mail. they were slipped under doorways and in desk drawers. they turned up beside your plate at dinner and under your pillow at night. they were pasted on your front door in the morning and they appeared in the fly-leaves of your books. they were even hung on trees like fruit, and surely no fruit ever spored so queer a seedling. they said either one thing or the other: the wistick dufels the moraddy, or the moraddy dufels the wistick. which card belonged to what group was not immediately clear. it was not until the riots broke out that the thing began to be seen in its proper perspective. and then it was too late. when the first riot started, it was assumed that the university officials and the police could quell it in a very short time. but strangely enough, as additional police were called in, the battle raged even more fiercely. i could see part of the affair from my window and therefore was able to understand why the increasing police force only added to the turmoil. they were fighting one another! and through the din could be heard the wild shouts of "the wistick dufels the moraddy!" or "the moraddy dufels the wistick!" the final blow came when i saw the registrar and the dean of men struggling fiercely in one of the hedge-rows, and heard the dean of men yell in wild exultation as he brought a briefcase down on the registrar's head, "the wistick dufels the moraddy!" then someone broke in through the door of my office. i turned in alarm and saw a huge three-letter man standing only a few feet from me. he had been in one of my classes. i remembered something about his being the hardest driving fullback on the pacific coast. he was certainly the dumbest philosophy student i ever flunked. his hair was mussed and he was wild-eyed. he had blood on his face and chest, and his clothes were torn and grass-stained. "the wistick dufels the moraddy," he said. "get out of my office," i told him coldly, "and stay out." "so you're on the other side," he snarled. "i hoped you would be." he started toward me and i seized a bookend on my desk and tried to strike him with it. but he brushed it aside and came on in. his first blow nearly broke my arm and as i dropped my guard due to the numbing pain, he struck me solidly on the side of the jaw. when i recovered consciousness, i was lying by the side of my desk where i had fallen. my head ached and my neck was stiff. i got painfully to my feet and then noticed the big square of cardboard pinned to the door of my office. it was lettered in red pencil and in past tense said, "the wistick dufelled the moraddy." * * * * * the uprisings arose spontaneously in all parts of the country. they were not confined to colleges. they were not confined to any particular group. they encompassed nearly the entire population and the fervor aroused by their battle-cry, whichever one it might be, was beyond all comprehension. i could not understand either slogan's meaning--and there were others like myself. on several occasions, i attempted to find out, but i was beaten twice and threatened with a pistol the third time, so i gave up all such efforts. i was never much given to any sort of physical violence. one night, i went home thoroughly disheartened by the state of affairs. the university was hardly functioning. nearly the entire faculty, including the college president, had been drawn into one camp or the other. their actions were utterly abhorrent to me. if the professor was a green-top, or wistickian, he lectured only to green-tops. if he belonged to the moraddians, or white-top faction, they were the only ones who could enter his classroom. the two groups were so evenly divided that open violence was frowned upon as a means of attaining whatever end they had in view. they were biding their time and gathering strength for fresh onslaughts on each other. as i say, i went home feeling very discouraged. my wife was in the kitchen preparing dinner, and i went in and sat down at the table while she worked. the daily paper was lying on the table, its headlines loaded with stories of bloodshed and strife throughout the nation. i glanced through them. lately, there seemed to be a sort of pattern forming. east of the mississippi, the general slogan was emerging as the moraddy dufelling the wistick. west of the mississippi, the wistick was receiving the greater support. and it seemed that the younger people and the women preferred the moraddy, while elderly people and most men were on the side of the wistick. i commented on this. my wife answered briefly, "of course. anyone should know that the moraddy will win out." she went on with the preparations for dinner, not looking at me. i sat stunned for a moment. great god in heaven, not my wife! "am i to understand that you are taking any part of this seriously?" i asked with some heat. "the whole thing is a horrible, pointless prank!" she turned and faced me squarely. "not to me. i say the moraddy will win out. i want it to--and i think you'd be wise to get on the bandwagon while there's still time." i realized she was serious. dead serious. i tried a cautious query: "just what does the dufellation of the wistick by the moraddy mean?" * * * * * and it made her angry. it actually made her angry! she switched off the front burner and walked past me into the living room. i didn't think she was going to answer, but she did--sort of. "there is no excuse for an egghead in your position not knowing what it means." her voice was strained and tense. "if you had any perception whatever, you would understand what the moraddy has to give the american people. it's our only hope. and you've got to take sides. you're either for the moraddy or the wistick--you can't take the middle way." i felt completely isolated. "wait! i don't know what it means--" "forget it," she broke in. "i should have known. you were born, you have lived, and you will die an egghead in an ivory tower. just remember--the moraddy dufels the wistick!" and she swept on upstairs to pack. and out of my life. and that's the way it was. whatever malignant poison had seeped into the collective brain of the nation, it was certainly a devastating leveler of all sorts of institutions and values. wives left husbands and husbands left wives. joint bank accounts vanished. families disintegrated. wall street crumpled. developments were swift and ominous. the army split up into various groups. most of the enlisted men favored the moraddy, but the officers and older non-coms pledged the wistickian faith. their power was sufficient to hold many in line, but a considerable number in the lower ranks deserted and joined forces with the moraddians, who held the eastern half of the country. the wisticks ruled the western half with an iron hand, and all signs pointed toward civil war. labor and military authorities conscripted the entire population regardless of age, sex or religious convictions. for my own part, i slipped away from the campus and fled north into the oregon mountains. it was not that i was afraid to fight, but i rebelled at the absolute stupidity of the whole thing. the idea--fighting because of a few words! but they did. the destruction was frightful. however, it was not as bad as many had thought it would be. the forces of the wistick leveled the city of new york, true, but it took three h-bombs to do the job, instead of one, as the air force had claimed. in retaliation, san francisco and los angeles were destroyed in a single night by cleverly placed atom bombs smuggled in by a number of fifth-columnist wives who gained access to the cities under the pretext of returning to their husbands. this was a great victory for the moraddians, even though the women had to blow themselves up to accomplish their mission. the moraddian forces were slowly beaten back toward the atlantic shores. they were very cunning fighters and they had youthful courage to implement that cunning. but their overall policy lacked the stability and long-range thinking necessary to the prosecution of total war. one day they might overrun many populous areas and the next day, due to the constant bickering and quarreling among their own armies, they would lose all they had won, and more, too. finally, in desperation, they loosed their most horrible weapon, germ warfare. but they forgot to protect themselves against their own malignity. the semantic war ground to a shuddering halt. the carrion smell of death lay round the world. the dufellation of the wistick and the moraddy. * * * * * so here i am, scuttling around in the forests like a lonely pack-rat. it is not the sort of life i would choose if there were any other choice. yet life has become very simple. i enjoy the simple things and i enjoy them with gusto. when i find food that suits my stomach, i am happy. when i quench my thirst, i am happy. when i see a beautiful sunset from one of my mountain crags, i am happy. it takes little when you have little, and there have been few men who have had less. only one thing troubles me. i suppose it doesn't matter, but i go on wondering. i wonder which side was right. i mean _really_ right.