Class C=J!^l2_ Book ' H 7^ Gopyriglit}!? COPYRIGHT DEPOSl'R lO/t/iA THE OUTLOOK machine, in the last statement, hcs in its control of the power to nominate, because the control of that power opens or closes for every man the door to public hfe. In some way, it must be made easier for men whose aim is simply to serve the public to get into public life and to stay in it without loss of self-respect. The many movements toward primary reform which look to regaining for the people the control of nominations are move- ments in the right direction. It is evident that the public instinct has recognized the source of the difficulty, and that everywhere men are at work trying to find a remedy for the evils of which they have become aware. The saying, " Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty," did not originate in our day. We are conscious of our own shortcomings and of our own difficulties, and we are apt to forget those out of which the world has grown. We have only to remember these things to gain heart. In a single word, I believe the problem of good govern- ment, in our day and country, is largely a problem of education ; and in this view it is interesting to recall what was pointed out not long ago by Dr. Stanley Hall, that education is the one thing as to the value of which all men everywhere, at the present time, are agreed. Not that there is agreement on the methods and detail of education; but all men are agreed that education is a thing to be encouraged, a thing to be desired, a thing to be struggled for, and a thing to profit by. In this education our universities have a large part to play. They are already doing much in the direction of a constructive study of politics and of society. Perhaps they are not doing enough in the direction of the constructive study of industry and com- merce, for in an industrial and commercial age both political and social questions are largely shaped by commerce and industry. In economics, the work of the universities is largely critical, not to say destructive; but because of their ability to illuminate the problems of the present with a broad knowledge of what is being done the world over, as well as with the knowl- edge of the past, and because of their own inherent democracy of spirit which puts them in vital touch with the spirit of the times, I am confident that they may, if they will, make valuable contributions to such a study of industry and commerce as will I [24] THE OUTLOOK cause the universities to become still more important factors in shaping the future of the country. To sum up, therefore, I should say that the trend of the past century has been to a great increase in knowledge, which has been found to be, as of old, the knowledge of good and evil; that this knowledge has become more and more the property of all men rather than of a few ; that as a result, the very increase of opportunity has led to the magnifying of the problems with which humanity is obliged to deal; and that we find ourselves, at the beginning of a new century, face to face with problems of world-wide importance and utmost difficulty, and with no new means of coping with them other than the patient education of the masses of men. However others may tremble as they contemplate the perplexities of the coming century, the children of the universities should find it easy to keep heart; for they know that higher things have been developed in pain and struggle out of lower since creation began; and in the atmos- phere of the university, with its equality of privilege and wealth of opportunity open to all, they must have learned, if they have learned anything of value, the essential nobility of the demo- cratic spirit that so surely holds the future in its hands — the spirit that seeks, with the strength of all, to serve all and uplift all. [25] II THE DANGER BY THEODORE ROOSEVELT PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES TF the general outlook for our people be fair, as Mr. Low has pointed out, nevertheless we face dangers in the future. Dangers obviously are of two classes. They are warning shadows which may extend either above an individual or above a race; and in this our search for the whole meaning of modern life we must examine the threat of the future in both these aspects. We take here and first its general warning for the race. Unfortunately it is just this broader danger that many of us are quite ready to ignore. We do not understand it; it seems to have no material threat for us, ourselves; and what is called the ^'social conscience'^ is not fully developed in us all. Many among us feel no vivid responsibility for our neighbor or for our children's children. " The nation will last my time" is a too common phrase wherewith a man turns back to his own narrow interests. Untrained in history, he does not know that when a racial danger strikes, it strikes with sudden rage. No magistrate expects it; a few ranting prophets proclaim it and are laughed at — as we are laughing at them to-day. Then comes the lightning bolt. Therefore it behooves even the most selfish of us, for his own sake, if he can find no broader standpoint, to take heed to the danger of the future, lest even he in his own narrow body be involved in the disaster. To these dangers that approach the nation no man is more fully alive than he whom we have set to be our chief. Again and again, in private speech and in public proclamation, has President Roosevelt cried out words of warning, perhaps never more posi- u [i] TH^)ANGER lively than in the address which is here incorporated in our scries with Jiis approval. It ivas delivered on Labor Day in ipoj, at the New York State Fair at Syracuse ; and Mr. Roosevelt weaves happily into his opening sentence the fact that he is addressing an audience of farmers and laborers. Later on he emphasizes that he sees also before him merchants and professional men, that, in short, his words are for the whole broad nation. They are worth our listening. Governor Higgins; my fellow-citizens: In speaking on Labor Day at the annual fair of the New York State Agricultural Association, it is natural to keep espe- cially in mind the two bodies who compose the majority of our people and upon whose welfare depends the welfare of the entire State. If circumstances are such that thrift, energy, industry, and forethought enable the farmer, the tiller of the soil, on the one hand, and the wage-worker, on the other, to keep themselves, their wives, and their children in reasonable comfort, then the State is well off, and we can be assured that the other classes in the community will Hkewise prosper. On the other hand, if there is in the long run a lack of prosperity among the two classes named, then all other prosperity is sure to be more seeming than real. It has been our profound good fortune as a nation that hitherto, disregarding exceptional periods of depression and the normal and inevitable fluctuations, there has been, on the whole, from the beginning of our Government to the present day a pro- gressive betterment alike in the condition of the tiller of the soil and in the condition of the man who, by his manual skill and labor, supports himself and his family, and endeavors to bring up his children so that they may be at least as well off as, and if possible better off than, he himself has been. There are, of course, exceptions, but as a whole the standard of Hving among the farmers of our country has risen from generation to genera- tion, and the wealth represented on the farms has steadily in- creased, while the wages of labor have likewise risen, both as regards the actual money paid and as regards the purchasing power which that money represents. Side by side with this increase in the prosperity of the wage- II [2] THE DANGER worker and the tiller of the soil has gone on a great increase in prosperity among the business men and among certain classes of professional men; and the prosperity of these men has been partly the cause and partly the consequence of the prosperity of farmer and wage-worker. It can not be too often repeated that in this country, in the long run, we all of us tend to go up or go down together. If the average of well-being is high, it means that the average wage worker, the average farmer, and the aver- age business man are all alike well off. If the average shrinks, there is not one of these classes which will not feel the shrinkage. Of course there are always some men who are not affected by good times, just as there are some men who are not affected by bad times. But speaking broadly, it is true that if prosperity comes, all of us tend to share more or less therein, and that if adversity comes, each of us, to a greater or less extent, feels the tension. Unfortunately, in this world the innocent frequently find themselves obhged to pay some of the penalty for the mis-. deeds of the guilty ; and so if hard times come, whether they be due to our own fault or to our misfortune ; whether they be due to some burst of speculative frenzy that has caused a portion of the business world to lose its head — a loss which no legislation can possibly supply; or whether they be due to any lack of wis- dom in a portion of the world of labor — in each case the trouble once started is felt more or less in every walk of hf e. It is all-essential to the continuance of our healthy national life that we should recognize this community of interest among our people. The welfare of each of us is dependent fundamen- tally upon the welfare of all of us, and therefore in public hfe that man is the best representative of each of us who seeks to do good to each by doing good to all; in other words, whose en- deavor it is, not to represent any special class and promote merely that class's selfish interests, but to represent all true and honest men of all sections and all classes, and to work for their interests by working for our common country. We can keep our Government on a sane and healthy basis, we can make and keep our social system what it should be, only on condition of judging each man, not as a member of a class, but on his worth as a man. It is an infamous thing in our n [3] THE ^NGER American life, and fundamentally treacherous to our institutions, to apply to any man any test save that of his personal worth, or to draw between two sets of men any distinction save the dis- tinction of conduct, the distinction that marks off those who do well and wisely from those who do ill and foolishly. There are good citizens and bad citizens in every class as in every locahty and the attitude of decent people toward great pubhc and social questions should be determined, not by the accidental questions of employment or locahty, but by those deep-set principles which represent the innermost souls of men. The failure in pubhc and in private life thus to treat each man on his own merits, the recognition of this Government as being either for the poor as such or for the rich as such, would prove fatal to our Republic, as such failure and such recognition have always proved fatal in the past to other republics. A healthy republican government must rest upon individuals, not upon classes or sections. As soon as it becomes government by a class or by a section it departs from the old American ideal. It is, of course, the merest truism to say that free institutions are of avail only to people who possess the high and peculiar characteristics needed to take advantage of such institutions. The century that has just closed has witnessed many and lamen- table instances in which people have seized a government free m form, or have had it bestowed upon them, and yet have per- mitted it under the forms of liberty to become some species of despotism or anarchy, because they did not have in them the power to make this seeming liberty one of deed instead of one merely of word. Under such circumstances the seeming liberty may be supplanted by a tyranny or despotism in the first place, or it may reach the road of despotism by the path of hcense and anarchy. It matters but Httle which road is taken. In either case the same goal is reached. People show themselves just as unfit for liberty whether they submit to anarchy or to tyranny; and class government, whether it be the government of a plu- tocracy or the government of a mob, is equally incompatible with the principles established in the days of Washington and per- petuated in the days of Lincoln. Many qualities are needed by a people which would preserve II [4] THE DANGER the power of self-government in fact as well as in name. Among these qualities are forethought, shrewdness, self-restraint, the courage which refuses to abandon one's own rights, and the dis- interested and kindly good sense which enables one to do justice to the rights of others. Lack of strength and lack of courage unfit men for self-government on the one hand; and on the other, brutal arrogance, envy — in short, any manifestation of the spirit of selfish disregard, whether of one's own duties or of the rights of others, are equally fatal. In the history of mankind many republics have risen, have flourished for a less or greater time, and then have fallen because their citizens lost the power of governing themselves and thereby of governing their state; and in no way has this loss of power been so often and so clearly shown as in the tendency to turn the Government into a government primarily for the benefit of one class instead of a government for the benefit of the people as a whole. Again and again in the republics of ancient Greece, in those of mediaeval Italy and mediaeval Flanders, this tendency was shown, and wherever the tendency became a habit it invari- ably and inevitably proved fatal to the State. In the final result it mattered not one whit whether the movement was in favor of one class or of another. The outcome was equally fatal, whether the country fell into the hands of a wealthy oligarchy which ex- ploited the poor or whether it fell under the domination of a turbulent mob which plundered the rich. In both cases there resulted violent alternations between tyranny and disorder, and a final complete loss of hberty to all citizens — destruction in the end overtaking the class which had for the moment been vic- torious, as well as that which had momentarily been defeated. The death-knell of the Republic had rung as soon as the active power became lodged in the hands of those who sought, not to do justice to all citizens, rich and poor ahke, but to stand for one special class and for its interests as. opposed to the interests of others. The reason why our future is assured lies in the fact that our people are genuinely skilled in and fitted for self-government and therefore will spurn the leadership of those who seek to excite / n [5] THI^ANGER this ferocious and foolish class antagonism. The average Ameri- can knows not only that he himself intends to do about what is right, but that his average fellow-countryman has the same in- tention and the same power to make his intention effective. He knows, whether he be business man, professional man, farmer, mechanic, employer, or wage-worker, that the welfare of each of these men is bound up with the welfare of all the others; that each is neighbor to the other, is actuated by the same hopes and fears, has fundamentally the same ideals, and that all ahke have much the same virtues and the same faults. Our average fellow- citizen is a sane and healthy man, who beheves in decency and has a wholesome mind. He therefore feels an equal scorn alike for the man of wealth guilty of the mean and base spirit of arro- gance toward those who are less well off, and for the man of small means who in his turn either feels or seeks to excite in others the f ecUng of mean and base envy for those who are better off. The two feelings, envy and arrogance, are but opposite sides of the same shield, but different developments of the same spirit. Fundamentally, the unscrupulous rich man who seeks to exploit and oppress those who are less well off is in spirit not opposed to, but identical with, the unscrupulous poor man who desires to plunder and oppress those who are better off. The courtier and the demagogue are but developments of the same type under different conditions, each manifesting the same servile spirit, the same desire to rise by pandering to base passions; though one panders to power in the shape of a single man and the other to power in the shape of a multitude. So likewise the man who wishes to rise by wronging others must by right be contrasted, not with the man who hkewise wishes to do wrong, though to a different set of people, but with the man who wishes to do justice to all people and to wrong none. The line of cleavage between good and bad citizenship Ues, not between the man of wealth who acts squarely by his fellows and the man who seeks each day's wage by that day's work, wronging no one and doing his duty by his neighbor; nor yet does this hne of cleavage divide the unscrupulous wealthy man who exploits others in his own interest, from the demagogue, or from the sullen and envious being who wishes to attack all men II [6] THE DANGER . of property, whether they do well or ill. On the contrary, the line of cleavage between good citizenship and bad citizenship separates the rich man who does well from the rich man who does ill, the poor man of good conduct from the poor man of bad conduct. This hne of cleavage hes at right angles to any such arbitrary line of division as that separating one class from another, one locality from another, or men with a certain degree of property from those of a less degree of property. The good citizen is the man who, whatever his wealth or his poverty, strives manfully to do his duty to himself, to his family, to his neighbor, to the State; who is incapable of the baseness which manifests itself either in arrogance or in envy, but who, while demanding justice for himself, is no less scrupulous to do justice to others. It is because the average American citizen, rich or poor, is of just this type that we have cause for our pro- found faith in the future of the RepubHc. Ours is a government of Hberty, by, through, and under the law. Lawlessness and connivance at law-breaking — whether the law-breaking take the form of a crime of greed and cunning or of a crime of violence — are destructive not only of order, but of the true Uberties which can only come through order. If aUve to their true interests, rich and poor alike will set their faces like flint against the spirit which seeks personal advantage by overriding the laws, without regard to whether this spirit shows itself in the form of bodily violence by one set of men or in the form of vulpine cunning by another set of men. Let the watchwords of all our people be the old familiar watchwords of honesty, decency, fair-deahng, and common- sense. The quahties denoted by these words are essential to all of us, as we deal with the complex industrial problems of to-day, the problems affecting not merely the accumulation but even more the wise distribution of wealth. We ask no man's permis- sion when we require him to obey the law ; neither the permission of the poor man nor yet of the rich man. Least of all can the man of great wealth afford to break the law, even for his own financial advantage ; for the law is his prop and support, and it is both foohsh and profoundly unpatriotic for him to fail in giving hearty support to those who show that there is in very fact n [7] THIWDANGER one law, and one law only, alike for the rich and the poor, for the great and the small. Men sincerely interested in the due protection of property, and men sincerely interested in seeing that the just rights of labor are guaranteed, should alike remember not only that in the ^ long run neither the capitalist nor the wage- worker can be helped in healthy fashion save by helping the other; but also that to require either side to obey the law and do its full duty toward the community is emphatically to that side's real interest. There is no worse enemy of the wage-worker than the man who condones mob violence in any shape or who preaches class hatred; and surely the slightest acquaintance with our industrial history should teach even the most short-sighted that the times of most suffering for our people as a whole, the times when busi- ness is stagnant, and capital suffers from shrinkage and gets no return from its investments, are exactly the times of hardship, and want, and grim disaster among the poor. If all the existing instrumentahties of wealth could be abohshcd, the first and severest suffering would come among those of us who are least well off at present. The wage- worker is well off only when the rest of the country is well off; and he can best contribute to this general well-being by showing sanity and a firm purpose to do justice to others. In his turn the capitaKst who is really a conservative, the man who has forethought as well as patriotism, should heartily wel- come every effort, legislative or otherwise, which has for its ob- ject to secure fair deahng by capital, corporate or individual, toward the pubhc and toward the employee. Such laws as the franchise-tax law in this State, which the Court of Appeals recently unanimously decided constitutional; such a law as that passed in Congress last year for the purpose of establishing a Department of Commerce and Labor, under which there should be a bureau to oversee and secure pubhcity from the great cor- porations which do an interstate business; such a law as that passed at the same time for the regulation of the great highways of commerce so as to keep these roads clear on fair terms to all producers in getting their goods to market — these laws are in the interest not merely of the people as a whole, but of the propertied II [8] THE DANGER classes. For in no way is the stability of property better assured than by making it patent to our people that property bears its proper share of the burdens of the State; that property is handled not only in the interest of the owner, but in the interest of the whole community. In other words, legislation to be permanently good for any class must also be good for the nation as a whole; and legislation which does injustice to any class is certain to work harm to the nation. Take our currency system, for example. This nation is on a gold basis. The Treasury of the public is in excellent condition. Never before has the per capita of circulation been as large as it is this day; and this circulation, moreover, is of money, every dollar of which is at par with gold. Now, our having this sound currency system is of benefit to banks, of course, but it is of infinitely more benefit to the people as a whole, because of the healthy eilect on business conditions. In the same way, whatever is advisable in the way of remedial or corrective currency legislation — and nothing revolutionary is advisable under present conditions — must be undertaken only from the standpoint of the business community as a whole, that is, of the American body politic as a whole. Whatever is done, we cannot afford to take any step backward or to cast any doubt upon the certain redemption in standard coin of every circulating note. Among ourselves we differ in many quahties, of body, head, and heart; we are unequally developed, mentally as well as physically. But each of us has the right to ask that he shall be protected from wrongdoing as he does his work and carries his burden through Ufc. No man needs sympathy because he has to work, because he has a burden to carry. Far and away the best prize that Hfe offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing; and this is a prize open to every man, for there can be no work better worth doing than that done to keep in health and comfort and with reasonable advantages those immediately dependent upon the husband, the father, or the son. There is no room in our healthy American life for the mere idler, for the man or the woman whose object it is throughout hfe to shirk the duties which hfe ought to bring. Life can mean n [9] THE^ANGER nothing worth meaning, unless its prime aim is the doing of duty, the achievement of results worth achieving. A recent writer has finely said: "After all, the saddest thing that can happen to a man is to carry no burdens. To be bent under too great a load is bad; to be crushed by it is lamentable; but even in that there are possibiUties that are glorious. But to carry no load at all — there is nothing in that. No one seems to arrive at any goal really worth reaching in this world who does not come to it heavy laden." Surely from our own experience each one of us knows that this is true. From the greatest to the smallest, happiness and usefulness are largely found in the same soul, and the joy of Ufe is won in its deepest and truest sense only by those who have not shirked hfe's burdens. The men whom we most dehght to honor in all this land are those who, in the iron years from '6i to '65, bore on their shoulders the burden of saving the Union. They did not choose the easy task. They did not shirk the difficult duty. Deliberately and of their own free will they strove for an ideal, upward and onward across the stony slopes of greatness. They did the hardest work that was then to be done; they bore the heaviest burden that any generation of Americans ever had to bear; and because they did this they have won such proud joy as it has fallen to the lot of no other men to win, and have written their names forevermore on the golden honor roll of the nation. As it is with the soldier, so it is with the civiHan. To win success in the business world, to become a first-class mechanic, a successful farmer, an able lawyer or doctor, means that the man has devoted his best energy and power through long years to the achievement of his ends. So it is in the Hfe of the family, upon which in the last analysis the whole welfare of the nation rests. The man or woman who as bread-winner and home-maker, or as wife and mother, has done all that he or she can do, patiently and uncomplainingly, is to be honored, and is to be envied by all those who have never had the good fortune to feel the need and duty of doing such work. The woman who has borne, and who has reared as they should be reared, a family of children, has in the most emphatic manner deserved well of the RepubHc. Her burden has been heavy, and II [10] THE DANGER she has been able to bear it worthily only by the possession of resolution, of good sense, of conscience, and of unselfishness. But if she has borne it well, then to her shall come the supreme blessing, for in the words of the oldest and greatest of books, "Her children shall rise up and call her blessed"; and among the benefactors of the land her place must be with those who have done the best and the hardest work whether as law-givers or as soldiers, whether in pubhc or in private life. This is not a soft and easy creed to preach. It is a creed wiUingly learned only by men and women who, together with the softer virtues, possess also the stronger; who can do, and dare, and die at need, but who while hfe lasts will never flinch from their allotted task. You farmers, and wage-workers, and busi- ness men of this great State, of this mighty and wonderful nation, are gathered together to-day, proud of your State and still prouder of your Nation, because your forefathers and prede- cessors have lived up to just this creed. You have received from their hands a great inheritance, and you will leave an even greater inheritance to your children and your children's children, pro- vided only that you practise alike in your private and your pubhc lives the strong virtues that have given us as a people greatness in the past. It is not enough to be well-meaning and kindly, but weak; neither is it enough to be strong, unless morahty and decency go hand in hand with strength. We must possess the quahties which make us do our duty in our homes and among our neighbors, and in addition we must possess the quahties which are indispensable to the makeup of every great and masterful nation — the qualities of courage and hardihood, of individual initiative and yet of power to combine for a common end, and, above all, the resolute determination to permit no man and no set of men to sunder us one from the other by hues of caste or creed or section. We must act upon the motto of all for each and each for all. There must be ever present in our minds the fundamental truth that in a republic such as ours the only safety is to stand neither for nor against any man because he is rich or because he is poor, because he is engaged in one occupa- tion or another, because he works with his brains or because he works with his hands. We must treat each man on his worth n [ii] THITDANGER and merits as a man. We must see that each is given a square deal, because he is entitled to no more and should receive no less. Finally we must keep ever in mind that a rcpubhc such as ours can exist only by virtue of the orderly hbcrty which comes through the equal domination of the law over all men ahkc, and through its administration in such resolute and fearless fashion as shall teach all that no man is above it and no man below it. II [12 3 Ill THE BELIEFS "RELIGION, SCIENCE, AND MIRACLE" BY SIR OLIVER LODGE PRESIDENT OF BIRMINGHAM UNIVERSITY, ENGLAND CT^HERE is one element oj our being that, in many minds, is -*■ so deeply interwoven with every aspect of thought, one question so omnipresent, that no search into the meaning of life can far advance without that question being raised. What atti- tude does the search assume toward religious faith ? This does not necessarily inquire into the particular sect or creed of the searcher. We have reached a point where even the most militant apostle, the one most satisfied as to the value and accuracy of his own beliefs, has ceased to enforce their acceptance upon his neighbor. Some of us might even admit that our heretic neighbor was the better man. We are all, however, more or less fully aware that some time duri?ig the last half-century certain Scientists and certain Church- men engaged in a somewhat vehement and wordy war. With the details of this strife most of us are not wholly familiar. It cen- tred, we know, upon evolution and upon Adam. Perhaps many of us were unwilling to know more. We avoided inquiry lest our religious faith be shaken by scientific ideas of whose value we were incompetent to judge. Yet in this very withdrawal of ourselves, there were elements of uncertainty, of fear. The spirit of faith was disturbed, even if not made doubtful, in each thoughtful mind. To all, therefore, who have not closely followed the course of the contest, the two following addresses must come as a relief. They show that this controversy, like many another, begins to be re- garded as a thing of the past, that religious faith still survives m [ I ] THE^ELIEFS even in the minds of many philosophers the most " advanced." Sir Oliver Lodge, M.Sc., F.R.S., D.Sc, LL.D., is among the most widely known oj British scientists. Perhaps he has done more than any other living man to bring scientific knowledge into the minds of the common people. Moreover, as head of one of the leading English universities, that of Birmingham, he has done much for the cause of higher education. Among the many honors which have come to him is that of being made, in 1905, President of the Social and Political Education League. The material of the following address is substantially that of a lecture recently delivered by him to his students at Birmingham, though it was rearranged for publication. The Duke of Northumberland ranks high among the great lords of the British Empire, as well as among the great scientific writers of the world. His religious attitude has ahvays shown closer clinging to old forms of faith than that of the radical scientist and is well worth comparing with that of Sir Oliver. In brief, religion has but passed through another of those crises common to all tilings that live and grow. Again and again in the course of ages, in Luther'' s time, in Galileo^ s, in other epochs and with other faiths less widely known, have the very foundations of the '^living faith" seemed undermined. In other days even more perhaps than now, have men who loved and feared, shut their eyes in terror and turned away from the threatened- downfall. Yet when the despairing mourners looked again, behold, the storm had passed them by; and belief in God, a living principle in the hearts of men, rose up mighty as ever, unshaken and eternal. SCIENCE AND RELIGION There was a time when religious people distrusted the in- crease of knowledge, and condemned the mental attitude which takes delight in its pursuit, being in dread lest part of the foundation of their faith should be undermined by a too ruth- less and unqualified spirit of investigation. There has been a time when men engaged in the quest of III [ 2 ] THE BELIEFS systematic knowledge had an idea that the results of their studies would be destructive not only of outlying accretions but of substantial portions of the edifice of religion which has been gradually erected by the prophets and saints of humanity. Both these epochs are now nearly over. All men realize that truth is the important thing, and that to take refuge in any shelter less substantial than the truth is but to deceive themselves and become liable to abject exposure when a storm comes on. On the other hand most men are aware that it is a sign of unbalanced judgment to conclude, on the strength of a few momentous discoveries, that the whole structure of re- ligious belief built up through the ages by the developing human race from fundamental emotions and instincts and experiences, is unsubstantial and insecure. • The business of science, including in that term, for present purposes, philosophy and the science of criticism, is with founda- tions; the business of religion is with superstructure. Science has laboriously laid a solid foundation of great strength, and its votaries have rejoiced over it ; though their joy must perforce be somewhat dumb and inexpressive until the more vocal apostles of art and literature and music are able to utilize it for their more aerial and winsome kind of building; so for the present the work of science strikes strangers as severe and forbidding. In a neighboring territory ReHgion occupies a splendid building — a gorgeously decorated palace; concerning which. Science, not yet having discovered a substantial and satisfactory basis, is sometimes inclined to suspect that it is phantasmal and mainly supported on legend. Without any controversy it may be admitted that the founda- tion and the superstructure as at present known do not corre- spond ; and hence that there is an apparent dislocation. Men of science have exclaimed that in their possession is t-he only foundation of solid truth, adopting in that sense the words of the poet : To the solid ground Of Nature trusts the mind which builds for aye. While on the other hand men of Religion, snugly ensconced in their traditional eyrie, and objecting to the digging and the hammer- in [ 3 ] THE^LIEFS ing below, have shuddered as the artificial props and pillars by which they supposed it to be buttressed gave way one after another; and have doubted whether they could continue to enjoy peace in their ancient fortress if it turned out that part of it was suspended in air, without any perceptible foundation at all, like the phantom city in "Gareth and Lynette" whereof it could be said ; the city is built To music, therefore never built at all And therefore built for ever. Remarks as to lack of solid foundation may be regarded as typical of the mild kind of sarcasm which people with a superficial smattering of popular science sometimes try to pour upon religion. They think that to accuse a system of being de- void of soHd foundation is equivalent to denying its stability. On the contrary, as Tennyson no doubt perceived, the absence of anything that may crumble or be attacked and knocked away, or that can be shaken by an earthquake, is a safeguard rather than a danger. It is the absence of material foundation that makes the Earth itself, for instance, so secure : if it were based upon a pedestal, or otherwise solidly supported, we might be anxious about the stability and durabihty of the support. As it is, it floats securely in the emptiness of space. Similarly the persistence of its diurnal spin is secured by the absence of any- thing to stop it : not by any maintaining mechanism. To say that a system does not rest upon one special fact is not to impugn its stability. The body of scientific truth rests on no sohtary material fact or group of facts, but on a basis of harmony and consistency between facts: its support and ultimate sanction is of no material character. To conceive of Christianity as built upon an Empty Tomb, or any other plain physical or his- torical fact, is dangerous. To base it upon the primary facts of consciousness or upon direct spiritual experience, as Paul did, is safer.^ There are parts of the structure of Religion which 1 It will be represented that I am here intending to cast doubt upon a fundamental tenet of the Church. That is not my intention. My contention here is merely that a great structure should not rest upon a point. So might a lawyer properly say; "To base a legal HI [ 4 ] THE BELIEFS may safely be underpinned by physical science: the theory of death and of continued personal existence is one of them ; there are many others, and there will be more. But there are and always will be vast religious regions for which that kind of scientific foundation would be an impertinence, though a scientific contribution is appropriate; perhaps these may be summed up in some such phrase as "the relation of the soul to God." Assertions are made concerning material facts in the name of religion ; these science is bound to criticise. Testimony is borne to inner personal experience; on that physical science does well to be silent. Nevertheless many of us are impressed with the conviction that everything in the universe may become in- telligible if we go the right way to work ; and so we are coming to recognize, on the one hand, that every system of truth must be intimately connected with every other, and that this connection will constitute a trustworthy support as soon as it is revealed by the progress of knowledge , and on the other hand, that the ex- tensive foundation of truth now being laid by scientific workers will ultimately support a gorgeous building of aesthetic feeling and rehgious faith. Theologians have been apt to be too easily satisfied with a pretended foundation that would not tand scientific scrutiny; they seem to believe that the religious edifice, with its mighty halls for the human spirit, can rest upon some event or statement, instead of upon man's nature as a whole; and they are apt to decline to reconsider their formulae in the light of fuller knowl- edge and development. Scientific men on the other hand have been liable to suppose that no foundation which they have not themselves laid can be of a substantial character, thereby ignoring the possibility of an ancestral accumulation of sound though unformulated experi- ence; and a few of the less considerate, about a quarter of a cen- tury ago, amused themselves by instituting a kind of jubilant rat-hunt under the venerable theological edifice: a procedure decision upon the position of a comma, or other punctuation— how- ever undisputed its occurrence — is dangerous; to base it upon the general sense of a document is safer." — O. L. , III [5] THE^LIEFS necessarily obnoxious to its occupants. The exploration was unpleasant, but its results have been purifying and healthful, and the permanent substratum of fact will in due time be cleared of the decaying refuse of centuries. Some of the chief hurly-burly of contention between the apparently attacking force and the ostensibly defending garrison arose round that bulwark which upholds the possibility of the Miraculous, and the efficacy of Prayer. It will be sufficient if in this Address I discuss these two connected subjects. II MEANING OF MIRACLE I have to begin by saying that the term "miracle" is ambig- uous, and that no discussion which takes that term as a basis can be very fruitful, since the combatants may all be meaning different things. (i) One user of the term may mean merely an unusual event of which we do not know the history and cause, a bare wonder or prodigy; such an event as the course of nature may, for all we know, bring about once in ten thousand years or so, leaving no record of its occurrence in the past and no anticipatory prob- ability of its re-occurrence in the future. The raining down of fire on Sodom, or on Pompeii; the sudden engulfing of Korah, or of Marcus Curtius; or, on a different plane, the advent of some transcendent genius, or even of a personality so lofty as to be called divine, may serve as examples. (2) Another employer of the term "miracle" may add to this idea a definite hypothesis, and may mean an act due to un- known intelHgent and living agencies operating in a self-willed and unpredictable manner, thus effecting changes that would not otherwise have occurred and that are not in the regular course of nature. The easiest example to think of is one wherein the lower animals are chiefly concerned; for instance, consider the case of the community of an ant hill, on a lonely uninhabited island, undisturbed for centuries, whose dwelhng is kicked over one day by a shipwrecked sailor. They had reason to suppose III [ 6 ] THE BELIEFS that events, were uniform, and all their difficulties ancestrally known, but they are perturbed by an unintelhgible miracle. A different illustration is afforded by the presence of an ob- trusive but unsuspected live insect in a galvanometer or other measuring instrument in a physical laboratory; whereby metri- cal observations would be complicated, and all regularity per- turbed in a puzzling and capricious and, to half-instructed knowledge, supernatural, or even diabolical, manner. Not dis- similar are some of the asserted events in a Seance Room. (3) Another may use the term "miracle" to mean the utili- zation of unknown laws, say of healing or of communication; laws unknown and unformulated, but instinctively put into operation by mental activity of some kind — sometimes through the unconscious influence of so-called self-suggestion, sometimes through the activity of another mind, or through the personal agency of highly gifted beings, operating on others ; laws where- by time and space appear temporarily suspended, or extraor- dinary cures are effected, or other effects produced, such as the levitations and other physical phenomena related of the saints. (4) Another may incorporate with the word "miracle" a still further infusion of theory, and may mean always a direct interposition of Divine Providence, whereby at some one time and place a perfectly unique occurrence is brought about, which is out of relation with the established order of things, is not due to what has gone before, and is not likely to occur again. The most striking examples of what can be claimed under this head are connected with the personality of Jesus Christ, notably the Virgin Birth and the Empty Tomb; by which I mean the more material and controversial aspects of those generally accepted doctrines — the Incarnation and the Resurrection. To summarize this part, the four categories are: (i) A natural or orderly though unusual portent, (2) a disturbance due to unknown live or capricious agencies, (3) a utilization by mental or spiritual power of unknown laws, (4) direct inter- position of the Deity. ni [7] THB«ELIEFS III ARGUMENTS CONCERNING THE MIRACULOUS In some cases an argument concerning the so-called miracu- lous will turn upon the question whether such things are theoreti- cally possible. In other cases it will turn upon whether or not they have ever actually happened. In a third case the argument will be directed to the question whether they happened or not on some particular occasion. And in a fourth case the argument will hinge upon the par- ticular category under which any assigned occurrence is to be placed : For instance take a circumstance which undoubtedly has occurred, one upon the actual existence of which there can be no dispute, and yet one of which the history and manner is quite unknown. Take for instance the origin of life; or to be more definite, say the origin of life on any given planet, the Earth for instance. There is practically no doubt that the Earth was once a hot and molten and sterile globe. There is no doubt at all that it is now the abode of an immense variety of Hving or- ganic nature. How did that life arise? Is it an event to be placed under head (i), as an unexpected outcome of the ordi- nary course of nature, a development naturally following upon the formation of extremely complex molecular aggregates — pro- toplasm and the Hke — as the Earth cooled ; or must it be placed under head (4), as due to the direct Fiat of the Eternal ? Again, take the existence of Christianity as a living force in the world of to-day. This is based upon a series of events of undoubtedly substantial truth centering round a historical per- sonage; under which category is that to be placed? Was his advent to be regarded as analogous to the appearance of a mighty genius such as may at anytime revolutionize the course of human history; or is he to be regarded as a direct manifestation and incarnation of the Deity Himself ? I am using these great themes as illustrations merely, for our Dresent purpose ; I have no intention of entering upon them here III [8] THE BELIEFS and now. They are questions which have been asked, and pre- sumably answered, again and again; and it is on lines such as these that debates concerning the miraculous arc usually con- ducted. But what I want to say is that so long as we keep the discussion on these lines, and ask this sort of cjucstion, though we shall succeed in raising difficulties, we shall not progress far toward a solution of any of them : nor shall we gain much aid toward life. IV LAW AND GUIDANCE The way to progress is not thus to lose ourselves in detail and in confusing estimates of possibilities, but to consider two main issues which may very briefly be formulated thus : (i) Are we to believe in unbreakable law ? (2) Are we to beheve in spiritual guidance ? If we accept only the first of these issues we accept an orderly and systematic universe, with no arbitrary cataclysms and no breaks in its essential continuity. Catastrophes occur, but they occur in the regular course of events, they are not brought about by capricious and lawless agencies; they are a part of the entire cosmos, regulated on the principle of unity and uniformity: though to the dwellers in any time and place, from whose senses most of the cosmos is hidden, they may appear to be sudden and portentous dislocations of natural order. So much is granted if we accept the first of the above issues. If we accept the second, we accept a purposeful and directed universe, carrying on its evolutionary processes from an inevit- able past into an anticipated future with a definite aim; not left to the random control of inorganic forces like a motor-car which has lost its driver, but permeated throughout by mind and inten- tion and foresight and will. Not mere energy, but constantly directed energy — the energy being controlled by something which is not energy, nor akin to energy, something which pre- sumably is immanent in the universe and is akin to life and mind. The alternative to these two beliefs is a universe of random III [ 9 ] THE^ELIEFS chance and capricious disorder, not a cosmos or universe at all — a multi verse rather; consequently I take it that we all hold to one or other of these two beliefs. But do we and can we hold to both ? So far as I conceive my present mission, it is to urge that the two behefs are not inconsistent with each other, and that we may and should contemplate and gradually feel our way toward accepting both. (i) We must realize that the Whole is a single undeviat- ing law-saturated cosmos; (2) But we must also realize that the Whole consists not of matter and motion alone, nor yet of spirit and will alone, but of both and all; we must even yet further, and enormously, enlarge our conception of what the Whole contains. Scientific men have preached the first of these desiderata, but have been liable to take a narrow view regarding the second. Keenly alive on law, and knowledge, and material fact, they have been occasionally blind to art, to emotion, to poetry, and to the higher mental and spiritual environment which inspires and glorifies the realm of knowledge. The temptation of rehgious men has also lain in the direc- tion of too narrow an exclusiveness, for they have been so occupied with their own conceptions of the fulness of things that they have failed to grasp what is meant by the first of the above requirements; they have allowed the emotional content to overpower the intellectual, and have too often ignored, disHked, and practically rejected an integral por- tion of the scheme — appearing to desire, what no one can really wish for, a world of uncertainty and caprice, where effects can be produced without adequate cause, and where the connection of antecedent and consequent can be arbitrarily dislocated. The same vice has therefore dogged the steps of both classes of men. The acceptance of miracle, in the crude sense of arbitrary intervention and special providence, is appropriate to those who feel enmeshed in the grip of inorganic and mechanical law, without being able to reconcile it with the idea of constant ui [10] THE BELIEFS guidance and intelligent control. And a denial of miracle, in every sense, that is of all providential guidance, and all control- ling intelligence, may also be the result of the very same feeling, experienced by people who are conscious of just the same kind of inability — people who cannot recognize a directing intelligence in the midst of law and order, and hence regard the absence of dislocation and interference as a mark of the inorganic, the mechanical, the inexorable : wherefore the denial of miracle has often led to a sort of practical atheism and to an assertion of the valuelessness of prayer. But to those who are able to combine the acceptance of both the above faiths, prayer is part of the orderly cosmos, and may be an efficient portion of the guiding and controlhng will; some- what as the desire of the inhabitants of a town for a civic im- provement may be a part of the agency which ultimately brings it about, no matter whether the city be representatively or auto- cratically governed. The two behefs cannot be logically and effectively combined by those who think of themselves as something detached from and outside the cosmos, operating on it externally and seeking to modify its manifestations by vain petitions addressed to a system of ordered force. To such persons the above proposi- tions must seem contradictory or mutually exclusive. But if we can grasp the idea that we ourselves are an intimate part of the whole scheme, that our wishes and desires are a part of the con- trolling and guiding will — then our mental action cannot but be efficient, if we exercise it in accordance with the highest and truest laws of our being. V HUMAN EXPERIENCE Let US survey our position : We find ourselves for a few score years incarnate intelligences on this planet ; we have not always been here, and we shall not always be here : we are here, in fact, each of us, for but a very short period, but we can study the conditions of existence while here, and we perceive clearly that a certain amount of guidance m [ II ] THE^ELIEFS and control is in our hands. For better for worse we can, and our legislators do, influence the destinies of the planet. The process is called "making history." We can all, even the humblest, to some extent influence the destinies of individuals with whom we come into contact. We have therefore a certain sense of power and responsibility. It is not likely that we are the only, or the highest, intelligent agents in the whole wide universe, nor that we possess faculties and powers denied to all else; nor is it likely that our own ac- tivity will be always as limited as it is now. The Parable of the Talents is full of meaning, and it contains a meaning that is not often brought out. It is absurd to deny the attributes of guidance and intelligence and personality and love to the Whole, seeing that we arc part of the Whole, and are personally aware of what we mean by those words in ourselves. These attributes are existent, therefore, and cannot be denied ; cannot be denied even to the Deity. Is the planet subject to intelligent control ? We know that it is : we ourselves can change the course of rivers for predestined ends, we can make highways, can unite oceans, can devise in- ventions, can make new compounds, can transmute species, can plan fresh variety of organic life; we can create works of art; we can embody new ideas and lofty emotions in forms of lan- guage and music, and can leave them as Platonic offspring (vide Symposium) to remote posterity. Our power is doubtless limited, but we can surely learn to do far more than we have yet so far in the infancy of humanity accornphshed ; more even than we have yet conjectured as within the range of possibility. Our progress already has been considerable. It is but a moderate time since our greatest men were chipping flints and carving bones into the likeness of reindeer. More recently they became able to build cathedrals and make poems. Now we are momentarily diverted from immortal pursuits by vivid interest in that kind of competition which has replaced the competition of the sword, and by those extraordinary inequalities of posses- sion and privilege which have resulted from the invention of an indestructible and transmissible form of riches, a form over which neither moth nor rust has any power. We raise an in- in [ 12 ] THE BELIEFS cense of smoke, and offer sacrifices of squalor and ugliness, in worship of this new idol. But it will pass; human Hfe is not meant to continue as it is now in city slums; nor is the strenuous futihty of mere accumulation Hkely to satisfy people when once they have been really educated ; the world is beautiful, and may be far more widely happy than it has been yet. Those who have preached this hitherto have been heard with deaf ears, but some day we shall awake to a sense of our true planetary im- portance and shall recognize the higher possibiHties of existence. Then shall we realize and practically believe what is involved in those words of poetic insight : "The heaven, even the heavens are the Lord's : but the earth hath he given to the children of men." There is a vast truth in this yet to be discovered ; power and in- fluence and responsibility lie before us, appalhng in their magni- tude, and as yet we are but children playing on the stage before the curtain is rolled up for the drama in which we are to take part. But we are not left to our own devices: we of this living generation are not alone in the universe. What we call the in- dividual is strengthened by elements emerging from the social whole out of which he is born. We are not things of yesterday, nor of to-morrow. We do not indeed remember our past, we are not aware of our future, but in common with everything else we must have had a past and must be going to have a future. Some day we may find ourselves able to realize both. Meanwhile what has been our experience here? We have not been left solitary. Every newcomer to the planet, however helpless and strange he be, finds friends awaiting him, devoted and self-sacrificing friends, eager to care for and protect his in- fancy- and to train him in the ways of this curious world. It is typical of what goes on throughout conscious existence; the guidance which we exert, and to which we are subject now, is but a phase of something running through the universe; and when the time comes for us to quit this sphere and enter some larger field of action, I doubt not that we shall find there also that kind- ness and help and patience and love, without which no existence would be tolerable or even at some stages possible. Ill [ 13 ] THE^ELIEFS Miracles lie all around us: only they are not miraculous. Special providences envelop us: only they are not special. Prayer is a means of communication as natural and as simple as is speech. Realize that you are part of a great, orderly, and mutually helpful cosmos, that you are not stranded or isolated in a foreign universe, but that you are part of it and closely akin to it; and your sense of sympathy will be enlarged, your power of free communication will be opened, and the heartfelt aspiration and communion and petition that we call prayer will come as easily and as naturally as converse with those human friends and rela- tions whose visible bodily presence gladdens and enriches your present life. VI SUMMARY The atmosphere of religion should be recognized as envelop- ing and permeating everything; it should not be specially or exclusively sought as an emanation from signs and wonders. Strange and ultranormal things may happen, and are well worthy of study, but they are not to be regarded as especially holy. Some of them may represent either extension or survival of human faculty, while others may be an inevitable endowment or attribute of a sufficiently lofty character; but none of them can be accepted without investigation. Testimony concerning such things is to be treated in a sceptical and yet open-minded spirit ; the results of theory and experiment are to be utilized, as in any other branch of natural knowledge; and indiscriminate dogmatic rejection is as inappropriate as wholesale uncritical acceptance. The bearing on the hopes and fears of humanity of such un- usual facts as can be verified may be considerable, but they bear no exceptional witness to guidance and control. Guidance and control, if admitted at all, must be regarded as constant and con- tinuous; and it is just this uniform character that makes them so difficult to recognize. It is always difficult to perceive or apprehend anything which is perfectly regular and continuous. Ill [ 14 ] THE BELIEFS Those fish, for instance, which are submerged in ocean-depths, beyond the reach of waves and tides, are probably utterly un- conscious of the existence of water; and, however intelligent, they can have but Httle reason to beheve in that medium, not- withstanding that their whole being, life, and motion, is de- pendent upon it from instant to instant. The motion of the earth, again, furious rush though it is — fifty times faster than a cannon ball — is quite inappreciable to our senses; it has to be inferred from celestial observations, and it was strenuously dis- beheved by the agnostics of an earher day. Uniformity is always difficult to grasp; our senses are not made for it, and yet it is characteristic of everything that is most efficient; jerks and jolts are easy to appreciate, but they do not conduce to progress. Steady motion is what conveys us on our way, collisions are but a retarcHng influence. The seeker after miracle, in the exceptional and narrow or exclusive sense, is pining for a catastrophe ; the investigator of miracle, in the con- tinuous and broad or comprehensive sense, has the universe for a laboratory. / "RELIGION AND PHYSICAL SCIENCE" BY THE DUKE OF NORTHUMBERLAND Of all the changes which have taken place in the attitude of thoughtful men in the course of the last thirty or forty years none are more striking than those affecting the relations between religion and physical science. The keen controversies which formerly raged between the two schools of thought, and the bitterness thereby engendered, have become things of the past, and the mutual distrust which certainly exercised a baneful in- fluence upon both parties has been greatly diminished, if it has not altogether disappeared. To what is this great change due ? Is it owing to lukewarmness, and to the indifference of either III [15] THE^ELIEFS of the combatants to their own pursuits and doctrines ? Is it because the faith of either in their own theories has been under- mined ? Has victory declared itself so pali)ably on one side that the other is vanquished, and silenced, if not convinced? Or does each disputant take a saner and more appreciative view of his own position and sphere, and that of his opponent, being con- tent to perform his own work without burdening himself with criticism of the other ? These are very grave and vital questions for all those who are strongly impressed with the importance of cither of these great branches of human thought and effort, and however little we may be able to appreciate in our own day their full significance there can be little doubt that on the answer to them must depend the legitimacy of our hopes for the advance and improvement of the highest interests of mankind. It is this, among many other things, which invests with pecul- iar importance the able address delivered by the president of the British Association at a recent meeting at Belfast. The distin- guished services which the protracted and indefatigable labors of Professor Dcwar have rendered to science, and the advances which it has made under his guidance, together with his well- known tolerance of opinion and width of grasp, attach the ut- most weight and authority to any views he may express. Con- sequently it is very noteworthy that he should on that occasion have called attention in a marked manner to what he fitly de- scribes as the "epoch-making deliverance" of Prof essor Tyndall in the same city some thirty years ago, and should have dwelt with special emphasis on his declaration on behalf of men of science that "we claim, and we shall wrest, from theology the entire domain of cosmological theory." Professor Dcwar adds that this " claim has been practically, though often unconsciously, conceded." In other words, if I understand the Professor rightly, the somewhat militant dictum of Tyndall has been justified by the defeat of the theologian, and his abandonment since the year 1874 of a field he has been compelled to admit he had no right to occupy. This must be a somewhat startling assertion for some persons who, while sincerely interested in the results of scientific research, and profoundly sensible of the value m [16] THE BELIEFS of the studies of those gifted men who devote themselves to it, are nevertheless firmly attached to the current theology of the day, and are absolutely unaware of having resigned an inch of its territory. It is, therefore, justifiable, and, indeed, necessary, to exam- ine this declaration of Tyndall's a httle closely, and to ascertain exactly what it means before inquiring whether its prog- nostics have been actually fulfilled. But as it is always haz- ardous to criticise any single sentence of an utterance without giving its context it may be well to quote the whole passage. "The impregnable position of science may be described in a few words. We claim, and we shall wrest, from theology the entire domain of cosmological theory. All schemes and systems which thus infringe upon the domain of science must, in so jar as Ihey do this, submit to its control, and relinquish all thought of controlHng it. Acting otherwise proved disastrous in the past, and is simply fatuous to-day. Every system which would escape the fate of an organism too rigid to adjust itself to its environ- ment, must be plastic to the extent that the growth of knowledge demands."* Now let us revert to the sentence of the above which is quoted by Professor Dcwar, and is indeed the text of that part of his address: "We claim, and we shall wrest, from theology the en- tire domain of cosmological theory." "Theology" is the science which treats of the nature, attri- butes, and modes of working of the Deity; "cosmology" is the science which deals with the origin, qualities, and properties, active or passive, of the material world; a "domain" is either the lordship over a territory, or the territory under rule. And, put into less figurative and formal language, these words mean that the science which treats of the nature, attributes, and modes of the working of Deity has nothing to tell us of the origin, quali- ties, and properties of the material world, can throw no light upon them, and is, therefore, not worth listening to on the point. Now one of three things must be true. Either there is no Deity, in which case there can be no science about Him, and it is * See Forty-fourth Report of the British Association (1874), p. xcv. Ill [17] THE BELIEFS impossible to wrest anything from that which has no existence; or there is a Deity, but we can know nothing about Him, in which case there can equally be no science of theology; or, thirdly, there is at any rate a Great First Cause, who has re- vealed Himself to some extent to man, and of whose attributes, etc., man can thus form some idea. If this last be the true state of the case (and we may gather from Tyndall's address that this was the direction in which his own convictions pointed), surely every scientist must regard the material universe as one of the most striking revelations of its supreme author which He has afforded. And thus we are brought to this signification of Tyndall's dictum, viz., that the students of cosmology claim that the most striking revelation of Himself which God has given to man is no part of that science which deals with His nature and attributes. This seems hardly a scientific or logical position. Theology may or may not have grappled satisfactorily with the problems. She may need direction and hmitation, but she can be no more dis- possessed by physical science than the starry heavens can be shut to Galileo by the Index Expurgatorius. An analogous, though not an identical, relation to that between theology and physical science may be traced between history and archaeology. For many ages history held its own almost, if not entirely, unaided by the researches and discoveries of the archaeologist. History so isolated not infrequently drew unwarranted conclusions, not so much on her theoretical and aesthetic side (for the philosophy of history and politics has ad- vanced but slowly) as in her facts, and especially in their details. And she left, and, for the matter of that, still leaves, much un- accounted for and unexplained. Archaeology, dealing with the material part, the dry bones, of the subject, has corrected some of her conclusions. But what would be thought of an attempt to wrest from history the whole domain of archaeology for this reason? How great would have been the loss if Layard and Fhnders Petrie, Sayce and Evans had turned Herodotus out of court ! For many years the most suggestive pages of the Father of History have seemed as idle tales ; and those too impatient to tolerate an apparent paradox, or to wait for a solution of a III [ i8 ] THE BELIEFS startling statement, dubbed him the father of lies. But wider knowledge has largely vindicated the Greek, and the process is still going on. It is, for instance, only quite recently that the excavations in Crete have verified the accuracy of the stories of Minos, the labyrinth, and the Minotaur. And just as the day. is dawning when not only is archaeology corroborating history, but history is, in innumerable cases, inter- preting and vivifying antiquarian discoveries in a very unex- pected manner, so there are many persons who are quite willing to bide in patience for the time when theology will illuminate many a scientific problem, and when science shall throw an un- looked-for light on theology. The truth is that there are two classes of minds, each of which finds it extremely difificult, not merely to sympathize with, but to conceive the attitude of the other. The one is slow to believe anything the truth of which has not been either proved experimentally or logically shown to be probable. The other experiences no difiiculty in saying "credo quia impossibile," and indeed regards such an attitude in the finite postulated' by the existence of the infinite. For both these modes of thought there can be for many people no common and simultaneous acceptance. But it does not necessarily follow that either should attack the other. In the Middle Ages, the theologian assaulted the scien- tist with great success, having the "bayonets" on his side. Thirty years ago the tables were turned, and the scientist's on- slaught on the theologian is expressed by Tyndall in a tone as decided as that of Urban the Eighth. Each wished to " wrest the domain of cosmological theory" from the other, and neither had the smallest right to do anything of the sort ! Another great obstacle to a common understanding is a verbal one. All men's thoughts are better than their words. Every one knows what it is to have ideas passing through the mind which the language at the thinker's command is totally in- adequate to express. In the case of an exact science, this diffi- culty is in some degree met by the coining of new words, a prac- tice so prevalent in the present day as to have lately called forth a vigorous protest in some quarters. But theology is not an exact science, and its subject-matter is to a large extent in- III [ 19 ] THE BELIEFS capable of precise definition, as the history of all sects and heresies abundantly shows. Words are commonly used in a vague and general sense, and this vagueness is intolerable to minds trained in the schools of experimental research. The true eirenicon consists in the frank recognition of these facts, and of the right of either party to traverse the whole do- main of human thought without an indictment of trespass, each retaining its own opinion of the abihty of the other to discover and develop the resources of that domain, but without inter- ference with its proceedings. If this were fully recognized, science would at any rate be the gainer by her liberty to attract an audience from among those who, being much affected by theological and ecclesiastical influences, are scared by a militant attitude on the part of the scientist. There is perhaps no better example of the character and value of such a position than the bearing which it would have on the acceptance of the great doctrine of evolution. As a working hypothesis which affords from the purely material side of the question a probable explanation of a vast body of fact, and which furnishes an admirable basis for the coordination and classifica- tion of cosmical phenomena, it receives the adhesion of almost every one at all quahfied to form an opinion. And this is all that science need, or indeed does, demand for her most brilliant generalizations. Let us hear Professor Dewar's finely ex- pressed statement of her posture. . "It is only poverty of language," he says, "and the necessity of compendious expression, that oblige the man of science to resort to metaphor, and to speak of the laws of Nature. In reality, he does not pretend to formulate any laws for Nature, since to do so would be to assume a knowledge of the inscrutable cause from which alone such laws could emanate. When he speaks of a 'law of Nature' he simply indicates a sequence of events which, so far as his experience goes, is invariable, and which therefore enables him to predict, to a certain extent, what will happen in given circumstances. But however seemingly bold may be the speculation in which he permits himself to in- dulge, he does not claim for his best hypothesis more than a pro- visional validity. He does not forget that to-morrow may bring III [ 20 ] THE BELIEFS a new experience compelling him to recast the hypothesis of to- day. This plasticity of scientific thought, depending on rev- erent recognition of the vastness of the unknown, is oddly made a matter of reproach by the very people who harp upon the limita- tions of human knowledge." But the theologian approaches the matter from another standpoint. He is accustomed to resolve problems according to what he considers to be their absolute and abstract truth or falsehood, and he asks, not whether "so far as experience goes " the theory of evolution holds good, but whether it is in fact the true explanation of the material world as we see it, and how far it is so. Is it not evident that science cannot, and does not pro- fess to, give an answer? But two things are plain. That en- vironment does modify the type of living organisms cannot be denied by any one. That all such organisms have been evolved from one primordial form cannot be affirmed with any certainty. Between these two extremes lies an ocean of possibilities. Each man will adopt his position partly according to the char- acter of his own mind, partly according to the value he attaches to abstract doctrines, partly according to his capacity for collect- ing evidence and for weighing it fairly. Why should he not hold it without insisting that his neighbor should assume it also? Why should not the man who cannot accept the Darwinian doctrine as the real explanation of the problems it claims to solve, entertain it as a working hypothesis? Why should the Darwinian wrest the domain of cosmological theory from him, when he himself can claim nothing more for his best hypothesis about the cosmos than provisional validity ? Professor Dewar asserts that science adopts a humble and a reverent attitude. He confesses on her behalf her ''ignorance of the ultimate nature of matter, of the ultimate nature of energy, and still more of the origin and ultimate synthesis of the two." Nay, further, he regards the mystery of matter as inscrutable. One of the greatest theologians who ever existed asserted an equal humility for theology more than 1800 years ago, when he declared that he saw through a glass darkly, and knew only in part. Whether the theologian and the natural philosopher will ever see perfectly eye to eye until both stand face to face with III [ 21 ] THE BELIEFS Him whose actings they ahke study, and know even as they are known, may well be doubted. But every true advance achieved by either must necessarily tend to bring them to the same goal, however temporarily divergent the winding and intricate paths leading thereto may appear to be. Theology, no less than natural science (to quote after Professor Dewar the noble words of Lord Kelvin), is "bound by the everlasting law of honor to face fearlessly every problem that can fairly be presented to it," and to assert its right to range over every domain of theory with absolute freedom. It is not by elbowing out her sister that either will promote her own true interests, but by patient and tolerant occupation and development of a field amply sufficient for both to seek to advance side by side from one conquest to another till both shall join hands in the full enlightenment of the perfect day. Ill [ 22 ] IV THE SUCCESSES FIVE AMERICAN CONTRIBUTIONS TO CIVILIZATION" BY CHARLES W. ELIOT PRESIDENT OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY ZpROM the probletns which menace the future, we turn for encouragement to the successes already achieved. As President Eliot himself expresses it, ^^Our country^ s future perils, whether visible or still unimagined, are to be met with courage and constancy founded p,rmly on these popular achievements of the pasty How great these achievements have really been, he makes clear to us in the following address, which was first delivered before the Chautauqua educational conference and is here presented with the approval of President Eliot and by the courtesy of his publishers, the Century Company. The address is patriotic, as we all are patriotic, but it is wholly free from any extravagance of praise or pride. It uses nouns, not adjectives, states facts with- out attempting to color them. It is thoughtful, moderate, and conservative. There was a time when America passed through an era of giant adjectives, of self-congratulation, self -consciousness, perhaps of boast fulness. Recently, however, as if in reaction against this excess, many of our citizens have swung to the other extreme. We have criticised our country, and decried ourselves; we have mag- nified every fault. Perhaps we have been more pessimistic of tongue than of heart; yet the fact remains that our country has been deliberately underrated by those who love it best. It is well * Copyright 1897 by the Century Co. IV [ I ] TH^UCCESSES then that a man who has the confidence oj us all, a man serene and aged, the dean 0} American education, for thirty-eight years the president oj our largest university, should speak out before us all, soberly estimate our past, and tell us what he accepts, what pos- terity will undoubtedly accept, as to the worthiness 0} the work so jar accomplished by our United States. Looking back over forty centuries of history, we observe that many nations have made characteristic contributions to the prog- ress of civihzation, the beneficent effects of which have been permanent, akhough the races that made them may have lost their national form and organization, or their relative standing among the nations of the earth. Thus, the Hebrew race, dur- ing many centuries, made supreme contributions to religious thought; and the Greek, during the brief chmax of the race, to speculative philosophy, architecture, sculpture, and the drama. The Roman people developed mihtary colonization, aqueducts, roads and bridges, and a great body of public law, large parts of which still survive ; and the Italians of the middle ages and the Renaissance developed ecclesiastical organization and the fine arts, as tributary to the splendor of the church and to municipal luxury. England, for several centuries, has contributed to the institutional development of representative government and public justice; the Dutch, in the sixteenth century, made a superb struggle for free thought and free government; France, in the eighteenth century, taught the doctrine of individual free- dom and the theory of human rights; and Germany, at two periods within the nineteenth century, fifty years apart, proved the vital force of the sentiment of nationality. I ask you to con- sider with me what characteristic and durable contributions the American people have been making to the progress of civilization. The first and principal contribution to which I shall ask your attention is the advance made in the United States, not in theory only, but in practice, toward the abandonment of war as the means of settling disputes between nations, the substitution of discussion and arbitration, and the avoidance of armaments. If the intermittent Indian fighting and the brief contest with the Barbary corsairs be disregarded, the United States passed IV [ 2 ] THE SUCCESSES through only four years and a quarter of international war in the one hundred and seven years following the adoption of the Con- stitution. Within the same period the United States have been a party to forty-seven arbitrations — being more than half of all that have taken place in the modern world. The questions settled by these arbitrations have been just such as have com- monly caused wars, namely, questions of boundary, fisheries, damage caused by war or civil disturbances, and injuries to commerce. Some of them were of great magnitude, the four made under the treaty of Washington (May 8, 1871) being the most important that have ever taken place. Confident in their strength, and relying on their ability to adjust international differences, the United States have habitually maintained, by voluntary enlistment for short terms, a standing army and a fleet which, in proportion to the population, are insignificant. The beneficent effects of this American contribution to civili- zation are of two sorts : in the first place, the direct evils of war and of preparations for war have been diminished ; and secondly, the influence of the war spirit on the perennial conflict between the rights of the single personal unit and the powers of the multi- tude that constitute organized society — or, in other words, between individual freedom and collective authority — has been reduced to the lowest terms. War has been, and still is, the school of collectivism, the warrant of tyranny. Century after centuiy, tribes, clans, and nations have sacrificed the liberty of the individual to the fundamental necessity of being strong for combined defence or attack in war. Individual freedom is crushed in war, for the nature of war is inevitably despotic. It says to the private person : " Obey without a question, even unto death; die in this ditch, without knowing why; walk into that deadly thicket; mount this embankment, behind which are men who will try to kill you, lest you should kill them; make part of an immense machine for bhnd destruction, cruelty, rapine, and kilHng." At this moment every young man in Continental Europe learns the lesson of absolute military obedience, and feels himself subject to this crushing power of militant society, against which no rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness avail anything. This pernicious influence, IV [3] THE-SUCCESSES inherent in the social organization of all Continental Europe during many centuries, the American people have for genera- tions escaped, and they show other nations how to escape it. I ask your attention to the favorable conditions under which this contribution of the United States to civilization has been made. There has been a deal of fighting on the American con- tinent during the past three centuries; but it has not been of the sort which most imperils liberty. The first European colonists who occupied portions of the coast of North America encoun- tered in the Indians men of the Stone Age, who ultimately had to be resisted and quelled by force. The Indian races were at a stage of development thousands of years behind that of the Europeans. They could not be assimilated ; for the most part they could not be taught or even reasoned with ; with a few ex- ceptions they had to be driven away by prolonged fighting, or subdued by force so that they would live peaceably with the whites. This warfare, however, always had in it for the whites a large element of self-defence — the homes and families of the settlers were to be defended against a stealthy and pitiless foe. Constant exposure to the attacks of savages was only one of the formidable dangers and difficulties which for a hundred years the early settlers had to meet, and which developed in them courage, hardiness, and persistence. The French and English wars on the North American continent, always more or less mixed with Indian warfare, were characterized by race hatred and religious animosity — two of the commonest causes of war in all ages ; but they did not tend to fasten upon the English colo- nists any objectionable public authority, or to contract the limits of individual liberty. They furnished a school of martial quali- ties at small cost to liberty. In the War of Independence there was a distinct hope and purpose to enlarge individual liberty. It made possible a confederation of the colonies, and, ultimately, the adoption of the Constitution of the United States. It gave to the thirteen colonies a lesson in collectivism, but it was a needed lesson on the necessity of combining their forces to resist an oppressive external authority. The war of 1812 is properly called the Second War of Independence, for it was truly a fight for liberty and for the rights of neutrals, in resistance to the im- IV [4] THE SUCCESSES pressment of seamen and other oppressions growing out of European conflicts. The civil war of 1861-65 was waged, on the side of the North, primarily, to prevent the dismemberment of the country, and, secondarily and incidentally, to destroy the in- stitution of slavery. On the Northern side it therefore called forth a generous element of popular ardor in defence of free institutions; and though it temporarily caused centralization of great powers in the government, it did as much to promote in- dividual freedom as it did to strengthen pulolic authority. In all this series of fightings the main motives were self- defence, resistance to oppression, the enlargement of liberty, and the conservation of national acquisitions. The war v/ith Mexico, it is true, was of a wholly different type. That was a war of conquest, and of conquest chiefly in the interest of African slavery. It was also an unjust attack made by a powerful people on a feeble one ; but it lasted less than two years, and the number of men engaged in it was at no time large. Moreover, by the treaty which ended the war, the conquering nation agreed to pay the conquered eighteen million dollars in partial compensation for some of the territory wrested from it, instead of demanding a huge war-indemnity, as the European way is. Its results con- tradicted the anticipations both of those who advocated and of those who opposed it. It was one of the wrongs which prepared the way for the great rebellion; but its direct evils were of moderate extent, and it had no effect on the perennial conflict between individual liberty and public power. In the mean time, partly as the results of Indian fighting and the Mexican war, but chiefly through purchases and arbitrations, the American people had acquired a territory so extensive, so defended by oceans, gulfs, and great lakes, and so intersected by those great natural highways, navigable rivers, that it would ob- viously be impossible for any enemy to overrun or subdue it. The civilized nations of Europe, western Asia, and northern Africa have always been liable to hostile incursions from without. Over and over again barbarous hordes have overthrown estab- lished civilizations ; and at this moment there is not a nation of Europe which does not feel obliged to maintain monstrous arma- ments for defence against its neighbors. The American people IV [5] THE SUCCESSES have long been exempt from such terrors, and are now absolutely free from this necessity of keeping in readiness to meet hesL\y assaults. The absence of a great standing army and of a large fleet has been a main characteristic of the United States, in con- trast with the other civilized nations; this has been a great in- ducement to immigration, and a prime cause of the country's rapid increase in wealth. The United States have no formi- dable neighbor, except Great Britain in Canada. In April, 1817, by a convention made between Great Britain and the United States, without much pubhc discussion or observation, these two powerful nations agreed that each should keep on the Great Lakes only a few police vessels of insignificant size and arma- ment. This agreement was made but four years after Perry's naval victory on Lake Erie, and only three years after the burn- ing of Washington by a British force. It was one of the first acts of Monroe's first administration, and it would be difhcult to find in all history a more judicious or effectual agreement be- tween two powerful neighbors. For eighty years this beneficent convention has helped to keep the peace. The European way would have been to build competitive fleets, dockyards, and fortresses, all of which would have helped to bring on war during the periods of mutual exasperation which have occurred since 1817. Monroe's second administration was signalized, six years later, by the declaration that the United States would con- sider any attempt on the part of the Holy Alliance to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States. This announce- ment was designed to prevent the introduction on the American continent of the horrible European system — with its balance of power, its alhances offensive and defensive in opposing groups, and its perpetual armaments on an enormous scale. That a declaration expressly intended to promote peace and prevent armaments should now be perverted into an argument for arming and for a belligerent public policy is an extraordinary perversion of the true American doctrine. The ordinary causes of war between nation and nation have been lacking in America for the last century and a quarter. How many wars in the world's history have been due to contend- IV [6] THE SUCCESSES ing dynasties; how many of the most cruel and protracted wars have been due to religious strife ; how many to race hatred ! No one of these causes of war has been efficacious in America since the French were overcome in Canada by the English in 1759. Looking forward into the future, we find it impossible to imagine circumstances under which any of these common causes of war can take effect on the North American continent. Therefore, the ordinary motives for maintaining armaments in time of peace, and concentrating the powers of government in such away as to interfere with individual liberty, have not been in play in the United States, as among the nations of Europe, and are not likely to be. Such have been the favorable conditions under which America has made its best contribution to the progress of our race. There are some people of a perverted sentimentality who occasionally lament the absence in our country of the ordinary inducements to war, on the ground that war develops certain noble qualities in some of the combatants, and gives opportunity for the practice of heroic virtues, such as courage, loyalty, and self-sacrifice. It is further said that prolonged peace makes nations effeminate, luxurious, and materialistic, and substitutes for the high ideals of the patriot soldier the low ideals of the farmer, manufacturer, tradesman, and pleasure-seeker. This view seems to me to err in two opposite ways. In the first place, it forgets that war, in spite of the fact that it develops some splendid virtues, is the most horrible occupation that human beings can possibly engage in. It is cruel, treacherous, and murderous. Defensive warfare, particularly on the part of a weak nation against powerful invaders or oppressors, excites a generous sympathy ; but for every heroic defence there must be an attack by a preponderating force, and war, being the conflict of the two, must be judged by its moral effects, not on one party, but on both parties. Moreover, the weaker party may have the worse cause. The immediate ill effects of war are bad enough, but its after effects are generally worse, because indefinitely prolonged and indefinitely wasting and damaging. At this moment, thirty-one years after the end of our civil war, IV [7] THE SUCCESSES there are two great evils afflicting our country which took their rise in that war, namely, (i) the belief of a large proportion of our people in money without intrinsic value, or worth less than its face, and made current solely by act of Congress, and (2) the payment of immense annual sums in pensions. It is the paper- money delusion born of the civil Vvar which generated and sup- ports the silver-money delusion of to-day. As a consequence of the war, the nation has paid $2,000,000,000 in pensions within thirty-three years. So far as pensions are paid to disabled persons, they are a just and inevitable, but unproductive, ex- penditure; so far as they are paid to persons who are not dis- abled — men or women — they are in the main not only unproduc- tive, but demoralizing; so far as they promote the marriage of young women to old men, as a pecuniary speculation, they create a grave social evil. It is impossible to compute or even imagine the losses and injuries already inflicted by the fiat-money delu- sion ; and we know that some of the worst evils of the pension system v/ill go on for a hundred years to come unless the laws about widows' pensions are changed for the better. It is a significant fact that in 1895, of the existing pensioners of the war of 18 1 2 only twenty-one were surviving soldiers or sailors, while 3,826 were widows. War gratifies, or used to gratify, the combative instinct of mankind, but it gratifies also the love of plunder, destruction, cruel discipline, and arbitrary' power. It is doubtful whether fighting with modern appliances will continue to gratify the savage instinct of combat; for it is not likely that in the future two opposing lines of men can ever meet, or any line or column reach an enemy's intrenchments. The machine-gun can only be compared to the scythe, which cuts off every blade of grass within its sweep. It has made cavalry charges impossible, just as the modern ironclad has made impossible the manoeuvres of one of Nelson's fleets. On land, the only mode of approach of one line to another must hereafter be by concealment, crawling, or surprise. Naval actions will henceforth be conflicts between opposing machines, guided, to be sure, by men; but it will be the best machine that wins, and not necessarily the most enduring men. War will become a contest between treasuries or war- IV [8] THE SUCCESSES chests ; for now that 10,000 men can fire away a million dollars' worth of ammunition in an hour, no poor nation can long resist a rich one, unless there be some extraordinary difference between the two in mental and moral strength. The view that war is desirable omits also the consideration that modern social and industrial life affords ample opportuni- ties for the courageous and loyal discharge of duty, apart from the barbarities of warfare. There are many serviceable occupa- tions in civil life which call for all the courage and fidelity of the best soldier, and for more than his independent responsibility, because not pursued in masses or under the immediate command of superiors. Such occupations are those of the locomotive engineer, the electric lineman, the railroad brakcman, the city fireman, and the policeman. The occupation of the locomotive engineer requires constantly a high degree of skill, alertness, fidelity, and resolution, and at any moment may call for heroic self-forgetfulness. The occupation of a lineman requires all the courage and endurance of a soldier, whose lurking foe is mys- terious and invisible. In the two years 1893 and 1894 there were 34,000 trainmen killed and wounded on the railroads of the United States, and 25,000 other railroad employes besides. I need not enlarge on the dangers of the fireman's occupation, or on the discipHned gallantry with which its risks are habitually incurred. The policeman in large cities needs every virtue of the best soldier, for in the discharge of many of his most im- portant duties he is alone. Even the feminine occupation of the trained nurse illustrates every heroic quality which can possibly be exhibited in war; for she, simply in the way of duty, without the stimulus of excitement or companionship, runs risks from which many a soldier in hot blood would shrink. No one need be anxious about the lack of opportunities in civilized life for the display of heroic qualities. New industries demand new forms of fidelity and self-sacrificing devotion. Every generation de- velops some new kind of hero. Did it ever occur to you that the "scab" is a creditable type of nineteenth-century hero ? In de- fence of his rights as an individual, he deliberately incurs the reprobation of many of his fellows, and runs the immediate risk of bodily injury or even of death. He also risks his liveli- IV [9] THE SUflCESSES hood for the future, and thereby the well-being of his family. He steadily asserts in action his right to work on such conditions as he sees fit to make, and, in so doing, he exhibits remarkable courage and renders a great service to his fellow-men. He is generally a quiet, unpretending, silent person, who values his personal freedom more than the society and approbation of his mates. Often he is impelled to work by family affection, but this fact does not diminish his heroism. There are file-closers behind the line of battle of the bravest regiment. Another modern personage who needs heroic endurance, and often ex- hibits it, is the public servant who steadily does his duty against the outcry of a party press bent on perverting his every word and act. Through the telegram, cheap postage, and the daily news- paper, the forces of hasty pubhc opinion can now be concen- trated and expressed with a rapidity and intensity unknown to preceding generations. In consequence, the independent thinker or actor, or the public servant, when his thoughts or acts run counter to prevaihng popular or party opinions, encounters sudden and intense obloc^uy, which, to many temperaments, is very formidable. That habit of submitting to the opinion of the majority which democracy fosters renders the storm of detrac- tion and calumny all the more difficult to endure — makes it, in- deed, so intolerable to many citizens that they will conceal or modify their opinions rather than endure it. Yet the very breath of life for a democracy is free discussion, and the taking account, of all opinions honestly held and reasonably expressed. The unreality of the vilification of public men in the modern press is often rc\-ealed by the sudden change when an eminent public servant retires or dies. A man for whom no words of derision or condemnation were strong enough yesterday is recognized to-morrow as an honorable and serviceable person, and a credit to his country. Nevertheless, this habit of partisan ridicule and denunciation in the daily reading-matter of millions of people calls for a new kind of courage and toughness in public men, and calls for it, not in brief moments of excitement only, but steadily, year in and year out. Clearly, there is no need of bringing on wars in order to breed heroes. Civilized life affords plenty of opportunities for heroes, and for a better kind than v/ar IV [ lo ] THE SUCCESSES or any other savagery has ever produced. Moreover, none but lunatics would set a city on fire in order to give opportunities for fceroism to firemen, or introduce the cholera or yellow fever to give physicians and nurses opportunity for practising disin- terested devotion, or condemn thousands of people to extreme poverty in order that some well-to-do persons might practise a beautiful charity. It is equally crazy to advocate war on the ground that it is a school for heroes. Another misleading argument for war needs brief notice. It is said that war is a school of national development — that a nation, when conducting a great war, puts forth prodigious exer- tions to raise money, supply munitions, enhst troops, and keep them in the field, and often gets a clearer conception and a better control of its own materials and moral forces while making these unusual exertions. The nation which means to live in peace necessarily foregoes, it is said, these valuable opportunities of abnormal activity. Naturally, such a nation's abnormal ac- tivities devoted to destruction would be diminished; but its normal and abnormal activities devoted to construction and im- provement ought to increase. One great reason for the rapid development of the United States since the adoption of the Constitution is the comparative exemption of the whole people from war, dread of war, and preparations for war. The energies of the people have been directed into other channels. The progress of applied science during the present century, and the new ideals concerning the well-being of human multitudes, have opened great fields for the useful application of national energy. This immense territory of ours, stretching from ocean to ocean, and for the most part but imperfectly developed and sparsely settled, affords a broad field for the beneficent application of the richest national forces during an indefinite period. There is no department of national activity in which we could not advantageously put forth much more force than we now expend ; and there are great fields which we have never cultivated at all. As examples, I may mention the post-office, national sanitation, public works, and education. Although great improvements have been made during the past fifty years in the collection and delivery of mail matter, much IV [ii] THE SUCCESSES still remains to be done both in city and country, and particu- larly in the country. In the mail facilities secured to our people we are far behind several European governments, whereas we ought to be far in advance of every European government except Switzerland, since the rapid interchange of ideas, and the pro- motion of family, friendly, and commercial intercourse are of more importance to a democracy than to any other form of political society. Our national government takes very little pains about the sanitation of the country, or its deliverance from injurious insects and parasites; yet these are matters of gravest interest, with which only the general government can deal, because action by separate States or cities is necessarily ineffect- ual. To fight pestilences needs quite as much energy, skill, and courage as to carry on war; indeed, the foes are more insidious and awful, and the means of resistance less obvious. On the av- erage and the large scale, the professions which heal and prevent disease, and mitigate suffering, call for much more ability, con- stancy, and devotion than the professions which inflict wounds and death and all sorts of human miser}^ Our government has never touched the important subject of national roads, by which I mean not railroads, but common highways; yet here is a great subject for beneficent action through government, in which we need only go for our lessons to little republican Switzerland. Inundations and droughts are great enemies of the human race, against which government ought to create defences, because private enterprise cannot cope with such wide-spreading evils. Popular education is another great field in which public activity should be indefinitely enlarged, not so much through the action of the Federal government — though even there a much more effective supervision should be provided than now exists — but through the action of States, cities, and towns. We have hardly begun to apprehend the fundamental necessity and infinite value of public education, or to appreciate the immense ad- vantages to be derived from additional expenditure for it. What prodigious possibilities of improvement are suggested by the single statement that the average annual expenditure for the schooling of a child in the United States is only about eighteen dollars! Here is a cause which requires from hundreds of IV [ 12 ] THE SUCCESSES thousands of men and women keen intelligence, hearty devotion to duty, and a steady uplifting and advancement of all its stand- ards and ideals. The system of public instruction should em- body for coming generations all the virtues of the mediaeval church. It should stand for the brotherhood and unity of all classes and conditions; it should exalt the joys of the intellectual life above all material delights; and it should produce the best constituted and most wisely directed intellectual and moral host that the world has seen. In view of such unutilized opportuni- ties as these for the beneficent application of great public forces, does it not seem monstrous that war should be advocated on the ground that it gives occasion for rallying and using the national energies ? The second eminent contribution which the United States have made to civilization is their thorough acceptance, in theory and practice, of the widest religious toleration. As a means of suppressing individual liberty, the collective authority of the Church, when elaborately organized in a hierarchy directed by one head and absolutely devoted in every rank of its service, comes next in proved efficiency to that concentration of powers in government which enables it to carry on war effectively. The Western Christian Church, organized under the Bishop of Rome, acquired, during the middle ages, a centralized authority which quite overrode both the temporal ruler and the rising spirit of nationality. For a time Christian Church and Christian State acted together, just as in Egypt, during many earlier centuries, the great powers of civil and religious rule had been united. The Crusades marked the climax of the power of the Church. Thereafter, Church and State were often in conflict; and during this prolonged conflict the seeds of liberty were planted, took root, and made some sturdy growth. We can see now, as we look back on the history of Europe, how fortunate it was that the colonization of North America by Europeans was deferred until after the period of the Reformation, and especially until after the Elizabethan period in England, the Luther period in Germany, and the splendid struggle of the Dutch for liberty in Holland. The founders of New England and New York were men who had imbibed the principles of resistance both to arbitrary civil IV [ 13 ] THE ^SUCCESSES :^ power and to universal ecclesiastical authority. Hence it came about that within the territory now covered by the United States no single ecclesiastical organization ever obtained a wide and oppressive control, and that in different parts of this great region churches very unlike in doctrine and organization were almost simultaneously established. It has been an inevitable conse- quence of this condition of things that the Church, as a whole, in the United States has not been an effective opponent of any form of human rights. For generations it has been divided into numerous sects and denominations, no one of which has been able to claim more than a tenth of the population as its ad- herents; and the practices of these numerous denominations have been profoundly modified by political theories and prac- tices, and by social customs natural to new communities formed under the prevailing conditions of free intercourse and rapid growth. The constitutional prohibition of religious tests as qual- ifications for office gave the United States the leadership among the nations in dissociating theological opinions and poHtical rights. No one denomination or ecclesiastical organization in the United States has held great properties, or has had the means of conducting its ritual with costly pomp or its charitable works with imposing liberality. No splendid architectural exhibitions of Church power have interested or overawed the population. On the contrary, there has prevailed in general a great sim- plicity in public worship, until very recent years. Some splen- dors have been lately developed by religious bodies in the great cities; but these splendors and luxuries have been almost simul- taneously exhibited by religious bodies of very different, not to say opposite, kinds. Thus, in New York city, the Jews, the Greek Church, the Catholics, and the Episcopalians have all erected, or undertaken to erect, magnificent edifices. But these recent demonstrations of wealth and zeal are so distributed among differing religious organizations that they cannot be imagined to indicate a coming centralization of ecclesiastical in- fluence adverse to individual liberty. In the United States, the great principle of religious tolera- tion is better understood and more firmly established than in any other nation of the earth. It is not only embodied in legislation, IV [ 14 ] THE SUCCESSES but calso completely recognized in the habits and customs of good society Elsewhere it may be a long road from legal to social recognition of religious liberty, as the example of England shows. This recognition alone would mean, to any competent student of history, that the United States had made an unexampled con- tribution to the reconciliation of just governmental power with just freedom for the individual, inasmuch as the partial establishment of religious toleration has been the main work of civiliza- tion during the past four centuries. In view of this charac- teristic and infinitely beneficent contribution to human happi- ness and progress, how pitiable seem the temporary outbursts of bigotry and fanaticism which have occasionally marred the fair record of our country in regard to religious toleration! If any one imagines that this American contribution to civilization is no longer important— that the victory for toleration has been already won— let him recall the fact that the last years of the nineteenth century witnessed two horrible religious persecutions, one by a Christian nation, the other by a Moslem— one, of the Jews by Russia, and the other, of the Armenians by Turkey. The third characteristic contribution which the United States have made to civilization has been the safe development of a manhood suffrage nearly universal. The experience of the United States has brought out several principles with regard to the suffrage which have not been clearly apprehended by some eminent political philosophers. In the first place, American ex- perience has demonstrated the advantages of a gradual approach to universal suffrage, over a sudden leap. Universal suffrage is not the first and only means of attaining democratic government; rather, it is the ultimate goal of successful democracy. It is not a specific for the cure of all political ills; on the contrary, it may itself easily be the source of great political evils. The people of the United States feel its dangers to-day. When constituencies are large, it aggravates the well-known difficulties of party government; so that many of the ills which threaten democratic communities at this moment, whether in Europe or America, proceed from the breakdown of party government rather than from failures of universal suffrage. The methods of party government were elaborated where suffrage w^as limited and IV [15] THE ^XESSES constituencies were small. Manhood suffrage has not worked perfectly well in the United States, or in any other nation where it has been adopted, and it is not likely very soon to work per- fectly anywhere. It is like freedom of the will for the individual — the only atmosphere in which virtue can grow, but an atmos- phere in which sin can also grow. Like freedom of the will, it needs to be surrounded with checks and safeguards, particularly in the childhood of the nation; but, like freedom of the will, it is the supreme good, the goal of perfected democracy. Secondly, like freedom of the will, universal suffrage has an educational effect, which has been mentioned by many writers, but has sel- dom been clearly apprehended or adequately described. This educational effect is produced in two ways: In the first place, the combination of individual freedom with social mobility, which a wide suffrage tends to produce, permits the capable to rise through all grades of society, even within a single generation; and this freedom to rise is intensely stimulating to personal am- bition. Thus every capable American, from youth to age, is bent on bettering himself and his condition.. Nothing can be more striking than the contrast between the mental condition of an average American belonging to the laborious classes, but con- scious that he can rise to the top of the social scale, and that of a European mechanic, peasant, or tradesman, who knows that he cannot rise out of his class, and is content with his hereditary classification. The state of mind of the American prompts to constant struggle for self-improvement and the acquisition of all sorts of property and power. In the second place, it is a direct effect of a broad suffrage that the voters become periodically interested in the discussion of grave public problems, which carry their minds away from the routine of their daily labor and house- hold experience out into, larger fields. The instrumentalities of this prolonged education have been multiplied and improved enormously within the past fifty years. In no field of human endeavor have the fruits of the introduction of steam and elec- trical power been more striking than in the methods of reaching multitudes of people with instructive narratives, expositions, and arguments. The multiplication of newspapers, magazines, and books is only one of the immense developments in the means of IV [ 16 ] THE SUCCESSES reaching the people. The advocates of any public cause now have it in their power to provide hundreds of newspapers with the same copy, or the same plates, for simultaneous issue. The mails provide the means of circulating millions of leaflets and pamphlets. The interest in the minds of the people which prompts to the reading of these multiplied communications comes from the frequently recurring elections. The more diffi- cult the intellectual problem presented in any given election, the more educative the effect of the discussion. Many modern in- dustrial and financial problems are extremely difficult, even for highly educated men. As subjects of earnest thought and dis- cussion on the farm, and in the work-shop, factory, rolling-mill, and mine, they supply a mental training for millions of adults, the like of which has never before been seen in the world. In these discussions, it is not only the receptive masses that are benefited ; the classes that supply the appeals to the masses are also benefited in a high degree. There is no better mental exercise for the most highly trained man than the effort to ex- pound a difficult subject in so clear a way that the untrained man can understand it. In a republic in which the final appeal is to manhood suffrage, the educated minority of the people is con- stantly stimulated to exertion, by the instinct of self-preservation as well as by love of country. They see dangers in proposals made to universal suffrage, and they must exert themselves to ward off those dangers. The position of the educated and well- to-do classes is a thoroughly wholesome one in this respect : they \ cannot depend for the preservation of their advantages on land- owning, hereditar}' privilege, or any legislation not equally ap- plicable to the poorest and humblest citizen. They must main- tain their superiority by being superior. They cannot live in a too safe corner. I touch here on a misconception which underlies much of the criticism of universal suffrage. It is commonly said that the rule of the majority must be the rule of the most ignorant and : incapable, the multitude being necessarily uninstructed as to taxation, public finance, and foreign relations, and untrained to active thought on such difficult subjects. Now, universal suf- frage is merely a convention as to where the last appeal shall lie IV [17] THE SUCCESSES for the decision of public questions; and it is the rule of the majority only in this sense. The educated classes are undoubt- edly a minority; but it is not safe to assume that they monopo- lize the good sense of the community. On the contrary, it is very clear that native good judgment and good feeling are not proportional to education, and that among a multitude of men who have only an elementary education a large proportion will possess both good judgment and good feeling. Indeed, persons who can neither read nor write may possess a large share of both, as is constantly seen in regions where the opportunities for edu- cation in childhood have been scanty or inaccessible. It is not to be supposed that the cultivated classes, under a regime of universal suffrage, are not going to try to make their cultivation felt in the discussion and disposal of public questions. Any result under universal suffrage is a complex effect of the discus- sion of the public question in hand by the educated classes in the presence of the comparatively uneducated, when a majority of both classes taken together is ultimately to settle the question. In practice, both classes divide on almost every issue. But, in any case, if the educated classes cannot hold their own with the uneducated, by means of their superior physical, mental, and moral qualities, they are obviously unfit to lead society. With education should come better powers of argument and per- suasion, a stricter sense of honor, and a greater general effective- ness. With these advantages, the educated classes must un- doubtedly appeal to the less educated, and try to convert them to their way of thinking; but this is a process which is good for both sets of people. Indeed, it is the best possible process for the training of freemen, educated or uneducated, rich or poor. It is often assumed that the educated classes become im- potent in a democracy, because the representatives of those classes are not exclusively chosen to public office. This argu- ment is a very fallacious one. It assumes that the public offices are the places of greatest influence; whereas, in the United States, at least, that is conspicuously not the case. In a democ- racy, it is important to discriminate influence from authority. Rulers and magistrates may or may not be persons of influence; but many persons of influence never become rulers, magistrates, IV [ i8 ] THE SUCCESSES or representatives in parliaments or legislatures. The complex industries of a modern state, and its innumerable corporation services, offer great fields for administrative talent which were entirely unknown to preceding generations; and these new ac- tivities attract many ambitious and capable men more strongly than the public service. These men are not on that account lost to their country or to society. The present generation has wholly escaped from the conditions of earlier centuries, when able men who were not great land-owners had but three outlets i for their ambition — the army, the church, or the national civil service. The national service, whether in an empire, a limited monarchy, or a republic, is now only one of many fields which offer to able and patriotic men an honorable and successful career. Indeed, legislation and pubhc administration neces- sarily have a very second-hand quality; and more and more legis- lators and administrators become dependent on the researches of scholars, men of science, and historians, and follow in the footsteps ' of inventors, economists, and political philosophers. Political leaders are very seldom leaders of thought; they are generally trying to induce masses of men to act on principles thought out long before. Their skill is in the selection of practicable ap- proximations to the ideal; their arts are arts of exposition and persuasion ; their honor comes from fidelity under trying circum- stances to familiar principles of public duty. The real leaders of American thought in this century have been preachers, teachers, jurists, seers, and poets. While it is of the highest importance, under any form of government, that the public servants should \ be men of intelligence, education, and honor, it is no objection ' to any given form, that under it large numbers of educated and honorable citizens have no connection with the public service. Well-to-do Europeans, when reasoning about the working of democracy, often assume that under any government the prop- erty-holders are synonymous with the intelligent and educated class. That is not the case in the American democracy. Any one who has been connected with a large American university can testify that democratic institutions produce plenty of rich people who are not educated and plenty of educated people who IV [ 19 ] THE SUCCESSES arc not rich, just as media; val society produced illiterate nobles and cultivated monks. Persons who object to manhood suffrage as the last resort for the settlement of pubhc questions are bound to show where, in all the world, a juster or more practicable regulation or conven- tion has been arrived at. The objectors ought at least to indi- cate where the ultimate decision should, in their judgment, rest — as, for example, with the land-owners, or the property- holders, or the graduates of secondar}' schools, or the professional classes. He would be a bold political philosopher who, in these days, should propose that the ultimate tribunal should be constituted in any of these ways. All the experience of the civilized world fails to indicate a safe personage, a safe class, or a safe minority, with which to deposit this power of ultimate decision. On the contrary, the experience of civilization indicates that no select person or class can be trusted with that power, no matter what the principle of selection. The convention that the majority of males shall decide public questions has obviously great recom- mendations. It is apparently fairer than the rule of any minor- ity, and it is sure to be supported by an adecjuate physical force. Moreover, its decisions are likely to enforce themselves. Even in matters of doubtful prognostication, the fact that a majority of the males do the prophesying tends to the fulfilment of the prophecy. At any rate, the adoption or partial adoption of universal male suffrage by several civilized nations is coincident with unexampled ameliorations in the condition of the least for- tunate and most numerous classes of the population. To this general amelioration many causes have doubtless contributed; but it is reasonable to suppose that the acquisition of the power which comes with votes has had something to do with it. Timid or conservative people often stand aghast at the pos- sible directions of democratic desire, or at some of the predicted results of democratic rule ; but meantime the actual experience of the American democracy proves: i, that property has never been safer under any form of government ; 2, that no people have ever welcomed so ardently new machinery, and new inventions generally; 3, that religious toleration was never carried so far, and never so universally accepted; 4, that nowhere have the IV [20] THE SUCCESSES power and disposition to read been so general; 5, that nowhere has governmental power been more adequate, or more freely exercised, to levy and collect taxes, to raise armies and to disband them, to maintain public order, and to pay off great public debts — national, State, and town; 6, that nowhere have property and well-being been so widely diffused; and 7, that no form of gov- ernment ever inspired greater affection and loyalty, or prompted to greater personal sacrifices in supreme moments. In view of these solid facts, speculations as to what universal suft'rage would have done in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, or may do in the twentieth, seem futile indeed. The most civilized nations of the world have all either adopted this final appeal to manhood suffrage, or they are approaching that adoption by rapid stages. The United States, having no customs or traditions of an oppo- site sort to overcome, have led the nations in this direction, and have had the honor of devising, as a result of practical experience, the best safeguards for universal suffrage, safeguards which, in the main, are intended to prevent hasty public action, or action based on sudden discontents or temporary spasms of public feeling. These checks are intended to give time for discussion and deliberation, or, in other words, to secure the enlightenment of the voters before the vote. If, under new conditions, existing safeguards prove insufficient, the only wise course is to devise new safeguards. The United States have made to civilization a fourth con- tribution of a very hopeful sort, to which public attention needs to be directed, lest temporary evils connected therewith should prevent the continuation of this beneficent action. The United States have furnished a demonstration that people belonging to a great variety of races or nations are, under favorable circum- stances, fit for political freedom. It is the fashion to attribute to the enormous immigration of the last fifty years some of the failures of the American political system, and particularly the American failure in municipal government, and the introduction in a few States of the rule of the irresponsible party foremen known as "bosses." Impatient of these evils, and hastily ac- cepting this improbable explanation of them, some people wish to depart from the American policy of welcoming immigrants. IV [ 21 ] THE^UCCESSES In two respects the absorption of large numbers of immigrants from many nations into the American commonweahh has been of great service to mankind. In the first place, it has demon- strated that people who at home have been subject to every sort of aristocratic or despotic or military oppression become within less than a generation serviceable citizens of a republic; and, in the second place, the United States have thus educated to free- dom many millions of men. Furthermore, the comparatively high degree of happiness and prosperity enjoyed by the people of the United States has been brought home to multitudes in Europe by friends and relatives who have emigrated to this country, and has commended free institutions to them in the best possible way. This is a legitimate propaganda vastly more effective than any annexation or conquest of unwilling people, or of people unprepared for liberty. It is a great mistake to suppose that the process of assimilat- ing foreigners began in the last century. The eighteenth century provided the colonies with a great mixture of peoples, although the English race predominated then, as now. When the Revo- lution broke out, there were already English, Irish, Scotch, Dutch, Germans, French, Portuguese, and Swedes in the colo- nies. The French were, to be sure, in small proportion, and were almost exclusively Huguenot refugees, but they were a valuable element in the population. The Germans were well diffused, having established themselves in New York, Penn- sylvania, Virginia, and Georgia. The Scotch were scattered through all the colonics. Pennsylvania, especially, was in- habited by an extraordinary mixture of nationalities and relig- ions. Since steam-navigation on the Atlantic and railroad transportation on the North American continent became cheap and easy, the tide of immigration has greatly increased ; but it is very doubtful if the amount of assimilation going on in the nine- teenth century has been any larger, in proportion to the popula- tion and wealth of the country, than it was in the eighteenth. The main difference in the assimilation going on in the two cen- turies is this, that in the eighteenth centuiy the newcomers were almost all Protestants, while in the nineteenth century a con- siderable proportion have been Catholics. One result, however, IV [ 22 ] THE SUCCESSES of the importation of large numbers of Catholics into the United States has been a profound modification of the Roman Catholic Church in regard to the manners and customs of both the clergy and the laity, the scope of the authority of the priest, and the attitude of the Catholic Church toward public education. This American modification of the Roman Church has reacted strongly on the Church in Europe. Another great contribution to civilization made by the United States is the diffusion of material well-being among the popula- tion. No country in the world approaches the United States in this respect. It is seen in that diffused elementary education which implants for life a habit of reading, and in the habitual optimism which characterizes the common people. It is seen in the housing of the people and of their domestic animals, in the comparative costliness of their food, clothing, and household furniture, in their implements, vehicles, and means of trans- portation, and in the substitution, on a prodigious scale, of the work of machinery for the work of men's hands. This last item in American well-being is quite as striking in agriculture, mining, and fishing, as it is in manufactures. The social effects of the manufacture of power, and of the discovery of means of putting that power just where it is wanted, have been more striking in the United States than anywhere else. Manufactured and distrib- uted power needs intelligence to direct it : the bicycle is a blind horse, and must be steered at every instant; somebody must show a steam-drill where to strike and how deep to go. So far as men and women can substitute for the direct expenditure of muscular strength the more intelligent effort of designing, tend- ing, and guiding machines, they win promotion in the scale of being, and make their lives more interesting as well as more productive. It is in the invention of machinery for producing and distributing power, and at once economizing and elevating human labor, that American ingenuity has been most con- spicuously manifested. The high price of labor in a sparsely settled country has had something to do with this striking result; but the genius of the people and of their government has had much more to do with it. As proof of the general proposition, it suffices merely to mention the telegraph and telephone, the IV [ 23 ] THE SUCCESSES sewing-machine, the cotton-gin, the mower, reaper, and thresh- ing-machine, the dish-washing machine, the river steamboat, the sleeping-car, the boot and shoe machinery, and the watch ma- chinery. The ultimate effects of these and kindred inventions are quite as much intellectual as physical, and they are develop- ing and increasing with a portentous rapidity which sometimes suggests a doubt whether the bodily forces of men and women are adequate to resist the new mental strains brought upon them. However this may prove to be in the future, the clear result in the present is an unexampled diffusion of well-being in the United States. These five contributions to civilization — peace-keeping, relig- ious toleration, the development of manhood suffrage, the wel- coming of new-comers, and the diffusion of well-being — I hold to have been eminently characteristic of our country, and so im- portant that, in spite of the qualifications and deductions which every candid citizen would admit with regard to eveiy one of them, they will ever be held in the grateful remembrance of man- kind. They are reasonable grounds for a steady, glowing patriotism. They have had much to do, both as causes and as effects, with the material prosperity of the United States; but they are all five essentially moral contributions, being triumphs of reason, enterprise, courage, faith, and justice, over passion, selfishness, inertness, timidity, and distrust. Beneath each one of these developments there lies a strong ethical sentiment, a strenuous moral and social purpose. It is for such work that multitudinous democracies are fit. In regard to all five of these contributions, the characteristic policy of our country has been from time to time threatened with reversal — is even now so threatened. It is for true patriots to insist on the maintenance of these historic purposes and policies of the people of the United States. Our country's future perils, whether already visible or still unimagined, are to be met with courage and constancy founded firmly on these popular achieve- ments in the past. IV [24] V THE BEGINNINGS "THE MAN OF THE PAST" BY E. KAY ROBINSON T^ROM this general outline oj the organization oj our world oj to-day, its position, its plans and its problems, we turn now to look more closely at the details. First, ive must go hack to the earliest problem oj all, we must look to our racers very beginning, to the origin oj lije itselj, and oj mankind. Our steps jail here on doubtjul ground, amid vague mists. We attempt to penetrate through ages immeasurable, through years that perhaps ap- proach the infinite. Science ofjers herselj as our guide and guard; yet even Science is here wavering and uncertain, must soar through these dim regions on wings oj the imagination, must answer us with injerence and supposition, rather than with defi- nite conclusions, positive and ascertainable jacts, such as ordi- narily she prejers to dwell among, and jrom which she gathers all her strength. It were well also to premise that this backward glance involves no problem oj religion. There is no modern churchman who would maintain that suddenly, in an instant oj time, man was created out oj good, brown dirt. The creative process jrom which the human body sprang, extended over centuries, over eons oj time. The length, the giant reach oj this slow process, does not, however, affect the jact oj the creation. Science is quick and eager to insist on this. Nor does the long time lessen the wonder oj the jact. To many minds, indeed, it does but increase the mystery, the " miracle^ ^ oj unending patience, oj jar-sighted purpose, oj a wisdom beyond our thought or measure. V [i] THE BEGINNINGS But these tvords are beside the intention oj the present address. The duty 0} religion is with the soul, not with the body; with the juttire, not with the past; with the purpose 0} creation, not the physical facts employed in its accomplishment. It is these physi- cal jacts which are here imagined and arrayed for us by Mr. E. Kay Robinson, the well-known English scientific writer. About twenty years ago I was permitted to introduce to readers the man of the future, that mysterious being who will look back across the dim gulf of time upon us, his ancestors, with much of the same incredulous but not unkindly scorn with which we mentally caricature the poor ' Missing Link ' in the chain of human genealogy. ' The man of the future,' I then said, ' will be a toothless, hairless, and stiff-limbed being, incapable of ex- tended locomotion, with no divisions between the toes, and priding himself upon various other "developments" which would not at the present time be regarded as improvements.' Much has been written on the subject since then; but the general tendency of essayists is to confirm the view which I had some- what abruptly expressed, and to agree that the man of the future will hold his place, in the foremost files of time to come, by brain power alone, discarding the animal characteristics of teeth and hair, agility and combativeness, and disdaining the retention of such useless peculiarities as independent toes, each liable to the drawback of corns and chilblains. It was not easy, however, even in the enthusiasm of youth, surfeited with Darwinism, to feel altogether proud of so maimed a descendant; and as years pass retrospect becomes the more congenial habit of thought. Youth is the age of enthusiasm and curiosity as to the future; for youth has no past of its own, and therefore little sympathy with the past of the world at large. As the vista of years lengthens behind us, however, we fall to count- ing the milestones of our journey through Hf e, and this draws our eyes to the more distant landscape, with its dim traces of the devious paths trodden by those before us. Science has not yet thrown her search-hghts to the uttermost horizon of that misty landscape, and mortal vision still has limits which prevent us from seeing what the ancestor of humanity V [2] THE BEGINNINGS was like before he became an entity. Even the outhnes of his earhest being within our scientific ken are a trifle blurred and in- distinct. We must therefore be content with the general assur- ance that the original man, the ancestor of the human race, was what would in modern language be loosely described as a micro- scopic dab of mud. There are persons of considerable scientific attainments, still outside lunatic asylums, who cherish the hope of discovering the secret of the beginning of hfe by witnessing some process of spontaneous generation of microbes in bottled fluid; and other persons of equal or even greater scientific attainments have thought it worth while to conduct elaborate experiments to com- bat the views of the others. Both ahke seem to forget that the microbe of the present day — however simple his organization may appear to the limited power of such microscopes as we already possess, or to the clumsy touch of our chemical analyses — stands, as man himself does, at the end of a long hne of pro- gressive development. His family is as ancient as ours; and, like us, he has partly created and partly accommodated himself to the conditions which now prevail upon this planet. He is as much at home as we are in this world of the twentieth century, and on the whole he has succeeded in making himself fairly com- fortable. He is, too, the only rival whom we need fear as an enemy. Man will never extinguish the microbe, but the microbe may extinguish man. To expect him spontaneously to generate himself in a bottle of fluid is, then, no less insulting than would be the proposal to build a hermetically sealed town and after a lapse of a certain time expect it to be filled with men and women, or at least babies. If these men of science really desire to see as much of the beginning of life as is possible nowadays, let them take a basm of water, empty their solutions into it, and throw in the empty bottles and corks afterward. Then they will see the beginning of Hfe with the naked eye on the surface of the water in the basin. For what will they see? The empty bottles and the corks will, without assistance, either attach themselves to the sides of the basin or cluster together in the centre; while those bottles which can get rid of the air inside them will dive to the bottom. When V [3] THE BEGINNINGS Newton saw the apple fall, he made a shrewd guess at a great truth; but he did not discover that what he saw was Life itself. He saw the attraction of the earth for the apple, and we call the principle 'gravitation': but if the apple had fallen, like our hypothetical empty bottles, into a basin of water, it would have bobbed up again to the surface, and ultimately have attached itself to the side, unless indeed there had been other objects in the basin, whose company it might have sought by preference. Attraction is, in fact, not only the universal law of life, but it is life itself. So far as those empty bottles and that apple possess individual Hfe and power of action, they display it by forcing their way through the air or the water in order to attach them- selves to the object that attracts them most. How nearly this process approaches in appearance sometimes to the highest de- velopment of dehberate choice, as we recognize that function in ourselves, may be witnessed by any one curious enough to float, say, a wooden match and a few grains of sawdust in some water. If the water could be kept absolutely motionless it is possible that the separate grains of sawdust and the match might be kept apart indefinitely, each pinned, as it were, to its own spot on the surface of the water by the attraction of the earth, although the water, being still more strongly attracted, would insist upon occupying the nearer place and so keep the wood floating aloft. But in ordinary circumstances the water would sooner or later be disturbed, moving the grains of sawdust hither and thither, until one by one they come into the sphere of attraction of each other or the match or the side of the vessel. It is when they are at- tracted to the match that the phenomenon is most interesting. There is almost the coyness of courtship in their circling ap- proach, until they are quite close, and then it is by a positive leap that they throw themselves upon the attractive object and remain closely attached to it, insomuch that the water may be rudely disturbed without separating them. This not only looks like life — it is life : and we may see it also in the stone which, falling into a well, does exactly what you or I would do. It obeys the downward attraction of the earth, but at the same time recog- nizes that of the wall of the well by swerving toward and striking it before reaching the bottom. V [4] THE BEGINNINGS Now let us return to our ancestor, the prehistoric dab of mud which retrospective vision dimly discerns seated on the surface of an as yet inchoate world. It would be more correct, perhaps, to say in the surface; for it is only with the eye of imagination that we can elevate him above his fellows, and promote him to the status of a distinguishable entity, breaking the sky-line of that distant horizon. We may take him up by the pound with the spade of fancy, and he will slide back into his parent chaos, mere slime. Yet even in the shme of the past there were grada- tions of rank among its particles. Let us lay down the spade and filter the ooze through the meshes of thought ; much — most of it — slides through, intangible and imperceptible to the touch, but some remains. What ? Particles of matter. And here we reach the first milestone of human history. What constituted this prehistoric particle of matter, our pen- ultimate parent, so far as our present family knowledge extends ? We may be content with knowing, from our acquaintance with the general law of attraction, that a particle of homogeneous matter large enough to be retained in the meshes of a common- place mind must be composed of minor atoms sticking together. We have seen how grains of sawdust stick together in the water; we can see how grains of water stick together in a drop at the end of our wet finger; it requires, therefore, no great effort to see how, in the ooze where the first scenes in the drama of human life were played, atoms stuck together and made particles. It does not matter how large or small atoms or particles may be — I use no word in a severely scientific or unintelligible-to-the- vulgar sense — we know that the law of attraction made those, which had attraction for each other and came sufliciently near to each other, stick together. How tightly they adhered does not matter either ; the fact that they adhered is sufficient, because it means that they showed life, and with the commencement of life commenced their struggle for continued and improved existence, and their upward march toward the top-hatted and kid-gloved style now affected by their descendants. Viewed across so vast a stretch of time, with its innumerable milestones graduating almost to invisible infinity, the progress our ancestors had so far made may not appear extensive. But V [5] THE BEGINNINGS the first step of the journey is tnc most important ; they had made a start and in the right direction. They had individuahzed themselves among the surrounding shme, and had acquired a new status and new power. The fruit- vender who places the largest strawberries at the top of the basket might plead that he does so in obedience to a natural law: for, other things being equal, it is undeniably the rule in this world of stress and struggle for existence, that the biggest comes to the top. Sometimes other things are not equal, and the biggest sinks by sheer weight, which may be only another phrase for incapacity to rise. The truth of both axioms may be observed by the simple experiment of gently shaking a Httle mixed bird-seed in a wine-glass. The larger seeds will come to the surface ; but the superior size of the stones with which the dishonest seed-merchant has eked out the weight of his wares avails them naught. They can be descried through the glass, sinking ignobly to the bottom, past even the smallest and most insignificant of the seeds. And herein we see repeated the first parting that our ancestors suffered — when one branch of the family by its inert weight had to sink down below and people the interior of the earth with stones and minerals, while the other remained above to cover the surface with life and beauty. From this momentous epoch in our history, when we became the 'upper classes,' we have nothing to do with the struggle for existence of our poor relations, the stones. Since they parted company with us and came down in the world, they have gone through great trials, and have, like human unfortunates, suffered the extremes of heat and cold — now molten into igneous strata, and now cloven by the frost of glacial epochs. But they have also achieved great things: and there are beauties in gem and crystal, stalactite and ores of rainbow hue, in marbles and alabasters, which still move our minds with the sense of a beauty kindred to the loveliest products of the hfe — the higher life, as we are justified in regarding it — to which our branch of the family has attained; just as, in India, you may often find the loveliest women in the lowest castes. We soon forgot our poor relations, however: for one step necessitates another, and the position of our ancestors, in the sur- face of the slough which the world of the past resembled, sub- V [6] THE BEGINNINGS jected them to the inevitable process of knocking against other things and each other whenever natural movements agitated their surrounding shme. In such conditions it was inevitable that they should, like pebbles upon a wave-washed beach, tend to assume a rounded or oval outline ; and with the conservatism that is the marked characteristic of the animal and vegetable kingdom this early shape of our common ancestors is retained in the beginning of all Hfe, as in the eggs of birds, reptiles, and in- sects, and the seeds of plants : while the fact that we and other mammals have left off the habit of laying eggs need not fill us with unseemly progressive pride. Comparative anatomy shows that we are still conservative to the backbone in our allegiance to types that were ours before we had backbones ; for even we are oviform in our earhcst beginnings. The first triumph, then, of our ancestors was to be able to maintain their position at the top of things, generally by their superior size and what we may call in a prophetic sense their agility, as opposed to the inert weight of their relatives who sank to make the mineral world ; and the second was the accidental acquisition of an oval shape, which enabled them to survive the buffetings of their neighbors. But if they imagined that the struggle for existence was finally de- cided by those two achievements, the subsequent experiences of us, their descendants, show how vastly they were mistaken. In what way, then, did this struggle for existence next spur them on to self -improvement ? It is obvious that those were most favor- ably circumstanced who possessed, in addition to relative size and regularity of outhnc, a special power of cohesion beyond the ordinary attraction of matter to matter. We see varying degrees of attraction around us every day of our Hves : we feel them in the presence of victuals and drink, in the choice of occupations, and above all in the vicinity of the opposite sex. The various forms and degrees of special attraction may, therefore, be de- scribed as affinity; and our ancestors certainly belonged to that section of the upper classes of the upper past whose constituent parts possessed marked affinity for each other. A particle otherwise composed would have within it a force constantly tending to disruption, and in the long run this tendency to decom- position would prove a decisive disadvantage in the struggle for V [7] THE BEGINNINGS existence. And among the survivors new subtle distinctions were soon observable — just as among their successors of the present day there is always an elite of the elite — owing to the birth of the discriminating faculty. In proportion to the affmity of the elements composing these early beings would be their position in its substance. Those which were the more strongly attracted would be drawn to the centre ; those less privileged would stand in a ring outside, getting as near the centre as they could ; the unattractive detrimentals would be severely dropped. Thus each of our ancestors was, as one of their wise descendants has discovered of modern man, a microcosm in himself, with satel- lites in their orbits round his centre. And even as suitable atoms came within the radius of his attraction they took their proper place, and the larger he grew the more attractive he seemed and the ring of outsiders grew closer. Thus, although to the eye of fact our ancestor was still scarcely, if at all, dis- tinguishable from the slime in which he continued to reside, he had made a great stride up the ladder of evolution. He had mastered the secret of assimilation and of growth. For we must note here the wide potential distinction between this form of development and the mere accretion by which minerals in- crease in bulk. The growth of our ancestors took place by means of absorption and selection of what we would now call food, which was separated into its constituent elements according to their attractiveness, and distributed to the various parts of the body. In other words, our ancestor digested and assimilated his food ; and, at that stage, man could do no more. Stones have not learned to do it yet. The faculty which next calls for notice, though all matter had possessed it from the first, is that of motion. Everything which was attracted to anything else moved toward it ; but our ances- tor belonged to that fortunate class of beings whose complex at- tractions were so evenly balanced that he was always drawn whither it was advantageous to be. He was neither too earthy nor too spiritual in his affinities : he was a man of the world, and as such kept himself always in evidence. As he attracted attrac- tive particles to his inside, so was he drawn in the direction where attractive particles were thickest. Thus early was developed V [8] THE BEGINNINGS that faculty of mankind during social entertainments to cluster round the bars and supper- tables. Oh! man was getting on! And here it is to be observed that the attraction, we may call it the yearning, of our ancestor for his food proceeded directly from his inside; that is to say, the central part of him, which had the strongest attraction for the stuff he wanted, was the part which drew him toward it. We, his superior descendants, have a brain which polices our actions, and we do not reach after a sandwich with our stomachs. But we need not be proud. Our relatives, the amoeba and the star-fish and others, do this thing still, and the habit is one to which we owe much. In default of organs of prehension, mastication, and so on, it was something for our ancestor to be able to reach out, as it were, with some- thing for his dinner. Not that, in all probability, he greedily ex- truded his simple internal arrangements. It sufficed if their tendency was to gravitate toward that margin of his ovoid person near which the food was situated. The rest was simple, for the outer ring-rind (or skin we might call it nowadays) of semi- attractive atoms with which he had clothed himself had no such cohesion as to refuse admittance to a favored morsel. It was against our first parent's claim to very high rank, as rank goes in modern times, that he took in his food at any part of his person; but here, again, the amoeba — what evolutionists would have done without the amoeba I cannot say — comes to our rescue. The amoeba does it, unblushingly, in the glare of this so-called twentieth century. And here we come to the penultimate triumph of Hfe; namely, the faculty of reproduction. Hitherto the life of the individual was indefinite. The influence- of the sun was necessary to pro- duce that equipoise of conflicting attractions— the earHest 'bal- ance of power' known in mundane poHtics— which enabled our honest ancestor to hold his own among others, as may be seen from the diurnal rotation of our elementary functions. The in- fluence of the moon had much to say in the matter also: witness the lunar periods in the life of many animals. And that we are of the earth, earthy, goes without saying: else we would not be glued to it by our feet all our lives. Those creatures survived (our ancestor among the number) who were able to accommo- V • [9] THE B^INNINGS date themselves to the changing conditions created by these con- flicting influences. We were like frontier tribes in Central Asia, displaying all kinds of unexpected forms of activity, according as one or another ' sphere of influence ' overlapped us. And when I say ' we,' I do not mean that at this period of evolution there were lots of us. All the hopes of humanity were centred in one per- son, and with all the good-will in the world I cannot distinguish him, our ancestor, from the other dabs of mud around him. I would throw my arms around his neck if I could And him: but he had no neck, and did not appreciably differ from what, in our vulgar modern way, we should call 'sludge' or something like that. And the first accident which happened to him, although it prepared the way for the publication of Darwin's 'Origin of Species,' would have appeared to his hmitcd vision, if he had had any, in the light of a misfortune. I am inchned to believe that it was at the; close of an unusually hot day in spring that he got left high and dry above the high-water mark of the period. Not very dry, because everything, including the air, was wet in those days, but still out of his element rather. And it is always this factor of novel, and apparently unsuitable, environment which has brought out the highest qualities of the human race. Driven by necessity he invented — invcnio, *1 come into,' therefore 'I find out,' therefore ' I invent ' — reproduction. Let us think what this means. Hitherto the life of a species, or a genus, or a king- dom, had been the Uf c of the individual. It did not matter how cleverly our ancestor or any of the other persons who might have become the ancestors of beings totally different from ourselves adapted themselves to their surroundings: without reproduc- tion, the world would have been filled only with the original in- dividuals who were once microscopic dabs of mud. All that was needed for everlasting existence was the faculty of adaptation to the various forces of attraction. We see one instance in the successful adaptation of the air to the circumstances of life. The air was a creature, just like our first ancestor — more volatile and lively perhaps, and less severely handicapped in the struggle for existence. And it has made no progress. It goes on attracting suitable elements into itself when it can, and parting with them V [id] THE BEGINNINGS when it must ; and it has grown to an immense size. It covers the whole earth : but, hke the human beings of tropical climes, it has not yet found any incentive to further evolution because it has never been placed in sufliciently difficult circumstances. So far as we know, it is the same air that rose aloft when our ances- tor grovelled in the shme ever so long ago. It has remained ' it,' while we have become 'he's' and 'she's.' The water is another creature who has been able to flow along in its old course without interruption, so far as we know : although the glacial epoch may have hit it hard, and the Flood have buoyed it up with foolish hopes of swallowing the whole wide world. It did not reckon with the insignificant creature who, whether in the Ark or by other means, weathered the era of water's dominion, and has emerged triumphant to build bridges and water-mills and ocean- going ships, and now talks of using the 'wasted' strength of water to do all his work for him, turn his machinery, hght his house, and provide the force for driving his tricycle. Here we see on a world-wide scale the grand triumph of those who have struggled against difficulties, as in detail we see it also in the victory of Northern European races over the soft and luxurious inhabitants of the ' Sunny South ' and tropics. Well, our ancestor might have had the good, or bad, luck to find himself so adapted to surrounding circumstances that he continued to expand and grow, swallowing everything he had a mind to, until his slimy, shapeless bulk covered what we call con- tinents and oceans, and became in size a worthy rival of the air and the water, and an example to the various minerals cramped down below in their restricted areas. But in that case he would not have been our ancestor, because it was only owing to the fact that he met with an accident in being cast up beyond the reach of ordinary tides that he was compelled to invent reproduction. He may not have seemed happy at first. The air scoffingly passed over his surface and dried his skin : but he took what he wanted, all the same, from the air as it passed. His more fluid portions displayed an unworthy inclination to sink into the ground, but he got something out of the ground too. And when the sun rose next morning, it shone upon something just a Uttle different from anything which it had seen before. Shrivelled V [ii] THE BEGINNINGS somewhat, and as deplorable as a stranded jelly-fish, our ances- tor boldly met the gaze of the sun — for was not he the prospec- tive father of Britons ?— and he took what he wanted from the sunlight. So the day passed and the night, and other days and nights to follow, until another high tide came at the full moon and washed over our parent once more. And what happened then? During his long rest between high- water marks he had got stuck too tightly to the ground to leave it again. Some of him had indeed sunk into the crevices between particles of the soil— a habit which the roots of the vegetable kingdom have in- herited and improved upon — and held him where he was. But the bulk of him strove to obey loyally the old impulse that used to draw him upward to the sunlight when he was what natural- ists would call a free-swimming embryo of his present self. The attraction of food was strong upon him also, and the moon that drew up the tides strained him, too, toward her. Thus for the first time in his life he felt, as Britain felt when the American colonies claimed the right to independence, that he must part with a portion of himself. It stretched upward, and the bond that held them together grew thinner and weaker. His rind — may I call it 'skin'? — assumed an elongated shape, with an hour-glass constriction between the part which held to the earth and the part that would float through the water. At last, with a wrench almost like that of dissolution, it parted; and a fragment of him, small, globular, and free, as once he was himself, rose upward to the sunlight or to bask in the moon's rays. What was left of our ancestor settled down again, contentedly, for he had borne a son. Nor was that the only one. The changing seasons brought him new opportunities of growth, and at favor- able periods he cast off in the same way other fragments of him- self; and continued doing so to a very great age, until perhaps his great-great-great- and so on grandchildren who had risen in the world would have been ashamed to recognize the simple old fellow, with no organs and no specialized functions whatever, as their ancestor. We are not so proud. We cannot be certain, of course, that this new power of re- production was gained by a single individual only, or that evolu- tion had taken place in no other directions. The earth was filled V [12] THE BEGINNINGS with rude variations of types, which were holding their own in the struggle for existence, because the favorable circumstances which gave each of them a start were being incessantly repeated with the changes of days and seasons. But our concern is with our ancestor and his progeny only. These might not have sur- vived, and quite a different being to myself might now be specu- lating upon the origin of the world's inhabitants, but for the fact that our ancestor's children proved themselves to be true chips of the old block. He had invented reproduction : they responded with 'heredity.' When the sun rose next day there may have been little or nothing in the appearance of these individuals to mark their immense potential difference from their comrades all around. There was no analytical chemist to examine them and demon- strate that they were composed of exactly the same elements in the same combination as their father ; and there were no men of science to draw the conclusion that, when chance threw them into the same situation as that into which he had originally fallen, they would behave exactly as he did. Yet this is what our second ancestor could not help doing. He behaved as his father — the first father in the world — had done; that is to say, he parted with portions of himself and created new creatures in his own likeness. Thus was death vanquished. Hitherto the Ufe of all the types in the world ended with the individual; and although similarity of surrounding circumstances induced uni- formity, there was no heredity. Now there had come into the world a creature with the faculty of subdividing, i.e., propagat- ing, itself. In the lowest orders of animal and plant life— the orders, that is to say, which have advanced least from our common starting- point — we still find this dual form of existence in the shape of a fixed parent with free-swimming young, destined in their turn to become fixed and give birth to free progeny. At the first glance it might not be thought that much had been gained by this new development; but let us recapitulate. Our ancestor was still not very distinguishable from a dab of mud ; but he had acquired the power of (i) Attracting or Drawing into his own Substance those Ele- V [13] TH^BEGINNINGS ments which had jor him' the Strongest Affinity — or, as we should say nowadays, which he Hked most. Other less potently attract- ed elements went to form his indurated integument or skin; and yet others, unattracted — or, as we say now, unattractive or innutritious— were rejected altogether. Thus in a rude way he performed the functions which we now carry on by means of speciahzcd organs when we breathe, eat, or drink. (2) Moving Upward or Dowmvard or Sideways when it suited him — by which I do not mean that he exercised any inde- pendent voHtion, such as we think that we ourselves do, when he went hither or thither, but that he obeyed inherited impulses which tended to his advantage. If they had not he would not have inherited them, for they would have so handicapped his ancestors in the struggle for existence that they would not have survived- to produce him. The only movements which were perpetuated, therefore, were such as the accidental experience of generations proved to be good for the race ; and this remains still the highest aim of all our human actions. (3) Reproducing his Kind. — And upon this accidental ac- quirement the permanence and improvement of every other gift depended. For by the time that our first ancestor, in the proper hereditary sense, produced, or rather detached, from himself his first oviform offspring, the world was full of what were then the highest types of creatures. That they were not high according to modern ideas may be reahzed from the fact that each indi- vidual had gone through the whole course of evolution up to date in his own person. I should not be writing this article if I had to begin by inventing language; then discovering the truths of science; then bringing out the inventions of printing, paper- making, and the manufacture of ink and machinery ; then have to educate the pubHc and induct into their minds the idea that printed matter was worth purchasing; then estabhsh an editor, and finally bring him my article. I should not have got very far into this programme before death would cut short my career. No; many a^ons ago, in the first feeble sound uttered by one living creature and heard by another, was the germ and natural origin of this published volume. Therefore we must not despise those early contemporaries of our ancestor who inherited nothing V [14] THE BEGINNINGS from their ancestor and had to do all their own origin of species for themselves. Besides, de mortuis nil nisi boniim; and most of them disappeared forever off the face of the earth as our family multipUed, thanks to the subtle advantage which its members possessed of letting bits of themselves start periodically upon hf e on their own account. As the other creatures broke up or be- came decomposed for one reason or another, this multiplying type gradually absorbed their elements — 'ate them,' we should say now — and each fragment became in turn sufficiently obese to part with more fragments, and so on, until the world was filled with them. But all this while insensible variations were being introduced into this hereditary type. Infinitely small departures by accident from the original were found to give new generations the slight determining advantage which decides the struggle for existence : and of these, two ultimately survived. One was a type of crea- ture which attracted within itself such elements as were needed for the sustenance of life through infinitely small apertures or pores in its skin, and the other, the bolder type, which drew within it by the same force of attraction other entire creatures, subsequently separating the desired elements from those which were not required. The first type became the parent of all vegetables, which draw their sustenance in microscopic solution from earth, water, air, or decomposed organisms ; and from the second type origi- nated the animal world, which captures its food in the shape of other organized beings, animal or vegetable, and assimilates the parts required for sustenance, rejecting the residuum. With the first type we have no concern here save to notice that it has proved to the advantage of this class to remain usually in a fixed position, in the shape of trees and seaweeds, which draw nourish- ment from their surroundings, being content with very modest arrangements for the mobility of their offspring, in the shape of spores or seeds. The second type of creature — the ancestor of the animal kingdom — preferred the life of motion. Some indeed, as corals or sea anemones, retain the stationary habit, and many mollusks attach themselves to fixed spots: but the habit of living upon V [15] THE BEGINNINGS W organic creatures, while it materially assisted development, ne- cessitated in most cases free motion, either to fresh fields and new pastures or to happier hunting grounds when the old ones were exhausted. And the development of the higher classes of the animal kingdom depended entirely upon the habit of locomotion adopted. They all started from the common accidental device of excrescences protruding beyond the outline of the body, against which floating bodies lodged and were thence absorbed : but in one type the tendency was developed to produce these excres- cences impartially on all sides of the body, thus producing ulti- mately radiate creatures like starfish and polypi, while another type had the advantage, as it has proved, of acquiring the habit of annexing its food 'end on,' so to speak. As ages passed in- numerable variations of this type were doubtless produced, but it seems that, again, two only survived. One of these attained mobility and safety — for at a very early period those only began to survive who could protect themselves against the absorptive faculties of their neighbors — in a jointed and hardened integu- ment : while the other type had the joints and the stiffening in- side. From the former type have descended all such creatures as worms, woodlice, lobsters, and insects; and with these we have no further concern. Our ancestor belonged to the other type; for he was undoubtedly a person with his stifTening inside, else what should we be doing for backbones ? He still lived in the shallows of the vast sea, propelling himself through the water by the waggling of his body; but as ages passed, one member of the family acquired the habit of scrambling over the mud by means of projections, which in succeeding generations were im- proved into rudimentary limbs, stiffened by lateral prolongations of the stiffening inside. That is why our legs and arms are jointed to our backbones. Perhaps the modern goggle-eyed mudfish, which wabbles and wallows in the slimy mangrove swamps of the East, most nearly reproduces in outline the first great advance made by our ancestors after they had acquired jointed backbones and rudimentary limbs; and though the snakes have dispensed with limbs altogether, and the fishes have modified them to fins, our branch of the family undoubtedly made the wiser choice in attaching less importance to the wag- V [i6] THE BEGINNINGS gling of their hinder end as a means of progression than to the use of those lateral processes which have become our limbs. The wisdom of the choice may not have been obvious at first; but the blessings of evolution generally come in disguise. In- deed, to the philosopher of those days, had there been one, it might even have seemed that when at an earlier stage our parents neglected the vegetable habit of safely planting themselves upon a suitable spot, they made a serious mistake, and he would have pointed to the striking contrast between the luxuriance of vegeta- tion compared with the struggling Hfe of the crawling creatures at its roots. Even to-day, if it were merely a question of the difference between the mangrove tree and the mudfish which paddles about under its tangled branches, the advantage might not to a casual observer from another planet seem to be all on the side of the mudfish. But we who have also chosen locomotion, and to that end have adopted the system of backbone and Hmbs, know that, whatever pleasures plants may enjoy, they can know little of the joys of hunting, fighting, and love-making, the trinity of functions which constitute animal ' Hfe.' Indeed, from the animal's point of view the majority of plants might just as well be dead, for all the pleasure which they can have, and yet the only difference between the earliest animal and the earhest plant, children of a common parent, was that they chose different methods of obtaining nutriment. And at every subsequent parting of the branches of the genea- logical tree of humanity we can see how by chance our ancestors always had forced upon them that w^hich was the best for the future. When, for instance, the members of our branch of the family began to crawl about clumsily on dry land, dragging heavy tails after them, how clumsy and foohsh they must have appeared in comparison with their cousins who retained aquatic habits and swiftly darted hither and thither through the water with a waggle of the body and sweep of the wide tail! Even when the burden of the tail grew less and the hmbs became more prominent and powerful — a transformation which we may see repeated each spring in the development of the frog from the tadpole — how small the advantage would have appeared to a philosopher of the period ! Indeed, comparing the types of frog V [17] THE BEGINNINGS and crocodile, it is more than likely that he would have given the preference to the saurian. But the highest evolution arises from the successful negotiation of the greatest obstacles; as we may see in the superiority of our hardy Northern races, who have always been compelled to labor in order to live, over the uncivil- ized inhabitants of luxuriant regions where the problem of hveli- hood presents no difficulties. So long as monkeys can live hke monkeys they will remain monkeys; but the hard struggle for existence may teach them, too, as it has taught us, to acquire new powers in order to escape extinction, and then they will cease to be monkeys, though they will not be men. They parted com- pany from us at the last corner in our difficult journey, and there are no short-cuts to recover lost ground in evolution. And we cannot help f eehng sorry for the monkeys, because it really seems as if this particular turning was the only one of real importance since our common ancestor elected by accident to have his stiffen- ing inside instead of outside. Between the eating, fighting, and love-making of the crocodile, the eagle, the lion, or the whale, and that of the monkey, there does not seem much difference; and what other joy in life has he which they have not ? He has, in fact, gained nothing by belonging to our branch of the family when we discarded our tails as means of locomotion; retained our four limbs for the purpose of running on the ground instead of flapping two of them Hke birds ; and learned to use our toes for the purpose of grasping. The originator of the monkey family may indeed have considered, if he thought about the matter at all, that our ancestor was much to be pitied when he began to abandon the use of his hind toes in this way, for the greater con- venience of a flat foot in running or walking. And no doubt the abandonment was quite involuntary on our part. It may be that our ancestor was driven forth to fmd his living in a treeless land, where he acquired the habit of running hungrily after the prey on which he was forced to subsist, in place of fruit plucked without effort in the primeval forests. Perhaps it was in some such chase that — possibly in a fit of anger such as baulked mon- keys fall into — he seized his first missile and flung it, with the happiest effect, at his escaping dinner. Hence the art of hunting and the use of weapons. And familiarity with the weapon in V [i8] THE BEGINNINGS time suggested its use as a tool, the earliest application of the tool being doubtless analogous to carving-knife or hammer, to divide a slaughtered animal among the family or to smash through the hard shell of turtle or moUusk. Speech was first evolved by the necessities of combination to guard against enemies: for an animal which had learned to use lethal weapons, missiles, and tools ceased to be dependent upon either his personal agihty or powerful teeth for the purposes of offence and defence. It was doubtless by combination that our ancestors excavated their cave fortress ; and from the necessities of watch and ward, as well as the constant companionship within, arose the habit of speech, rising from mere signals to action, such as grunts of anger and cries of warning, to notes of encouragement, admonition, ap- proval, and so on. Thence language would naturally develop in the direction of expressing domestic needs and wishes : then com- munal instructions and words of command, with expressions of assent, dissent, or criticism. Thus by degrees speech was built up, and by combined labor and the communication of ideas man was enabled so to protect and perhaps to fortify his cave dwelling that the species acquired its characteristic of slow development. The young hare, brought forth in a tuft of grass, can see and run as soon as born. The young rabbit, born in a safe burrow, is bhnd and helpless for days. So cave-dweUing man acquired the habit, which he still possesses, of slower development from birth than any other creature, because in addition to the natural safety of his dwelling he had learned the art of protecting it, by com^ bination and distribution of work, against all enemies. The tool of utility he learned to use as an implement for the adornment of himself and his belongings. He scratched the outlines of the beasts he had slain upon the weapon that slew them ; he decked himself and his mate in their spoils. His powerful canine teeth decreased, the useless hair upon his body disappeared, the multi- plying problems of his many acquired habits developed his powers of thought ; and when he strode forth from his cave and viewed the animal and vegetable world around him, he felt that he was their king. Looking deeper and deeper, year by year, into the mysteries of the world around him, he has learned the 'why' of many things; and the complement of the 'why' is V [r9] THE BEGINNINGS always the 'because.' AiOTif he follows in thought the trail of the ' because' as far back as his mind will carry him, he comes to a point whence he can dimly discern the outline of his first . father, scarcely breaking the horizon of the sHmy past, a micro- scopic dab of mud. l20] VI THE ORIGIN OF LIFE ITS CHEMICAL CREATION BY SCIENCE" BY PROFESSOR JOHN BUTLER BURKE OP CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY / 'F the imaging forth of manh origin and development he a marvel of the infinitely great, we approach now a marvel of the infinitely minute. Modern science seeks to create life itself, to understand it as a natural, perhaps a chemical, process, and to set in motion the physical conditions which produce it — produce it through conjunctions and harmonies of atoms, too delicate, too evanescent for sight or for full comprehension. It were well to emphasize this point, for it has been much mis- understood. No scientist pretends to understand life, or, in the broader sense, to create it. He merely imitates; he investigates the conditions from the midst of which life may arise, and seeks to reproduce these so that some day he may see an organism, a being, appear before him, sprung not from preceding life-forms but from inorganic matter. Perhaps the thing is impossible. We have seen that in Mr. Robinson's address he could not forbear a sarcastic fiing at its absurdity. Yet so patient has been the investigation, so fasci- nating are its aims and its ideas, that no man can afford to shut the question wholly aside when engaged in an effort to under- stand our day. At the present m.oment the foremost of the in- vestigators of this subject is Mr. John Butler Burke, who here briefly explains what he and others have accomplished. The article is in a sense an abridgement of the author's recent elaborate volume upon the same subject. He belongs to the VI [I] THE ORIGIN OF LIFE younger generation 0} Engl^ scientists, being not yet forty. His lectures and investigations have, however, already won him fame, and placed him high among intellectual leaders. His explanations here are 0} necessity technical, far more technical than anything else that will appear in this series, and any one not possessed of at least a fair amount of chemical knowl- edge might better pass over most of the central part of the ad- dress, looking only to the opening to see the basis of Mr. Burke^s work, and then to the close to learn what the investigator be- lieves as to the result. The Editor offers me the opportunity to express my views upon the subject of those researches which have recently so much attracted the attention not merely of the scientific world but even of the world at large. Whether these experiments have the right to command all the interest they have evoked is a question which I myself feel rather diffident to answer. But that they have so aroused the enthusiam of all sorts and conditions of men compels me now to give utterance to what I do and do not think can legitimately be inferred from the facts I have observed; I feel it all the more beholden in me to express my indebtedness for the exceptional appreciation with which my efforts for some time past have been met from friends, and from all quarters. I do not think these experi- ments prove "spontaneous generation," if by this term is to be understood the appearance of life from the absolutely lifeless. Such a phenomenon, if it has ever taken place, and if it is even taking place around us, cannot, I fear, be proved to the satis- faction of all parties, and certainly not to that of those who have already made up their minds not to accept it. There may be, as they will again and again affirm — no matter to how high a temperature we may get — some secret source of energy. No matter how far we may trace the first beginnings of life, whether it is to the minutest microscopic cells, or to the atom itself, they would still maintain that the problem was not solved, and that in the atom itself is to be found the principle and the source of vital energy, and if this could be carried further they VI [2] THE ORIGIN OF LIFE would fall back upon the electron or even on the aether. In this respect they cannot, strictly speaking, it is true, be met by any contradiction. But their argument is of the nature of a metaphysical objection of the same kind as that which asserts the freedom of the will and the immortality of the soul. They admit of no answer, just as they admit of no proof, unless that proof be metaphysical, and unconvincing so far as its scien- tific aspect goes. I do not wish to be drawn into a quagmire if even in that quagmire I should discover what is true. The risk is too great, and our time is too short. There may be charms in groping in a bog, or in getting muddled, but for my part I prefer to keep out of it, at any rate so far as my investi- gations go. By spontaneous generation I mean the development of what we have a right to think is living from that which we have hither- to had a right to think was not. The development of living or- ganisms from inorganic matter would be without question quite a case in point. No doubt that inorganic substance may contain embedded in it some germ, or germs, hitherto unknown, and of a nature quite distinct from any we have yet had reason to regard as living; the substances employed may by their very nature, as it is here claimed — or, more accurately, suggested — have the principle of vital process, in an elementary form, as a part and parcel of their being. It is so with the dynam- ically unstable substances which of their own account mani- fest radio-activity. These dynamically unstable bodies have to some extent some of the properties of life — they disinte- grate, they decay, in their manifestations of that activity, but although this is merely analogy, and we must remember, as Darwin has well said, "Analogy is a deceitful guide"; still, if that analogy has prescribed or suggested results which have since been verified, its utility should have a greater claim to ouj attention than to be passed over with indifference and ignored. The products of radio-active bodies manifest not merely in- stability and decay but growth, subdivision, reproduction, and adjustm_ent of their internal functions to their surroundings, a circumstance which I think will be found to be equivalent to nutrition. Whether we are to regard these products, strictly VI [ 3 ] THE ORIGIN OF LIFE speaking, as living things is mc point which remains to be de- cided. We have to define their properties, and we have also to define life. Now their properties are as simple as they are well known, but before they are recapitulated here it would be well to repeat in outline one or two of the particulars which have led me to take up the line of argument I have ventured to pursue. By the action of radium upon bouillon, when sterilized so far as such experiments permit, microscopic bodies appear, already more than once described. In the first instance, they are not, as micro-organisms generally, or I should say always, are, more or less of the same size so long as they are of the same kind ; ordinary bacilli, provided they are of the same type, are found to be also of the same dimensions. They do not show signs which indicate that they have one and all sprung in a process of continuous growth from ultra-microscopic forms. But this is one of the characteristic features of the products now produced by radium. There can be no question that they spring — that in each case they have sprung — from the invisible, and grown to such a magnitude as to be seen. We find no such indication with ordinary bacteria. If these have not the marks of manufactured articles, they afford at least the signs of not having sprung spontaneously into existence. They bear the stamp of an inheritance of many varying qualities from a long and probably vaiying line of ancestors, of probably countless generations, which have at last made them what they are. But the " radiobcs " undergo many developments. After six or seven days, and at times even less, they develop nuclei; but later still they cease to grow, and then begin to segregate and multiply. These are some of the qualities which have led me to suppose that they are assimilative, and automatic, and not, strictly speaking, lifeless things. Their growth is no indication of vitality, for crystals not merely grow, but grow to such dimensions that in this point no living microscopic organism has any chance to rival them ; they, how- ever, do stop growing at some stage or another, else we should have, as some one has insisted, diamonds as large as Mount Etna or the Himalayas. This, however, does not seem to be the VI [4] THE ORIGIN OF LIFE point; when crystals reach their maximum dimensions, do they then throw off their superfluous particles and disintegrate them- selves ? In other words, do they show the cyclic process, pass into higher forms, and then decay, which is the test and the guar- antee of life? There are critics who will criticise without in the least trying to understand. Some indeed are merely literary hacks who pose before the world as judges of everything and anything they can get the chance to talk about. The stoppage of growth at a particular size, and of reproduction by fission or subdivision, and then the total disintegration of the cell, or whatever we may choose to call it, after its steady regular growth up to that point, is not merely suggestive of vitality, but in a certain sense, as it seems, it is vitality itself. It is an indication of self- nutrition and a very clear as well as an assuring one. The subdivision or fission which accompanies the cessation of devel- opment in the mechanism of adding to its size, shows the stage when there is a balance between the accumulation of energy and its expenditure. The bodies obtained by M. Stephane Lcduc in 1902, by the action of potassium ferrocyanide on gelatine, or by allowing metallic salts to crystallize in gelatine and other colloidal solutions, do not exhibit all these primary or elementary proper- ties of living things ; they do not, in fact, manifest more than a resemblance in appearance to the cells or unit-forms of life. Their properties are not sufficient to justify the inference that they are living things, nor even that they possess to any marked extent any of the qualities that are associated with organic matter as it manifests vitality. On the other hand, it has been suggested that the "radiobes" (as I have ventured to designate them), if they are crystals, subdivide by cleavage under the influence of internal strain, as, for instance, South African diamonds are found occasionally to do. It all depends upon the nature of the segregation whether it is like a fission or a cleavage. Photographs show this most distinctly as it occurs within fourteen days or so. The subdivision is clearly not of the nature of a cleavage. Neither is it, as has also been suggested, at all likely that these subdivisions resemble those obtained by Professor Biitschli of Heidelberg, by the action on soluble salts of such substances as olive oil, and the bodies VI [5] THE ORIGIN OF LIFE obtained by emulsion of these bodies in water which behave in some ways, or by their subdivisions, much as if they were elementary forms of living things. But here again it is upon the nature of the subdivisions that we must rest our assurance as to what these subdivisidns mean. The subdivisions are quite different from anything we should expect mere surface tension to effect, A close examination of the mode of segregation at once shows that the"cell, " if so we may call it, becomes divided into segments, much in the same way as ordinary yeast cells are well known to do. A sharp corner, which is not unusual in the part so segre- gated, seems incompatible with the proposed theory of some overbalance in the force of surface tension over the internal forces which tend to keep the body intact. Many minute bodies subdivide, but they thus subdivide in different ways. And the manner in which they are found to do this is as important, if not far more so, than the mere fact that they do so actually divide. Thus it may again and again be urged that there are many micro- scopic particles which are known to pass through some of the performances which our "radiobes" also do; but we have no knowledge of any bodies wMch. can do them all except those bodies which we know are living things. If a bacteriologist were told that the objects of his observations were not strictly living things because Biitschli had obtained bodies certainly quite lifeless which could perform many of the actions which his bacteria do — because Leduc had obtained other bodies which possess many other properties which his bacterial bodies have; that Le Bon, Schron, Quincke, Lehmann, Ostwald, and a host of others had also observed minute so-called liquid and organic bodies, some of which are, accurately speaking, crystals — that therefore microbes must be crystals, he w^ould reply, and very rightly so, that the argument was scarcely valid, and that here, at least, analogy was a deceitful guide. But the argument would not be worse than that of those who would assert that because certain things are not bacteria they therefore must be crj^stals. It has been suggested that the products of radium and bouillon are like the microscopic crystals described by those alreadv mentioned, and also by VI [6 ' THE ORIGIN OF LIFE Schenck in his admirable little work which has recently been published/ But the bodies there described, some of which I have many times observed, I have never thought of classify- ing or identifying with the "plastide particles" in bouillon that I have styled " radiobes. " The two are totally distinct. One type, the smaller one, behave like bubbles, or, more accurately, like oily drops, possessing no indication whatsoever of an inter- nal structure other than that which we may associate with crys- talline forms. The larger ones are much too large, and show no signs of disintegration, but give the beautiful characteristic figures of crystals under the polariscope. Even the compara- tively small ones give, to some extent at least, some slight polar- iscope effects. But they are obviously, to anybody who has seen them, quite different from those which are brought about in the culture medium under the influence of radium. They do not stain— at least I have not found them to do so— as the radium bodies do, and they do not manifest any of the properties which have so attracted our attention with the latter. The two— at least so far as I can judge— are totally distinct— as distinct as coal is from potatoes. It will be urged— in fact it has been urged— that these bodies, if living, must be the result of imperfect sterilizations, and that the experiments of Pasteur completely proved that when sterili- zations are properly carried out life does not spring from lifeless matter. This sounds very simple, very clear, and very forcible. But has it really any bearing on the question as to whether radio- activity can afford the internal energy of vital processes ? Pasteur's experiments were on sterilized media not acted upon by sources of activity such as those which now form the subject of discus- sion. They have nothing whatsoever to do with the question as to whether radio-activity can afford the energy in dynamically unstable groupings placed in suitable surroundings, and which might afford in more complex aggregations the f.ux, so to speak, which constitutes the principle of life. I argue now for possibil- ities, and I say without fear or hesitation, that, whatever may be the aspect we should take of this conception, the bearing of. Pasteur's observations on this point is as remote as it is on the 1 Kristallinische Flussigkcilcn und Flussigc Kristalle. VI [7] THE ORIGIN OF LIFE Rja question whether there are living bodies in Venus or in Mars. It is a matter about which I feel, without misgiving, that Pas- teur, Tyndall, and Huxley would have thought as strongly as myself that their efforts had no bearing whatsoever on the point at issue. Having cleared our minds on the subject of these previous experiments of thirty years ago, we may turn our attention more particularly to these new experiments themselves. In the course of my previous work on phosphorescence I was induced to try whether the molecular groupings which, it was supposed, were formed during phosphorescence, by exciting sources, could also be produced in other organic bodies, whether they become luminous or not so long as they are similarly acted upon. The first attempt was to bring about the condensation or for- mation of a complex aggregate round a nucleus, itself the seat of electro-magnetic disturbances, as in radio-active particles, that might set up an aggregation of molecules, probably of an un- stable kind, in its vicinity. The most promising step to take appeared to be to introduce some radium salt into a tube containing glycerine and then suddenly to cool the liquid by immersion in liquid air.* The lic{uid would thus have every opportunity of condensing round the ions embedded in the glycerine from the radium, and perhaps also the aggregates contemplated would have a similar oppor- tunity of being formed, by the intense electro-magnetic pulses set up, or possibly by some catalytic actions. Crystals of glycer- ^ These experiments were made at the Cavendish Laboratory in October, 1904, and were exhibited to a host of people in Cambridge at the time. By a coincidence, M. R. Dubois, an eminent physiologist, shortly afterwards stated, in an inaugural address at Lyons last Novem- ber, that he had observed the production of similar bodies, which he called vaciiolidcs, by the action of radium on certain culture media. Up to the time of correcting the proofs of this article he has not, so far as I am aware, made any communication to any scientific journal on the subject. In abstracting my work for the Revue des I dees, July 15, 1905, he refers to his speech and proposes to change the name of his vacuolides to eobes. He admits they are the same as radiobes. VI [8] THE ORIGIN OF LIFE ine were thus produced, but it was found that the radium was not necessary, the low temperature being sufficient to enable them to form. On being removed from the cooling chamber and allowed to stand at the ordinary temperature of the room, they rapidly disappeared in about five minutes or so. The experiment was also made with gelatine. Microscopic crystals were thus easily produced by immersion in liquid air, and the outward appearance of the colloid was greatly altered, as it became intensely opaque. Bouillon, which was carefully sterilized under pressure at a temperature from 130° to 140° with radium for about thirty minutes at a time, was also tried. It was found in this case that after two days a culture was growing on the surface of the gela- tine. Moreover, on repeating the experiment it was observed that the culture was still formed even when the tube was not frozen. This was most remarkable, but the obvious explanation ap- peared to be that the cultures were contaminations and the re- sult of imperfect sterilization. So the experiment was repeated with controls. The result was precisely the same as before, in the tube containing radium, while the control tube showed no sign whatever of contamination. The radium was mixed with the gelatine medium in most of the experiments; in some, how- ever, it was contained in another and smaller tube close to the surface of the gelatine, or in a side tube. In all the experiments which may be regarded as reliable, actual contact seemed to be necessary, although at first it seemed as though the a-rays were sufficient. But in all such cases some of the radium actually got to the gelatine during the process of sterilization. In the earlier experiments the salt used was the chloride. It was sprinkled on a narrow glass slide over which a thin layer of gum was spread. The cultures were obtained only when the edge of the glass slide came in contact with the gelatine. On looking up the matter I found that it was a well-known fact that gum acted on gelatine in such a manner as to produce oily drops.^ Controls with gum alone, however, proved that the two effects were entirely different, the gum globules being confined ^ See Article "Gum," Encyclopcedia Britannica. 9th Edition. VI [9] THE ORIGIN OF LIFE chiefly to the surface, disappearing altogether after some days, while the radium effect increased. Thus it seemed quite clear from these control experiments that the gum was not the cause of the culture-like appearances, while subsequent experiments with pure radium salt proved this beyond doubt. The next step was to get sub-cultures by inoculation in fresh media. The sub-cultures did not show the slightest signs of growth for nearly six weeks. They then, however, did manifest a tendency towards development, but only to a very small extent. Thus it is at once evident that the original cultures were not bacteria. The first experiments were repeated with radium bromide. About 2 J milligrammes of the salt contained in a small glass tube, one end of which was drawn out to a fine point, were intro- duced into an ordinary test-tube containing bouillon. The test-tube was plugged with cotton-wool in the usual way with such experiments, and then sterilized at a temperature of 130° C. for about thirty minutes at a time. On cooling, as soon as the liquid had coagulated, the fine end of the inner tube con- taining the radium was broken by means of a wire hook in a side tube. The salt was thus allowed to drop on the surface of the gelatine. After twenty-four hours signs of growth were already visible. On opening the tube and examining the culture micro- scopically the same results w^re obtained as previously. Their appearance is indeed most striking. It is curious, however, that with the bromide the cultures, although produced more rapidly, did not spread far into the interior of the gelatine, as did those due to the chloride. It is noteworthy that the consistency with which they appear, and their form at each stage of development, are not the least striking feature of their many characteristics. At first their appearance is that of diplococci ; yet it will be observed that they are not all of the same size, but vary considerably through a considerable range from 0.3/^. * to mere specks, as seen in yV ^ fL is the one-thousandth of a miUimetre, or the twenty-five- thousandth of an inch. VI [10] THE ORIGIN OF LIFE inch power. There is an indication of growth and of their hav- ing originated from uhra-microscopic particles. At first they looked like crystals of carbonate of lime, but these are so very much larger and are visible with much lower powers. The latter are insoluble, while the former are soluble in warm water, so that the two cannot be identified. They might have been soluble phosphates, but the considera- tions which follow indicate that they are highly complicated structures and more like organisms. The polariscope does not give the figures and changes of color which are the characteristic features of a crystal. There is, however, a left-handed rotation imparted to the gelatine, and one which can easily be detected when the culture has penetrat- ed some distance into the interior, the rotation amounting to several degrees in a centimetre thickness. Thus they appear to be more of the nature of colloided bodies, but like bacteria with an asymmetric structure. The very minute quantity which could be experimented with rendered it extremely difficult to investigate their chemical composition; but the method of prolonged observation, like the astronomical method in matters over which we have no con- trol, enables us to study their structure and behavior, and to decide the question as to whether they are crystalline or or- ganized and living forms. Upon this point, however, it is necessary that the use of the word "crystal" should stand for some definite thing. By a crystal I mean an aggregate of symmetrically arranged groups of molecules. Such aggregates are known to grow by piling up, as it were, one on to another. They grow by accretion, not by assimilation, from their environment. Sachs* regarded protoplasm as made up of minute crystals, but that seems ^Physiology of Plants, p. 206. His view that protoplasm is an organized substance consisting of crystalline, doubly refracting molecules (Micellas) is now generally accepted. In the moist state each of these (Micellae) is surrounded with an envelope of water in consequence of its powerful attraction. In their dry state they are in mutual contact. This theory of the internal structure of organized bodies was founded by Naegeli. VI [11] THE ORIGIN OF LIFE perhaps to be using the word in a somewhat clastic sense, if protoplasm, a colloid substance, were to be included amongst crystalline bodies. If colloidal bodies are aggregates of minute crystals, they are, however, not symmetrically arranged crystals, and the aggregate is not isomorphous with the constituent crystals, but on the whole amorphous. An organism has a structure, a nucleus, and an external boundary or cell-wall, and its vitality may be described as being a continuous process of adjustment between its internal and its external relations. Now a clear examination of the bodies produced by the action of radium on culture media will enable us to decide under which of these two heads these bodies come. The earlier stage does not reveal any structure, but later on the existence of a nucleus of a highly organized body is dis- tinctly shown; whilst after a while the segregation effects of growth and development, which it would appear rule crystals out of court, become distinctly marked. In such large bodies a satellite or offspring is usually visible and is suggestive of reproduction. This subdivision is the most striking thing about them, and a clear idea of its actual nature cannot fully be derived from the photographs. When the body exceeds yj. there is a tendency for it to divide up, and each part to lead a separate existence. The growth is from the minutest visible speck to two dots, then a dumb-bell shaped appearance, later more like frog's spawn, and so on through various stages until it reaches a shape largely different from its previous forms, when it divides and loses its individuality, and ultimately becomes resolved into minute crystals, possibly of uric acid. This is a develop- ment which no crystal has yet been known to make, and forces upon the mind the idea that they must be organisms; the fact, however, that they are soluble in water seems, on the other hand, to disprove the suggestion that they can be bacteria. But the stoppage of growth and the subdivision at a certain stage of development in such circumstances as these is a clear indi- VI [ 12 ] THE ORIGIN OF LIFE cation of the continuous adjustment of internal to external re- lations of the individual with its surroundings, and thus sug- gests vitality. The continuity of structure, assimilation, and growth, and then subdivision, together with the nucleated structure as shown in a few of the best specimens, suggests that they are en- titled to he classed among living things, in the sense in which we use the words, whether we call them bacteria or not. As they do not possess all the properties of bacteria, they are not what are understood by this name, and are obviously alto- gether outside the beaten track of living things. This, however, will not prevent such bodies from coming under the realm of biology, and, in fact, they appear to possess many of the qualities and properties which enable them to be placed in the borderland between crystals and bacteria, organisms in the sense in which we have employed the word, and possibly the missing link be- tween the animate and inanimate. May it not also be the germ which, after countless generations, under gradually chang- ing forms and in suitable environments, has at length evolved into a bacillus at which we gaze and gaze with hopeless won- der and amazement, each time we view it in the microscope to-day ? In their properties they are so like bacteria and yet not of them, nor of crystals, from both of which they differ widely, that they may with advantage, as we have said, be called Radiohes, a name at once suggestive both of their nature and their origin. Thus the gap, apparently insuperable, between the organic and the inorganic world seems, however roughly, to be bridged over by the presence of these radio-organic organisms which at least may give a clew as to the beginning and the end of life, "that vital putrefaction of the dust," to which Dr. Saleeby has recently drawn attention. Rainey obtained many curious results with salts of lime, but some of his observations may have been due to microbes, as in those days sufficient attention was not paid to the process of sterilization, while crystals of lime would be insoluble in water. Schenck's crystals, however, can be examined in the polari- VI [ 13 ] THE ORIGIN OF LIFE W scope, and do not segregate and reproduce as the bodies we are dealing with invariably have been found to do. ]\Iay it not be that, among those unknown processes which, as Huxley expected, worked in the "remote prodigious vista of the past," where he could find no record of the com- mencement of life, the process now considered almost a univer- sal one, of radio-activity, performed those reactions, that we now see taking place in gelatine cultures, slowly and yet spon- taneously by virtue of even slightly radio-active bodies?^ The earth itself, which is slightly radio-active, should act likewise, and the substances required are the ingredients for the formation of radio-organisms. The only process taking place in matter which has since then revealed a hidden source of energy, not destroyed by heat, is radio-activity. Whether the lowliest forms of life — so simple that the sim- plest amceba as we see it to-day would appear a highly complex form — whether such elementary types have arisen from inorganic matter by such processes as I have described, I know not. IVIay it not be, however, and does it not seem probable, in the light of these experiments, that the recently discovered processes of instability and decay of inorganic matter, resulting from the unexpected source of energy which gives rise to them, are analogous in many ways to the very inappropriately called "vital force" or really vital energy of living mater? For this idea such physiologists as Johannes Miiller so devoutly pleaded more than half a century ago. And may they not also be the source of life upon this planet ? Cannot this instability and decay of inorganic matter of atoms of highly complex structure, in suitable environments, be the seat of disturbances, of fermentations, and of metabo- lisms ? The building up and breaking down through catalytic actions of great complex aggregates, not merely of stable crystal- line forms, but of unstable dynamical aggregations, imparted by the unstable atom of a radio-active substance to the agglom- erated mass? The results of these investigations of which I have given an account, although not affording an answer to this question, by VI [ 14 ] THE ORIGIN OF LIFE giving rise to organisms such as bacteria (for it must be borne in mind that these are the descendants of countless generations, under gradually varying conditions), still afford beyond doubt organic forms of matter, as appears from their structure and behavior, even if they are not crystals or bacteria of the types already known, and place also at our disposal a method of structural organic synthesis, of which the chemist, perhaps, has not hitherto made use with effect. When working some time ago at the phosphorescent glow in gases, I was led from various considerations to infer that the luminosity was the result of great complex molecular agglom- erations produced by the spark. The duration of the life- period, if I might so call it, of those molecular groups is greatly increased by letting them diffuse into another tube through which the spark had not previously been sent,^ The effect of glycerine and gelatine on phosphorescent liquids is also known to increase the duration of the luminosity, and this is probably due to diminution of the number of colli- sions. I thus endeavored to observe the effect upon the phosphor- escent molecules by introducing glycerine or gelatine into a vacuum tube, immediately after sending a discharge of elec- tricity through it, while the phosphorescent glow lasted. If the glycerine or gelatine on being introduced is shaken inside the tube, some of the phosphorescent molecules would be caught by the liquid, which in turn should become phos- phorescent. The cyanogen molecules, it was thought, would do this particularly on account of their persistent nature after the passage of the discharge. Bouillon,^ which had been steri- lized with the tube itself before being introduced, w^as also among the substances employed. The vapor, however, from these substances when in the liquid state was enough to prevent the phosphorescent molecules which could exist at low pressure from persisting, and thus the experiments for the time were dropped. It seemed to me that the complex molecules of para-cyano- ^ Philosophical Magazine, March, 1901. 2 In this particular case it was the substance used for cultivating photogenic micro-cocci. VI [15] THE ORIGIN OF LIFE )RI< gen, unstable, but at the same time persistent and yielding a vast store of energy in their disintegration, might act as nuclei which would in suitable media set up catalytic activity, and thus act as a means of synthesizing complex organic com- pounds, a method not hitherto employed. It was for this reason that bouillon, of the composition used in the experiments with radium, was employed, since it contained all the constituents of protoplasm, and it seemed at the time quite possible, not to say probable, that the physical properties of the cyanogen molecule, as well as its chemical properties, justified the very shrewd conception of Pfluger, that the molecule of cyanogen is a'semi-living thing. The fundamental difference between living proteid as it constitutes living substance, and dead proteid as it occurs in egg-albumen, is in the self-decomposition of the former and the stable constitution of the latter. Verworn says: "The starting-point for further considera- tion is afforded by the fact that of the heterogeneous decompo- sition products of living proteid such as uric acid, creatin, and, moreover, the nuclein bases, guanin, xanthin, hypoxanthin, and adenin, a part contains cyanogen as a radical, and a part like urea, the most important of all the decomposition products of living proteid, can be produced artificially from cyanogen compounds by a rearrangement of the atoms." "This points strongly," he thinks, "to the probability that living proteid contains the radical cyanogen, and thus differs fundamentally from dead or food proteid." Thus, according to Pfluger, "in the formation of cell substance, i.e., of living proteid out of food proteid, a change in the latter takes place, the atoms of nitrogen going into a cyanogen-like relation with the atoms of carbon, probably with the absorption of a considerable amount of heat." Cyanogen is a radical which contains a vast amount of energy, and, although not to be compared with that of radium compounds, its potential store is nevertheless very great, as appears from thermal investigations. Again, "the idea that it is the cyanogen especially that confers upon the living proteid molecule its characteristic properties is supported es- pecially by many analogies that exist between living proteid and VI [i6] THE ORIGIN OF LIFE. the compounds of cyanogen. Thus a product of the oxidation of cyanogen, cyanic acid, H.C.N.O., possesses great similarity to living protcid. Pfliigcr calls attention to the following interesting points of comparison: (i) Both bodies grow by polymerization by chemically combining similar molecules, like chains, into masses; the growth of living substance takes place thus, and in this way also the polymeric HuCnNnOn comes from cyanic acid, H.C.N.O. (2) Further, both bodies in the presence of water are spontaneously decomposed into carbonic acid and ammonia. (3) Both afford urea by disso- ciation, i.e., by intramolecular rearrangement, not by direct oxidation. (4) Finally, both are liquid and transparent at low temperatures and coagulate at higher ones; cyanic acid earlier, living proteid later." "Their similarity," says Pfliigcr, " is so great that I might term cyanic acid a half-living molecule." Pfliiger's analyses have not met, to say the least of it, with widespread recognition. Further experimental confirmation is doubtless necessary before they can be ranked as theory. The dynamical nature of the cyanogen molecule, however, together with the large store of potential energy it contains, con- stitutes the resemblance between it and radium compounds, but it must be borne in mind that the internal energy thus manifested by the molecular disintegration is of an entirely different order of magnitude. Nevertheless, there is a sufficient resemblance between the two to utilize each for the purpose of the experiments we have in view. Then the molecule of either might act as a nucleus which should by catalysis, or some other means, set up dynamically unstable groups, which, though not living in the sense that they possessed the n qualities of living proteid, may, by possessing (w-i) of those qualities, be regarded as a mode of life in the sense in which many philoso- phers have used the word. If cyanogen is a half-living thing, as Pfliiger supposed for the reason we have given, it is only natural to try if it would form growths in culture media, and the use of bouillon in my experiments was merely the logical outcome of this conception. It seems quite beyond hope that even if we had the materials and conditions for producing life in the laboratory we should be VI [ 17 ] THE ORIGIN OF LIFE ■^ able to produce forms of life as developed as even the simplest amoeba, for the one reason, if for no other, that these are the descendants of almost an indefinite series of ancestors. But it is not beyond hope to produce others, more elementary ones, arti- ficially; and the micro-organisms — I think I am justified in calling them such — which form the subject of this article, al- though not bacteria, still may be looked upon as approximating to these more closely, and certainly regarded as higher in the scale of being than any forms of crystalline or colloid bodies hitherto observed. VI [i8] VII THE BIRTH OF CONSCIENCE "THE MORALITY OF NATURE" BY PRINCE KROPOTKTN TN our own day^ the old distinction between scientist and philosopher bids fair to become extinct. Time was when the scientist confined himselj to exact experiment and the discovery of the physical laws which underlay his results, while the philoso- pher took the universe for his province and speculated upon its meaning. Now, however, each invades the other^s realm; the scientist theorizes on origin and cause; the philosopher adopts scientific methods. Somewhere in the borderland between the two, lies the following address. It attempts to discover the origin of society, the explanation of altruism, the reason why a man is in- sufficient for himself and desires the company of others, feels both the joy and suffering of others in addition to his own. Here again it is obvious that we do but strive to push a little further from us the mystery of our being. Even were the search of science successful, so that she could set her finger on a point and date, and say, here began the social instinct in man, from this it has developed — even then the marvel would stand as it stands now, not in the method of development, but in the fact that this social in- stinct exists, that it has been created. Nevertheless, it may be well to caution our readers that in this interweaving of science and philosophy, the scientist is apt to carry through his philosophic excursions the forms of expression, the posiliveness of assertion, which belong properly to his experi- mental work. Hence when, in one of the few essays our series gives of necessity to science, the writer states a fact of the present vn [i] THE BIRTH OF CONSCIENCE time, which he has seen or tried, we may accept him jully; but when from this jact he injers something that occurred ceons ago, we must grow cautious. For each positive ^^is'^ it were wise to sub- stitute the more modest "seems," for "proves" let us read "sug- gests," or at the most "makes probable." Scientists themselves would be the readiest to approve this caution. -True science has no more deadly enemy than over-sureness. The possibility oj lurking error, or oj new and unknown causes working to confuse results, is ever in the seekefs mind. In the present address Darwinism, already introduced to the reader, presents its most recent thoughts, and presents them in the words oj one oj its most noted exponents. Prince Kropotkin is the most widely known oj Russian scientists. He is also a leader in the discussion oj social problems. To Americans his career may he less jajniliar than it is in Europe. Born oj a vice-regal jamily in Russia, he was educated among the pages oj the imperial court; but a more vigorous lije attracted him, and he became an explorer and geographer amid the wilds oj Siberia. Later he took part in the Russian revolutionary movement, and joined the International Working Men's Association (1872). He was imprisoned and escaped, to become an anarchistic leader throughout Europe. As such, he was expelled jrom Switzerland. Even in republican France he was held three years in prison; and it was not till 1886 that he settled to the more quiet existe?ice oj a litterateur a«(^ scientist. In I goo he published his " Memoirs oj a Revolutionist," which has been translated into every leading language; and in igo2 he pub- lished his important treatise on "Mutual Aid in Evolution," to which he makes jrequent rejerence below. The work of Darwin was not limited to biology only.* Already in 1837, when he had just written a rough outhne of his theory of the origin of species, he entered in his note-book this significant remark: 'My theory will lead to a new philosophy.' 1 In his History of Modern Philosophy the Danish professor, Harald Hoffding, gives an admirable sketch of the philosophical importance of Darwin's work. Gcsckichte der ncucrcn Philosophic, German transla- tion by F. Bendixen (Leipsic, 1896), Vol. II., p. 487 et seq. vn [2] THE BIRTH OF CONSCIENCE And so it did in reality. The application which he made of the idea of evolution to the whole of organic life marked a new era in philosophy; and it led him later on to write a sketch of the de- velopment of the moral sense, which opened a new page in ethics. In this sketch so much was done to throw a new- light upon the true and efficient cause of the moral feelings, and place the whole of ethics on a scientific basis, that although Darwin's leading ideas may be considered as a further development of those of Shaftesbury and Hutcheson, his work represents, nevertheless, a new departure, on the lines faintly indicated by Bacon. It secured, therefore, for its author a place by the side of the other founders of ethical schools, such as Hume, Hobbes, or Kant. The leading ideas of Darwin's ethics may easily be summed up. In the very first sentences of his essay he states his object in quite definite terms. He begins with a praise of the sense of duty, which he characterizes in the well-known poetical words of Kant : * Duty! Wondrous thought that workest neither by fond insinuation, flattery, nor by any threat, . . .' etc. And he undertakes to explain this sense of duty, or moral conscience, 'exclusively from the side of natural history' — an explanation, he adds, which no English writer had hitherto attempted to give.* That the moral sense should be acquired by each individual separately, during its lifetime, he naturally considers ' at least extremely improbable on the general theory of evolution ' ; and he derives this sense from the social feelings which are instinctive or innate in the lower animals, and probably in man as well. The origin and the very foundation of all moral feelings Darwin sees ' in the social instincts which lead the animal to take pleasure in the society of its fellows, to feel a certain amount of sympathy with them, and to perform various services for them ' ; sympathy being understood here in its proper sense — not as a feeling of commiseration or love, but as a 'fellow-feeling' or 'mutual sensi- bility ' ; the fact of being influenced by another's feelings. This being Darwin's first proposition, his second is that as soon as the mental faculties of a species become highly developed as they are in man, the social instinct will necessarily lead, as every other unsatisfied instinct does, to a sense of dissatisfaction, 1 The Descent of Alan, chap IV. vn [3] THE BIRTH OF CONSCIENCE or even misery, as often as the individual, reasoning about its past actions, sees that in some of them 'the enduring and always present social instinct had yielded to some other instinct, at the time stronger, but neither enduring nor leaving behind it a very vivid impression.' For Darwin the moral sense is thus not the mysterious gift of unknown origin which it was for Kant. ' Any animal whatever,' he says, 'endowed with well-marked social instincts, the parental and filial affections being here included, would inevitably acquire a moral sense, or conscience [Kant's "knowledge of duty"], as soon as its intellectual powers had become as well, or nearly as well, developed as in man. To these two fundamental propositions Darwin adds two secondary ones. After the power of language had been acquired, and the wishes of the community could be expressed, 'the com- mon opinion how each member ought to act for the public good would naturally become, in a paramount degree, the guide of action.' However, the effect of public approbation and dis- approbation depends entirely upon the development of mutual sympathy. It is because we feel in sympathy with others that we appreciate their opinions; and public opinion acts in a moral direction only where the social instinct is sufficiently strongly developed. This is evidently an important remark, because it refutes those theories of Mandeville and his more or less outspoken eighteenth-century followers, w^hich represented morality as nothing but a set of conventional manners. Finally, Darwin mentions habit as a potent factor for framing our con- duct. It strengthens the social instinct and mutual sympathy, as also obedience to the judgment of the community. Having thus stated the substance of his views in four definite propositions, Darwin gives them some further developments. He examines, first, sociability in animals, their love of society, and the misery which every one of them feels if it is left alone; their continual intercourse ; their mutual warnings, and the ser- vices they render each other in hunting and for self-defence. 'It is certain,' he says, 'that associated animals have a feeling of love for each other which is not felt by non-social adult animals.' They may not much sympathize with each other's pleasures, but cases of sympathy with each other's distress or danger are quite VII [ 4 ] THE BIRTH OF CONSCIENCE common, and Darwin quotes a few of the most striking instances. Some of them, such as Saintsbury's blind pelican or the blind rat, both of which were fed by their congeners, have become classical by this time, while several similar illustrations have been added since. 'Moreover, beside love and sympathy,' Darwin con- tinues, 'animals exhibit other qualities connected with social instincts which in us would be called moral,' and he gives a few examples of moral self-restraint in dogs and elephants. Alto- gether, it is evident that every action in common — and with cer- tain animals it is quite habitual — requires some restraint of the same sort. However, it must be said that Darwin did not treat the subject of sociabiHty in animals and their incipient moral feeHngs with all the developments which it deserved, in view of the central position which it occupies in his theory of morality. Considering next human morahty, Darwin remarks that although man, such as he now exists, has but few special in- stincts, he nevertheless is a sociable being who must have re- tained from an extremely remote period some degree of instinc- tive love and sympathy for his fellows. These feelings act as an impulsive instinct, which is assisted by reason, experience, and the desire of approbation. 'Thus the social instincts, which must have been acquired by man in a very rude state, and prob- ably even by his ape-hke progenitors, still give the impulse for some of his best actions.' The remainder is the result of a steadily growing intelligence and collective education. It is evident that these views are correct only if we are ready to recognize that the intellectual faculties of animals differ from those of man in degree, but not in their essence. But this is ad- mitted now by most students of comparative psychology; and the attempts which have been made lately to establish ' a gulf ' between the instincts and the intellectual faculties of man and those of animals have not attained their end.^ How- ^ The incapacity of an ant, a dog, or a cat to make a discovery, or to hit upon the correct solution of a difficulty, is not proof of an essential difference between the intelligence of man and that of these animals, because the same want of inventiveness is continually met with in men as well. Like the ant in one of Lubbock's experiments, thousands of men who had not been already familiar with bridges would spend their forces in the effort of crossing a brook or a ravine, before they would try to bridge it. And, on the other hand, the collective intelligence of vn [ 5 ] THE BIRTH OF CONSCIENCE ever, it docs not follow from this resemblance that the moral instincts developed in different species, and the less so in species belonging to two different classes of animals, should be identical. If we compare insects with mammals, we must never forget that the lines of their development have diverged at a very early period of animal evolution. The consequence was that a deep physiological differentiation be- tween separate portions of the same species took place with the ants, the bees, the wasps, etc., corresponding to a permanent physiological division of labor between their females, their males, and their workers — a division of which there is no trace among mammals. Therefore it seems almost impossible to ask men to judge of the morality of the worker- bees when they kill the males in their hive ; and this is why the illustration of Darwin to this effect met with so much hostile criticism. And yet the moral conceptions of man and the actions of insects have so much in common that the greatest ethical teachers of mankind did not hesitate to recommend certain features of the ants and the bees for imitation by man. Their devotion to the group is certainly not surpassed by ours; and, on the other hand — to say nothing of our race wars, or of the occasional exterminations of religious dissidents and political adversaries — the human code of morality has undergone such variations in the course of time as to pass from the exposure of children by savages in years of scarcity, and the ' wound-f or- wound and lif e-f or-lif e ' principle of the Deca- logue, to the profound respect of everything that lives preached by Bodisatta and the pardon of offences practised by the early Christians. We are thus bound to conclude that while the dif- ferences between the morality of the bee and that of man are due to a deep physiological divergence, the striking similarities be- tween the two point, nevertheless, to a community of origin. The social instinct is thus, in Darwin's opinion, the common stock, out of which all moraUty originates; and he further an ant's nest or a beehive — one individual in the thousand hitting upon the correct solution, and the others imitating it — solves difficulties much greater than those upon which the individual ant, or bee, or cat has so ludicrously failed. The bees at the Paris Exhibition, and their devices to prevent being disturbed in their work, or any one of the well- known facts of inventiveness among the bees, the ants, the wolves hunting together, are instances in point. — K. VII [ 6 ] THE BIRTH OF CONSCIENCE analyzes this instinct. Unfortunately, scientific animal psychol- ogy is still in its infancy, and therefore it is extremely difficult to disentangle the complex relations which exist between the social instinct, properly so-called, and the parental and fihal instincts, as well as several other instincts and faculties, such as sympathy, reason, experience, and a tendency to imitation. Darwin felt this difficuhy very much, and therefore he expressed himself extremely cautiously. The parental and fihal instincts, he sug- gested, ' apparently lie at the base of the social instincts' : and in another place he wrote: 'The feehng of pleasure from society is probably an extension of the parental or filial affections, since the social instinct seems to be developed by the young remaining for a long time with their parents.' This caution was fully justified, because in other places he pointed out that the social instinct must be a separate instinct in itself, different from the others— an instinct which has been de- veloped by natural selection for its own sake, as it was useful for the well-being and the preservation of the species. It is so fundamental that when it runs against another instinct, even one so strong as the attachment of the parents to their offspring, it often takes the upper hand. Birds, when the time has come for their autumn migration, will leave behind their tender young, not yet old enough for a prolonged flight, and follow their comrades. To this striking illustration I may also add that the social instinct is strongly developed with many lower animals, such as the land- crabs, or the Molucca crab ^ ; as also with certain fishes, with whom it hardly could be considered as an extension of the fihal or parental f eehngs. In these cases it appears rather as an extension of the brotherly or sisterly relations, or feelings of com- radeship, which probably develop eacli time that a considerable number of young animals, having been hatched at a given place and at a given moment, continue to live together— whether they are with their parents or not. It would seem, therefore, more correct to consider the social and the parental instincts as two closely connected instincts, of which the former is perhaps the earlier, and therefore the stronger, and which both go hand in hand in the evolution of the animal world. Both are favored ^SeeMuttialAid, 1903, pp. 11 and 12. VII [7] THE BIRTH OF CONSCIENCE by natural selection, which, as soon as they come into conflict, keeps the balance between the two, for the ultimate good of the species.* The most important point in the ethical theory of Darwin is, of course, his explanation of the moral conscience of man and his sense of remorse and duty. This point has always been the stumbling-block of all ethical theories. Kant, as is known, utterly failed, in his otherwise so beautifully written work on morality, to establish why his ' categorical imperative ' should be obeyed at all, unless such be the will of a supreme power. We may admit that Kant's 'moral law,' if we slightly alter its for- mula, while we maintain its spirit, is a necessary conclusion of the himian reason. We certainly object to the metaphysical form which Kant gave it; but, after all, its substance is equity, justice. And, if we translate the metaphysical language of Kant into the concrete language of inductive science, we may find points of contact between his conception of the origin of the moral law and the naturalist's view concerning the development of the moral sense. But this is only one-half of the problem. Supposing, for the sake of argument, that 'pure reason,' free from all obser- vation, all feeling, and all instinct, in virtue of its inherent proper- ties, should necessarily come to formulate a law of justice similar to Kant's imperative, and granting that no reasoning being could ever come to any other conclusion, because such are the inherent properties of reason — granting all this, and fully recognizing at the same time the elevating character of Kant's moral philosophy, the great question of all ethics remains, nevertheless, in full: ' Why should man obey the moral law, or principle, formulated by his reason ? ' Or, at least, ' Whence that feeling of obligation which men are experiencing ? ' Several critics of Kant's ethical philosophy have already pointed out that it left this great fundamental question unsolved. ^In an excellent analysis of the social feeling {Animal Behaviour, 1900, pp. 231-232) Professor Lloyd Morgan says: 'And this question Prince Kropotkin, in common with Darwin and Espinas, would prob- ably answer without hesitation that the primaeval germ of the social community lay in the prolonged coherence of the group of parents and offspring. ' I should only add the words : ' or of the offspring without the parents,' because this addition would better agree with the above facts, while it also more correctly renders the idea of Darwin. — K. VII [ 8 ] THE BIRTH OF CONSCIENCE But they might have added also that Kant himself had recog- nized his incapacity of solving it. After having thought in- tensely upon this subject, and written about it for four years, he acknowledged in his Philosophical Theory of Religion (Part I., 'Of the Radical Evil of Human Nature,' published in 1792) that he was unable to find the origin of the moral law. In fact, he gave up the whole problem by recognizing 'the incomprehensi- bility of this capacity, a capacity which proclaims a divine origin ' — this very incomprehensibiHty having to rouse man's spirit to enthusiasm and to strengthen it for any sacrifices which respect to his duty may impose upon him.^ Intuitive philosophy having thus acknowledged its incapac- ity to solve the problem, let us see how Darwin solved it from the point of view of the naturalist. Here is, he said, a man who has yielded to a strong sense of self-preservation, and has not risked his life to save that of a fellow- creature; or, he has stolen food from hunger. In both cases he has obeyed a quite natural instinct, and the question is, Why should he feel miserable at all ? Why should he think that he ought to have obeyed some other instinct, and acted differently? Because, Darwin replies, in human nature ' the more enduring social instincts conquer the less persistent instincts.' Moral conscience has always a retro- spective character; it speaks in us when we think of our past actions ; and it is the result of a struggle, during which the less persistent, the less permanent individual instinct yields before the more permanently present and the more enduring social in- stinct. With those animals which always live in society 'the social instincts are ever present and persistent.' Such animals are always ready to join in the defence of the group and to aid each other in different ways. They feel miserable if they are separated from the others. And it is the same with man. 'A man who possessed no trace of such instincts would be a mon- ster.' On the other hand, the desire which leads a man to satisfy his hunger or his anger, or to escape danger, or to appro- priate somebody's possessions, is in its nature temporary. Its satisfaction is always weaker than the desire itself. And when we think of it in the past, we cannot recall it as vividly as it was 1 Hartleben's edition of Kant's works, Vol. VI., pp. 143, 144. VII [ 9 ] THE BIRTH OF CONSCIENCE before its satisfaction. Consequently, if a man, with a view of satisfying such a desire, has acted so as to traverse his social in- stinct, and afterward reflects upon his action — which we con- tinually do — he will be driven ' to make a comparison between the impressions of past hunger, vengeance satisfied, or danger shunned at other men's cost, with the almost ever-present in- stinct of sympathy, and with his early knowledge of what others consider as praiseworthy or blamable.' And once he has made this comparison he will feel ' as if he had been baulked in follow- ing a present instinct or habit, and this with all animals causes dissatisfaction, or even misery.'' And then Darwin shows how the primary promptings of such a conscience, which always 'looks backward, and serves as a guide for the future,' m.ay take the aspect of shame, regret, re- pentance, or even violent remorse, if the feeling be supported by reflection about the judgment of those with whom man feels in sympathy. Later on, habit will necessarily increase the power of this conscience upon man's actions, while at the same time it will tend to harmonize more and more the desires and passions of the individual with his social sympathies and instincts.^ Altogether, the great difliculty for ethical philosophy is to explain the, first germs of the ' ought '—the appearance of the first whisper of the voice which pronounces that word. If that much has been ex- plained, the accumulated experience of the community and its collective teachings will explain the rest. We have thus, for the first time, an explanation of the sense of duty on a natural basis. True that it runs counter to the ideas that are current now about animal and human nature ; but it is correct. Nearly all ethical writers have hitherto started with the unproved postulate that the strongest of all the instincts of man, ^ In a foot-note Darwin, with his usual deep insight, makes, however, one exception. 'Enmity, or hatred,' he remarks, 'seems also to be a highly persistent feeling, perhaps more so than any other that can be named. . . . This feeling would thus seem to be innate, and is cer- tainly a most persistent one. It seems to be the complement and con- verse of the true social instinct ' (foot-note 27). This feeling, so deeply seated in animal nature, evidently explains the bitter wars that are fought between different tribes or groups in several animal species and among men. It explains also the existence of two different codes of morality retained till now among civilized nations. Btit this important and yet neglected subject can better be treated in connection with the development of the idea of justice. — K. VU I 10 ] THE BIRTH OF CONSCIENCE and the more so of animals, is the selj- preservation inslinct, which, owing to a certain looseness of their terminology, they have identified, in man, with self-assertion, or egoism properly speak- ing. This instinct, which they conceived as including, on the one side, such primary impulses as self-defence, self-preserva- tion, and the very act of satisfying hunger, and, on the other side, such derivative feehngs as the longing for domination, greed, hatred, the desire of revenge, and so on — this compound and heterogeneous aggregate of instincts and feelings they repre- sented as an all-pervading and all-powerful force, which finds no contradiction in animal and human nature, excepting in a cer- tain f eehng of benevolence or mercy. The consequence of such a view was that, once human nature was recognized as such, there obviously remained nothing but to lay a special stress upon the softening influence of those moral teachers who appealed to mercy, borrowing the spirit of their teachings and the impressive- ness of their words from a world that hes outside nature — outside and above the world which is accessible to our senses. And if one refused to accept this view, the only alternate issue was to attribute, as Hobbes and his followers did, a special importance to the coercive action of the State, inspired by genial law-givers — which meant, of course, merely to shift the extra-natural inspira- tion from the religious preacher to the law-maker. Beginning with the Middle Ages, the founders of ethical schools, for the most part ignorant of nature, to the study of which they preferred metaphysics, had represented the self- assertive instincts of the individual as the very condition of its physical existence. To obey their promptings was considered as the law of nature, the neglect of which would lead to a sure defeat and to the ultimate disappearance of the species. There- fore, to combat these egotistic promptings was possible only if man called to his aid the supernatural forces. The triumph of moral principles was thus represented as a triumph of man over nature, which he may hope to achieve only with an aid from without, coming as a reward for his humihty. They told us, for instance, that there is no greater virtue, no greater triumph of the spiritual over the natural, than self-sacrifice for the welfare of our fellow-men.. But the fact is that self-sacrifice in the interest VII [ II ] THE BIRTH OF CONSCIENCE of an ants' nest, for the safety of a group of birds, or the security of a drove of cattle, a herd of antelopes, or a band of monkeys, is a zoological fact oj every-day occurrence in Nature — a fact for which hundreds upon hundreds of animal species require nothing else but natural sympathy with their fellow-creatures, the sensa- tion of full vital energy, and a constant habit of mutual aid. Darwin, who knew nature, had the courage boldly to assert that of the two instincts — the social and the individual — it is the former which is the stronger, the more persistent, and the more permanently present. And he was right. The instinct of mutual aid pervades the animal world, because natural selection works for maintaining and further developing it, and pitilessly destroys those species which lose it. In the great struggle for life which every animal species carries on against the hostile agencies of climate, surroundings, and natural enemies, big and small, those species which most consistently carry out the prin- ciple of mutual support have the best chance to survive, while the others die out. And the same great principle is confirmed by the history of mankind. It is most remarkable that in representing the social instinct under this aspect we return, in fact, to what Bacon, the great founder of inductive science, had perceived. In his programme of the work to be done by the next generations with the aid of the inductive method, in The Great Instauration, he wrote: "All things are endued with an appetite for tvv^o kinds of good — the one as a thing is a whole in itself, the other as it is a part of some greater whole; and this latter is more worthy and more powerful than the other, as it tends to the conservation of a more ample form. The first may be called individual, or self-good, and the latter, good of communion. . . . And thus it generally happens that the conservation of the more general form regu- lates the appetites." * 1 On the Dignity and Advancement of Learning, Book VII. chap. i. We certainly find Bacon's arguments in favor of this idea insufficient; but he was only establishing the outlines of a science, which had to be worked out by his followers. In another place he returns to the same idea. He speaks of 'two appetites [instincts] of the creatures,' (i) that of self-preservation and defence, and (2) that of multiplying and prop- agating, and he adds, ' The latter, which is active, seems stronger and more worthy than the former, which is passive.' — K. VII [12] THE BIRTH OF CONSCIENCE It may be asked, of course, whether such a conception agrees with the theory of natural selection, according to which struggle for Uf e, within the species, was considered a necessary condition for the appearance of new species, and for evolution altogether ? Having already touched elsewhere upon this question, I will not enter here into its discussion, and will only add the following remark. Immediately after the appearance of Darwin's work on the origin of species we were all inclined to believe that an acute struggle for the means of existence between the members of the same species was necessary for accentuating the variations, and for the development of new species. But the deeper we go into the study of the facts of nature, and realize the direct influ- ence of the surroundings for producing variation in a definite direction, as also the influence of isolation upon portions of the species separated from the main body in consequence of their migrations, we are prepared to understand ' struggle for life ' in a much wider and deeper sense. We see more and more the group of animals, acting as a whole, carrying on the struggle against adverse conditions, or against some such an enemy as a kindred species, by means of mutual support within the group, and thus acquiring habits which reduce the struggle, while they lead at the same time to a higher development of intelhgence among those who took to mutual support. The above objection falls through in proportion as we advance in our knowledge of the struggle for Ufe. Nature has thus to be recognized as the first ethical teacher of man. The social instinct, innate in men as well as it is in all the sociable animals, is the origin of all ethical conceptions and all the subsequent ethical development. VTT [13] THE BIRTH OF CONSCIENCE II Primitive man lived in close intimacy with animals. With some of them he probably shared the shelters under the rocks, occasionally the caverns, and very often food. Not more than a hundred years ago the natives of Siberia and America astonished our naturalists by their thorough knowledge of the habits of the most retiring beasts and birds; but primitive man stood in still closer relations to the animals, and knew them still better. The wholesale extermination of life by means of forest and prairie fires, poisoned arrows, and the like, had not yet begun; and from the bewildering abundance of animal hf e which was found by the white settlers when they first took possession of the American continent we may judge of the density of the animal population during the early Post-glacial period. Palaeolithic and neohthic man lived closely surrounded by his dumb brothers — just as the shipwrecked crew of Behring lived amidst the multitudes of polar foxes, which were prowling in the midst of their encamp- ments and gnawing at night at the very furs upon which the men were sleeping. Our primitive ancestors lived with the animals, in the midst of them. And as soon as they began to bring some order into their observations of nature, and to transmit them to posterity, the animals and their fife supplied them with the chief materials for their unwritten encyclopaedia of knowledge, as well as for their wisdom, which they expressed in proverbs and say- ings. Animal psychology was the first psychology which man was aware of— it is still a favorite subject of talk at the camp- fires; and animal hfe, closely interwoven with that of man, was the subject of the very first rudiments of art, inspiring the first engravers and sculptors, and entering into the composition of the most ancient epical traditions and ccsmogonic myths. The first thing which our children learn in natural history is something about the beasts of prey — the lions and the tigers. But the first thing which primitive savages must have learned about nature was that it represents a vast agglomeration of animal clans and tribes: the ape tribe, so nearly related to man, the ever-prowling wolf tribe, the knowing, chattering bird tribe, the ever-busy insect tribe, and so on. For them the animals VII [ 14 ] THE BIRTH OF CONSCIENCE were an extension of their own kin — only so much wiser than themselves. And the first vague generalization v/hich men must have made about nature — so vague as to hardly differ from a mere impression — was that the living being and his clan or tribe are inseparable. We can separate them — they could not; and it seems even doubtful whether they could think of life otherwise than within a clan or a tribe. Such an impression of nature was unavoidable. Among his nearest congeners — the monkeys and the apes — man saw hun- dreds of species living in large societies, united together within each group by the closest bonds. He saw how they supported each other during their foraging expeditions, how they combined against their common enemies, and rendered each other all sorts of small services, such as the picking of thorns from each other's fur, the nestling together in cold weather, and so on. Of course they often quarrelled, but there was more noise in these quarrels than serious harm, and at times, in case of danger, they displayed the m.ost striking mutual attachment, to say nothing of the strong devotion of the m.others to their young ones, which they have in common with all the animals. Sociability was thus the rule with the monkey tribe; and if there are now two species of big apes, the gorilla and the orang-outang, which are not sociable, and keep in small families only, the very hmited sizes of the areas they inhabit are a proof of their being now decaying species — decaying, perhaps, on account of the merciless war which men have waged against them in consequence of the very resemblance between the two species.^ Primitive man saw, next, that even among the carnivorous beasts, which hve by kiUing other animals, there is one general and invariable rule : They never kill each other. Some of them are very sociable^such are all the dog tribe: the jackals, the dholes or kholzun dogs, the hyenas. Some others prefer to live in small families; but even among these last the more inteUigent ones— the Uons and the leopards — occasionally join together for hunting, like the dog tribe. And as to those few which lead — nowadays, at least — a quite sohtary life in small f amihes, so that even the females with their cubs will often keep separate from the * Several African travellers speak of that enmity and signal its causes. VII [15] THE BIRTH OF CONSCIENCE males, the same general rule of nature prevails among them* they do not kill each other. Even now, when the myriads of ruminants which formerly peopled the prairies have been exter- minated, and the tigers live mainly on man's herds, and are com- pelled, therefore, to keep close to the villages, every one to its own domain — even now the natives of India will tell us that some- how the tigers manage to keep to their separate domains without fighting bloody internecine wars for securing them. Besides, it appears extremely probable that even those few animals which now lead a sohtary existence — such as the tigers, the smaller species of the cat tribe (nearly all nocturnal), the bears, the gen- ets, most weasels, the marten tribe, the hedgehog, and a few others — were not always solitary creatures. For some of them we have positive evidence that they remained sociable so long as they escaped extermination by man, and we have reason to beHeve that nearly all of them were in the same conditions in times past.^ But even if there always existed a few unsociable species, the fact is that man has always considered them an exception. The lesson of nature was, thus, that even the strongest beasts are bound to combine. And that man who had witnessed once in his life an attack of wild dogs, or dholes, upon the biggest beasts of prey, certainly realized, once and forever, the irresis- tible force of the tribal unions, and the confidence and courage with which they inspire every individual. Man made divinities of these dogs, and worshipped them, trying by all sorts of magic to acquire their courage. In the prairies and the woods our earliest ancestors saw myriads of animals, all living in clans and tribes. Countless herds of red-deer, fallow deer, reindeer, gazelles and antelopes, thousands of droves of buffaloes and legions of wild horses, wild donkeys, quaggas, zebras, and so on, were moving over the boundless plains, peacefully grazing side by side. Even the dreary plateaus had their herds of llamas and wild camels. And when man approached these animals, he soon realized how closely connected all these beings were in their respective droves or herds. Even when they seemed fully absorbed in grazing, ^See Mutual Aid, chaps. I. and II., and Appendix. VII [ i6 ] THE BIRTH OF CONSCIENCE and apparently took no notice of the others, they closely watched each other's movements, always ready to join in some common action. Man saw that all the deer tribe, whether they graze or merely gambol, always keep sentries, which never release their watchfulness and never are late to signal the approach of a beast of prey; he knew how, in case of sudden attack, the males and the females would encircle their young ones and face the enemy, exposing their lives for the safety of the feeble ones; and how, even with such timid creatures as the antelopes, or the fallow deer, the old males would often sacrifice themselves in order to cover the retreat of the herd. Man knew all that, which we ignore or easily forget, and he repeated it in his tales, embcUish- ing the acts of courage and self-sacrifice with his primitive poetry, or mimicking them in his rehgious tribal dances. Still less could he ignore the great migrations of animals, because be followed them — just as the Chukchi follows still the herds of the wild reindeer, when the clouds of mosquitoes drive them from one place of the Chukchi peninsula to another, or as the Lapp fol- lows the herds of his half-domesticated reindeer in their wander- ings, over which he has no control. And if we, with all our book- learning, feel unable to understand how animals scattered over a wide territory can warn each other so as to bring their thousands to a given spot before they begin their march north, south, or west, our ancestors, who considered the animals as beings so much wiser than themselves, saw no difficulty in explaining that intercourse. For them all animals — beasts, birds, and fishes alike — were in continual communication, warning each other by means of hardly perceptible signs or sounds, informing one another about all sorts of events, and thus constituting one vast community, which had its own habits and rules of propriety and good behavior. Even to-day deep traces of that conception of nature survive in the folklore of all nations. From the populous, animated, and gay villages of the mar- mots, the prairie dogs, the jerboas, the hamsters, and so on, and from the colonies of that silent sage, the beaver, with which the Post-glacial rivers were thickly studded, primitive man, who him- self had begun as a nomad forest-dweller, could learn the ad- vantages of settled Hfe, permanent dwelhngs, and labor in com- VII [ 17 ] THE BIRTO OF CONSCIENCE mon. Even now we can see how the nomad cattle-breeders of Mongolia, whose improvidence is phenomenal, learn from the striped marmot {Tamias striatus) the advantages of agriculture and foresight when they plunder quite regularly every autumn the underground galleries of this rodent, and seize its provisions of eatable bulbs. The granaries of many smaller rodents, full of all sorts of eatable seeds, must have given man the first sugges- tion as to- the culture of cereals. In fact, the sacred books of the East contain many an allusion to the foresight and laboriousness of the animals, which are set up as an example to man. The birds, in their turn — almost every one of their species — gave our ancestors a lesson of the most intimate sociability, of the joys of social life, and its enormous advantages. It certainly did not escape the attention of man that, even among the birds of prey, many species of falcons are extremely sociable, and that even some eagles com.bine for hunting; while the flocks of kites will sometimes chase the strongest eagle and get hold of its spoil. And they saw, of course, many a time, how the smallest birds, if they are numerous enough, overcome their first terror at the sight of a hawk, and chase it, immensely enjoying this kind of sport. The nesting associations of aquatic birds, and their unanim- ity in defending their young broods and eggs, were well known to man. He knew that as soon as he approached the shore of a lake where thousands of birds belonging to different species were nesting, his appearance would be signalled at once; how, the moment he would set his foot upon their grounds, hundreds of birds would circle and fly round him, skim over his face, bewilder him by the flapping of their wings, deafen him by their cries, and often compel him to retreat. Man knew this only too well, for his very existence in the early summer depended upon his capac- ity to resist such a combined attack of the winged tribe. And then the joy of life in the autumn societies of the bird- youngsters was certainly familiar to people who themselves lived in the woods and by the side of the forest brooks. Who knows if the very idea of wide tribal unions, or, at least, of those great tribal hunts {aha with the Mongols, kada with the Tunguses), which are real jttes, lasting a couple of months every autumn, was not suggested by such autumn gatherings of the birds, in which so VII [i8] THE BIRTH OF CONSCIENCE many widely different species join together, spending a few hours every day in providing their food, and then chattering and fluttering about the remainder of the time ? Man knew also, of course, the gay play of animals, the sports in which several species delight, the concerts and dances of some others; the flights which certain species perform in the evenings, sometimes with a wonderful art and elaboration; the noisy meetings which are held by the swallows and other migrating birds, for years in succession, on the same spot, before they start on their long journeys south. And how often man must have stood in bewilderment as he saw the immense migrating columns of birds passing over his head for many hours in succession. The ' brute savage ' knew and meditated on all these beauties of nature, Vvhich we have forgotten in our towns, and which we do not even lind in our 'natural history' books, compiled for teach- ing anything but Kfe; while the narratives of the great explorers — the Humboldts, the Audubons, the Azaras, the Brehms — of which every page was a picture of the real Hfe of nature, are mouldering in our libraries. In those times the wide world of the running waters and lakes was not a sealed book for man. He was familiar with its in- habitants as well. Even now many semi -savage natives of Africa and Polynesia profess a deep reverence for the crocodile. They consider him a near relative to man — a sort of ancestor. They even avoid naming him in their conversations, and if they must mention him they will say ' the old grandfather,' or use some other word expressing kinship and veneration. The crocodile, they maintain, acts exactly as they themselves do. He will never finally swallow his prey without having invited his relatives and friends to share the food; and if one of his tribe has been killed by man, otherwise than in due and just blood revenge, he will take vengeance upon any one of the murderer's kin. Therefore, if a negro has been eaten by a crocodile, his tribe will take the greatest care to discover the real culprit, and when he has been discovered and killed, they will carefully examine his intestines, in order to make sure that there has been no mistake; but if no proof of the beast's guilt is forthcoming, they will make all sorts of expiatory amends to the crocodile tribe, in order to appease VII [ 19 ] THE BIRra OF CONSCIENCE the relatives of the innocently slaughtered individual, and con- tinue to search for the real culprit. Otherwise the kinsfolk of the former would take revenge. The same behef exists among the Red Indians concerning the rattlesnake and the wolf, and its bearing upon the subsequent development of the idea of justice is self-evident. The fishes, their shoals, and the ways they play in the trans- parent waters, exploring them by their scouts before they move in a given direction, must have deeply impressed man from a remote antiquity. Traces of this impression are found in folk- lore in many parts of the globe. Thus, for instance, Dekana- wideh, the legendary law-giver of the Five Nations of the Red Indians, who is supposed to have given them the class organiza- tion, is represented as having retired first to meditate in contact with nature. He ' reached the side of a smooth, clear, running stream, transparent and full of fishes. He sat down, reclining on the sloping bank, gazing intent into the waters, watching the fishes playing about in complete harmony. . . .' Thereupon he conceived the scheme of dividing his people into gentes and classes, or totems.^ Altogether, for the primitive savage, animals are mysterious, problematic beings, possessed of a wide knowledge of the things of nature. They know much more than they are ready to tell us. In some way or another, by the aid of senses much more refined than ours, and by teUing to each other all that they notice in their rambles and flights, they know everything, for miles round. And if man has been 'just' toward them, they will warn him of a coming danger, as they warn each other; but they will take no heed of him if he has not been straightforward in his actions. Snakes and birds (the owl is a leader of the snakes), mammals and insects, Uzards and fishes — all understand each other, and continually communicate their observations to one another. They all belong to one brotherhood, into which they may, in some cases, admit man. Inside this vast brotherhood there are, of course, the still closer brotherhoods of beings 'of one blood.' The monkeys, ^J. Brant-Sero, 'Dekanawideh,' in Man, 1901, p. 166. In other legends the wise man of the tride learns wisdom from the beaver, or the squirrel, or some bird. VII [ 20 ] THE BIRTH OF CONSCIENCE the bears, the wolves, the elephants and the rhinoceroses, most ruminants, the hares and most of the rodents, the crocodiles, and so on, perfectly know their own kin, and they will not tolerate any one of their relatives to be slaughtered by man without taking, in one way or another, honest revenge. This conception must have had an extremely remote origin. It must have grown at a time when man had not yet become omnivorous (which I am incHned to think, must have happened during the Glacial period) and had not yet begun to hunt animals for food. However, the same conception has been retained down to the present time. Even now, when a savage is hunting, he is bound to respect cer- tain rules of propriety toward the animals, and he must perform certain expiatory ceremonies after his hunt. Most of these ceremonies are rigorously enacted, even nowadays in the savage clans, especially as regards those species which are considered the alHes of man. It is well known that two men belonging to two different clans or tribes can become brothers by mixing the blood of the two, obtained from small incisions made for that purpose. To enter into such a union was quite habitual in olden times, and we learn from the folklore of all nations, and especially the sagas, how religiously such a brotherhood was observed. But it was also quite habitual for man to enter into brotherhood with some animal. The tales continually mention it. An animal asks a hunter to spare it, and if the hunter accedes to the demand the two become brothers. And then the monkey, the bear, the doe, the bird, the crocodile, or the bee — any one of the sociable ani- mals — will take all possible care of the man-brother in the critical circumstances of his life, sending his or her animal brothers of different tribes to warn him or help him out of a difficulty. And if the warning comes too late, or is misunderstood, and he loses his life, they will all try to bring him back to hf e, and if they fail they will take the due revenge, just as if the man had been one of their own kin. When I journeyed in Siberia I was often struck, without understanding it, with the care which my Tungus or Mongol guide would take not to uselessly kill any animal. The fact is that every life is respected by a savage, or rather it was before he vn [ 21 ] THE BIRT^ OF CONSCIENCE came in contact with Europeans, If he kills an animal, it is for food or for clothing; but he does not destroy Hfe, as the whites do, for the mere excitement of the slaughter. True, the Red Indians nave done that with the buffaloes; but it was only after they had been for a long time in contact with the whites, and had got from them the rifle and the quick-firing revolver. Of course, there are rascals among the animals — the hyena, for instance, or the shrew-mouse, or the man-eating tiger; but these do not count: they are outlaws. As to the great animal world as a whole, savage children are taught to respect it and to see in it an extension of their own kin. The idea of 'justice,' conceived at its origin as revenge, is thus connected with observations made on animals. But it appears extremely probable that the idea of reward for ' just ' and 'unjust' treatment must also have originated, with primitive mankind, from the idea that animals take revenge if they have not been properly treated by man, and repay kindness with kind- ness. This idea is so deeply rooted in the minds of the savages all over the world that it may be considered as one of the most primitive conceptions of mankind. Extended from a few ani- mals to all of them, it soon embodied the whole of nature — the trees and the forests, the rivers and the seas, the rocks and the mountains, which are all living. Gradually it grew to be a con- ception of the great whole, bound together by certain links of mutual support, which watches all the actions of the hving beings and, owing to that solidarity in the universe, undertakes the revenge of wrong deeds. It became the conception of the Eumen- ides and the Moirai of the Greeks, the Parcge of the Romans, and especially the Karma of the Hindoos. The Greek legend of the cranes of Ibikus, which Hnks together man and birds, and countless Eastern legends, are poetical embodiments of the same conception. This is what primitive man saw in nature and learned from it. With our scholastic education, which has systematically ignored nature and has tried to explain its most common facts by meta- physical subtleties, we began to forget that lesson. But for our Stone-Age ancestors sociability and mutual aid within the tribe ^ must have been a fact so general in nature, so habitual, and so Vn [ 22 ] THE BIRTH OF CONSCIENCE common that they certainly could not imagine life under another aspect. The conception of an isolated being is a later product of civilization — an abstraction, which it took ages to develop in the human race. To a primitive man isolated life seems so strange, so much out of the usual course of nature, that when he sees a tiger, a badger, a shrew-mouse, or a kingfisher leading a solitary existence, or when he notices a tree that stands alone, far from the forest, he creates a legend to explain this strange occurrence. He makes no legends to explain Hf e in societies, but he has one for every case of sohtude. The hermit, if he is not a sage or a wizard, is in most cases an outcast of animal society. He has done something so contrary to the ordinary run of life that they have thrown him out. Very often he is a sorcerer, who has the command of all sorts of dangerous powers, and has something to do with the pestilential corpses which sow disease in the world. This is why he prowls at night, prosecuting his wicked designs under the cover of darkness. All other beings in nature are sociable, and human thought runs in this channel. Sociable life — that is, we, not I — is, in the eyes of primitive man, the normal form of life. // is life itself. Therefore ' We ' must have been the normal form of thinking for primitive man : a ' cate- gory ' of his understanding, as Kant might have said. And not even 'We,' which is still too personal, because it represents a multipHcation of the '/'s,' but rather such expressions as 'the men of the beaver tribe,' 'the kangaroo men,' or 'the turtles.' This was the primitive form of thinking, which nature impressed upon the mind of man. Here, in that identification, or, we might even say, in this ab- sorption of the ' I ' by the tribe, Hes the root of all ethical thought. The self -asserting ' individual' came much later on. Even now, with the lower savages, the 'individual' hardly exists at all. It is the tribe, with its hard-and-fast rules, superstitions, taboos, habits, and interests, which is always present in the mind of the child of nature. And in that constant, ever-present identifica- tion of the unit with the whole lies the substratum of all ethics, the germ out of which all the subsequent conceptions of justice, and the still higher conceptions of morality, grew up in the course of evolution. vn [23] VIII THE SOUL IN BEASTS THE GROWTH OF MODERN IDEAS ON ANIMALS" BY COUNTESS CESARESCO T F we accept, or even partly accept, the views oj Prince Kropot- kin as to the development 0} men from animals, and as to the nature and extent of our moral debt to the lower orders of life, then indeed the question of the possibility of a soul in the beast becomes of deepest interest. So also does the obverse of the same idea, our treatment of, our duty toward our ^^ brethren of the wild.^* How many of us have felt urged to lament with Burns: "I'm truly sorry man's dominion, Has broken nature's social union, An' justifies that ill opinion. Which makes thee startle At me, thy poor, earth-born companion. An' fellow-mortal. " It is this side of the question, the humane side, that seems ever uppermost in the mind of the Countess E. Martinengo Cesaresco. She is known throughout the English and Italian races, indeed throughout the world, as a '^ friend of the creature.''^ She has been active in his service and has written in his favor many times. In the following article, however, she keeps in mind the historic and also the scientific side of her subject, and presents us a summation of the most recent (1907) thought upon the relation of man and beast. The last age of antiquity was an age of yeast. Ideas were in fermentation; religious questions came to be regarded as "in- teresting" — just as they are now. The spirit of inquiry took the VIII [ I ] THE SJ^L IN BEASTS place of placid acceptance on the one hand, and placid indiffer- ence on the other. It was natural that there should be a re- bound from the effort of Augustus to re-order religion on an Im- perial, conventional, and unemotional basis. Then, too, Rome, which had never been really Italian except in the sublime pre- visions of Virgil, grew every day more cosmopolitan: the deni- zens of the discovered world found their way thither on business, for pleasure, as slaves — the influence of these last not being the least important factor, though its extent and character are not easy to define. Everything tended to foment a religious unrest which took the form of one of those "returns to the East" that are ever destined to recur: the spiritual sense of the Western world became Orientalized. The worship of Isis and Serapis and much more of Mithra proved to be more exciting than the worship of the Greek and Roman gods which represented Nature and law, while the new cults proposed to raise the veil on what transcends natural perception. No doubt the atmosphere of the East itself favored their rapid development ; the traveller in North Africa must be struck by the extraordinary frequency with which the symbols of Mithraism recur in the sculpture and mosaics of that once great Roman dependency. Evidently the birthland of St. Augustine bred in the matter-of-fact Roman colonist the same nostalgia for the Unknowable which even now a lonely night under the stars of the Sahara awakes in the dullest European soul. Personal immortality as a paramount doctrine ; a further hfc more real than this one; ritual purification, re- demption by sacrifice, mystical union with deity — these were among the un- Roman and even anti-Roman conceptions which lay behind the new, strange propaganda, and prepared the way for the diffusion of Christianity. With the Italian peasants who clung to the unmixed older faith no progress was made till perse- cution could be called in as an auxiliary. In such a time it was a psychological certainty that among the other Eastern ideas which were coming to the fore would be those ideas about animals which are roughly classed under the head of Pythagoreanism. The apostles of Christ in their jour- neys east or west might have met a singular individual who was carrying on an apostolate of his own, the one clear and un- VIII [ 2 ] THE SOUL IN BEASTS yielding point of which was the abolition of animal sacrifices. This was Apollonius of Tyana, our knowledge of whom is de- rived from the biography, in part perhaps fanciful, written by Philostratus in the third century to please the Empress Julia Domna, who was interested in occult matters. Apollonius worked wonders as well attested as those, for instance, of the Russian Father John, but he seems to have considered his power the naturally produced result of an austere life and abstinence from flesh and wine, which is a thoroughly Buddhist or Jaina theory. He was a Theosophist who refrained from attacking the outward forms and observances of established religion when they did not seem to him cither to be cruel or else incongruous to the degree of preventing a reverential spirit. He did not entirely understand that this degree is movable, any more than do those persons who want to substitute Gregorian chants for opera airs in rural Italian churches. He did not mind the Greek statues which appealed to the imagination by suggestions of beauty, but he blamed the Egyptians for representing deity as a dog or an ibis; if they disliked images of stone, why not have a temple where there were no images of any kind, where all was left to the inner vision of the worshipper ? In which cjucstion, almost acci- dentally, Apollonius throws out a hint of the highest form of spiritual worship. The keenly intellectual thinkers whom we call the Fathers of the Church saw that the majority of the ideas then agitating men's minds might find a quietus in Christian dogma, which suited them a great deal better than the vague and often gro- tesque shape they had worn hitherto. But there was a residuum of which they felt an instinctive fear, and pecuhar notions about animals had the ill-luck of being placed at the head of these. It could not have been a fortunate coincidence that two of the most prominent men who held them in the early centuries were declared foes of the new faith — Celsus and Porphyry. When the Church triumphed, the treatise written by Celsus would have been no doubt entirely destroyed hke other works of the same sort, had not Origen made a great number of quota- tions from it for the purpose of confutation. Celsus was no borne disputant after the fashion of the Octavius of Minucius, VXii [3] THE SOUL IN BEASTS but a man of almost encyclopaedic learning; if he was a less fair critic than he held himself to be, it was less from want of infor- mation than from want of that sympathy which is needful for true comprehension. The inner feeling of such a man toward the Christian Sectaries was not nearly so much that of a Torque- mada in regard to heretics as that of an old-fashioned Tory up- holder of throne and altar toward dissent fifty years ago. It was a feeling of social aloofness. Yet Celsus wished to be fair, and he had studied rehgions to enough purpose not to condemn as delusion or untruth every- thing that a superficial adversary would have rejected at once; for instance, he was ready to allow that the appearances of Christ to His disciples after the Crucifixion might be explained as psychical phenomena. Possibly he believed that truth, not falsehood, was the ultimate basis of all religions, as was the belief of Apollonius before him. In some respects Celsus was more unprejudiced than Apollonius; this can be observed in his remarks on Egyptian zoomorphism; it causes surprise, he says, when you go inside one of the splendid Egyptian temples to find for divinity a cat, a monkey, or a crocodile, but to the initiated they are symbols which under an allegorical veil turn people to honor imperishable ideas, not perishable animals as the vulgar suppose. It may have been his recondite researches which led Celsus to take up the question of the intelligence of animals and the conclusions to be drawn from it. He only touches lightly on the subject of their origin; he seems to lean toward the theory that the soul, life, mind, only is made by God, the corruptible and passing body being a natural growth or perhaps the handi- work of inferior spirits. He denied that reason belonged to man alone, and still more strongly that God created the universe for man rather than for the other animals. Only absurd pride, he says, can engender such a thought. He knew very well that this, far from being a new idea, was the normal view of the ancient world from Aristotle to Cicero; the distinguished men who disagreed with it had never won more than a small minority over to their opinion. Celsus takes Euripides to task for saying : • The sun and moon are made to serve mankind." VIII [ 4 ] THE SOUL IN BEASTS Why mankind ? he asks ; why not ants and flies ? Night serves them also for rest, and day for seeing and working. If it be said that we are the king of animals because we hunt and catch them or because we eat them, why not say that we are made for them because they hunt and catch us? Indeed, they are better provided than we, for while we need arms and nets to take them and the help of several men and dogs, Nature fur- nishes them with the arms they require, and we are, as it were, made dependent on them. You want to make out that God gave you the power to take and kill wild animals, but at the time when there were no towns or civilization or society or arms or nets, animals probably caught and devoured men while men never caught animals. In this way, it looks more as if God subjected man to animals than vice versa. If men seem dif- ferent from animals because they build cities, make laws, obey magistrates and rulers, you ought to note that this amounts to nothing at all, since ants and bees do just the same. Bees have their "kings"; some command, others obey; they make war, win battles, take prisoners the vanquished ; they have their towns and quarters; their work is regulated by fixed periods; they punish the lazy and cowardly — at least, they expel the drones. As to ants, they practise the science of social economy just as well as we do; they have granaries which they fill with provisions for the winter; they help their comrades if they see them bending under the weight of a burden; they carry their dead to places which become family tombs; they address each other when they meet: whence it follows that they never lose their way. We must conclude, therefore, that they have com- plete reasoning powers and common notions of certain general truths, and that they have a language and know how to ex- press fortuitous events. If some one, then, looked down from the height of heaven on to the earth, what difference would he see between our actions and those of ants and bees? If man is proud of knowing magical secrets, serpents and eagles know a great deal more, for they use many preservatives against poisons and diseases, and are acquainted with the virtues of certain stones with which they cure the ailments of their young ones, while if men find out such a cure they think they have hit vni [5I THE SOUL IN BEASTS on the greatest wonder in tne world. Finally, if man imagine that he is superior to animals because he possesses the notion of God, let him know that it is the same with many of them; what is there more divine, in fact, than to foresee and to fore- tell the future? Now for that purpose men have recourse to animals, especially to birds, and all our soothsayers do is to understand the indications given by these. If, therefore, birds and other prophetic animals show us by signs the future as it is revealed to them by God, it proves that they have closer relations with the deity than we; that they are wiser and more loved by God. Very enlightened men have thought that they understood the language of certain animals, and in proof of this they have been known to predict that birds would do some- thing or go somewhere, and this was observed to come true. No one keeps an oath more religiously or is more faithful to God than the elephant, which shows that he knows Him. Hence, concludes Celsus, the universe has not been made for man any more than for the eagle or the dolphin. Every- thing was created not in the interest of something else, but to contribute to the harmony of the whole in order that the world might be absolutely perfect. God takes care of the universe; it is that which His providence never forsakes, that which never falls into disorder. God no more gets angry with men than with rats or monkeys : everything keeps its appointed place. In this passage Celsus rises to a higher level than in any other of the excerpts preserved for us by Origen. The tone of irony which usually characterizes him disappears in this dignified affirmation of supreme wisdom justified of itself, not by the little standards of men — or ants. It must be recognized as a lofty conception, commanding the respect of those who differ from it, and reconcihng all apparent difficulties and con- tradictions forced upon us by the contemplation of man and Nature. But it brings no water from the cool spring to souls dying of thirst; it expounds in the clearest way and even in the noblest way the very thought which drove men into the Christian fold far more surciy than the learned apologies of controversialists like Origen: the thought of the crusliing un- importance of the individual. vm [ 6 ] THE SOUL IN BEASTS The least attentive reader must be struck by the real knowl- edge of natural history shown by Celsus; his ants are nearly as conscientiously observed as Lord Avebury's. Yet a certain suspicion of conscious exaggeration detracts from the serious- ness of his arguments ; he strikes one as more sincere in disbeliev- ing than in believing. A modern writer has remarked that Celsus in the second half of the second century forestalled Darwin in the second half of the nineteenth by denying human ascendancy and contending that man may be a little lower than the brute. But it scarcely seems certain whether he was convinced by his own reasoning or was not rather replying by paradoxes to what he considered the still greater paradoxes of Christian theology. The shadow of no such doubt falls on the pages of the neo- platonists Plotinus and Porphyry. To them the destiny of animals was not an academic problem, but an obsession. The questions which Heine's young man asked of the waves — "What signifies man? Whence does he come? Whither does he go?" — were asked by them with passionate earnestness in their application to all sentient things. Plotinus reasoned, with great force, that intelligent beast-souls must be like the soul of man, since in itself the essence of the soul could not be different. Porphyry (born at Tyre, a.d. 233), accepting this postulate that animals possess an intelligent soul like ours, went on to declare that it was therefore unlawful to kill or feed on them under any circumstances. If justice is due to rational beings, how is it possible to evade the conclusion that we are also bound to act justly toward the races below us? He who loves all animated nature will not single out one tribe of inno- cent beings for hatred; if he loves the whole he will love every part, and, above all, that part which is most closely alHed to ourselves. Porphyry was quite ready to admit that animals in their own way made use of words, and he mentions Melampus and Apollonius as among the philosophers who understood their language. Neoplatonism penetrated into the early church, but divested of its views on animal destiny; even the Catholic neoplatonist Boethius, though he was sensitively fond of animals (witness viii It] THE SOUL IN BEASTS his lines about caged birds), yet took the extreme view of the hard and fast Hne of separation, as may be seen by his poem on the "downward head," which he interpreted to indicate the earth-bound nature of all flesh save man. Birds, by the by, and even fishes, not to speak of camelopards, can hardly be said to have a "downward head." Meanwhile, the other manner of feehng, if not of thinking, reasserted its power, as it always will, for it belongs to the primal things. Excluded from the broad road, it came in by the narrow way — the way that leads to heaven. In the wake of the Christian Guru came a whole troop of charming beasts, little less saintly and miracu- lous than their holy protectors, and thus preachers, of the re- ligion of love were spared the reproach of showing an all-un- lo\'ing face toward creatures that could return love for love as well as most and better than many of the human kind. The saint saved the situation, and the Church wisely let him alone to discourse to his brother fishes or his sister turtle-doves, without inquiring about the strict orthodoxy of the proceeding.* Unhappily the more direct inheritors of neoplatonist dreams were not let alone. A trend of tendency toward Pythagorean- ism runs through their different developments from Philo to the Gnostics, from the Gnostics, through the Paulicians, to the Albigenses. It passes out of our sight when these were sup- pressed in the thirteenth century by the most sanguinary perse- cution that the world has seen; but before long it was to re- appear in one shape or another, and we may be sure that the thread was never wholly lost. At an early date, in the heart of official Catholicism, an inconsistency appeared which is less easily explained than homihes composed for fishes or hymns for birds; namely, the strange business of animal prosecutions. Without inquiring exactly what an animal is, it is easy to bestow upon it either blessings or curses. The beautiful rite of the blessing of the beasts, which is still performed once a year in many places, ^ It is the common impression in Rome that the present occupant of the Chair of St. Peter is nearer to the Saints than to the doctors; it does not cause surprise, therefore, though it must cause a great deal of pleasvire, to find him recently bestowing his blessing "on all protectors of animals throughout the world. " — C. VIII [ 8 1 THE SOUL IN BEASTS involves no doctrinal crux. In Corsica the priest goes up to the high mountain plateaux where the animals pasture in the summer, and after saying mass in presence of all the four- footed family, he solemnly blesses them and exhorts them to prosper and multiply. It is a dehglitful scene, but it does not affect the coiiception of the moral status of animals, nor would that conception be affected by a right-down malediction or order to quit. What, however, can be thought of a regular trial of inconvenient or offending animals, in which great care is taken to keep up the appearance of fair-play to the defendants ? Our first impression is that it must be an elaborate comedy; but a study of the facts makes it impossible to accept this theory. The earliest allusions to such trials that seem to exist belong to the ninth century, which does not prove that they were the first of the kind. One trial took place in 824 a.d. The Coun- cil of Worms decided in 868 that if a man has been killed by bees they ought to suffer death, "but," added the judgment, "it will be permissible to eat their honey." A relic of the same order of ideas lingers in the habit some people have of shooting a horse which has caused a fatal accident, often the direct consequence of bad riding or bad driving. The earlier beast trials of which we have knowledge were conducted by laymen, the later by ecclesiastics, which suggests their origin in a folk-practice. A good, characteristic instance began on September 5th, 1370. The young son of a Burgundian swine- herd had been killed by three sows which seemed to have feared an attack on one of their young ones. All members of the herd were arrested as accomplices, which was a serious matter to their owners, the inmates of a neighboring convent, as the animals, if convicted, would be burnt and their ashes buried. The prior pointed out that three sows alone were guilty; surely the rest of the pigs ought to be acquitted. Justice did not move quickly in those times; it was on the 12th September, 1379, that the Duke of Burgundy delivered judgment; only the three guilty sows and one young pig (what had it done?) were to be executed; the others were set at liberty, "notwith- standing that they had seen the death of the boy without de- fending him." Were the original ones all alive after nine VIII [ 9 ] THE SOUL IN BEASTS years ? If so, would so long a respite have been granted them had no legal proceedings been instituted ? An important trial took place in Savoy in the year 1587. The accused was a certain fly. Two suitable advocates were assigned to the insects, who argued on their behalf that these creatures were created before man, and had been blessed by God who gave them the right to feed on grass, and for all these and other good reasons the flies were in their right when they occupied the vineyards of the Commune; they simply availed themselves of a legitimate privilege conforming to divine and natural law. The plaintiffs' advocate retorted that the Bible and common sense showed animals to be created for the utility of man; hence they could not have the right to cause him loss, to which the counsel for the insects replied that man had the right to command animals, no doubt, but not to persecute, excommunicate, and interdict them when they were merely con- forming to natural law, "which is eternal and immutable like the divine." The judges were so deeply impressed by this pleading that, to cut the case short, which seemed to be going against him the Mayor of St. Julien hastened to propose a compromise; he offered a piece of land where the flies might find a safe re- ireat and live out their days in peace and plenty. The offer was accepted. On June 29th, 1587, the citizens of St. Juhen were bidden to the market square by ringing the church bells, and after a short discussion they ratified the agreement, which handed over a large piece of land to the exclusive use of the insects. Hope was expressed that they would be entirely satis- fied with the bargain. A right of way across the land was, indeed, reserved to the public, but no harm whatever was to be done to the flies on their own territory. It was stated in the formal contract that the reservation was ceded to the insects in perpetuity. All was going well, when it transpired that, in the mean time, the flies' advocates had paid a visit to that much-vaunted piece of land, and when they returned they raised the strongest objection to it on the score that it was arid, sterile, and pro- duced nothing. The mayor's counsel disputed this; the land, VIII [ 10 ] THE SOUL IN BEASTS he said, produced no end of nice small trees and bushes, the very things for the nutrition of insects. The judges intervened by ordering a survey to find out the real truth, which survey cost three florins. There, alas, the story ends, for the wind- ing up of the affair is not to be found in the archives of St. Julien. Records of 144 such trials have come to light. Of the two I have described, it will be remarked that one belongs, as it were, to criminal and the other to civil law. The last class is the most curious. No doubt the trial of flies or locusts was resorted to when other means of getting rid of them had failed; it was hoped, somehow, that the elaborate appearance of fair play would bring about a result not to be obtained by violence. We can hardly resist the inference that they involved some sort of recognition or intuition of animals' rights and even of ani- mal intelligence. Afterward, during the cruel witch mania, not a few cleverly trained animals were put to death on suspicion of diabolical possession, hke Bankes' horse, "Morocco," whose pretty tricks were mentioned by Shakespeare. It is lucky for the Prussian "Hans " that he lives in a more enlightened age. In the dawn of modern literature animals played a large, though artificial, part, which must not be quite ignored on ac- count of its artificiality, because in the Bestiaries, as in the -^sopic and Oriental fables from which they were mainly de- rived, there was an inextricable tangle of observations of the real creature and arbitrary ascription to him of human quali- ties and adventures. At last they became a mere method for attacking political or ecclesiastical abuses, but their great popu- larity was as much due to their outer as to their inner sense. There is not any doubt that at the same time floods of Eastern fairy-tales were migrating to Europe, and in these the most highly appreciated hero was always the friendly beast. In a romance of the thirteenth century called Guillaume de Palerme, all previous marvels of this kind were outdone by the story of a SiciUan prince who was befriended by a were-wolf ! It is not generally remembered that the Indian or Buddhist view of animals must have been pretty well known in Europe VIII [11] THE SO^ IN BEASTS at least as early as the fourteenth century. The account of the monastery "where many strange beasts of divers kinds do live upon a hill," which Fra Odoric, of Pordenone, dictated in 1330, is a description, both accurate and charming, of a Bud- dhist animal refuge, and in the version given of it in Mande- ville's "Travels," if not in the original, it must have been read by nearly every one who could read, for no book ever had so vast a diffusion as the "Travels" of the elusive Knight of St. Albans. With the Italian renaissance came the full modern cEsthetic enjoyment of animals — the admiration of their beauty and perfection, which had been appreciated, of course, long before, but not quite in the same spirit. The all-round gifted Leo Battista Alberti in the fifteenth century took the same criti- cal delight in the points of a fine animal that a modern expert would take. He was a splendid rider, but his interest was not confined to horses; his love for his dog is shown by his having pronounced a funeral oration over him. We feel that with such men humanity toward animals was a part of good manners. "We owe justice to men," said the intensely civilized Montaigne, "and grace and benignity to other creatures that are capable of it; there is a natural com- merce and mutual obligation between them and us." Sir Arthur Helps, speaking of this, called it "using courtesy to animals," and, when one comes to think of it, is not such "cour- tesy" the particular mark and sign of a man of good breeding in all ages ? The Renaissance brought with it something deeper than a wonderful quickening of the a?sthetic sense in all directions; it also brought that spiritual quickening which is the co-effi- cient of every really upward movement of the human mind. It was to be foreseen that animals would have their portion of attention in the ponderings of the god-intoxicated musers on life and things w'ho have been called the sceptics of the Re- naissance. For the proof that they did receive it we have only to turn to the pages of Giordano Bruno: "Every part of crea- tion has its share in being and cognition." "There is a differ- ence, not in quality, but in quantity, between the soul of man, VUI [12] THE SOUL IN BEASTS the animal, and the plant." "Among horses, elephants, and dogs there are single individuals which appear to have almost the understanding of men." "With what understanding the ant gnaws her grain of wheat lest it should sprout in her under- ground habitations ! " Bruno's prophetic guess, that instinct is inherited habit, might have saved Descartes (who was much indebted to the Nolan) from giving his name an unenviable immortality in connection with the theory which is nearly all that the ignorant know now of Cartesian philosophy. This was the theory that animals are automata, a sophism that may be said to have swept Europe, though it was not long before it provoked a re- action. Descartes got this idea from the very place where is was hkely to originate, from Spain. A certain Gomez Pereira advanced it before Descartes made it his own, which even led to-a charge of plagiarism. "Because a clock marks time and a bee makes honey, we are to consider the clock and the bee to -be machines. Because they do one thing better than man and no other thing so well as man, we are to conclude that they have no mind, but that Nature acts within them, holding their organs at her disposal." "Nor are we to think, as the ancients do, that animals speak, though we do not know their language, for, if that were so, they, having several organs re- lated to ours, might as easily communicate with us as with each other." About this, Huxley showed that an almost imperceptible imperfection of the vocal chord may prevent articulated sounds. Moreover, the click of the bushman, which is almost his only language, is exceedingly hke the sounds made by monkeys. Language, as defined by an eminent Itahan man of science, Professor Broca, is the faculty of making things known or ex- pressing them by signs or sounds. Much the same definition was given by Mivart, and if there be a better one, we have still to wait for it. Human language is evolved; at one time man had it not. The babe in the cradle is without it; the deaf mute, in his untaught state, is without it; er^o, the babe and the deaf mute cannot feel. Poor babes and poor deaf mutes, should the scientific Loyolas of the future adopt this view! VIII ' [ 13 ] THE SOUL IN BEASTS I do not know if any one has remarked that rural and primi- tive folk can never bring themselves to believe of any foreign tongue that it is real human language like their own. To them it seems a jargon of meaningless and uncouth sounds. Chanct, a follower of Descartes, said that he would beheve that beasts thought when a beast told him so. By what cries of pain, by what looks of love, have not beasts told men that they thought! Man himself does not think in words in mo- ments of profound emotion, whether of grief or joy. He cries out or he acts. Thought in its absolutely elementary form is action. The mother thinks in the kiss she gives her child. Perhaps God thinks in constellations. I asked a man who had saved many Hves by jumping into the sea, "What did you think of at the moment of doing it?" He repUed, "You do not think, or you might not do it." The whole trend of philosophic speculation worthy of the name lies toward unity, but the Cartesian theory would arbi- trarily divide even man's physical and sensational nature from that of the other animals. To remedy this, Descartes admitted that man was just as much an automatic machine as other creat- ures. By what right then does he complain when he happens to have a toothache? Because, says Descartes triumphantly, man has an immortal soul! The child thinks in his mother's womb, but the dog, which after scenting two roads takes the third without demur, sure that his master must have gone that way, this dog is acting "by springs," and neither thinks nor feels at all. The misuse of the ill-treated word "Nature" cannot hide the fact that the beginning, middle, and end of Descartes' argu- ment rests on a perpetually recurrent miracle. Descartes con- fessed as much when he said that God could make animals as machines, so why should it be impossible that he had made them as machines? Voltaire's clear reason revolted at this logic; he declared it to be absurd to imagine that God had given animals organs of feeling in order that they might not feel. He would have endorsed Professor Romanes' saying that "the theory of animal automatism which is usually attributed to Descartes can never be accepted by common sense." vni [14] THE SOUL IN BEASTS On the other hand, while Descartes was being persecuted by the Church for opinions which he did not hold, this par- ticular opinion of his was seized upon by Catholic divines as a vindication of creation. Pascal so regarded it. The miracu- lous element in it did not disturb him. Malebranche said that though opposed by reason it was approved by faith. Descartes said that the idea that animals think and feel is a relic of childhood. The idea that they do 7iot think and feel might be more truly called a relic of that darkest side of per- verse childhood, the existence of which we are all fain to forget. Whoever has seen a little child throwing stones at a toad on the highway — and sad because his hands are too small to take up the bigger stones to throw — will understand what I mean. I do not wish to allude more than slightly to a point which is of too much importance to pass over in silence. Descartes was a vivisector; so were the pious people at Port Royal, who embraced his teaching with enthusiasm and liked to hear the howls of the dogs they vivisected. M. Emile Ferriere in his work "L'ame est la fonction du cerveau," sees in the "soul" of beasts exactly the same nature as in the "soul" of man; the difference, he maintains, is one of degree; thought generally inferior, it is sometimes superior to "souls" of certain human groups. Here is a candid materialist who deserves respect. But there is a school of physiologists nowadays which carries on an unflagging campaign in favor of belief in unconscious animal machines which work by springs, while denying that there is a God to wind up the springs, and in conscious human machines, while denying that there is a soul, independent of matter, which might account for the difference. "The wish is father to the thought." Non ragionam di lor ma guar da e passa. The strongest of all reasons for dismissing the machine theory of animals is their variety of idiosyncrasy. It is said that to the shepherd no two sheep look alike; it is certain that no two animals of any kind have the same characters. Some are selfish, some are unselfish, some are gentle, some irretriev- ably ill-tempered both to each other and to man. Some ani- mals do not show much regret at the loss of their offspring; with others it is manifestly the reverse. Edouard Quinet de- vni [15] THE SOUL IN BEASTS sm scribed how on one occasion, when visiting the hons' cage in the Jardin des Plantcs, he observed the Hon gently place his large paw on the forehead of the Uoness, and so they remained, grave and still, all the time he was there. He asked Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, who was with him, what it meant. "Their Hon cub," was the answer, "died this morning." "Pity, benevo- lence, sympathy, could be read on those rugged faces." That these quaHties are often absent in sentient beings, what man can doubt ? but they are not to be found in the best machine- made animals in all Nuremberg! One of the first upholders of the idea of legislative protec- tion of animals was Jeremy Bentham, who asked why the law should refuse its protection to any sensitive being? iMost people forget the degree of opposition which was encountered by the earHcr combatants of cruel practices and pastimes in England. Cobbctt made a furious attack on a clergyman who, to his honor, was agitating for the suppression of bull- baiting, "the poor man's sport," as Cobbett called it. That it demoralized the poor man as well as tormented the bull never entered into the head of the inimitable wieldcr of English prose, pure and undcfilcd, who took it under his (happily) in- effectual protection. Societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals had, in their day, to undergo almost as much criti- cism and ridicule in England as they now meet with in some parts of the Continent. Even the establishment of the Dogs' Home in London raised a storm of disapproval, as may be seen by any one who turns over the files of the Times for October, i860. If the friends of humanity persevere, the change of sentiment which has become an accompHshcd fact in England, will in the end triumph elsewhere. Unfortunately, humane sentiment, and espcciaUy humane practice, do not progress on a level line. As long ago as 1782 an English writer named Soame Jenyns protested against the wickedness of shooting a bear on an inaccessible island of ice, or an eagle on the mountain's top. "We are unable to give Hfe and therefore ought not to take it away from the meanest insect without sufi'icient reason." What would he say if he came back to earth to find whole species of beautiful winged VIII [ 16 ] THE SOUL IN BEASTS creatures being destroyed to afford a more or less barbarous ornament for women's heads ? The "discovery" of Indian literature brought prominently forward in the West the Indian ideas of animals of which the old travellers had given the earliest news. The effect of famil- iarity with those ideas may be traced in many writers, but no- where to such an extent as in the works of Schopenhauer, for whom, as for many more obscure students, they formed the most attractive and interesting part of Oriental lore. Schopen- hauer cannot speak about animals without using a tone of passionate vehemence which was, without doubt, genuine. He felt the intense enjoyment in observing them which the lonely soul has ever felt, whether it belonged to saint or sinner. All his pessimism disappears when he leaves the haunts of man for the retreats of beasts. What a pleasure it is, he says, to watch a wild animal going about undisturbed! It shows us our own nature in a simpler and more sincere form. "There is only one mendacious being in the world, and that is man. Every other is true and sincere." It strikes me that total sin- cerity did not shine on the face of a dog which I once saw trot- ting innocently away, after burying a rabbit he had caught in a ploughed field, near a tree in the hedge — the only tree there was — which would make it easy for him to identify the spot. But about that I will say no more. The German "Friend of the Creature" was indignant at "the unpardonable forget- fulness in which the lower animals have hitherto been left by the morahsts of Europe." The duty of protecting them, neg- lected by religion, falls to the police. Mankind are the devils of the earth, and animals the souls they torment. Full of these sentiments, Schopenhauer was prepared to wel- come unconditionally the Indian conception of the Wheel of Being and to close his eyes to its defects. Strauss, too, hailed it as a doctrine which "unites the whole of Nature in one sacred and mysterious bond" — a bond in which, he goes on to say, a breach has been made by the Judaism and DuaHsm of Chris- tianity. He might have observed that the Church derived her notions on the subject rather from Aristotle than from Semitic sources. VIII [ 17 ] THE SqpL IN BEASTS Schopenhauer came to the conclusion that the ill-treatment of animals arose directly from the denial to them of immortality, while it was ascribed to men. There is and there is not truth in this. When all is said, the humane man always was and always will be human; "the merciful man regardeth the life of his beast." And since people reason to fit their acts rather than act to fit their reasoning, he will even find a motive for his humanity where others find an excuse for the lack of it. Humphry Primatt wrote in 1776: "Cruelty to a brute is an in- jury irreparable because there is no future life to be a com- pensation for present afflictions." Mr. Lecky, in his "History of European Morals," tells of a cardinal who let himself be bitten by gnats because "we have heaven, but these poor creatures only present enjoyment!" Could Jaina do more ? Strauss thought that the rising tide of popular sentiment about animals was the direct result of the abandonment by science of the spiritualistic isolation of man from Nature. I suspect that those who have worked hardest for animals in the last half century cared little about the origin of species, while it is certain that some professed evolutionists have been their worst foes. The fact remains, however, that by every rule of logic the theory of evolution ought to produce the effect which Strauss thought that it had produced. The discovery which gives its name to the nineteenth century revolutionizes the whole philosophic conception of the place of animals in the Universe. Lamarck, whom Cuvier so cruelly attacked, was the first to discern the principle of evolution. At one time he held the Chair of Zoology at the University of Paris; but the opposition which his ideas met with crushed him in body, though not in soul, and he died bhnd and in want in 1829, only consoled by the care of an admirable daughter. His last words are said to have been that it is easier to discover a truth than to convince others of it. An Italian named Carlo Lessona was one of tlie first to be convinced. He wrote a work containing the phrase, "the in- telhgence of animals" — which work, by the rule then in force, VIII [ 18 ] THE SOUL IN BEASTS had to be presented to the ecclesiastical Censor at Turin to receive his permit before publication. Tlie canon who ex- amined the book fell upon the words above mentioned, and re- marked, "This expression, 'intelligence of animals,' will never do!" "But," said Lessona, "it is commonly used in natural history books." "Oh!" replied the canon, "natural history has much need of revision." The great and cautious Darwin said that the senses, intui- tions, emotions, and faculties, such as love, memory, attention, curiosity, imitation, reason, of which man boasts, may be found in an incipient or even sometimes in a well-developed condition, in the lower animals. "Man, with all his noble qualities, his God-like intellect, still bears in his bodily frame ■ the indelible stamp of his lowly origin. Our brethren fly in the air, haunt the bushes, and swim in the sea." Darwin agreed with Agassiz in recognizing in the dog something very like the human conscience. Dr. Arnold said that the whole subject of the brute creation was such a painful mystery that he dared not approach it. Michelet called animal life a "sombre mystery," and shuddered at the "daily murder," hoping that in another globe "these base and cruel fatalities may be spared to us." It is strange to find how many men of very different types have wandered without a guide in these dark alleys of speculation. A few of them arrived at, or thought they had arrived at, a solution. Lord Chesterfield wrote that "animals preying on each other is a law of Nature which we did not make and which we cannot undo, for 'if I do not eat chickens my cat will eat mice.' " But the appeal to Nature will not satisfy every one; our whole human conscience is a protest against Nature, while our moral actions are an attempt to effect a compromise. Paley pointed out that the law was not good, since we could live without ani- mal food, and wild beasts could not. He offered another justi- fication, the permission of Scripture. This was satisfactory to him, but he must have been aware that it waives the question without answering it. Some humane people nave taken refuge in the automata argument, which is like taking a sleeping-draught to cure a VIII [ 19 ] THE SOUL IN BEASTS broken leg. Others, again, look for justice to animals in the one and only hope that man possesses of justice to himself — in compensation after death for unmerited suffering in this life. Leibnitz said that Eternal Justice ought to compensate animals for their misfortunes on earth. It is curious to find that in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries seven or eight small works, written in Latin in support of this thesis, were published in Germany and Sweden. Probably in all the world a number, unsuspectedly large, of sensitive minds has endorsed the belief expressed so well in the lines which Southey wrote on coming home to find that a favorite old dog had been "destroyed" during his absence : Mine is no narrow creed; And He who gave thee being did not frame The mystery of Hfe to be the sport Of merciless man ! There is another world For all that live and move — a better one ! Where the proud bipeds, who would fain confine Infinite Goodness to the little bounds Of their own charity, may envy thee! The holders of this "no narrow creed" start with all the advantages from the mere point of view of dialectics. They can boast that they have placed the immortality of the soul on a scientific basis. For truly, it is more reasonable to suppose that the soul is natural than supernatural, a word invented to clothe our ignorance ; and, if natural, why not universal ? They have the right to say, moreover, that they and they alone have "justified the ways of God." They alone have admitted all creation that groaneth and travailcth to the ulti- mate guerdon of the "Love that moves the sun and other stars." VIII [ 20 ] IX THE FAILURE OF EVOLUTION "HUMAN SELECTION AND MARRIAGE" BY ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE J LFRED RUSSEL WALLACE, LL.D., D.C.L., F.R.S., stands to-day as the father of modern science, the dean of living scholars. An aged man 0} eighty- jour, he is still vigorous and full of thought, still writing for a world which is little likely ever to forget his remarkable entry into fame. It was he who. at the same time as Darwin, worked out the theory of the survival of the fittest. From his far-ojj exploring station in the Malayan archi- pelago, Mr. Wallace sent home to Darwin an essay which covered the very ground upon which its recipient was at work. Darwin made public both his own work and Wallace^ s, and thus the two men shone forth as twin stars of the great new doctrine. It was around Darwin that the attack and defence of evolution centred, and doubtless he proved himself the greater scientist of the two; so that the fame of the dead discoverer has justly outshone the fame of the one still living. Yet science knows few names to equal that of Wallace. • His article here treats the startling question of the failure of his famous doctrine to apply to modern conditions of society, and, in consequence, the possible retrogression of human life and the sur- vival of the unfit. The danger is a real one; it has drawn wide attention of late. Modern pity and charity protect the feeble; modern war and competition destroy the strong. Mr. Wallace finds the remedy in the wisdom of women, in the marriage customs of the future. Whether he is right in this or no, he makes star- K [I] THE FAILURE OF EVOLUTION tlingly evident the jact that me oldbrute law oj survival has ceased to operate upon mankind. In one of my latest conversations with Darwin he expressed himself very gloomily on the future of humanity, on the ground that in our modern civilization natural selection had no play, and the fittest did not survive. Those who succeed in the race for wealth are by no means the best or the most intelligent, and it is notorious that our population is more largely renewed in each generation from the lower than from the middle and upper classes. As a recent American writer well puts it, "We behold the melancholy spectacle of the renewal of the great mass of society from the lowest classes, the highest classes to a great ex- tent either not marrying or not having children. The floating population is always the scum, and yet the stream of life is largely renewed from this source. Such a state of affairs, sufficiently dangerous in any society, is simply suicidal in the democratic civilization of our day." ^ That the check to progress here indicated is a real one few will deny, and the problem is evidently felt to be one of vital im- portance, since it has attracted the attention of some of our most thoughtful writers, and has quite recently furnished the theme for a perfect flood of articles in our best periodicals. I propose here to consider very briefly the various suggestions made by these writers, and afterward shall endeavor to show that, when the course of social evolution shall have led to a more rational organization of society, the problem will receive its final solution by the action of physiological and social agencies, and in perfect harmony v/ith the highest interests of humanity. ARE THE RESULTS OF TRAINING HEREDITARY? Before discussing the question itself it will be well to consider whether there are in fact any other agencies than some form of selection to be relied on. It has been generally accepted hitherto that such beneficial influences as education, hygiene, and social refinement had a cumulative action, and would of themselves lead to a steady improvement of all civilized races. This view 1 Hiram M. Stanley in the Arena. IX [2] THE FAILURE OF EVOLUTION rested on the belief that whatever improvement was effected in individuals was transmitted to their progeny, and that it would be thus possible to effect a continuous advance in physical, moral, and intellectual qualities without any selection of the better or ehmination of the inferior types. But of late years grave doubts have been thrown on this view, owing chiefly to the researches of Galton and Weismann as to the fundamental causes to which heredity is due. The balance of opinion among physiologists now seems to be against the heredity of any quah- ties acquired by the individual after birth, in which case the question we are discussing will be much simphfied, since we shall be limited to some form of selection as the only possible means of improving the race. In order to make the difference between the two theories clear to those who may not have followed the recent discussions on the subject, an illustration may be useful. Let us suppose two persons, each striving to produce two distinct types of horse — the cart-horse and the racer— from the wild prairie horses of America, and that one of them beheves in the influence of food and training, the other in selection. Each has a lot of a hundred horses to begin with, as nearly as possible alike in quality. The one who trusts to selection at once divides his horses into two lots, the one stronger and heavier, the other lighter and more active, and, breeding from these, continually selects, for the parents of the succeeding generation, those which most nearly approach the two types required. In this way it is perfectly cer- tain that in a comparatively short period — thirty or forty years perhaps — he would be able to produce two very distinct forms, the one a very fair racehorse, the other an equally good specimen of a cart-horse; and he could do this without subjecting the two strains to any difference of food or training, since it is by selec- tion alone that our various breeds of domestic animals have in most cases been produced. On the other hand, the person who undertook to produce similar results by food and training alone, without allowing selection to have any part in the process, would have to act in a very different manner. He should first divide his horses into two lots as nearly as possible identical in all points, and there- IX [3] THE FAILURE OF EVOLUTION after subject the one lot to oaily exercise in drawing loads at a slow pace, the other lot to equally constant exercise in running, and he might also supply them with different kinds of food if he thought it calculated to aid in producing the required effect. In each successive generation he must make no selection of the swiftest or the strongest, but must either keep the whole progeny of each lot, or carefully choose an average sample of each to be again subjected to the same discipline. It is quite certain that the very different kinds of exercise would have some effect on the individuals so trained, enlarging and strengthening a different set of muscles in each, and if this effect were transmitted to the off- spring then there ought to be in this case also a steady advance toward the racer and the cart-horse type. Such an experiment, however, has never been tried, and we cannot therefore say posi- tively what would be the result ; but those who accept the theory of the non-heredity of acquired characters would predict with confidence that after thirty or forty generations of training with- out selection, the last two lots of colts would have made little or no advance toward the two types required, but would be practi- cally indistinguishable. It is exceedingly difficult to find any actual cases to illustrate this point, since either natural or artificial selection has almost always been present. The apparent effects of disuse in causing the diminution of certain organs, such as the reduced wings of some birds in oceanic islands and the very small or aborted eyes of some of the animals inhabiting extensive caverns, can be as well explained by the withdrawal of the cumulative agency of natural selection and by economy of growth, as by the direct effects of disuse. The following facts, however, seem to show that special skill derived from practice, when continued for several generations, is not inherited, and does not therefore tend to in- crease. The wonderful skill of most of the North American Indians in following a trail by indications quite imperceptible to the ordinary European has been dwelt upon by many writers, but it is now admitted that the white trappers equal and often excel them, though these trappers have in almost every case acquired their skill in a comparatively short period, without any of the inherited experience supposed to belong to the Indian. IX [4] THE FAILURE OF EVOLUTION Again, for many generations a considerable proportion of the male population of Switzerland has practised rifle-shooting as a national sport, yet in international contests they show no marked superiority over our riflemen, who are, in a large proportion, the sons of men who never handled a gun. Another case is afforded by the upper classes of this country who for many generations have been educated at the universities, and have had their classi- cal and mathematical abilities developed to the fullest extent by rivalry for honors. Yet now, that for some years these institu- tions have been opened to dissenters whose parents usually for many generations have had no such training, it is found that these dissenters carry off their full share or even more than their share of honors. We thus see that the theory of the non-heredity of acquired characters, whether physical or mental, is supported by a considerable number of facts, while few if any are directly opposed to it. We therefore propose to neglect the influence of education and habit as possible factors in the improvement of our race, and to confine our argument entirely to the possibility of improvement by some form of selection.^ PROPOSALS FOR THE IMPROVEMENT OF THE RACE Among the modern writers who have dealt with this question the opinions of Mr. Galton are entitled to be first considered, because he has studied the whole subject of human faculty in the most thorough manner, and has perhaps thrown more light upon it than any other writer. The method of selection by which he has suggested that our race may be improved is to be brought into action by means of a system of marks for family merit, both as to health, intellect, and morals, those individuals who stand high in these respects being encouraged to marry early by state endowments sufficient to enable the young couples to make a start in life. Of all the proposals that have been made tending to the systematic improvement of our race, this is one of the least objectionable, but it is also I fear among the least effective. Its tendency would undoubtedly be to increase the number and to raise the standard of our highest and best men, but it would at the same time leave the bulk of the population unaffected, and ^ Those who desire more information on this subject should read Weismann's Essays on Heredity. IX [5] THE FAILURE OF EVOLUTION would but slightly diminis^he rate at which the lower types tend to supplant or to take the place of the higher. What we want is, not a higher standard of perfection in the few, but a higher average, and this can best be produced by the ehmination of the lowest of all and a free interminghng of the rest. Something of this kind is proposed by Mr. Hiram M. Stanley in his article on "Our Civilization and the Marriage Problem," already referred to. This writer beheves that civilizations perish because, as wealth and art increase, corruption creeps in, and the new generations fail in the work of progress because the renewal of individuals is left chiefly to the unfit. The two great factors which secure perfection in each animal race — sexual selection by which the fit are born, and natural selection by which the fittest survive — both fail in the case of mankind, among whom are hosts of individuals which in any other class of beings would never have been born, or, if born, would never sur- vive. He argues that, unless some effective measures are soon adopted and strictly enforced, our case will be irremediable ; and, since natural selection fails so largely, recourse must be had to artificial selection. "The drunkard, the criminal, the diseased, the morally weak should never come into society. Not reform, but prevention, should be the cry." The method by which this is proposed to be done is hinted at in the following passages: " In the true golden age, which lies not behind but before us, the privilege of parentage will be esteemed an honor for the com- paratively few, and no child will be born who is not only sound in body and mind, but also above the average as to natural ability and moral force"; and again, "The most important matter in society, the inherent quality of the members which compose it, should be regulated by trained specialists." Of this proposal and all of the same character we may say that nothing can possibly be more objectionable, even if we ad- mit that they might be effectual in securing the object aimed at. But even this is more than doubtful; and it is quite certain that any such interference with personal freedom in matters so deeply affecting individual happiness will never be adopted by the majority of any nation, or if adopted would never be submitted to by the minority without a lif e-and-death struggle. IX [6] THE FAILURE OF EVOLUTION Another popular writer of the greatest ability and originality, who has recently given us his solution of the problem, is Mr. Grant Allen. His suggestion is in some respects the very re- verse of the last, yet it is, if possible, even more objectionable. Instead of any interference with personal freedom he proposes the entire abolition of legal restrictions as to marriage, which is to be a free contract, to last only so long as either party desires. This alone, however, would have no effect on race-improvement, except probably a prejudicial one. The essential part of his method is that girls should be taught, both by direct education and by the influence of public opinion, that the duty of all healthy and intellectual women is to be mothers of as many and as per- fect children as possible. For this purpose they are recom- mended to choose as temporary husbands the finest, healthiest, and most intellectual men, thus insuring a variety of combina- tions of parental qualities which would lead to the production of offspring of the highest possible character and to the continual advancement of the race.^ I think I have fairly summarized the essence of Mr. Grant Allen's proposal, which, though enforced with all his hterary skill and piquancy of illustration, can, in my opinion, only be fitly described by the term already applied to it by one of his reviewers, "detestable." It purports to be advanced in the interests of the children and of the race ; but it would necessarily impair that family life and parental affection which are the prime essentials to the well-being of children ; while, though it need not necessarily produce, it would certainly favor, the increase of pure sensuahsm, the most degrading and most fatal of all the quali- ties that tend to the deterioration of races and the downfall of nations. One of the modern American advocates of greater Hberty of divorce, in the interest of marriage itself, thus admir- ably summarizes the essential characteristics and purport of true marriage: " In a true relation, the chief object is the loving com- panionship of man and woman, their capacity for mutual help and happiness, and for the development of all that is noblest in each other. The second object is the building up a home and family, a place of rest, peace, security, in which child-hfe can * See The Girl of the Future in The Universal Review. IX [7] THE FAILURE OF EVOLUTION bud and blossom like flowers in the sunshine."^ For such rest, peace, and security, permanence is essential. This permanence need not be attained by rigid law, but by the influence of public opinion, and, more surely still, by those deep-seated feelings and emotions which, under favorable conditions, render the marriage tie stronger and its influence more beneficial the longer it en- dures. To me it appears that no system of the relations of men and women could be more fatal to the happiness of individuals, the well-being of children, or the advancement of the race, than that proposed by Mr. Grant Allen. OBJECTIONS TO ALL THE PRECEDING PROPOSALS Before proceeding further with the main question it is neces- sary to point out that, besides the special objections to each of the proposals here noticed, there is a general and fundamental ob- jection. They all attempt to deal at once, and by direct legisla- tive enactment, with the most important and most vital of all human relations, regardless of the fact that our present phase of social development is not only extremely imperfect, but vicious and rotten at the core. How can it be possible to determine and settle the relations of women to men which shall be best alike for individuals and for the race, in a society in which a very large proportion of women are obliged to work long hours daily for the barest subsistence, while another large proportion are forced into more or less uncongenial marriages as the only means of securing some amount of personal independence or physical well-being? Let any one consider, on the one hand, the lives of the wealthy as portrayed in the society papers and, on the other hand, the terri- ble condition of millions of workers — men, women, and children — and the still more awful condition of those who seek work of any kind in vain, and, seeing their children slowly dying of starvation, are driven in utter helplessness and despair to murder and suicide. Can any thoughtful person admit for a moment that, in a society so constituted that these overwhelming con- trasts of luxury and privation are looked upon as necessities, and are treated by the Legislature as matters with which it has prac- tically nothing to do, there is the smallest probability that we can * Elizabeth Cady Stanton, in the Arena. IX [8] THE FAILURE OF EVOLUTION deal successfully with such tremendous social problems as those which involve the marriage tie and the family relation as a means of promoting the physical and moral advancement of the race ? What a mockery to still further whiten the sepulchre of modern society, in which is hidden "all manner of corruption," with schemes for the moral and physical advancement of the race! SOCIAL ADVANCE WILL RESULT IN IMPROVEMENT OF CHARACTER It is my firm conviction, for reasons which I shall state pres- ently, that, when we have cleansed the Augean stable of our ex- isting social organization, and have made such arrangements that all shall contribute their share of eitlier physical or mental labor, and that all workers shall reap the lull and ec^ual reward of their work, the future of the race will be ensured by those laws of human development that have led to the slow but continuous advance in the higher quahties of human nature. When men and women are alike free to follow their best impulses; when idleness and vicious or useless luxury on the one hand, oppressive labor and starvation on the other, are alike unknown ; when all receive the best and most thorough education that the state of civihzation and knowledge at the time will admit; when the standard of public opinion is set by the wisest and the best, and that standard is systematically inculcated on the young — then we shall find that a system of selection will come spontaneously into action which will steadily tend to eliminate the lower and more degraded types of man, and thus continuously-raise the average standard of the race. I therefore strongly protest against any attempt to deal with this great question by legal enactments in our present state of unfitness and ignorance, or by endeavoring to modify public opinion as to the beneficial character of monog- amy and permanence in marriage. That the existing popular opinion is the true one is well and briefly shown by Miss Chap- man in LippincoWs Magazine; and as her statement of the case expresses my own views, and will, I think, be approved by most thinkers on the subject, I here give it : " I. Nature plainly indicates permanent marriage as the true human relation. The young of the human pair need parental care and supervision for a great number of years. IX [ 9 ] THE FAILURE OF EVOLUTION u 2. Instinct is strongly on the side of indissoluble marriage. In proportion as men leave brutedom behind and enter into the fulness of their human heritage, they will cease to tolerate the idea of two or more living partners. "3. History shows conclusively that where divorce has been easy, licentiousness, disorder, and often complete anarchy have prevailed. The history of civilization is the history of advance in monogamy, of the fidelity of one man to one woman, and one woman to one man. "4. Science tells the same tale. Physiology and Hygiene point to temperance, not riot. Sociology shows how man, in spite of himself, is ever striving, through lower forms, upward, to the monogamic relation. "5. Experience demonstrates to every one of us, individually, the superiority of the indissoluble marriage. We know that, speaking broadly, marriages turn out well or ill in proportion as husband and wife are — let me not say loving — but loyal, sinking differences and even grievances for the sake of children and for the sake of example." We have now to consider what would be the probable effect of a condition of social advancement, the essential characteristics of which have been already hinted at, on the two great problems — the increase of population, and the continuous improvement of the race by some form of selection v/hich we have reason to beheve is the only method available. In order to make this clear, however, and in order that we may fully reahze the forces that would come into play in a just and rational state of society, such as may certainly be reahzed in the not distant future, it will be necessary to have a clear conception of its main character- istics. For this purpose, and without committing myself in any way to an approval of all the details of his scheme, I shall make use of Mr. Bellamy's clear and forcible picture of the society of the future, as he supposes it may exist in America in little more than a century hence.^ The essential principle on which society is supposed to be founded is that of a great family. As in a well-regulated modern family the elders, those who have experience of the labors, the ^ Looking Backward. See specially, chapters vii, ix, xii, and xxv. . IX [ 10 ] THE FAILURE OF EVOLUTION. duties, and the responsibilities of life, determine the general mode of hving and working, witli the fullest consideration for the convenience and real well-being of the younger members, and with a recognition of their essential independence. As in a family, the same comforts and enjoyments are secured to all, and the very idea of making any difference in this respect, to those who from mental or physical disability are unable to do so much as others, never occurs to any one, since it is opposed to the essen- tial principles on which a true society of human brotherhood is held to rest. As regards education all have the same advan- tages, and all receive the fullest and best training, both intellec- tual and physical; every one is encouraged to follow out those studies or pursuits for which they are best fitted, or for which they exhibit the strongest inclination. This education, the com- plete and thorough training for a life of usefulness and enjoy- ment, continues in both sexes till the age of twenty-one (or there- abouts), when all alike, men and women, take their place in the lower ranks of the industrial army in which they serve for three years. During the latter years of their education, and during the succeeding three years of industrial service, every opportunity is given them to see and understand every kind of work that is carried on by the community, so that at the end of the term of probation they can choose what department of the public service they prefer to enter. As every one — men, women, and children ahkc — receive the same amount of public credit — their equal share of the products of the labor of the community, the attrac- tiveness of various pursuits is equaHzed by differences in the hours of labor, in holidays, or in special privileges attached to the more disagreeable kinds of necessary work, and these are so modified from time to time that the volunteers for every occupa- tion are always about equal to its requirements. The only other essential feature that it is necessary to notice for our present pur- pose is the system of grades, by which good conduct, persever- ance, and intelligence in every department of industry and occu- pation are fully recognized, and lead to appointments as foremen, superintendents, or general managers, and ultimately to the highest offices of the state. Every one of these grades and ap- pointments is made public; and as they constitute the only IX [ii] THE FAILURE OF EVOLUTION honors and the only differences of rank, with corresponding in- signia and privileges, in an otherwise equal body of citizens, they are highly esteemed, and serve as ample inducements to industry and zeal in the pubhc service. At first sight it may appear that in any state of society whose essential features were at all hke those here briefly outHned, all the usual restraints to early marriage as they now exist would be removed, and that a rate of increase of the pojnilation unex- ampled in any previous era would be the result, leading in a few generations to a difficulty in obtaining subsistence, which Mal- thus has shown to be the inevitable result of the normal rate of increase of mankind when all the positive as well as the preven- tive checks are removed. As the positive checks — which may be briefly summarized as war, pestilence, and famine — are sup- posed to be non-existent, what, it may be asked, are the preven- tive checks which are suggested as being capable of reducing the rate of increase within manageable limits? This very reason- able question I will now endeavor to answer. NATURAL CHECKS TO RAPID INCREASE The first and most important of the checks upon a too rapid increase of population will be the comparatively late average period of marriage, which will be the natural result of the very conditions of society, and will besides be inculcated during the period of education, and still further enforced by pubhc opinion. As the period of systematic education is supposed to extend to the age of twenty-one, up to which time both the mental and physical powers will be trained and exercised to their fullest capacity, th? idea of marriage during this period will rarely be entertained. During the last year of education, however, the subject of marriage will be dwelt upon, in its bearing on individ- ual happiness and on social well-being, in relation to the welfare of the next generation and to the continuous development of the race. The most careful and dehberate choice of partners for life will be inculcated as the highest social duty; while the young women will be so trained as to look with scorn and loathing on all men who in any way wilfully fail in their duty to society — on idlers and malingerers, on drunkards and hars, on the selfish, the IX [ 12 ] THE FAILURE OF EVOLUTION cruel, or the vicious. They will be taught that the happiness of their whole lives will depend on the care and dehberation with which they choose their husbands, and they will be urged to accept no suitor till he has proved himself to be worthy of respect by the place he holds and the character he bears among his fellow-laborers in the public service. Under social conditions which render every woman abso- lutely independent, so far as the necessaries and comforts of existence are concerned, surrounded by the charms of family life and the pleasures of society, which will be far greater than any- thing we now realize when all will possess the refinements de- rived from the best possible education, and all will be reheved from sordid cares and the struggle for mere existence, is it not in the highest degree probable that marriage will rarely take place till the woman has had three or four years' experience of the world after leaving college — that is, till the age of 25, while it will very frequently be delayed till 30 or upward ? Now Mr. Galton has shown, from the best statistics available, that if we compare women married at 20 with those married at 29, the proportionate fertility is about as 8 to 5. But this difference, large as it is, only represents a portion of the effect on the rate of increase of popu- lation caused by a delay in the average period of marriage. For when the age of marriage is delayed the time between successive generations is correspondingly lengthened ; while a still further effect is produced by the fact that the greater the average age of marriage the fewer generations are alive at the same time, and it is the combined effect of these three factors that determines the actual rate of increase of the population.* But there is yet another factor tending to check the increase of population that would come into play in a society such as we have been considering. In a remarkable essay on the Theory of Population, Herbert Spencer has shown, by an elaborate discus- sion of the phenomena presented by the whole animal kingdom, that the maintenance of the individual and the propagation of the race vary inversely, those species and groups which have the shortest and most uncertain hves producing the greatest number *See Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development, p. 321 ; and Hereditary Genius, p. 353. IX [13] THE FAILURE OF EVOLUTION of oflfspring; in other words, individuation and reproduction are antagonistic. But individuation depends almost entirely on the development and speciahzation of the nervous system, through which, not only are the several activities and co-ordinations of the various organs carried on, but all advance in instinct, emotion, and intellect is rendered possible. The actual rate of increase in man has been determined by the necessities of the savage state, in which, as in most animal species, it has usually been only just sufficient to maintain a hmited average popula- tion. But with civilization the average duration of Hf e increases and the possible increase of population under favorable condi- ■ tions becomes very great, because f ertiHty is greater than is needed under the new conditions. The advance in civiUzation as regards the preservation of hf e has in recent times become so rapid, and the increased development of the nervous system has been hmited to so small a portion of the whole population, that no general diminution in fertility has yet occurred. That the facts do, however, accord with the theory is indicated by the common observation that highly intellectual parents do not as a rule have large famihes, while the most rapid increase occurs in those classes which are engaged in the simpler kinds of manual labor. But in a state of society in which all will have their higher faculties fully cultivated and fully exercised throughout life, a shght general diminution of fertility would at once arise, and this diminution added to that caused by the later average period of marriage would at once bring the rate of increase of population within manageable Hmits. The same general princi- ple enables us to look forward to that distant future when the world will be fully peopled, in perfect confidence that an equilib- rium between the birth and death rates will then be brought about by a combination of physical and social agencies, and the bugbear of over-population become finally extinct.^ HOW NATURAL SELECTION WILL IMPROVE THE RACE There now only remains for consideration the means by which, in such a society, a continuous improvement of the race * See A Theory of Population deduced from the General Law of Animal Fertility. IX [ 14 ] THE FAILURE OF EVOLUTION could be brought about, on the assumption that for this purpose education is powerless as a direct agency, since its effects are not hereditary, and that some form of selection is an absolute ne- cessity. This improvement I beheve will certainly be eft'ected through the agency of female choice in marriage. Let us, there- fore, consider how this would probably act. It will be generally admitted that, although many women now remain unmarried from necessity rather than from choice, there are always a considerable number who feel no strong inclination to marriage, and who accept husbands to secure a subsistence or a home of their own rather than from personal affection or sexual emotion. In a society in which women were all pecun- iarily independent, were all fully occupied with pubHc duties and intellectual or social enjoyments, and had nothing to gain by marriage as regards material well-being, we may be sure that the number of the unmarried from choice would largely increase. It would probably come to be considered a degradation for any w^oman to marry a man she could not both love and esteem, and this feeling would supply ample reasons for either abstaining from marriage altogether or delaying it till a worthy and sympa- thetic husband was encountered. In man, on the other hand, the passion of love is more general, and usually stronger ; and as in such a society as is here postulated there would be no way of gratifying this passion but by marriage, almost every woman would receive offers, and thus a powerful selective agency would rest with the female sex. Under the system of education and of pubhc opinion here suggested there can be no doubt how this selec- tion would be exercised. The idle and the selfish would be almost universally rejected. The diseased or the weak in intellect would also usually remain unmarried ; while those who exhibited any tendency to insanity or to hereditary disease, or who possessed any congenital deformity would in hardly any case find part- ners, because it would be considered an offence against society to be the means of perpetuating such diseases or imperfections. We must also take into account a special factor hitherto, I believe, unnoticed in this connection, that would in all proba- bility intensify the selection thus exercised. It is well known that females are largely in excess of males in our existing popula- IX [15] THE FAILURE OF EVOLUTION tion, and this fact, if it were a necessary and permanent one, would tend to weaken the selective agency of women, as it un- doubtedly does now. But there is good reason to believe that it will not be a permanent feature of our population. The births indicate a natural tendency in the opposite direction, since they always give a larger proportion of males than females, varying from 3|- to 4 per cent. But boys now die so much more rapidly than girls that when we include all under the age of five the numbers are nearly equal. For the next five years the mor- tahty is nearly the same in both sexes ; then that of females pre- ponderates up to 30 years of age, then up to 60 that of men is the larger, while for the rest of life female mortality is again greatest. The general result is that at the ages of most frequent marriage — from 20 to 35 — females are between 8 and 9 per cent, in excess of males. But during the ages from 5 to 35 we find a wonderful excess of male deaths from two preventible causes — "accident" and "violence." For a recent year the deaths from these causes in England and Wales was as follows : — Males (5 to 35 years) 4,158 Females (s to 35 years) 1,100 Here we have an excess of male over female deaths in one year of 3,058, all between the ages of 5 and 35, a very large por- tion of which is no doubt due to the greater risks run by men and boys in various industrial occupations, in sport, and in war. In a state of society in which the bulk of the population were en- gaged in industrial work, and were all social equals, it is quite certain that almost all these deaths would be prevented, thus bringing the male population more nearly to an equahty with the female. But there are also many unhealthy employments in which men are exclusively or more largely engaged, such as the grinders of Sheffield, and many others; and many more men have their lives shortened by labor in unventilatcd workshops, to say nothing of the loss of life at sea and in war. When the lives of all its citizens are accounted of equal value to the com- munity, no one will be allowed to suffer from such preventible causes as these; and this will still further reduce the mortahty of men as compared with that of women. On the whole, then, it seems highly probable that in the society of the future the supe- IX [ 16 ] THE FAILURE OF EVOLUTION rior numbers of males at birth will be maintained throughout hfe, or, at all events, during what may be termed the marriageable period. This will greatly increase the influence of women in the improvement of the race. Being a minority they will be more sought after, and will have a real choice in marriage, which is rarely the case now. This actual minority being further in- creased by those who, from the various causes already referred to, abstain from marriage, will cause considerable numbers of men to remain permanently unmarried, and as these will consist very largely, if not almost wholly, of those who are the least per- fectly developed either mentally or physically, the constant ad- vance of the race in every good quahty will be insured. This method of improvement, by elimination of the worst, has many advantages over that of securing the early marriages of the best. In the first place it is the direct instead of the indirect way, for it is more important and more beneficial to society to improve the average of its members by getting rid of the lowest types than by raising the highest a little higher. Exceptionally great and good men are always produced in sufficient numbers, and have always been so produced in every phase of civilization. We do not need more of these so much as we need less of the weak and the bad. This weeding- out system has been the method of natural selection, by which the animal and vegetable worlds have been improved and developed. The survival of the fittest is really the extinction of the unfit. In nature this occurs perpetually on an enormous scale, because, owing to the rapid increase of most organisms, the unfit which are yearly destroyed form a large proportion of those that are born. Under our hitherto imperfect civilization this wholesome process has been checked as regards mankind ; but the check has been the result of the development of the higher attributes of our nature. Humanity — the essentially human emotion — has caused us to save the lives of the weak and sufi'ering, of the maimed or im- perfect in mind or body. This has to some extent been antago- nistic to physical and even intellectual race-improvement ; but it has improved us morally by the continuous development of the characteristic and crowning grace of our human as distinguished from our animal nature. IX [i7j THE FAILURE OF EVOLUTION In the society of the future this defect will be remedied, not by any diminution of our humanity, but by encouraging the ac- tivity of a still higher human characteristic — admiration of all that is beautiful and kindly and self-sacrificing, repugnance to all that is selfish, base, or cruel. When we allow ourselves to be guided by reason, justice, and pubUc spirit in our dealings with our fellow-men, and determine to abohsh poverty by recognizing the equal rights of all the citizens of our common land to an equal share of the wealth which all combine to produce — when we have thus solved the lesser problem of a rational social organi- zation adapted to secure the equal well-being of all, then we may safely leave the far greater and deeper problem of the improve- ment of the race to the cultivated minds and pure instincts of the men, and especially of the Women of the Future. IK [18] X THE LATEST KNOWLEDGE "SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATION AND PROGRESS" BY IRA REMSEN PRESIDENT OF JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY TTAVING traced the thoughts of science as they apply to -'--'- man, as they enable us to understand the progress and perhaps the origin of our race, we are ready now to turn to the latest achievements oj the investigators, to question what they are doing for us to-day, and what they hope and promise to do for us to-morrow. The recent develop?nents of science have been, as we all know, marvellous. Has it "reached its term'^? Or does it see opening before it a future even more brilliant than its past ? To guide us in this question, we need, not the vague enthusiasm of the dreamer, but the practical analysis and calm judgment of the expert. Let us therefore seek for information from one among the foremost of our American authorities. The following address was delivered by President Remsen before the American Association for the Advancement of Science, oj which distinguished body he was made president in ipoj. Dr. Remsen has been professor of chemistry at Johns Hopkins University for over thirty years, and since igo2 has been presi- dent of that celebrated institution. It is however not so much to his high official position as to his valuable research work that Dr. Remsen owes his noteworthy place among the leaders oj modern science. X [I] THE LATEST KNOWLEDGE l^ At the weekly services of many of our churches it is cus- tomary to begin with the reading of a verse or two from the Scriptures for the purpose, I suppose, of putting the congrega- tions in the proper state of mind for the exercises which are to follow. It seems to mc that we may profit by this ex- ample, and accordingly I ask your attention to Article i of the Constitution of the American Association for the Ad- vancement of Science, which reads thus: "The objects of the association are, by periodical and migratory meetings, to pro- mote intercourse between those who are cultivating science in different parts of America, to give stronger and more general impulse and more systematic direction to scientific research, and to procure for the labors of scientific men increased fa- cilities and a wider usefulness." The first object mentioned, you will observe, is "to pro- mote intercourse between those who are cultivating science in different parts of America"; the second is "to give a stronger and more general impulse and more systematic direction to scientific research"; and the third is "to procure for the labors of scientific men increased facihties and a wider use- fulness." Those who are famihar with the history of the association are well aware that it has served its purposes ad- mirably, and I am inchncd to think that those who have been in the habit of attending its meetings will agree that the ob- ject .which appeals to them most strongly is the promotion of intercourse between those who are cultivating science. Given this intercourse and the other objects will be reached as a necessary consequence, for the intercourse stimulates thought, and thought leads to work, and work leads to wider usefulness. While in 1848, when the association was organized and the constitution was adopted, there was a fair number of good scientific investigators in this country, it is certain that in the half-century that has passed since then the number of inves- tigators has increased very largely, and naturally the amount of scientific work done at present is very much greater than it was at that time. So great has been the increase in scien- tific activity during recent years, that we are apt to think X [2] THE LATEST KNOWLEDGE that by comparison scientific research is a new acquisition. In fact there appears to be an impression abroad that in the world at large scientific research is a relatively new thing, for which we of this generation and our immediate predecessors are largely responsible. Only a superficial knowledge of the history of science is necessary, however, to show that the sciences have been developed slowly, and that their beginnings are to be looked for in the very earliest times. Everything seems to point to the conclusion that men have been always engaged in efforts to learn more and more in regard to the world in which they find themselves. Sometimes they have been guided by one motive and sometimes by another, but the one great underlying motive has been the desire to get a clearer and clearer understanding of the universe.^ But besides this there has been the desire to find means of in- creasing the comfort and happiness of the human race. A reference to the history of chemistry will serve to show how these motives have operated side by side. One of the first great incentives for working with chemical things was the thought that it was possible to convert base metals like lead and copper into the so-called noble metals, silver and gold. Probably no idea has ever operated as strongly as this upon the minds of men to lead them to undertake chemical experiments. It held control of intellectual men for cen- turies, and it was not until about a hundred years ago that it lost its hold. It is very doubtful if the purely scientific question, whether one form of matter can be transformed into another, would have had the power to control the activities of investigators for so long a time; and it is idle to speculate upon this subject. It should, however, be borne in mind that many of those who were engaged in this work were ac- tuated by a desire to put money in their purses — a desire that is by no means to be condemned without reserve, and I mention it not for the purpose of condemning it, but to show that a motive that we sometimes think of as peculiarly modern is among the oldest known to man. While the alchemists were at work upon their problems, another class of chemists were engaged upon problems of X [3] THE LATESIl KNOWLEDGE an entirely different nature. The fact that substances ob- tained from various natural sources and others made in the laboratory produce effects of various kinds when taken into the system, led to the thought that these substances might be useful in the treatment of disease. Then, further, it was thought that disease itself is a chemical phenomenon. These thoughts, as is evident, furnish strong motives for the inves- tigation of chemical substances, and the science of chemistry owes much to the work of those who were guided by these motives. And so in each period as a new thought has served as the guide we find that men have been actuated by different motives, and often one and the same worker has been under the influence of mixed motives. Only in a few cases does it appear that the highest motives alone operate. We must take men as we find them, and we may be thankful that on the whole there are so many who are impelled by one mo- tive or another, or by a mixture of motives to take up the work of investigating the world in which we five. Great progress is being made in consequence and almost daily we are called upon to wonder at some new and marvellous re- sult of scientific investigation. It is quite impossible to make predictions of value in regard to what is likely to be revealed to us by continued work, but it is safe to beheve that in our efforts to discover the secrets of the universe, only a begin- ning has been made. No matter in what direction we may look we are aware of great unexplored territories, and even in those regions in which the greatest advances have been made it is evident that the knowledge gained is almost in- significant as compared with that which remains to be learned. But this line of thought may lead to a condition bordering on hopelessness and despondency, and surely we should avoid this condition, for there is much greater cause for rejoicing than for despair. Our successors will see more, and see more clearly than we do, just as we see more and see more clearly than our predecessors. It is our duty to keep the work going without being too anxious to weigh the results on an absolute scale. It must be remembered that the ab- X [4] THE LATEST KNOWLEDGE solute scale is not a very sensitive instrument, and that it requires the results of generations to affect it markedly. On an occasion of this kind it seems fair to ask the ques- tion, What does the world gain by scientific investigation? This question has often been asked and often answered, but each answer differs in some respects from the others, and each may be suggestive and worth giving. The question is a profound one, and no answer that can be given would be satisfactory. In general it may be said that the results of scientific investigation fall under three heads — the material, the intellectual, and the ethical. The m^aterial results are the most obvious and they nat- urally receive the most attention. The material wants of man are the first to receive consideration. They can not be neg- lected. He must have food and clothing, the means of com- bating disease, the means of transportation, the means of producing heat, and a great variety of things that contribute to his bodily comfort and gratify his 8esthetic desires. It is not my purpose to attempt to deal with all of these and to show how science is helping to work out the problems sug- gested. I shall have to content myself by pointing out a few of the more important problems, the solution of which de- pends upon the prosecution of scientific research. First, the food problem. Whatever views one may hold in regard to that which has come to be called "race suicide," it appears that the population of the world is increasing rapidly. The desirable places have been occupied. In some parts of the earth there is such a surplus of population that famines occur from time to time, and in other parts epidemics and floods relieve the embarrassment. We may fairly look for- ward to the time when the whole earth will be overpopulated, unless the production of food becomes more scientific than it now is. Here is the field for the work of the agricultural chemist, who is showing us how to increase the yield from a given area, and, in case of poor and worn-out soils, how to preserve and increase their fertility. It appears that the methods of cultivating the soil are still comparatively crude, and more and more thorough investigation of the processes X [5] THE LATEST KNOWLEDGE involved in the growth of plants is called for. Much has been learned since Liel^ig founded the science of agricultural chemistry. It was he who pointed out some of the ways by which it is possible to increase the fertihty of a soil. Since the results of his investigations were given to the world, the use of artificial fertilizers has become more and more general. But it is one thing to know that artificial fertilizers are useful, and it is quite another thing to get them. At first bone dust and guano were chiefly used. Then as these be- came dearer, phosphates, and potassium salts from the mineral kingdom came into use. At the Fifth International Congress for Applied Chemistry, held at Berlin, Germany, in 1903, Dr. Adolph Frank, of Char- lottenburg, gave an extremely interesting address on the sub- ject of the use of the nitrogen of the atmosphere for agricul- ture and the industries, which bears upon the problem that we are dealing with. Plants must have nitrogen. At present this is obtained from the great beds of saltpetre found on the west coast of South America — the so-called Chili saltpetre — and also from the ammonia abtained as a by-product in the distillation of coal, especially in the manufacture of coke. The use of Chili saltpetre for agricultural purposes began about i860. In 1900 the quantity exported was 1,453,000 tons, and its value was about $60,000,000. In the same year the world's production of ammonium sulphate was about 500,000 tons, of a value of somewhat more than $20,000,000. Of these enormous quantities about three-quarters finds ap- plication in agriculture. The use of these substances, espe- cially of saltpetre, is increasing rapidly. At present it seems that the successful cultivation of the soil is dependent upon the use of nitrates, and the supply of nitrates is Umited. Un- less something is done we may look forward to the time when the earth, for lack of proper fertilizers, will not be able to produce as much as it now does, and meanwhile the demand for food is increasing. According to the most reliable esti- mations, indeed, the saltpetre beds will be exhausted in thirty or forty years. Is there a way out? Dr. Frank shows that there is. In the air there is nitrogen for all. The plants X [6] THE LATEST KNOWLEDGE can make only a limited use of this directly. For the most part it must be in some form of chemical combination, as, for example, a nitrate of ammonia. The conversion of atmos- pheric nitrogen into nitric acid would solve the problem, and this is now carried out. But Dr. Frank shows that there is another, perhaps more economical, way of getting the nitro- gen into a form suitable for plant food. Calcium carbide can now be made without difficulty, and is made in enormous quantities by the action of a powerful electric current upon a mixture of coal and lime. This substance has the power of absorbing nitrogen from the air, and the product thus formed appears to be capable of giving up its nitrogen to plants, or, in other words, to be a good fertiHzer. It is true that this subject requires further investigation, but the results thus far obtained are full of promise. If the outcome should be what we have reason to hope, we may regard the approaching ex- haustion of the saltpetre beds with equanimity. But, even without this to pin our faith to, we have the preparation of nitric acid from the nitrogen and oxygen of the air to fall back upon. While speaking of the food problem, a few words in re- gard to the artificial preparation of foodstuffs. I am sorry to say that there is not much of promise to report upon in this connection. In spite of the brilhant achievements of chemists in the field of synthesis, it remains true that thus far they have not been able to make, except in very small quantities, substances that are useful as foods, and there is absolutely no prospect of this result being reached within a reasonable time. A few years ago Berthelot told us of a dream he had had. This has to do with the results that, according to Ber- thelot, are to be brought about by the advance of chemistry. The results of investigations already accomplished indicate that, in the future, methods will perhaps be devised for the artificial preparation of food from the water and carbonic acid so abundantly supplied by nature. Agriculture will then become unnecessary, and the landscape will not be dis- figured by crops growing in geometrical figures. Water will be obtained from holes three or four miles deep in the earth, X [7] THE LATEST KNOWLEDGE and this water will be above the boiling temperature, so that it can be used as a source of energy. It will be obtained in liquid form after it has undergone a process of natural dis- tillation, which will free it from all impurities, including, of course, disease germs. The foods prepared by artificial meth- ods will also be free from microbes, and there will be, conse- quently, less disease than at present. Further, the necessity for kilHng animals for food will no longer exist, and man- kind will become gentler and more amenable to higher in- fluences. There is, no doubt, much that is fascinating in this line of thought, but whether it is worth following, de- pends upon the fundamental assumption. Is it at all prob- able that chemists will ever be able to devise methods for the artificial preparation of foodstuff's? I can only say that to me it does not appear probable in the light of the results thus far obtained. I do not mean to question the probabiUty of the ultimate synthesis of some of those substances that are of value as foods. This has been already accomplished on a small scale, but for the most part the synthetical processes employed have involved the use of substances which them- selves are the products of natural processes. Thus, the fats can be made, but the substances from which they are made are generally obtained from nature and are not themselves synthetical products. Emil Fischer has, to be sure, made very small quantities of sugars of different kinds, but the task of building up a sugar from the raw material furnished by nature — that is to say, from carbonic acid and water — pre- sents such difficulties that it may be said to be practically im- possible. When it comes to starch, and the proteids which are the other chief constituents of foodstuffs, the difficulties are still greater. There is not a suggestion of the possibility of making starch artificially, and the same is true of the proteids. In this connection it is, however, interesting to note that Emil Fischer, after his remarkable successes in the sugar group and the uric-acid group, is now advancing upon the proteids. I have heard it said that at the beginning of his career he made out a programme for his lifework. This included the solution X [8] THE LATEST KNOWLEDGE of three great problems. These are the determination of the constitution of uric acid, of the sugars, and of the proteids. Two of these problems have been solved. May he be equally successful with the third! Even if we should be able to make a proteid, and show what it is, the problem of the artificial preparation of foodstuffs will not be solved. Indeed, it v/ill hardly be affected. Although science is not likely, within periods that we may venture to think of, to do away with the necessity of cultivat- ing the soil, it is likely to teach us how to get more out of the soil than we now do, and thus put us in a position to provide for the generations that are to follow us. And this carries with it the thought that, unless scientific investigation is kept up, these coming generations will be unprovided for. Another way by which the food supply of the world can be increased is by relieving tracts of land that are now used for other purposes than the cultivation of foodstuffs. The most interesting example of this kind is that presented by the cultivation of indigo. There is a large demand for this sub- stance, which is plainly founded upon gesthetic desires of a somewhat rudimentary kind. Whatever the cause may be, the demand exists, and immense tracts of land have been and are still, devoted to the cultivation of the indigo plant. Within the past few years scientific investigation has shown that in- digo can be made in the factory from substances, the pro- duction of which does not for the most part involve the culti- vation of the soil. In 1900, according to the report of Dr. Brunck, managing director of the Badische Anilin- und Soda- Fabrik, the quantity of indigo produced annually in the fac- tory would, if grown from plants, "require the cultivation of an area of more than a quarter of a milHon acres of land (390 square miles) in the home of the indigo plant (India)." Dr. Brunck adds: "The first impression- which this fact may be likely to produce is that the manufacture of indigo will cause a terrible calamity to arise in that country; but, perhaps not. If one recalls to mind that India is periodically afflicted with famine, one ought not, without further consideration, to cast aside the hope that it might be good fortune for that country X [9] THE LATEST KNOWLEDGE if the immense areas now devoted to a crop which is subjce'. to many vicissitudes and to violent market changes, were vA last to be given over to the raising of breadstuffs and other food products." "For myself," says Dr. Brunck, "I no not assume to be an impartial adviser in this matter, but, never- theless, I venture to express my convictions that the govern- ment of India will be rendering a very great service if it should support and aid the progress, which will in any case be irre- sistible, of this impending change in the cultivation of that country, and would support and direct its methodical and rational execution." The connection between scientific investigation and health is so frequently the subject of discussion that I need not dwell upon it here. The discovery that many diseases are due primarily to the action of microscopic organisms that find their way into the body and produce the changes that reveal themselves in definite symptoms, is a direct consequence of the study of the phenomenon of alcoholic fermentation by Pasteur. Everything that throws light upon the nature of the actions of these microscopic organisms is of value in deal- ing with the great problem of combating disease. It has been established in a number of cases that they cause the forma- tion of products that act as poisons and that the diseases are due to the action of these poisons. So also, as is well known, investigation has shown that antidotes to some of these poisons can be produced, and that by means of these antidotes the diseases can be controlled. But more important than this, is the discovery of the way in which diseases are transmitted. With this knowledge it is possible to prevent the diseases. The great fact that the death rate is decreasing stands out prominently and proclaims to humanity the importance of scientific investigation. It is, however, to be noted in this connection that the decrease in the death rate compensates to some extent for the decrease in the birth rate, and that, if an increase in population is a thing to be desired, the investi- gations in the field of sanitary science are contributing to this result. The development of the human race is dependent not alone X [lo] THE LATEST KNOWLEDGE upon a supply of food, but upon a supply of energy in available forms. Heat and mechanical energy are absolutely essential to man. The chief source of the energy that comes into play is fuel. We are primarily dependent upon the coal supply for the continuation of the activities of man. Without this, unless something is to take its place, man is doomed. Sta- tistics in regard to the coal supply and the rate at which it is being used have so frequently been presented by those who have special knowledge of this subject, that I need not trouble you with them now. The only object in referring to it is to show that, unless by means of scientific investigation man is taught new methods of rendering the world's store of energy available for the production of heat and of motion, the age of the human race is measured by the extent of the supply of coal and other forms of fuel. By other forms of fuel I mean, of course, wood and oil. Plainly, as the demand for land for the production of foodstuffs increases, the amount available for the production of wood must decrease, so that wood need not be taken into account for the future. In regard to oil, our knowledge is not sufficient to enable us to make predictions of any value. If one of the theories now held in regard to the source of petroleum should prove to be correct, the world would find much consolation in it. According to this theory petroleum is not likely to be exhausted, for it is constantly being formed by the action of water upon carbides that in all probability exist in practically unlimited quantity in the interior of the earth. If this be true, then the problem of supplying energy may be reduced to one of transportation of oil. But given a supply of oil and, of course, the problem of transportation is solved. What are the other sources of practical energy? The most important is the fall of water. This is being utilized more and more year by year, since the methods of producing electric currents by means of the dynamo have been worked out. There is plainly much to be learned before the energy made available in the immediate neighborhood of the water- fall can be transported long distances economically, but ad- vances are being made in this line, and already factories that X [II J THE LATEST KNOWLEDGE have hitherto been dependent upon coal are making use of the energy derived from waterfalls. The more rapidly these advances take place the less will be the demand for coal, and if there were enough waterfalls conveniently situated, there would be no difficulty in furnishing all the energy needed by man for heat or for motion. It is a fortunate thing that, as the population of the earth increases, man's tastes become more complex. If only the simplest tastes prevailed, only the simplest occupations would be called for. But let us not lose time in idle speculations as to the way this primitive condition of things would affect man's progress. As a matter of fact his tastes are becoming more complex. Things that are not dreamed of in one generation become the necessities of the next generation. Many of these things are the direct results of scientific investigation. No end of examples will suggest themselves. Let me content myself by reference to one that has of late been the subject of much discussion. The development of the artificial dye- stuff industries is extremely instructive in many ways. The development has been the direct result of the scientific in- vestigation of things that seemed to have little, if anything, to do with this world. Many thousands of workmen are now employed, and many millions of dollars are invested, in the manufacture of dye-stuffs that were unknown a few years ago. Here plainly the fundamental fact is the aesthetic desire of man for colors. A colorless world would be unbearable to him. Nature accustoms him to color in a great variety of combina- tions, and it becomes a necessity to him. And his desires increase as they are gratified. There seems to be no end to development in this line. At all events, the data at our dis- posal justify the conclusion that there will be a demand for every dye that combines the qualities of beauty and dura- bility. Thousands of scientifically trained men are engaged to work in the effort to deliver nev/ dyes to meet the increasing demands. New industries are springing up, and many find employment in them. As a rule, the increased demand for labor caused by the establishment of these industries is not offset by the closing up of other industries. Certainly it is X [12] THE LATEST KNOWLEDGE true that scientific investigation has created large demands for labor that could hardly find employment without these demands. The welfare of a nation depends to a large extent upon the success of its industries. In his address as president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Sir Nor- man Lockyer quotes Mr. Chamberlain thus: "I do not think it is necessary for me to say anything as to the urgency and necessity of scientific training. ... It is not too much to say that the existence of this country as the great commercial nation depends upon it. . . . It depends very much upon what we are doing now, at the beginning of the twentieth century, whether at its end we shall continue to maintain our supremacy or even equality with our great commercial and manufacturing rivals." In another part of his address, Sir Norman Lockyer says: "Further, I am told that the sum of ;;^24,ooo,ooo is less than half the amount by which Germany is yearly enriched by having improved upon our chemical industries, owing to our lack of scientific training. Many other industries have been attacked in the same way since, but taking this one instance alone, if we had spent this money fifty years ago, when the Prince Consort first called attention to our backwardness, the nation would now be much richer than it is, and would have much less to fear from competition." But enough on the purely material side. Let us turn to the intellectual results of scientific investigation. This part of our subject might be summed up in a few words. It is so obvious that the intellectual condition of mankind is a direct result of scientific investigation, that one hesitates to make the statement. The mind of man cannot carry him much in advance of his knowledge of the facts. Intellectual gains can be made only by discoveries, and discoveries can be made only by investigation. One generation differs from another in the way it looks at the world. A generation that thinks the earth is the centre of the universe differs intellectually from one that has learned the true position of the earth in the solar system, and the general relations of the solar system to other similar systems that make up the universe. A genera- X [13] THE LATEST KNOWLEDGE tion that sees in every species of animal and plant evidence of a special creative act differs from one that has recognized the general truth of the conception of evolution. And so in every department of knowledge, the great generahzations that have been reached through the persistent efforts of scientific investi- gators are the intellectual gains that have resulted. These great generalizations measure the intellectual wealth of man- kind. They arc the foundations of all profitable thought. While the generalizations of science belong to the world, not all the world takes advantage of its opportunities. Nation differs from nation intellectually, as individual differs from individual. It is not, however, the possession of knowledge that makes the efficient individual and the efficient nation. It is well known that an individual may be very learned and at the same time very inefficient. The question is, what use does he make of his knowledge? When we speak of intel- lectual results of scientific investigation, we mean not only accumulated knowledge, but the way in which this knowl- edge is invested. A man who simply accumulates money, and does not see to it that this money is carefully invested, is a miser, and no large results can come from his efforts. While, then, the intellectual state of a nation is measured partly by the extent to which it has taken possession of the generahza- tions that belong to the world, it is also measured by the ex- tent to which the methods by which knowledge is accumulated have been brought into requisition and have become a part of the equipment of the people of that nation. The intellectual prog- ress of a nation depends upon the adoption of scientific methods in dealing with intellectual problems. The scientific method is applicable to all kinds of intellectual problems. We need it in every department of activity, I have sometimes wondered what the result would be if the scientific method could be employed in all the manifold problems connected with the management of a government. Questions of tariff, of finance, of international relations would be dealt with much more satisfactorily than at present if the spirit of the scientific method were breathed into those who are called upon to deal with these questions. It is plain, I think, that the higher the in- X [14] THE LATEST KNOWLEDGE tcllcctual state of a nation the better will it deal with all the problems that present themselves. As the intellectual state is a direct result of scientific investigation, it is clear that the nation that adopts the scientific method will in the end out- rank both intellectually and industrially the nation that does not. What are the ethical results of scientific investigation? No one can tell. There is one thought that in this connection I should like to impress upon you. The fundamental char- acteristic of the scientific method is honesty. In dealing with any question science asks no favors. The sole object is to learn the truth, and to be guided by tlie truth. Absolute accuracy, absolute fidelity, absolute honesty are the prime conditions of scientific progress. I believe that the constant use of the scientific method must in the end leave its impress upon him who uses it. The results will not be satisfactory in all cases, but the tendency will be in the right direction. A life spent in accordance with scientific teachings would be of a high order. It would practically conform to the teachings of the highest types of religion. The motives would be dif- ferent, but so far as conduct is concerned the results would be practically identical. I need not enlarge upon this subject. Unfortunately, abstract truth and knowledge of facts and of the conclusions to be drawn from them do not at present furnish a sufficient basis for right living in the case of the great majority of mankind, and science cannot now, and I do not believe it ever can, take the place of religion in some form. When the feeling that the two are antagonistic w^ars away, as it is wearing away, it will no doubt be seen that one supple- ments the other, in so far as they have to do with the conduct of man. What are we doing in this country to encourage scientific investigation? Not until about a quarter of a century ago can it be said that it met with any encouragement. Since then there has been a great change. Up to that time research was sporadic. Soon after, it became almost epidemic. The direct cause of the change was the establishing of courses in our universities for the training of investigators somewhat X [15] THE LAT^T KNOWLEDGE upon the lines followed in the German universities. In these courses the carrying out of an investigation plays an important part. This is, in fact, the culmination of the course. At first there were not many following these courses, but it was not long before there was a demand for the products. Those who could present evidence that they had followed such courses were generally given the preference. This was especially true in the case of appointments in the colleges, some colleges even going so far as to decline to appoint any one who had not taken the degree of doctor of philosophy, which is the badge of the course that involves investigation. As the demand for those who had received this training increased, the number of those seeking it increased at least in the same proportion. New universities were established and old ones caught the spirit of the new movement, until from one end of the country to the other centres of scientific activity are now found, and the amount of research work that is done is enormous compared with what was done twenty-five or thirty years ago. Many of those who get a taste of the work of investigation become fascinated by it and are anxious to devote their lives to it. At present, with the facilities for such work available, it seems probable that most of those who have a strong desire and the necessary industry and ability to follow it find their op- portunity somewhere. There is little danger of our losing a genius or even one with fair talent. The world is on the look- out for them. The demand for those who can do good re- search work is greater than the supply. To be sure the ma- terial rewards are not as a rule so great as those that are likely to be won by the ablest members of some other professions and occupations, and as long as this condition of affairs con- tinues to exist there will not be so many men of the highest intellectual order engaged in this work as we should like to see. On the other hand, when we consider the great prog- ress that has been made during the last twenty-five years or so, we have every reason to take a cheerful view of the future. If as much progress should be made in the next quarter century, we shall, to say the least, be able to com- pete with the foremost nations of the world in scientific in- X [i6] THE LATEST KNOWLEDGE vestigation. In my opinion this progress is largely depen- dent upon the development of our universities. Without the opportunities for training in the methods of scientific in- vestigation there will be but few investigators. It is neces- sary to have a large number in order that the principle of selection may operate. In this line of work, as in others, many are called, but few are chosen. Another fact that is working advantageously to increase the amount of scientific research done in this country is the support given by the government in its different scientific bureaus. The Geological Survey, the Department of Agri- culture, the Coast and Geodetic Survey, the National Bureau of Standards, and other departments are carrying on a large amount of excellent scientific work, and thus helping most efficiently to spread the scientific spirit throughout the land. Finally, two exceedingly interesting experiments in the way of encouraging scientific investigation are now attracting the attention of the world. I mean, of course, the Carnegie Institution, with its endowment of $10,000,000, and the Rocke- feller Institute, devoted to investigations in the field of medi- cine, which will no doubt be adequately endowed. It is too early to express an opinion in regard to the influence of these great foundations upon the progress of scientific investiga- tion. As both will make possible the carrying out of many investigations that would otherwise probably not be carried out, the chances of receivirig valuable results will be increased. The danger is that those who are responsible for the manage- ment of the funds will be disappointed that the results are not at once of a striking character, and that they will be tempted to change the method of applying the money before those who are using it have had a fair chance. But we who are on the outside know little of the plans of those who are inside. All signs indicate that they are making an earnest effort to solve an exceedingly difficult problem, and all who have the opportunity should do everything in their power to aid them. X |ii7] XI OUR COUNTRY "THE MAKING OF THE NATION" BY WOODROW WILSON PRESIDENT OF PRINCETON UNIVERSITY T/f/^ E, have traced humanity hack to its vague sources, we have invoked the aid of the chief leaders of present- day science to tell us not only what they are achieving now, hut what they helieve as to the development of the primal instincts of the race. We have endeavored to look upon ourselves as science looks upon us, calmly, analytically, comprehensively. Let us escape for a moment from this unemotional atmosphere, let us turn from consideration of the race, the animal, as a mass, and begin the more direct and human study of the individual. And first, for man in general we will substitute American man. Through what special process has he, the woodsman, the pioneer, the colonizer of three centuries ago, become the intellectual, wide- reaching, business-like worker of to-day? What changing in- fluences have worked upon his mind and body, upon his sur- roundings and his government? What, in short, has built up ''our country'^? To guide us here we seek the aid of our foremost contem- porary historian, Woodrow Wilson, President of Princeton since 1902, and author of the noteworthy '^History of the Ameri- can People.''^ The following article was originally published in the Atlantic Monthly, and is here reprinted by permission of the editors and with the approval of President Wilson. The broad patriotism of the author saves from all sectional spirit an analysis which might easily have become partisan. There is weakness in our government, of the occasional evil results of XI [I] OUR COUNTRY which we have all been painjully aware. Dr. Wilsori's keen thought points out its source. The making of our own nation seems to have taken place under our very eyes, so recent and so familiar is the story. The great process was worked out in the plain and open day of the modern world, statesmen and historians standing by » to superintend, criticise, make record of what was done. The stirring narrative runs quickly into the day in which we live; we can say that our grandfathers builded the government which now holds so large a place in the world ; the story seems of yesterday, and yet seems entire, as if the making of the republic had hastened to complete itself within a single hundred years. We are elated to see so great a thing done upon so great a scale, and to feel ourselves in so intimate a way actors in the moving scene. Yet we should deceive ourselves were we to suppose the work done, the nation made. We have been told by a cer- tain group of our historians that a nation was made when the federal Constitution was adopted; that the strong sentences of the law sufficed to transform us from a league of States into a people single and inseparable. Some tell us, however, that it was not till the war of 1812 that we grew fully con- scious of a single purpose and destiny, and began to form policies as if for a nation. Others see the process com^plete only when the civil war struck slavery away, and gave North and South a common way of life that should make common ideals and common endeavors at last possible. Then, when all have had their say, there comes a great movement hke the one which we call Populism, to remind us how the country still lies apart in sections: some at one stage of development, some at another ; some with one hope and purpose for America, some with another. And we ask ourselves, Is the history of our making as a nation indeed over, or do we still wait upon the forces that shall at last unite us? Are we even now, in fact, a nation? Clearly, it is not a question of sentiment, but a question of fact. If it be true that the country, taken as a whole, is at XI [2] OUR COUNTRY one and the same time in several stages of development — not a great commercial and manufacturing nation, with here and there its broad pastures and the quiet farms from which it draws its food; not a vast agricultural community, with here and there its ports of shipment and its necessary marts of ex- change; nor yet a country of mines, merely, pouring their products forth into the markets of the world, to take thence whatever it may need for its comfort and convenience in Hving — we still wait for its economic and spiritual union. It is many things at once. Sections big enough for kingdoms hve by agriculture, and farm the wide stretches of a new land by the aid of money borrowed from other sections which seem almost like another nation, with their teeming cities, dark with the smoke of factories, quick with the movements of trade, as sensitive to the variations of exchange on London as to the variations in the crops raised by their distant fellow-country- men on the plains within the continent. Upon other great spaces of the vast continent, communities, millions strong, live the distinctive Hfe of the miner, have all their fortune bound up and centred in a single group of industries, feel in their utmost concentration the power of economic forces else- where dispersed, and chafe under the unequal yoke that unites them with communities so unlike themselves as those which lend and trade and manufacture, and those which follow the plough and reap the grain that is to feed the world. Such contrasts are nothing new in our history, and our system of government is admirably adapted to reUeve the strain and soften the antagonism they might entail. All our national history through our country has lain apart in sec- tions, each marking a stage of settlement, a stage of wealth, a stage of development, as population has advanced, as if by successive journeyings and encampments, from east to west; and always new regions have been suffered to become new States, form their own life under their own law, plan their own economy, adjust their own domestic relations, and legal- ize their own methods of business. States have, indeed, often been whimsically enough formed. We have left the matter of boundaries to surveyors rather than to sta.tesmen, XI [3] OU^ COUNTRY and have by no means managed to construct economic units in the making of States. We have joined mining communi- ties with agricultural, the mountain with the plain, the ranch with the farm, and have left the making of uniform rules to the sagacity and practical habit of neighbors ill at ease with one another. But on the whole, the scheme, though a bit haphazard, has worked itself out with singularly little fric- tion and no disaster, and the strains of the great structure we have erected have been greatly eased and dissipated. Elastic as the system is, however, it stiffens at every point of national policy. The federal government can make but one rule, and that a rule for the whole country, in each act of its legislation. Its very constitution withholds it from dis- crimination as between State and State, section and section; and yet its chief powers touch just those subjects of economic interest in which the several sections of the country feel them- selves most unhke. Currency questions do not affect them equally or in the same way. Some need an elastic currency to serve their uses; others can fill their coffers more readily with a currency that is inelastic. Some can build up manu- factures under a tariff law; others cannot, and must submit to pay more without earning more. Some have one interest in a principle of interstate commerce; others, another. It would be difficult to find even a question of foreign policy which would touch all parts of the country alike. A foreign fleet would mean much more to the merchants of Boston and New York than to the merchants of Illinois and the farmers of the Dakotas. The conviction is becoming painfully distinct among us, moreover, that these contrasts of conditions and differences of interest between the several sections of the country are now more marked and emphasized than they ever were before. The country has been transformed w^ithin a generation, not by any creations in a new kind, but by stupendous changes in degree. Every interest has increased its scale and its in- dividual significance. The "East" is transformed by the vast accumulations of wealth made since the civil war — trans- formed from a simple to a complex civiHzation, more like the XI [4] OUR COUNTRY Old World than like the New. The "West" has so magni- fied its characteristics by sheer growth, every economic in- terest which its life represents has become so gigantic in its proportions, that it seems to Eastern men, and to its own people also, more than ever a region apart. It is true that the "West" is not, as a matter of fact, a region at all, but, in Professor Turner's admirable phrase, a stage of development, nowhere set apart and isolated, but spread abroad through all the far interior of the continent. But it is now a stage of development with a difference, as Professor Turner has shown, ^ which makes it practically a new thing in our history. The "West" was once a series of States and settlements beyond which lay free lands not yet occupied, into which the restless and all who could not thrive by mere steady industry, all who had come too late and all who had stayed too long, could pass on, and, it might be, better their fortunes. Now it lies with- out outlet. The free lands are gone. New communities must make their life sufficient without this easy escape — must study economy, find their fortunes in what lies at hand, intensify effort, increase capital, build up a future out of de- tails. It is as if they were caught in a fixed order of hfe and forced into a new competition, and both their self-conscious- ness and their keenness to observe every point of self-interest are enlarged beyond former example. ' That there are currents of national hfe, both strong and definite, running in full tide through all the continent from sea to sea, no observant person can fail to perceive — currents which have long been gathering force, and which cannot now be withstood. There need be no fear in any sane man's mind that we shall ever again see our national government threatened with overthrow by any power which our own growth has bred. The temporary danger is that, not being of a common mind, because not living under common conditions, the several sec- tions of the country, which a various economic development has for the time being set apart and contrasted, may struggle for supremacy in the control of the government, and that we may learn by some sad experience that there is not even ^ See American Historical Review, Vol. I., p. 71. XI [5] OUR COUNTRY yet any common standard, cither of opinion or of policy, underlying our national life. The country is of one mind in its allegiance to the government and in its attachment to the national idea; but it is not yet of one mind in respect of that fundamental question, What policies will best serve us in giving strength and development to our hfe? Not the least notev^'orthy of the incidents that preceded and foretokened the civil war was, if I may so call it, the sectionalization of the national idea. Southern merchants bestirred themselves to get conventions together for the discussion, not of the issues of polities, but of the economic interests of the country. Their thought and hope were of the nation. They spoke no word of antagonism against any section or interest. Yet it was plain in every resolution they uttered that for them the nation was one thing and centred in the South, while for the rest of the country the nation was another thing and lay in the North and Northwest. They were arguing the needs of the nation from the needs of their own section. The samiC thing had hap- pened in the days of the embargo and the war of 1812. The Hartford Convention thought of New England when it spoke of the country. So must it ever be when section differs from section in the very basis and method of its Hfe. The nation is to-day one thing in Kansas, and quite another in Massachusetts. ^ There is no longer any danger of a civil war. There was war between the South and the rest of the nation because their differences were removable in no other way. There was no prospect that slavery, the root of these differences, would ever disappear in the mere process of grow^th. It was to be apprehended, on the contrary, that the very processes of growth would inevitably lead to the extension of slavery and the perpetuation of radical social and economic contrasts and antagonisms between State and State, between region and region. A heroic remedy was the only remedy. Slavery being removed, the South is now joined with the "West," joined with it in a stage of development, as a region chiefly agricultural, without diversified industries, without a multi- farious trade, without those subtle extended nerves which come with all-around economic development, and which make XI [6] k OUR COUNTRY men keenly sensible of the interests that link the world to- gether, as it were into a single community. But these are lines of difference which will be effaced by mere growth, which time will calmly ignore. They make no boundaries for armies to cross. Tide-water Virginia was thus separated once from her own population within the Alleghany valleys — held two jealous sections within her own limits. Massachusetts once knew the sharp divergences of interest and design which separated the coast settlements upon the Bay from the rest- less pioneers who had taken up the free lands of her own western counties. North Carolina was once a comfortable and indifferent "East" to the uneasy "West" that was to become Tennessee. Virginia once seemed old and effete to Kentucky. The "great West" once lay upon the Ohio, but has since disappeared there, overlaid by the changes which have carried the conditions of the "East" to the Great Lakes and beyond. There has never yet been a time in our history when we were without an "East" and a "West," but the novel day when we shall be without them is now in sight. As the country grows it will inevitably grow homogeneous. Population will not henceforth spread, but compact; for there is no new land between the seas where the "West" can find another lodgment. The conditions which prevail in the ever- widening "East" will sooner or later cover the continent, and we shall at last be one people. The process will not be a short one. It will doubtless run through many genera- tions and involve many a critical question of statesmanship. But it cannot be stayed, and its working out will bring the nation to its final character and role in the world. In the mean time, shall we not constantly recall our re- assuring past, reminding one another again and again, as our memories fail us, of the significant incidents of the long journey we have already come, in order that we may be cheered and guided upon the road we have yet to choose and follow? It is only by thus attempting, and attempting again and again, some sufficient analysis of our past experiences, that we can form any adequate image of our life as a nation, or acquire any intelhgent purpose to guide us amidst the rushing move- XI [71 OU^COUNTRY ment of affairs. It is no doubt in part by reviewing our lives that we shape and determine them. The future will not, in- deed, be like the past; of that we may rest assured. It can- not be like it in detail; it cannot even resemble it in the large. It is one thing to fill a fertile continent with a vigorous people and take possession of its treasures; it is quite another to complete the work of occupation and civilization in detail. Big plans, thought out only in the rough, will suffice for the one, but not for the other. A provident leadership, a patient tolerance of temporary but unavoidable evils, a just temper of compromise and accommodation, a hopeful industry in the face of small returns, mutual understandings, and a cordial \ spirit of cooperation are needed for the slow, intensive task, which were not demanded amidst the free advances of an unhampered people from settlement to settlement. And yet the past has made the present, and will make the future. It has made us a nation, despite a variety of life that threatened to keep us at odds among ourselves. It has shown us the processes by which differences have been obliterated and antagonisms softened. It has taught us how to become strong, and will teach us, if we heed its moral, how to become wise, also, and single-minded. The colonies which formed the Union were brought to- gether, let us first remind ourselves, not merely because they were neighbors and kinsmen, but because they were forced to see that they had common interests which they could serve in no other way. "There is nothing which binds one country or one State to another but interest," said Washington. "With- out this cement the Western inhabitants can have no pre- dilection for us." Without that cement the colonies could have had no predilection for one another. But it is one thing to have common interests, and quite another to perceive them and to act upon them. The colonies were first thrust to- gether by the pressure of external danger. They needed one another, as well as aid from over-sea, as any fool could perceive, if they were going to keep their frontiers against the Indians, and their outlets upon the Western waters from the French. The French and Indian war over, that press- XI [8] OUR COUNTRY ure was relieved, and they might have fallen again apart, indifferent to any common aim, unconscious of any common interest, had not the government that was their common master set itself to make them wince under common wrongs. Then it was that they saw how like they were in polity and Hfe and interest in the great field of politics, studied their common liberty, and became aware of their common ambitions. It was then that they became aware, too, that their common ambitions could be realized only by union; not single-handed, but united against a common enemy. Had they been let alone, it would have taken many a long generation of slowly increased acquaintance with one another to apprise them of their kinship in life and interests and institutions; but Eng- land drove them into immediate sympathy and combination, unwittingly founding a nation by suggestion. The war for freedom over, the new-fledged States entered at once upon a very practical course of education which thrust its lessons upon them without regard to taste or predilection. The Articles of Confederation had been formulated and pro- posed to riie States for their acceptance in 1777, as a legali- zation of the arrangements that had grown up under the in- formal guidance of the Continental Congress, in order that law might confirm and strengthen practice, and because an actual continental war commanded a continental organiza- tion. But the war was virtually over by the time all the re- luctant States had accepted the Articles; and the new govern- ment had hardly been put into formal operation before it became evident that only the war had made such an arrange- ment workable. Not compacts, but the compulsions of a common danger, had drawn the States into an irregular co- operation, and it was even harder to obtain obedience to the definite Articles than it had been to get the requisitions of the unchartered Congress heeded while the war lasted. Peace had rendered the makeshift common government uninterest- ing, and had given each State leave to withdraw from com- mon undertakings, and to think once more, as of old, only of itself. Their own affairs again isolated and restored to their former separate importance, the States could no longer spare XI [9] OUR.COUNTRY 'h their chief men for what was considered the minor work of the general Congress. The best men had been gradually withdrawn from Congress before the war ended, and now there seemed less reason than ever why they should be sent to talk at Philadelphia, when they were needed for the actual work of administration at home. PoHtics fell back into their old localization, and every pubHc man found his chief tasks at home. There were still, as a matter of fact, common needs and dangers scarcely less imperative and menacing than those which had drawn the colonies together against the mother country; but they were needs and perils of peace, and ordi- nary men did not see them; only the most thoughtful and observant were conscious of them: extraordinary events were required to hft them to the general view. Happily, there were thoughtful and observant men who were already the chief figures of the country — men whose leadership the people had long since come to look for and accept — and it was through them that the States were brought to a new common consciousness, and at last to a real union. It was not possible for the several States to live self-sufficient and apart, as they had done when they were colonies. They had then had a common government, little as they hked to submit to it, and their foreign affairs had been taken care of. They were now to learn how ill they could dispense with a common providence. Instead of France, they now had England for neighbor in Canada and on the Western waters, where they had themselves but the other day fought so hard to set her power up. She was their rival and enemy, too, on the seas; refused to come to any treaty terms with them in regard to commerce; and laughed to see them unable to concert any policy against her because they had no common political authority among themselves. She had promised, in the treaty of peace, to withdraw her garrisons from the Western posts which lay within the terri- tory belonging to the Confederation; but Congress had prom- ised that British creditors should be paid what was due them, only to find that the States would make no laws to ful- fil the promise, and were determined to leave their Federal XI [ lo ] OUR COUNTRY representatives without power to make them; and England kept her troops where they were. Spain had taken France's place upon the farther bank of the Mississippi and at the great river's mouth. Grave questions of foreign policy pressed on every side, as of old, and no State could settle them unaided and for herself alone. Here was a group of commonwealths which would have Hved separately and for themselves, and could not; which had thought to make shift with merely a "league of friend- ship" between them and a Congress for consultation, and found that it was impossible. There were common debts to pay, but there was no common system of taxation by which to meet them, nor any authority to devise and enforce such a system. There were common enemies and rivals to deal with, but no one was authorized to carry out a common poHcy against them. There was a common domain to settle and administer, but no one knew how a Congress without the power to command was to manage so great a property. The Ordinance of 1787 was indeed bravely framed, after a method of real statesmanship; but there was no warrant for it to be found in the Articles, and no one could say how Congress would execute a law it had had no authority to enact. It was not merely the hopeless confusion and sinister signs of anarchy which abounded in their own affairs — a rebellion of debtors in Massachusetts, tariff wars among the States that lay upon New York Bay and on the Sound, North Caro- lina's doubtful supremacy among her settlers in the Ten- nessee country, Virginia's questionable authority in Ken- tucky — that brought the States at last to attempt a better union and set up a real government for the whole country. It was the inevitable continental outlook of affairs as well; if nothing more, the sheer necessity to grow and touch their neighbors at close quarters. Washington had been among the first to see the neces- sity of living, not by a local, but by a continental pohcy. Of course he had a direct pecuniary interest in the development of the Western lands — had himself preempted many a broad acre lying upon the far Ohio, as well as upon the nearer western XI [ II ] OUR COUNTRY slopes of the mountains — and it is open to any one who likes the sinister suggestion to say that his ardor for the occupancy of the Western country was that of the land speculator, not that of the statesman. Everybody knows that it was a con- ference between delegates from Maryland and Virginia about Washington's favorite scheme of joining the upper waters of the Potomac with the upper waters of the streams which made their way to the Mississippi — a conference held at his suggestion and at his house — that led to the convening of that larger conference at Annapohs, which called for the ap- pointment of the body that met at Philadelphia and framed the Constitution under which he was to become the first Presi- dent of the United States. It is open to any one who chooses to recall how keen old Governor Dinwiddle had been, when he came to Virginia, to watch these same Western waters in the interests of the first Ohio Company, in which he had bought stock; how promptly he called the attention of the ministers in England to the aggressions of the French in that quarter, sent Washington out as his agent to warn the in- truders off, and pushed the business from stage to stage, till the French and Indian war was ablaze, and nations were in deadly conflict on both sides of the sea. It ought to be nothing new and nothing strange, to those who have read the history of the English race the world over, to learn that conquests have a thousand times sprung out of the initiative of men who have first followed private interests into new lands like speculators, and then planned their occupation and govern- ment like statesmen. Dinwiddle was no statesman, but Washington was; and the circumstance which it is worth while to note about him is, not that he went prospecting upon the Ohio when the French war was over, but that he saw more than fertile lands there — saw the "seat of a rising em- pire," and, first among the men of his day, perceived by what means its settlers could be bound to the older communities in the East aUke in interest and in polity. Here were the first "West" and the first "East," and Washington's thought mediating between them. I The formation of the Union brought a real government XI [12] OUR COUNTRY into existence, and that government set about its work with an energy, a dignity, a thoroughness of plan, which made the whole country aware of it from the outset, and aware, consequently, of the national scheme of political life it had been devised to promote. Hamilton saw to it that the new government should have a definite party and body of interests at its back. It had been fostered in the making by the com- mercial classes at the ports and along the routes of commerce, and opposed in the rural districts which lay away from the centres of population. Those who knew the forces that played from State to State, and made America a partner in the life of the world, had earnestly wanted a government that should preside and choose in the making of the nation; but those who saw only the daily round of the countryside had been indifferent or hostile, consulting their pride and their prejudices. Hamilton sought a poHcy which should serve the men who had set the government up, and found it in the funding of the debt, both national and domestic, the assump- tion of the Revolutionary obligations of the States, and the estabHshment of a national bank. This was what the friends of the new plan had wanted, the rehabiHtation of credit, and the government set out with a programme meant to commend it to men with money and vested interests. It was just such a government that the men of an oppo- site interest and temperament had dreaded, and Washing- ton was not out of office before the issue began to be clearly drawn between those who wanted a strong government, with a great establishment, a system of finance which should domi- nate the markets, an authority in the field of law which should restrain the States and make the Union, through its courts, the sole and final judge of its own powers, and those who dreaded nothing else so much, wished a government which should hold the country together with as little thought as possible of its own aggrandizement, went all the way with JefTerson in his jealousy of the commercial interest, accepted his ideal of a dispersed power put into commission among the States — even among the local units within the States — and looked to see Hberty discredited amidst a display of federal power. XI [ 13 ] OUR COUNTRY When the first party had nad their day in the setting up of the government and the inauguration of a poHcy which should make it authoritative, the party of Jefferson came in to purify it. They began by attacking the federal courts, which had angered every man of their faith by a steady maintenance and elaboration of the federal power; they ended by using that power just as their opponents had used it. In the first place, it was necessary to buy Louisiana, and with it the con- trol of the Mississippi, notwithstanding Mr. Jefferson's solemn conviction that such an act was utterly without constitutional warrant; in the second place, they had to enforce an arbitrary embargo in order to try their hand at reprisal upon foreign rivals in trade; in the end, they had to recharter the national bank, create a national debt and a sinking fund, impose an excise upon whiskey, lay direct taxes, devise a protective tariff, use coercion upon those who would not aid them in a great war — play the role of masters and tax-gatherers as the Federalists had played it— on a greater scale, even, and with equal gusto. Everybody knows the familiar story: it has new significance from day to day only as it illustrates the in- variable process of nation-making which has gone on from generation to generation, from the first until now. Opposition to the exercise and expansion of the federal power only matle it the more inevitable by making it the more deliberate. The passionate protests, the plain speech, the sinister forecasts, of such men as John Randolph aided the process by making it self-conscious. What Randolph meant as an accusation, those who chose the policy of the govern- ment presently accepted as a prophecy. It was true, as he said, that a nation was in the making, and a government under which the privileges of the States would count for less than the compulsions of the common interest. Few had seen it so at first; the men who were old when the government was born refused to see it so to the last; but the young men and those who came fresh upon the stage from decade to dec- ade presently found the scarecrow look hke a thing they might love. Their ideal took form with the reiterated sug- gestion; thev began to hope for what they had been bidden XI [14] OUR COUNTRY to dread. No party could long use the federal authority without coming to feel it national — without forming some ideal of the common interest, and of the use of power by which it should be fostered. When they adopted the tariff of 1816, the Jeffersonians themselves formulated a pohcy which should endow the federal government with a greater economic power than even Hamil- ton had planned w^hcn he sought to win the support of the merchants and the lenders of money; and when they bought something like a third of the continent beyond the Mississippi, they made it certain the nation should grow upon a continental scale which no provincial notions about state powers and a common government kept within strait bounds could possi- bly survive. Here were the two forces which were to domi- nate us till the present day, and make the present issues of our politics: an open "West" into which a frontier popu- lation was to be thrust from generation to generation, and a protective tariff which should build up special interests the while in the "East," and make the contrast ever sharper and sharper between section and section. What the "West" is doing now is simply to note more dehberately than ever before, and with a keener distaste, this striking contrast between her own development and that of the "East." That was a true instinct of statesmanship which led Henry Clay to couple* a policy of internal improvements with a policy of pro- tection. Internal improvements meant in that day great *^ roads leading into the West, and every means taken to open the country to use and settlement. While a protective tariff was building up special industries in the East, pubhc works should make an outlet into new lands for all who were not getting the benefit of the system. The plan worked admira- bly for many a day, and was justly called "American," so well did it match the circumstances of a set of communities, half old, half new: the old waiting to be developed, the new setting the easy scale of living. The other side of the policy was left for us. There is no longer any outlet for those who are not the beneficiaries of the protective system, and nothing but the contrasts it has created remains to mark its triumphs. XI [15] OUR COUNTRY Internal improv-cments no longer relieve the strain; they have become merely a means of largess. The history of the United States has been one continuous story of rapid, stupendous growth, and all its great questions have been questions of growth. It was proposed in the Con- stitutional Convention of 1787 that a limit should be set to the number of new members to be admitted to the House of Representatives from States formed beyond the Allegha- nies; and the suggestion was conceived with a true instinct of prophecy. The old States were not only to be shaken out of their self-centred Hfe, but were even to see their very government changed over their heads by the rise of States "in the Western country. John Randolph voted against the admission of Ohio into the Union, because he held that no new partner should be admitted to the federal arrangement except by unanimous consent. It was the very next year that Louisiana was purchased, and a million square miles were added to the territory out of which new States were to be made. Had the original States been able to live to them- selves, keeping their own people, elaborating their own life, without a common property to manage, unvexed by a vacant continent, national questions might have been kept within modest limits. They might even have made shift to digest Tennessee, Kentucky, Mississippi, Alabama, and the great commonwealths carved out of the Northwest Territory, for which the Congress of the Confederation had already made provision. But the Louisiana purchase opened the continent to the planting of States, and took the processes of nationali- zation out of the hands of the original "partners." Ques- tions of politics were henceforth to be questions of growth. For a while the question of slavery dominated all the rest. The Northwest Territory was closed to slavery by the Ordi- nance of 1787. Tennessee, Kentucky, Mississippi, Alabama, took slavery almost without question from the States from which they were sprung. But Missouri gave the whole country view of the matter which must be settled in the making of every State founded beyond the Mississippi. The slavery struggle, which seems to us who are near it to occupy so great a space in the field of our affairs, was, of course, a struggle XI [ 16 ] OUR COUNTRY for and against the extension of slavery, not for or against its existence in the States where it had taken root from of old — a question of growth, not of law. It will some day be seen to have been, for all it was so stupendous, a mere epi- sode of development. Its result was to remove a ground of economic and social difference as between section and sec- tion which threatened to become permanent, standing forever in the way of a homogeneous life. The passionate struggle to prevent its extension inevitably led to its total abolition; and the way was clear for the South, as well as the "West," to become Hke its neighbor sections in every element of its hfe. It had also a further, almost incalculable effect in its stimu- lation of a national sentiment. It created throughout the North and Northwest a passion of devotion to the Union which really gave the Union a new character. The nation was fused into a single body in the fervent heat of the time. At the beginning of the war the South had seemed hke a sec- tion pitted against a section; at its close it seemed a territory conquered by a neighbor nation. That nation is now, take it roughly, that "East" which we contrast with the "West" of our day. The economic conditions once centred at New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Pittsburg, and the other commercial and industrial cities of the coast States are now to be found, hardly less clearly marked, in Chicago, in Minneapohs, in Detroit, through all the great States that lie upon the Lakes, in all the old "Northwest." The South has fallen into a new economic classification. In respect of its stage of development it belongs with the "West," though in sentiment, in traditional ways of life, in many a point of practice and detail, it keeps its old individuality, and though it has in its peculiar labor problem a hinderance to progress at once unique and ominous. It is to this point we have come in the making of the nation. The old sort of growth is at an end — the growth by mere ex- pansion. We have now to look more closely to internal con- ditions, and study the means by which a various people is to be bound together in a single interest. Many differences will pass away of themselves. "East" and "West" will come together by a slow approach, as capital accumulates where XI [17] OUR COUNTRY now it is only borrowed, as industrial development makes its way westward in a new variety, as life gets its linal elabora- tion and detail throughout all the great spaces of the con- tinent, until all the scattered parts of the nation are drawn into real community of interest. Even the race problem of the South will no doubt work itself out in the slowness of time, as blacks and whites pass from generation to genera- tion, gaining with each removal from the memories of the war a surer self-possession, an easier view of the division of labor and of social function to be arranged between them. Time is the only legislator in such a matter. But not everything can be left to drift and slow accommodation. The nation which has grown to the proportions almost of the continent within the century, Ues under our eyes, unfinished, unhar- monized, waiting still to have its parts adjusted, lacking its last lesson in the ways of peace and concert. It required statesmanship of no mean sort to bring us to our present growth and lusty strength. It will require leadership of a much higher order to teach us the triumphs of cooperation, the self-possession and calm choices of maturity. Much may be brought about by a mere knowledge of the situation. It is not simply the existence of facts that governs us, but consciousness and comprehension of the facts. The whole process of statesmanship consists in bringing facts to light, and shaping law to suit, or, if need be, mould them. It is part of our present danger that men of the "East" listen only to their own public men, men of the "West" only to theirs. We speak of the "West" as out of sympathy with the "East": it would be instructive once and again to reverse the terms, and admit that the "East" neither understands nor sympathizes with the "West"— and thorough nationah- zation depends upon mutual understandings and sympathies. There is an unpleasant significance in the fact that the "East" has made no serious attempt to understand the desire for the free coinage of silver in the "West" and the South. If it were once really probed and comprehended, we should know that it is necessary to reform our currency at once, and we should know in what way it is necessary to reform it ; we should know that a new protective tariff only marks with a XI [ i8 ] OUR COUNTRY new emphasis the contrast in economic interest between the "East" and the "West," and that nothing but currency re- form can touch the cause of the present discontents. Ignorance and indifference as between section and sec- tion no man need wonder at who knows the habitual courses of history; and no one who comprehends the essential sound- ness of our people's life can mistrust the future of the nation. He may confidently expect a safe nationalization of in- terest and policy in the end, whatever folly of experiment and fitful change he may fear in the mean while. He can only wonder that we should continue to leave ourselves so utterly without adequate means of formulating a national policy. Certainly Providence has presided over our affairs with a strange indulgence, if it is true that Providence helps only those who first seek to help themselves. The making of a nation has never been a thing deliberately planned and consummated by the counsel and authority of leaders, but the daily conduct and policy of a nation which has won its place must be so planned. So far we have had the hope- fulness, the readiness, and the hardihood of youth in these matters, and have never become fully conscious of the posi- tion into which our peculiar frame of government has brought us. We have waited a whole century to observe that we have made no provision for authoritative national leader- ship in matters of policy. The President does not always speak with authority, because he is not always a man picked out and tested by any processes in which the people have been participants, and has nothing often but his ofiice to render him influential. Even when the country does know and trust him, he can carry his views no further than to recommend them to the attention of Congress in a written message which the Houses would deem themselves subservient to give too much heed to. Within the Houses there is no man, except the Vice-President, to whose choice the whole country gives heed; and he is chosen, not to be a Senator, but only to wait upon the disability of the President, and preside meanwhile over a body of which he is not a member. The House of Representatives has in these latter days made its Speaker its political leader as well as its parliamentary XI [19] OUlpCOUNTRY moderator; but the country is, of course, never consulted about that beforehand, and his leadership is not the open leadership of discussion, but the undebatable leadership of the parliamentary autocrat. This singular leaderless structure of our government never stood fully revealed until the present generation, and even now awaits general recognition. PecuHar circumstances and the practical political habit and sagacity of our people for long concealed it. The framers of the Constitution no doubt expected the President and his advisers to exercise a real leadership in affairs, and for more than a generation after the setting up of the government their expectation was ful- filled. Washington was accepted as leader no less by Con- gress than by the people. Hamilton, from the Treasury, really gave the government both its policy and its adminis- trative structure. If John Adams had less authority than Washington, it was because the party he represented was losing its hold upon the country. Jefferson was the most consum- mate party chief, the most unchecked master of legislative poHcy, we have had in America, and his dynasty was continued in Madison and Monroe. But Madison's terms saw Clay and Calhoun come to the front in the House, and many another man of the new generation, ready to guide and coach the Presi- dent rather than to be absolutely controlled by him. Mon- roe was not of the calibre of his predecessors, and no party could rally about so stiff a man, so cool a partisan, as John Quincy Adams. And so the old poHtical function of the presi- dency came to an end, and it was left for Jackson to give it a new one — instead of a leadership of counsel, a leadership and discipline by rewards and punishments. Then the slavery issue began to dominate politics, and a long season of con- centrated passion brought individual men of force into power in Congress — natural leaders of men like Clay, trained and eloquent advocates like Webster, keen debaters with a logic whose thrusts were as sharp as those of cold steel Hke Cal- houn. The war made the Executive of necessity the nation's leader again, with the great Lincoln at its head, who seemed to embody, with a touch of genius, the very character of the race itself. Then reconstruction came — under whose leader- XI [ 20 ] OUR COUNTRY ship who could say? — and we were left to wonder what, hence- forth, in the days of ordinary peace and industry, we were to make of a government which could in humdrum times yield us no leadership at all. The tasks which confront us now are not like those which centred in the war, in which passion made men run together to a common work. Heaven forbid that we should admit any element of passion into the dehcate matters in which national poHcy must mediate between the dif- fering economic interests of sections which a wise moderation will assuredly unite in the ways of harmony and peace ! We shall need, not the mere compromises of Clay, but a construct- ive leadership of which Clay hardly showed himself capable. There are few things more disconcerting to the thought, in any effort to forecast the future of our affairs, than the fact that we must continue to take our executive policy from presi- dents given us by nominating conventions, and our legislation from conference committees of the House and Senate. Evi- dently it is a purely providential form of government. We should never have had Lincoln for President had not the Re- pubHcan convention of i860 sat in Chicago, and felt the weight of the galleries in its work — and one does not like to think what might have happened had Mr. Seward been nominated. We might have had Mr. Bryan for President, because of the impression which may be made upon an excited assembly by a good voice and a few ringing sentences flung forth just after a cold man who gave unpalatable counsel had sat down. The country knew absolutely nothing about Mr. Bryan before his nomination, and it would not have known anything about him afterward had he not chosen to make speeches. It was not Mr. McKinley, but Mr. Reed, who was the real leader of the RepubHcan party. It has become a commonplace among us that conventions prefer dark horses — prefer those who are not tested leaders with well-known records, to those who are. It has become a commonplace among all nations which have tried popular institutions, that the actions of such bodies as our nominating conventions are subject to the play of passion and of chance. They meet to do a single thing — for the platform is really left to a committee — and upon that one thing all intrigue centres. Who that has witnessed them XI [21] f OUR COUNTRY will ever forget the intense night scenes, the feverish recesses, of our nominating conventions, when there is a running to and fro of agents from delegation to delegation, and every can- didate has his busy headquarters — can ever forget the shout- ing and almost frenzied masses on the floor of the hall when the convention is in session, swept this way and that by every wind of sudden feeling, impatient of debate, incapable of de- hberation? When a convention's brief work is over, its own members can scarcely remember the plan and order of it. They go home unmarked, and sink into the general body of those who have nothing to do with the conduct of government. They cannot be held responsible if their candidate fails in his attempt to carry on the Executive. It has not often happened that candidates for the presi- dency have been chosen from outside the ranks of those who have seen service in national pohtics. Congress is apt to be peculiarly sensitive to the exercise of executive authority by men who have not at some time been members of the one House or the other, and so learned to sympathize with members' views as to the relations that ought to exist between the Presi- dent and the federal legislature. No doubt a good deal of the dislike which the Houses early conceived for Mr. Cleve- land was due to the feeling that he was an "outsider," a man without congressional sympathies and points of view — a sort of irregular and amateur at the delicate game of national politics as played at Washington; most of the men whom he chose as advisers were of the same kind, without Washing- ton credentials. Mr. McKinley, though of the congressional circle himself, repeated the experiment in respect of his cabi- net in the appointment of such men as Mr. Gage and Mr. Bliss and Mr. Gary. Members resent such appointments; they seem to drive the two branches of the government further apart than ever, and yet they grow more common from ad- ministration to administration. These appointments make cooperation between Congress and the Executive more difticult, not because the men thus appointed lack respect for the Houses or seek to gain any advantage over them, but because they do not know how to deal with them — through what persons and by what cour- XI [ 22 ] OUR COUNTRY tesies of approach. To the uninitiated Congress is simply a mass of individuals. It has no responsible leaders known to the system of government, and the leaders recognized by its rules arc one set of individuals for one sort of legislation, another for another. The Secretaries cannot address or ap- proach either House as a whole; in dealing with committees they are deaUng only with groups of individuals; neither party has its leader — there are only influential men here and there who know how to manage its caucuses and take advantage of parliamentary openings on the floor. There is a master in the House, as every member very well knows, and even the easy-going pubHc are beginning to observe. The Speaker appoints the committees; the committees practically frame all legislation; the Speaker, accordingly, gives or withholds legislative power and opportunity, and members are granted influence or deprived of it much as he pleases. He of course administers the rules, and the rules are framed to prevent debate and individual initiative. He can refuse recognition for the introduction of measures he disapproves of as party chief; he may make way for those he desires to see passed. He is chairman of the Committee on Rules, by which the House submits to be governed (for fear of helplessness and chaos) in the arrangement of its business and the apportion- ment of its time. In brief, he is not only its moderator, but its master. New members protest and write to the news- papers; but old members submit — and indeed the Speaker's power is inevitable. You must have leaders in a numerous body — leaders with authority; and you cannot give authority in the House except through the rules. The man who ad- ministers the rules must be master, and you must put this mastery into the hands of your best party leader. The legis- lature being separated from the executive branch of the gov- ernment, the only rewards and punishments by which you can secure party discipHne are those within the gift of the rules — the committee appointments and preferences: you can- not administer these by election; party government would break down in the midst of personal exchanges of electoral favors. Here again you must trust the Speaker to organize and choose, and your only party leader is your moderator. XI [ 23 ] OUR COUNTRY He does not lead by debate; he explains, he proposes nothing to the country; you learn his will in his ruhngs. It is with such machinery that we are to face the future, find a wise and moderate poHcy, bring the nation to a com- mon, a cordial understanding, a real unity of life. The Presi- dent can lead only as he can command the ear of both Con- gress and the country — only as any other individual might who could secure a Hke general hearing and acquiescence. PoHcy must come always from the deliberations of the House committees, the debates, both secret and open, of the Senate, the compromises of committee conference between the Houses; no one man, no group of men, leading; no man, no group of men, responsible for the outcome. Unquestionably we behevc in a guardian destiny! No other race could have ac- complished so much with such a system; no other race would have dared risk such an experiment. We shall work out a remedy, for work it out we must. We must find or make, somewhere in our system, a group of men to lead us, who rep- resent the nation in the origin and responsibiHty of their power; who shall draw the Executive, which makes choice of foreign policy and upon whose ability and good faith the honorable execution of the laws depends, into cordial cooperation with the legislature, which, under whatever form of government, must sanction law and pohcy. Only under a national leader- ship, by a national selection of leaders, and by a method of con- structive choice rather than of compromise and barter, can a various nation be peacefully led. Once more is our problem of nation-making the problem of a form of government. Shall we show the sagacity, the open-mindedness, the moderation, in our task of modification, that were shown under Wash- ington and Madison and Sherman and FrankHn and Wilson, in the task of construction? XI [ 24 ] XII C( PATRIOTISM AND POLITICS" BY HIS EMINENCE CARDINAL GIBBONS CHIEF PRELATE OF THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH IN AMERICA PRESIDENT WILSON has shown us the steps by which our country has become the mighty and happy land it is. Let us look now to the spirit which has made it great, to the pa- triotism which has guided and inspired its advance. Let us, moreover, consider this patriotism in no idle mood oj joy, or pride, or selj-gratulation. Rather must we study thoughtfully the means by which love of country has been roused in the past. We must seek the root of the emotions from which so fair a flower blooms; we must examine the meaning of this inspiring power which we have all seen in action, this undeniable spiritual force. We must aim to find why God implanted it in the heart of man. If in this search we become convinced of patriotism'' s high worth, we must then question what dangers threaten it, what means shall be taken to preserve it and to stimulate it to yet greater strength of inspiration in the coming years. For this search, less simple than perchance it seems, let us accept the guidance of that distinguished prelate who stands at the head of the Roman Catholic Church in America. However widely many of us may differ from Cardinal Gibbons in matters of religious faith, yet his pure, strong, simple life has wo7i him the respect of all. His steady influence in ^^ Americanizing'^ the Catholic Church marks him as a friend of liberty. And his ever-widening fame guarantees that any written word of his will be filled full with a broad knowledge, a high wisdom, and a prac- tical common-sense. XII [ I ] "PATRIOTISM AND POLITICS" I HAVE no apology to make for offering some reflections on the political outlook of the nation; for my rights as a citizen were not abdicated or abridged on becoming a Christian prel- ate, and the sacred character which I profess, far from lessen- ing, rather increases, my obligations to my country. In answer to those who affirm that a churchman is not quali- fied to discuss poHtics, by reason of his sacred calUng, which removes him from the pohtical arena, I would say that this statement may be true in the sense that a clergyman as such should not be a heated partisan of any political party; but it is not true in the sense that he is unfitted by his sacred profes- sion for discussing pohtical principles. His very seclusion from popular agitation gives him a vantage-ground over those that are in the whirlpool of party strife, just as they, who have never witnessed Shakespeare's plays performed on the stage, are better qualified to judge of the genius of the author and the literary merit of his productions than they who witness the plays amid the environment of stage scenery. It is needless to say that I write not merely as a church- man, but as a citizen; not in a partisan, but in a patriotic, spirit; not in advocacy of any particular party, but in vindica- tion of pure government. There is a moral side to most politi- cal questions; and my purpose here is to consider the ethical aspect of politics, and the principles of justice by which they should be regulated. Every man in the Commonwealth leads a dual life — a pri- vate Ufe under the shadow of the home, and a pubhc hfe under the aegis of the State. lAs a father, a husband, or a son, he owes certain duties to the family; as a citizen, he owes certain obligations to his country. These civic virtues are all com- prised under the generic name, patriotism. ^^ Patriotism means love of country! Its root is the Latin word patria, a word not domesticated in English. The French have it in patrie; the Anglo-Saxon and Teutonic races have it Hterally translated in Fatherland. "Fatherland," says Cicero, "is the common parent of us all: Patria est communis omnium nostrum parens.'"^ 'It is the parental home extended, the ^ See Cicero's De Finihus, III., p. 19. XII [ 2 ] "PATRIOTISM AND POLITICS" family reaching out to the city, the province, the country. Hence, with us Fatherland and Country have come to be synony- mous.'^ Country in this sense comprises two elements, the soil itself, and the men who live thereon. We love the soil in which our fathers sleep — terra patrum, terra palria, the land in which we were born. We love the men who as fellow-dwellers share that land with us. When, not long ago, Dom Pedro, the exiled Emperor of Brazil, died in Paris, he was laid to his last sleep on Brazihan soil, which he had carried away with him for that very purpose. ■ Let a citizen from Maine meet a citizen from CaUfornia on the shores of the Bosphorus or on the banks of the Tiber, they will, at once, forget that at home they dwelt three thousand miles apart) State Unes are obhterated, party differences are laid aside, rehgious animosities, if such had existed, are extinguished. iThey warmly clasp hands, they remember only that they are fellow-American citizens, children of the same mother, fellow-dwellers in the same land over which floats the star-spangled banner?! Patriotism implies not only love of soil and of fellow-citi- zens, but also, and principally, attachment to the laws, institu- tions, and government of one's country; filial admiration of the heroes, statesmen, and men of genius, who have contributed to its renown by the valor of their arms, the wisdom of their counsel, or their literary fame. It includes, also, an ardent zeal for the maintenance of those sacred principles that secure to the citizen freedom of conscience, and an earnest determi- nation to consecrate his Hfe, if necessary, pro arts et jocis (in defence of altar and fireside), of God and Fatherland. Pa- triotism is a universal sentiment of the race : "Breathes there the man with soul so dead Who never to himself hath said, 'Thisismy own, my native land!' " A certain philosophical school has taught that love of country has its origin in physical comfort. Ihi patria uhi bene. But is it not true that one's country becomes dear in proportion to the sufferings endured for it ? Have not the sacrifices of our wars developed the patriotism of the American? !ln fact, it is the most suffering and persecuted races that are endowed xn [ 3 ] "PATRIOTISM AND POLITICS" with the deepest patriotisil^ We may even go so far as to say that the rougher the soil, the harsher the cHmate, the greater the material privations of a land, the more intense is the love of its inhabitants for it. Witness the Irish peasant. And are not the Sv^^iss in their narrow valleys and on their steep moun- tain-sides, the Scotch on their rugged Highlands the classic models of patriotism? Nay, the Eskimo, amid the perpet- ual snows that hide from his eyes every green spot of earth, loves his home nor dreams of a f airer.N Patriotism is not a sentiment born of material and physical well-being; it is a sentiment that the poverty of country and the discomforts of climate do not diminish, that the inflictions of conquest and despotism do not augment. The truth is, it is a rational instinct placed by the Creator in the breast of man. When God made man a social being. He gave him a sentiment that urges him to sacrifice himself for his family and his country, which is, as it were, his larger family. "Dear are ancestors, dear are children, dear are relatives and friends; all these loves are contained in love of country." ^ The Roman was singularly devoted to his country. Civis Ronianus sum (I am a citizen of Rome) was his proudest boast. He justly gloried in being a citizen of a repubHc conspicuous for its centuries of endurance, for the valor of its soldiers, for the wisdom of its statesmen and the genius of its writers. One of its greatest poets has sung: "It is sweet and honorable to die for one's country."^ So execrable was the crime of treason regarded, that the traitor not only suffered extreme penalties in this hfe, but he is consigned after death by Virgil to the most gloomy regions of Tartarus. ^ Love of country shows itself in the citizen by the observance of law and the good use of political rights; and in those that, for the time being, govern, by justice and disinterestedness in their administration. Ministers of religion manifest their pa- triotism, not only as citizens, but also as spiritual teachers and ^ Cari sunt parentes, cari liberi, propinqui, familiares, sed omnes omnium caritates patria una complexa est. (Cicero, De Off., I., 17.) 2 Dulce et decorum pro patria mori. (Horace, B. III., Ode II.) 3 See Virgil's /Eneid, Book VI. XII [4] "PATRIOTISM AND POLITICS" leaders of the people, by inculcating the religious, moral, and civic virtues, and by prayer to the throne of God for the welfare of the land. "I desire, therefore," wrote St. Paul to his dis- ciple Timothy, "first of all that supplications, prayers, inter- cessions, and thanksgivings be made for all men ; for kings and for all that are in high station, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable Hfe in all piety and chastity; for this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour." ^ The Catholic Church in our country is not unmindful of this duty. A prayer composed by Archbishop Carroll to beg Heaven's blessing on the land and its rulers, a masterpiece of liturgical literature, is recited every Sunday at the solemn ser- vice in some parts of the United States, and notably in the Cathedral at Baltimore, in which the custom has never ceased since it was introduced by Baltimore's first Archbishop over one hundred years ago. To the soldier, patriotism has inspired the most heroic deeds of courage and self-sacrifice. The victories of Debora, Judith, and Gcdeon, achieved for God and country, are re- corded with praise in Sacred Scripture. The stand of Leonidas in the pass of Thermopylae with his three hundred Spartans against the million Persians of Xerxes; the boldness of his answer to the Oriental monarch's summons to lay down arms, "Let him come and take them"; the recklessness of his reply to the threat that so numerous were his foes that the very heavens would be darkened by their arrows, "'Tis well. We shall fight in the shade"; the fierce battle; the fall of almost all the Grecian heroes; the total defeat of the Persian host— are commonplaces of history, are themes of the schoolroom. That day ranks among the great days of the world. Had Xerxes triumphed, Europe had become Asiatic, and the trend of history had been changed. The three calls of Cincinnatus to the Dictatorship from the solitude and cultivation of his Sabine farm, his three tri- umphs over the enemies of the Republic, kindled not in his breast the fire of pohtical ambition. When the foe was re- pelled and his country needed him no longer, he laid down the * See Timothy, II., 1-3. xn - [ 5 J "PATRIOTISM AND POLITICS" sword of command for the^R)ugh, left "the pomp and circum- stance" of the camp for the quiet of his rural homestead, Hke him whose grave hallows the hillside of Mount Vernon — two not- able instances of patriotism, making men great in peace no less than in war. Need I recall to my readers Regulus, Horatius Codes, Brutus, the first consul, whose heroic and patriotic deeds have been the exultant theme of the classic authors of Rome? Patriotism finds outward and, so to say, material expres- sion, in respect for the flag that symbohzes the country, and for the chief magistrate who represents it. ; Perhaps it is only when an American travels abroad that he 'fully reahzes how deep-rooted is his love for his native country. The sentiment of patriotism, which may be dormant at home, is aroused and quickened in foreign lands. The sight of an American flag flying f rpm the mast of a ship in mid-ocean or in some foreign port awakes unwonted emotion and enthusiasm. The interest which an American feels in a presidential elec- tion, or in any other important domestic event, is intensified when he is abroad. When I was travelhng through the Tyrol, in 1880, 1 had a natural desire to find out who had been nomi- nated for the Presidency; but in that country news travels slowly. On reaching Innspruck, I learned that Mr. Garfield was the nominee. I got my information from an American student buried in the cloisters of a seminary, to whom the out- side world was apparently dead. I never discovered, and I dare say his professors never knew, how he obtained his infor- mation. But the news was correct. Americans are in the habit of visiting Rome every year in large numbers. The greater part of them on their anival instinctively repair to the American College. Perhaps, the name of the college attracts them; perhaps, also, the consciousness that they will hear their mother-tongue. And when they enter its portals, where they are always sure to find a warm welcome from the genial rector, their eyes are gladdened by the familiar features of the " Father of his Country." Love of country, as I have described it, which is funda- mentally an ethical sentiment, and which was such in all nations, even before Christian Revelation was given to the world, and XII [ 6 ] "PATRIOTISM AND POLITICS" which is such to-day among nations that have not heard the Christian message, is elevated, ennobled, and perfected by the religion of Christ. Patriotism in non-Christian times and races has inspired heroism even unto death. We do not pretend that Christian patriotism can do more. (But we do say that Christianity has given to patriotism, and to the sacrifices it demands, nobler motives and higher ideals, j If the virtue of patriotism was held in such esteem by pagan Greece and Rome, guided only by the hght of reason, how much more .should it be cherished by Christians, instructed as they are by the voice of Revelation! The Founder of the Christian religion has ennobled and sanctified loyalty to coun- try by the influence of His example and the force of His teaching. When St. Peter was asked by the tax-collector whether his Master should pay the tribute money or not, he rej^^jcd in the affirmative, and the penniless Master wrought a miracle to secure the payment of the money, though He was exempt from the obligation by reason of His poverty and his divine origin; for if the sons of kings are free from taxation, as Christ Him- self remarked on that occasion, the Son of the King of kings had certainly a higher claim to exemption. The Herodians questioned Jesus whether or not it was lawful to pay tribute to Caesar. By this question they sought to ensnare Him in His words. If He admitted the obHgation, He would have aroused the indignation of the Jews, who deemed it unlawful to pay tribute to a Gentile and idolatrous ruler. If, on the other hand. He denied the obligation, He would have incurred the vengeance of Rome. He made this memorable re- ply, which silenced His adversaries : " Render to Caesar the things which are Caesar's, and to God the things which are God's." The Apostles echo the voice of their Master. "Let every soul be subject to higher powers; for there is no power but from God. Therefore, he who resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God ; and they who resist, purchase for them- selves damnation. Render, therefore, to all their dues: trib- ute to whom tribute is due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honor to whom honor." ^ "Be ye subject to ^Romans, XIII. xn [ 7 J ''PATRIOTISM AND POLITICS" every authority for God's ^Kc, whether to the king as ex- ceUing, or to governors as sent by him for the punishment of evil-doers, and for the praise of those who do well."^ This short sentence, "There is no authority but from God," has contributed more effectually to the stability of nations and to the peace and order of society than standing armies and all the volumes ever written on the principles of government. It ennobles obedience to constituted authority by representing it, not as an act of servility to man, but of homage to God. It sheds a halo around rulers and magistrates by holding them up to us as the representatives of God. It invests all legitimate laws with a divine sanction by an appeal to our conscience. If the Apostles and the primitive Christians had so much reverence for the civil magistrates in whose election they cer- tainly had no voice; and if they were so conscientious in ob- serving the laws of the Roman Empire, which often inflicted on them odious pains and disabihties, how much more respect should the American citizen entertain for the civil rulers in whose election he actively participates! With what alacrity should he fulfil the laws which are framed solely for his peace and protection and for the welfare of the Commonwealth ! The deification of the State in pagan times rested on a principle contrary to reason, and exacted sacrifices destructive of the moral worth of the citizen. The State absorbed the individual. It was held to be the proprietor and master of the citizen, who was only an instrument in its hand, to be used, cast aside, or broken at will. Christianity knows how to con- ciliate patriotism with the exigencies of man's personal dignity. fSocial perfection, or civilization, is in that form of government that secures to its members the greater facihty for pursuing and attaining their end in Ufe.^i That is the Christian notion of the State, and the American aiso, as laid down in the Declara- tion of Independence. It is stated therein that government is for the citizen, to secure to him his inahenable rights — that is to say, rights that are liis and are inahenable by virtue of the supreme end marked out for him by the Creator. I Again, unhke pagan civilization, which despised the for- Peter, II. XII [ 8 ] "PATRIOTISM AND POLITICS" eigner as a barbarian and a foe, Christian and American civili- zation sees its ideal in that universal charity revealed to the world by Christ, who came to teach the brotherhood of all men in the Fatherhood of the One God. Patriotism and cosmo- pohtism are not incompatible in the Christian.^ They find a model in the rehgious order, in the Catholicity and unity of the Church. \And even in the poHtical order, the United States offers a miniature picture of the brotherly federation of nations — forty-five sovereign States, sovereign and independent as to their internal existence, yet presenting to the rest of the world a national unity in the federal government J And, indeed, when we reflect on the happiness and mani- fold temporal blessings which our pohtical institutions have already conferred, and are destined in the future to confer, on milhons of people, we are not surprised that the American citizen is proud of his country, her history, and the record of her statesmen. Therefore, next to God, our country should hold the strongest place in our affections. Impressed, as we ought to be, with a profound sense of the blessings which our system of govern- ment continues to bestow on us, we shall have a corresponding dread lest these blessings should be withdrawn from us. It is a sacred duty for every American to do all in his power to per- petuate our civil institutions and to avert the dangers that threaten them. The system of government which obtains in the United States is tersely described in the well-known sentence, "A government of the people, by the people, for the people " ; which may be paraphrased thus: Ours is a government in which the people are ruled by the representatives of their own choice, and for the benefit of the people themselves. Our rulers are called the servants of the people, since they are appointed to fulfil the people's wishes; and the people are called the sovereign people, because it is by their sovereign voice that their rulers are elected. The method by which the supreme will of the people is registered is the ballot-box. This is the oracle that proclaims their choice. This is the balance in which the merits of the XII [ 9 ] "PATRIOTISM AND POLITICS" candidates arc weighed. TllFlicavier scale determines at once the decision of the majority and the selection of the candidate. And what spectacle is more subhme than the sight of ten millions of citizens determining, not by the bullet, but by the ballot, the ruler that is to preside over the nation's destinies "A weapon that comes down as still As snowflakes fall upon the sod ; But executes a freeman's will, As lightning does the will of God : And from its force nor doors nor locks Can shield you: 'tis the ballot-box.'' But the greatest blessings are Hable to be perverted. Our Republic, while retaining its form and name, may degenerate into most odious tyranny; and the irresponsible despotism of the multitude is more galling, because more difficult to be shaken off, than that of the autocrat. ; History is philosophy teaching by example. A brief re- view of the Roman Republic and the causes of its downfall will teach us a useful lesson. The RepubHc prospered so long as the citizens practised simplicity of Hfe, and the civil magis- trates administered even-handed justice. Avarice and ambi- tion proved its ruin.^ The avarice of the poor was gratified by the bribery of the rich ; and the ambition of the rich was fed by the votes of the poor. In the latter days of the Republic bribery and corruption were shamefully practised. Marius was elected to the consul- ship by the purchase of votes and by collusion with the most notorious demagogues. Pompey and Crassus secured the con- sulship by intimidation, though neither of them was legally quaUfied for that office. The philosophy of Epicuris, intro- duced during the last years of the RepubHc, hastened the moral and mental corruption of Rome. The loss of the poHtical au- tonomy of Greece, which preceded that of Rome, may be traced to the same cause. To the early Romans the oath was sacred, and perjury a detestable crime. We find in a letter of ^Primo pecunice, deinde imperii cupido crevit; ea quasi materies omnium malorum fuere. (Sallust.) Catalin. C. X. XII [ lO ] "PATRIOTISM AND POLITICS" Cicero to Atticus a curious incident that shows how far the poHticians of his day had departed from former standards, "Memmius," he writes, "has just made known to the Senate an agreement between himself and an associate candidate for the consulship on the one hand, and the two consuls of the current year on the other." It appears that the two consuls agreed to favor the candidacy of the aspirants on the following terms: The two aspirants bound themselves to forfeit to the consuls four hundred thousand sesterces if they failed to pro- duce in favor of the consuls three augurs who were to swear that in their sight and hearing the Plebs (though such was not the fact) had voted the law Curiate, a law that invested the consuls with full military powers; and also if they failed to produce two ex-consuls who were to swear that in their presence the Senate had passed and signed a certain decree regulating the provinces of each consul, though such was not the fact.^ What a crowding of dishonesty in this one transaction! Can the worst kind of American poHtics furnish the match of this slate gotten up regardless of truth and oath ? Cato failed to be elected consul, although eminently worthy of that dignity, because he disdained to purchase the office by bribes. Caesar had so far debauched the populace with flat- tery and bribes, and the soldiers with pensions, that his elec- tion to the office of chief pontiff and consul was easily obtained. During the Empire, elections were usually a mere formality. Bribery was open and unblushing. Toward the end of the second century the Empire was pubhcly sold at auction to the highest bidder. Didius JuHanus, a rich senator, obtained the prize by the payment of $620 to each soldier of the Praetorian guard. But he was executed after a precarious and inglorious reign of sixty-six days. The history of the Roman Repubhc and the Roman Empire should be a salutary warning to us. Our Christian civihzation, gives us no immunity from political corruption and disaster. The oft-repeated cry of election frauds should not be treated with indifference; though, in many instances, no doubt, it is the 1 Book IV.. Letter XVIII XII [ II ] "PATRIOTISM AND POLITICS" empty charge of defeated partisans against successful rivals, or the heated language of a party press. But after all reasonable allowances are made, enough re- mains of a substantial character to be ominous. In every possi- ble way, by tickets insidiously printed, by "colonizing," "re- peating," and "personation," frauds are attempted, and too often successfully, on the ballot. I am informed by a trust- worthy gentleman that, in certain locaHties, the adherents of one party, while proof against bribes from their political oppo- nents, will exact compensation before giving their votes even to their own party candidates. The evil would be great enough if it were restricted to examples of this kind, but it becomes much more serious when large bodies of men are debauched by the bribes or intimidated by the threats of wealthy corporations. But when the very fountains of legislation are polluted by lobbying and other corrupt means; when the hand of bribery is extended, and not always in vain, to our municipal, state, and national legislators; when our law-makers become the pHant tools of some selfish and greedy capitalists, instead of subserving the interests of the people — then, indeed, patriotic citizens have reason to be alarmed about the future of our country. The man who would poison the wells and springs of the land is justly regarded as a human monster, as an enemy of society, and no punishment could be too severe for him. Is he not as great a criminal who would poison and pollute the ballot-box, the unfailing fount and well-spring of our civil free- dom and of our national life ? The Ark of the Covenant was held in the highest venera- tion by the children of Israel. It was the oracle from which God communicated His will to the people. Two cherubim with outstretched wings were placed over it as sacred guardians. Oza was suddenly struck dead for profanely touching it. May we not, without irreverence, compare the ballot-box to the an- cient Ark ? Is it not for us the oracle of God, because it is the oracle of the people? God commands us to obey our rulers. It is through the ballot-box that our rulers are proclaimed to us; therefore, its voice should be accepted as the voice of God. Let justice and truth, Hke twin cherubs, guard this sacred in- XII [ 12 ] "PATRIOTISM AND POLITICS" strument. Let him who lays profane hands upon it be made to feel that he is guilty of a grievous offence against the stability of government, the peace of society, and the majesty of God. Our Saviour, filled with righteous indignation, seizes a scourge and casts out of the Temple those that bought and sold in it, and overturns the tables of the money-changers, saying: "My house is a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of thieves." The polHng booth is a temple, in which the angel of justice holds the scales with an even hand. The pohtical money-changer pollutes the temple by his iniquitous bargains. The money-changer in Jerusalem's Temple traf- ficked in doves; the electioneering money-changer traffics in human beings. Let the minister of justice arise, and, clothed with the pano- ply of authority, let him drive those impious men from the temple. Let the buyers and sellers of votes be declared in- famous; for they are trading in our American birthright. Let them be cast forth from the pale of American citizenship and be treated as outlaws. I do not think the punishment too severe when we con- sider the enormity and far-reaching consequences of their crime. 1 hold that the man who undermines our elective system is only less criminal than the traitor who lights against his country with a foreign invader. The one compasses his end by fraud, the other by force. The privilege of voting is not an inherent or inalienable right. It is a solemn and sacred trust, to be used in strict ac- cordance with the intentions of the authority from which it emanates. When a citizen exercises his honest judgment in casting his vote for the most acceptable candidate, he is making a legiti- mate use of the prerogatives confided to him. But when he sells or barters his vote, when he disposes of it to the highest bidder, hke a merchantable commodity, he is clearly violating his trust and degrading his citizenship. The enormity of the offence will be readily perceived by pushing it to its logical consequences: XII [ 13 ] "PATRIOTISM AND POLITICS" First. Once the purcha^^f votes is tolerated or condoned or connived at, the obvious resuh is that the right of suffrage becomes a solemn farce. The sovereignty is no longer vested in the people, but in corrupt pohticians or in wealthy corpora- tions; money instead of merit becomes the test of success; the election is determined, not by the personal fitness and integrity of the candidate, but by the length of his own or his patron's purse; and the aspirant for office owes his victory, not to the votes of his constituents, but to the grace of some political boss. Second. The better class of citizens will lose heart and ab- sent themselves from the polls, knowing that it is useless to engage in a contest which is already decided by irresponsible managers. Third. Disappointment, vexation, and righteous indigna- tion will bum in the breasts of upright citizens. These senti- ments will be followed by apathy and despair of carr}ing out successfully a popular form of government. The enemies of the Republic will then take advantage of the existing scandals to decry our system and laud absolute monarchies. The last stage in the drama is political stagnation or revolution. But, happily, the American people are not prone to de- spondency or to pohtical stagnation, or to revolution outside of the Hnes of legitimate reform. They are cheerful and hope- ful, because they are conscious of their strength; and well they may be, when they reflect on the centur}' of ordeals through which they have triumphantly passed. They are vigilant, be- cause they are hberty-loving, and they know that "Eternal vigilance is the price of hberty." They are an enhghtened and practical people; therefore are they quick to detect and prompt to resist the first inroads of corruption. They know well how to apply the antidote to the pohtical distemper of the hour. They have the elasticity of mind and heart to rise to the occasion. They will never suffer the stately temple of the Constitution to be overthrown, but will hasten to strengthen the foundation where it is undermined, to repair every breach, and to readjust every stone of the glorious edifice. In conclusion, I shall presume to suggest, with all deference, xu [14] "PATRIOTISM AND POLITICS" a brief outline of what appear to me the most efficient means to preserve purity of elections and to perpetuate our political independence- Many partial remedies may be named. The main purpose of these remedies is to foster and preserve \Yhat may be called a Public Conscience. In the individual man, conscience is that inner hght which directs him in the knowledge and choice of good and evil, that practical judgment which pronounces, over every one of his acts, that it is right or wrong, moral or immoral. Now, this Hght and judgment which directs man in the ordinary personal affairs of life, must be his guide also in the affairs of his political life; for he is answerable to God for his political, as well as his personal, life. The individual conscience is an enhghtenment and a guide; and it is itself illumined and directed by the great maxims of natural law and the conclusions which the mind is constantly deducing from those maxims. Now, is there not a set of maxims and opinions that fulfil the office of guides to the masses in their pohtical hf e ? The means which I propose are : First. The enactment of strict and wholesome laws for pre- venting briber}' and the corruption of the ballot-box, accom- panied with condign punishment against the violators of the law. Let such protection and privacy be thrown around the polhng booth that the humblest citizen may be able to record his vote without fear of pressure or of interference from those that might influence him. Such a remedy has already been attempted, with more or less success, in some States by the introduction of new systems of voting. Second. A pure, enhghtened, and independent judiciary to interpret and enforce the laws. Third. A vigilant and fearless press that will reflect and create a healthy pubhc opinion. Such a press, guided by the laws of justice and the spirit of Am.erican institutions, is the organ and the reflection of national thought, the outer bulwark of the rights and liberties of the citizen against the usurpations of authority and the injustice of parties, the speediest and most direct castigator of vice and dishonesty. It is a duty of the XII [15] "PATRIOTISM AND POLITICS" citizen? of a free counti^iiot only lo encourage the press, but to cooperate with it; and it is a misfortune for any land when its leading men neglect to instruct their country and act on public opinion through this powerful instrument for good. . Fou)'ih.\rhc incorporation into our school system of familiar lessons embodying a history of our country, a brief sketch of her heroes, statesmen, and patriots, whose civic virtues the rising generation will thus be taught to emulate. The duties and rights of citizens, along with reverence for our political in- stitutions, should likewise be inculcated, as Dr. Andrews, Presi- dent of the University of Nebraska, recommended some years ago.^ There is danger that the country whose history is not known and cherished will become to the masses only an ab- straction, or, at best, that it will be in touch with them only on its less lovable side, the taxes and burdens it imposes. Men lost in an unnatural isolation, strangers to the past life of their nation, Hving on a soil to which they hold only by the passing interests of the present, as atoms without cohesion, are not able to reahze and bring home to themselves the claims of a country that not only is, but that was before them, and that will be, as history alone can teach, long after them. Fifth. A more hearty celebration of our national holidays. The Hebrew people, as we learn from Sacred Scripture, were commanded to commemorate by an annual observance their liberation from the bondage of Pharaoh and their en- trance into the Promised Land. In nearly all civihzed countries there are certain days set apart to recall some great events in their national history, and to pay honor to the memory of the heroes who figured in them. The United States has already established three national holidays. The first is consecrated to the birth of the "Father of his Country"; the second, to the birth of the nation ; and the third is observed as a day of Thanks- giving to God for His manifold blessings to the nation. On those days, when the usual occupations of hfe are suspended, every citizen has leisure to study and admire the political in- stitutions of his country, and to thank God for the benedictions that He has poured out on us as a people. In contemplating XII [ i6 ] "PATRIOTISM AND POLITICS" these blessings, we may well repeat with the Royal Prophet: "He hath not done in like manner to every nation, and His judgments He hath not made manifest to them." If holidays are useful to those that are to the manor born, they are still more imperatively demanded for the foreign popu- lation, which is constantly flowing into our country, and which consists of persons who are strangers to our civil institutions. The annually recurring hoHdays will create and develop in their minds a knowledge of our history and admiration for our system of government. It will help, also, to mould our people into unity of political faith. By the young, especially, are holi- days welcomed with keen dehght; and as there is a natural, though unconscious, association in the mind betv/een the civic festivity and the cause that gave it birth, their attachment to the day will extend to the patriotic event or to the men whose anniversary is celebrated. Sixth. The maintenance ot party lines is an indispensable means for preserving political purity. One party watches the other, takes note of its shortcomings, its blunders and defects; and it has at its disposal the means for rebuking any abuse of power on the part of the dominant side, by appealing to the country at the tribunal of the ballot-box. The healthiest periods of the Roman Republic were periods of fierce political strife. The citizens of Athens were not allowed to remain neutral. They were compelled to take sides on all questions of great pubHc interest. Not only was every citizen obliged to vote, but the successful candidate was bound to accept the office to which he was called, and to subordinate his taste for private life to the public interests. England owes much of her greatness and liberty to the ac- tive and aggressive vigilance of opposing political camps. Political parties are the outcome of pohtical freedom. Parties are not to be confounded with factions. The former contend for a principle, the latter struggle for a master. To jurists and statesmen these considerations may seem trite, elementary, and commonplace. But, like all elementary principles, they are of vital import. They should be kept prominently in view before the people, and not obscured in a XII [17] "PATRIOTISM AND POLITICS" maze of wordy technicalities. They are landmarks to guide men in the path of public duty, and they would vastly contrib- ute to the good order and stability of the Commonwealth if they w^ere indelibly stamped on the heart and memory of every American citizen. XII [ i8 ] XIII AMBITION "THE CONDITIONS OF SUCCESS " BY DR. MAX NORDAU Tlf^X SIMON NORDAU stands to-day among the leading philosophers and literary men of the world. He is of Hebrew origin, was born in Budapesth, and educated there as a physician. Persecutions directed at his race and faith drove him from Hungary, and for over a quarter century he has re- sided in Paris, the centre which has drawn to itself so many noted literary men. Dr. Nordau early became known as a novel- ist and playwright, and in 1893 his celebrated work ^' Degenera- tion^^ drew upon him the attention of the entire world. Medical men were as interested as philosophers by this grim, though probably exaggerated, pointing out of the symptoms of degeneracy in modern life. Since then works of more or less similar char- acter, such as ^'The Drones Must Die^'' have kept the author prominently before the public. The present discourse by Dr. Nordau displays the same keenness of analysis, the same monumental honesty, and the same irrefutable logic as his longer works. To turn from Nor- dau contemptuously as a mere pessimist is childish folly. Rather we should look to him in admiration as what he is, the stern physician who does not hesitate to search the illnesses of society. With his keen scalpel he lays bare each evil, not from a mere morbid curiosity as to the progress of disease, but in anxiety to understand and cure. It is for us to aid him in his efforts, or at least to heed his warning of the danger, and, for ourselves^ beware. xni [ I ] AMBITION The reader in these latter days is accustomed to the sight of diagrams which show him in what an extraordinary measure everything has developed in the last quarter or half century: the output of coal and iron; baldness; the population of countries and towns; the wealth of individuals and communi- ties; the range of guns and the consumption of soap; the length of railways and the salaries of tenors; the circulation of newspapers, the average length of life, and the number of divorces. There is something, however, on which we never obtain statistics, although it has developed to a greater extent than any other, and that is ambition. It has become a commonplace that the great impulse to all human effort is hunger and love. This statement is true only regarding a certain phase of civilization. The daily bread and the woman are the aim of the toil and struggle of man so long as he has not raised himself much over the level of animality. On a higher degree of development a third stimulus comes into play, in many men the strongest of all — Ambition. People desire to shine, to become famous; they desire to be admired, envied, imitated. Everybody strives to rise above the others, to overtake all competitors in the race of life, to win the first prize. Formerly the feudal organization of society created hard-and-fast limits to the cravings of the individual. The low-born, the poor man, could not hope to lift himself much above the level on which the accident of his birth had placed him. His boldest dreams never carried him beyond the extreme limits of his caste. The democratic transformation of the peoples has changed this. The emancipation of the individual is in some countries complete and in others nearly so. Birth and extraction are no longer obstacles. Energy and talent, but of course smartness and unscrupulousness also, are keys to every door. Forces now have full play, free from the fetters of prejudice. "Quo non ascendam," cries in Dionysian intoxication every youngster who enters the arena of hfe, to take up the struggle for existence. Nowhere is ambition so general and so boundless as in xin [2] AMBITION America. This is natural, for nowhere is the individual so liighly differentiated as in America, nowhere is he so full of inborn energy, so rich in initiative, resource, optimism, and self-contidence; nowhere is he so little tethered by pedantry, and nowhere are people so willing to recognize the value of a brilliant personality, however this may find expression. To this it must be added, that in America the instances in which men have risen from the most humble beginnings to the most fabulous destinies, are more numerous and striking than anywhere else. A Lincoln who develops from a woodcutter into a President ; a Mr. Schwab who at twenty years earned a dollar a day and at thirty-five has a salary of a million; a Mr. Car- negie who as a youth did not know where to find a shilling to buy primers, and as a man in mature life does not know how to get rid reasonably and usefully of his three hundred milHon dollars, must suggest to every woodcutter, every "buttons," every factory apprentice with the scantiest elementary school- ing, the idea that it only depends on himself to tread in the footsteps of a Lincoln, a Mr. Schwab, or a Mr. Carnegie, and to reach the goal that these celebrities have attained. The Horatian Aurea mediocritas has nowhere so few parti- sans as in America. "Everybody ahead" is the national motto. ' I suppress intentionally the second half of the smart sentence. The universal ideal of the American people seems to be success. The dream of success feeds the fancy of the child, hypnotizes the youth, gives the man temerity, tenacity, and perseverance, and only begins to become a matter of indifference under the sobering influence of advanced age. Success, however, is but one of those vague words which mean nothing definite, but which, Hke "freedom" or "prog- ress," are mere recipients filled by everybody with a different content. A well-known exercise in experimental psychology consists in asking a number of persons to indicate what images emerge in their consciousness when an abstract term is sud- denly pronounced in their presence. In this manner we suc- ceed in distinguishing the concrete elements out of which an abstract notion is composed. If one were to ask a number of Americans what they iinag- XIII [ 3 ] AMBITION I ine by success, one woi^^ evidently receive very different answers. Many would reply: Success means money. To be successful is synonymous with owning a palace, a yacht, a private Pullman car, with eating off gold plate, having the most expensive box in the Opera House, buying one's wife the largest diamonds in the market and one's daughter an English duke, or astonishing the world by the price of one's pictures, the number of one's pairs of trousers, and the amount of one's stakes at poker. This is, of course, the coarsest view of wealth. It does not go beyond the most brutal selfishness and the mental horizon of an illiterate publican. Men of higher intellectual and moral attainment who hunt after wealth dream of making a nobler use of their gold. They desire to found universities and libraries, create museums, put up public monuments, assist talent, reward genius, to be the providence of the poor and the sick, and spread faith. In the one case as in the other, one is greedy for money on account of the power it incarnates, the power to satisfy low appetites or nobler aspirations, provoking whims or philanthropic sympathies, to gall one's fellow-men, or to be of use to them. For others, success means the esteem of their fellow-country- men. They do not desire to present them with money, they desire to give them the work of their brains. They see them- selves as popular orators, as admired administrators, poli- ticians, legislators. They dream of enthusiastic receptions by cheering crowds, of electoral victories, and of holding offices from mayor of their native place to President of the United States. Yet another category understand success in one shape only, as fame. To be known to the whole world — to find that one's name is a household word with all people of education — what "consummation devoutly to be wish'd!" a goal which seems higher and more comprehensive than that of the millionaire or the public man. For with fame, so at least those believe who strive for it, goes also pecuniary reward, and the respect and admiration of one's fellow-men. XIII [ 4 ] AMBITION II To weigh the moral and material value of these various forms of success, one against the other, is clearly not easy. There exists no common measure for them. Their propor- tional estimation depends upon the conception of the world and life, the temperament, the coarser or finer soul-fibre of the person estimating them. It is emphatically a case for the application of the classic fable of the stork and the fox who invite each other to a meal. The fox can naturally do nothing with the long narrow pitcher of the stork, while the latter is equally helpless with the broad shallow dish of the fox. It all depends on whether one has a muzzle or a long bill. It will probably be most difficult to come to an agreement regarding the value of the ideal of those for whom success takes the form of a mountain of gold, because not many people have the moral courage to deal with the problem sincerely; in their hearts they probably all value wealth, but it is considered low- minded and vulgar to admit this, while it seems noble and superior to make a show of despising money. Now to despise money is very foolish, as it means to despise force, and force is the essence of the universe. Money in itself is nothing and means nothing. It is a mere symbol. It is a conventional representation of the whole of civilization. It virtually includes everything that up to this hour man has created with his many-sided mental and bodily efforts; what he has wrested from Nature in a struggle of giants of thousands of years, and has brought to a form suitable for human needs. Whoever boasts that he despises money, boasts that he de- spises the pictures of Leonardo and Velasquez, the statues of Michael Angelo, Carpeaux and Paul Dubois, the view on the north Italian lakes, the gulf of Naples and the giants of the Alps, the voice of De Reszke and Patti, the violin playing of Joachim and Sarasate, the wisdom of Mr. Herbert Spencer, the science of Lord Kelvin, and the inventiveness of Edison. For all these one can procure with money. That money can also be expended in vulgar fashion is not the fault of the money, but of those who spend it in a vulgar fashion. xiii [ 5 ] AMBITION At bottom one cannot yBhic the young man who, when he starts out on the race of hie, makes as his goal the milhards of a Carnegie or a Rockefeller. He can think out for himself a good or a bad, a wise or a foolish, a useful or a harmful employ of them, and according to his choice will his ambition be attractive or repulsive. It is true that a father, a tutor, a friend of even moderate wisdom only, will never advise the young man to make the conquest of milliards the task of his Hfe. The prospects of passing the winning-post as victor are extremely unfavor- able, the probabilities that in the struggle for excessive wealth he will lose his health, his peace of mind, his better self, per- haps his very life, are very great. The possession of the milliard may be a happiness; the earning of the milliard is cer- tainly a work which peremptorily excludes every idea of hap- piness. The road to the milliard leads through all the circles of Dante's Inferno. Supposing the goal to be the paradise, the traveller arrives there in a condition which leaves him but Httle capacity for enjoying its bliss. The milliardaire who lives on a daily pint of milk of the value of six cents, and who in vain exhausts all the resources of human invention in striving to obtain a few hours of sleep, has become a common type in mod- ern fiction, and I believe the portrait is true to Hfe. Providence has happily arranged that trees do not reach the heavens. Great wealth can only be gained from man. It is never the prize of solitary contemplation or secluded work at the desk in the cosey study. One must go to seek it in the market place, among the crowd. One must handle, outdo, overcome, or crush innumerable people. One must be more clever, have more will power, or be more artful than other men. This presupposes qualities which are not possessed by one man in a milhon. The young apprentice millionaire, when he is not a fool, soon sees that he is not cut in the material from which milHardaires are made. He calculates that on the whole there is no business which pays so httle as the chase after the milliard, he abandons the race in time, before he breaks down, and de- votes his energies to aims which are closer at hand, and reaches, not the fabulous milliards, but probably an honest competence. XIII [ 6 ] AMBITION The ambition to conquer a prominent situation m public life can be better encouraged. It is from its nature more moral than that for the mere possession of money. It is by definition social. The efforts it necessitates are compatible with health and happiness. It is true that here also we have the broad road and the narrow path. One can, in order to gain popu- larity, appeal to the bad instincts of the crowd as well as to the good. One may be the cad, parasite, and corrupter of the people, or its stern educator, warner, and critic. One can arrive at the Capitol through Tammany Hall or by heroism on Cuban battlefields. Whoever is not an incurable pessimist will at least admit the possibility that honesty, firmness of character, sound common sense, public spirit, sympathy with one's fellow-man, a little geniality, and a httle gift of the gab, will sufficiently designate the possessor of these qualities, which are not over rare, even in their happy assemblage, to the esteem and confidence of his neighbors to assure him a reasonable, if perhaps not phenomenal, success in public life. The greater the number of citizens who have this kind of ambition, the better for the community; for their fruitful emulation, when it is controlled by a well-developed public sense of morality, strengthens the national solidarity, and recruits constantly precious forces for the work of the commonweal. In the struggle for success of this order, disappointment is not prob- able, for if the competitors are many, so also are the prizes. Csesar preferred to be the first in the village rather than the second in Rome. Now to be first in Rome is difficult enough, but the alternative leaves Ceesar the choice of 50,000 situations. The thirst for fame seems to be the most ideal ambition. It is the most foolish of all. In no case is the appearance so different from the reality as in the case of celebrity. To him who does not possess it, it seems the sum total of all that is splendid. He who, according to the general opinion of his contemporaries, possesses it, sees that it contains much more bitterness than satisfaction, and that it is not worth either a night's sleep or a day's effort. To nothing can the "vanity of vanities" of the preacher XIII [ 7 ] AMBITION be so well applied as to ^Rebrity. Dante devoted to it the Terzina: — "Non e '1 mondan rumor altro ch'un fiato Del vento ch' or vien quinci ed or vien quindi, E Gambia nome perche cambia lato." "World-renown is nothing but a break of wind, which blows sometimes from here, sometimes from there, and takes another name because it comes from another direction." All that Falstaff said of honor, which replaces no lost limb and brings no dead to hfe, holds good of fame. What real use, what tangible advantage does it bring the celebrated man? His name is familiar to the world, but often enough the people who know it have no precise idea of the reason why they know it, and of the signification of the name. Sir Richard Wallace presented the Parisians with some hundreds of public fountains. They arc, as is meet, known as "Wallace Fountains," and have rendered his name a familiar sound to the man in Parisian streets. A reporter once over- heard the following dialogue between two Paris workmen: " Old Wallace is dead ! " " What old Wallace ? " "You know quite well what Wallace, the man who made his fortune in fountains." Fualdes is another name celebrated throughout France. It is that of a man who was cruelly murdered in the beginning of the nineteenth century. This tragic occurrence gave rise to a ballad which still lives in the mouth of the people. Let any one ask the average Frenchman if he knows Fualdes. Out of a hundred thus asked, ninety- nine will answer, "Fualdes ? Certainly! the famous murderer!" The visiting lady of a Sunday-school asked the children, "Do you know what a poet is?" "Yes," answered a dozen voices. "Give me a name." "Shakespeare." "Very good; now do you know what Shakespeare wrote ? " General silence, finally broken by a clear voice, "The Bible, mum." What does the celebrated man personally experience from his fame ? He receives daily a bushel of letters, asking him for autographs, the minority of them with stamps for reply, many insufficiently prepaid, some not prepaid at all. Unknown XIII [ 8 ] AMBITION persons honor him with confidential requests for assistance. Interviewers force their way in on him when he is obhged to work or when he would like to rest, bother him with indiscreet questions, and put idiotic replies in his mouth. Everybody claims the right to take up his time with undesired visits or egotistical letters, and he makes himself active, deadly foes, when he does not answer their letters or receive the visits. Authors send him more books than he could get through in ten hfetimes entirely devoted to reading, and expect from him an exhaustive judgment, with his reasons for forming it. If he puts off the bore with a few non-compromising phrases, without opening the work, he is soon found out, and denounced as a hypocrite and a liar. If he frankly declares that he has no time for books which do not lie within his speciality, then he gets the name of being an ill-mannered boor and narrow- minded pedant. Every imbecile thinks it his duty to give his opinion about him, and many of these imbeciles put their opinion in print. People who also desired to become famous, but who, strange to say, have not become so, revenge themselves on him by spreading libellous anecdotes about him, and these anecdotes naturally find a greater number of people to repeat them and believe them, according to his degree of celebrity. If it gives him pleasure that the newspapers should occupy themselves with him, his enjoyment will be marred by his observing that the murderer of the day is given more space than the poet of the century. Czolgosz was, I believe, more spoken of in the Press in fourteen days than Tolstoi in a decade. The flattering conviction that his fame reaches to the con- fines of the globe is supposed to indemnify the celebrated man for all these personal inconveniences. But to what humilia- tions he exposes himself if he tries personally to test his degree of fame! People have always believed that the best-known name of the nineteenth century was that of Napoleon I. One day, however, Prince Napoleon, "Plon Plon," came medita- tively to his palace and said to the guests awaiting him, among whom were Sainte-Beuve and Renan, that he had just had a XIII [ 9 ] AMBITION conversation under the arcades of the Palais Royal with a woman born and brought up in Paris who had never heard the name of Napoleon and had no notion of who he was. Ill It is exactly for this imaginary value, for fame, which neither offers the individual the tangible satisfactions of ex- cessive wealth nor the community the advantage of the am- bitious struggle for civic honors, that the most passionate greed exists. This is easy to understand. The law of the least resistance explains the phenomenon. The young man on the threshold of active life, who desires to become famous, naturally strikes upon the idea to try it by writing a book. He will become an author and win laurels with his pen. This requires the minimum of working capital and allows him to cling longest to subjective illusions. Should the ambitious young man try for fame in a public career, he will soon be convinced that success cannot be at- tained by him if he has not the necessary qualities. He will fail at the polls ; people will refuse to listen to his public speeches ; he will return empty-handed from the hunt for office. That will, if he is at all capable of forming a judgment, open his eyes, and he will cease an effort which he is forced to see has no prospect of success. Should he desire to become a milliardaire, every-day hfe will rapidly make it clear to him whether or not he has anything to hope for in this field. He will know at any minute the exact amount of his cash box. He will know what he is worth. Figures speak loudly and clearly, and they will tell him if his efforts are bearing fruit or not. We meet, it is true, people down at heel and out at elbow who are always on the track of phantom-like millions, but these poor fools are the laughing- stocks of their acquaintances. Men, too, are not too scarce who have actually climbed to the summit of the gold mountain, but have been hurled headlong down, to lie at the foot with broken limbs. These keep to the end of their lives the hope XIII [ lO ] AMBITION of once more reaching the top, and the memory of their short moment of glory makes them incapable of a sober comprehen- sion of their position. They belong to the most lamentable victims of the battle of life. The man, on the contrary, who hopes to win fame with the pen can for a very long time, perhaps forever, waste his strength and his time without being forced to the admission that he has failed to find the proper way. In order to create an immortal masterpiece, all that is required is some paper, ink, and a pen. This represents a starting capital of say ten cents. So much even the poor street arab can find. It is true that to the writing material something must be added — Genius. But this the ambitious youth believes he possesses. He therefore sits down and writes. The work will probably turn out to his satisfac- tion; for the less talent a man has, the more mild is his judg- ment of his efforts. Who is to open his eyes to the worthless- ness of his work ? His friends, if he finds them ready to listen to, or read, his elucubrations, will say to him, "That is trash." He will at once reply, "Pearls before swine." He will find no publisher. This only will depress him, but will not open his eyes, as he will mentally enumerate all the anecdotes of masterworks which were refused with contempt by a dozen pubhshers, until the thirteenth printed it reluctantly, thereby acquiring fame and fortune. Let us assume the book is not so very bad, only mediocre; it is printed and comes on the market. The critics silence it to death — "Naturally, the conspiracy of silence!" The critic gives it a notice and says frankly that it would have been better left unwritten, without any loss to anybody and with distinct advantage to the author and publisher — "The critics are asses." The public refuses to buy the book — "They are fools; they are not ripe for my art or my wisdom." Thus can an author go for a whole Hfetime, from failure to failure, without comprehending that the cause lies in himself. His self-consciousness resists every attack like an adamantine rock. He is clothed in armor, impenetrable to reality, by his illusions. He will die in the conviction that he was an unrecognized genius, and that posterity will accord to him the XIII [ II ] AMBITION justice that was refused to him by the blindness of his con- temporaries. The number of these unhappy people is counted in the world by the hundreds of thousands. Their useless life work represents a waste of energy of the worst kind. Had they no ambition, they would probably be of economic and moral value for themselves and the community. Had they not this passion for fame, they would probably in every walk of life meet with that moderate success which spells happiness. Whoever should find a means to convince this army of deluded dreamers that in the struggle in which they have engaged victory is a rare exception, and when it is really achieved has only an imaginary value, would be one of the greatest benefactors of mankind. IV Literary ambition has one side to which I would like to draw special attention. It not only requires but the smallest capital, it seems also to impose the smallest measure of dis- cipline. Any other work seems more jealous and tyrannical than literary work. I have already said that for a masterpiece of literature a sheet of paper, a pen, and some ink suffices. This paper one can write upon at any time and in any place, in the garret or on the bench in the public promenade, by day or by night. The temptation is great to regard literary occu- pation as something that one can carry on as a by-occupation, in the pauses of work, in the night hours, on Sundays and holidays. How many young people get the idea of trying literature because the attempt costs nothing. It is so inviting to gamble for fame without the game requiring any stake. Every other occupation in which one hopes to achieve success demands peremptorily the whole man. One must devote body and soul to it, give up to every minute of one's time and every thought of one's brain. Did it ever occur to any one to found a great Trust in his leisure moments, or to stand, by way of an amateur sport, for a post as senator or governor? Everybody knows he can do nothing else when he does this, and if he is not rich and does not soon achieve success, he will xin [ 12 ] AMBITION speedily enough abandon an occupation which brings nothing in and hinders him earning his hving by more remunerative work. Literature, on the contrary, seems suitable for a by-occu- pation; it seems an excellent plan for the utihzation of time- offals. It brings the apprentice, the beginner, no return, but it also costs him nothing. It generously permits the poor man, who has nothing but his time, his ambitions, and his hopes, to earn the indispensable by some prosaic work, and to content himself with such spare time as he can find after the paid labor. It is a tempting thought for an impecunious but ener- getic youth that want of means is not a hindrance to the achiev- ing of literary fame. He proudly proclaims, "I work by day to earn my bread, and by night to win fame*" The formula is, however, a delusion. The sooner he gives it up, the better it will be for him who has selected it as his rule of Hf e. The most ordinary common sense should teach everybody that it is quite hopeless with half one's strength and during the hours of fatigue after a long day's work to try to win prizes in a career that is open to every one, which for that reason is the most crowded, and where the competition is the keenest and most pitiless that can be imagined. In a horse- race a difference of half a pound may be decisive for the victory. A sleepless night would deprive a Derby favorite of all chance. In every sporting competition the greatest care is taken that the competitors are in the very best form and not handicapped by any fatigue, any preoccupation, any indisposition. But the same young man who would never dream of competing for a championship in some athletic sport after a day's work for his daily bread, because he knows that it would be ridiculous to measure himself against a trained, fresh, professional com- petitor, if he is not himself in equally good condition, will not hesitate under the same predisposition to take up the struggle for a literary prize. A lady of society once asked Newton how he had made his famous discovery of the law of gravitation. Sir Isaac answered, "By constantly thinking of it, madam." That is, together with inborn talent, the secret of each intellectual xni [ 13 ] AMBITION achievement. The insjilRtion comes, perhaps, suddenly, though this is in no way proved, for it is Hkely, even probable, that the possible sudden irruption of an idea of genius into consciousness was preceded by a may- be long preparatory work below the threshold of consciousness, on which the usual occupation of the mind may have exercised great influ- ence. But inspiration is not everything. In a literary work the working out is quite as important, and the elaboration, in order to be perfect, demands all the concentration of which one is capable, all attention, all freshness of brain; in short, according to Sir Isaac Newton's formula, "constant thinking of it." It is imaginable that a man who by day earns his bread by any kind of work may devote, with good results, a portion of his nights to acquiring education. Even this double activity of course is harmful to health, but if it does not last too long and is not too recklessly overdone, it need not necessarily destroy it. The memory retains what it can. If a man is too fatigued by his day's work or too preoccupied, he will not profit by night study. One must linger longer over a page of a book; it requires months to learn things which one with a fresh, well-concentrated, well-rested brain would acquire in weeks or days. The goal will be later and more painfully reached, but it can be reached, and, once one possesses the knowledge, no one can perceive that it was acquired in hours which should have been devoted to sleep. There are enough examples of successful men who work for their daily bread by day and study by night. George Smith, born in 1840, was an engraver who earned 48s. a week. He had to engrave the plates for Sir Henry Rawlinson's great work on Assyriology. This work interested him. He had the daring idea of studying the Assyrian language and cuneiform writing. He did this in the night and in his leisure moments with super- human application, and with the result that after two years' work, at the age of twenty-six, he was appointed to a position in the Assyrian Department of the British Museum, and soon after became world-famous as the discoverer and decipherer of the cuneiform version of the biblical story of the Flood, xni [ 14 ] AMBITION He died of the plague at Aleppo, when only thirty-six years old. Another and not less characteristic case is that of Michael Faraday. This great scientist, who lived from 1791 to 1867, was at twenty-two years old a poor ignorant bookbinder, who earned perhaps 30s. a week. He had a consuming thirst for knowledge and no means of stilhng it. He greedily devoured the books given him to bind, acquired bit by bit some elements of knowledge, and obtained, by means of it, admission to a physical laboratory, where his genius could freely develop itself. Similar, only reversed, is the case of the celebrated Professor of Clinical Medicine in the Paris Faculty, J. Jaccoud.' In addition to his gift for medicine he had a pretty talent for the violin. He obtained a place in an orchestra, played half the night in the theatres and at balls, earned in this fashion perhaps 200 francs a month, and was able to study medicine by day. It is, however, one thing to learn, something different to create. The memory still continues to serve after a long, trying day's work; the creative force of the imagination cannot then possibly be at its height. With a tired brain one learns more slowly, but one learns ; one creates not slower, but weaker, worse, or not at all. It does not alter the quality of knowledge that one acquired it under pecuHar difficulties; the quality of a literary work is incurably deteriorated by being conceived and carried out by an exhausted brain. I have been able to give examples of scientists who worked by day for bread and by night for knowledge, and it would be easy to add to these other similar cases. I know, however, no single example where a man after the daily work for bread has produced in the night hours a work which achieved fame. This affirmation needs being qualified on one point only. Short lyrical poems could, under such circumstances, as a matter of exception, be successfully composed, because in this case the inspiration is everything, and the elaboration demands less material work than a novel, a drama, or a great essay. The few men who, by amateur work in the night after their XIII [ 15 ] AMBITION professional work by d^^have acquired fame in literature are all lyric poets. I may name the New York Ghetto-poet Morris Rosenfcld, who by day worried himself as tailor in a sweating-shop for a pittance, and at night composed songs in Jewish jargon of deep emotion, which endeared him to all who understand this jargon. Johanna Ambrosius, a simple East Prussian peasant woman, looked after her household, did her duty as wife and mother of a numerous family, and made use of her rare hours of leisure to write poems. Her verses had on their publication great success. It is true that this is to be ascribed more to a sentimental interest in the fate of the poetess than to the value of the poems themselves. Other examples which one might cite prove nothing. Hans Sachs was a famous poet without ceasing to be a shoemaker. But then, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, a handi- craft had, according to the German saying, "a golden bottom," and Hans Sachs was sufficiently well-to-do to have as much time to spare for writing poetry as he desired. John Bunyan first began to write when he had laid aside the tinker's tools and lived by his preaching. The Pilgrim'' s Progress is the work of a man who, while he was writing his book, thought of nothing else. Robert Burns had, as a farmer, spare time in the winter months, apart from the fact that a lyrical genius can compose a short song while he is driving the plough. The barber Jasmin (i 798-1 864), the well-known Provencal poet, really handled the razor, scissors, and comb less than the pen, and it was shrewd coquetterie on his part that he still kept his barber's shop when, in fact, he was nothing else but a professional writer. It is not the night work of itself that is incompatible with good literary work. Schiller, when he was in full swing, wrote the whole night through in spite of the great harm it did his health, and Lord Byron preferred to compose at night in com- pany with a bottle of brandy. But these men had no different day occupation to distract them. They had no other idea in their heads, day and night, but their work. Only by means of this complete concentration is success possible. Good literary work suffers no other occupation XIII [ 16 ] AMBITION beside it. Whoever is so poor that he must earn his bread by subaltern labor will seek in vain to pursue fame in the night hours. He will not achieve celebrity, but will certainly en- danger his health and shorten his life. In every other field overwork only harms the worker. In the field of literature it harms the work. In ancient time it was already a reproach when a critic remarked that a book smelt of the oil of the midnight lamp. When to the smell of that oil is added that of the sweat of a heterogeneous day- worker.- the book will be completely unpalatable. XIII [ 17 ] XIV OUR PAST "THE LESSON OF THE PAST" BY MAURICE MAETERLINCK cr'HE materialist, as represented hy Nordau, looks to the -^ material, and life seems shallow. The idealist sees m it a deeper meaning and a greater worth. Maurice Maeter- linck, the well-known Belgian writer, has been called a mystic, and the word has led some over-busy folk to dismiss him from mind as an idle dreamer; yet he is held by many critics to be the most valuable of living philosophers. It has been said of him that he bids fair to increase ^Hhe world^s permanent stock of wisdom.''^ There have been few men in any one cen- tury for whom this high claim could be made. Let us then approach with Maeterlinck the heights of medita- tion. Here is no scientific measuring of material things, but an attempt to grasp the meaning of things immeasurable, to readjust our ways of thinking and our entire plane of thought. What is said here is true. It is more than true, it is divinely inspiring, encouraging, and resurrecting. It is such a word as the proph- ets gave to man. To dismiss it with an idle, scurried read- ing, such as one gives the latest novel, is a folly that reacts upon the reader. To meditate and ponder well upon its thought may mean a revolution in a gloomy life, a reformation in a wasted one. I Our past stretches behind us in long perspective. It slum- bers on the far horizon like a deserted city shrouded in mist. A few peaks mark its boundary, and soar predominant into the air; a few important acts stand out, hke towers, some with XIV [ I ] OUR PAST the light still upon them, others half ruined and slowly de- caying beneath the weight of oblivion. The trees are bare, the walls crumble, and shadow slowly steals over all. Every- thing seems to be dead there, and rigid, save only when memory, slowly decomposing, lights it for an instant with an illusory gleam. But apart from this animation, derived only from our expiring recollections, all would appear to be definitely motionless, immutable forever; divided from present and future by a river that shall not again be crossed. In reahty it is alive; and, for many of us, endowed with a profounder, more ardent life than either present or future. In reahty this dead city is often the hotbed of our existence : and in accordance with the spirit in which men return to it shall some find all their wealth there, and others lose what they have. II Our conception of the past has much in common with our conception of love and happiness, destiny, justice, and most of the vague but therefore not less potent spiritual organisms that stand for the mighty forces we obey. Our ideas have been handed down to us ready-made by our predecessors; and even when our second consciousness wakes, and, proud in its conviction that henceforth nothing shall be accepted blindly, proceeds most carefully to investigate these ideas, it will squan- der its time questioning those that loudly protest their right to be heard, and pay no heed to the others close by, that as yet, perhaps, have said nothing. Nor have we, as a rule, far to go to discover these others. They are in us and of us: they wait for us to address them. They are not idle, notwith- standing their silence. Amid the noise and babble of the crowd, they are tranquilly directing a portion of our real Ufe; and as they are nearer the truth than their self-satisfied sisters, they will often be far more simple, and far more beautiful too. Ill Among the most stubborn of these ready-made ideas are those that preside over our conception of the past, and render it a force as imposing and rigid as destiny; a force that indeed XIV [ 2 ] OUR PAST becomes destiny working backward, with its hand outstretched to the destiny that burrows ahead, to which it transmits the last Hnk of our chains. The one thrusts us back, the other urges us forward, with a hke irresistible violence. But the violence of the past is perhaps more terrible, and more alarm- ing. One may disbelieve in destiny. It is a god whose on- slaught many have never experienced. But no one would dream of denying the oppressiveness of the past. Sooner or later its effect must inevitably be felt. Those even who re- fuse to admit the intangible, will credit the past, which their finger can touch, with all the mystery, the influence, the sov- ereign intervention whereof they have stripped the powers that they have dethroned; thus rendering it the almost unique and therefore more dreadful god of their depopulated Olympus. IV The force of the past is indeed one of the heaviest that weigh upon men and incline them to sadness. And yet there is none more docile, more eager to follow the direction we could so readily give, did we but know how best to avail our- selves of this docility. In reahty, if we think of it, the past belongs to us quite as much as the present, and is far more malleable than the future. Like the present, and to a much greater extent than the future, its exsistence is all in our thoughts and our hand controls it; nor is this only true of our material past, wherein there are ruins that we perhaps can restore; it is true also of the regions that are closed to our tardy desire for atonement, it is true above all of our moral past, and of what we consider to be most irreparable there. V "The past is past," we say, and it is false: the past is always present. "We have to bear the burden of our past," we sigh; and it is false; the past bears our burden. "Noth- ing can wipe out the past"; and it is false: the least effort of will sends present and future travelhng over the past, to efface whatever we bid them efface. "The indestructible, XIV [3] OUR PAST irreparable, immutable pa"" And that is no truer than the rest. In those who speak thus it is the present that is immu- table, and knows not how to repair. "My past is wicked, it is sorrowful, empty," we say again: "As I look back I can see no moment of beauty, of happiness, or love: I see nothing but wretched ruins. . • ." And that is false; for you see precisely what you yourself place there at the moment your eyes rest upon it. VI Our past depends entirely upon our present, and is con- stantly changing with it. Our past is contained in our memory, and this memory of ours, that feeds on our heart and brain, and is incessantly swayed by them, is the most variable being in the world, the least independent, the most impressionable. Our chief concern with the past, that which truly remains and forms part of us, is not what we have done or the adventures that we have met with, but the moral reactions bygone events are producing within us at this very moment, the inward being that they have helped to form; and these reactions, whence there arises our sovereign, intimate being, are wholly governed by the manner in which we regard past events, and vary as the moral substance varies that they encounter within us. But with every step in advance that our feelings or intellect takes will come a change in this moral substance, and then, on the instant, the most immutable facts, that seemed to be graven forever on the stone and bronze of the past, will assume an en- tirely different aspect, will return to Hfe and leap into move- ment, bringing us vaster and more courageous counsels, drag- ging memory aloft with them in their ascent; and what was once a mass of ruin, mouldering in the darkness, becomes a populous city whereon the sun shines again. VII We have an arbitrary fashion of establishing a certain number of events behind us. We relegate them to the horizon of our memory, and having set them there we tell ourselves that they form part of a world in which the united efforts of XIV [ 4 ] OUR PAST all mankind could not wipe away a tear or cause a flower to raise its head. And yet, while admitting that these events have passed beyond our control, we still, with the most curious inconsistency, believe that they have full control over us. Whereas the truth is that they can only act upon us to the extent in which we have renounced our right to act upon them. The past asserts itself only in those whose moral growth has ceased; then, and not till then, does it truly become redoubta- ble. From that moment we have indeed the irreparable be- hind us and the weight of what we have done lies heavy upon our shoulders. But so long as the life of our mind and charac- ter flows uninterruptedly on, so long will the past remain in suspense above us; and, as the glance may be that we send toward it, will it, complaisant as the clouds Hamlet showed to Polonius, adopt the shape of the hope or fear, the peace or disquiet, that we are perfecting within us. VIII No sooner has our moral activity weakened than accom- plished events rush forward and assail us; and woe to him who opens the door and permits them to take possession of his hearth! Each one will vie with the other in overwhelming him with the gifts best calculated to shatter his courage. It matters not whether our past has been happy and noble, or lugubrious and criminal, the danger shall be no less if we per- mit it to enter, not as an invited guest, but like a parasite settling upon us. The result will be either sterile regret or impotent remorse, and remorse and regrets of this kind are equally disastrous. In order to draw from the past what is precious within it — and most of our wealth is there — we must go to it at the hour when we are strongest, most conscious of mastery; enter its domain and make choice there of what we require, discarding the rest, and commanding it never to cross our threshold without our order. Like all things that only can live at the cost of our spiritual strength, it will soon learn to obey. At first, perhaps, it will endeavor to resist. It will have recourse to artifice and prayer. It will try to tempt us, XIV [ 5 ] OUR PAST to cajole. It will drag forward frustrated hopes and joys that are gone forever, broken affections, well-merited reproaches, expiring hatred and love that is dead, squandered faith and perished beauty; it will thrust before us all that once had been the marvellous essence of our ardor for life; it will point to the beckoning sorrows, decaying happiness, that now haunt the ruin. But we shall pass by without turning our head; our hand shall scatter the crowd of memories, even as the sage Ulysses, in the Cimmerian night, with his sword prevented the shades — even that of his mother, whom it was not his mission to question — from approaching the black blood that would for an instant have given them Hfe and speech. We shall go straight to the joy, the regret or remorse, whose counsel we need; or to the act of injustice it behooves us scrupulously to examine, in order either to make reparation, if such still be possible, or that the sight of the wrong we did, whose victims have ceased to be, is required to give us the indispensable force that shall Uft us above the injustice it still lies in us to commit. IX Yes, even though our past contain crimes that now are be- yond the reach of our best endeavors, even then, if we consider the circumstances of time and place and the vast plane of each human existence, these crimes fade out of our hfe the moment we feel that no temptation, no power on earth, could ever induce us to commit the like again. The world has not for- given — there is but little that the external sphere will forget or forgive — and their material effects will continue, for the laws of cause and effect are different from those which govern our consciousness. At the tribunal of our personal justice, however — the only tribunal which has decisive action on our inaccessible life, as it is the only one whose decrees we cannot evade, whose concrete judgments stir us to our very marrow — the evil action that we regard from a loftier plane than that at which it was committed, becomes an action that no longer exists for us save in so far as it may serve in the future to render our fall more difficult ; nor has it the right to lift its head again XIV [6] OUR PAST except at the moment when we incHne once more toward the abyss it guards- Bitter, surely, must be the grief of him in whose past there are acts of injustice whereof every avenue now is closed, who is no longer able to seek out his victims and raise them and com- fort them. To have abused one's strength in order to despoil some feeble creature who has definitely succumbed beneath the blow, to have callously thrust suffering upon a loving heart, or merely misunderstood and passed by a touching affection that offered itself — these things must of necessity weigh heavily upon our life, and induce a sorrow within us that shall not readily be forgotten. But it depends on the actual point our consciousness has attained whether our entire moral destiny shall be depressed or lifted beneath this burden. Our actions rarely die; and many unjust deeds of ours will therefore inevi- tably return to life some day to claim their due and start legitimate reprisals. They will find our external life without defence; but before they can reach the inward being at the centre of that life they must first listen to the judgment we have already passed on ourselves; and in accordance with the nature of that judgment will the attitude be of these mysterious envoys, who have come from the depths where cause and effect are established in eternal equilibrium. If it has indeed been from the heights of our newly acquired consciousness that we have questioned ourselves, and condemned, they will not be menac- ing justiciaries whom we shall suddenly see surging in from all sides, but benevolent visitors, friends we have almost ex- pected; and they will draw near us in silence. They know in advance that the man before them is no longer the guilty creature they sought; and instead of coming to us charged with ideas of hatred, revolt, and despair, with punishments that degrade and kill, they will flood our heart with thought and contrition that ennoble, purify, and console. X The manner in which we are able to recall what we have done or suffered is far more important than our actual suffer- ings or deeds. This is one of the many features — all governed XIV [ 7 •] OUR PAST by the amount of confidence and zeal we possess — that distin- guish the man who is happy and strong from him who weeps and will not be comforted. No past, viewed by itself, can seem happy; and the privileged of fate, who reflect on what remains of the happy years that have flown, have perhaps more reason for sorrow than the unfortunate ones who brood over the dregs of a life of wretchedness. Whatever was one day, and now is no longer, makes for sadness; above all, whatever was very happy and very beautiful. The object of our regrets — whether these revolve around what has been or what might have been — is therefore more or less the same for all men, and their sorrow should be the same. It is not, however; in one case it will reign uninterruptedly, whereas in another it will only appear at very long intervals. It must therefore depend on things other than accompHshed facts. It depends on the manner in which men will act on these facts. The conquerors in this world — those who waste no time setting up an imaginary irreparable and immutable athwart their horizon, those who seem to be born afresh every morning in the world that forever awakes anew to the future — these know instinctively that what appears to exist no longer is still existing intact, that what appeared to be ended is only completing itself. They know that the years time has taken from them are still in trav- ail; under their new master, obeying the old. They know that their past is forever in movement; that the yesterday which was despondent, decrepit, and criminal, will return full of joyousness, innocence, youth in the track of to-morrow. They know that their image is not yet stamped on the days that are gone: that a decisive deed, or thought, will suffice to break down the whole edifice; that however remote or vast the shadow may be that stretches behind them, they have only to put forth a gesture of gladness or hope for the shadow at once to copy this gesture, and, flashing it back to the remotest, tiniest ruins of early childhood even, to extract unexpected treasure from all this wreckage. They know that they have retrospective action on all bygone deeds; and that the dead themselves will annul their verdicts in order to judge afresh a past that to-day has transfigured and endowed with new hfe. XIV [ 8 J V V OUR PAST They are fortunate who find this instinct in the folds of their cradle. But may the others not imitate it who have it not ; and is not human wisdom charged to teach us how we may acouire the salutary instincts that nature has withheld ? XI Let us not lull ourselves to sleep in our past : and if we find that it tends to spread like a vault over our life, instead of incessantly changing beneath our eye : if the present grow into the habit of visiting it, not Uke a good workman repairing thither to execute the labors imposed upon him by the com- mands of to-day, but as a too passive, too credulous pilgrim content idly to contemplate beautiful, motionless ruins — then, the more glorious, the happier, that our past may have been, with all the more suspicion should it be regarded by us. Nor should we yield to the instinct that bids us accord it profound respect, if this respect induce the fear in us that we may disturb its nice equilibrium. Better the ordinary past, content with its befitting place in the shadow, than the sumptuous past which claims to govern what has travelled out of its reach. Better a mediocre, but living, present, which acts as though it were alone in the world, than a present which proudly expires in the chains of a marvellous long ago. A single step that we take at this hour toward an uncertain goal is far more important to us than the thousand leagues we covered in our march toward a dazzling triumph in the days that were. Our past had no other mission than to Uft us to the moment at which we are, and there equip us with the needful experience and weapons, the needful thought and gladness. If, at this precise moment, it take from us and divert to itself one particle of our energy, then, however glorious it may have been, it still was useless, and had better never have been. If we allow it to arrest a gesture that wt were about to make, then is our death beginning ; and the edifices of the future will suddenly take the semblance of tombs. More dangerous still than the past of happiness and glory is the one inhabited by overpowering and too dearly cherished phantoms. Many an existence perishes in the coils of a fond XIV [9] OUR PAST recollection. And yet, w^ the dead to return to this earth, they would say, I fancy, with the wisdom that must be theirs who have seen what the ephemeral Hght still hides from us: "Dry your eyes. There comes to us no comfort from your tears; exhausting you, they exhaust us also. Detach your- self from us, banish us from your thoughts, until such time as you can think of us without strewing tears on the life we still live in you. We endure only in your recollection; but you err in believing that your regrets alone can touch us. It is the things you do that prove to us we are not forgotten and rejoice our manes: and this without your knowing it, without any necessity that you should turn toward us. Each time that our pale image saddens your ardor, we feel ourselves die anew, and it is a more perceptible, irrevocable death than was our other; bending too often over our tombs, you rob us of the life, the courage and love, that you imagine you restore. " It is in you that we are: it is in all your life that our life resides; and as you become greater, even while forgetting us, so do we become greater too, and our shades draw the deep breath ot prisoners whose prison door is flung open. "If there be anything new we have learned in the world where we are, it is, first of all, that the good we did to you when we were, like yourselves, on the earth, does not balance the evil wrought by a memory which saps the force and the con- fidence of hfe." XII Above all, let us envy the past of no man. Our own past was created by ourselves, and for ourselves alone. No other could have suited us, no other could have taught us the truth that it alone can teach, or given the strength that it alone can give. And whether it be good or bad, sombre or radiant, it still remains a collection of unique masterpieces the value of which is known to none but ourselves; and no foreign master- piece could equal the action we have accomphshed, the kiss we received, the thing of beauty that moved us so deeply, the suffering we underwent, the anguish that held us enchained, the love that wreathed us in smiles or in tears. Our past is XIV [ lO ] OUR PAST ourselves, what we are and shall be; and upon this unknown sphere there moves no creature, from the happiest down to the most unfortunate, who could foretell how great a loss would be his could he substitute the trace of another for the trace which he himself must leave in life. Our past is our secret promulgated by the voice of years: it is the most mysterious image of our being, over which Time keeps watch. The image is not dead: a mere nothing degrades or adorns it: it can still grow bright or sombre, can still smile or weep, express love or hatred; and yet it remains recognizable forever in the midst of the myriad images that surround it. It stands for what we once were, as our aspirations and hopes stand for what we shall be; and the two faces blend that they may teach us what we are. Let us not envy the facts of the past, but rather the spiritual garment that the recollection of days long gone will weave around the sage. And though this garment be woven of joy or of sorrow, though it be drawn from the dearth of events or from their abundance, it shall still be equally precious; and those who may see it shining over a life shall not be able to tell whether its quickening jewels and stars were found amid the grudging cinders of a cabin or upon the steps of a palace. No past can be empty or squalid, no events can be wretched ; the wretchedness lies in our manner of welcoming them. And if it were true that nothing had happened to you, that would be the most astounding adventure that any man ever had met with; and no less remarkable would be the Hght it would shed upon you. In reality the facts, the opportunities and possi- bilities, the passions, that await and invite the majority of men, are all more or less the same. Some may be more dazzling than others; their attendant circumstances may differ, but they differ far less than the inward reactions that follow ; and the insignificant, incomplete event that falls on a fertile heart and brain will readily attain the moral proportions and grandeur of an analogous incident which, on another plane, will con- vulse a whole people. He who should see, spread out before him, the past lives of a multitude of men, could not easily decide which past he XIV [ 1 1 ] OUR PAST himself would wish to ha-\^nivcd, were he not able at the same time to witness the moral results of these dissimilar and un- symmctrical facts. He might not impossibly make a fatal blunder: he might choose an existence overflowing with in- comparable happiness and victory, that sparkle hke wonderful jewels; while his glance might travel indifferently over a hfe that appeared to be empty, whereas it was truly steeped to the brim in serene emotions and lofty, redeeming thoughts, where- by, though the eye saw nothing, that life was yet rendered happy among all. For we are well aware that what destiny has given and what destiny holds in reserve can be revolu- tionized as utterly by thought as by great victory or great defeat. Thought is silent: it disturbs not a pebble on the illusory road we see; but at the crossway of the more actual road that our secret hfe follows will it tranquilly erect an indestructible pyra- mid; and thereupon, suddenly, every event, to the very phenom- ena of Earth and Heaven, will assume a new direction. In Siegfried's life it is not the moment when he forges the prodigious sword that he is most important, or when he kills the dragon and compels the gods from his path, or even the dazzling second when he encounters love on the flaming moun- tain; but indeed the brief instant wrested from eternal decrees, the little childish gesture when one of his hands, red with the blood of his mysterious victim, having chanced to draw near his lips, his eyes and ears are suddenly opened : he understands the hidden language of all that surrounds him, detects the treachery of the dwarf who represents the powers of evil, and learns in a flash to do that which had to be done. XIV [ 12 ] XV ART THE WHAT AND THE HOW IN ART"* BY WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS T F art might he dismissed as a mere means of amusement, a -* source of relaxation to be the sport of leisure hours, it would have no place in our discussion here. But art, as the great artists have understood it, as the world is beginning to understand it, is not a pleasant playing with colors or with sounds or words; it is an effort to give the highest, truest ex- pression to whatever is pure and fair ivithin us. Looked at in this light, art becomes assuredly one of the important aspects of life. The one all-important aspect, it has seemed to some geniuses, a Beethoven, or a Michelangelo! And though most of us may refuse to go so far in our artistic devotion, yet it is evident that in seeking to understand modern life we must pause for a moment to examine into the meaning of art, its aims and hopes, and its relationship to life in general. It is this study which is here essayed by Mr. Howells, William Dean Howells, who has been aptly termed the dean of American letters, whose novels and whose critical works have won him the respect and admiration of all readers. The following essay, previously pub- lished by Messrs. Harper ^ Brothers in their volume ^^Litera- ture and Life,^^ is here reproduced by consent of the publishers and with the special permission of Mr. Howells. It is accom- panied by an address from M. de Maulde, the well-known French critic, in which he discusses the use of art in daily and especially in feminine life, the aims and means of art and woman being made clear as a Frenchman sees them. ^ Copyright 1902 by Harper & Brothers. XV [l] ART One of the things ^ways enforcing itself upon the consciousness of the artist in any sort is the fact that those whom artists work for rarely care for their work artistically. They care for it morally, personally, partially. I suspect that criticism itself has rather a muddled preference .for the what over the how, and that it is always haunted by a philistine question of the material when it should, aesthetically speaking, be concerned solely with the form. The other night at the theatre I was witness of a curious and amusing illustration of my point. They were playing a most soul-filling melodrama, of the sort which gives you assurance from the very first that there will be no trouble in the end, but everything will come out just as it should,, no matter what obstacles oppose themselves in the course of the action. An overruling Providence, long accustomed to the exigencies of the stage, could not fail to intervene at the critical moment in behalf of innocence and virtue, and the spectator never had the least occasion for anxiety. Not unnaturally there was a black-hearted villain in the piece; so vcr^' black-hearted that he seemed not to have a single good impulse from first to last. Yet he was, in the keeping of the stage Providence, as harmless as a blank cartridge, in spite of his deadly aims. He accom- plished no more mischief, in fact, than if all his intents had been of the best ; except for the satisfaction afforded by the edifying spectacle of his defeat and shame, he need not have been, in, the play at all; and one might almost have felt sorry for him, he was so continually baffled. But this was not enough for the audience, or for that part of it which filled the gallery to the roof. Perhaps he was such an uncommonly black-hearted vil- lain, so very, very cold-blooded in his wickedness that the justice unsparingly dealt out to him by the dramatist could not suffice. At any rate, the gallery took such a vivid interest in his punish- ment that it had out the actor who impersonated the wretch between all the acts, and hissed him throughout his deliberate passage across the stage before the curtain. The hisses were XV [ 2 ] ART not at all for the actor, but altogether for the character. The performance was fairly good, quite as good as the performance of any virtuous part in the piece, and easily up to the level of other villanous performances (I never find much nature in them, perhaps because there is not much nature in villany itself; that is, villany pure and simple); but the mere conception of the wickedness this bad man had attempted was too much for an audience of the average popular goodness. It was only after he had taken poison, and fallen dead before their eyes, that the spectators forbore to visit him with a lively proof of their abhorrence; apparently they did not care to "give him a realizing sense that there was a punishment after death, " as the man in Lincoln's story did with the dead dog. II The whole affair was very amusing at first, but it has since put me upon thinking (I hke to be put upon thinking; the eighteenth-century essayists were) that the attitude of the audi- ence towards this deplorable reprobate is really the attitude of most readers of books, lookers at pictures and statues, listeners to music, and so on through the whole list of the arts. It is absolutely different from the artist's attitude, from the connoisseur's attitude; it is quite irreconcilable with their attitude, and yet I wonder if in the end it is not what the artist works for. Art is not produced for artists, or even for con- noisseurs; it is produced for the general, who can never view it otherwise than morally, personally, partially, from their associations and preconceptions. Whether the effect with the general is what the artist works for or not, he does not succeed without it. Their brute liking or misliking is the final test; it is universal suffrage that elects, after all. Only, in some cases of this sort, the polls do not close at four o'clock on the first Tuesday after the first Monday of November, but remain open forever, and the voting goes on. Still, even the first day's canvass is important, or at least significant. It will not do for the artist to electioneer, but if he is beaten he ought to ponder the causes of his defeat, and XV [3] ART question how he has failc^ffo touch the chord of universal in- terest. He is in the world to make beauty and truth evident to his fellow -men, who are as a rule incredibly stupid and ignorant of both, but whose judgment he must nevertheless not despise. If he can make something that they will cheer, or something that they will hiss, he may not have done any great thing, but if he has made something that they will neither cheer nor hiss, he may well have his misgivings, no matter how well, how finely, how truly he has done the thing. This is very humiliating, but a tacit snub to one's artist-pride such as one gets from public silence is not a bad thing for one. Not long ago I was talking about pictures with a painter, a very great painter, to my thinking; one whose pieces give me the same feeling I have from reading poetry; and I was excusing myself to him with respect to art, and perhaps putting on a little more modesty than I felt. I said that I could enjoy pictures only on the literary side, and could get no answer from my soul to those excellences of handling and execution which seemed chiefly to interest painters. He replied that it was a confession of weakness in a painter if he appealed merely or mainly to technical knowledge in the spectator; that he nar- rowed his field and dwarfed his work by it; and that if he painted for painters merely, or for the connoisseurs of painting, he was denying his office, which was to say something clear and appreciable to all sorts of men in the terms of art. He even Insisted that a picture ought to tell a story. The difficulty in humbling one's self to this view of art is in the ease with which one may please the general by art which is no art. Neither the play nor the playing that I saw at the theatre when the actor was hissed for the wickedness of the villain he was personating was at all fine; and yet I perceived, on reflection, that they had achieved a supreme effect. If I may be so confidential, I will say that I should be very sorry to have written that piece; yet I should be very proud if, on the level I chose and with the quality I cared for, I could invent a villain that the populace would have out and hiss for his surpassing wickedness. In other words, I think it a thousand pities whenever an artist gets so far away from the XV [4] ART general, so far within himself or a little circle of amateurs, that his highest and best work awakens no response in the multitude. I am afraid this is rather the danger of the arts among us, and how to escape it is not so very plain. It makes one sick and sorry often to see how cheaply the applause of the common people is won. It is not an infallible test of merit, but if it is wanting to any performance, we may be pretty sure it is not the greatest performance. Ill The paradox lies in wait here, as in most other human affairs, to confound us, and we try to baffle it, in this way and in that. We talk, for instance, of poetry for poets, and we fondly imagine that this is different from talking of cooker)- for cooks. Poetry is not made for poets; they have enough poetry of their own, but it is made for people who are not poets. If it does not please these, it may still be poetry, but it is poetry which has failed of its truest office. It is none the less its truest office because some very wretched verse seems often to do it. The logic of such a fact is not that the poet should try to achieve this truest office of his art by means of doggerel, but that he should study how and where and why the beauty and the truth he has made manifest are wanting in universal interest, in human appeal. Leaving the drama out of the question, and the theatre, which seems now to be seeking only the favor of the dull rich, I believe that there never was a time or a race more open to the impressions of beauty and of truth than ours. The artist who feels their divine charm, and longs to impart it, has now and here a chance to impart it more widely than ever artist had in the world before. Of course, the means of reaching the widest range of humanity are the simple and the elementary, but there is no telling when the complex and the recondite may not universally please. The art is to make them plain to every one, for every one has them in him. Lowell used to say that Shakespeare was subtle, but in letters a foot high. XV [5] ART The painter, sculptor,^R- author who pleases the poHte only has a success to be proud of as far as it goes, and to be ashamed of that it goes no further. He need not shrink from giving pleasure to the vulgar because bad art pleases them. It is part of his reason for being that he should please them, too; and if he does not it is a proof that he is M^anting in force, however much he abounds in fineness. Who would not wish his picture to draw a crowd about it? Who would not wish his novel to sell five hundred thousand copies, for reasons besides the sordid love of gain which I am told governs novel- ists ? One should not really wish it any the less because chromos and historical romances are popular. Sometime, I believe, the artist and his public will draw nearer together in a mutual understanding, though perhaps not in our present conditions. I put that understanding off till the good time when life shall be more than living, more even than the question of getting a living; but in the mean time I think that the artist might very well study the springs of feeling in others; and if I were a dramatist I think I should quite humbly go to that play where they hiss the villain for his villany, and inquire how his wickedness had been made so appreciable, so vital, so personal. Not being a dramatist, I still cannot indulge the greatest contempt of that play and its public. ART IN DAILY LIFE BY R. DE MAULDE Many people think that life cannot be filled better than by whirl and excitement. Tell me frankly, does this lend charm to life? Life is what it is; why should we kill ourselves in painting its stucco? It would often be doing us a service were some one to show us the ridiculous side of a crowd of obligations and ambitions in which we consume ourselves, vainly. To do this thing or that because "ever)'body does it," XV [6] ART to know everybody, to take the present time by the forelock, to think eveiybody's thoughts, to see what every one sees, to eat the fashionable kickshaws and suffer from the fashionable complaint, to reel under the prodigious exertion of doing nothing — truly a fine object in life, ' this : the life of a circus horse or a squirrel. The world will regard us with admiration maybe; but the physician before whom we presently collapse after our surfeit will treat us as degenerates. He will tell us to quit Paris and fly to the sea or the moun- tains. Stuff! 'tis not the air of Paris that is unwholesome; what is unwholesome is its moral atmosphere. Still, I do find it a little hard to understand how a Parisian, constantly beset by risks so various, can reach manhood limb-whole, unmaimed. To be alive — that is the marvel. And many persons, amid these futile activities, pass life by after all without touching it. Who they were is never known ; you see only their gestures. In sooth, there must be many serious people among the clowns at the fair, judging by the number of clowns and fribbles among serious people. Not a few of the grave men I happen to meet, lawyers, bankers, men of business, are not really men at all; they are merely lawyers, bankers, men of business. Is this happiness! Mr. Rockefeller, the petroleum king, has fallen into a melan- choly. Like Charles V., he desires to abdicate; but this dream is still to him a fresh source of trouble and sorrow, for he seeks a mortal of fit mould and temper to wield the sceptre in his stead, and, though he scours two hemispheres, this mortal is nowhere discoverable. Will it astonish you, Madam, if I avouch that this rage of unrest has set its mark upon some of your sex? Would not you yourself think it a slight on your reputation if you were even suspected of being a stay-at-home ? Conversation — writing, — what outworn, antiquated things! You fling out your words, your notes, in the style of a tradesman's list or a telegram; you are seen in the paddock or the polo-field, on charitable committees, in presidential chairs; since man is master, you think you are winning a place among the engulf- ing sex by adopting mannish modes wholesale. XV [7] ART The most charming of4Pbmcn will cut, at least, but a poor figure as a man; and I cannot, in truth, see what there is in the spectacle of the masculine hurly-burly to attract women who might well live in quietness. To be endlessly getting and spending, to turn all things to laughter and take nothing seriously, to be altogether insensible — oh, a fine philosophy! With all his wealth and titles and decorations, many a man comes to crawling on all-fours, and even finds exceeding com- fort in his proncness, like the good soul who, being changed into a swine by the enchantress Circe, refused point-blank to resume his former features. But all our restless strivings represent in reality nothing but a varnish of egotism, wherefore we cannot desire a woman to take pleasure in them. Moreover, she would have to force her nature to attain an egotism so perfect. Such egotism is very rare among you, ladies; and often, after the loss of those you love has driven you within your last entrenchments, it' happens that Death comes, rather than Forgetfulness. Shall we at least find joy in the happiness of doing nothing ? I recognize that, for some women, there is a measure of practical wisdom in remaining idle. Unaccustomed to any- thing that can be called work, constrained often to periods of enforced idleness, they prefer to avoid all serious under- takings, last their activity prove mere bungling. This attitude of mind is familiar also to many men, if they have an income however small, or merely the hope of espousing one. They tell themselves that work brings worry, breeds jealousy and envy: ignorance has its art — the art of shining inexpensively; and all you have to do for the decoration you covet is to unveil a statue in honor of some philosopher con- neviently deceased. Meanwhile, it is so pleasant a sensation, so conducive to the peace and order of your country, to smoke your cigar without one thought, one desire, one aspiration ! So pleasant ! But stay, my dear sir, let me deal fairly with you: you are always doing something, even though it be only smoking, hunting, reading the newspaper, emitting your political views, riding, eating, digesting. Only, these occu- XV [ S ] ART pations are useless to your neighbors. It is very lucky, you will admit, that all men do not profess the same principles of ideal parasitism, for then who would give you to eat ? If we could but hug the assurance that wretchedness be- longs of right to the poor, and glory to the rich, we might be- seech the poor to batten on the odors exhaled from your kitchens. But no ; uselessness seeks to foist itself as a mark of distinction ; and vanity, often more ravenous than hunger, excites violent social strictures, especially among workmen of some intelli- gence, and sufficiently well off already to have an inkling of what luxury means. Unhappily, our progress in material things serves only to develop this sense of luxury, by establishing on all sides con- tacts purely material. Money, and money alone, classifies the passengers on the railway; we all become mere parcels, some in wadding, others not. We are estimated by the weight of our money, though that is commonly a cause of moral feeble- ness, or at least of torpor. Will social happiness, any more than personal happiness, be found in this glorification of ma- terial indolence and the aristocracy of pleasure ? It seems not, judging by the jealousy that devours our whole society, from top to bottom. There is endless talk of solidarity, fraternity; that is the court dress of the present day, as were formerly wigs and knee-breeches. But never was egotism so intolerant; never, consequently, was the tedium of life so grievous. Men mightily deceive themselves by indulging all their life long the dream of an easy time — retirement from business, quiet days of fishing, and so on; seeking a path to this happi- ness by way of a life of inelastic limitations. Our life is either whirl or stagnation. To the women who do nothing, as well as to all these mechanical gentlemen, to those who are enam- oured of the world, and to persons flourishing and waxing fat, may I present the woman of my dreams? She has formed the habit of living so actively on the joys and sorrows of others, she has sustained, encouraged, helped others so often, shared so many fears and hopes, seen so much of birth and death, lived so full of life, that beneath her blanching hair her heart finds it impossible to retire from the service. It grows and XV [9] grows. Her activity, alwUP fruitful, brings forth ever more and more. A clear proof that there must be a special secret. II Art has for its aim perfection, the augmentation of our sen- sibility to physical objects. Contact with the True and the Use- ful being often void of charm, whether because the Beautiful passes " out of range," as hunters say, or because the ugly presses upon us somew'hat too closely, art consists in creating for one's self a nest, a little sanctuary, an environment that one can love, and in presenting to us by their softer sides the things with which contact is inevitable. Therefore a woman's art consists in drawing from the most modest occupations a ray of beauty and of love ; and the surest means of discovering such in those is to put it there. A gross error of our time is an aesthetic error. The belief is current that there are things which are necessarily artistic, ■which make you an artist from head to heel as soon as you touch them, and other things which can never be artistic. People rush to the first, and eschew the others. They fancy themselves to be artists by the mere fact of their handling a chisel or a brush instead of a plough; a governess, be she ever such a goose, thinks herself a superior person. In reality there are some things to which art is applied, and other things to which it is not applied. The art of life consists in living steadily, without perturbations, in doing honestly that for which we were born, and in doing it with love. I cannot forget, for example, the singular impression pro- duced upon me, in a corner of the old hospital of Bruges, where Memlinc worked, by a group of Beguines scraping car- rots, and murmuring their prayers the while. I was leaving the place with a band of tourists, my eyes filled with beauty, my heart haunted by the exquisite visions of Memlinc; these placid women, not one of whom raised her head at so com- monplace an event as a stranger passing, wholly absorbed, as they were, in blending the love of God with the fulfilment of His laws, well reflected the sentiment of the painter, the XV [to] ART living ray of grace. I seemed to see around them a glamour of art. Take a woman who, from an entirely different point of view, showed the same instinct for finding loveliness in common things — the celebrated Madame Roland. "The drying of her grapes and plums, the garnering of her nuts and apples, the due preparation of her dried pears, her broods of hens, her litters of rabbits, her frothing lye, the mending of her linen, the ranging of her napery in its lofty presses — all these were objects of her personal, unstinted, unremitting care, and gave her pleasure. She was present at the village merrymakings and took her place among the dancers on the green. The country people from miles around sought her aid for sick friends whom the doctors had given up. She ranged the fields on foot and horseback to collect simples, to enrich her herbarium, to complete her collections, and would pause in delight before tufts of violets bordering the hedgerows bursting with the first buds of spring, or before the ruddy vine-clusters tremulous in the autumn breeze; for her, every- thing in meadow and wood had voices, everything a smile." ^ When a woman has armed herself with this special force of beauty, she has done much. It only remains for her to nour- ish and propagate it ; her life is a permanent work of art ; around her an atmosphere is naturally created in which all things solicit and give play to our noblest sentiments. Ah! this art is no chimera, no vain or useless thing ; it is the very nursery of life. Even in a cottage it smiles upon the wayfarer, offering flowers to his view, teaching him the graciousness and the necessity of joy. M. Guyau defines the artist as "he who, simple even in his profound accomplishment, preserves in the gaze of the world a certain freshness of heart, and (so to say) a perpetual novelty of sensation." That is the impression that a woman should produce around her, and no tremendous exertion is needed, since the first rule is frankness and sim- plicity. Luxury tends to be hurtful. It is useless to go far afield, to ferret out recondite styles, to complicate, to love the affected, the rare, the eccentric, the languid. Let the house >0. Gr^ard. XV [ 1 1 ] ART be a living and well-ordered place, where the accessory does not take precedence of the essential, where every object has its own place and its specific character. Breathe into all things a sentiment of unity, and also, as far as possible, of spaciousness and comfort. In the country, respect the ancient dwelling, even though a little dilapidated — the old walls, the old furniture, the old avenue, the old church. Tiy to feel in presence of a living personality. A house is a book in stone, and, if you will, you may give to everything a soul, even to stones. Allow your own life freely to enter and pervade this ancient home. Irregular- ities in structure, recent additions, are all cries of existence. Something of your own soul thus cleaves to all these walls. Is it not true that the architect of a building, the painter of a fresco, the carver of an arabesque, have left upon their work some fragments of their souls? Their thoughts hover about the walls. The voice of a singer causes the composer's soul to live again in us; the painter, the sculptor, speak to us, serve us as mentors. I also, in these pages, shall leave some frag- ments of my soul, with the hope that in the shadow of my thought some one perchance may pray and love. Ill Rich or poor, do not crowd your walls ; set on them merely a living and friendly note, something that is a final revelation of yourself, an element of life — a pretty water-color, a fine engraving. Is not this a thousand times better than a vulgar glitter, or even than tapestries? It is you, your thought, that you must stamp on these walls! Thereby you extend and fortify your personal action. What recks it me whether I find this or that object in your drawing-room? Am I stepping into a photographer's studio, or into a museum? It is you that I want to see. And, to tell the truth, I do not think it very delightful to see above your head your own portrait, the portraits of your husband and children. The end of por- traiture is to replace the absent ; besides, the painter or engraver strikes me too forcibly as interposing between you and me, XV • [ 12 ] ART and as indicating almost brutally how I am to understand you. What would happen, I wonder, if I should admire the imitation more than the original? I would rather divine you, come to know you, in my own fashion, as the secret unity among your belongings grows upon me. If the visitor on entering perceives no discordant element; if his eye, wandering presently towards the chimney-piece or some other salient point, rests on a beautiful head enhaloed, as it were, with Christian sentiment and ideals, or on a beautiful Greek statue, calm, dignified, in no wise labored or strained, natural in pose and expression; at once he is at ease, his con- fidence is already won. Presently his glance will range afield ; he will perceive some fine early Italian master, adorable in its artlessness, crowded with ardent ideas, and fragrant with noble aspirations; or if you are touched with the unrest of life, if needs you must plumb the mysterious and the unknown, you will have made room for some Vincian vision; or maybe for the clever and superficial gayeties of the French school, or the admirable warmth and freedom of some of our landscape painters. Many people indulge a taste for small canvases, because these will hang anywhere, go with anything, form part of the furniture, and suggest no manner of problem — cowsheds to wit, scoured miraculously clean, interiors all spick and span, kettles athrob, alive; or watery meadow-lands, with gray trees and gray water, and clouds fretted, or far stretched-out, or close-packed, or fiocculent. These do not tire the brain, they offend no one, except that, from the house-decorator's point of view, they are often of too superior a workmanship. Rembrandt is the divinity of shade, the antipodes of the Italian expansiveness. In an impenetrable cloud he dints a spot of gold, which proves to be a drunkard, a beggar, a melan- choly wight, a rotund Boniface, a needy soul, or a Jew from Amsterdam or Batignolles; or possibly himself. There are also the Gargantuesque old Flemish masters, with their phenomenal processions, their banquets open to the world, bubbling over with gayety and life. It seems to me that in matters of art one should say Raca I ^v [ 13 ] ART to nothing; every aesthetiffmprcssion has some use. And I really do not see the utility of a dispute like that which has been wrangled over for ages, about the relative importance of form and substance. Certainly there are features that are accidental, and others that arc essential; you will choose according to your taste. The arts of design have no title to gov- ern your soul; it is your part to govern and make use of them. Do you prefer to invoke an image, or a thought ? Do you wish to surround yourself with the brutalities of so-called Truth, or with suggestions, forms which efface themselves in the interests of impressions or ideas ? Do you love beauty of form, exact outlines, well-defined contours, or a broad effect, a surface whose lines are lost in the ambient shade? These are ques- tions for yourself to answer. Good tools are those which suit you best. It is not the mission of painter or sculptor to re- produce a scene with mathematical precision; a photographer would do this better; the artist's part is to be of service to you, to furnish you with the elements of the art of life. Indeed, it is the distinguishing mark of the artist that he singles out and segregates, in a crowd, in a landscape, the one choice ob- ject ; upon this he fastens, he is alive to all its manifold nuances, and the charm is so great that around this object he sees nought but gloom. The aesthetic object does you the delightful service of supplementing your own visions, and of compassing you about with ideas. You do not inquire what it is, but what it expresses ; the cleverest of still-life pictures, like those to be seen in Italian houses, would give you but a very superficial pleasure. You need support, not illusions; this marble, as no one knows better than yourself, is marble; but it speaks to you. Only, the message of art needs to be properly directed. To catch its accents, or to make them heard, one must impart to it something of one's own. How wonderfully the meaning of things, even their most precise intellectual meaning, varies for us, day by day, through distraction or a change of mood! If our mind wanders when we read a book, the loveliest thoughts glide over us as though over marble. A lady who had been stirred to enthusiasm by a somewhat mediocre book wrote XV [ 14 ] ART asking me to recommend another Vv^hich would produce the same effect. I told her first to fill herself with the same en- thusiasm, and then to take down from her shelves any book she pleased. One day, subdued to our mechanism, we pass on like blind men; the next, if our hearts are moved and our spirits satisfied, we feel suggestion to the full, and go so far as to see, in a phrase or a picture, ideas which the author never dreamed of putting there. Let us not, then, be anxious to crowd our rooms with beau- tiful things; far better to display things few in number, but high in worth, adapted to their surroundings, and performing in some sort the office of the conductor of an orchestra. To enforce this reflection, it is enough to mention the irritating effect produced by certain museums. The genus "collection" — that is the rock to shun! All these hapless canvases, torn from their luminous, hallowed, intimate, unique places, are there exhibited high and dry in philosophic deso- lation, rootless, forlorn. At ten o'clock you have to don the freshness of spirit necessary to enjoy them, and doff it on the stroke of four or five, according to the season. Instead of en- tering a gallery with heart at rest, and seeing in the sanctuary the objects of worship, you pull it to pieces, compare it with the canons, and puzzle out a needless meaning. Some good souls criticise the subject, others its treatment and technique; and the keepers stroll about or doze in a corner. What a crime to despoil streets and palaces and churches, the very tombs, for the sake of ranging such labels in a row! This is art as officialdom knows it. In a room of great simplicity, a single work, adapted to its surroundings, and excellently interpreting a woman's tastes, renders us a wholly different service. This is no corpse to anatomize. You contemplate a thing that is loved, and a radiance floods the place; you forget, if only for a moment, the offences of life. And I maintain that the poorest woman in the world, if she has confidence in beauty, will always be able thus to fill her home with light; she can always place in It some flowers or a photograph. XV [15] ART IV You may furnish your rooms in a higher sort by adorning your chairs with beings who speak and act. In referring to these famib'ar beings as furniture I mean no harm, but simply imply that they are no friends of yours, but merely accessories, persons who sink their own ideas and tastes. Madam, to assist your art with theirs. In this category, musicians probably hold the first place. Indeed, music plays a much higher role in aestheticism than the manual arts, a role scarcely inferior to that of the intellectual arts. Like the latter, it has (so to say) no substance, appealing solely to the feelings; whether we will or no, it rarely fails to take possession of us, though merely by tangled sensations ; it catches us as in a web, and does with us what it will ; it moves as, lulls us to sleep, stimulates us. It derives its effects from the relations of tone, whether with neighboring tones on the scale, or with the singer and the listener. A small thing in itself, it is yet of capital importance; all life, all motion even, pro- duces sound, from the wind and the sea upwards; and re- course has ever been had to sound for the purpose of touching men. Beggars and the blind have always sung, as they do to this day; song has ever been employed to console the afflicted, to hearten soldiers on the march, even to soothe physical pain. With very good reason, then, do women regard music as their own peculiar sphere. Thus, at the epoch of the Renais- sance, in the heyday of their influence, they adopted musical attributes in their portraits; these were, so to speak, their sceptres. Does it beseem a woman to aim higher, and to seek to create around her a real atmosphere of philosophy, history, science, poetry — in short, an intellectual atmosphere? Yes, and no. If she is so reliant on her own wit and ascendancy as to make all the personages she gathers but garniture for her soul or faith- ful radiators of her glory, mere apostles of her influence, yes. But no, if she has any fear of being absorbed by her surroundings and reduced to the level of a landlady. XV [ i6 ] ART It is often said that salons are things of the past, and the fact is lamented; in truth there are no salons now, and there never will be again, because, what with the ambitions and pre- tensions of men, the necessities of their careers, the obligations of the struggle for life, the present age knows little of the delight of allowing itself to be embodied or summed up in a woman. A drawing-room very soon becomes a sort of exchange for literary or sporting affairs, or the like. This does not imply that, for their own purposes, women should neglect intellectual resources; but it will certainly be recognized that real courage is needed if they are to rise superior to tittle-tattle, talk of stocks or the stable, the stuff they read, the things they hear. Happy are the societies where one can still enjoy life, and think! Happy the man who, like Monsieur Jourdain, makes prose without knowing it! Yet, without holding a salon, women may still exercise in intellectual matters a guiding influence truly indispensable. Instead of allowing themselves to fall a prey to puffery, clap- trap, or scandal, why should they not, on the contrary, treat as personal enemies the men who only use their undoubted talents to sport with them, to flaunt everywhere their nudities, to show off the slaves of their pleasure? — why smile upon scribblers, geniuses of Montmartre and the Latin Quarter? It is self-constituted slavery to bow incessantly at the feet of fashion. Always the fashion! A play is bad. Don't go to see it, and tell people so. A poem is a medley of unintelligible catchwords, a rigmarole of sonorous nothings ; have the courage to say that it defies comprehension and that your mind loves lucidity! We all need our courage: this is yours. Nobody wants you to shoulder a rifle; you are asked to read or not to read, to see or not to see. If need be, effect a grand spring- cleaning! You alone can destroy the literature of the music- hall and the casino, the trashy novelettes, that ravage the mean- est hamlets worse than alcohol. Is this courage beyond your strength? Do you fancy yourself compelled, because it is a free country, to fuddle yourself on the vile rinsings retailed a few steps away from your dwelling? Why then do you nourish your spirit on things that no one would dare to retail XV [ 17 ] ART in the open air ? Nobody ^uld suggest that you should pass your life in preaching; a light or even a fatuous remark is not likely to offend. But for pity's sake insist that people wash their hands before entering your doors. Many a great person- age whom you invite to dinner and make much of would be wearing a livery and displaying his calves in your entrance- hall if he had remained an honest man. Dare to face and to praise things that are true and serious. Diffuse their fra- grance around you. You are responsible for the books that lie about on your table. What a power you would have at command if you acted resolutely in the interests of beauty! The whole world would lay down its arms at your feet. The sentiment of the Beauti- ful is so strong! "To fathom the dreams of poets is the true philosophy," said a philosopher. "The mind of the savant stops at phenomena ; the soul of the poet essays a higher flight, his inward vision pierces to the heart of reality. If the final knowledge is that which attains, not the surface, but the founda- tions of being, the poet's method is the true one." Wherefore, surround yourself at any rate with men who have the taste for rendering life musical; in your conversations encourage clear, clean, warm images, refinements of sentiment rather than tricks of style; spread abroad an air of gayety, polish, and, above all, reverence. Your door is not that of a church, but neither is it that of a market. Some v/omen have too much belief in men of distinction, or so reputed; they imagine them upon a higher plane than they really are, and, especially, more difficult to reach. The majority of them, foolish or eminent, obscure or famous, reck little of grand sentiments, and are satisfied with a modicum of illusion or suggestion; they are led by means quite infantile, provided they are carried out of themselves. Have you sometimes pondered our extraordinary facility for self-detachment, whenever we perform an act of imagination — ^if we are reading a novel, for instance? We delight in be- ing duped ; we want to see and hear everything, we fancy our- selves present at scenes where the novelist himself declares no one was present. Thus, as has been said by a very witty XV [ i8 ] ART writer, we identify ourselves so thoroughly vs^ith the adventures of Pierre Loti that on the day when the Academy received into its bosom M. Julien Viaud, naval officer, the whole assem- bly, though so fastidiously select, thought they were really beholding M. Loti. The art of the novelist consists in riveting us to what he depicts. M. Loti, for instance, to whom I have just referred, has admirably painted the sea, but he has not sought to exalt it to a level with us; he has lent to it neither ideas nor will, sadness nor ecstasies; but he has marvellously felt and caused us to feel the solemnity of its multitudinous and changeless life, its invincible weight, its aimless perturbation, and it is in this way that he has so powerfully impressed us. Well, your art is similar. You need not trouble about your merits or ours, but solely about the effect you can produce on us who love to be duped. Acknowledge this as a guiding principle; for it is easier to regulate illusions than realities. Finally, we must clearly envisage the precise duty of women, which is to develop their natural gifts, and boldly to adopt the virtues in which men are lacking. They are the instrument of life, one might almost say the magic cauldron of life. They set all its elements in fer- mentation. To transform and to impart is their whole concern. Scarcely have they opened their eyes upon the world but they must needs have a doll to cherish, and tend, and fondle. And they continue thus cherishing, tending, fondling, unless life warps their nature. "Their machinery," as Rousseau said, "is admirable for assuaging or exciting the passions." Theirs is a treasure that grows richer in the spending. Even from a physiological point of view, they exhibit a marvellous power of endurance. They are not armed for attack; the finest natured are the strongest; their chords answer wonderfully to all appeals of sentiment; they love money with resignation, but glory intoxicates them; they live on a glance, a breath of kindness; their enthusiasm is contagious, and they shed around them the youth and freshness of life. So, without intention or effort, they are constantly bestowing their very selves, they clothe all things with their own enthusiasm. Science XV [19] ART they vindicate by the noble Wits they obtain from it; from thorns they cause roses to spring forth, and these roses in their turn they cultivate, giving them an added beauty and fragrance, and fresh blossoms all the season round. Excellent gardeners of the world ! Their role no doubt has varied with the circum- stances and needs of different times ; but the urgent necessities of the present time serve only to accentuate it and bring it into higher relief. The ignorance and weakness of women work more real mischief than the ignorance and weakness of men. The passive virtues no longer avail for governing; active virtues are the need of to-day. In olden days, if men loved the king, it was because he belonged to them all, and represented something indispensable to every society, a person with no private interests, but wholly devoted to the interest of the public. Furthermore, he had no possessions entirely his own, not even a park, not even his palace. Now, daring as the idea may appear, let us say that women also can only reign on condition of communizing their souls. Otherwise, they will lose all influence, even with their sons. A woman comes short of essential duties if she stops at bemoaning the evils of the times and playing patroness to good little schoolboys, instead of learning for herself and re- vealing to others what the evils of the times really are, of draw- ing out the manhood slumbering within us, and giving it new graces. She bears the burden of human joy. And a woman of intelligence and leisure has, in this particular, duties more complicated than she who milks the cows or who minds the poultry. She must think and love by her own energ}', instead of bear- ing in her heart a thousand undeveloped sentiments. Her husband and her friends hunt, speculate, work, make havoc of their lives. Even so; she has no right to do the same. If she does not redeem men when she can, surely it is she who ruins them! No difhculty will discourage her if she first fully realizes that she possesses all that is needful for success, and then sets her responsibilities in a clear light. She will sometimes make mistakes ; enthusiasm itself, the deli- XV [ 20 ] ART cioiis art of giving things charm, has its perils, carrying one away into the unreal, opening a loophole for illusion, day- \ireams, prejudices, fictions. What matters it, so long as the tree is vigorous? Would you fell a superb poplar because you noticed upon it some sprigs of mistletoe? A woman may also go astray in point of vanity. That is a pretty common folly (even among men), and very provoking when it is shown in questions of etiquette or dress. But why should we not agree that there is a noble, an excellent form of vanity, which consists in being thoroughly acquainted with the things one can love, rejoicing in the apostleship one exer- cises, and securing success therein by cultivating diligence, refinement, considerateness, industry, persuasiveness? Where is the harm? But we need not dwell on these fears. The special goal of a woman's life, that in which it is distinguished from the life of men, is manifest; it is the great things, the things to be loved, the things which do not "pay." Man serves money. You make it your servant, ladies, and you must aim higher, at the things that are not bought and sold; attachments, real friendships — those are your speculations. Be faithful to your aim. In faithfulness is redemption. A moment! As I bow to you, I seem to see on my wall, in place of a modern paper, a grand fresco of long ago, an exquisite symbol of your reign : the Angel from Heaven, kneel- ing in humble adoration before the spotless Motherhood, pro- claiming that from your devotion shall proceed the welfare of mankind. The scene is simple and sweet, the color serene: a closed room, a curtain hanging, barely a glimpse of the sky. XV [ 21 ] XVI ART AND MORALITY BY FERDINAND BRUNETIERE FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE FRENCH ACADEMy] TT is not the purpose 0} this series to attack or to condemn. ■* // seeks rather to tmderstatid, and to uphold. Yet there are some errors so obtrusive that one can only advance by pushing them aside, so blatant that the busy man is apt to accept them as being established when really they are merely being shouted. Such an error we here confront. The high mission oj art, its intimate relation with much that is noblest in lije, has perhaps been brought home to each of us by the words of Mr. Howells and Mr. DeMaule; while closely allied with this broad general question of the purpose of art is the problem, much discussed in present days, of arVs relation to morality. Now, it has been shouted at us that no such relation exists — as though anywhere in all this universe any object could stand isolated, untouching and untouched by its surroundings ! On the other hand, some men have thought that the whole deep subject of morality is per- haps best approached through its relationship to art. We in this country are sometimes accused of being too '' Puri- tan" a people, and of being, like our English cousins, too heavily "of the earth.'^ Hence it is perhaps as well that we should here listen to the word of a continental European, some leading man of letters known to and respected by us all. Such r. man is, or alas, was, Ferdinand Brunetiere, who died last fall. He was one of the "-Forty Immortals,^' the Royal Academy of France; he was acknowledged the foremost critic of our day; and he was XVI [ I ] ART AND MORALITY well known, in America as^ell as Europe, as a lecturer oj rare grace and power. The following address was delivered by him in Paris under the auspices oj the Societe des Conferences; and the present translation was made for the Living Age, oj Boston, is covered by its special copyright, and is here used by the cour teous permission oj its editors. M. Brunetiere^s dissection oj the principles oj art must prove to a layman both instructive and interesting; his outlook on morality may be oj even wider value. Ladies and Gentlemen: — In order that I may not surprise any one, and also that I may secure to myself the benefit of my frankness, T will tell you at the very beginning that, in this lecture, I purpose to be long, tiresome, obscure, and commonplace withal. And, in truth, the fault will not be entirely in me, but in the subject I have chosen: MoraHty in Art, or rather. Art and Morahty, a trite subject, as you know; for since the time of Plato, at least, it has been the common ground of conversation in academies, salons, studios, schools; and in spite, or rather because, of its banality it is a subject both complex and difiicult. I say because of its triteness; and indeed one of the great mistakes we make in regard to "commonplaces" is beheving them easy to deal with. We have no doubt that the easiest thing in the world to-day is to be, or seem to be, original; and the means thereto have become so simple! We simply have to maintain the opposite of what people around us think; to say of charity, for example, that there is no need to practise it — and that is what a whole school is teaching — to say of justice that there is no need to administer it ; to say of patriotism that it is a prejudice of another age; and twenty paradoxes of the same nature. This is a sure way of astonishing, of cheaply shocking, one's readers or hearers, and to-day it is the ABC of the art of the paragrapher and of the platform lecturer. Li these days intellectuality merely consists in thinking the opposite of other people! But, on the other hand, to think Hke everybody else; to seek solid reasons and precise reasons that are those of almost all reasonable people or of all cultivated people, to confirm people, as need be perhaps, in what the XVI [ 2 ] ART AND MORALITY learned Professor Lombroso has called their misoneism — and which is only a wise distrust of novelty — to tell them there are ideas, old ideas, without which the hfe of humanity cannot do any more than without bread; in a word, to communicate to them the rare courage, the unusual audacity, of not wishing, at any price, to appear more ''advanced" than their times — that, ladies and gentlemen, yes, that is a difficult undertaking, that is a hazardous undertaking: and that is what I would try to do to-day. You know the problem, and I have only to remind you of the terms in which it is stated. If we are to believe the artists in this matter, at least certain of the artists, and the greater number of the critics, or aesthetes, but specially the journal- ists, Art, great Art, Art with a capital A, would transform, would transmute into pure gold everything it touches, would subHmate it, so to speak , and would make a thing to be ad- mired out of a thing obscene or most atrocious. Do not some call this a means of purgation ? "There's not a monster bred beneath the sky. But, well disposed by art, may please the eye," Pascal said the same thing, but in a far more Jansenist manner, when he wrote: "What a vanity is painting, which attracts our admiration by the imitation of things which we do not admire in reality." You see that I am keeping my promise, and one could scarcely bring forward more familiar quotations. Illustrious examples, moreover, confirm, or seem to confirm, the sentence of Pascal and the verses of Boileau. We admire in good faith, we credit ourselves with good taste for admiring, under Greek names, Venuses which we would not dare to name in French; and if we strip (I well know it is a sacrilege), but if we do really strip the subject of Corneille's "Rodogune" or of Racine's "Bajazet," for example, of the prestige of poetry, which transfigures them; if we reduce both of them to the essence of the fable which sustains them, what will remain of XVI [ 3 ] ART AND MORALITY them but two intrigues of^e harem, which would be all very well in their place in the annals of crime and indecency.* Yet we are told, neither "Bajazet" nor "Rodogune," es- pecially, are works which we can tax as immoral. In seizing on these intrigues, the poet — and it is his privilege — has trans- formed their nature. That man would be condemned, he would be disqualified, who, in the presence of the goddesses of Praxit- eles, felt emotions other than those of the most chaste and dis- interested admiration. The fact is, we are further told, the artist or the poet has hfted us above what is instinctive or animal in us; they have performed this miracle by placing us — how, is not very well known, by a secret known only to them — in a sphere where the gross excitements of sense are unknown; they have freed us from ourselves (you know the theory of the liberat- ing power of art, that of the "purgation of the emotions," and I need only to allude to it in passing^); and we have entered with them into the region of supreme calm and of divine repose. La Mort peut disperser les univers tremblans, Mais la Beauts flamboie, et tout renait en elle, Et les mondes encore roulent sous ses pieds blancs.^ That is not my opinion. And first, if this were the place to produce texts, I should not be embarrassed to prove that Greek sculpture — I mean that of the great epoch — fell short of that character of ideal purity that we are accustomed to attribute to it. It is pagan; and we must remember that when we speak of it ! And pagan- ism is not here or there, the religion of Jupiter or that of Venus, the mysteries of Eleusis or the Thesmophoria, but simply, and in a word, the adoration of the energies of nature. Here cus- tom makes us bhnd; but in order to see clearly, think Vv^hat the ' It is well known that Racine's boldness in the choice of his subjects, as in his freedom of observation and in the detail of his style, has long before equalled or surpassed the most audacious liberty that romanti- cism could imagine at a later time. — B ' See Hegel's Acsthelik, and Schopenhauer on the aesthetics of poetry in The World as Will and Idea ^ "Death may shatter the trembling universe; but Beauty's torch ever flames aloft, and all things revive, and the worlds once more roll on beneath her white feet." XVI [ 4 ] ART AND MORALITY amours of the chief gods — Europa, Danae, Leda, Semele, Gany- mede — have become with an Ovid, for example, or with very great painters, a Michael Angelo, a da Vinci, a Correggio, a Veronese; and more generally, all those voluptuous fictions which, after having furnished the materials of classic art, have come to their end in the terrible games in the amphitheatre. Ask yourselves, in another art and in another order of ideas, whether — when we come from seeing this "Bajazet" or this "Rodogune" played, of which I was speaking just now — whether the impression which we carry from it has not some- thing of mingled estrangement, of suspicious estrangement ? On this point there is a confession of Diderot which you will find quite eloquent, and which will show, too, how this creator of "art criticism" admired the "Antiope" by Correggio.* Alas! gentlemen, Corneille, the great Corneille, is not always moral: And I mean by that that I would not be sure of the quality of the soul formed in the school of his "heroism" alone. It would be lacking in what Shakespeare has so finely called "the milk of human kindness." I continue, ladies and gentlemen, to say trite things, ex- ceedingly trite things, things even worthy of Mrs. Grundy, and what would the case be if I wished to take my examples from music instead of from painting, sculpture, or poetry? But this is the most banal of all these things — I mean that, of which you are all secretly, though perhaps without knowing it, most certainly convinced; yet which is most difficult to prove. It is that these examples have nothing that need astonish us if in every form or every species of art there is, as principle or germ, a furtive immorality. Note that I am not speaking of inferior forms of art; of the cafe-concert song, for example, of the vaudeville, or of the dance. Of the dance! Yes, I know that David danced before the ark, and we hear every day much talk of hieratic dances, of sacred dances, of martial dances. There is also the danse du ventre; and I should not be at all surprised if some grave author should find it symbolic. But symbolic or expressive of what? That is the point; and no one else will pretend that it is expressive of decency or modesty. "How ^" Salon de 1 761, "and Letter to Mile. Voland, 17th Aug., 1759. XVI [ 5 ] ART AND MORALITY much there is to a mini#P!" said a famous dancing master. Why, certainly, but how much of what? For, certainly the opera ballet may have all sorts of qualities — qualities that I myself may have the weakness not to despise: that they have not the cjuality of elevating the mind is something of which I am certain ! Neither has a cafe-concert song, nor a vaudeville. But since this is not what we ask of them, I will not insist. That would be to make myself ridiculous! Let us take the highest things. I speak to you of great art, of the greatest art : it is in the notion of great art that I say a germ of immoraUty is enveloped; and it is here that I am going to become weari- some. Of, rather, not yet, ladies and gentlemen; that will be presently; for I must first of all tell you of the memorable ex- ploit of M. Taine, the most glorious of his exploits, and the one which most eloquently testifies that in him sincerity of research and uprightness of character did not yield to brilliancy of talent. He began, as you know — in conforming with his intention of finding an objective foundation for critical judgments, and thus of rescuing the works of hterature and art from the caprice of particular opinions — by taking the attitude which I will not call indifferent or uninterested, but impartial and impersonal, which is that of the zoologist before the animal or of the botanist with regard to the plant. When the zoologist studies the habits of the hyena or of the antelope, of the jackal or of the dog, and when the botanist describes to us the rose or the Datura stra- monium, the belladonna or "the sacred blade which gives us bread," you know they always use the same patient method, and we do not see them angry with the ferocious beast or the poisonous plant. We do not find them changing either tone or composure of mind with their subject. Taine tried to imitate them, and for a moment he could believe that he had succeeded ; when, as yet knowing only France and England, on his appoint- ment as professor of aesthetics in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, he visited Italy. That was a revelation. The difference be- tween the best, the mediocre, and the worst, that difference, that sense of difference, to which the spirit of system so easily blinds us in literature, because words express ideas and because we have a leaning toward ideas that resemble our own, how- XVI [ 6 ] ART AND MORALITY ever feebly Ihey may be expressed — this difference which we do not always appreciate in music, because music is a kind of science as well as an art, and especially because our judgments do not anywhere depend more on the state of our nerves than in music — this, on the other hand, stands out clearly in painting, in sculpture ; and Taine was forcibly struck by it. That, ladies and gentlemen, is why, when he began those celebrated lectures on "The Production of the Work of Art," on "Art in Italy," "Art in Holland," "Art in Greece," on "The Ideal in Art " — certainly, with the work of Eugene Fromentin on "The Early Masters," and some rare writings of M. Guil- laume, the most remarkable things which art criticism has pro- duced in our times ^ — that is why it appeared to him necessary to classify, to judge works, to estabUsh "scales of values" — what is more pedantically called an aesthetic criterion- — in order to judge them. And where did he find this criterion, gentle- men, after having long sought for it, where did he find it, he, the pupil of Condillac and of Hegel, the theorist and philoso- pher of the impassibility of criticism, whose most serious re- proach to the Cousins and Jouffroys was that of trying to bring everything to the "moral point of view"? What is the sign by which he declared that the most elevated in the museum of masterpieces can be recognized ? It is by what he calls "the degree of beneficence in the character." And what, then, are the works he places highest in the heaven of art — he, I repeat, the theorist of naturahsm, whose deeper sympathies all went, in spite of himself, to the mani- festations of force and violence? Now it is "Polyeucte," "le Cid," "les Horace," it is "Pamela," "Clarissa," "Grandison," it is "Mauprat," "Fran9ois le Champi," "La Mare au Diable," it is "Hermann and Dorothea," it is Goethe's "Iphigenia," it is Tennyson with his "Idylls of the King." Who, in very truth, would have suspected it only three or four years before, when he wrote his "History of Enghsh Literature," and when, ' Fromentin in painting and M. Eugene Guillaume in sculpture (see his essay on Michael Angelo) have added to Taine 's criticism what it lacked on the side of "technique. " — B. XVI [ 7 ] ART AND MORALITY with an energy of style ^0ch at times resembled a gymnastic feat, he glorified, in the drama of Shakespeare or in the poetry of Byron, the splendid villany of Don Juan or of lago ? I do not discuss these judgments, gentlemen; I do not deny any of them to-day; I do not speak to you of the reservations they permit, and of the principal ones which the author himself has made. But I see in them an instructive testimony — a pre- sumption, if you like — for what I was saying to you just now: that is, that the art which has only itself as an object, the art which does not care for the quality of the characters it expresses ; the art, in a word, which does not take account of the impres- sions which it is capable of making on the senses or of exciting in the mind, that art, however great in the artist, I do not say is inferior (that is another question), but I say that it necessarily tends to immorality. I am now going to try to give you the reasons for this. II There is one reason which, if I am not mistaken, is as clear as noon-day; and which is that every form of art, in order to reach the mind, is obhged to have recourse to the mediation, not only of the senses, but of the pleasure of the senses. No painting but must first of all be a joy to the eye ! No music but must be a pleasure to the ear ! No poetry but must be a caress ! And that very thing, we may remark in passing, is one of the reasons for the changes in fashion and taste. The works exist ; and whether good or bad, they remain what they are. We Hke them or we do not hke them! They do not change in character; the " Ihad " is always the " Ihad," Raphael's " School of Athens " is always the " School of Athens." But the senses become refined, or rather they are sharpened ; they become more subtle and more exacting; they require, in order to experience the same quantity of pleasure, a greater amount of excitation. As has been well observed, "la Dame Blanche," "le Pre-aux-Clercs," and so many other operas we to-day call out-of-date — although their representation once was profitable to dozens of theatres in Ger- many — these works doubtless gave to our fathers the same kind of pleasure as " Carmen," for example, or " Die Meistersinger," gives us. It is because their less practised ears were less exacting. XVI [8] ART AND MORALITY Have you never asked yourselves at times whence comes the scorn it is fashionable, in the last few years, to show toward Raphael's painting ? Independently of the element of snobbery which is certainly mixed with it — and which consists in people thinking that this gives them the air of connoisseurs — it is be- cause after the lapse of fifty years our eyes have learned to enjoy color far more intensely than formerly. The sense for color, which, as you know, has had a long history, and the in- creasing complexity of which in the progress of time we can follow, seems to have profited by what the sense of design and form has lost. And we delight in reds or blues, yellows or greens to-day, as such, demanding only vigor or dehcacy. Perhaps this, too, is the reason, or one at least, for the develop- ment of landscape. The chief factor of landscape is light or color, a pleasure purely sensuous, or primarily sensuous, which it affords us; and do not the very words we use to admire, for example, a canvas by Corot indicate it, when we speak of the calm, of the freshness, of the melancholy, which we breathe there ? All that is not only sensed, but sensuous ; and I do not think I need support this point any further. But there result from this, ladies and gentlemen, several consequences; and thus it is that we see — I say, in history — that when art is left to itself and seeks its principle only in it- self — poetry, music, or painting — it degenerates into a mass of artifices to stir up sensuaHty. Then no one asks of it anything more ; it itself no longer thinks of anything but of pleasing, and of pleasing at any price, by every means; and it literally changes from a leader or from a guide, into a kind of go-between. That is the only name which fits it when I think of the close of the eighteenth century, of the novels of Duclos and of Crebillon the younger, of that of Laclos: "les Liaisons dangereuses " ; of the sculpture of Clodion; of the painting of Boucher, of Frago- nard ; of the Hbertine engravings of so many dandies ; of that furor of eroticism which disgraces not only the "Poesies" of Parny, but even those of Andre Chenier. Let us be bold enough to confess it; all this art which is so praised to us, which is still celebrated, all this art, in all its forms, was, for nearly half a century, scarcely anything but a XVI [9] ART AND MORAIJTY perpetual incentive to de|^|iich ; and do you think that, aUhough it be called elegant, debauchery is any the less dangerous ? As for me, I believe it is far more so ! Here is something graver still. At heart, when they are not devoid of all moral sense, these Fragonards or these Crebillons cannot but know that they ply a shameful trade. But the seduction of form sometimes works in a more subtle and in- sidious fashion, for which the artist or the pubhc can scarcely themselves account, and of which the effects are more disastrous; for while corrupting the principle of art there is the appearance of respecting it ; optimi corruptio pessima. When an exagger- ated importance, not to say an importance which ignores all else, is attributed to the form, then it is that there results, from this very importance, what an Italian critic, writing of the de- cadence of Italian art, has justly called "the difference to the content."^ That is when the painter, Correggio or Titian, with the same hand, as skilful, as caressing, as licentious, but as sure, with which he yesterday painted a "Madonna" or an "Assumption," to-day paints, warm and amber on a dark background, the nudity of a courtesan. It is when a Montes- quieu, with the same pen with which he has thrown on paper a sketch of the "Spirit of Law," writes the "Persian Letters" or the "Temple de Guide." Or better still, it is when relaxation is taken after writing a "Stabat" by writing the music of a ballet. For, what, indeed, do the things we say matter? What must be considered is the manner of saying them! Form is everything, the basis is nothing, if it is not the pretext or occa- sion for form. And, as this striving, as this care, as this passion for form never fails to lead to new effects; as the qualities lost are, or seem to be, replaced by others; as the execution becomes more masterly or more skilful, it cannot at first be seen where that leads to. That, ladies and gentlemen, leads directly to dilettanteism; and dilettanteism is the death both of all art and of all morahty. Oh, certainly, I know very well I speak like a barbarian, not to say like one possessed; at all events, like an iconoclast; and you are used to see something else in dilettanteism. Dilct- * Francesco de Sanctis, ' ' Storia della Letterature Italiana. ' ' XVI [ ID ] ART AND MORALITY tanteism, I know, for the most of those who profess it and glory in it, for the most of those who are in sympathy with it, means independence of mind, hberty, diversity, superiority of taste; it means absence of prejudices; it is the faculty of comprehend- ing everything. But, gentlemen, is it also the faculty of ex- cusing everything? For, indeed, we who beHeve in anything, and who have what are called "principles" — you know that that means to-day that we are limited on all sides — can any one imagine that, when we adopt, when we maintain, an opinion, we have not seen the reasons for the contrary opinion, or the difficulties of the one we adopt ? Alas ! there is not a critic or historian worthy of the name who does not argue against his tastes, who does not combat his own pleasures, who does not harden himself against the things that attract him. But dilet- tanteism is nothing but an incapacity for taking sides, an en- feeblement of the will, when it is not a clouding of the moral sense; and — on the most favorable supposition — a tendency, eminently immoral, to make of the beauty of things the measure of their absolute value. When art comes to that — and it necessarily comes to that whenever it seeks its end only in itself or in what is emphatically called the realization of pure beauty — I once more repeat, it is not only art which is ruined : it is morality, or, if you want something more precise, it is society, which has made an idol of it. We have a memorable example of this in the Italy of the fifteenth and of the sixteenth centuries, assuredly one of the most corrupt societies of history, according to the admission of all historians ; the Italy of all these tyrants to whom we seem to have pardoned everything because they have had triumphal mythologies painted in fresco on the walls and ceilings of their palaces; or because the daggers they buried in the breasts of their victims were marvellously carved by a Benvenuto CelUni. And do you know whence is this corruption, gentlemen ? Pre- cisely from this idolizing of art, or, if you prefer it, from the subordination of every part of public and private life to art and its demands. An excellent critic has said : "The ItaHans of the Rennaissance, under the sway of the fine arts, sought after form, and satisfied themselves with XVI [ 1 1 ] ART AND MORALITY rhetoric. Therefore we^hdemn their moral disquisitions and their criticisms as the flimsy playthings of intellectual volup- tuaries. Yet the right way of doing justice to these styHstic trifles is to regard them as products of an all-embracing genius for art, in a people whose most serious enthusiasms were aes- thetic. ... If the methods of science may be truly said to regulate our modes of thinking at the present time, it is no less true that, during the Rennaissance, art exercised a like con- trolling influence." Note, ladies and gentlemen, this last comparison; we shall return to it in a little while. Penetrated with the idea of the "beautiful," Italy went so far as to find it in crime. It recog- nized in a crime well done, boldly conceived, skilfully executed, and audaciously avowed, merits and analogues to those she ap- plauded in her works of art. Why is that? You see why, perhaps. It is in distinguishing and dividing the invisible, in separating the inseparable, in dissociating the form from the substance; it is in placing in the execution all the merit of art. As long as this tendency found its counterpoise in the sincerity of the religious, moral, social, or poHtical sentiment, it gave to the world the masterpieces which you know, from the "Divine Comedy" to the decoration of the Sistine. But according as the tendency was able to develop freely, the decadence of art was seen to commence, followed by the decadence of morahty. That is a first-class proof, in my opinion — a proof by the facts, a proof by history — that every form of art contains a principle of immorality, and there is another in the fact that it is obliged to address the mind only by the mediation of the pleasure of the senses, of which art must exercise a wise mistrust, the chief part of which will be never to seek its end in itself. It is to that, you know, that people have tried to answer, in giving as its end the imitation of nature; and as regards this, I begin by declaring that two things are equally certain: that we are cured of dilettanteism or of virtuosity only by returning to the imitation of nature ; and the other is that if the imitation of nature is not, perhaps, the end of art, it is at least the principle. "All rules," said a great painter, "have been made only to aid XVI [ 12 ] ART AND MORALITY us in placing ourselves before nature, and thus to teach us to see it better " ; and a great poet has said before him : "Nature is made better by no mean, But nature makes that mean ; so, over that art Which you say adds to nature, is an art That nature makes." But what is this nature which it is a question of imitating? How, in what measure, ought we to imitate it ? If we feel in us any temptation to correct it, or, as is said, to perfect it, ought we to yield to it ? And how, in short, have morals or morahty accommodated themselves? I mean, how, in fact and in his- tory, have they accommodated themselves to that recommenda- tion and that principle ? I will not examine, gentlemen, whether nature is always beautiful, or whether it is never so. The question would take us too far afield. Truly, I, for my part, will freely say that if colors are not in objects, but in our eye (and that is proven), the proof would have greater validity for that relative and changing quality which is called "Beauty." Plato has said, or rather has been made to say, that "the beautiful is the splendor of the true"; and I admire Plato; none the less, this is an example of one of these immortal blunders which we piously transmit from generation to generation. If we only take the trouble to try to understand ourselves, there is no "beauty" in a geo- metrical theorem, nor in a chemical law, or at least the beauty shines in it only with a mild brilliance, modest and timid. There is beauty, in the human sense of the word, only in tliose very general laws that are, properly speaking, hypotheses rather than laws, and of which I do not wish to speak disparagingly, because it may be that the search for them is the very end, the highest end, of science. But, on the other hand, we might easily show that there have been some very great mistakes. But, I repeat, and without wishing to examine the question, ugliness as well as beauty is in nature ; and you know, we all know, some artists who have seen it alone. The romanticists have even made the representation of the ugly an essential part of their aesthetics — and it certainly is not on this point that contemporary naturalism has disavowed them. XVI [13] ART AND MORALITY What is still more c^Rin, and what is especially important to us to-day, is that, beautiful or ugly, nature is not "good"; and I scarcely need to maintain this point, since the Schopen- hauers, the Darwins, the Vignys, have firmly established it. Do not let us needlessly complicate matters, and do not let us embarrass ourselves with metaphysical complications. If the first need of a creature is "to preserve its being," nature, you know well enough, has, as it were, surrounded us with snares, and we cannot make a movement without running the risk of perishing by it. Life is spent in learning to live, and no sooner have we succeeded in it than we die. Does the living console us, and can we say, with the poet, " Mais la nature est la, qui invite et qui t'aime Plonge-toi dans son sein qu'elle t'ouvre toujours"? ^ Her "bosom" is rather a stepmother's; and her indiffer- ence to us is equalled only by her lack of regard for all that we call by the name of good or bad. "On me dit une mere et je suis une tombe, Mon hiver prend vos morts comme son hecatombe, Men printemps ne sent pas vos adorations." ^ Let us go still further, gentlemen ; nature is immoral, thoroughly immoral, I may say immoral to such a degree that everything moral is, in a sense, and especially in its origin, in its first prin- ciple, only a reaction against the lessons or counsels that nature gives us.^ Vitium hominis, natura pecus, I believe St. Augus- tine has said; there is no vice of which nature does not give us the example, nor any virtue from which she does not dissuade us. This is the empire of brute force and unchained instincts, neither moderation nor shame, neither pity nor compassion, neither charity nor justice; all species are armed against one another, in muua junera; all passions aroused, every individual ready to oppose every other — that is the spectacle that nature offers us; and if we imitate it, who does not see and who does i"But nature is ever there, inviting thee and loving thee; plunge into her bosom, ever open for thee." 2 "They call me a mother, and I am a tomb; my winter takes your dead as its hecatomb; my spring does not listen to your worships." 3 1 have tried to show this in a brochure, "La Moralite de la Doc- trine Evolutive " XVI [ 14 ] ART AND MORALITY not understand what humanity would become in so doing? Plunge us into nature! Why, gentlemen, if we were not careful, that would be to plunge us into animality; and that is what has not been understood by certain who are inviting us to take "nature" only for a guide in all things — that they were inviting us to go back again over the very steps of history and civiUzation. We have become men, and can become more so each day only by detaching ourselves from nature, and by try- ing to institute in the midst of it '' an Empire within an Empire." Shall I add to this that it is not always true? That is what I ought to do if I keep myself narrowly within the bounds of my subject. Nature has its failures, it has its exceptions, it has its monstrosities. If we are to attach a precise meaning to the words, which will make us understand, it is not "natural" to be bhnd or a hunchback; and that is what so many artists readily forget. They also forget that " Some thoughts may be too strong to be believed." We see examples of it every day. Every day there happens the reality that resembles a fiction, and, on the other hand, the fiction that one would take for a reality. It is even a common- place with novehsts to say that they invent nothing that reality does not surpass. , . . But all these considerations are purely aesthetic, and to-day I am interested in the relations between morahty and art. Now you see that ttiey are of sucn a nature that, as we have just now seen, immorality may be engendered in the very seduc- tion of the form ; so in the same way it is always to be feared lest it may also result from a too faithful imitation. Examples of this are innumerable in the history of painting, and especially of literature. But, as I should compromise myself if I here invoked the memory of the "Tales" of La Fontaine, or of his "Fables," it is the author of "Andromaque" and of "Bajazet" that I shall ask to offer me his repentance. For, indeed, when this great man, in the maturity of life and genius, not yet having reached forty — that is, the age at which Moliere had just begun to write' — abandoned the stage, what sentiments do you think ^Racine, born 1639, renounced the stage, 1677. Moliere, born 1622, presented the " Precieuses Ridicules," 1659. XVI [15] ART AND MORALITY dictated his conduct ? H^i^as afraid of himself, afraid of the truth of the paintings he had made; of the terrible fidelity with which he had rendered what is most natural in the passions; of the justification that he had found for their excess in their conformity to instinct; and that is why from that moment his Hfe was nothing but one long expiation for the errors of his genius. Let us regret it if we will! But let us not have minds so narrow as to be astonished at it; nor especially to blame the poet for it ; and let us consider that at this very moment there is an example of this very thing in him who was in his hour the il- lustrious novehst of "War and Peace," and of "Anna Karenina." You will find the proof of this in the work "What is Art?" in which he wages the same warfare as I do to-day — and if this endeavor appears only ordinary in a critic, or in a historian of ideas, so much the worse for those who did not understand how heroic it is in a novehst. In that work he brings to light a final cause of that im- morality which we can look upon as inherent in the very prin- ciple of art. I mean a condition which seems to be imposed on the artist, and which consists, in order to assure his origi- nahty, not precisely in his cutting himself off from the society of other men, and shutting himself in his "ivory tower," but in his distinguishing himself from the crowd. La Bruyere has excellently said, "If we always listened to criticism there is not a work that would not be completely founded on it"; and he was right. Painter, poet, sculptor, or musician, if the origi- nality of the artist is to feel, by the same things, sensations different from other men, it would seem that one of his cares should be not to let them in any way become "banal," and consequently it would seem that this right of separation from the crowd cannot be denied him. But to what dangers at all times, and especially at a time like ours, does not the appHca- tion of this principle lead ? By it, humanity is divided into two kinds of men: "Artists," who make art, and the " Phihstines," the "Bourgeois," who do not make it, or who do not understand it as the "artists" do, or who do not like the same art as they. In this connection, recall Flaubert in his "Correspondence," of the Gencourts in XVI [ i6 ] ART AND MORALITY their "Journal." It has been said, and I hasten to subscribe to it, "What love, what passion, what religion for their art!" And, in truth, that is admirable! But also what ignorance, what thoughtlessness for all that is not art and their art ; what scorn of their contemporaries, of the "Messrs. Dumas, Augier, Feuillet," of all the novels that are not "Madame Bovary," of all the comedies that are not "Henriette Marechal"! Evi- dently all of us — we who beHeve that there may be something else in life than art — in their eyes we are all only simple Bouvards or frightful Peceuchets. We are the crowd, and the crowd is always to be despised. "I beUeve that the crowd, the flock, will always De nateiui. In so far as the people do not bow before the mandarins, in so far as the Academy of Sciences will not take the place of the Pope, society to its very roots will be only a lot of sickenin ghumbugs." I do not stop over the strangeness of the phrase — which would be worthy of a place on the wall of the editor's office — but you see the sentiment! I do not even reply that if it is by works that we must ultimately test doctrines, we can conceive of a more useful employment in life than writing "Paradise Artificiel," "Tentations de Saint- Antoine," "Faustin, " and "Fille Elsa." But I ask you, gentlemen, whether the con- sequence of the doctrine is not to make art consist in what is most inhuman and most foreign to our occupations, our cares, our anxieties ! Not that for this reason the authors repel praises or ad- miration. "Money is always good," said an Emperor; and our "Artists" think that from whatever hand it may come, admiration is always good to take and to retain if possible. Only, if, in the midst of these praises, any misunderstanding arises between the artist and the public, it is always the public that is in the wrong ; and let us render this justice to the artists ; they think it a matter of honor to aggravate the misunder- standing. Ah, but we are reproached for our harshness of manner ! Well, we will be still more harsh, and we will elevate our very lack of feeling into a principle of art. Ah, but we are told that they claim from us emotion and feeHng! Well, then we will take shelter in our indifference and coldness! What XVI [17] ART AND MORALITY do we care for the misericl^f humanity ! "The crowd is always hateful!" We are the mandarins, before whom you must bow! To others the business of justice and charity! As for us, we are busy with art; that is, we are pounding colors and wt are cadencing phrases. We are noting sensations, and we are pro- ducing artificial ones to note! We are doing "artistic writing," and if we are not admired it is so much the worse for our con- temporaries! But it is all the better for us, for he who docs not understand us judges himself; and the incomprehensi- bility of our invention is simply a proof of our superiority. It pleases us to be misunderstood. Thus it is that people bury themselves in a proud self- satisfaction; and that would not matter if it did not entail the monopoHzing of the attention by a coterie! But what I hate about these paradoxes — and without taking into account the fact that they do nothing less than cut art off from its com- munications with life — is that they are eminently and insolently aristocratic. A little indulgence, O great artists, and permit us to be men! Yes, permit us to believe that there is some- thing else in the world as important as pounding colors or cadencing phrases! Do not imagine that we are made for you, and that for six thousand years humanity has travailed, has labored, has suffered, only to establish your mandarinate. We could do without you much more easily than without many other things! And you yourselves, after all, how, on what, in what conditions would you hve if the incessant toil of these Bouvards, whom you despise, and of these Peceuchcts, for whom you have nothing but ironies sufficiently cruel, did not assure you the security of your leisure, the peace of your meditations, a pubhc to admire you, and, I may even say, your daily bread ? Ill Whither does this discourse tend, ladies and gentlemen, and what are the conclusions I wish to draw from it ? That art, as has been said of love, is mixed, especially in our time, "with a host of things with which it has no more to do than the Doge has with what is done in Venice." Of course, and, for that matter, nothing need hinder a picture dealer or a book pub- XVI [i8] ART AND MORALITY lishcr from being a true "artist." That has been seen more than once in history. The studio of more than one great painter in Italy or in Flanders has often been nothing more than a manufactory of cartoons or of canvases, and two of the rare surviving works of our eighteenth century, "Manon Lescaut" and "Gil Bias," were, as was then said, made for the publisher. No, it is not the love of lucre that is the worst enemy of art. Ladies and gentlemen, I do not mean, either, that the artist or the writer ought to metamorphose themselves into moral preachers. There are sermonizers and moralists for that, whose purpose or trade it is. Whatever admiration I have for Richard- son, that is what prevents me from speaking of " Clarissa Har- lowe" with the declamatory enthusiasm of Diderot, and still more from daring to place his "Pamela" or his "Grandison" so high in the history of art as you have seen that Taine has placed them. We must try not to confuse anything! But, as I have tried to show you, if every form of art, so far as it is a pleasure of the senses, and in so far as it is an imitation and consequently an apology for nature, and, again, in so far as it develops in the artist this ferment of egotism which is a part of his individuality — if every form of art, when thus left to itself, runs the inevitable risk of "demoralizing" or of "de- humanizing" a soul, then we must premise, in the first place, that art has not all the liberties. "Stop, my child," said Mon- tesquieu to his daughter, whom he found reading the "Persian Letters," "stop; that is a book of my youth that is not made for yours"; and I have told you that in my opinion it was not to become a convert that Racine abandoned the theatre, but that he believed he ought to become a convert because he had written plays, or rather because he was the creator of his plays, the father of Hermione, of Roxane, and of Phedre. As for the aged Corneille, he did not feel the need of becoming a convert. Why so? For a very simple and sufficiently evident reason! Be- cause in his old age, as in the morning of his glory, he was con- vinced that Rodrigue had done right in avenging Don Diegue's honor; that Horace was excusable for having hurled in Ca- mille's teeth the curses she spewed forth against Rome; that Polycucte was to be praised for having overthrown the idols, XVI [ 19] ART AND ISrORALITY and for having preferred me conversion of Paulina to the tran- quiUity of their amours. He did not become a convert, because he believed that he never excited other than generous and noble passions, even if he thought more than once of depicting base or sanguinary ones. He did not become a convert, because, as Taine told you just now, he beheved that he, "vi^hosc hand had sketched the soul of the great Pompey," worked only for the exaltation of the "Will"; and of all the human faculties, will, real will, is at once the rarest of things, and the thing of which men have always thought the most, first, because it is the rarest, and then because it is the real cause of personal and social progress. This is the same thing as saying, in the second place, that if the end of art is not to move the passions or to tickle the senses, neither can it be complete, and narrow itself in any w^ay within itself. There are several ways of interpreting the theory of "art for art's sake," and on this point, as on all, it is only a matter of coming to an agreement; and unfortunately that is most frequently what people do not want to do. But if the theory of "art for art's sake" consists in seeing in art only art itself, I know of nothing more false, and I have tried to tell you why. Art has its object and its end outside of and beyond itself; and if that object is not exactly moral, it is social, which, for that matter, is the same thing. Whether we are painters or poets, we are not allowed to forget that we are men; and in return for the society of men we must give the means of propa- ganda or of action, which we hold from them alone. Do you remember in this connection, or do you know, that page of Alexandre Dumas? I say "do you know"; for you will not find it in all the editions of his plays, but only in that which is called the " Edition des Comediens " : "What has made the dramatic poets great, v/hat has most ennobled the stage, are the subjects which at first sight seemed absolutely incompatible with the habits of the stage or of the public. Thus we cannot be told, 'Stop here or there.' All that is man and woman belongs to us, not only in the relations of these two creatures between themselves by the sentiments and the passions, but in their isolated or collective relations XVI [ 20 ] ART AND MORALITY with all kinds of occurrences, of customs, of ideas, of powers, of social, moral, political, and religious laws, which, in turn, produce their action on them." That, certainly, might be better said ; and I sometimes fear, gentlemen, that, one or two pieces aside, imperfection of form will draw the drama of Alexandre Dumas into obHvion; but you understand sufficiently well what he means, and I assent to it entirely. Art has a social function, and its true morality is the conscientiousness with which it discharges this function. You will tell me that this formula is vague, and I acknowl- edge it. If it were not vague, if it had the precision of a geo- metrical formula or of a medical prescription (are medical pre- scriptions so very precise ?) we should no longer be dealing with art, or criticism, or history, but with science. Let us leave the learned in their laboratories, and let us not imagine that we can find the secret of genius or moral law in the bottom of a retort. But for that, ladies and gentlemen, you must give me your attention for a moment longer. There is scarcely any doctrine more widely diffused among us than t^iat of "the relativity of knowledge." But what ex- actly does it mean? That is what many people do not seem to know who none the less profess belief in it ; and you see how it can be reclothed with meaning. To say that everything is relative may mean that nothing is false and nothing is true, but everything is possible; every- thing therefore is probable; and each of us becomes "the measure of all things," as the ancient sophist taught ; all opinions have worth, and the only difference between them is the manner of expressing them. I do not pause, gentlemen, over this in- terpretation. But in the second place, to say that everything is relative may mean that everything depends, not only for each of us individually, but for man in general, the species, on the con- stitution of its organs, and that, if we had our cranium made otherwise, or if we had six senses, for example, in place of five, or four dimensions in place of three, the universe would appear to us under an aspect entirely different from that which we know. Bodies would be revealed to us by other qualities; ^ve XVI [21 ] ART AND MORALITY should perceive in them wW^ we do not now perceive, unknown forms and nameless colors. It is very possible and I readily believe it! But I know nothing about it, nor does any one else; and besides it does not matter. If in another planet bodies have n plus i dimensions instead of three, how can that affect us as long as we know nothing about it, and when there are only three on this earth? What does it matter to us that the color of the flower or the taste of the fruit is in our eye, or in our palate, provided that the rose is always red and the orange is always scented ? Do you feel yourselves humiliated or cha- grined by it ? But there is a third way of understanding the relativity of knowledge, and the best, which is — as Pascal said, and also both Comte and Kant — that " all things being causes and caused, aiding and aided," a thing can be exactly defined only by its relations to another thing. Each of you is seated in his place in this room. But how can I give an idea of it to any one out- side? That will be done only in beginning by describing the arrangement of the room, of the seats, my situation, the left chair, the right chair, that at the back, that at the front, and ten, twenty, other details. In other words, every object is rela- tive to an infinity of others with which it stands in relations more or less constant, and moreover, according to their nature, more or less complex to determine. Or, again, and in general philosophical terms if you wish, everything is entangled in a system of relations from which its character results; and that is what Pascal meant when he added to the other part of the phrase which I have just recalled to you: "I hold it impossible to know the parts without knowing the whole, as it is to know the whole without knowing the parts." If we knew only Ra- cine's '* Thebaide," just think what a strange idea we should have of his genius; and how badly we should know it if we did not know who preceded and followed him! A certain knowledge of the "Cid" and of "Polyeucte" thus forms a part of the very definition of "Andromaque" or of "Phedre," and that defini- tion, in turn, needs to be completed by some knowledge of "Zaire" and of "Merope." We know Racine truly only when we know him in his relation to Voltaire and Corneille, and all XVI [ 22 ] ART AND MORALITY these in their relation to Shakespeare or to Euripides, and all in relation to a certain idea of tragedy, which still other relations determine. If we put ourselves at this point of view, we perceive, gentle- men, that the definition of art is thus relative to the definition of other social functions, to which it holds, or ought to hold, determinate relations; or if you prefer, it appears that, like religion, like science, like tradition, art is a force, the use of which cannot be regulated by itself and by itself alone. These forces must be balanced among themselves in a well-ordered society; and none among them can estabhsh its absolute domi- nation over the others without harm, and sometimes disaster, resulting therefrom. If it is rehgion that gains the day and subordinates tradition, science, and art, the history of the Papacy of the middle ages is there to tell us of the grandeurs, but also of the dangers of theocracy. If it is tradition, custom, super- stitious respect for the past, which make themselves masters of consciences, and consequently of actions, it seems to me — I dare not say more — but it seems to me that the example of China emerges from the shade at this moment to teach us, with its advantages of stability, the dangers of immobility. If art in its turn seizes the entire life, in order to govern it, it may indeed flatter the imagination of some dilettantes; but we have looked closely at this matter just now, and the Italy of theRenais- sance, to which I can add the Greece of the decadence, is there to prove to us that the danger is not any less. I would say freely it is greater still, or as great, when we give over, as has been tried in our days, to positive and experimental science the work of directing or ordering existence. On the contrary, gentlemen, the great epochs of history are precisely those in which these forces have been placed in equihbrium — and such have been, in France chiefly — the great years of the seventeenth century, or the early years of our own. Does the realization of that equihbrium depend on the will of men? And are we able at every moment of the period to prevent one of the forces from advancing in excess of the other ? For my part, gentlemen, I beheve we can. I beheve that, if we wish, we can maintain the authority of tradition againsl the XVI [ 23 ] ART AND MORALITY craze of novelty. I bclidj^ that it depends only on ourselves to prevent even religion from encroaching on the liberty of scientific research. I believe that we can stem, check, prevent science from overstepping the limits of its own domain. And I also believe that — just as science is characterized by a sort of moral indifferentism,^ so art, as I have tried to show you, is characterized on its i)art by an unconscious tendency to im- morality — we can, if we will, annul these effects, not only with- out harming it, but in directing it to its proper object. But will would be needed; and unhappily we Uve in a time when — to give meaning to an old distinction that might be thought very subtle and very vain and which profound philosophers have denied — the failure, or rather the enfecblement, of the will has perhaps no equal except in the increasing intensity of the desires. ^See the brochures: "Science et Religion," "Education et In- struction," and "La Moralite de la Doctrine Evolutive." XVI [ 24 ] XVII WOMAN "MARRIAGE CUSTOMS AND THEIR MORAL VALUE" BY ELIZABETH S. DIACK AND WILLIAM LILLY SECRETARY OF THE CATHOLIC UNION OF GREAT BRITAIN /^LOSE allied to the question of morality in general, comes ^ the question of woman in her relation to life and to man. We face the narrower problem first, her relation to the man. For historic information our readiest appeal is to the well-known English authoress upon the subject, Elizabeth Stitchell Diack. She outlines for us "the woman of the past'' as her confrere, Mr. Robinson, has outlined the man. Aiming then to carry our study up to the present day, we present briefly the thought of Mr. Lilly. The Hon. William S. Lilly, M.A., J. P., is a Roman Catholic; in fact his long service as secretary to the Catholic Union of Great Britain, a post which he has. held since 1874, enables him in some sort to speak officially for the Catholics of England, as Car- dinal Gibbons has aheady spoken to us for those of America. Moreover, it is well that on this serious question of marriage we should listen to the views of the Catholic body among our contemporaries. Matrimony, once apparently the most firmly established and settled of human institutions, begins in these inquisitive and skeptic days to find itself no longer unquestioned. Its security is assailed; its wisdom is doubted; nay, its very morality is held open to dispute. Trial marriages and "ten-year periods" are discussed with an openness that a single decade ago would have been impossible. xvn [i] WOMAN Under these circumst(0^cs the Catholic Church should have a hearing; jor it is an established fact that during many cen- turies that church has been the most emphatic and insistent oj the opponents of divorce. In reading Mr. Lilly^s presentation oj the moral aspects oj the question, it were well also to turn back {address IX) and note how these are reinjorced by Mr. Wallace's analysis oj the same subject jrom its scientific side. Among the primitive nations of the world woman was com- monly regarded as a chattel or slave — a creature existing and originally created merely to minister to the wants of man. The Egyptians alone treated her with respect and consideration. In Ancient Egypt monogamy was practised, although it was not enjoined by law. There is no evidence of the existence of a marriage ceremony, but the marriage contract secured to the wife certain rights, one of which was that of complete control over her husband, who promised to yield her imphcit obedience ! Nearness of relationship was no barrier to wedlock, the union of brother with sister being quite common. Women, both married and unmarried, participated with the men in all the pleasures of social intercourse. They took part in the public festivals, shared in banquets, drove out in their chariots, and made pleasure excursions on the Nile. At ban- quets the guests were entertained chiefly with music and dancing. Singing was also an esteemed accomplishment, and the more solid part of their education must have been attended to, as women often held important offices in the priesthood. They presided at birth and officiated as mourners at death and burial. Ladies of rank occupied their spare moments in embroidery and in the cultivation of flowers, of which they were passionately fond, and which were lavishly used on all festive occasions. Women of the humbler classes were ernployed in spinning, and in the rural districts in tending cattle and sheep, and in carrying water — the heavier employments being left to the men. This halcyon state of affairs lasted only during the days of Egypt's greatness ; during the period of her decline her daughters were fearfully downtrodden and degraded. The hardest man- ual labor was assigned to them, and they suffered cruel punish- ments for the crimes of their fathers, husbands, or brothers, xvn [ 2 ] WOMAN as the case might be. Sometimes they were publicly beaten with sticks, at others thrown into dungeons or sent to work at the mines, where the miseries they endured were so great that, as the old historian tells us, they longed for death as far prefer- able to life. In Babylonia, and also in Persia, woman was a mere chattel of man. She had no rights, and was supposed to have no feel- ings. Assyrian maidens had no voice in the disposal of them- selves in marriage. Those of marriageable age were once a year collected and brought together into one place, there to be sold to the highest bidders. The most beautiful were offered for sale first, and these were eagerly competed for by the wealthy men of the community desirous of marrying. With the money obtained for the beauties, the plain and deformed ones were dowered, so that they, too, might obtain husbands, they being given to the men who offered to take the smallest sums. Each purchaser was obliged to give security for the due fulfilment of the marriage contract — marriage being a condition of pur- chase — and for the pubUc acknowledgment of his newly ac- quired wife. If a pair found on coming together that they could not live amicably the husband could return his purchase and receive back his money, but the wife who repudiated her husband was condemned to be drowned. Womanly purity was discountenanced by the Babylonians, and woman's Hfe was held in light esteem. During a period of revolt thousands of women were massacred by their own nearest relatives, merely to save the provisions which otherwise they would have required. In Ancient Greece the position of woman varied in the different eras and in the different states. In the renowned State of Sparta women were regarded as instruments for the production of strong, robust citizens for the State, and great care was taken that they should be well developed physically. They were from their earHest youth allowed the utmost hberty, and were exercised in running, wrestling, and boxing, accom- pHshments which they displayed in the pubHc games at the theatre. Scantily clad, so as to allow perfect freedom of mo- tion, and crowned with flowers, they also took part in the rehg- ious ceremonies, and sang and danced at the national festivals. On ordinary, as on festive occasions, the dress of the Spartan XVII [ 3 ] WOMAN women was of the simp|p^ description. A woollen robe loose at one side, and fastening with clasps over the shoulder, was the attire of maidens, while married women wore also an upper garment and a veil. The wearing of embroidery, gold, and precious stones was restricted to prostitutes. When they married, which, according to Plutarch, was not till they had arrived at maturity, they were always well dowered. We are told by the same writer that the Spartan bride was dressed "in man's clothes," and had her hair "cut close to the skin." Her troth was plighted, not to her husband, but to the State, and patriotism seems to have been a leading sentiment in her bosom. For some time after her marriage the wife con- tinued to reside with her parents, seeing her husband but occa- sionally, by stealth, and disguised in masculine apparel. Spe- cially beautiful women were allowed to have several husbands, and so lightly was the marriage tie regarded that a man could, if he chose, give away his wife without any legal process whatever. Indeed, it was considered rather a meritorious action for him to do so. Heiresses were at the disposal of the king, who, without consulting either themselves or their parents, bestowed them upon the poorest citizens, that the wealth of the nation might be equally distributed among all classes. During the frequent absences of their warHke lords the Spartan women had entire control of their households and their affairs. So much power did they enjoy in comparison with other women of the time, that a foreign lady on one occa- sion said to Gorgo, the wife of Leonidas, "You of Laced?emon are the only women in the world that rule the men," whereat the Spartan quickly retorted, "We are the only women that bring forth men." In other parts of Greece women led lives of strict seclusion. They seem to have scarcely been allowed to leave their own r.partments, which were always situated in the back, and com- monly in the upper part of the house, so as to insure the utmost privacy. Young girls had to ask permission to go from one part of the house to another, and the reputation of a newly married woman was in danger if she were seen out of doors. When she became a mother she enjoyed a little more freedom, •XVII [4] WOMAN though only during her husband's pleasure, for those of a jealous temperament kept their wives in close confinement. By the laws of Solon women were prohibited from leaving home with more than three changes of clothing and a certain allowance of provisions, or a basket of more than a cubit's length. Neither were they permitted to appear in the streets at night, save in a chariot and preceded by torch-bearers. It is said that those strict laws were framed in order to check the depravity of the daughters of Athens, but it was not only to the peregrinations of women that the laws of the great Athenian extended, but to all the details of daily life, including even eating and drinking. The ordinary employments of women, apart from their domestic duties, were spinning, weaving, embroidery, and other kinds of needlework. Instruction in these mechanical arts seems to have been all the education they received — all that was considered necessary or fitting for them. "She is the best woman," says Thucydides, "of whom least is said either of good or evil." An orphan heiress was compelled by law to marry her next- of kin, in order to keep the property in the family. When, however, she had married prior to the death of her father, she could, at his decease, be taken from her husband and given to her relative along with her estate, the bond of wedlock, as in Sparta, being somewhat loosely regarded and quite easily dissolved. As in Sparta, too, a man could give away his wife either for a time, or permanently, as he desired. It was by no means the most depraved or the meanest of mankind who exercised this strange privilege, Socrates and Pericles being among the number. During the golden age of Athens, when the ashes of her illustrious law-giver had long been at rest in his native isle (for Solon was an Athenian but by adoption), the daughters of the classic city enjoyed more freedom than they had done in earlier days. Husbands when they went from home often took their wives along with them, but from a moral point of view it was not always the best of society into which they were thus intro- duced. The house of the celebrated Aspasia, the mistress of Pericles, was a favorite resort of even the wisest and highest XVII [ 5 ] WOMAN cultured of the citizens oiP^thens. This remarkable woman was noted, not only for her beauty, but for her talents, and for the elevation to which she had attained in learning. The un- fortunate class to which she belonged was then the only class of women in Athens that enjoyed freedom and culture. Whether from a desire to heighten their charms by means of a knowledge of "divine philosophy," or from a genuine love of learning, many of them frequented the schools and the company of phi- losophers and studied mathematics and other sciences. Their personal beauty often made them the chosen models of painters and sculptors, and the themes of licentious poets, and, as we have already said, Aspasia, who was at their head, wielded such a powerful influence over even their best and wisest men that they resorted to her house as to a lecture-room, accom- panied by their wives. They evidently wished the latter to profit by the learned and brilliant conversation of the gifted courtesan, who at least had taught them that the life of ignor- ance and seclusion to which they doomed their women was that which was least calculated to develop their mental powers and render them congenial companions. The corrupt condi- tion of society, however, may be inferred from the fact that such women occupied a prominent, almost a leading, position in it, and, indeed, at this period, the golden age of Grecian art and literature, learning, luxury, and vice were equally dominant in "the eyes and Hght of Greece," as her panegyrists called Athens. "In the brave days of old" the Roman patriarch could, with the sanction of the law, throw his daughter into a dungeon, deprive her of food, lash her with the scourge, sell her as a slave, or slay her with the sword. When she married, her husband assumed over her the same power. She could, like the Grecian woman, inherit either the whole or a part of her father's estate ; but whatever property she possessed, or whatever right of in- heritance, was at marriage passed over to her husband. She could be divorced for drinking wine, or even for having in her possession the keys of any place in which it was kept. A wife could, however, be divorced almost at pleasure, provided that her dowry was returned along with her. For a considerable period a woman was forbidden by law to wear a garment of various colors, to have personal ornaments weighing more than xvii [ 6 ] WOMAN half an ounce of gold, and to drive in a chariot within a mile of the city. In those early days the women were employed in cooking, spinning, weaving, and sewing. When the Romans became rich in the usual way, by plunder- ing their neighbors, the laws relative to woman's dress and recreation were repealed; the domestic duties were relegated to slaves, and the Roman matron blossomed into a lady of fashion. There were "blue-stockings" as well as "belles," however, among the ladies of ancient Rome. The speech of Hortensia against the unjust taxation of women, delivered before the three assassins who governed Rome during the second triumvirate, is mentioned admiringly by Cicero, and her courage must have been as great as her eloquence, since no man could be found to undertake the perilous task. In another of ItaHa's cities it is evident that the "new woman" was in existence at a very early date. One of the inscriptions found among the ruins of Pom- peii shows that women were put forward by women as candi- dates for seats on the board of magistrates, but whether suc- cessful or not in gaining the coveted office is not recorded. Honored, however, above all other women were the vestals, to whose care were committed the sacred rehcs upon which the safety of the city was supposed to depend. Often they were the custodians of wills and other important documents, and enjoyed many privileges denied to ordinary mortals. The usual accomplishments of the Roman maiden were music and dancing. During the Empire, however, ladies were skilled in fencing, boxing, and wrestling, and often appeared in the amphitheatre as competitors for the prize. They appeared there more frequently, however, as spectators of the bloody gladiatorial combats in which unfortunate slaves, unhappy cap- tives, or not less unhappy criminals were butchered to make a Roman holiday. Cruelty, gluttony, and even drunkenness had become prominent traits in the character of the Roman lady of those latter days, and those ugly vices are apt to ob- scure the virtues of the simple matrons, the pure-minded Lu- cretias of early Rome. Among the ancient Germanic tribes women were regarded with peculiar reverence, and were commonly treated as the XVII [ 7 ] WOMAN equals, sometimes as the s^Mriors, of men. They were believed to be recipients of messages from the gods, and, like the rhap- sodists of Greece, they were the repositories of the unwritten history of the race, the reciters of the poems in which were commemorated the stories of the tribal heroes. The "wise women," who were carefully set apart from the rest, were be- lieved to be endowed with the power of lifting the veil of the future and learning the decrees of fate, and so were often con- sulted as oracles. Others were supposed to be gifted with supernatural powers, because of their allegiance to mahgnant divinities. The daugliters of kings and princes were often priestesses, but what were their official duties it is difficult to say. We are told by Tacitus that the priests settled disputes, awarded and inflicted punishments, and attended the armies to battle. Both sexes were remarkable for their conjugal fidelity, monog- amy being practised except in the case of royalty, the posses- sion of more than one wife being a purely regal privilege. The marriage ceremony in those primitive times was exceedingly simple, consisting chiefly of the interchange of presents in the presence of the friends assembled for the feast. Says Tacitus, "To the husband the wife gives no dowry, but the husband to the wife." The present of the bride, he continues, "consisted of oxen, horses, and arms to intimate to her that she was to share in the toils and dangers of her husband as well as in his pleasures." This it was customary for her to do, for the wife of the ancient German was her husband's companion and counsellor in time of peace and his comrade in time of war. Of the male sex, he says, "those who are bravest and most warHke among them never do any work or mind any busi- ness, but, when they are not engaged in war or hunting, spend their whole time in loitering and feasting, committing the management of their houses, lands, and all their affairs to their women, old men, and children." This custom, which to the Roman seemed so strange and so contemptible, was doubtless but a relic of the earher mother age, when woman was not the dependent of, but the teacher and ruler of, man. Students of German mythology claim that from woman proceeded agricult- ure, medicine, tradition, and family life — from man, warfare xvn [ 8 ] WOMAN and hunting. Long before the father had become a member of the family group, the mother reigned supreme in the den, teaching to her children the knowledge she had acquired in her efforts to provide for herself and offspring. For a long period such property as there was descended through the mother, and the management of the houses, lands, and all the affairs per- taining to them was in all likehhood due, not to the indolence of the men, but to the fact that woman had not entirely given place to man as head of the household. The social customs which prevailed among the ancient Britons were in many respects similar to those of Germany. Both Germans and Britons lived in the semi-promiscuous fashion which seems to have led the Romans to form such a low estimate of their morals. Their houses consisted of but one apartment, which was shared by men, women, and children, who during the night rested on one continuous bed of rushes. This mode of life must have seemed exceedingly barbarous to the civihzed, luxurious Romans, but that the wives of the Britons were held in common, as is stated by Juhus Caesar, is, we con- sider, extremely doubtful. The treatment of Cartismandna, the adulterous queen of the Brigantes, whom her indignant sub- jects obhged to vacate the throne in favor of her injured husband, tends to induce the behef that they did not so Ughtly look upon the marriage bond, and that monogamy was practised by all classes of society. In Wales, however, wedlock was by no means indissoluble. There a man could divorce his wife upon very slight pretext, and a wife could separate from her husband for such a shght cause as a disagreeable breath. By the laws of Hoel Dda, who was a prince of that country in the tenth cen- tury, a man w^as allowed to give his wife three blows with a stick upon any part of the body except the head if she com- mitted adultery, if she squandered his means, if she pulled his beard, or "called him opprobrious names," but if the beating were more severe or for any more trifling reason, he was fined. It is difficult to determine what was the exact status of woman in every part of Britain in that olden time. By the law of regal succession a British king was succeeded by his daughter or by his widow, if he left no son. It was in this way that the famous Boadicea became Queen of the Iceni, xvu [9] WOMAN In the ordinary rank^f life a man's property was at his death divided equally among his sons. What share was ap- portioned to his daughters is not quite clear. Among the Saxons on the Continent it was customary for the daughters to receive a smaller share than their brothers. In like manner the laws of Wales in the tenth century decreed that a daughter receive but half as much as falls to her brother of their father's in- heritance. There is, however, a law of King Canute from which it appears that sons and daughters were made equal, as they may have been in even earlier times. Although the British woman was in many cases legally recognized as the equal of man, she was by no means considered fit to be her own guardian, but during her whole life was in the care of one of the opposite sex. While unmarried she was, of course, under the control of her father. At his death her brother took his place, or, if she had none, her nearest male rela- tive. The women who had no relations fell to the guardianship of the king. A married woman was under the legal control of her husband, provided that she had been married with the con- sent of her previous guardian, whose authority could not be taken from him without his consent. His compHance was usually gained by means of ample presents, sometimes so ample that it became necessary to pass a law fixing the amount for people of all ranks. The value of the presents varied not only according to the rank, but according to the condition of the woman, only half as much being paid in the case of a widow as was paid for a maiden of the same rank. The man who married without the consent of his bride's guardian had no legal authority over his wife nor any of her possessions, and had to suffer various severe penalties for his crime {mundhreach)^ for such it was reckoned. Marriage was celebrated with a great deal of festivity, although the ceremony was, like that of the Germans, of the simplest description. Among the guests were included all rela- tives within the third degree. Each guest was expected to give a present to the bride and bridegroom, and the latter also re- ceived a present from the guardian of the bride. This "fader- fium" was all the dowry which the husband received with his wife. On the morning after the marriage the bridegroom had XVII [ lO ] WOMAN to retaliate by presenting a valuable gift to his wife. This " morgaengif e " (morning gift) became her own separate prop- erty, to which she had exclusive right. The ancient British woman appears to have been as fond of dress as were her Continental sisters, the women of Gaul. Boadicea is described by Dio as wearing a short tunic of thick woollen cloth, over which was a long mantle reaching nearly to the ground. Massive gold ornaments were worn by both sexes, the gold chains of Caractacus and of Boadicea being thought worthy of special mention by the Roman historians. Luxuriant tresses were also esteemed "a thing of beauty," and the golden hair of the ill-fated Queen of the Iceni is said to have floated far down over her armor when engaged in battle. Indeed, it is evident, from all that we can learn of the women of the re- mote past, that they did not differ so widely from the women of the present day as the lapse of time would lead us to expect, and that, apart from outward circumstances, they were women "in all things like as we are." XVII [ II ] WOMAN MARRIAGE AND MODERN CIVILIZATION BY W. S. ULLY "A person is a man endowed with a civil status" (civili statu prcBditiis) was the definition of Latin jurisprudence. And this was the conception of personality which Christianity found in the Roman Empire, and transformed. Far other was its teaching as to personahty. Christianity revealed human nat- ure to itself, exhibiting man as self-conscious, self-determined, morally responsible ; as by his very nature invested with rights inalienable and imprescriptible, and encompassed with correla- tive duties; as lord of himself in the sacred domain of con- science, and accountable there only to Him whose perpetual witness conscience is. This was, in fact, a new principle of individuality. The individual of the later Roman jurisprudence was the citizen, just as the individual among the Germanic in- vaders of the decadent Empire was the member of the tribe. Slaves were regarded as mere things. Christianity vindicated the moral and spiritual freedom of men as men, proclaimed their universal brotherhood, and insisted that before their Crea- tor and Judge, rich and poor, bond and free, meet together in the essential equivalence of human personahty. Victor Hugo's picturesque saying is hterally true — truer even than he realized : "The first Tree of Liberty was that Cross on which Jesus Christ offered Himself in sacrifice for the liberty, equality, and fra- ternity of mankind." So much as to the root idea of modern civilization : the idea of differentiating it from all other civihzations: the idea of human personahty. " Tm homo, tantum nomen si te scias^^ ("How great, O man, is the name thou bearest, if thou only knewest!") said St. Augustine. But by this revelation of the dignity of human nature — I might say the sanctity, homo res sacra homini — the weaker half of humanity benefited far more than the stronger half. The proclamation of the spiritual equaUty of woman with man in the new order- — "In Jesus xvn [ 12 ] WOMAN Christ there is neither male nor female" — notwithstanding her natural subjection to him economically, brought about what may well appear the most wonderful part of the great change due to the influence of Christianity. The estate of woman in the Roman Empire has been pithily expressed by one of the most recent, and not the least authoritative, of its historians. "She was degraded in her social condition," writes Merivale, "because she was deemed unworthy of moral consideration; and her moral consideration, again, sank lower and lower pre- cisely because her social condition was so degraded." Among the Jews — and we must never forget that Christianity first came before the world as a Jewish sect — her place was no higher; indeed it was lower. Divorce was practised by the Hebrews to an extent unknown even in the lowest decadence of im- perial Rome. The text in Deuteronomy authorizing a man to put away his wife if he found in her some blemish (aliquant f(Bditalem, as the Vulgate has it) was interpreted most liberally by the Rabbis. Any cause of offence was sufficient, according to Hillel: for example, if a woman let the broth burn; and Akiva lays it down that a man might give his wife a bill of divorcement if he could find a better-looking spouse. Polyg- amy, too, was at the least tolerated, if it was not largely prac- tised ; indeed, it still survives among the Jews of the East, and did not disappear among those dwelling in the West until the prohibitory law of Rabbi Gershom ben Jehudah was passed in the Synod of Worms (a.d. 1020). But Christianity did more than merely vindicate the per- sonality of woman. It protected her personality by what a learned writer has well called "the new creation of marriage." There are few things in history more astonishing — we may say, in the strictest sense, miraculous — than the fact, for fact it is, that a few words spoken in Syria two thousand years ago by a Jewish peasant, "despised and rejected of men," brought about this vast change, which has wrought so much to purify and ennoble modern civiHzation ; surely an emphatic testimony to the truth of the Evangehst's assertion: "He knew what was in man." De Wette remarks, with his usual judiciousness. "Christ grounds wedlock on the original interdependence {Zusavimengehorigkeit) oi the two sexes, established by God, XVII [ 13 ] WOMAN and lays it down that, as or^^annot exist without the other, the inscparabihty of their union should follow. This union is, indeed, the work of man; but it takes place, and ever should take place, through an inner tendency (Drang), proceeding from the original interdependence of the sexes, through love. The separation, on the other hand, ... [of those who thus come together] takes place through human arbitrariness (Will- kur), or through lusts and passions which unfairly or incon- sistently annul what was ordained in conformity with the original law of Nature" ("was dem urspriinglichen Naturgesetze ge- mass gestif tet war ") . This is the Magna Charta of woman in modern civiHzation: this lifelong union of two equal personalities; this gift of one woman to one man as adjutorium simile sibi, a help like unto him — "not like to Hke, but Hke to difference"; a union, a gift, consecrated by religion and made holy matrimony. But I may observe in passing, Christianity did even more than this to secure the position of feminine humanity in that new order of society which it was to mould. Soon — hov,' soon the Cata- combs bear witness — the type of womanhood idealized in the Virgin Mother assumed a prominent place in the devotions of the faithful; and as this idea germinated in the Christian con- sciousness, Mary received a worship inferior only to that offered to her Son. The conception presented by the Madonna would have been fooHshness to the antique Greeks, and Romans too. It was a stumbling-block to the Jews, contemptuous of the daughters of her who figures so poorly in the account received by them "of man's first disobedience and the fruit of that for- bidden tree." The Christian Church, from the earliest times, delighted to think of Mary as the second Eve, who had undone the work of the first, and had brought life instead of death into the world, mutans Eva nomen; changing the name of the temp- tress into the "Ave" of the angeHc salutation. And when a thousand years had passed away, and chivalry arose, the "all but adoring love " of Christians for her, powerfully stimulated the quasi- rehgious veneration paid in the Middle Ages to the graces of feminine nature, a veneration which^ striking a note before unheard in the world, has inspired the highest poetry of modern civiHzation. Such was the influence exercised on the XVII [ 14 ] WOMAN place of her sex in the new order of society by "the Mother of fair love, and fear, and knowledge, and holy hope." "Born of a woman" is the true account of the modern home, with its re- fined and elevating influences. That is the characteristic spe- cially marking off the Christian family from the other families of the earth. It is founded on woman, not on man. We must, however, remember that the conception of matri- mony, which was so powerfully to affect modern civiHzation — for that is my immediate theme — was not fully and firmly es- tabhshed for centuries. Lotze excellently observes : "The rela- tion of Christianity toward the external condition of mankind was not that of a disturbing and subversive force. But it de- prived evil of all justification for permanent continuance . . . when the spirit of Christian faith made itself felt in the relations of life." The Church at the beginning accepted, generally, the marriage customs prevaiHng in the Roman Empire. The Christian bride, like her pagan sisters, wore the long white robe with the purple fringe, the yellow veil, the girdle which the bridegroom was to unloose. The ring, the coronation — still retained in the Eastern Church — the joining of hands, contin- ued to beautify the nuptial rite for the votaries of the new faith. But for them it was hallowed by a prayer of benediction, offered by a bishop or priest ; and, sometimes, by the Eucharistic Sacri- fice. Again, the Church, like the Roman legists, recognizes the essence of marriage as residing in the free consent of the man and woman contracting it. But from the first she regarded it as something more than a contract — as a state of life divinely ordained for ends of the natural order, but hallowed by a super- natural significance into an august mystery of rehgion. And therefore she utterly rejected the view which she found preva- lent in the Roman Empire, that, as it had been contracted by mutual consent, so by mutual consent it might be dissolved. From the first she insisted upon its permanency as well as upon its unity.^ So much is absolutely certain. But was it possible ^ And a second marriage, after the death of either, was regarded with much disfavor, as it still is in the Greek Church. Athenagoras calls it " a decent adultery" ; Clement of Alexandria, " fornication." St. Greg- ory Nazianzen, while conceding to the bigamist " pardon and indulg- ence," terms a third marriage " iniquity," and pronounces that he who exceeds that number is "manifestly bestial." St. Jerome allows that XVII [15] WOMAN for this sacrosanct bond tol^dissolved in its essential character? It is quite clear that the early Church never held as lawful the remarriage of either husband or wife during the Ufetime of either, if separated for any other cause than adultery. It is equally clear that on the question whether, if adultery did in- vaUdate the bond, both the innocent and the guilty party, or either of them, might remarry, the Church gave no certain sound for long centuries. The balance of authority among her weightiest teachers is against all such remarriage. But they are divided in opinion ; nay, some of the greatest of them waver in their judgment, incUning now to one side, now to the other. Gradually the loftier and sterner view of the Christian con- cept was apprehended in the West, and maintained by the Roman Pontiffs,^ though not till the opening Middle Ages was the absolute indissolubiUty of marriage, when once rightly con- tracted, save by the death of one of the contracting parties, firmly established in the canon law. It is the doctrine set forth by Gratian, whose Decretum (a.d. 1140), a work of supreme authority, is the basis of the Corpus Juris Canonici; and from his time to our own it has been universally accepted throughout the Catholic Church. It is a true saying that a man is formed at the knees of his mother. The kind of men found in a civihzation depends upon the kind of women found in it. The ethos of society — what Burke called "the moral basis" — is determined by women. And their goodness or badness, as our very language bears witness, depends upon their purity. That is the root of all feminine virtues, and the source of a people's genuine greatness. Renan's saying is so true as to be almost a truism: "La force d'une nation c'est la pudeur de ses femmes." And the great those who contract more than one marriage may remain in the Church, but on sufferance only, and likens them to the unclean beasts in Noah's ark. ^ Even so late as a.d. 726 Pope Gregory the Second, in a letter to St, Boniface, while recommending that a man whose wife's health for- bade conjugal intercourse should not marry again, left him free to do so provided he maintained her. Gratian remarks that this concession " is altogether opposed to the sacred canons; nay, even to the Evangelical and Apostolic doctrine." It is certainly opposed to the view taken by all Gregory's successors in the Roman See, and, so far as we know, by all his predecessors. xvn [ 16 ] WOMAN bulwark of woman's chastity is the absolute character of matrimony. We owe, then, to the severe teaching of the Catholic Church that institution of indissoluble monogamy which, more than anything else, marks off our modern civilization from all other civilizations. It is matter of history, over which we need not linger, how unflinchingly the CathoHc Church * has upheld the integrity of that institution throughout the ages. Nor need we examine the arguments adduced by her divines in support of it. I may, however, make an observation on the criticism to which one of those arguments is manifestly open. Theological writers, when maintaining that indissoluble monogamy is divinely in- stituted — and surely with reason, for it issues from the divinely ordained nature of things in their ethical relations — have been confronted with the obvious difficulty presented by the practice of Hebrew patriarchs and kings, of acknowledged sanctity, with whom they claimed solidarity. Their favorite expedient for meeting this difficulty is the hypothesis that a Divine dis- pensation for polygamy was granted to the human race from the time of the flood associated with that familiar figure of our childhood, the Noachian ark, and was revoked by Christ. It is objected that they do not disclose the manner in which this stupendous indulgence was proclaimed to mankind, or explain why knowledge of its summary cancellation was withheld from the countless milhons affected thereby. The objectors do not understand that theological fictions, like legal, have their proper office in certain stages of social evolution, as necessary stepping- stones on which our race rises to higher things. But, as a matter of fact, the institution of marriage in our modern civiUzation rests, not on argument, but on authority. The nations to which the Catholic Church taught the doctrine of Christ did not heckle their teacher; they received her as the prophet of God, and believed her on her bare word. The great ^ It cannot be too emphatically stated that, in the Catholic Church, divorce, in the modern sense of the word — the dissolution of the mar- riage bond — is never sfranted, and is never recognized. The common phrase, " the divorce of Henry the Eighth," has given rise to much popular misapprehension It was not a divorce, as the term is now understood, but a declaration of nullity, which Henry the Eighth sought, and the Holy See refused. xvn [ 17 j WOMAN religious revolution of tW sixteenth century is congruously- termed Protestanism. Its imitators differed widely upon a great many matters. But Henry the Eighth and Luther, Calvin and Zwingli, Knox and Miinzer, however varying their private judgments in things theological, were all agreed in protesting against the authority of the Pope, and in substituting for it their own. And when the authority of the Apostolic See was cast ofT, much of the doctrine and discipline which it upheld was mutilated. The doctrine and disciphne of marriage did not escape this fate. In England, indeed, though the schism arose from the refusal of the Sovereign Pontiff to prostitute Christian matrimony to the lust of a tyrant, the institution itself was left intact.^ This, it may be observed in passing, was by no means due to Cranmer. His own history, perhaps, sufficiently explains his aversion from the CathoHc doctrine of marriage. At all events, it is abundantly clear that he was as willing to relax the nuptial bond for the world in general as to cancel it for his master. The legislation on divorce which he proposed to sub- stitute, in the Reformatio Le gum Ecclesiasticarum, for the Catholic law might have satisfied even Luther, whose practice is suf- ficiently indicated by his own marriage, and by the dispensation for polygamy given by him to the Landgrave PhiHp of Hesse. The earUer generations of the Lutheran sect appear to have followed its founder's views concerning the relations of the sexes haud passihus cequis. From the first, indeed, it allowed divorce for adultery and mahcious desertion, as did also the sect founded by Calvin. But it was not until the eighteenth century that the dissolution of the matrimonial tie was accorded by Protestant consistories for such reasons as " uncongeniahty," "irreconcil- able enmity," and the like. In fact, as Protestantism developed, the pronouncements of its pundits concerning the bond of marriage became laxer. Nor was this laxity confined to its more rationalistic forms. Even the greatest of the Puritans, John Milton, in that masterpiece of eloquence, erudition, and invective. The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, "pushes the * In theory, but not in practice. Between the Reformation and the establishment of the Divorce Court (ad. 1857) many marriages were dissolved by Act of Parliament, the Anglican bishops not protesting and in some cases expressly consenting. XVII L 18 ] WOMAN Protestant license," to borrow the phrase of his editor, very far. The position which he sets himself to establish is "that indis- position, unfitness, and contrariety of mind, arising from a cause in nature unchangeable, hindering and ever Hkely to hinder the main benefits of conjugal society, which are solace and peace, is a greater reason of divorce than natural frigidity, especially if there be no children, and that there be mutual consent." This was, substantially, the position taken by the publicists of the French Revolution — the second Act in that great Euro- pean drama which opened with the Protestant Reformation. Of course the foulness which they preached in their crusade against Christianity would have been rejected with horror by Milton's God-fearing soul. Purity they regarded as "a new disease brought into the world by Christ"; modesty as "a vir- tue fastened on with pins" ; holy matrimony as " a superstitious servitude." And their legislation, when they obtained the power to legislate, was the faithful expression of these opinions. Their great "reform" was to reduce marriage to a civil contract, ter- minable by the consent of the contracting parties. Other grounds of divorce enumerated by their law of 1792 were in- sanity, desertion, absence, emigration, and incompatibility of temper on the allegation of either husband or wife. The measure seems to have been successful beyond the expectation of its authors. During the twenty-seven months following its enactment six thousand marriages were dissolved in Paris alone, and in the year 1797 the divorces actually outnumbered the marriages. Duval, in his Souvenirs Thermidoriens, tells us : "People divorced one another with the least provocation; nay, they divorced without any provocation, and with no more ado than they would have made for an expedition to gather lilacs in the meadows of Saint- Gervais, or to eat cherries at Montmorency. The husband had a mistress, and was tired of his wife ; the wife had a lover, and desired nothing better than to be rid of her husband. They informed one another of the state of the case, set out together for the city hall, acquainted the mayor that they could no longer bear each other, and on the same day, or the next, the divorce was granted for incom- patibility of temper. And the children — ^what became of them ? XVII [ 19 ] WOMAN What did it matter? Th^^ouses were free from one another; the most important thing was achieved. Moreover, it was not rare, on account of the ease with which marriages could be dis- solved, to find couples who had been divorced five or six times in as many months. Occasionally very ludicrous things hap- pened. Once two couples acted after the manner of La Fon- taine's Troqueurs, that is to say, they arranged an exchange of husband and wife among themselves : and the two couples were on such good terms that the double-wedding breakfast was held at their joint expense." The Napoleonic Code somewhat curbed this bestiality, and, at the Restoration, the old Catholic marriage legislation was reinstated in France. But the Third Republic has rcenacted divorce by the law of the 27th of July, 1884, carried by the per- sistent endeavors of M. Naquet, a measure which, though going beyond the corresponding legislation in England, is less licentious than the law of the First RepubUc. The French Revolution is the immediate source of a number of sophisms concerning man and society which have worked their way into popular favor throughout Europe during the last century, and now tyrannize as shibboleths. They are, one and all, underlain by that spurious individuaUsm which is of the essence of Rousseau's teaching, and which the Revolution, happily described by Burke as "an armed doctrine," endeavored to translate into fact. The atomism, real or imaginary, of cer- tain unstable tribes in the lowest stages of civilization, was for Rousseau the true ideal of the family. It is a false ideal; but it is the ideal which so-called Liberalism has persistently en- deavored to realize. There can be no doubt that the attack on the permanency of marriage throughout Europe, which has already been crowned with so much success, is an outcome of this ideal — an ideal essentially anarchic. When the Divorce Court was established in England, that sagacious publicist Le Play — whose writings, I fear, are hardly known in this country — saw in it "a symptom of the decline of public morahty; "elle affaiblit," he observed, "dans I'esprit de la nation le principe de I'ordre sup^rieur." But, of course, what has been accomplished here by the opponents of indissoluble marriage, falls far short of their achievements elsewhere. In Germany, xvn [ 20 ] WOMAN "insuperable aversion" is recognized as a ground for divorce; so is "hopeless insanity," or "malignant inconsistency," or " quarrelsomeness," or " a disorderly mode of life," or " drunken- ness," or "extravagance." In Sweden, "hatred, ill-will, prod- igality, drunkenness, or a violent temper " suffices. The Protestants of Austria may divorce one another for "violent dis- like." In Switzerland, "marriage relations greatly strained" are recognized as a valid reason for dissolving the marriage. But in the last-mentioned country a still further "reform" is desired by the party of "progress," and an appeal, by way of referendum, to the "yea and no of general ignorance" is con- templated, with a view of legalizing divorce whenever "a pro- found disorganization" of such relations occurs. The American courts take a very liberal view of cruelty. It appears that they have granted divorce to a petitioning wife on this ground when her husband "did not wash himself, there- by inflicting great mental anguish on her"; when "he accused her sister of stealing, thereby sorely wounding her feelings"; when, "after twenty-seven years of marriage, he said: * You are old and worn out; I do not want you any longer' "; when "he would not cut his toenails, and she was scratched severely every night"; when "he persisted in the use of tobacco, thereby aggravating sick headaches, to which she was subject." A petitioning husband, on the other hand, has obtained from them the dissolution of his marriage for such instances of cruelty as the following: when "his wife pulled him out of bed by the whiskers"; when "she upbraided him, and said: 'You are no man at all, ' thereby causing him mental suffering and anguish"; when "she refused to keep his clothes in repair, and even to cook, and never sewed on his buttons"; when "she struck him a violent blow with her bustle." This is the condition into which the institution of marriage has already come in modern civilization. And the causes to which this is due are yet working, and with ever-increasing activity. Materialism, disguised and undisguised, is the fashion- able philosophy of the day.^ It is fatal to the idea of human personality, and, consequently, to the spiritual prerogatives of I For the proof of this statement I must refer the reader to Chapter 1. and to the Appendix in my work On Right and Wrong. XVII [ 21 ] WOMAN woman. It means to her,^ Dean Merivale has well observed in his striking Lectures on the Conversion oj the Northern Na- tions, from which I quoted in an earher portion of this paper, "a fall from the consideration she now holds among us." It means that she must "descend again to be the mere plaything of man, the transient companion of his leisure hours, to be held loosely, as the chance gift of a capricious fortune." Such transient companionship, such loose holding, appear to many careful observers the substitute for Christian marriage which will be found in the world as Christianity becomes gener- ally discredited; a consummation which they deem imminent. To quote at length even the more considerable of contemporary publicists who have expressed this view, would take me far beyond my present limits. I can here cite only a very few words from three of them. Mr. Karl Pearson, in his learned and able work. The Ethic oj Free Thought, writes: "Legalized life monogamy is, in human history, a thing but of yesterday; and no unprejudiced person can suppose it a final form. A new sex relationship will replace the old. Both as to matter and form it ought to be a pure question of taste, a simple matter of agreement between the man and woman." Mr. Pearson, in his most suggestive volume, National Life and Character, holds that as "the religion of the State" replaces Christianity, which he thinks it is swiftly and surely doing, it will be "im- possible to maintain indissoluble marriage," and "the tie be- tween husband and wife" will "come to be easily variable, instead of permanent." Similarly, Mr. H. G. Wells, in the singularly interesting Anticipations, with which he has just favored the world, deems it "impossible to ignore the forces making for a considerable relaxation of the institution of per- manent monogamous marriage in the coming years," and holds it "foolish not to anticipate and prepare for a state of things when not only will moral standards be shifting and uncertain, admitting of physiologically sound menages of very variable status, but also when vice and depravity, in every form that is not absolutely penal, will be practised in every grade of mag- nificence, and condoned." I own I think this prognostication of the return of modern civilization to "the morals of the poultry yard" well warranted XVII [ 22 ] WOMAN by the signs of the times. It rests, indeed, upon the assump- tion that the revolution in the relations of the sexes, steadily progressing since the destruction of the religious unity of Europe, will continue unchecked. Whether that assumption is correct "only the event will teach us, in its hour." Of course we must not forget that human affairs seldom advance for very long in a straight line. " Incst in rebus humanis quidam circulus." The future rarely corresponds with the forecasts of even the wisest. Still, as we look around the world, it is impossible not to recog- nize the strength of the forces which militate against marriage. I know well that we cannot count reason among them. The human reason, properly disciplined and correctly exercised, is capable of ascertaining the ethical principles necessary to enable man to arrive at his natural ideal — the harmonious de- velopment of all his powers in a complete and consistent whole. And from these principles is derived the true norm of matri- mony so well expressed by the great jurisconsult of ancient Rome: "Conjunctio maris et feminae est consortium omnis vitae; divini et humani juris communicatio." A state of life involving the fusion of two personalities, and fraught with con- sequences most momentous to both, and to society, its unity and indissolubihty issue from the nature of things in their ethical relations. The only real witness in the world for the absolute character of holy matrimony is the Catholic Church. And whether men will hear, or whether — as seems more likely — they will forbear, she warns them that to degrade indissoluble marriage to a mere dissoluble contract, to a mere regulation of social police, to- a mere material fact governed by the animal, not the rational, nature, will be to throw back modern civilization to that wallow- ing in the mire from which she rescued it. XVII [ 23 ] XVIII UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE "THE ESSENTIAL EQUALITY OF MAN AND WOMAN" BY FRANCES POWER COBBE AND WILLIAM K. HILL I~\ ISMISSING the moral side of the problem of woman in ■'-^ her relations with man, we turn now to its practical aspect. What is woman's position in the world to-day, and what is it like to he in the immediate future ? This, in every public woman's mind, hurls us at once upon the question of woman suf- frage, or ^^ universal suffrage^' as many of its advocates prefer to call it. Any vehemently argued issue is perhaps better wider - stood by viewing it from a distance; and so we have purposely dealt with this agitated theme, not as it presents itself to any one of its supporters hi America, but as it strikes our English cousins. Frances Power Cobbe has long been a leading name among woman suffragists. A granddaughter of Archbishop Cobbe, of Dublin, Miss Cobbe early became a leader in religious circles, and in her own career has exemplified the principles for which she stands, being widely known as a lecturer, an author, and a journalist. The following address was 'first delivered by her before the Ladies^ Club in Clifton. Lest her view of the matter might be thought one-sided we supplement it with a discussion by a ^^mere man,'' who ap- proaches the subject in its broader aspect. Going beyond "suf- frage" Mr. Hill inquires as to the equalities and inequalities of the sexes, mental, moral, and physical. He even attempts to strike a scientific balance and deduce results. XVIII [ I ] UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE There are two sides from which we may regard the woman- suffrage demand : the Just^oi it and the Expediency of it. I am one of those who would always place the former in the foreground, for I believe with Cicero that "nothing is right because it is expedient, but it is expedient because it is right." When we have ascertained the righteousness of any line of ac- tion, public or private, we may be pretty sure that, in God's world, it will turn out sooner or later to have been the ex- pedient course; if not in the lower sense and connected with our baser interests, yet in the higher, connected with those in which the happiness and honor of human life consist. Now as regards the Justice of the claim of women to the franchise, we must of course admit at starting that the whole idea of representative government is a modern one, and that the abstract idea of justice — what Kant would call "a Law fit for Law Universal" — is difficult of application to it. We might have lived still under a government at any stage between a Greek democracy, where every man has his own representative in the market-place, and a Russian autocracy, where the Auto- crat may say like Louis XIV., Uetat c'est moi. But as we stand now in the twentieth century in England, it would seem that {where men are concerned) two principles are almost uni- versally accepted as just — namely, that those who are called on to obey the laws should have a voice in making them; and that those who pay taxes should have a voice in their expenditure. These two principles, I remark, are almost universally ac- cepted as just, jor men. Very few people will refuse to admit that they are so. But why then, I ask, are they not to be held just likewise, and equally, where women are concerned? We too are called upon to obey the laws. Why should not we have a voice in making them? We too (alas!) are called upon to pay taxes. Why should not we have a word to say about their expenditure? This is our contention. That what is just for the gander would also be just for the goose ! At least the onus of proving that it is not so lies with our opponents. Of course the real origin and still existing source of this failure of justice is the old, old story of the subjection of the weak to the strong — the inevitable, and (not blamable) omnip- XVIII [ 2 ] UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE otence of men in times when Might made Right; and a natural survival of the old state of masculine overbearing under happier and softer conditions, in the minds both of men and women. It is an idee fixe with both sexes that men should rule, and women be ruled. But now, surely, the time has come when the problem may be regarded dispassionately and with- out prejudice by both parties, and the question pressed home: Why, if it be just to give men, who have to obey the laws and pay taxes, a voice in making the laws and expending the taxes, is it not also just to give the same voice to women who have to do both, the same as they ? I apprehend that very few, even of the sternest opponents of our claims, will attempt to dispute them on these abstract grounds of justice pur et simple. But they will say that, where public interests are concerned, other things must be taken into consideration beside abstract and theoretic justice; and that the weakness of women renders them by nature unfit to take part in government or public affairs; that their inclusion in the constituencies would water doivn the political life of the nation and weaken the constitution; and that there are other objects to which their whole attention should be given — namely, to housekeeping and baby- rearing. Now let us face this argument from the inferiority of women frankly. It is true! Women, on the whole, are intellectually as well as physically less strong than men. That is, if we set up almost any standard of ability or genius or erudition, we shall find a good many more men than women attain to it. The highest standard of all no woman has ever yet reached; and accordingly we have been contemptuously taunted with the question : "Where is your Hamlet, your Macbeth, Your soul-wrought victories? " ''Nowhere," I cheerfully answer, unless poor Sappho (whom Aristotle ranks alongside of Homer and ^Eschylus) at- tained it; and her works (all the nine books save a few frag- ments!) men have, unfortunately, managed to lose. I have also recently learned that many of the hymns in the Rig Veda are by female Rishis. That these are absolutely Divine is the XVIII [ 3 ] UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE belief of all Brahmins. I bmscss an idol of Brahma the Creator, which represents him as nolding the four Vedas in his four hands, and reading them with his four heads. Think of the chief God of the Trimurti reading a woman's writing ! * But now arises the question: Has the possession of genius sufficient to write "Hamlet" and "Macbeth" anything to do with the exercising of the voting power in the United Kingdom as at present constituted ? If it be so, then the whole Celtic population would be justly disfranchised, for there has never been a Celtic Shakespeare, or Homer, or Dante, or Milton, any more than there has been a woman of the same exalted intellectual rank. But if no one would dream of urging this deficiency against a good Scotch, Welsh, or Irish farmer as a reason why he should not cast a vote for the candidate he prefers at his county election, is it not ridiculous to use it as a reason for refusing the same franchise to us women? The same argument apphcs in the still higher field of philosophy. There has never been a female Plato or Kant. But neither has there been a Celtic Plato or Kant. There would be some fairness in arguments on this line if some intellectual test, high or low, were made the condition of ability to vote for a member of Parliament. In that case it might be a proportionately small number of women who would reach it. But there would be some; and that would end the injustice of the present state of things. But admitting frankly the inferiority of our sex as regards great epics and tragedies and systems of philosophy, we must here put in a pertinent question: Whether women have proved themselves Ukewise inferior in that gift — power, faculty — what- ever we may call it, which alone concerns the question in hand ? Are women bad politicians, bad administrators, incapable nat- urally of understanding and guiding aright our ship of state ? I will tell my reasons for urging this question. I possess at home two heavy volumes of tables of ancient * The Psalm which says: "The Lord gave the Word, great was the company of the preachers," ought (I am informed by the best Hebrew scholars) to be translated : " The Lord gave the Word. The heraldesses who proclaimed it were a great host." XVIII [ 4 ] UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE and modern history, in which I noted down (in my long-past studious youth) all the sovereigns of all the countries concern- ing which I was able to glean any information; using a Uttle system of my own for showing at a glance their descents and successions. It occurred to me some time ago to count over the names in these tables; and I found there were more than 2,500 men sovereigns on record — kings and emperors; and of these a proportion of something like 5 per cent, were to be ranked as "eminent" or "illustrious" rulers, according to Mr. Francis Galton's definitions. Among them, at long intervals, in almost every country appeared also Queens, numbering altogether 51. But in that half hundred, nearly half were indisputably "eminent" or "illustrious"; some of them the best rulers which their coun- tries ever possessed. We cannot enter far into this inquiry (I have often begged my hterary friends to undertake it care- fully), but I will just name a few out of the small number of women who have ever reigned as independent sovereigns, and ask the reader to consider whether they do not stand out lus- trously in the pages of history ? ^ 1 must begin in order of time (even if modem investigation leaves them as half-mythical personages,) with the great Semir- AMis, and her successor (after five generations) Nitocris of Babylon. Both of these queens are credited by Herodotus with vast works of pubHc beneficence connected with the great Rivers; and the former, Diodorus says, "traversed all parts of the vast Assyrian Empire, erecting great cities and stupendous monuments, and opening roads through savage mountains." Nitocris, Herodotus describes, as building a sort of draw- bridge over the Euphrates, and making other great works. After a second Nitocris (called in the Turin Papyrus Netagerti), Queen of Egypt, who is said to have wreaked a fearful retribution on her brother's murderers and then to have buried herself ahve;^ we come at last to firm grounds of history iMany of the 51 above counted as Queens-Regnant were the daughters of preceding sovereigns, married to their successors, and practically not more independent rulers than other Queens-Consort. 2 See History of Egypt by Flinders Petrie, Vol. I., p. 105. XVIII [ 5 ] UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE in the actual movements offne glorious reign of Queen Hatepsu (or more properly Hatshepsut) at Dcir-el-Bahri, and the great obelisks at Karnak. It is Httle to say to those who have studied these monuments, and the wondrous story of her Embassy to the Land of Punt, that Queen Hatepsu was one of the most enlightened princes of the ancient world, and one of the grandest of the mighty Pharaohs. Again we find Deborah among the Judges; a woman whose generalship saved Israel from the tyranny of Jabin, and secured peace for the land for forty years; and whose "Song" remains to us (as recent criticism avers) the most ancient frag- ment of Hebrew Scripture. Again we find Artemisia, the heroine of Salamis, who alone saved her ships in that disastrous battle, and for whose life the (not very chivalrous!) Athenians offered a reward of 10,000 drachmas because they "could not bear to be beaten by a woman"; also the second Artemisia, of Halicarnassus, who built to her husband's memory the sub- lime Mausoleum, which has been ever since the archetype of noble funeral monuments. Again: Zenobia, the magnificent and illustrious Queen of Palmyra, the friend of Longinus, of whom her conqueror, Aurelian (who so meanly compelled her to adorn his triumph) said that he had "never encountered so brave and resolute a foe." Passing to the Western world we have our own British BoADiCEA defying all the power of Rome, and, when she could do so no longer, killing herself to escape capture. Later on, Margaret, Queen of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, reached, as we read, by her great ability as a sovereign and diplomatist, "a degree of power unequalled in Europe since Charlemagne." Isabella IL, Queen of Castile, to whose discernment of the genius of Columbus the world owes the discovery of America. Our own Queen Elizabeth, of whose greatness it is needless to speak; Maria Theresa, of Austria, of whom we read that she "made great financial reforms," and that in her reign "Agri- culture, Manufacture and Commerce flourished, and the na- tional revenue greatly increased." Catherine II. , of Russia, no doubt a bad woman, but not perhaps a very bad Empress, XVIII [ 6 ] UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE to whom it is noticeable that, alone of all female sovereigns, the title of ^' Great" has been appropriated! Then we have the present mysterious Empress of China — "She" — who, whether innocent, or a monster of cruelty and craft, is probably the ablest living person, man or woman, among the four hun- dred milUons of the Celestial Empire. And lastly, and greatest and best of all. Queen Victoria of England. Few will be found to say that this true Woman — fond wife, tender mother, kind and sympathizing friend to all who suffered — was not at least as good a poHtician as any male voter in her dominions, nay, perhaps as any of her illustrious subjects in the great ** Victorian Age" which bears her name. Yet Queen Victoria was not "a genius." Her simple books show no trace of an intellect, or an imagination, which could have composed a Hamlet, or a Macbeth, or a Paradise Lost; still less a Phcedo, or a Kritik der reinen Vernunft. She was, in short, a "mere woman"; we might say a typical, duty-loving woman. But nevertheless she was (quite indisputably) a first-rate Statesman ! Thus I think we may fairly contend that if, in any branch of human intelHgence, women are the equals of men, it is pre- cisely in the one from which they are carefully excluded by law, unless they happen to be born princesses! Then, indeed, they are placed at the top of the constitution; and for sixty years we never hear a complaint of their incapacity for poHtics. Where then, I ask, can be found any plea of justice for ex- cluding our whole sex from the very simplest and smallest of political rights, when in that field at all events we have been proved to possess at least equal faculty with men ? What right have our legislators to continue to classify for this important purpose every living woman — blameless as to crime, and of full age to form a soHd judgment — as if she were of necessity by nature always a pauper, an idiot, a criminal, or a minor ? The refusal to us of Parliamentary votes is assuredly a rank injustice, and it practically involves a score of other injustices resulting from our unrepresented position, which causes our interests inevitably to go to the wall. We demand therefore in all seriousness and earnestness that this injustice be done away with in the United Kingdom, as it has been done away XVIII [ 7 ] UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE with in our Southern Coronics, and in the Isle of Man, with none but beneficial results to the whole community.^ But now let us turn from the painful and, I confess, to me, irritating subject of the Injustice of which we complain in the refusal to us of the suffrage on the same terms as men, and consider for a few pleasant moments what may happen if the sense of justice in men ever rise high enough to induce them to grant us our natural rights. We have no means to force this concession on men. That is our misfortune. We have no pou sto from which to work, and sorely we have wanted one! But I bchcve in the universal progress of all humanity; and that the day will come when the difference of the constitution which stands between us will appear (as in truth it is) abso- lutely unreasonable and absurd, and the expediency of granting to us women the Parliamentary suffrage will become manifest, I am persuaded that the right of voting (small as it seems) will carry with it (if we ever obtain it) a great intellectual and moral uplifting of women. We are all — men and women — subject to a law of our nature which I have described elsewhere as the Contagion 0} the Emotions; and to be despised is, in all but the very strongest natures, to despise ourselves. Now the refusal to us of the franchise in its present largely extended area is to deconsider us ; to place us in an inferior category from even very ignorant and low-class men. It is degrading to our whole sex, qua sex; and it is impossible for any of us who are of an age and pecuniary position in which we should have votes if we were men, not to feel this, and to recognize that, * The following is a letter testifying to this fact from my friend Dr. John Ellis McTaggart, Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, who is married to a New Zealand lady : " So I jot down the following conclusions in which we both agree : — ( 1 ) The Colony is completely satisfied with it. (2) The percentage of women who vote is smaller, but only slightly smaller, than the percentage of men. (3) Neither political party has gained by it — the women ap- parently dividing themselves in the same proportions as the men between the two parties. (4) It has substantially, but not overwhelmingly, strengthened the temperance vote." XVIII [ 8 ] UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE in the judgment of our fellow-countrymen, we are an inferior class of beings. This comes home to us more in the country than in a town, for there we are directly confronted with mas- culine privileges. Our own farmers, our servants, our very laborers, be they never so ignorant and stupid, have a voice in elections while we have none. It is all very well for men to glorify womanhood in prose and verse, and treat us with special courtesy, and even to worship the Madonna! At bottom most men feel to us as we do to children ; and this acts most injuriously on our own characters in making us childish. Now if we can obtain votes men will begin to adopt a dif- ferent tone toward us, for they will want to interest us in their poHtics. It will not be a rapid change on their side or on our own; but it is bound to come in time. They will also seek more often the society of women who, as we all know, are apt to be a good deal left to themselves when they happen to be widows, or old maids, without any very special attractions. It is in every way desirable that the two sexes should frequently converse freely together, to the strengthening and enlarging the minds of women (and even putting animal spirits and pluck into them) ; and, we may hope, on the other side, to the soften- ing and purifying of the minds of men. If I had the choice of associating only with women, or only with men, I should have no hesitation in preferring women's society. But, as the children say, '^Both is best" and there is always a loss when men never converse with women or women never converse with men. You know what George EHot says, "The mascu- line mind — ivhat there is of it — is always of a superior order!" I should always advocate every plan bringing us into common work and play — to sit on committees together and unite as much as possible in all pubHc action. I even took on myself once to tell the lady Principal of one of our new colleges for women at Oxford, that I thought she ought to be a married woman with a husband who would sit at the head of the dinner table every day and lead the conversation! I beUeve it would be an excellent arrangement ; better for the students than many a course of Lectures. Many of my readers must have noticed the different nuance xvni [9] UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE in the talk of English armroi American gentlemen to women. In America, though the women have not as yet votes, except in a few States, they have attained a different social position from that which we hold in England: and consequently an American man talks up to us; very visibly taking it for granted that we know as much and have as good a judgment of the sub- ject in hand as himself. An Englishman on the contrary usually talks down to us. He assumes that we know httle or nothing; and that our opinions (if we have any) are hardly worth ascertaining. This he does pretty universally to ladies who are strangers to him. Only if he happen to know that the woman to whom he is speaking is the possessor of brains, he is apt to treat her in a still more aggravating manner, and to imply, in all he says, that she is not as other women are, "fools and shght," but stands apart from her sex — a very great insult as we must all consider it. After a certain number of years of the new regime I am convinced that the minds of women would grow larger and stronger, even as their bodies have done in the last forty years by fresh air and exercise, and then a generation will arise in which women will scarcely be called any longer the " weaker sex." But the moral and intellectual advantages to women per- sonally which the franchise would in time — slowly perhaps, but surely — bring; and also the actual material gain which in many cases it would involve by compeUing ParHamentary attention to the Bills in which their interests are concerned — these gains are secondary to the great issue: "What will be the influence of the feminine vote on the politics of the nation at large?" For a long time it will, of course, not tell very greatly in varying this policy one way or another; but as time goes on, it must turn the balance on many questions. Will that influence be for bad or for good ? I am sure that, on the whole, it will be greatly for good. Mistakes may be made, and no doubt women will be affected like men by waves of popular sentiment, causing them some- times to throw their weight wrongly. But in the long run there can be little doubt that both the conscientiousness and the ten- derness of women will influence pubhc affairs and the making xvni [ lo ] UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE of laws in the direction of greater humanity toward all the poor and suffering, to captives, to criminals, to children, to the aged, to animals; and also in that of public morality; in that of temperance; and finally, in that of peace. No Member of Parliament, depending largely for his election on the votes of women, will (for example) sanction the licensed torture of ani- mals, on the ground that it is hoped it will pay in useful dis- coveries. Thus viewing the whole field of politics, I do not doubt that the concession of the suffrage to women on the same terms as men now hold it (or on any terms on which they may hold it from time to time), will be expedient as well as just. We are not a sex of saints and sages, though there have been some saints and sages here and there belonging to us ; and also a great many sinners and fools. But on the whole we are less often criminals than are men; perhaps we are a little less selfish; and certainly more conscientious than ordinary men. In short, in the lump, women are better than men, though not so strong and not so clever. As Theodore Parker well defined it: We are not the equals of men, but their equivalents. We are not their equals physically, aesthetically, or perhaps intellectually. They are not our equals in things higher than these — in the regions of moraHty and of the affections, human and divine. But if this be conceded, is it not to under-estimate goodness itself, to doubt that this better weight, thrown into the scales of politics, will be beneficial? Once again, I am convinced, it will be proved (as I started by affirming), that what is JUST will always be, in the highest sense, also EXPEDIENT. " THE ESSENTIAL EQUALITY OF MAN AND WOMAN " BY WILLIAM K. HILL Of the many controversies which occupy the intellectual ac- tivities of the human race, probably none is more ancient, in- teresting, and long-lived than that which concerns the relative xvin [ii] UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE position of the sexes in rcf^ct to capacity. Before the dawn of civiHzation there was presumably no controversy on this point. If any wandering doubt entered the mind of any in- dividual woman, either she kept it to herself or the prompt apphcation of a male hand or foot silenced its expression for- ever. Later on in the pre-Christian civilizations of South- eastern Europe, if womanhood was recognized as reaching nearer to the admitted superiority of manhood than barbarism believed, the admission was largely theoretical, and its illus- trations in the Aspasias and Cornelias of the time were few and far between. The standard set up by Christ, if it took root at all, was soon disfigured by the famous gloss of his Apostle Paul. "In Hke manner, ye wives, be in subjection to your own hus- bands, . . . beholding your chaste behavior coupled with fear, ... in the incorruptible apparel of a meek and quiet spirit, ... as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord." The mediaeval appreciation of womanhood, as is well known, was merely a vision of passion and fancy which rose above rational equahty into the region of fulsome adulation. Thence through many stages of effort we have arrived at the so-called eman- cipation and higher education of woman, upon which disfran- chisement is perhaps the last remaining blot of any magnitude. But it is just in the fact of the persistence of this great and dark blot, and of the many smaller and lighter blots scattered over the sphere of sex-equality, that a great interest lies and much food for reflection. Why, when so many doors have been opened to women, are the great doors of the parliament-house and several other small wickets still closed to them? The answer will, I think, be found in the fact that, out of the sum of manhood, there are still but few men who, at all times and under all circumstances, really believe in the essential equahty of the sexes. Of the rest, the majority are still sceptical, and the minority beHeve only with half their heart, being too ready to trim their sails to any wind of adverse criticism blown vtji by the passing crazes of the Press and platform, or the drawing- room. Under these circumstances it is still a matter of interest to try and throw new hght upon this ancient controversy, and xvm [ 12 ] UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE unveil, if it be possible, the subconscious opposition which makes so many men admit in theory the equality of the sexes and yet in practice act upon hnes which can only be justified by the denial of such equaHty. Let us consider, then, these leading characteristics of the human race: reason, imagination, and the initiative which manifests itself in creative work; emotion, courage, moral sta- bility, and truth ; strength and endurance. Reason is equally the characteristic of both sexes, but its derivatives, reasonableness and reasoning, are said to be more strongly marked in man than in woman. Man usually thinks before he acts. Woman is inclined very often to act before she thinks. The truth of this would in no way be lessened by the thoughtful action of the man leading, as so often happens, to a result inferior to that which flows from the impulsive action of the woman. DeHberation is not always a virtue; yet, inas- much as the man's action is fundamentally rational, it is likely to blunder less often than the sometimes successful intuition of the woman, and, under the conditions of the average, the superiority would lie with the man, assuming that this alleged distinction is really as widespread as men declare. I have heard one of the most strenuous advocates of the emancipation of woman assert that women are inclined to be very unreason- able about small matters in the sphere of the home. But this apparent unreasonableness has a basis in reason not properly appreciated by man. Take one example, which has so often been the subject of satire. Woman thinks punctual obedience to the dinner gong more important than the catching and fixing for posterity of some soul-compelUng metaphor or one ray of "the Hght that never was on sea or land," which is hovering just on the horizon of the imagination, but just out of pen or pencil grip when the gong rings. Is it not because, but for the assiduous cultivation of such distorted estimates of relative importance, she would find the details of domestic manage- ment altogether too sordid and wearisome, and, as a result, starve and weaken the great mind that is at hand-grips with inspiration ? In the matter of imagination, as manifested objectively in XVIII [13] UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE its works, the only form ^r which we can estimate it, woman cannot at present set anything against such male achievements as the Iliad, the Divina Commedia, Hamlet, Faust, the Venus of Milo, Tannhduser, or the Choral Symphony, to cite only a few leading examples. In the closely aUicd quality of initiative the weakness of woman is loudly asserted by man and, though I shall have occasion to traverse this contention in certain particulars, it is difficult to cite any considerable number of women who have initiated and shaped with creative touch great works or great movements. The capacity for scheming and intrigue, specially credited to woman, is quite a different and very inferior posses- sion, no less common in man, as any one living amid the seeth- ing intrigue of present educational politics will admit. But, taking the quality of creative initiative, Sappho's output is merely fragmentary. Mrs. Browning's emotional beauty and imaginative fervor are, for many, disfigured by lack of musical sense. Cleopatra's statecraft was only destructive ; and though Joan of Arc must be credited with the initiation of a truly states- manlike conception of policy, it is doubtful if her success was due so much to able generalship as to the power of inspiring enthusiasm. The distinguishing characteristics of Elizabeth's greatness were a capacity for recognizing the wisdom of her servants and a devoted patriotism, rather than any such con- structive faculty as must be credited to Henry IL, Edward I., and others of England's great kings. In like manner the great- ness of Victoria was much more the outcome of her success in the practical application of the doctrine of constitutional govern- ment than in any constructive power, for which indeed the very system of modern constitutional government left her little scope. Great deeds may be laid to the credit of emotion in the his- tory of the world when time and circumstance favored the form of stimulus it gives; but the sins chargeable to its account far outnumber these great deeds. Woman has long held the repu- tation of being more emotional than man. "Uncertain, coy, and hard to please. And variable as the shade By the light quivering aspen made." XVIII [ 14 ] UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE The reason commonly assigned is physiological, but I think the true cause is neither so permanent nor so incurable. In courage, moral stability, mental endurance, and truth it would seem as if man could claim no superiority, and in the last three must even yield to woman; for there are many brave women, and woman's power of mental endurance is famous, while her morality, truth, conscientiousness, and general good behavior, in youth at least, are superior to man's. None the less woman has always been looked upon as more timid than man, while woman and nerves have always been associated in the popular fancy. It is well known that in fundamental virtues woman is more fastidious than man; for Pope's dictum that "every woman is at heart a rake" was merely a sacrifice of truth to epigram ; but in the minor verities of social intercourse her laxity has long been the butt of the social satirist. No one charges her with a tendency to covet her neighbor's husband as a man covets his neighbor's wife; but, when it is a case of the neighbor's ox or ass, as symbolized in jewelry, servants, or a double coach-house, she is credited with being of an envious and even mahcious disposition. Only two or three times in a century, as in the Humbert case, is she convicted of taking part in a great "deal"; but social fibs and hypocrisies are freely laid to her charge. The most virulent misogynist has never accused her of being splendide mendax, like the company pro- moter; but the support she gives to ceremonial observances whose spirit has long since evaporated, lends point to a charge of small insincerities. Few men have thought more highly of women than Thackeray did, yet he says : " There are some mean- nesses which are too mean even for man — v/oman, lovely woman alone, can venture to commit them." Here also I shall have occasion to traverse popular opinion, while admitting the germ of truth from which it is developed. The asserted inferiority of woman in physical strength and endurance is difficult to controvert; for it may be contended that the endurance of pain, in which she claims a superiority, is merely the endurance which comes of use. The man cries out, because the sensation is strange to him. The woman suffers pain in silence, as one endures the querulousness of old XVIII [15] UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE age, because one expects and allows for it. If, however, this be true, it would seem to ^ a question, not of inferiority, but of habit, with the sole difference that nature has assigned to woman larger opportunities of acquiring the particular habit in question. Whatever, then, may be the virtue and abihty of individual women, and however high such individuals may soar above the average of manhood, it is alleged that, on the main counts of human characteristics, woman in the mass is inferior to man in the mass. I shall presently try to show that, if the statement must be admitted a fact, it is only a present fact. I do not beheve that this inferiority of woman need be, or is likely to be, permanent. I come now to my second thesis. Assuming for the moment that woman's achievement is, up to the present time, inferior to man's, what is the funda- mental cause of her backwardness ? Surely false training fos- tered by fallacious tradition. I have said that woman is now, even in this twentieth cen- tury, charged with being niore unreasonable than man. If this be true, it is because generations of self-absorbed fathers and unenlightened mothers have steadily brought up their sons in such a manner as to develop reasonableness, and their daughters in such a manner as to develop unreasonableness. The teach- ing of Euclid in schools is a trite example. Even now in many schools this first essay in logical deduction is begun later by girls than boys. How long is it since elementary — or any — science was generally introduced into the curriculum of girls' schools? But the false lead in the direction of non-reasoning has long been given much earhcr and more subtly — in the playing fields by the inferiority of the girls' games for develop- ing reason (compare rounders and skipping with cricket and hockey, battledore and shuttlecock with football), and at home by the consideration which is given to childish whims when shown in the girl, while in the boy they are laughed at as un- manly. This toleration of action upon impulse and fancy has been carried on throughout the woman's childhood and youth until it has justified the Shakespearean satire upon the adult woman: ''I have no other but a woman's reason; I think XVIII [ i6 ] UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE it so because I think it so." For centuries romancers, who are among the most powerful moulders of sex character, have de- lighted in representing the pretty, but empty-headed, woman's unreasonableness as a positive charm in the eyes of her male adorer, that is, until the practical realities of married life have shown him that reasonableness is a maker, fancifulness a de- stroyer, of human happiness. In a word, lovers and romancers have combined to describe unreasonableness as a most reason- able thing in woman, and, heredity helping, woman has un- consciously moulded herself in strict accordance with the prosaic doctrine of supply and demand. Again, aided and abetted by the approving smile of man, woman herself has clipped the wings of her own imagination so that it should not soar over the low walls of the nursery. How should woman conceive Iliads and Divine Comedies, when generations of mothers and grandmothers have taught her that woman's sphere of action is not life, time, or eternity, but the little world of infancy and childhood with its small delights and sorrows, its crude conceptions and narrow horizon of ac- tivities? So the Faust of womanhood is dwarfed into Jack of the Beanstalk, who sells his infantile obligations for an immoral purchase of beans. Her Venus of Milo becomes the plump and rosy Cupid of the bath-tub, so much so that her very notion of physical beauty becomes confused with that of physical luxuriance, and she describes a more or less shapeless present- ment of healthy flesh and muscle as a "lovely" baby. Later on this early stunting of artistic appreciation brings her to the admiration and adoption of the false anatomy and false curves of the milliner's model. Similarly her sense of musical grandeur is kept chained to the ditties of the Piper's Son and all his fraternity. If she rocks her last cradle on the wrong side of forty, it is small wonder that her musical imagination never gets beyond the Choral Symphonies of the nursery. It is no answer to this argument to cite the large attendance of women at art galleries and classical concerts ; for to galleries and concerts they go merely to absorb artistic and musical thought and beauty. The sphere of stimulus to artistic and musical imagination is, for the vast majority of women, the environment of the cradle. XVIII J [17] UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE Lastly, woman's physi^Jp inferiority also was the product of bad air and sedentary conventions rather than natural de- fectiveness. Every year opens to her some new profession, long thought to be too arduous for female limbs and feminine minds. Her tenacity and determination in these professions prove that the physical strength of her savage ancestress, who tilled the earth and built the home while her savage lord amused himself with bow and spear, has only been lying in abeyance till a wiser tradition called it forth to labor in the more refined fields of activity which modern civilization throws open equally to both sexes. Everywhere the opening up of woman's intel- lectual liberty asserts itself in her physical improvement — the height of her figure, the strength of her foot and arm, and the general quickening of her gait and carriage — all pointing to the breaking up of a false tradition of sedentary dulness and spiritual starvation. False training, then, fostered by fallacious tradition, has lain at the root of that backwardness of woman which has so long been supposed to be the product of inherent and irremediable inferiority, but is now shown to be no more inherent than the rapidly disappearing savagery and coarseness of man, which also were once thought to be the distinguishing and not wholly unworthy mark of his manhood. And now for my last thesis — Will woman ever be indis- putably equal to man, and when ? To this question the scoffer, shutting his eyes, answers glibly "no" and "never"; but the thoughtful man, looking round with wide eyes and a pondering mind, and applying the measure of his own experience, notes the rapid progress woman has made even in his own memory. If the bent of his mind leads him to look for the root of things below the efflorescence which alone attracts the average mind, he will observe the significant fact that woman has begun her race for equality with man by first securing the equipment of education. Education is the great economizer of historic effort, and will enable woman to cover in a few years a field of accomplishment which illiterate man traversed with pain and error and frequent backsliding only in a decade or a century. Therefore woman will move rapidly through the necessary schooling of experience, XVIII [ i8 ] UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE which man has traversed slowly through the ages. Our curious observer will note yet another significant phenomenon of the twentieth century, which, rumor says, has attained the pro- portions of a social anxiety in America — the gradual alienation of man from the powerful agent of self-development named above. If man turns from education, which, in the guise of modern science, has been mainly responsible for the abnormal strides made by modern civilization, in order to dull his finer susceptibilities upon the coarser grain of commercial and finan- cial operations — if he allows woman to take over his respon- sibilities in the matter of brain production — the march of her intellectual and moral development will be proportionately ac- celerated, and the speed with which she is already overhauling him in the race will grow daily greater. Even now woman's once ready admission of inferiority has gro"\\Ti reticent, and she is generally eager to claim at least an equality of abihty with its consequential rights. The modern Harriet Byron is no longer considered to outstep decorum when she enters upon an argu- ment with the modern Walden, and it is no uncommon experi- ence to see a mixed assembly listening with pleasure to an intel- ligent woman while she expounds her " views" on some matter of current interest. In the middle and upper classes woman is now expected to be intelligent and reasonable as well as pretty, and the absence of the last, when nature happens to be unkind, is more readily tolerated than the absence of either of the first two qualities. Indeed, some of us know cases where wit, wisdom, and character are found to obliterate entirely a positive ugliness which w^ould have made the woman in ques- tion impossible in seventeenth and eighteenth century society. Though grace and beauty will always hold sway, the eyes of the lover are becoming less easily dazzled, and the exhilaration which thrills the male being when first inoculated with love's poison is apt to be followed by shrewd questionings as to the qual- ity of the brain that fights the fascinating eyes. Dolls are less easily mistaken for goddesses, and mainly because your true divinity is more in request; for which reason, as the value of the real diamond makes its purchase a work of judgment that reacts upon its value, so the supply of a better class of femininity xvni [ 19 ] UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE has aroused a finer male (incrimination that is again reacting upon the quality of that femininity. In the matter of initiative, woman has shown a growing capacity since female emancipation brought opportunities to her. Naturally at first she has displayed this capacity in those spheres which were already the fields of her particular interest when emancipation came — education and philanthropy. The recent movement for the higher education of women, the associa- tions for fostering child-study, co-education and the kinder- garten, the temperance and various minor movements, furnish ample evidence of capacity for initiative in woman. If we bear in mind that, chronologically, these movements stand in the history of woman's effort where the Crusades, the Reformation, and the Renaissance stood in the history of man, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that, as time and opportunity bring experience and practice, it will be discovered that initiative in woman was never absent, but merely latent. Already on the gov- erning councils of educational bodies, and on certain bodies en- gaged in municipal administration, woman shares with honor and distinction in the initiation and moulding of constructive work. I have already noted woman's superiority in the funda- mental virtues and the signs of her improvement in the minor verities. Ceremonial with all its insincerity still exerts its subtle influence over woman. The scofTer says "because woman is foolish." The physiologist says "because woman is woman," that is, "a creature that feels rather than reasons." I venture to traverse both assertions, and ascribe her excess of devotion to ceremonial, whether in life or religion, first to the stunting of her reasoning faculty during a long period of male tyranny, with the consequent intensification of the other — the emotional — side of her human nature. Secondly, I attribute it to the greater purity and naive innocence of her character — the result of long years of training in the cult of "goodness" — which encourages and enables her to read reahty into ceremonial shams and make the most soulless simulacrum a real expression of what it should be, but is not — a real feeling. But the reasoning faculty of woman is no longer stunted. It is nourished as- siduously by modern science, which knows not sex. Her XVIII [ 20 ] UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE "goodness" is no longer "goody-goodness." The prudery of affected ignorance has given place to the modesty of discreet knowledge. It is now possible for a woman to know the truths of physiology and yet be pure-minded, just as it is now possible for a man to be manly without being coarse. Both sexes are approximating to a modesty which is independent of drapery and, consequently, to an abhorrence and avoidance of shams, of coverings up, of whited sepulchres, of incongruities between the inside and the outside of the cup and platter. The great agent of this approximation has been modern science, which teaches men and women equally to look before they think, to think before they judge, and to judge before they generalize — a serial process which is fatal to hollov/ ceremonial and flores- cent shams. In the matter of physical strength and endur- ance, the rapid entry of woman .into the arena of male labor, as soon as the artificial barriers of prejudice were broken down, and her ever-increasing and successful competition with man, show that the levelling up of her physical strength to his — certain temporary functional derangements excepted — is only a matter of time and training. Everywhere, then, the rapid rise of woman from the charac- teristics of a depressed existence to those of a free and equal development shows that her inferiority to man is factitious and not inherent — the result merely of artificial restrictions now withdrawn, not the outcome of a poorer raw material which can never take the higher polish that man has acquired and now boasts to be the proof of a superior metal. That woman, then, will one day be and appear, in all but functional peculiarities, mentally, morally, and physically equal to man appears to me to be beyond a doubt. The question is, when will she arrive at this equality ? Reasoning with the rule of actuality, no man can mark the point of future time at which this "consumm.a- tion devoutly to be wished" will be attained. So many lets and hinderances crowd the path of progress. But, measuring by probabilities, if the present rate of woman's development is maintained, the attainment of equality cannot be far distant in the coming centuries. There is in woman's work, as many have noted, a driving earnestness and a conscientious concen- XVIII [ 21 ] UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE tration of effort which fcu^ransccnd the application of man, who hkes to move leisurely and with due attention to comfort and relaxation. This deadly earnestness often dries up the sap of humor and stumbles for want of imagination ; but its driving force is enormous and enables progress to cover ground in a surprising fashion. Therefore woman will not require all the centuries man has had to attain a proportionate perfection, and thereafter she will overhaul him by leaps and bounds. But, it may be asked, is it not probable that man's rate of prog- ress may be accelerated when the fear of competition becomes present to his imagination, and may he not thus defy woman and retain his present lead? He may; but the probabilities are against it. For man's progress has been steady and natural, and there is no reason to suppose that its velocity could be materially accelerated. Woman's progress, on the other hand, has been "cabin'd, cribb'd, confin'd," and, now the repression has been suddenly withdrawn, the forward leap of her progress is not unlike the rebound of a new spring that has long been held down against the strong impulse of its potential power. Now she is free, more or less, woman makes haste to reap the fruits of freedom, and her haste will last until she draws level with the rights and powers of man. Then we may hope with confidence — for the grounds of hope are apparent even now — certain elements of her character— whether the product of her sex-individuality or her peculiar fate in the past, it is impossible to say with certainty — will add new elements to the character of man, drawing in exchange new elements to her own. There- after, and as a happy consequence, the velocity of their joint progress may exceed that of either in the unregenerate days of sex-prejudice and sex-cfppression. Finally, who will gain most by this equality of the sexes? Surely, man himself ; for there is little exaggeration in Otway's panegyric on woman : ' ' Nature made thee To temper man; we had been brutes without you. Angels are painted fair, to look like you; There's in you all that we believe of heaven: Amazing brightness, purity, and truth, Eternal joy, and everlasting love." XVIII [ 22 ] UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE Those advantages which the days of woman's suppression gave to man were poor indeed — a httle self-complacency, which only detracted from the dignity of his manhood — a little glorifica- tion of physical superiority, which was too often associated with intellectual inferiority — a monopoly of avocations, which only loaded him with the burden of himself maintaining his women relatives or seeing them humiliated, like Ruth Pinch, by the mortifications of shabby genteel dependence upon the caprice of insolent vulgarity — or, lastly, the pitiful consciousness of an intellectual superiority, which was daily and hourly revenged by a companionship that could bring neither sympathy, with his aims and aspirations in life, nor help and inspiration in the day of difficulty and defeat. Of all the joys that the emancipation of woman has brought to man, surely none can be greater than that which springs from the life companionship of an intelli- gent and cultivated wife and the devotion of daughters endowed with all the mental and physical beauties that are developed by modern education in place of the mean aspirations and futile follies of the old days of domesticity and deportment. And when woman has become equal to man, equal in every sense, the charm and happiness of the new companionship will per- meate every walk of his life. Let his avocation be the study of " the floor of heaven," that's " thick inlaid with patines of bright gold," a study fraught with the loftiest intellectual suggestion and the charm of an infinite mystery that unfolds a little portion of its wonders day by day and yet remains as vast and incommensurate as ever. How delightful it will be for him to find in the constant companion of his days the rational interest, the intelligent sympathy of a Caroline Herschell, and a help as ready and as valuable as that of any hireling colleague, in place of a vacant look and a puzzled frown, or the irritating indifference of a soul that cannot soar above the price of steak or the misdemeanors of a witless housemaid! How delightful it will be to traverse with a companion of equal intellect and equal culture the glorious treasure-house of history or delve thus aided in the inexhaustible mine of nature! "The soul's armor," says Ruskin, "is never well set to the heart unless a woman's hand has braced it." There is no path now trodden XVIII [ 23 ] UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE by man which will not b#Bmc smoother, brighter, and more richly furnished with the light of imagination, the bloom of sentiment, the vigor of thought, and all that elevates the work of reason above the impulse of instinct, by the companionship of "earth's noblest thing, a woman perfected." The married state, so often now but little removed from a " paidotrophic partnership," where, after the first bloom of passion fades, con- tempt and bitterness are mitigated only by the pleasures of the lower nature, will more often become, as sometimes it does now, a perfect fusion of differing but equipollent entities. The union of these two will add to the treasure of the state a third more perfect twofold organism, and to the world-forces which are building for posterity the impetus of a mighty stream that springs from the union of two noble tributaries, bearing within its bosom a double fertility and in the sweep of its creating current a more than double power. XVIII [ 24 ] XIX SOCIETY "THE ROLE OF WOMEN IN SOCIETY" BY LADY MARY PONSONBY TT/'E have endeavored to look on woman intellectually in ''^' her relation to the life of to-day, emoiionally in her relation to man. It still remains to consider her in connection with that bewildering organization which she has herself built up and to which, instinctively allowing it precedence over all other social problems, we give the general name of society — the association of human beings of the ^^ upper crust. ''^ In America we have no very clearly established cult of aris- tocracy. It is true that the newspapers of one great city or another occasionally refer to their own particular set of money or idleness, as "society.^' But no one of the groups thus dis- tinguished holds any special influence except such as rises from intellect or wealth, of the former of which they have assuredly no monopoly, while the other is usually employed much more ejfectually outside their circle. In England, on the other hand, a recognized aristocracy has long held assured control of life's best gifts. Lady Mary Ponsonby, herself a -firmly established member of this favored class, is therefore appealed to here to explain to us the meaning of this social world, "the ladies' world,'' in its past, its present, and its future. They were very delightful, those Frenchwomen of the eighteenth century. They were witty, clever, unscrupulous; often very loyal, always very powerful, as acknowledged rulers of their house or salon, and of Society. Their political opin- XIX [ I ] SOCIETY ions were hopelessly wroi^ but not more so than those of the men of the time. Why did they possess a power denied to their English contemporaries; or rather held by these in far less strength? One might inquire why Society in France in the eighteenth century shows to that of England in the present day so many points of resemblance. It might be diverting, but unfore- seen difficulties forbid a close comparison. Differences of tra- dition, of surroundings, of education arc to be met with at every turn; yet the analogy is at moments so exact that it should be possible, by keeping the respective threads of re- semblance and dissimilarity clear and untangled, to arrive at a fairly true presentment. The psychological, physiological, analytical introspective method has been done to death. In studies of this order, even of the first rank, let us say such as M. Bourgct's Cos- mopoUs or Mrs. Humphry Ward's Marcella, the author acts too much as showman; you cannot get rid of his presence; he or she is forever looking over your shoulder, pointing out how you ought to see this and detect the other. The value of impartiality in an artist has often been pointed out, and this rare equality he best shows by leaving it to the spectator to form his own judgment on what he sees, giving him no clue and pursuing him with no comment. This impartiality is more likely to be ours if we gather our information of a past epoch from contemporary memoirs, letters, and individual sayings, rather than from comments and disquisitions in which the place of critic and exponent takes up too much room. As a rule, however, it must be owned that a French writer rarely over-explains. In England we have improved in this respect, but we are still harassed by the over-exphcit writer of biography. It is true, certain young and clever authors are drifting away from this position, perhaps too far, into a "green carnation" and cheaply paradoxical vein of impres- sional writing; yet the general public likes explanation, and, to please it, explanations rounded with literary platitudes arc reeled off. On the stage, this mania for explanation, this craving for diffuse details, produces a still more offensive XIX [ 2 ] SOCIETY state of things. In order that the inevitable and satisfactory denouement should be rightly understood, it has been found sometimes necessary to add an act to an English adaptation of a French play, so that nothing may be left to the intelli- gence of the audience. But, in the present inquiry, in spite of our wish to leave the ordinary reader to his unbiassed judg- ment, it is impossible, even in a slight sketch on so knotty and intricate a question as the role played by women in past and present times, to ignore what has been written by some of our would-be teachers. When, for instance, some few years ago, Mrs. Lynn Linton made a series of fierce but able attacks on the champions of women's rights, she little guessed that that object of her particular scorn — the new woman — would be as extinct as the ichthyosaurus before the end of the nineteenth century, or that the inference she drew points to a source of power in the famous women in the past which, if analyzed, she would have been the first to reject. Mrs. Lynn Linton in her accounts of the women of Rome and Greece admits that their power was, in the main, in propor- tion to their frailty. This granted — and that there is no way of accounting for it, except by allowing for the different stand- ard of morality then prevalent or by the fact that love in its sensual aspect will ever prove itself the strongest factor in the art of ruling man — then there is an end of the controversy. This sceptre Frenchwomen wielded almost irresistibly in the eighteenth century. Their reign was still more remark- able in the seventeenth, but, except to glance at the quahties derived by our eighteenth-century friends from their prede- cessors, we must refrain from dwelhng on the never-faihng interest and charms of Mesdames de Sevigne, de Lafayette, de Maintenon, etc. The pedantic tone of the Hotel Ram- bouillet was gradually abandoned after the appearance of Les Femmes Savantes and Les Precieuses Ridicules. After a while, nobody in Society durst indulge in long and wordy jeux d'esprit. For all that, a shadow of the old pedantry darkened the social sky at intervals. Mazarin's nieces, es- pecially Marie Mancini, Princesse de Colonna, and la Du- chesse de Mazarin, brought Italian exaggeration to bear on XIX [ 3 ] SOCIETY French frivolity, and the^tsult was not a happy one; but it is in the picture of the Cour de Sceaux that the acme of stilted and, at the same time, puerile and extravagant arti- ficiality seems to have been reached. The manner of life of this Court, inspired by the Duchesse du Maine, as described in the memoirs of the day, fully de- serves this description. She paid her satellites to be amusing, but amusing in the mode she prescribed. Amused she would be, by day and by night, and every one had to contribute to this hunt for happiness through what would appear to the uninitiated as the very tedious paths of madrigals, sonnets, bouts-rimes, in which the little Duchesse appeared sometimes as Venus, sometimes as Minerva, now as a nymph, then as a siren. On n'avaii jamais une heure devant soi pour Hre hHe en paix; but the lighter recreations of poetical invitations to dinner, of anonymous compUments inserted in a bouquet, of laborious pleasantries which weary the soul even to hear of, began to pall on the chdielaine of Sceaux. Acting became the rage, and the indefatigable Duchesse divided her time between the stage and assiduous studies in astronomy, philos- ophy, and the classics. Needless to say, each pursuit and study was followed under the special guidance of the favorite reigning in that department. Among the Duchesse du Maine's intellectual disciples — let us put it so — she at one time could boast of Voltaire, who, having quarrelled with the authori- ties, took refuge at Sceaux. He was hidden away in a room apart, with closed shutters, and there he remained for two months. In the daytime he amused himself by writing his contes, and during the night he joined the Duchesse and her friends in their celebrations of les grandes nuits de Sceaux. These diversions of the Duchesse du Maine appear to have been more innocent than their title would imply. The form this amusement took made so severe a call on the Uterary capacity of those engaged in it that even scandal finds no place in the record of these nocturnal orgies. All the ardor, misplaced energy, the Duchesse had spent on fruitless pohtical intrigues and small hole-and-corner conspiracies she now di- verted to this frantic struggle against ennui. Her sleepless- XIX [4] SOCIETY ness was what led her to turn night into day, and the guests, exhausted with games, madrigal- turning, sonnet-composing, and perhaps, who shall say, love-making, implored with no effect for a moment's peace during the gorgeous breakfasts served to them at sunrise; but the rule held good, in spite of a sleepless night, de V esprit, encore de V esprit,- tou jours de Vesprit. With the arrival of Voltaire and Madame du Chate- let the programme was altered, and tragedies, operas, ballets, farces, took the place of less ambitious pastimes. Madame du Chatelet evidently bored Madame du Maine consid- erably with her mathematics, her translations of Newton's works, her geometrical problems strewn over every avail- able table in the comfortable reception-rooms; so Madame du Maine swept away the learned rubbish and insisted on forcing Madame du Chatelet on to the stage, and making her take an active part in the private theatricals. These, under the new direction, became a scene of indiscriminate social hcense; Voltaire and Madame du Chatelet inviting every one, known and unknown, to the Theatre de Sceaux, so that a dis- turbance took place which threatened to break up the whole concern. Voltaire pleaded, wrote, faltered, and won his way back into favor, begging that the protecting genius, the soul of Corneille, the spirit of the great Conde, would deign to be his Hterary Egeria; and all ended well. The httle Duchesse forgave and retained her star. She pursued her way un- daunted, and her seventy-seventh birthday found her still hard at work, amusing herself, vexed now and then at the abrupt departure of some of her friends for the next world, but observing at the same time that after all it was less an- noying than to keep her waiting for an entertainment or a card party. Perhaps her rank and her behef in the divinity of royal blood prevented the parties at Sceaux from being quite accurately typical of the artificial and pedantic salon which survived long after the Hotel Rambouillet had been swept away. Be this as it may, one impression is worth noting —that not a trace of the love of the natural to be found even in the most pedantic and pompous moment of the grand siecle can be detected in the social atmosphere of Sceaux. We XIX [ 5 ] SOCIETY have seen that some intl^st in that miniature Court was de- rived from the flavor and point which Voltaire's sayings and doings always seem to carry with them; but how incapable were the Duchesse du Maine and her friends of the enthu- siastic appreciation of Lafontaine by Madame de Sevigne and her friends, Madame de Bouillon, Madame de la Sabhere, etc.! Their admiration is more striking than the homage paid him by Moliere, Racine, and La Rochefoucauld, who, of course, having le flair litteraire in a supreme degree, detected the master poet and writer, in spite of his extraordinary simplicity. Madame de Sevigne and her friends loved him for this sim- phcity. I do not know whether Madame de Maintenon was one of this group, but she certainly felt the reaction toward the natural and the actual that she is always insisting upon in her correspondence. Here we shake off the long and wordy jeux d* esprit; the tedious and rounded periods gave way to short and witty epigrams. These were the direct offpring of La Rochefoucauld's maxims. Women decided it was wicked to be bored. A hushed whisper to this effect soon found its way into the sacred precincts of the Court, Ma- dame de Maintenon, who, it may be shrewdly suspected, put on the airs of a pedant to avoid tiresome functions, gave her rival, Madame de Montespan, enough to do when the latter attempted to answer the governess's sarcasms on the empty silliness of the lives of the courtiers; and Madame de Mon- tespan always got the worst of the encounter. The good-humored but very distinct aversion of Madame de Sevigne to bores inspired some of her wittiest letters and her most brilHant epigrams. The joyousness of her tone (Ninon de Lenclos said of her wit, "La joie de I'esprit en fait la force "^) took the sting out of the dart. She gave the word in favor of brightness and she damned heaviness. The notes of her friend Madame de Lafayette on La Rochefoucauld outdid his very maxims in brevity and pith, and very good advice these ladies gave their friends on style. Madame de Coigny, in a letter to Mademoiselle X , "lui recommande de prendre des notes sur la lecture"; "d'ecrire ses pensees c'est ^ "The joy of wit makes its power." XIX [ 6 ] SOCIETY unc fagon de savoir si on est bete. . . . Penser ses lectures, nc pas lire comme si on mangeait dcs cerises."^ Their games even had become racy and amusing. One of the most di- verting was the game of portraits, when each member of an assembled company, after taking the oath of sincerity, was bound to write a truthful account of himself in a few lines. To relate the disputes and corrections evolved by these worded portraits would take us too far from our present purpose. It is easy to see that the ground for the reign of fair women of the eighteenth century was well prepared. The rule of la pai'jaife bonne compagnie was estabHshcd in the absence of all moral law, and became an authority from which there was no appeal. The note of perfect and sincere poHteness, the distinction in speech, manner, and expression, became a kind of freemasonry protecting the admitted members from any intrusion from without. The acquirements of a perfect manner may seem but a trivial aim ; but when we find the code of rules to be observed to include deHcacy of touch in dealing with the feelings of others, a readiness of perception as to what would cause offence, the avoidance of all unnecessary friction, the art of praising without flattery, of showing off the merits of others without appearing to protect them; and if you add to these characteristics the charm of ease and nat- uralness, and the feeling that air, manner, and speech com- bine to convey graceful and intelligent kindness, you feel in- clined to agree with the author quoted by the De Goncourts who compared the spirit of good society at that time with the spirit of charity, a bold comparison, a little in the way of a very modern saying that defines "tact as inspiration in small things." And so this code of gentle manners and conduct, rigor- ously enforced, supported the more important fabric of the law of honor — the law from which there is no appeal, the last religion of France. From the grand utterance, "Tout est perdu fors I'honneur," to the present day there have been ^ " Would suggest taking notes of one's reading; to write one's thoughts is a way to see if one is stupid. . . . Think over your reading, do not read as if you were eating cherries." XIX [ 7 ] SOCIETY doubtless violations of tha^-odc; and it is, perhaps, ridiculed by those who would rather sneer at it than account for it. In England and in France to-day it is running some risk of extinction from the worship of money, but human nature as we find it in the average gentleman has still an unconscious love of the ideal as represented in the point of honor. In England we prefer the men found dead with the colors of their regiment wrapped around them, to the reform.ers who cynically advise the disuse of the flag as a useless colored rag. In France, in spite of the destructives who are ready to cry "A bas la patrie! A bas I'honneur!" the current opinion of honest men flows in the opposite direction. The view that the complaisant husband is the lowest animal extant, that to be mercenary in love is vile, that to hold up even the caprice of a woman to the ridicule of one's friends is ignominious, is still held, as a matter of course, by men of honor, at the same time that they are unconscious of the source from which it springs. It is a truth of all time that men are slow to recog- nize what they owe to beliefs they may have shaken off, but which control their instincts, after the expression of such be- liefs in set form has ceased to compel their assent and to em- body their convictions. In the eighteenth century the code of honor was enforced in vigorous and uncompromising terms, and it is for this reason that we find it regulating the lives of women strongly, if indirectly. In some respects it might seem that the honor of women had never been so lightly regarded, and that un- bounded hcense reigned supreme; but, if we look more closely into the matter, we shall find it not exactly true. To gener- ahze in this way would be as misleading as if, looking back still further, we were to regard the rough and brutal manners in the days of La Fronde as the essential feature of the time. At first sight it seems difficult to believe that the code of honor and morahty of the heroes and heroines of that day was based upon a strong belief in themselves. But so it was. The "Gentleman," as he is called in Marguerite de Navarre's heptameron, never doubted that success in love, be it ever so unlawful, must be accomplished, and the lady's consent XIX [ 8 ] SOCIETY was rarely questioned; but if she proved severely virtuous, death made the disappointed lover interesting for all time. The crudities, even the indecencies, were never vicious, and the whole atmosphere was charged with more vitaHty and strength than can be found with their descendants two hun- dred years later. But, in judging the standard of conduct in the days of these descendants, we must allow as broad a margin for the spirit of the times as we find ourselves giving their predecessors. Let us take their views on marriage. In marriage, in the eighteenth century, there was little conception of a solemnity, still less of a sacrament. In exceptional instances, in the days of the Marguerites of Navarre and Valois, we find the atmosphere of crime and Ucense Hghtened by redeeming traits of high loyalty and devotion, and by a distinct note of poetry and rehgion; but no such gleams illumined their descendants; yet we must allow that a conventional sense of honor per- sisted, and it led to curious contradictions in its appHcation. The manage de convenance et non dHnclination was as much the rule of good French society in the seventeenth and eigh- teenth centuries, a rule admitted and applauded, as it is, in spite of denials and disclaimers, in the England of to-day. Examples show that there was observed a code of honor in dishonor as it were, an unwritten law the breaking of which brought the inevitable penalty of ostracism. The limits of a husband's forbearance were strictly defined, and the net re- sult of the restraint which the necessity of keeping up ap- pearances entailed was that a mystery of romance environed a woman who was known to live a separate existence from the man whose name she bore. A passion faithful and deep might be found to be the key to all that was best in her exist- ence. Some, no doubt, were shameless, but they derived from les jemnies galantes of the sixteenth century; and even among these, recklessness, but not commonness, was the main factor in their adventurous lives. Some were simply excellent and devoted wives, like the Duchesse de Choiseul, who had never, she said, been able to conceive greater perfection in mind or body than could be found in her very fickle lord. XIX [ 9 ] SOCIETY It was the prcrogati\-^Wif the mother, and the mother alone, to direct the conduct not only of her daughters, but of her sons. A young man, says M. de Segur, who failed in respectful attention to a woman, or to a man older than him- self, knew that the fact would be reported to his mother that very evening. I forget whether it was the Due de Niver- nais or the Prince de Ligne who, upon being asked his per- mission by his sons to organize a jete chain pel re or some such entertainment, pointed to their disordered dress after a day's chase and said: "When you have made yourselves fit to enter your mother's apartment and have obtained her leave, I will confirm it." And so the rule of women became the principle on which rested, not only the government of the family, but also the control of the State. The spontaneous and natural note which strikes one in all these women did and said, the right royal power they wielded by reason of the high level of their in- telligence — this power acknowledged by all and justifying their unbounded ambition — had for its foundation charm and strength; but charm gradually fades and strength becomes weakness in the downward course. The proceedings at the Court of Sceaux show the dark side of the picture, and it is painful to discern the beginning of the bad taste, the exag- geration, and the other symptoms of disordered brains which, as the century waxed older, seemed to characterize the be- wildered women who succeeded the refined, intelligent spiri- tuelles, though often profligate ladies, whose education was begun at the Convent of L'Abbaye-aux-Bois. The woman who could reign undisputed over husband, lover, or king was unable to cope with the attack on Society by the new destruc- tive forces of the intellectual world, and fell into a more and more hopeless condition and became a helpless prey to her nerves. The feverish pursuit of pleasure, the ceaseless round of gatherings, brilliant and pointed with wit, but desperately exhausting in the long run, filled every hour of the day and night, and led, needless to say, to the worst form of reaction, the falhng back on self and finding nothing there. Hence the demon, called by them in their despair Pennemi, took up XIX [ lO ] SOCIETY his abode in them. The secret enemy, the incurable com- plaint, the unconquerable and ever-present foe they dragged smilingly about with them. This foe became the motive power of all their exertions, of all their ill-nature, and of their love of scandal; this gave zest to their intrigues, for to believe themselves amused, they thought, might shake off the ob- session. But no, they could not escape it; the disgust of self, of friends, of society, even of solitude, persisted. La grande ennuyee, Madame du Deffand, tells us that the bore of solitude is the most overwhelming and crushing form of ennui. This downward course was marked by stages which have a strange likeness to phases of social life in England at the present day. The description of these vagaries ap- pears in most of the letters and memoirs of that day. MM. de Goncourt have perhaps collected more material than any other modern author on the mode of life of the eighteenth- century fin-de-si^cle women. One of the points they insist on is the dryness of spirit and want of heart preceding the outbursts of maudlin sentimentality and affectation of tender- ness which became the fashion; also the exaggerated mani- festations of friendship between women. Hymns to friend- ship, altars to friendship, eternal vows of constancy became the vogue; also an exchange of love tokens, of colored em- blematic knots, etc., the messenger employed to convey these being some effeminate man, who, content with the gossiping companionship of the young married woman, made it often his business to prepare the way for another's more signal suc- cess in rousing interest to the point of a real serious liaison. The path the young woman followed is defined with clear- ness. In the beginning, an absorbing friendship taken up at first as a means of showing off a conquest before rivals; this languished, and all of a sudden became unattractive when the little man's visits found her alone with no public to ad- mire her triumph. We are assuming, of course, that she had not the faintest inclination to flirt in earnest with her com- panion; but if the man was skilful the moment quickly came when a mere friendly gossip gradually led to intimate discus- sion on the ways of love, the absurdities of husbands, with XIX [ II ] SOCIETY compromising confidences ^0M vainglorious hints on the part of the would-be lover, followed by more or less naive admis- sions of former successes from the newly married lady. Often she was wholly unconscious of danger, had no evil intention; but the spark of coquetry, never very difficult to kindle into flame, would suddenly take fire, her imagination would be stirred, and gradually the harmless badinage and fun vv^ould take another aspect, and another guileless spirit would be plunged into fathomless trouble. It is not very clear whether MM, de Goncourt, who give us the most interesting examples of these semi-platonic love affairs, think the devoted woman friend or the complaisant chien-de-poche kind of man the more dangerous confidant. What they have no doubt about ap- pears to be that religion, marriage, and love are equally power- less to influence these eighteenth century-ladies. Exceptional devotion in religion, deep attachment in marriage, and pas- sionate loyalty in love are to be found in the seventeenth cen- tury, but no trace of anything of the kind can be detected in the eighteenth. Happiness in religion was out of date; a well regulated aspect of mild devotion at Mass was held to be part of good manners, even with the indifferent and the scepti- cal, and it was easier to assume that aspect than to scoff. Happiness in marriage, said Society, was ridiculous and dis- tinctly plebeian. Happiness in love was unknown, and a grande passion, whether fortunate or the reverse, was foolishness. All three — religion, marriage, and love — would, in the cur- rent language of the time, prove to be "le neant." The utter absence of naturalness that we have noted be- fore became more and more accentuated; not a trace of real feeling, not a breath of freshness, not a gleam of light could be detected in this loaded atmosphere in which poor human beings groped, seeking vainly to find they knew not what, and drifting vainly toward their melancholy end. Of course this state of things reacted on the physical condition of these women. They suffered acutely from weakness, overstrung nerves, melancholia, and vapors. "Les vapeurs c'est I'en- nui," said Madame d'Epinay; and this although the sufferers were spared neither ridicule nor epigrams, and their imagi- XIX [ 12 ] SOCIETY nary ills were branded as affectations and exaggerations. A more acute observer^ suggests that they were simply suffer- ing intensely from the great malady of over-civilization, the increase of nervous disease, secret hypochondria, and, above all, from the terrible curse of that mysterious evil hysteria. The doctors now came upon the scene and insisted upon a change of regime. This somewhat modified the evil, and a more wholesome programme ensued. Fresh air was pre- scribed by the great Doctor Tronchin,^ and to dig in the gar- dens, to take violent exercise, to pursue some object, and to work at some occupation hitherto unknown became the order of the day; and these pursuits were undertaken with the feverish excitement Society women had formerly shown in ransacking their gay world in search of a new amusement or a new distraction. The study of science, of natural his- tory, of physics, even of metaphysics, filled the days and nights in the place of coquettish rivalries, of every form of amusement, and of the very fanaticism of pleasure. The mad appetite for pleasure was succeeded by an equal ardor for knowledge, and it is evident there was as little reality in this new search for happiness as there had been in the old. We no longer find the fair ladies affecting languor and exhaustion, perhaps having persuaded, as somebody said Madame d'Estarbey did, the doctor to bleed them, to give their looks a kind of delicate and sentimental interest; but their very attitude was changed. See, we now find them in a costume of stern simplicity, pale, with no trace of rouge, their eyes heavy with fatigue from brain work, the brow resting carelessly on the right hand, with a general look of undisturbed attention. This was, in- deed, a new picture, and when at last they were roused they were no longer to be found as of yore flitting from fair to opera, from jev/ellers' to milliners' shops. Now courses of political study, of philosophical systems, of scientific theories, took up the spare hours, and, scarcely less exhausted than they had been before with frivolity, they slept but a few hours, to re- sume next day their arduous and self-imposed task. ^See Memoires de la Comtesse de Boufflers. "^See Les Sports dc I'Ancienne France by Jusserand. XIX [ 13 ] SOCIETY And now we must leave ^r French friends, and with re- gret we do so. There is something pathetic in the way those who formed French Society hastened on to their doom, in a wholly unconscious way. They had no suspicion of the coming catastrophe. It was as well they did not foresee the Reign of Terror; but when it came they met their fate coura- geously. We must now turn to the English compeers of the French- women of the seventeenth century. Here, till we get to the crucial point of the comparison, we shall find the task of sus- taining the interest somewhat difficult. For it cannot be de- nied that the Frenchwomen of the seventeenth century were more interesting than the ancestors of the Englishwomen of the eighteenth. During the epochs under notice, the eighteenth century in France and the nineteenth in England, the charm as in the seventeenth century remains with France until we get to the end of both centuries, when the likeness between the women of the two centuries became very close. At their best the English of the eighteenth century seems to be too nearly a replica of their French contemporaries to be very arresting; but it is worth considering how a certain view of tradition derived from the latter can be traced to the end of the nineteenth century. There is also the temptation to linger over contemporary letters and memoirs, of which we have a good supply. Horace Walpole, dealing out his criticism and sharpening his wit on Lady Mary W. Montagu's ugly man- ners and Lady Craven's spitefulness, brings into full light many details of these ladies' lives they little guessed would ever see the light. This rather adds to the pleasure of read- ing what they carefully prepared for publication, for one does so with a liberal discount. There are moments when Lady Mary fearlessly exposes the folhes of foreign Courts. "One foundation of these everlasting disputes," she writes, "turns entirely upon rank, place, and the title of Excellency"; and in other letters she gives a graphic description of the follies and futilities of English society, concerning which she seems to show more insight than her celebrated censor. And the same may be said of Lady Craven, who, however, was by no XIX [ 14] SOCIETY means on the same level as her rival; but if she failed, as Horace Walpole said she did, to understand Lady Mary's best points, she was her equal in accurate delineation. For in- stance, in her letters to the Margrave of Anspach, whom she afterward married, she speaks of the misrule of the unspeak- able Turk, of the discomfort and absurd ceremonials of the small Italian Courts; and the whole of her correspondence is seasoned with a fine insular savor of admiration for British freedom and British comfort, expressed in forcible and epi- grammatic terms. Horace Walpole might, with his exaggera- tion and cosmopolitanism and his surrender through old Ma- dame du Deffand, to French influence, almost have envied Lady Craven. And so it was with others in the same Society - — Lady Cowper, Mrs. Montague, and a long way after them Mrs. West and others. They give one the same impression of possessing considerable cultiA'ation and fine manners, but with stilted tediousness. Of the vein of Puritanism which had certainly permeated the middle class and the more re- tired upper class, as is shown in Rachel Lady Russell's and Lady Herbert's letters, etc., traces still remain in English Society. But it takes the light and air out of the subject, and confirms the impression that neither by way of contrast nor of likeness can the women of the eighteenth century in France be compared with those of the same epoch in England. Before we reach our friends of to-day we must give a glance at their immediate predecessors, their mothers and grand- mothers; and the experience of anyone with half a century's experience ought to be useful in helping us to see Society in the first part of this century as it really was. The great Whig Houses had much to say in the training of the smart world of those days. The traditions of perfect manners, lax morality, political shrewdness, excellence of taste, unrivalled skill in holding a salon, were handed down from mother to daughter, till the ebb of the tide set in during the fifties; then it is curious to observe the decline of each of these traditions. Who does not remember, if he is old enough, the courtesy without pat- ronage, the gentleness to inferiors, the rigorous but perfectly natural bearing, which never failed, however morality or re- XIX [ 15 ] SOCIETY ligion might fare in the da^s of his grandmothers ? When I was a child it appeared td^c impossible to beheve that there could be any other way of getting old but that with which I was familiar. But, full of point and amusement as were her sayings, merciless as she was to false fine ladyism, swift and cutting as were her caustic, witty snubs to both old and young, yet I feel when I look back that old Lady G must have been a milder reproduction of the preceding generation; for the disintegrating forces of the French Revolution were at work in England, and a woman whose husband knew his Voltaire and Rousseau by heart found the Whig edition of liberalism strongly tinged with ideas which could revolutionize in a bloodless way the exclusive aristocratic upper classes; while the middle classes were protected by the Puritan in- fluence from this disturbing agent. And so it came about that the puzzled, restless phase which came over French society at the end of the eighteenth century began to undermine English society in the sixties and seventies of the nineteenth in a dull respectable way; manners became democratized, salons lost their prestige be- cause the entertainer no longer believed in herself. Of a group of salons which still held their own fifty years ago, Lady Pal- merston's was the most successful and the most powerful politically, because the widest and the most cosmopolitan. Her charm and great distinction were unhampered by any shade of strictness. She had a delightful naivete in the choice of her political agents that would make us smile now. "I think," she would say, "I shall send the Flea to Rotten Row (a certain little Mr. Fleming, who had the art de se jau filer par tout), to report to me what the feeling of the country is on last night's debate." Her two daughters, Lady Shaftes- bury and the incomparably witty Lady Jocelyn, helped her not a little. Lady Granville's salon was of a different sort — more ex- clusive, much more affected, and frequented by foreigners. She had the French gift of receiving without effort. Sitting at work with a shaded lamp near her, she would call out with a word from among those passing through to the tea-room XIX [ i6 ] SOCIETY a friend with whom she wished to talk, and one always longed to hear what she was saying, for the friend on the sofa looked very happy and much amused; even "the lodger," Charles Greville, who lived on the floor above in Bruton Street, thawed in that corner. Of course, there was the immense advantage of the presence of the master of the house, who, with his won- derful instinct for society, rapidly arranged and rearranged groups, so that a bore, if such were admitted by mistake, found himself neutralized by being handed to some one fully capable of dealing with him. Lady Palmerston, Lady Gran- ville, and Lady Holland may be said to be the last charming mondaines cojivaincues, who never doubted what they should do and say to maintain their power. They sometimes in- dulged in an inner circle of intimate (small) dinners and tails to dinners, but, on the whole, devoted themselves mainly to the interest of "the party," and received all — and a very long list it was — ^with the most perfect manner, which was simply no manner at all. Each guest, young and old, left the house with the conviction that special attention and marked sym- pathy had been shown to him. The later attempts to fill this rdle, the grande dame hold- ing a salon, were not successful. Strawberry Hill had in Frances Lady Waldegrave's reign a reputation of its own. As a country house it was an amusing one to go to, though her receptions were a little too much of a scramble for it to be dis- tinguished in its jagon d'etre. The generous qualities of the hostess and the mixed character of her guests made up a whole which, as a feature of the epoch, has a special value. Yet, as a salon, held by a grande dame, it was beside the mark. The strings were beginning to get tangled and to respond no longer to the hand that played with them with a political purpose, and it failed, in spite of skilful combinations and strong personal influence. In later attempts the failure was still more marked; to watch the pulling at bell- wires that rang no bells became to the looker-on oppressive and some- times ludicrous. Before we leave the last of the salons for duller company, there is one personality who ought to find a place in a sketch, however slight, of the world in which XIX [17] SOCIETY Lady Palmerston and Lady Granville reigned supreme. Lady William Russell did n(^^ltcmpt to hold a salon; she spent much of her time abroad, and, when she came to England, lived in the simplest foreign way, her establishment consist- ing of few servants beyond her courier and her maid. But, though not attempting the role of hostess, she was almost in- dispensable at the salons of her friends, and still more so at the small recherche dinners which were the fashion among the creme de la crime. She was by far the strongest person- nality of that time, a powerful woman, powerful to violence. (So said rumor.) To the fascination which strength of char- acter gives its owner she added the charm of being so free from insularity and provincialism that many people were puz- zled as to her nationahty. Each country claimed her as its own. A Parisian was at once arrested by her wittily expressed appreciation of both ancient and modern regime, of both solid and frivolous literature in .France. Then she might be heard talking to the German Ambassador on abstruse political ques- tions; she was equally able, in the purest Tuscan, to discuss with an Italian cardinal the latest news from the Vatican. All this without the slightest pose or effort. She brought up her three sons in a way of her own, utterly unlike any English system of education ever heard of. A Catholic herself, she hated the priest, and wished to have only inscribed on her grave: "The mother of Hastings, Odo, and Arthur." We must leave these interesting personalities and pass on to a very dull epoch, glancing on the way at the theological High Church phase kindly interpreted by Miss Sewell and Miss Yonge. An ideal founded on the inculcation of obedience to the Church, instilled in brothers and cousins from Oxford, gave the more intelligent of the young women in the fifties some perception of what culture might imply; but its pur- suit was on the whole uninteresting, still more so were the lives of their frivolous sisters, made up as they were mainly of a great deal of silhness, of love of dress that didn't result in good dress, of flirtations with no background of wit, vice sometimes having its turn at the wheel; but even the vice of that period was dull. XIX [ i8 ] SOCIETY We have arrived at the point at which we may consider the question with which we started — what is common to the Frenchwomen of the eighteenth century and the Enghsh of the nineteenth — and this misgiving arises. Are not the dis- similarities so marked as to destroy all resemblance? Yet it is the one interesting point in the study, so the doubt must be conquered. An additional difficulty lies in the avoidance of any portrait-painting. Just as the roman a clef is generally very poor art, so in an essay, however unpretending, it would be odious to bolster up the interest by dealing with distinct personalities and not with types. Time is pressing, and some one else said the other day, a propos of the expression, "Now the psychological moment has arrived." You are talking as they did in the early nineties, and the types change before your very eyes. Why, ten or fifteen years ago we had the academic fad. The higher education of women was the cry. It touched Society vaguely: Lady So-and-so was determined to send her daughters to Girton of Newnham. The ordinary English and even French governesses were made to wince when com- parisons were made between the effect of their teaching and the result of a college course. In many a middle or profes- sional home it came as a solution to the dreary problem of how the girls of the family were to earn their bread, besides giving them the unexpected joy of finding their brains to be un- doubtedly fit for something. Those who hate academic train- ing in either men or women railed at the naij belief that to follow the exact curriculum which produced such poor re- sults in men would advance the general status of women. Its evident narrowness and want of elasticity could not strike the enthusiastic promoters of the higher education. Enthu- siasts are usually found to be without a sense of humor, and the inefficiency and defects of the women's colleges were scarcely apparent even to outsiders, who were, if in sympathy with the movement, too full of admiration for the wonderful energy and zeal, the untiring and self-denying devotion, of the founders, to find it in their hearts to criticise. They did not observe the deteriorating effect of the strain of over-work XIX [ 19 ] SOCIETY during the growing year^^ the young girls who were forced into competition with strong men, the majority of whom cared not to beat them. Every faculty was bent to the task of ob- taining marks. Commercially it answered to send such well- equipped teachers into the market, and this, in a way, met one of the pressing wants of the day. But later, in the homes of the intelligent classes, this practical solution was before' long pronounced to be inadequate, and disappointment was felt by the parents of the very hard, trenchant, cut-and-dried young prig who returned from time to time to the home she had learned to contemn. Now, the colleges have proved that they have to deal with influences more potent even than ignorance. In Society the ineradicable love of dress and the eternal power of physical beauty prevented at any time any great warmth of enthu- siasm in the direction of intellectual training. Men dishked it. They had been used to the toy and doll's house theory. Useless to quote women of past ages; neither men nor women had imagination enough to see that, with all their weaknesses, not to speak of their vices, the women of the Middle Ages were a superior kind of animal to the average Englishwoman of the last decade of the nineteenth century. The cult of the Virgin Mary in the Middle Ages did far more to raise the status of women than any other cause at work since the age of chivalry, and the efforts toward intel- lectual discipline in our day are futile in comparison. Still these efforts indirectly affected later developments of women's energies, and may play a more considerable part in the his- tory of the woman of the twentieth century than we expect at present. The "new woman" followed the student, but was gradu- ally demolished by common consent, and the artillery spent in her destruction some ten years ago by such opponents as Mrs. Lynn Linton, of the Saturday Review, was rather a waste of force. So quickly do we move on in these days, so rapidly do different ideals and different ways and customs start into life and follow each other, that what was a true description of XIX [ 20 ] SOCIETY society two or three years ago may be an inaccurate picture now. Yet I believe that some members of each of these older groups survive in the present day. Such as those who led society before, in the main lead now; in so far as they do not, it is due to the uneasiness, very like that prevailing at the end of the eighteenth century that is beginning to show itself. The novelty of playing at intellectualism is beginning to lose its charm. Those who are born intellectual or have inherited literary aptitudes remain in a way masters of the situation. There are not many of these, and even they are amused by the desperate recklessness of experiment that seems to be not only a reaction against conventionality, but to result from a mad desire to exhaust every form of amusement, and indeed of vice. The husband-snatching, the lover-snatching — in short, the open profligacy — becomes unattractive because nobody is shocked. Gambling is resorted to, but that is such an ex- clusive passion that it protects its votaries from destruction by other forms of vice. In some cases the quality of atten- tion required of the gambler is intermittently applied to other aims, and the scholar gambler is in a fair way to become a type. What remains? The Kingdom of Bore. We have seen how the Frenchwomen, 'jin du iSieme siecle, after exhaust- ing every form of excitement, were found calling out for the neant; and the parallel is curiously close and suggestive. But history, as we know, does not actually repeat itself, and those Frenchwomen gave up trying to understand the days they lived in. There was a feeling of storm in the air that op- pressed them, and whose cause they had neither the mental nor moral equipment to discern. So they sat and waited to see what would come, and the great storm did come and swept them all away before they had had time to understand it. Here such a storm may or may not come; should it come, it would be met more intelligently — who knows? perhaps guided and directed; but what would be the outcome it is idle to try to predict. The older generation sometimes amuse themselves by conjecturing what regime will follow the present. Several thousand years ago the form of confession pre- XIX [ 21 ] SOCIETY scribed by the Egyptian^priests was a negative pronounce- ment — I have not stolen, murdered, etc., and so on, leaving the Deity to infer what sins have been committed. We might take the hint and find that a negative position has more chance of holding its own than a positive assertion, and the humble but definite aim of searching for facts, not theories, may prove a successful mode of arriving at something like a conclusion. I believe that the woman of the twentieth century will not in any way resemble the platforming, noisy, aggressive ladies of the advanced school, who may themselves be traced to the terrible new woman who affiicted us for a short time; but I also believe that the extinct woman — like Ibsen's master- builder's wife, Mrs. Solness — who threatened at one time to be rehabilitated by the force of reaction, has no chance at all of reincarnation. Nor do I think the courtisane de haul eiage doubled with the philanthropist is a type that will com- mend itself to English opinion, for the men held in bondage by her are seldom those on the first line. Nor will the scholar and purely literary woman, or the grande dame who dabbles in literature, science, and art, and leads a charming life of eclecticism, aestheticism, and many other isms, prevail, for none of these are adequate ; they are not the size, as an Ameri- can would say. Our successors will insist on something built on a larger and wider conception of life, a type higher and nobler, and therefore more fascinating; for, after all, there seems to be lacking in the very distinct types I have tried to sketch that great quality of charm which is all too absent from the ordinary Englishwoman. Charm ! who can define it ? It is an essence, a mystery ; it rules in spite of vice and wickedness, not by reason of them. From Helen of Troy to Mary Stuart, the women who charmed look out through the mist of centuries with their "basilisk eyes," and arrest even now those who would, if they could, resist their fascination. Who that has seen Sarah Bernhardt as Cleopatra slowly stepping from the barge toward Anthony, with the simple words in the golden voice, " Je suis la Reine d'Egypte!" who that has felt with Swinburne that Mary Stuart's cold cruelty prevailed not with Chastelard, for with XIX [22] SOCIETY her Ronsard in hand he met death with joy so that he might see that beautiful wicked face once more; who that has feh the powxr of these and other instances (why should we multiply them?) will deny that there is here an inscrutable secret ? Baffled we must ever be if we try to explain the mys- tery. We feel it, though we cannot analyze it. But we should beware of one pitfall. In this, as in all mysteries, we have an instance of a duality which cannot be overlooked. It is easy enough to consider only one side of the question. Take the physical side alone : it does not require the lore of a Bran- tome or a Boccaccio to point out that, if we do not acknowl- edge the power of beauty over the senses, we shall go terribly astray. But is this all? Surely the other aspect of the mys- tery inevitably must be met. The wit, the intellectual fire, the quickness of apprehension, what would sensual beauty be without these? Take them together, and you feel what magnetic charm may be, though you cannot explain it. The number of those who possess the secret is not so great in the present day that we need fear the subjugation of the entire race of man in the twentieth century. The exceptions to the commonplace must always be few. Rare instances may exist now. Let us be thankful for them, as we are for genius, and turn our attention to the future woman. The future woman! There are many burning ques- tions she will help to disentangle, but we cannot touch upon them here. Probably the improvement in her economic con- ditions may, as the Americans foresee, effect wonders. But I shall be told that I have for my ideal something made up of Vittoria Colonna, Diane de PoitierSj and Miss Nightingale. No, my aim is much more humble. I dream of a possible woman having something of the frank, fearless grace, the self- reliant daring, the open-air freedom of the Englishwoman of the past. Give her also charm and sympathy and capa- bility of deep passion, and we may find . . . but, if I do not take care I shall begin to predict, and I have promised not to do so. XIX [23] XX THE CHILD "THE BEGINNING OF THE MIND" BY H. G. WELLS /f RE our children getting the very best training possible for those trials of life which they, like the rest of us, must one day face? To every father and mother that question ranks high among the most important. Even some of us who are not parents may, perhaps, have recognized the value of the question as bearing on the future of the world, and may be willing to give the subject closer consideration. Is it possible that the way of the beast with its cub is not the best way? that intel- lect is better than instinct in the raising of the human young? The Indian mother lashed her pappoose upon her back, and there it hung, to live or to die as chance might fall, as the Great Spirit willed. We have rejected ^^ instinct,^' in that aspect at least, and summon intellect in the guise of learned doctors to advise us as to every step in our darling's physical career. But in matters of mentality, so far as. babies are concerned, we still cling to the blind method of instinct. The child learns what it can, what chance dictates, though these things may easily mean life or death to its mental and its moral being. Perchance we have only acted thus at hazard because along these lines science has offered us no positive guide. Physicians for the mind and soul have no such assured authority among us, no such positive facts upon which to act, as have their brethren of the body. Each of us therefore, however unwilling and in- competent, feels himself compelled to assume the responsibility XX [i] THE CHILD oj the judge, and to do jor ^k children what to him seems good. With most oj us, it is to be feared, this results merely in letting things drijt till the child is old enough to go to school. Then as the little one begins its second birth into the world oj books, we marvel to find its character already partly jormed. It is, we say, a bright child or a determined one. It has caught — jeeble verb vividly stiggestive oj our own sense oj haphazard helplessness — it has caught some ideas quickly, others it has jailed to assimilate. Heredity, which accuses our ancestors equally with ourselves, is a so much more comjortable explana- tion to ofjer jor the youngster^s jailures, than to blame them upon our own ignorance, misguidance, and neglect. Fortunately, jor our recently aiuakening consciences, science begins to investigate this subject along with others. The whole problem is as yet at an elementary stage; but no suggestions have been advanced more valuable than those oj Mr. H. G. Wells. Mr. Wells, who first became knoivn to most oj us some dozen years ago as a writer oj jantastic tales about the future, has grad- ually, with deepening interest in the social problems he por- trayed, abandoned the story-telling part oj his books and plunged ever more thoughtjully and earnestly into their philosophic side. To-day he stands among the most vigorous and most advanced oj our social teachers, an "Associe de I'lnstitut International de Sociologie." He preaches a "New Republicanism,^^ to which he makes occasional rejerence below. His "New Republicans^^ are to devote themselves to the juture and ignore the past, to bind themselves not to any single land, but to a league oj new thought and higher purpose extending through all lands. Perhaps these ideas are jancijul, but nothing could be more practical than his approach to the practical problem oj the conditions which do and which should surround the child. The newborn child is at first no more than an animal. Indeed, it is among the lowest and most helpless of all animals, a mere vegetative lump; assimilation incarnate— wailing. It is for the first day in its Hfe deaf, it squints blindly at the world, its limbs are beyond its control, its hands clutch drowningly XX [ 2 ] THE CHILD at anything whatever that drifts upon this vast sea of being into which it has plunged so amazingly. And imperceptibly, subtly, so subtly that never at any time can we mark with cer- tainty the increment of its coming, there creeps into this soft and claimant little creature a mind, a will, a personality, the beginning of all that is real and spiritual in man. In a httle while there are eyes full of interest and clutching hands full of purpose, smiles and frowns, the babbhng beginning of ex- pression and affections and aversions. Before the first year is out there are obedience and rebeUion, choice and self-control, speech has commenced, and the struggle of the newcomer to stand on his feet in this world of men. The process is un- analyzable; given a certain measure of care and protection, these things come spontaneously, with the merest rough en- couragement of things and voices about the child they are evoked. . But every day the inherent impulse makes a larger demand upon the surroundings of the child, if it is to do its best and fullest. Obviously, quite apart from physical consequences, the environment of a little child may be good or bad, better or worse for it in a thousand different ways. It may be dis- tracting or over-stimulating, it may evoke and increase fear, it may be drab and dull and depressing, it may be stupefymg, it may be misleading and productive of vicious habits of mmd. And our business is to find just what is the best possible en- vironment, the one that will give the soundest and fullest growth, not only of body, but of intclHgence. _ Now from the very earliest phase the infant stands m need of a succession of interesting things. At first these are mere vague sense impressions, but in a month or so there is a dis- tinct looking at objects; presently follow reaching and clutch- ing, and soon the little creature is urgent for fresh things to see, handle, hear, fresh experiences of all sorts, fresh combi- nations of things already known. The newborn mind is soon as hungry as the body. And if a healthy well-fed child cries, it is probably by reason of this unsatisfied hunger, it lacks an interest, it is bored, that dismal vacant suffering that punishes the failure of things living to live fully and completely. As XX [ 3 ] THE CHILD Mr. Charles Booth has pojpbtl out in his Life and Labor oj the People, it is probable that in this respect the children of the relatively poor are least at a disadvantage. The very poor infant passes its life in the family room, there is a going and coming, an interesting activity of domestic work on the part of its mother, the preparation of meals, the intermittent pres- ence of the father, the whole gamut of its mother's unsophis- ticated temper. It is carried into crowded and eventful streets at all hours. It participates in pothouse soirees and assists at the business of shopping. It may not lead a very hygienic life, but it does not lead a dull one. Contrast with its lot that of the lonely child of some woman of fashion, leading its beauti- fully non-bacterial life in a carefully secluded nursery under the control of a virtuous, punctual, invariable, conscientious rather than emotional nurse. The poor little soul wails as often for events as the slum baby does for nourishment. Into its gray nursery there rushes every day, or every other day, a breathless, preoccupied, excessively dressed, cleverish, many- sided, fundan^entally silly, and universally incapable woman, vociferates a httle conventional affection, slaps a kiss or so upon her offspring, and p^oes off again to collect that daily meed of admiration and cheap envy which is the gusto of her world. After that gushing, rustling, incomprehensible pas- sage, the child relapses into the boring care of its bored hireling for another day. The nurse writes her letters, mends her clothes, reads and thinks of the natural interests of her own Ufe, and the child is "good" just in proportion to the extent to which it doesn't "worry." The ideal environment should contain the almost constant presence of the mother, for no one is so likely to be constantly various and interesting and so untiring as she. It is entirely on account of this ideal environment that monogamy finds its practical sanction, because it insures the presiding mother the maximum of security and self-respect. A woman who enjoys the full rights of a wife without a complete discharge of the duties of motherhood profits by the imputation of things she has failed to perform. To secure an ideal environment for children in as many cases as possible is the second of the XX [4] THE CHILD two great practical ends — ^the first being sound births, for which the rules of sexual morality exist. The ideal environment should no doubt centre about a nursery — a clean, airy, brightly Ht, brilliantly adorned room, into which there should be a frequent coming and going of things and people ; but from the time the child begins to recog- nize objects and individuals it should be taken for little spells into other rooms and different surroundings. In the homely, convenient, servantless abode over which the able-bodied, capable, skilful, civilized women of the future will preside, the child will naturally follow its mother's morning activities from room to room. Its mother will talk to it, chance visitors will sign to it. There should be a pubhc or private garden available where its perambulator could stand in fine weather; and its promenades should not be too much a matter of routine. To go along a road with some traffic is better for a child than to go along a secluded path between hedges; a street corner is better than a laurel plantation as a pitch for perambulators. When a child is five or six months old it will have got a certain use and grip with its hands, and it will want to handle and examine and test the properties of as many objects as it can. Gifts begin. There seems scope for a wiser selection in these early gifts. At present it is chiefly woolly animals with bells inside them, woolly balls, and so forth, that reach the baby's hands. There is no reason at all why a child's attention should be so predominantly fixed on wool. These toys are colored very tastefully, but as Preyer has advanced strong reasons for supposing that the child's discrimination of colors is extremely rudimentary until the second year has begun, these tasteful arrangements are simply an appeal to the parent. Light, dark, yellow, perhaps red and "other colors" seem to constitute the color system of a very young infant. It is to the parent, too, that the humorous and reaHstic quality of the animal forms appeal. The parent does the shopping and has to be amused. The babyish parent who really ought to have a doll instead of a child is sufficiently abundant in our world to dominate the shops, and there is a vast traffic in facetious baby toys, facetious nursery furniture, XX [5] THE CHILD "art" cushions and "qua^" baby clothing, all amazingly delightful things for grown-up people. These things are bought and grouped about the child, the child is taught tricks to complete the picture, and parentage becomes a very amus- ing afternoon employment. So long as convenience is not sacrificed to the aesthetic needs of the nursery, and so long as common may compete with "art" toys, there is no great harm done, but it is well to understand how irrelevant these things are to the real needs of a child's development. A child of a year or less has neither knowledge nor imagi- nation to see the point of these animal resemblances — much less to appreciate either quaintness or prettiness. He is much more interested in the crumpling and tearing of paper, in the crumpling of chintz, and in the taking off and replacing of the lid of a little box. I think it would be possible to devise a much more entertaining set of toys for an infant than is at present procurable, but, unhappily, they would not appeal to the intelligence of the average parent. There would be, for example, one or two little boxes of different shapes and substances with lids to take off and on, one or two rubber things that would bend and twist about and admit of chewing, a ball and box made of china, a fluffy, flexible thing like a rabbit's tail w^ith the vertebrae replaced by cane, a velvet- covered ball, a powder puff, and so on. They could all be plainly and vividly colored with some non-soluble inodorous color. They would be about on the cot and on the rug where the child was put to kick and crawl. They would have to be too large to swallow and they would all get pulled and mauled about until they were more or less destroyed. Some would probably survive for many years as precious treasures, as be- loved objects, as powers and symbols in the mysterious secret fetichism of childhood — confidants and sympathetic friends. While the child is engaged with its first toys, and w^ith the collection of rudimentary sense impressions, it is also develop- ing a remarkable variety of noises and babblements from which it will presently disentangle speech. Day by day it will show a stronger and stronger bias to associate definite sounds with definite objects and ideas, a bias so comparatively powerful XX [6] THE CHILD in the mind of man as to distinguish him from all other living creatures. Other creatures may think, may, in a sort of con- crete way, come almost indefinably near reason (as Professor Lloyd Morgan in his very delightful Animal Life and Intel- ligence has shown) ; but man alone has in speech the apparatus, the possibility, at any rate, of being a reasoning and reasonable creature. It is, of course, not his only apparatus. Men may think out things with drawings, with little models, with signs and symbols upon paper, but speech is the common way, the highroad, the current coin of thought. With speech humanity begins. With the dawn of speech the child ceases to be an animal we cherish, and crosses the boundary into distinctly human intercourse. There begins in its mind the development of the most wonderful of all con- ceivable apparatus, a subtle and intricate keyboard, that will end at last with thirty or forty or fifty thousand keys. This queer, staring, soft little being in its mother's arms is organiz- ing something within itself, beside which the most wonderfully organized orchestra one could imagine is a lump of rude clum- siness. There will come a time when, at the merest touch upon those keys, image will follow image and emotion develop into emotion, when the whole creation, the deeps of space, the minutest beauties of the microscope, cities, armies, passions, splendors, sorrows, will leap out of darkness into the conscious being of thought, when this interwoven net of brief, small sounds will form the centre of a web that will hold together in its threads the universe, the All, visible and invisible, ma' terial and immaterial, real and imagined, of a human mind. And if we are to make the best of a child it is in no way secondary to its physical health and growth that it should acquire a great and thorough command over speech, not merely that it should speak, but, what is far more vital, that it should understand swiftly and subtly things written and said. Indeed, this is more than any physical need. The body is the substance and the implement; the mind, built and compact of language, is the man. All that has gone before, all that we have discussed of sound birth and physical growth and care, is no more than the making ready of the soil for the mind that is to grow therein. XX [7] THE CHILD As we come to this matter ^ language we come a step nearer to the intimate reahties of our subject, we come to the mental plant that is to bear the flower and the ripe fruit of the in- dividual life. The next phase of our inquiry, therefore, is to examine how we can get this mental plant, this foundation substance, this abundant mastered language best developed in the individual, and how far we may go to insure this best development for all the children born into the world. From the ninth month onward the child begins serious attempts to talk. In order that it may learn to do this as easily as possible it requires to be surrounded by people speaking one language and speaking it with a uniform accent. Those who are most in the child's hearing should endeavor to speak — even when they are not addressing the child — deliberately and clearly. All authorities are agreed upon the mischievous effect of what is called "baby talk," the use of an extensive sham vocabulary, a sort of deciduous milk vocabulary that will presently have to be shed again. Froebel and Preyer join hands on this. The child's funny little perversions of speech are really genuine attempts to say the right word, and we simply cause trouble and hamper development if we give back to the seeking mind its own blunders again. When a child wants to indicate milk, it wants to say milk, and not "mooka" or "mik," and when it wants to indicate bed the needed word is not "bedder" or "bye-bye," but "bed." But we give the little thing no chance to get on in this way until suddenly one day we discover it is "time the child spoke plainly." There comes an age when children absolutely loathe these adult imbecilities. Preyer has pointed out very instructively the way in which the quite sufficiently difficult matter of the use of I, mine, me, my, you, yours, and your is made still more difficult by those about the child adopting irregularly the ex- perimental idioms it produces. When a child says to its mother, "Me go mome," it is doing its best to speak English, and its remark should be received without worrying com- ment; but when a mother says to her child, "Me go mome," she is simply behaving stupidly and losing an opportunity of teaching her child its mother-tongue. XX [8] THE CHILD In learning to speak, the children of the more prosperous classes are probably at a considerable advantage when com- pared with their poorer fellow- children. They hear a clearer and more uniform intonation than the blurred, uncertain speech of our commonalty, that has resulted from the re- action of the great synthetic process of the past century upon dialects. But this natural advantage of the richer child is discounted in one of two ways : in the first place by the mother, in the second by the nurse. The mother in the more pros- perous classes is often much more vain and trivial than the lower-class woman; she looks to her children for amusement and makes them contributors to her "effect," and by taking up their quaint and pretty mispronunciations and devising humorous additions to their natural baby talk, she teaches them to be much greater babies than they could ever possibly be' themselves. They specialize as charming babies until their mother tires of the pose, and then they are thrust back into the nursery to recover leeway, if they can, under the care of governess or nurse. The second disadvantage of the upper-class child is the foreign nurse or nursery governess. There is a widely dif- fused idea that a child is particularly apt to master and retain languages, and people try and inoculate with French and Ger- man as Lord Herbert of Cherbury would have inoculated children with antidotes for all the ills their flesh was heir to — even, poor little wretches, to an anticipatory regimen for gout. The root-error of these attempts to form infantile poly- glots is embodied in an unverified quotation from Byron's Beppo, dear to pedagogic writers — "Wax to receive and marble to retain " runs the line — which the curious may discover to be a descrip- tion of the faithful lover, though it has become as firmly as- sociated with the child-mind as has Sterne's "tempering the wind to the shorn lamb" with Holy Writ. And this idea of infantile receptivity and retentiveness is held by an unthink- ing world in spite of the universally accessible fact that hardly one of us can remember anything that happened before the XX [9] THE CHILD age of five, and veiy little Uw,t happened before seven or eight, and that children of five or six, removed into foreign surround- ings, will in a year or so — if special measures are not taken — reconstruct their idiom and absolutely forget every word of their mother-tongue. This foreign nurse comes into the child's world, bringing with her quite weird errors in the quantities, the accent, and idiom of the mother-tongue, and greatly increas- ing the difficulty and delay on the road to thought and speech.' And this attempt to acquire a foreign language prematurely at the expense of the mother-tongue, to pick it up cheaply by making the nurse an informal teacher of languages, entirely ignores a fact upon which I would lay the utmost stress in this paper, which indeed is the gist of this paper, that only a very small minority of English or American people have more than half mastered the splendid heritage of their native speech. To this neglected and most significant limitation the amount of public attention given at present is quite surprisingly small. There can be little or no dispute that the English language in its completeness presents a range too ample and appliances too subtle for the needs of the great majority of those who profess to speak it. I do not refer to the half-civilized and altogether barbaric races who are coming under its sway, but to the people we are breeding of our own race — the barbarians of our streets, our suburban "white niggers," with a thousand a year and the conceit of Imperial destinies. They live in our mother-tongue as some half-civilized invaders might live in a gigantic and splendidly equipped palace. They misuse this, they waste that, they leave whole corridors and wings unexplored, to fall into disuse and decay. I doubt if the ordi- nary member of the prosperous classes in England has much more than a- third of the English language in use, and more than a half in knowledge, and as we go down the social scale we may come at last to strata having but a tenth part of our full vocabulary, and much of that blurred and vaguely under- * The same objection applies to the Indian ayah and the black " mammy," who are such kind, slavish, and picturesque additions to the ensemble of white mother and children. XX [ ID ] THE CHILD stood. The speech of the Colonist is even poorer than the speech of the home-staying English. In America, just as in Great Britain and her Colonies, there is the same limitation and the same disuse. Partly, of course, this is due to the petti- ness of our thought and experience, and so far it can only be remedied by a general intellectual amplification; but partly it is due to the general ignorance of English prevailing through- out the v^^orld. It is atrociously taught, and taught by ignorant men. It is atrociously and meanly written. So far as this second cause of sheer ignorance goes, the gaps in knowledge are continually resulting in slang and the addition of needless neologisms to the language. People come upon ideas that they know no English to express and strike out the new phrase in a fine burst of ignorant discovery. There are Americans in particular who are amazingly apt at this sort of thing. They take an enormous pride in the jargon they are perpetually in- creasing — they boast of it, they give exhibition performances in it, they seem to regard it as the culminating flower of their Continental Republic — as though the Old World had never heard of shoddy. But indeed they are in no better case than that unfortunate lady at Earlswood who esteems newspapers stitched with unravelled carpet and trimmed with orange peel the extreme of human splendor. In truth, their pride is base- less, and this slang of theirs no sort of distinction whatever. Let me assure them that in our heavier way we in this island are just as busy defiling our common inheritance. We can send a team of linguists to America who will murder and mis- understand the language against any eleven the Americans may select. Of course, there is a natural and necessary growth and development in a living language, a growth that no one may arrest. In appliances, in politics, in science, in philosophical interpretation there is a perpetual necessity for new words, words to express new ideas and new relationships, words free from ambiguity and encumbering associations. But the neolo- gisms of the street and the saloon rarely supply any occasion of this kind. For the most part they are just the stupid efforts of ignorant men to supply the unnecessary. And side by side XX [ 1 1 ] THE CHILD with the invention of infq^pr cheap substitutes for existing words and phrases, and infinitely more serious than that in- vention, goes on a perpetual misuse and distortion of those that are insufficiently known. These are processes not of growth but of decay — they distort, they render obsolete, and they destroy. The obsolescence and destruction of words and phrases cuts us off from the nobility of our past, from the severed masses of our race over-seas, far more effectually than any grov/th of neologisms. A language may grow — our language must grow — it may be clarified and refined and strengthened, but it need not suffer the fate of an algal filament and pass constantly into rottenness and decay whenever growth is no longer in progress. That has been the fate of languages in the past because of the feebler organization, the slenderer, slower intercommunication, and above all the insufficient records of human communities; but the time has come now — or at the worst is rapidly coming — ^when this will cease to be a fated thing. We may have a far more copious and varied tongue than had Addison or Spenser — that is no disaster — but there is no reason why we should not keep fast hold of all they had. There is no reason why the whole fine tongue of Elizabethan England should not be at our disposal still. Con- ceivably Addison would find the rich, allusive English of George Meredith obscure; conceivably we of this time might find a thousand words and phrases of the year 2000 strange and perplexing ; but there is no reason why a time should ever come when what has been written well in English since Elizabethan times should no longer be understandable and fine. The prevailing ignorance of English in the English-speak- ing communities enormously hampers the development of the racial consciousness. Except for those who wish to bawl the crudest thoughts, there is no means of reaching the whole mass of these communities to-day. So far as material re- quirements go it would be possible to fling a thought broad- cast like seed over the whole world to-day, it would be possible to get a book into the hands of half the adults of our race. But at the hands and eyes one stops — there is a gap in the brains. Only thoughts that can be expressed in the meanest common- XX [ 12 ] THE CHILD places will ever reach the minds of the majority of the English- speaking peoples under present conditions. A writer who aims to be widely read to-day must perpetually halt, must perpetually hesitate at the words that arise in his mind; he must ask himself how many people v/ill stick at this word altogether or miss the meaning it should carry; he must ransack his memory for a commonplace periphrase, an ingenious rearrangement of the familiar; he must omit or over- accentuate at every turn. Such simple and necessary words as "obsolescent," "deliquescent," "segregation," for example, must be abandoned by the man who would write down to the general reader; he must use "impertinent" as if it were a synonym for "impudent" and "indecent" as the equivalent of "obscene." And in the face of this wide ignorance of English, seeing how few people can either read or write English with any subtlety, and how disastrously this reacts upon the general development of thought and understanding amidst the English-speaking peoples, it would be preposterous, even if the. attempt were successful, to complicate the first linguistic struggles of the infant with the beginnings of a second language. But people deal thus lightly with the mother-tongue because they know so little of it that they do not even suspect their own ignorance of its burden and its powers. They speak a little set of ready-made phrases, they write it scarcely at all, and all they read is the weak and shallow prose of popular fiction and the daily press. That is knowing a language within the meaning of their minds, and such a knowledge a child may very well be left to "pick up" as it may. Side by side with this they will presently set themselves to erect a similar "knowl- edge" of two or three other languages. One is constantly meeting not only women but men who will solemnly profess to "know" English and Latin, French, German, and Italian, perhaps Greek, who are in fact— beyond the limited range of food, clothing, shelter, trade, crude nationalism, social con- ventions, and personal vanity — no better than the deaf and dumb. In spite of the fact that they will sit with books in their hands, visibly reading, turning pages, pencilling com- ments, in spite of the fact that they will discuss authors and XX [ 13 ] THE CHILD repeat criticisms, it is as lig^less to express new thoughts to them as it would ])e to seek for appreciation in the ear of a hippopotamus. Their hnguistic instruments are no more capable of contemporary thought than a tin whistle, a xylo- phone, and a drum are capable of rendering the Eroica Sym- phony. In being also ignorant of itself this wide ignorance of English partakes of all that is most hopeless in ignorance. Except among a few writers and critics, there is little sense of defect in this matter. The common man does not know that his limited vocabulaiy limits his thoughts. He knows that there are "long words" and rare words in the tongue, but he does not know that this implies the existence of definite meanings beyond his mental range. His poor collection of cvery-day words, worn-out phrases, and battered tropes constitute what he calls "plain English," and speech beyond these limits he seriously believes to be no more than the back-slang of the educated class, a mere elaboration and darkening of inter- course to secure privacy and distinction. No doubt there is justification enough for his suspicion in the exploits of pre- tentious and garrulous souls. But it is the superficial justifi- cation of a profound and disastrous error. A gap in a man's vocabulary is a hole and tatter in his mind; words he has may indeed be weakly connected or wrongly connected — one may find the whole keyboard jerry-built, for example, in the English- speaking Baboo — but words he has not signify ideas that he has no means of clearly apprehending; they are patches of im- perfect mental existence, factors in the total amount of his personal failure to live. This world-wide ignorance of English, this darkest cloud almost upon the fair future of our confederated peoples, is something more than a passive ignorance. It is active, it is aggressive. In England at any rate, if one talks beyond the range of white-nigger English, one commits a social breach. There are countless "book words" well-bred people never use. A writer with any tenderness for half-forgotten phrases, any disposition to sublimate the mingling of unaccustomed words, runs as grave a risk of organized disregard as if he tampered XX [ 14 ] THE CHILD with the improper. The leaden censures of the Times, for example, await any excursion beyond its own battered circum- locutions. Even nowadays, and when they are veterans, Mr. George Meredith and Mr. Henley get ever and again a screed of abuse from some hot champion of Lower Division Civil Service prose. "Plain English" such a one will call his de- sideratum, as one might call the viands on a New Cut barrow "plain food." The hostility to the complete language is everywhere. I wonder just how many homes may not be witnessing the. self-same scene as I write. Some little child is struggling with the unmanageable treasure of a new-found word, has produced it at last, a nice long word, forthwith to be "laughed out" of such foolish ambitions by its anxious parent. People train their children not to speak English beyond a threadbare minimum; they resent it upon platform and in pulpit, and they avoid it in books. Schoolmasters as a class know little of the language. In none of our schools, not even in the more efficient of our elementary schools, is English adequately taught. . . . And these people expect the South African Dutch to take over their neglected tongue! As though the poor partial King's English of the British Colonist was one whit better than the Taal! To give them the reality of what English might be: that were a different matter alto- gether. These things it is the clear business of our New Republi- cans to alter. It follows, indeed, but it is in no way secondary to the work of securing sound births and healthy childhoods, that we should secure a vigorous, ample mental basis for the minds born with these bodies. We have to save, to revive this scattered, warped, tarnished, and neglected language of ours, if we wish to save the future of our world. We should save not only the world of those who at present speak English, but the world of many kindred and associated peoples who would willingly enter into our synthesis, could we make it wide enough and sane enough and noble enough for their honor. To expect that so ample a cause as this should find any support amongst the festering confusion of the old politics is to expect too much. There is no party for the English language XX [ 15 ] THE CHILD anywhere in the world. Wj^tiave to take this problem and deal with it as though the old politics, which slough so slowly, were already happily excised. To begin with, we may give our attention to the foundation of this foundation, to the growth of speech in the developing child. From the first the child should hear a clear and uniform pronunciation about it, a precise and careful idiom and words definitely used. Since language is to bring people together and not to keep them apart, it would be well if throughout the English-speaking world there could be one accent, one idiom, and one intonation. This there never has been yet, but there is no reason at all why it should not be. There is arising even now a standard of good English to which many dialects and many influences are contributing. From the Highlanders and the Irish, for example, the English of the South are learning the possibilities of the aspirate h and wh, which latter had entirely and the former very largely dropped out of use among them a hundred years ago. The drawling speech of Wessex and New England — for the main features of what people call Yankee intonation are to be found in per- fection in the cottages of Hampshire and West Sussex — are being quickened perhaps from the same sources. The Scotch are acquiring the English use of shall and will and the confu- sion of reconstruction is world-wide among our vowels. The German w of Mr. Samuel Weller has been obliterated within the space of a generation or so. There is no reason at all why this natural development of the uniform English of the coming age should not be greatly forwarded by our deliberate efforts, why it should not be possible within a little while to define a standard pronunciation of our tongue. We have available now for the first time, in the more highly evolved forms of phonograph and telephone, a means of storing, analyzing, transmitting, and referring to sounds, that should be of very considerable value in the attempt to render a good and beautiful pronunciation of English uniform throughout the world. It would not be unreasonable to require from all those who are qualifying for the work of education the read- ing aloud of long passages in the standard accent. At present ^x. [i6] THE CHILD there is no requirement of this sort in England and too often our elementary teachers at any rate, instead of being mis- sionaries of linguistic purity, are centres of diffusion for blurred and vicious perversions of our speech. In the pulpit and the stage, moreover, we have ready to hand most potent instru- ments of dissemination, that need nothing but a little sharpen- ing to help- greatly toward this end. At the entrance of almost all professions nowadays stands an examination that includes English, and there would be nothing revolutionary in adding to that written paper an oral test in the standard pronuncia- tion. By active exertion to bring these things about the New Republican could do much to secure that every child of our English-speaking people throughout the world would hear in school and church and entertainment the same clear and defi- nite accent. The child's mother and nurse would be helped to acquire almost insensibly a sound and confident pronuncia- tion. No observant man who has lived at all broadly, meet- ing and talking with people of diverse culture and tradition, but knows how much our intercourse is cumbered by hesita- tions about quality and accent, and petty differences of phrase and idiom, and how greatly intonation and accent may warp and limit our sympathy. And while they are doing this for the general linguistic atmosphere, the New Republicans could also attempt some- thing to reach the children in detail. By instinct nearly every mother wants to teach. Some teach by instinct, but for the most part there is a need of guid- ance in their teaching. At present these first and very im- portant phases in education arc guided almost entirely by tradition. The necessary singing and talking to very young children is done in imitation of similar singing and talking; it is probably done no better, it may possibly be done much worse, than it was done two hundred years ago. A very great amount of permanent improvement in human affairs might be secured in this direction by the expenditure of a few thou- sand pounds in the systematic study of the most educational method of dealing with children in the first two or three years of life, and in the intelligent propagation of the knowledge XX [ 17 ] THE CHILD obtained. There exist ali^Jy, it is true, a number of Child Study Associations, Parents^ Unions, and the like, but for the most part these are quite ineffectual talking societies, akin to Browning Societies, Literary and Natural History Societies: they attain a trifling amount of mutual improvement at their best, the members read papers to one another, and a few medical men and schools secure a needed advertisement. They have no organization, no concentration of their energy, and their chief effect seems to be to present an interest in education as if it were a harmless, pointless fad. But if a few men of means and capacity were to organize a committee with adequate funds, secure the services of specially endowed men for the exhaustive study of developing speech, publish a digested report, and, with the assistance of a good writer or so, produce very cheaply, advertise vigorously, and dis- seminate widely a small, clearly printed, clearly written book of pithy instructions for mothers and nurses in this matter of early speech they would quite certainly effect a great im- provement in the mental foundations of the coming genera- tion. We do not yet appreciate the fact that for the first time in the history of the world there exists a state of society in which almost every nurse and mother reads. It is no longer necessary to rely wholly upon instinct and tradition, there- fore, for the early stages of a child's instruction. We can reinforce and organize these things through the printed word. For example, an important factor in the early stage of speech-teaching is the nursery rhyme. A little child, toward the end of the first year, having accumulated a really very comprehensive selection of sounds and noises by that time, begins to imitate first the associated motions, and then the sounds of various nursery rhymes — pat-a-cake, for example. In the book I imagine, there would be, among many other things, a series of little versicles, old and new, in which, to the accompaniment of simple gestures, all the elementary sounds of the language could be easily and agreeably made familiar to the child's ears. And the same book I think might well contain a list of foundation things and words and certain elementary forms of XX [ i8 ] THE CHILD expression which the child should become perfecdy familiar with in the first three or four years of life. Much of each little child's vocabulary is its personal adventure, and Heaven save us all from system in excess ! But I think it would be possible for a subtle psychologist to trace through the easy natural tangle of the personal brier-rose of speech certain necessary strands, that hold the whole growth together and render its later expansion easy and swift and strong. Whatever else the child gets, it must get these fundamental strands well and early if it is to do its best. If they do not develop now their imperfection will cause delay and difficulty later. There are, for example, among these fundamental necessities, idioms to express comparison, to express position in space and time, elementary conceptions of form and color, of tense and mood, the pronouns and the like. No doubt, in one way or another, most of these forms are acquired by every child, but there is no reason why their acquisition should not be watched with the help of a wisely framed list, and any deficiency deliber- ately and carefully supplied. It would have to be a wisely framed list, it would demand the utmost effort of the best in- telligence, and that is why something more than the trades- man enterprise of publishers is needed in this work. The publisher's ideal of an author of an educational work is a girl in her teens working for pocket-money. What is wanted is a little quintessential book better and cheaper than any pub- lisher, publishing for gain, could possibly produce, a book so good that imitation would be difficult, and so cheap and universally sold that no imitation would be profitable. . . . But in this discussion of school-books and the like, we wander a little from our immediate topic of mental beginnings. At the end of the fifth year, as the natural outcome of its instinctive effort to experiment and learn acting amidst wisely ordered surroundings, the little child should have acquired a certain definite foundation for the educational structure. It should have a vast variety of perceptions stored in its mind and a vocabulary of three or four thousand words, and among these and holding them together there should be certain struc- tural and cardinal ideas. They are ideas that will have been XX [ 19 ] THE CHILD gradually and imperccptil^ instilled, and they are necessary as the basis of a sound mental existence. There must be, to begin with, a developing sense and feeling for truth and for duty as something distinct and occasionally conflicting with immediate impulse and desire, and there must be certain clear intellectual elements established already almost impregnably in the mind, certain primary distinctions and classifications. Many children are called stupid and begin their educational career with needless difficulty through an unsoundness of these fundamental intellectual elements, an unsoundness in no way inherent but the result of accident and neglect. And a starting handicap of this sort may go on increasing right through the whole life. The child at five, unless it is color blind, should know the range of colors by name and distinguish them easily, blue and green not excepted; it should be able to distinguish pink from pale red and crimson from scarlet. Many children through the neglect of those about them do not distinguish these colors until a very much later age. I think also — in spite of the fact that many adults go vague and ignorant on these points — that a child of five may have been taught to distinguish between a square, a circle, an oval, a triangle, and an oblong, and to use these words. It is easier to keep hold of ideas with words than without them, and none of these words should be impossible by five. The child should also know familiarly by means of toys, wood blocks, and so on, many elementary solid forms. It is matter of regret that in common language we have no easy, convenient words for many of these forms, and instead of being learnt easily and naturally in play they are left undistinguished and have to be studied later under circumstances of forbidding technicality. It would be quite easy to teach the child in an incidental way to distinguish cube, cyhnder, cone, sphere (or ball), prolate spheroid (which might be called "egg"), oblate spheroid (which might be called "squatty ball"), the pyramid, and various parallelopipeds, as, for example, the square slab, the oblong slab, the brick, and post. He could have these things added to his box of bricks by degrees, he would build with XX [ 20 ] THE CHILD them and combine them and play with them over and over again and absorb an intimate knowledge of their properties, just at the age when such knowledge is almost instinctively sought and is most pleasant and easy in its acquisition. These i things need not be specially forced upon him. In no way should he be led to emphasize them or give a priggish im- portance to his knowledge of them. They will come into his toys and play mingled with a thousand other interests, the fortifying powder of clear general ideas, amidst the jam of play. In addition the child should be able to count, it should be capable of some mental and experimental arithmetic, and I believe that a child of five might be able to give the sol-fa names to notes and sing these names at their proper pitch. Possibly in social intercourse the child will have picked up names for some of the letters of the alphabet, but there is no great hurry for that before five certainly, or even later. There is still a vast amount of things immediately about the child that need to be thoroughly learnt, and a premature attack on letters divides attention from these more appropriate and educational objects. It should be able to handle a pencil and amuse itself with freehand; and its mind should be quite uncontaminated by that imbecile drawing upon squared paper by means of which ignorant teachers destroy both the desire and the capacity to sketch in so many little children. Such sketching could be enormously benefited by a really intelli- gent teacher who would watch the child's efforts, and draw with the child just a little above its level. The child will already be a great student of picture-books at five, something of a critic (after the manner of the realistic school), and it will be easy to egg it almost imperceptibly to a level where copying from simple outline illustrations will become possible. About five, a present of some one of the plastic substitutes for modeling clay now sold by educational dealers, plasticine for example, will be a discreet and accept- able present to the child — if not to its nurse. The child's imagination will also be awake and active at five. He will look out on the world with anthropomorphic (or rather with pasdomorphic) eyes. He will be living on a XX [ 21 ] THE CHILD great flat earth — unless som^officious person has tried to mud- dle his wits by telling him the earth is round; amidst trees, animals, men, houses, engines, utensils, that are all capable of being good or naughty, all fond of nice things and hostile to nasty ones, all thumpaljle and perishable, and all conceiv- ably esurient. And the child should know of Fairy Land. The beautiful fancy of the "Little People," even if you do not give it to him, he will very probably get for himself; they will lurk always just out of reach of his desiring, curious eyes, amidst the grass and flowers and behind the wainscot and in the shadows of the bedroom. He will come upon their traces; they will do him little kindnesses. Their affairs should inter- weave with the affairs of the child's dolls and brick castles and toy foundlings. Little boys like dolls — preferably mascu- line and with movable limbs — as much as little girls do, albeit they are more experimental and less maternal in their manipu- lation. At first the child will scarcely be in a world of sus- tained stories, but very eager for anecdotes and simple short tales. At five I suppose a child would be hearing brief fairy- tales read aloud. At five it is undesirable that the child should have heard horrifying things and he should not be afraid of the dark. It is, I am sorry to beheve, very difficult to elimi- nate the horrors of fear absolutely from a child's life. Vul- garly illustrated toy-books should be guarded against. Pic- tures of ugly monsters will haunt imaginative children for years. An intelligent censorship may do much to ward off these sufferings until this passion of fear — so needless in the civilized life — begins that process of withering which is its destiny under our present and future securit} , Cowardly mothers and nurses who scuttle from cows and dogs and prancing horses may do infinite harm to a child by confirming this vestige of our animal past. The simple and obvious fearlessness of those about him should wean the child steadily from his instinctive dread of strangers and strange animals and strange unexpected objects and sudden loud noises. . . . This is the hopeful foundation upon which at or about the fifth year the formal education of every child in a really civilized community ought to begin. XX [ 22 ] XXI LIFE'S INTERCOURSE "LANGUAGE AS THE INTERPRETER OF LIFE" BY BENJAMIN IDE WHEELER PRESIDENT OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA . creed religious liberty; and his subsequent convocation of th^ Douma was closely followed by directions to the Metropolitan who is president of the Holy Synod to call a general council of the Orthodox Greek Church. No such council had met since 1654. It can hardly fail to give a new direction to the religious life of the mass of the Russian people.^ Already they have shown a new interest in what it stands for, by a general inquiry for copies of the Bible. More parts of Bibles and Testaments were sold in Russia last year than in any year before, over half a million in European Russia alone. The fruits have not thus far made for peace, but they may be worth more than peace. A department of the Holy Synod until recently, as a bureau of "Spiritual Censure," held control of all publications on ecclesiastical' history, theology, or philosophy. Nothing could be published or sold on these topics without its permission. It is worth noting that from 1863 this bureau forbade the cir- culation of any part of the Old Testament, except the Psalms, in the languages of the people. There was too much in the other books that breathed the spirit of revolution. ' Autobiography of Andrew D. White, II. chap. 36. Before these changes, Pobedonostseff and his school had relied on the popular reverence for religion as the main support of autocracy. If there be such a thing as a religious stage of development for nations, Russia was still in it. The events of 1906 would indicate that reverence, for her state church at least, had been seriously weakened. XXXIV [ 21 ] THE POWER OF RELIGION It may indeed be ^My said that no single cause for the spread of religious liberty and, by consequence, of civil liberty in modern times has been so powerful as the circulation of the Bible in all languages. It is to-day pronounced by publishers to be the best-selling book in the world.* The market for it has steadily broadened with and because of the new lati- tude of interpretation and criticism countenanced by modern churches. The last sixty or seventy years has indeed given to Christen- dom a new Bible. It is not that so very much has been dis- covered by archaeologists or worked out by critical research, which was unknown before, but because the attitude of Chris- tian people and Christian ministers toward biblical study has become gradually revolutionized. Textual homilctics, textual theology, unscientific theories of interpretation, have become generally discredited. The spirit of free inquiry, which not long ago characterized but a few men like Strauss and Renan, has now begun to characterize all real Christian scholarship in the United States and most of it in the world at large. Here, from the absence of religious establishments and the presence of universal education at public charge, it has naturally had free scope. It has given a prominence before unknown in modern times, outside of China, to character and conduct as the foundations of a true life. It has brought the general Christian world to look upon them as about the only evidence worth hav- ing that in any man earth has been brought close to heaven, while still maintaining that character and conduct are the fruits of the ideal, the children of faith in the invisible and eternal. It has brought the wider world of civilized mankind in all conti- nents to care little for a man's theological beliefs, everything for his beliefs, his real beliefs, as to what is the true, the good, and the beautiful. Panislamism has gained a fresh inspiration from this source. * The North India Bible Society, which is sixty years old, published and circulated, between 1890 and 1900, a yearly average of 87,000 copies of Bibles, New Testaments, and selected portions of them. Since 1900 this annual output has been nearly doubled, and the number rose in 1905 to 195,879. XXXIV [ 22 ] THE POWER OF RELIGION The Young Turkish Party, already recognized as an important political force, founds itself on treating the Koran with the same free hand with which Christians treat the Bible, and so bringing its teachings into harmony with the new thought of a new time. During the last few years the American people have in- sisted, to a marked degree, on the observance of higher ethical standards on the part of their public and of their business men. The movement in this direction has been a steady one for more than half a century. In 1843 the foremost English novelist, fresh from a visit to the United States, could speak of it as "that Republic, but yesterday let loose upon her noble course, and but to-day so maimed and lamfe, so full of sores and ulcers, foul to the eye and almost hopeless to the sense, that her best friends turn from the loathsome creature with dis- gust."* So severe an arraignment was unjustified in 1843. It would have been impossible and unthinkable at any time since, let us say, the Civil War. But it was not the Civil War that elevated the moral standards of the people. War is a salvation to some souls, a damnation to many more. "Treasons, strata- gems, and spoils" — the spoils of the field and the spoils of the army contractor — make a poor soil for the growth of public morals. The American people have grown to a purer life, or at least to a demand for a purer life on the part of those who lead their fortunes, mainly by force of a world movement, which has simply found here the freest play. The better relations between Jew and Christian that now generally exist are attributable, in no small degree, to the growth of this ethical spirit; not so much because ethics make for fraternity, as that this growth proceeds from a tendency on the part of Christians toward acceptance of the same fundamental religious principles. The Jew has never troubled himself very much with the question of personal immortality, and all that goes with it of responsibility and retribution. His aim has been to make the best of earth ; his hope that 9f a Mes- sianic era here. Christian theology has looked more to a future ' Dickens in Martin Chuzzlewit, chap. xxii. XXXIV [ 23 ] THE POWER OF RELIGION world as the real home oypien, in an abode or state that, happy or miserable, was to endure forever. Christendom, during the last few years, has been approach- ing the Judaic view, as best expressive of the immediate ob- jects to be pursued in human life. Hence among those peoples which have gone farthest in this direction, the political and social condition of the Jews is more favorable than among those — like Russia, Roumania, and Austria— which have made no substantial change of position. If his life on this earth be the great thing for a man to regulate and plan for, why complain if the Jew wins the prizes of trade and wealth, though it be by concentrating his attention on material gains? "Go thou and do likewise" is becoming, perhaps too fast and with too little qualification, the general motto of the business world. Christian theology anticipated evolution in endeavoring to account for what is base in human nature. It set it to the account of original sin. To raise up a being infected with that not simply from his birth, but through an inheritance from ancestors infected with it for countless generations, was a task which God only could accomplish. To Him it was the work of a moment ; and they called it salvation. It was a theory well calculated to have a profound effect on the human mind. It gave an immense power to a priesthood believed to have the power of speaking for God and declaring to any man that his salvation had been accomplished. It put them by the side of kings and above kings. A time has come when the leaders of the church are begin- ning to say with John Fiske that "original sin is neither more nor less than the brute inheritance which every man carries with him, and the process of evolution is an advance toward true salvation," The church is changing — has changed — its ground. It is not losing — has not lost — its power. It makes use of the old truth in a new way. It was right at bottom. The unfolding of the law of evolution from the first, for those who accepted it, unquestionably tended to narrow the order of things in which man has his being. As the bond be XXXIV [ 24 ] THE POWER OF RELIGION tween him and the lowest forms of Hfe became visibly stronger, that between him and any form of life higher than himself be- came visibly weaker. He was of less importance in the world. Wallace could open the gates to the new vision of the past; he could not shut them. He could not lead men to any new standpoint from which they could look on the earth as the cen- tre of the intellectual or moral universe. The church, at first, everywhere disinclined — still much of it disinclined — to accept the theory of evolution with all that it im- plies, has begun to readjust itself to its new environment. If, she says, this new evolution can produce from some single torpid cell a being with the intellectual and moral force of man, why may not man contain the torpid cell out of which in some at least may be evolving and ultimately, in some other stage of being, may be evolved what for want of a better word we call a Spirit — something with an energy akin to what we name divine? Force is persistent. That it is we know. What it is we do not know. If persistent in what is material, why not persistent in what is immaterial? If persistent in what we call time and space, why not persistent in something which we do not dare to call time or space and vaguely name eternity ? But questions like these do not much concern the mass of humankind. The leaders of intellectual life are few. They are followed at a long interval. They know this well. It is their office, in every generation, to set the goal, but to moderate rather than to speed the pace of the people as they turn in the new direction. The leaders of intellectual life who are in positions of ecclesi- astical authority, under the influence of these forces, have every- where begun to preach a new theology. It is a theology of the present. It might almost be called a theology of the earth, earthy. Its foundation is still the existence of a great first cause, which men call God. Its aim is still to set forth the whole duty of man, and to found it on his duty toward this almighty and eternal source of his being. But it sets forth with less as- sumption of a knowledge of the unseen. No Nicene creed, no creed professing to define the genesis and nature and attributes of God, could ever be the product of the twentieth century. XXXIV [ 25 ] THE POWER OF RELIGION The modern pulpit and 0tr\d\ are content to say with St. Paul that "the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead." The churches of every faith, in some degree — of all in proportion to their share in the time-spirit of their generation — are pointing to Man as the only real revelation of the nature of God, and to the opportuni- ties of the present life as what chiefly concerns him, in his highest as well as his lowest desires and activities. One hears little in churches led by an educated clergy of a future heaven, and less of a future hell. It is this pressing, immediate world about us, that is their theme. "One world at a time" is more and more becoming the practical doctrine of the modern pulpit. Do your duty to-day, and be not anxious about to-morrow, whether it be the morrow of the next sunrise or of a million ages. What has been, what is to be, the effect of this change in the attitude of the church on the course of human history ? It will not remove the power of theistic appeal. If it should spread over all nations, and all faiths, it will leave unimpaired the mo- tives of duty to God and country. A war to maintain the honor of fatherland and of the fathers from whom it was inherited will always enlist the sympathies of the people with double force, if they are quickened by rchgious convictions. Recent events have shown that soldiers who believe they are fighting God's battles may yield before those not superior in numbers or arms who believe that in fighting they are honoring the first ancestors of the sovereign, whose spirit in an ancestor world holds sway over those of their own ancestors. The double character of the Mikado of Japan as spiritual leader and earthly sovereign, impressed by the institution of ancestor worship upon every Japanese from infancy, moves him far more deeply than the Russian muzhik is affected by his reverence for the Czar as head of his country's church. Admiral Togo's message to the Mikado last year, attributing to his superhuman influence the annihilation of the Russian fleet, spoke the real conviction of a great man and a great people. We must never forget that not only were the founders of all the great religions of Asiatic origin, but that religion is now a XXXIV [ 26 ] THE POWER OF RELIGION more vital force in Asia than on any other continent. The deep, if dreamy, spiritual insight, the brooding intellectual habit, the strength of antecedents, that belong to the East, put religion there in a position as lofty as it is unique. Hegel observed that there are two natural steps in human life, that of subjectivity and objectivity. The youth bends his thoughts toward the correspondence that he is to establish between himself and the universe. He proceeds from himself outward. He joins his life to the ideal, in hope and faith. Years pass and he has found his place. There is a round of daily duties and perhaps of pleasures, on which his attention centres. His thoughts now turn not to the ideal but to what Ufe in fact has brought him, and to how that shall be best accomplished. The race of man pursues the same stages. In the East they are still in the first. P^^ven in Japan, so largely occidentalized, they are constructing for themselves a new ideal of Christianity. Except for Japan, they are what they were. Subjectivity still holds them captive. China has recently abolished the requirement of famiharity with the Confucian classics on the part of those desiring official appointment or promotion. The first examination under the new system took place this fall, and the nine receiving the high- est marks were men educated in the United States or Europe — the first of them a doctor of philosophy and the next a doctor of civil law of an American university. A change like this involves, as a necessary consequence, the rise of new national ideals. The calm and restful tone of the Confucian philosophy of life will be replaced by something less smooth and more deep, more religious. The spirit of the West has burst upon the silent sea of self-satisfied seclusion on which China has been idly floating for two thousand years. It has troubled the waters. It may turn them into a river that will run far. As respects Mahometanism, the fundamental precepts of that faith are such as necessarily to give them a strong political effect.* Its adherents stand together, like the members 1 Only by force of the Treaty of Berlin of 1878 has religious tolera- tion been anything but an empty word at Constantinople. XXXIV [ 27 ] THE POWER OF RELIGION of a secret order, Ir^Piirope they cling to their religion as closely as in Asia. In 1900 seven thousand Mahometan Ser- vians suddenly left the country, because one Mahometan had been received into a Christian church.* The strongest assurance of the power of the Sublime Porte is the general recognition by the Mahometan vv^orld, and the King of Great Britain as Emperor of India, of the Sultan of Turkey as the true CaHph or Commander of the Faithful. The strongest menace of the British Empire in the East is the utter f orcignness there of Western Christianity. The European sent to Asia or Africa to govern a subject race finds himself separated from it by an aloofness which he cannot conquer. It does not proceed from him. He is often anxious to overcome it in the native. But it is the inevitable fruit of antipathetic relations, springing from religious differences. The religions of the West rule the religionist. The religion of Islam rules every Mahometan, be he saint or sinner; and in case of war all are faithful to the commander of the faithful. Lord Cromer, a few months ago, received a warning letter from one professing to write in the name of his people of Egypt, and whose stately periods remind one of the Hebrew prophets. It was addressed to "the Reformer of Egypt." "He must be blind [said the writer], who sees not what the English have wrought in Egypt: the gates of justice stand open to the poor ; the streams flow through the land and are not stopped at the order of the strong; the poor man is lifted up and the rich man pulled down; the hand of the oppressor and the briber is struck when outstretched to do evil. Our eyes see these things and we know from whom they come. You will say, 'Be thankful, O, men of Egypt! and bless those who benefit you ' ; and very many of us — those who preserve a free mind and are not ruled by flattery and guile — are thankful. But thanks lie on the surface of the heart, and beneath is a deep well. " While peace is in the land the spirit of Islam sleeps. We * Francis H. E. Palmer, Austro-Hungarian Life (New York, 1903), p. 88. XXXIV [ 28 ] THE POWER OF RELIGION hear the imam cry out in the mosque against the unbelievers, but his words pass by Uke wind and are lost. Children hear them for the first time and do not understand them; old men have heard them from childhood and pay no heed. "But it is said, 'There is war between England and Abdul- Hamid Khan.' If that be so, a change must come. The words of the imam arc echoed in every heart, and every Moslem hears only the cry of the faith. As men we do not love the sons of Osman; the children at the breast know their words, and that they have trodden down the Egyptians like dry reeds. But as Moslems they are our brethren; the Khalif holds the sacred places and the noble relics. Though the Khalif were hapless as Bajazid, cruel as Murad, or mad as Ibrahim, he is the shadow of God, and every Moslem must leap up at his call as the willing servant to his master, though the wolf may devour his child while he does his master's work. The call of the Sultan is the call of the faith ; it carries with it the command of the Prophet, blessings, etc. I and many more trust that all may yet be peace; but if it be war, be sure that he who has a sword will draw it, he who has a club will strike with it. The women will cry from the housetops, ' God give victory to Islam ! ' " You will say : ' The Egyptian is more ungrateful than a dog, which remembers the hand which fed him. He is foolish as the madman who pulls down the rooftree of his house upon himself.' It may be so to worldly eyes, but in the time of danger to Islam the Moslem turns away from the things of this world and thirsts only for the service of his faith, even though he looks in the face of death. May God (His name be glorified) avert the evil." It is the existence of this spirit which makes the punish- ments often inflicted on insurgents by the British in their Eastern possessions sharp up to the point of barbarism. Noth- ing less tells there. It is the mosque that guards the palace of the Sultan. Sir William Marriott, when in company with Ismail Pasha, the first Khedive of Egypt, happened to meet in Bou- XXXIV [ 29 ] THE POWER OF RELIGION logne a procession of J^ng girls on their way to their first communion. The Pasha saluted it with a low reverence. "Your Highness is more Catholic than the Catholics," said Sir William. "Ah," was the reply, "you see I have ruled, and no man can rule without religion."* On this point East and West can both agree. Napoleon said in reference to the Concordat of 1801, that he saw in the church not the mystery of the incarnation but the mystery of social order. Later, at the height of his power, speaking in the same vein, he intimated his belief that Christianity was an illusion, but a very useful one. It assured the tranquillity of the state in reconciling man with himself and giving him a philosophy to live by. The age of illusions was for nations, as for individ- uals, the age of happiness.^ It is not for history to pronounce whether any religion or all religions be founded on mere illusions. She must leave that to theologians and psychologists. But in her field of in- ductive sociology, she owns still the continuing force of the religious motive. In modern politics it takes on a new importance. They are expressed in terms of representative government. It may be representation by a legislature or by a ministry. In either case it will assume to represent the people by representing a party. Representative government implies and involves party organization. Party organization is unfavorable to the ex- pression of candid, impartial public opinion. But let any religious question be involved, and public opinion will find a way to express itself, which no party machinery can seriously obstruct. So in world politics, now so largely governed by a public opinion of the world, the pressure that can be brought upon any one power by others — that is brought upon each by other peoples through the press — will be immensely strengthened if it be impelled by an ethical or religious motive; ethical or relig- ious, for an ethical impulse common to many nations belongs to the religion of humanity. * Memoirs of Grant Duff, II. 18. 2 Memoirs of Talleyrand, Putnam's edition, I. 339. XXXIV [ 30 ] THE POWER OF RELIGION That grows as ecclesiasticism declines. The Christian church has been gradually reduced, to use the phrase of Gardi- ner, "from the exercise of power to the employment of in- fluence." Its tendencies of thought run, more than those fostered by any other of the great religions, toward loyalty to humanity, rather than to race. It is the only one that makes any serious effort to preach its gospel "to every creature." "We recognize," said Tertullian, "one commonwealth, the world." It does not hesitate to put its own rules above those assumed for political science or economy. From the churches of England came the last great impulse that carried through the Corn Laws, and made free trade her policy to-day. There arc signs of a movement in the churches of the United States in the same direction. Should it gather force, statesmen must reckon seriously with it. Renan, in his "Life of Jesus,"* remarks that he was the first of men to conceive, or at all events to put Hfe into that thought, that Hberty was something independent of politics; that one's country is not everything; and that the man is anterior and superior to the citizen. The share of government in human society becomes less ob- trusive as time goes on. Show of force declines as the senti- ment of obedience to law becomes more prevalent. Public authority is more and more localized in small political com- munities, there to be administered by representatives of the inhabitants. These social principles go to diminish the weight of national governments, and make the individual man feel that he is a citizen first of his own local community and then of the world. They also strongly reinforce the general trend of the Christian religion (which we may fairly say is to-day the strongest of any in its influence upon human history) toward insistence on universal brotherhood as the ultimate criterion of international obligations. ' Chapter vii. XXXIV [ 31 ] XXXV CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILI- ZATION "SOCIAL CULTURE IN EDUCATION AND RELIGION" BY IWILLIAM T. HARRIS. L.LD. FORMER UNITED STATES COMMISSIONER OF EDUCATION /fCCEPTING on the high authority oj Professor Baldwin the vast im parlance oj the influence oj religion upon modern life, the obverse oj that same question, the meaning oj religion, its outlook, its historical development, becomes equally impor- tant. It is this problern oj the growth oj religious thought, its educational influence upon man and upon his educational in- stitutions, which is here taken up by Mr. William T. Harris, jor many years, and until his recent retirement, the United States Commissioner oj Education. This address was first delivered by Mr. Harris be jor e the International Congress oj Arts and Sciences at the St. Louis exhibition. It has since appeared in the Educational Review, and is here published under Mr. Harrises revision. I SHALL announce as my thesis that: Social Culture is the training of the individual for social institutions. Man by his social institutions secures the adjustment of the individual to the social whole — the social unit. The person, or individual, comes into such harmony and co-operation with human society as a whole that he may receive a share of all the production of his fellow-men; be protected against violence by their united strength; given the privilege of accumulating XXXV [ I ] CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION property and of enjoyin|^ in peace and security, in such a manner as to escape from sudden approaches of famine and penury by reason of seasonal extremes or by reason of the vicissitudes of infancy, old age, disease, or of the perturbations affecting the community. And finally, there is participation in the wisdom of the race — the opportunity of sharing in the knowledge that comes from the scientific inventory of nature in all its kingdoms, and of human life on the globe in all its va- ried experiments, successful and unsuccessful; the opportunity of gaining an insight into the higher results of science in the field of discovery of laws and principles — the permanent forms of existence under the variable conditions of time and place. Finally, we may share, through our membership in the social unity, in the moral insights that have resulted from the discipline of pain, the defeats and discomfitures arising from the choice of mistaken careers on the part of individuals and entire com- munities. The sin and error of men have vicariously helped the race by great object lessons which have taught mankind through all the ages, and now teach the present generation of men — all the more efl^ectively because of the devices of our civilization which not only make the records of the past ac- cessible to each and every individual, but institute a present means of intercommunication by and through which each people — each individual — may see from day to day the unfold- ing of the drama of human history. The good of this unity of the individual with the social whole by means of institutions may be summed up by saying that it re-enforces the individual by the labor of all, the thought of all, and the good fortune of all. It takes from him only his trifling contribution from his trade or vocation, and gives in return a share in the gigantic aggregate of productions of all mankind. It receives from him the experience of his little life and gives him in return the experience of the race, a myriad of myriads strong, and working through millenniums. What Thomas Hobbes said of the blessings of the political whole, the State, is true when applied to civilization as an inter- national combination of States. " Outside of the State," said he, " is found only the dominion XXXV [ 2 ] CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION of the passions — war, fear, poverty, filth, isolation, barbarism, ignorance, and savagery ; while in the State is found the domin- ion of reason — peace, security, riches, ornament, sociability, elegance, science, and good -will." With this point of view we see at a glance the potency of the arts of social culture, fitting as they do the individual for a co-operative Hfe with his fellow-men in the institutions of civilization. My thesis proceeds from this insight to lay down the doctrine that the first social culture is religion and that religion is the foundation of social life in so far as that social life belongs to the history of civilization. Religion in the first place is not merely the process of an individual mind, but it is a great social process of intellect and will and heart. Its ideas are not the unaided thoughts of individual scholars, but the aggregate re- sults of a social activity of intellect, so to speak; each thought of the individual being modified by the thought of his com- munity so that it comes to the individual with the substantial impress of authority. There is a religious social process, the most serious of all social activity. In it the religious view of the world is shaped and delivered to the individual by authority such as cannot be resisted by him except with martyrdom. Each modification in the body of religious doctrine has come through individual innovation, but at the expense of disaster to his Hfe. He had to sacrifice his hfe so far as his ordinary prosperity was con- cerned, and his doctrine had to be taken up by his fellow-men acting as a social whole, and translated into their mode of view- ing divine revelation before it effected a modification in the popu- lar faith. It was a process of social assimilation of the product of the individual comparable to the physiologic process by which the organs of the body take up a portion of food and convert it into a blood corpuscle before adding it to the bodily structure. So in the living church of a people goes on forever the great process of receiving new views from its members, and its mem- bers include not only the Saint Bernards, but also the Voltaires. XXXV [ 3 ] CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION The Church receives ib0ticw views, but does not by any means adopt them until it has submitted them to the negative process of criticism and elimination, and finally to the transforming process that selects the available portions for assimilation and nutriment. This is certainly the slow^est and most conservative spiritual process that goes on in civilization. But it is by all means the most salutary. The individuals that suggest the most radical modifications arc swiftly set aside, and their result is scarcely visible in the body of faith transmitted to the next generation. It is clear this conservatism is necessary. Any new modi- fication of doctrine gets adopted only by the readjustment of individuals within the communion or church. All the inertia of the institution is against it. Again, it is not only necessary but desirable, because it is a purification process, the trans- mutation of what is individual and tainted with idiosyncrasy, into what is universal and well adapted for all members within the communion. The Church must prove all things and hold fast to that which can stand the test. The test is furnished by what is old, by what is already firmly fixed in the body of rehgious faith. If its foundations could be uprooted so that religion gave up the body of its faith, all authority would go at once to the ground, and with it the relation of the institu- tional whole to the individuals within it. Such an event can scarcely be conceived in a realizing sense, but a study of the Reign of Terror in the French Revolution aids one to gain a point of view. When a citizen finds himself in a social whole in which all the principles that have governed the community have become shaky, he gets to be unable to count on any par- ticular set of social reactions in his neighbors from day to day, or to calculate what motives they may entertain in their minds in the presence of any practical situation. He is forced into an attitude of universal suspicion of the intentions of his fellow-men, and he is in his turn a general object of suspicion himself. The solution forced on the community is the adoption, by the Committee of Safety, of death for all suspected ones. But the more deaths the more suspicion. For the relatives of the slain — those who yesterday were with us, but who en- XXXV [ 4 ] CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION deavored to dissuade us from guillotining their parents, brothers, or cousins — as to those we are warranted in suspecting that they to-day are planning a new revolution and to-morrow may put us to death. We may by this, after a sort, realize the situation when the foundations of rehgious belief are utterly broken up. Fortunately for us our civilization carries with it, even un- der varying creeds, sects, and denominations, the great body of religious belief uncj^uestioned. Only the Nihilists offer a radical denial to this body of Christian doctrine, and we can see how easily we might come to a Reign of Terror if it were possible to spread this Nihilistic doctrine widely among any considerable class of our people. For the Nihilistic view would extend its death remedy, after the destruction of its enemies, to its own ranks, and guillotine its own Robespierres by rea- son of suspicion and distrust entertained toward one's accom- pHces. The substantiality of the view of religion is the basis of civilization. It holds conservatively to elementary notions of an affirmative character such as the monogamic marriage, the protection of helpless infancy in certain fundamental rights, the protection of women; the care for the aged and the weak- lings of society; private ownership of property, including under property land and franchises as well as movable chattels. The Church includes in its fundamentals the security of life against violence, and makes murder the most heinous of crimes. It insists on respect for established law and for the magistrates themselves. It even goes so far as to protect the heretic and to insure the private right of the individual to dissent from the established or prevalent religious creeds so far as church worship or dogmas of theology are concerned. It is obvious that the community as a social whole would be obliged to limit its toleration of private creeds were there a great extension of Nihilism possible or were there to arise sects that attacked the sacredness of the family institution — by polygamy, for example, or by the abohtion of marriage; or sects that attacked civil society by attempting practically to abolish the ownership of property (Proudhon said, "All property is robbery"); or by XXXV [ 5 ] CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION the denial of the right^ laborers to contract with employers for their labor. When we study these fundamental ideas common to the different confessions of our composite church, we see at once how powerful is the established doctrine of the prevailing religious ideal in our civilization in exerting an authoritative control over individuals as to belief and practice. Many people have come to believe, in this age of greatly extended religious toleration, that the Church as an institu- tion is moribund, and that its authority is about to disappear wholly from the earth in an age of science, of the ballot box, and of universal secular education at public expense. It would seem to them that public opinion is sufficient or about to become sufficient, by means of the newspaper and the book, to secure life, personal liberty, and the peaceful pursuit of happiness, without the necessity for a religious provision for social culture. Only the culture that comes from the secular school is adjudged to be necessary for all. For the proper consideration of this question it is necessary to take up more fundamentally the origin and real function of religion. We shall find two fundamental views of nature and man the foundation of two opposite religious movements in the world history — the Christian and the Oriental. Accord- ing to one of these views our free secular life, our science and the arts, our literature and our productive industry and our commerce, are utterly perverse and not to be tolerated on any terms. A year ago or more there was published a letter written by an Arab Sheik of Bagdad to the editor of a Paris newspaper {La Revue for March, 1902), in which he expressed admira- tion for certain external characteristics of European civiliza- tion, but found no words bitter enough for his detestation of the Christian religion professed by all European nations. To him it was all a horrible blasphemy. The pure One as preached in the Koran is sovereign and transcendent, and to speak of it as divine-human, or as triune in the Christian sense, is to the Mahometan , an act of unspeakable sacrilege. Therefore XXXV [ 6 ] CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION if oui- triiimplis in science and art flow from our religion the worshipper of Islam must regard them as his mortal foe/ And yet the Arab Sheik is much nearer to the Christian view than is the Buddhist or the Brahmin. The East Indian view holds a first principle that repudiates or shuts out from its attributes consciousness and will and feeling — all the elements of per- sonality. But the Allah of the Koran is personal and in an ^ Lc Dernier Mot de VI slant d I'Europe. Par le Sheikh Abdul Hagk de Bagdad; Paris, La Revue No. 5 (ist March, 1902). Passage translated from the beginning: "Christian Peoples: The hatred of Islam against Europe is implacable. After ages of effort to effect a reconciliation between us, the only result to-day is that we detest you more than ever. This civilization of yours and its marvels of progress which have rendered you so rich and so powerful, be it known to you that we hate them and we spurn them with our very souls . . . the Mohammedan religion is to-day in open hostility against your world of progress. . . . We explain how it is that we spurn with horror not only your religious doctrines but all your science, all your arts, and everything that comes from Christian Europe ... I the humble Sheik Abdul Hagk, member of the holy Panislamistic league, come with a special mission to explain clearly how this comes to be. . . . Our creed is this: There is in the universe one sole being, God, source of all power, of all light, of all truth, of all justice, and of all goodness; He has not been generated; He has not generated any one. He is single, in- finite, eternal; Alone, He wished to be known; He made the universe. He created man. He surrounded man with the splendors of crea- tion and imposed on him the sacred duty of worshipping Him alone. To worship continually this only God is man's only mission on earth. Man's soul is immortal; his life on earth only a probation . . . the supreme duty of man to worship the only God and to sacrifice himself to Him without reserve; the sum of all iniquity to renounce the only God and to worship a false God . . . for us Mussulmans there is a world containing only two kinds of human beings, believers and infidels (mecreants) ; love, charity, brotherhood to the believers; contempt, disgust, hatred, and war for the infidels. Among the infidels the most hated and the most criminal are those who worship God but ascribe to Him earthly parents, or fatherhood, or a human mother. Such monstrous blindness seems to us to surpass all measure of iniquity: the presence among us of infidels of this kind is the plague of our life; their doctrine is a direct menace to the purity of our faith; contact with them is defilement, and any relation with them whatever a torment to our souls. '- XXXV [ 7 ] CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION important sense ethical, Jiaving the attributes of righteousness and goodness borrowed ffom the Old Testament by the Hanyf preachers of the Ebionitic sect of Old Testament Christians who proselyted Mahomet, as shown by Sprenger.* But Brahma is above the ethical distinctions of good and evil, and goodness and righteousness are as naught to him and to the Yogi who seeks by mortification to get rid of his selfhood. Let us endeavor to find, by the well-known road taken by the philosophy of history, the twofold root of all human ex- perience which gives rise to the religious insights which in their first form of external authority govern human life before the advent of the stage of reflection and individual free thought — religion before secular education. Examine life and human experience as we may, we find our attention drawn to two aspects or opposite poles, so to speak, of each object presented to us. The first aspect includes all that is directly perceivable by the five senses — sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch. This is the aspect of immediate existence. But experience begins at once to go beyond the immediate aspect and to find that it is a product or effect of outlying causes. We are not satisfied with it as an immediate exist- ence; it now comes to be for us an effect or mediated existence. If we call the first aspect an effect, we shall call this second aspect a causal process. Each immediate object, whether it be thing or event, is an effect, and beyond it we seek the causes that explain it. The first pole of existence is therefore immediate existence, and the second is the causal chain in which the object, whether it be considered as thing or as event, is found. Since the causal process contains the explanation of im- mediate existence, the knowledge which is of most importance is that knowledge which includes the completest chain of causa- tion. It is the knowledge of primal cause which contains the ^ Das Lcbcn und die Lchrc des Mohammed; Berlin 1869. Chapter I., pp. 16-27, 37-47. 60, 69, 70-77, 101-107. XXXV i 8 J CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION fulness of explanation. And the mind of the human race has devoted itself chiefly to the question of first cause. In this search, as already suggested, it has been the mind of the social whole of a people that has done the thinking, rather than the minds of mere individuals. Even the most enlight- ened individuals and the most original and capable ones have borrowed the main body of their ideas from the religious tradition of their people, and their success in effecting modi- fications and new features in the existing creed has been due to the co-operation of like-minded contemporaries which assisted the utterance of the new idea so far as to make it prevail. Again, the collisions of peoples settled by war and conquest have brought about new syntheses of religious doctrine which have resulted in deeper religious insight and more consistent views of the divine nature. It has been the long-continued process of pondering on the second aspect of things and events, the second pole of ex- perience, that has reached the religious dogmas of the greater and greatest religions of human history — a process of social units in which whole peoples have merged. This process has been a study of the question how the per- fect One can be conceived as making a world of imperfect beings. For imperfect or derivative beings demand another order of being, an originating source, as a logical condition of existence. But this source must explain not only the efii- cient cause of the imperfect, but also the motive or purpose, the final cause or end, of the creation of the imperfect being. There are two great steps which religion takes after it leaves ancestor worship and other forms of animism, in which dis- embodied individuals as good or evil demons reign as personal causes in an order above the natural order of things and events which are immediately present to our senses. As the intellect of man became developed, socially and individually, the great step was taken above all secondary causes to a first cause transcending nature and also transcend- ing time and space — the logical conditions of finitude and mul- tiplicity. The transcendent unity, in which all things and events los^ XXXV [ 9 ] CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION their individual being and mingled in one chaotic confusion, is conceived as a great ^id into which all things and events are resolved when traced to their first principle. Transcendence was in the first stage of religious con- templation the important attribute to be kept in mind when thinking of the First Cause. To halt in this thought of mere transcendence of the world meant pantheism in the sense that the One is conceived to possess all being and to be devoid of finitude. It exists apart in an order above all fmitude, as found in our experience. To deny all relation to finitude comes as a result from this ab- stract thought of the infinite. It is the nothing of the world of experience and is to be thought of as its dissolution. The philosophy of Kapila in the Sankhya Karika, the religion of both the Yoga doctrines, the Yoga of complete asceticism (of Patanjali) as well as the Karma Yoga expounded in the Bha- gavad Gita, reach a One not only above things and events and above a world order, but also elevated even above creator- ship — and above intellect and will — a pure being that is as empty as it is pure, having no distinctions within itself nor for others— light and darkness, the widest distinction in nature, are all the same to Brahma, and so also are good and evil, sin and virtue, "shame and fame," as Emerson names these ethical distinctions in his poem of Brahma — they are all one to Brahma. When the social mind had reached this insight of the tran- scendence of the Great First Cause we see that it lost the world of things and events and had annulled one of the two poles of experience which it was attempting to explain. And it had left in its thought only a great negative abstraction, pure being or pure naught, with no positive distinctions, not even con- sciousness, nor the moral idea of ethics, goodness and right- eousness or mercy and justice. It was obliged to deny the creation altogether and conceive the world as a vast dream, a maya. Asia's chief thought is this idea of transcendence of the One First Cause, above the world and above creation and creative XXXV [ lo] CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION activity. But in the Old Testament we have the last word of Asia; it reveals an insight which reacts against the thought of this abstract oneness as transcendental Being, and sets in its place the idea of a creator. God as creator makes the world, but does not lose his sovereignty by this act. He also retains consciousness, inward distinction; he is personal, having intellect and will and also feeling. The pantheistic idea which conceived God only as transcen- dent One, followed its thought out to the denial of all creative activity and even to the denial of all inward distinction of sub- ject and object. It ended its search for a first cause (follow- ing out the causal Hne which it began with) by denying causal- ity altogether and finding only a quiet, empty being devoid of finitude within itself and annihilating objective finitude altogether. Hence its search ended with the denial of true being to the world and to man. But this self-contradiction was corrected by the Israelitic people, who felt an inward necessity— a logical necessity — of conceiving the First Cause as active, both as intellect making internal distinctions of subject and object, and also as a free will creating a world of finite reality in which it could reveal itself as goodness. The essence of goodness, in the Old Testa- ment sense of the idea, consists in imparting true being to that which has it not — God creates real beings. Goodness not only makes others, but gives them rights ; that is to say, gives them claims on its consideration. While Orientalism with the single idea of transcendence or sovereignty arrived at the idea of a One without the many, and at a consequent destruction of what it set out to explain, Theism found a First Cause that could explain the world as created by an ethical being, a personal One that possessed what we call "character," namely a fixed self-determination of will — of which the two elements were goodness and righteousness. This doctrine conceived ethics as a fundamental element in the character of the Absolute, a primordial form of being belong- ing to the First Cause. Time and space according to the first form of religion — XXXV [ 1 1 ] CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION that is to say, according; to the lirst completed thought ar- rived at by the social i4WHgence of the race — are illusions and the producer of illusions. All illusions arise in the primor- dial distinction of subject and object which constitutes the lapse into consciousness out of primeval unity which is not sub- ject and object/ This thought of Kapila becomes the basis of the religion of Buddhism, the religion founded on the simple idea of transcendence of the One First Cause above all causality. This is opposite to the religion of the Bible, which reveals the divine as a One that is goodness. Goodness is so gracious as to- create and give independent reality to nature and man — in short, to make man al)lc to sin and to defy the First Cause his Creator, Here emerges for the hrst time the idea of sin. ]\Ian, as maya or illusion, is not created nor is he a creator of things or events — his deeds are only seeming, for he does not possess true reality himself. But with the doctrine of theism man has an eternal selfhood given him and is responsible for the acts of his will; he can sin and repent. He can choose the ethical and form in himself the image of God, or on the other hand he can resist the divine and create an Inferno. While theism commands man to renounce selfishness, pan- theism commands to renounce selfhood. Theism contains in it as a special prerogative the possibility of meeting difficulties insoluble to pantheism. It has solved the great difficulty of conceiving a first cause so transcendent that it is no cause of the world and man. For theism sees the necessity of goodness and righteousness in the first cause and hence finds the world and man in the divine mind. But it, too, sees divine sovereignty and does not lose that thought in its theory of man and nature. Nature is full of beings that perish, notwithstanding the fact that they come from a perfect Creator. The history of man is full of sin and rebellion against good- ness and righteousness. But our theistic insight knows that God is holy; that he possesses perfect goodness and righteousness. The exclusive contemplation of the imperfections of man and 'Memorial verses of the Sankhya Karika, Nos. XXI, XXII, XXIV, LXII, LXIV. XXXV [ 12 ] CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION even of his best works leads to the pantheistic denial of the world and to despair as to man's salvation before the sovereign first cause. The religion of theism often lapses toward Orien- taHsm in its condemnation of nature and history as empty of all good. Whenever it has gone so far that it blasphemes the First Cause by limiting divine goodness, the Church has given a check to this tendency and ushered in an epoch of missionary effort, wherein the true believer leaves off his ex- cessive practice of self-mortification and devotes himself like St. Francis to the work of carrying salvation to the lost. It goes out like St. Dominic to save the intellect and to have not only pious hearts but pious intellects that devote their lives to the study of the creation, trying to see how God works in his good- ness, giving true being to his creatures, and lifting them up into rational souls able to see the vision of God.^ The piety of the intellect contains in it also another possibility of lapse into impiety of intellect, namely through lack of power to hold to the sovereignty of God. It may go astray from the search of the first cause and set up secondary causes in place of a first cause. This is the opposite danger to pantheism, which gets so much intoxicated with the divine unity that it neglects nature and history, and discourages intellectual piety, and loses the insight into the revelation of God's good- ness and righteousness in the creation of the world. There are two kinds of intellectual impiety, one kind that goes astray after a secondary cause in place of a First Cause, and the other that passes by secondary causes as something unworthy of the True First Cause; not seeing that the true First Cause makes the world with three orders of being: the lower ministering to the higher and the higher to the lower: an inorganic below an organic realm; and within the organic realm creating the animal below the man, and among the races of man making savages below civilized peoples. It does not see that in all these divine goodness has its own great pur- pose — to make the world of time and space an infinite cradle 'See Goethe's Fatist, "Scene in Heaven" (Part II, Act V, scene 7), Pater Profundus and Pater Seraphicus. XXXV [ 13 ] CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION for the development of s^itual individuality. The Christian God is not an abstract one delighting only in abstract ones, but a Creator delighting in creators — commanding true be- lievers to engage in the eternal work of the First Cause, namely by multiplying his creative and educative work. Thus from one or another form of impiety of the intellect there arise collisions with the Church from age to age. A closer and closer definition of the dogma arises out of the struggle. One of the greatest epochs of struggle in the Church arose in the time of the importation of Arabian pantheism into Spain, and thence into the other parts of Europe by reason of resort of Christian youth to the medical schools established by the Arabs. The great commentators on Aristotle, Avicenna and Aver- rhoes, came to notice and caused great anxiety by their inter- pretation of Aristotle's doctrine of the active Reason (vou? TTOLTjTiKo^), wliicli tlicy liclcl to cxist only in God; and upon the death of the individual, the passive soul of reason (vovs Tra0r]TLK6 Vaughan's Hours with the Mystics, Vol. I., contains an excellent summary of the views of the Neo-Platonists. Philo Judasus, writing from Alexandria a few years b. c, says: "This alliance with an upper world, of which we are conscious, would be impossible, were not the soul of man an indivisible portion of the divine and blessed spirit." See also Thomas Taylor's translation of some of the works of Plotinus. * Here perhaps I may add one line expressive of my own indebted- ness to and affectionate regard for my dear friend C. C. Massey, whose knowledge of all that relates to the higher problems before our Society is more profound than that of any one I know. XXXVI [ 22 ] THE MYSTERIES seen. Waves in the luminiferous ether require a material medium to absorb them before they can be perceived by our senses. The intermediary may be a photographic plate, a fluorescent screen, the retina, a black surface, or an electric resonator, according to the length of those waves. But some medium formed of ponderable matter is absolutely necessary to render the actinic, luminous, thermal, or electrical effects of these waves perceptible to our senses. And the more or less perfect rendering of the invisible waves depends on the more or less perfect synchronism between the unseen motions of the ether and the response of the material medium that absorbs and manifests them. Thus we find certain definite physical media are necessary to enable operations to become perceptible which otherwise remain imperceptible. Through these media energy traversing the unseen is thereby arrested, and, passing through ponderable matter, is able to affect our senses and arouse consciousness. Now, the nexus between the seen and the unseen may be physical or psychical, but it is always a specialized substance, or living organism. In some cases the receiver is a body in a state of unstable equilibrium, a sensitive material — like one of Sir Oliver Lodge's receivers for wireless telegraphy — and in that case its behavior and idiosyncrasies need to be studied beforehand. It is doubtless a peculiar psychical state, of the nature of which we know nothing, that enables certain persons whom we call mediums to act as receivers, or resonators, through which an unseen intelligence can manifest itself to us. And this receptive state is probably a sensitive condition easily affected by its mental environment. We should not go to a photographer who took no trouble to protect his plates from careless exposure before putting them in the camera. And I do not know why we should expect any- thing but a confused result from a so-called medium (or auto- matist, as Myers suggested they should be called) if the mental state of those present reacts unfavorably upon the sensitive. Inhnite patience and laborious care in observation we must have (as in all difficult investigation), but what good results from any scientific research could we expect, if we started with XXXVI [ 23 ] THE MYSTERIES the presumption that there was nothing to investigate but imposture ? ^ In connection with this subject of mediumship, it seems to me very probable that a medium, an intermediary of some sort, is not only required on our side in the seen, but is also required on the other side in the unseen. In all communication of thought from one person to another a double translation is necessary. Thought, in some inscrutable way, acts upon the medium of our brain, and becomes expressed in written or spoken words. These words, after passing through space, have again to be translated back to thought through the medium of another brain. That is to say, there is a descent from thought to gross matter on one side, a transmission through space, and an ascent from gross matter to thought on the other side Now the so-called medium, or automatist, acts as our brain, trans- lating for us the impressions made upon it and which it receives across space from the unseen. But there must be a corre- sponding descent of thought on the other side to such a tele- pathic form that it can act upon the material particles of the brain of our medium. It may be even more difficult to find a spirit medium there than here. No doubt wisely so, for the invasion of our consciousness here might otherwise be so fre- quent and troublesome as to paralyze the conduct of our life. It is possible, therefore, that much of the difficulty and con- fusion of the manifestations which are recorded in our Pro- ceedings, and in the very valuable contribution which Mr. Piddington has just given us of sittings with Mrs. Thompson, are due to inevitable difficulties in translation on both sides.^ 1 Miss Jane Barlow, who has made a close study of these com- munications, writes to me on this point: "The almost unimaginable difficulty in communicating may account for many of the failures, mistakes, and absurdities we notice. I think we are apt to lay too much stress on the want of memory. Apart from purely evidential considerations, there seems a tendency to regard it as a larger and more essential element of Personality than it really is. In my own case for instance, any trivial cause — a headache, a cold, or a little flurry — scatters my memory for proper names. I can easily imagine myself forgetting my own name without suffering from any serious con- fusion of intellect in other respects, or the least decay of personality." XXXVI [ 24 ] THE MYSTERIES Furthermore, if my view be correct, that the self-conscious part of our personaUty plays but a subordinate part in any telepathic transmission, whether from incarnate or discarnate minds, we shall realize how enormously complex the problem becomes. So that the real persons whom we knew on earth may find the difficulty of self-manifestation too great to over- come, and only a fitful fragment of their thoughts can thus reach us. There is, however, another view of the matter which to me seems very probable. The transition from this hfe to the next may in some respects resemble our ordinary awakening from sleep. The discarnate soul not improbably regards the circum- stances of his past hfe, "in this dream world of ours," as we now regard a dream upon awakening. If, even immediately upon awakening, we try to recall all the incidents of a more or less vivid dream, we find how difficult it is to do so, how frag- mentary the whole appears; and yet in some way we are con- scious the dream was a far more coherent and real thing than we can express in our waking moments. Is it not a frequent and provoking experience that while some trivial features recur to us, the dream as a whole is elusive, and as time passes on even the most vivid dream is gone beyond recall? May it not be that something analogous to this awaits us when we find ourselves amid the transcendent realities of the unseen universe ? The deep impress of the present Hfe will doubtless be left on our personality, but its details may be difficult to bring into consciousness, and we may find them fading from us as we wake to the dawn of the eternal day. Whatever view we take, the records of these manifestations in our Proceedings give us the impression of a truncated per- sonality, "the dwindling remnant of a hfe," rather than of a fuller, larger hfe. Hence, while in my opinion psychical research does show us that intelligence can exist in the unseen, and personality can survive the shock of death, we must not confuse mere, and perhaps temporary, survival after death with that higher and more expanded hfe which we desire and mean by immortality, and the attainment of which, whatever may be our creed, is only to be won through the "process of the Cross." XXXVI [ 25 ] THE MYSTERIES For it is by self-surrendcr^lhc surrender, that is, of all that fetters "What we feel witl'm ourselves is highest," that we enter the pathway of self-realization. Or as Tennyson expresses it: "Thro' loss of Self The gain of such large life as match 'd with ours Were Sun to spark — unshadowable in words, Themselves but shadows of a shadow-world." * 'So also Goethe: "Und so lang du das nicht hast, Dieses: 'stirb und werde ' ! Bist du nur ein triiber Gast Auf der dunklen Erde.'- XXXVI [ 26 ] XXXVII HYPNOTISM "ITS HISTORY, NATURE, AND USE BY HAROLD M. HAYS, PHYSICIAN OF MOUNT SINAI HOSPITAL /^F all these vague reachings toward the occult, these mys- terious influences oj mind on mind, no other, as Professor Barrett has pointed out jor us, is so definitely recognized and established as hypnotism. This force, weird and inexplicable as its action still remains, has been positively accepted within the domain of fact. It is medically employed in the treatment of disease. It begins to be matter of experiment in the inculcation of morality. This set of phenomena have therefore seemed to deserve special examination in our series, and the subject is presented from the pen of a man of the day and one of ourselves, a New York physician, in actual practice and of scholarly re- pute, Dr. Harold M. Hays. His discussion is reprinted by permission from the Popular Science Monthly, where its ap- pearance drew much approving comment. It is perhaps unnecessary to state that the word hypnotism brings to the mind of the average person timid recollections of many criminal acts. That is because few people hear of hypno- tism in its proper sphere. It is clothed with the garb of shame ; it is surrounded with all the horror belonging to the age of witchcraft. Newspapers delight in depicting its bad sides, in painting to the world the crimes that have been committed under its influence, the fearful results of its all-powerful spell. To most it means a giving up of one's will to another who is XXXVII [ I ] HYPNOTISM superior, the crushing of iJI's entity by the power of another, the total abstinence of individual self-control, the entire weak- ening of one's higher intelligence. Vivid imagination supplies the result — suffering, hardship, labor, and total subservience. The question arises, "Why should hypnotism have been thus derided ? " Simply and plainly because the ignorance of people in general has given it no opportunity to show its good sides. Unfortunately, people are always looking for the "eternal gullible" and are not satisfied until they get a taste of it. And, as hypnotism was first practised solely and is now practised mostly by men who have made the world their dupes, the world has had to suffer in the advancement of hypnotism on a scientific basis. But it has been so with other sciences. Astrology and alchemy are now things of the past ; but astronomy and chemis- try are their results — two great and everlasting sciences. There is, therefore, still great hope for hypnotism ; for, although known under different names for so many hundreds of years, it is still in its infancy and the scientific aspect of the subject is yet in embryo. Before, however, proceeding to cases in point, we may review briefly the history of hypnotism up to the present day. Call it what we may, since the beginning of the world, before Noah ever went on the Ark or the whale swallowed Jonah (much to the discomfort of both), hypnotism has been practised. The influence of one man over another by a certain innate quality or by personal magnetism has always been. Even Eve exerted an influence over Adam which has precipitated the world into misery and kept it there ever since. As time went on, people recognized this influence, gave it a name and called it the influence of the gods, the result being that those who were ordained with this wonderful power were called God's min- isters. Soothsayers, divine healers, the oracle ministers, all made the Oriental people construe this power by religious means. Among the Chaldeans, Babylonians, Persians, Hindoos, and other ancient peoples, there were priests who, because of their power of exerting a superhuman influence over others, were considered divine. To this day the yogis and fakirs of India use this power and throw themselves into a state of hynotic XXXVII [ 2 ] HYPNOTISM ecstasy and revcry. In the eleventh century it was used in the Greek Church, as it is now by the omphalopsychics. In the Middle Ages it was practised by Paracelsus, who maintained that the human body possessed a double magnetism, the first magnetism coming from the planets, the second from flesh and blood. All through the Middle Ages hypnotism was practised under different names, such as witchcraft, divinations, etc. It was supposed to be a supernatural power derived from Satan himself, and, therefore, the user of this power was expelled from society and sometimes put to death. Magic spells where people went into trances or out of their head were of common occurrence. Religious ecstasy, demon-possession, cures by shrines and relics, the cure by the king's touch, etc., were all phenomena of this same sort. During the seventeenth century a number of faith healers sprang up all over the Continent and British Isles. Many of these men were noted for their skill, but the one who attained the greatest reputation was one by the name of Greatrakes, who was born in Ireland about 1628. This "healer" was sent for by a Lord Conway, who expressed his message in tl.e following language: "to cure that excellent lady of his, the pains of whose head, as great and unparalleled as they are, have not made her more known or admired abroad thnn have her other en- dowments." At Lady Conway's was a miscellaneous gather- ing, chiefly engaged in mystical pursuits, "an unofficial but active society for psychical research, as that study existed in the seventeenth century." Says Mr. Lang: Greatrakes' special genius in these mystical pursuits was of divine agency; for he tells us that at one time "he heard a voyce within him (audible to none else), encouraging to the tryals: and afterwards to cor- rect his unbelief the voice aforesaid added this sign, that his right hand should he dead, and that the stro akin g 0} his left arm should recover it again, the events whereof were fully verified by him three nights together by a successive infirmity and cure of his arm." We are told that he failed to cure the lady's malady, but that he worked some wonderful miracles of heahng among the sick of the neighborhood. Henry Stubbe, a physician of Stratford-on-Avon, thus XXXVII [ 3 ] HYPNOTISM comments on Grcatrakc^^iiraclcs. He says "that God had bestowed upon Mr. Greatrakes a peculiar temperament, etc., composed his body of some particular ferments, the effluvia whereof, being sometimes introduced by a light, sometimes by a violent friction, should restore the temperament of the debilitated parts, reinvigorate the blood and dissipate all heterogeneous ferments out of the bodies of the diseased, by the eyes, nose, mouth, hands, and feet." Indeed, he recognized the difference between functional and organic complaints; and he only meddled with such diseases as " have their essence either in the masse of blood and spirit (or nervous liquors) or the particular temperament of the part of the body" and attempted to cure no disease " wherein there is a decay of nature. " "This is a confessed truth by him, he refusing still to touch the eyes of such as their sight has quite perished." None the less his cures were regarded as miraculous, and Dr. Stubbe tells us that "as there is but one Mr. Greatrakes, so there is but one Sonne"; Greatrakes' method consisted principally in stroaking and passings and in driving the pains from one point to another until they went out at the fingers or toes. In the latter half of the eighteenth century many fakirs, alleged philosophers, quacks, and cosmongerers came to the front. Swedenborg, with his inspirations; Cagliostro, with his idea of personal power; Schrepfcr, with the beginning of spirit- ualism ; and then Gassner, the priest healer, who gave to Mesmer later on some of the ideas for the foundation of his theories. Johann Joseph Gassner, a Swabian priest, appeared upon the scene in 1773. He was a forerunner of our modern spirit- ualist in a way, but had the added distinction of attributing all diseases to the devil. So his object was to pray for the expulsion of this satanic being. The patient had to have implicit faith and was made to give a detailed account of his malady. Gassner's next procedure was to chant various symptoms such as pain, weakness, stiffness, etc., and at his peremptory command to "stop," these symptoms would disap- pear and the patient be well again. At the words "You will cease being disabled," the patient's symptoms vanished. "Your right hand and arm will become somewhat weak," he says; xxxvu [ 4 ] HYPNOTISM and no sooner are the words out his mouth than the right hand is cold and numb and the pulse is accelerated. " Your left hand will become as your right one was and this one will be normal," is his next invocation, whereupon the left hand is cold and numb and the right returns to normal. Gassner keeps up these incantations until the patient is entirely cured, each prayer being accompanied by the invocation that " this is accomplished in the name of the Lord, Our Father." Gassner's cures in theory and practice were identical with those of Greatrakes, except that the mystery was now clothed in a religious garb. In both, the predominant idea was the suggestion to the patient that he would get well. The reason why hypnotism was not studied scientifically until the middle of the eighteenth century was that there was too much of an air of mystery surrounding the workings of the phenomena. Whenever hypnotic power was discovered in a person, he at once considered himself as one who possessed attributes which placed him above the plane of society. Sug- gestion was of course practised as it always has been, but the true idea of what the power consisted of was unknown. At last, toward the close of the century, Frederick Anton Mesmer rose before the world as a disciple of a new force which was destined to turn the scale on to the side of science and forever after to present hypnotism in a new light. Frederick Anton Mesmer was born at Weil, near the point at which the Rhine leaves the Lake of Constance, on May 23, 1733. He studied medicine at Vienna under eminent masters, although at first his parents had destined him for the church. Interested in astrology, he imagined that the stars exerted an influence on beings living on the earth. He identified the supposed force first with electricity and then with magnetism; and it was but a short step to suppose that stroking diseased bodies with magnets might effect a cure. In 1776, meeting Gassner in Switzerland, he observed that the priest effected cures without the use of magnets, but by manipulation alone. This led Mesmer to discard the magnets, and to suppose that some kind of occult force resided in himself by which he could influence others. Mesmer's first practical work with magnets xxxvn [ 5 ] HYPNOTISM was in 1779, when he n^i^nctizcd a young lady complaining of various functional disorders. This emotional young lady " felt internally a painful streaming of a very line substance, nov/ here, now there, but finally settling in the lower part of her body and freeing her from all further attacks for six hours. " She was extremely sensitive to any of Mesmer's suggestions, but would obey no one but him. Thus we see the primeval work- ings of animal magnetism, afterward called hypnotism. Mesmer removed to Paris in 1778, and in a short time the French capital was thrown into a state of great excitement by the marvellous effects of what he called mesmerism. Mesmer soon made many converts; controversies arose; he excited the indignation of the medical faculty of Paris, who stigmatized him as a charlatan; still the people crowded to him. While at Paris his practice became so enormous that it was impossible for him to handle all his patients. So he invented a scheme by which a number of his patients could be magnetized at once. He had troughs filled with bottles of water and iron filings, around which the patients stood holding iron rods which issued from the troughs. All the subjects were tied to each other by cords so that they could not break away and thus spoil the contact. Perfect silence was necessary and soft music was heard. The patients were affected variously, according to the suggestion Mesmer gave them. Some became hysterical, others crazed, some became affectionate and embraced each other, while others laughed and became repulsive. This lasted for hours and was followed by states of dreaminess and languor. A picture given by Binet and Feret, two eminent French scien- tists, will present an idea of these meetings. " Mesmer, wearing a coat of lilac silk, walked up and down amid this agitated throng accompanied by Deslon and his associates whom he chose for their youth and comeliness. Mesmer carried a long iron wand, with which he touched the bodies of the patients and especially the diseased parts. Often laying aside the wand, he magnetized the patients with his eyes, fixing his gaze on theirs, or applying his hand to the hypochon- driac region and to the abdomen. This application was often applied for hours, and at other times the master made use of XXXVII [ 6 ] HYPNOTISM passes. He began by placing himself ' en rapport ' with his sub- ject. Seated opposite to him, foot against foot, knee against knee, Mesmer laid his fingers on the hypochondriac region and moved them to and fro, lightly touching the ribs. Magnetism with strong electric currents was substituted for these manipula- tions when more energetic results were to be produced. The master, raising his fingers in a pyramidal form, passed his hands all over the patient's body, beginning with the head and going downward over the shoulders to the feet. He then returned to the head, both back and front, to the belly and the back, and renewed the process again and again until the magnetized per- son was saturated with the healing fluid and transported with pain or pleasure, both sensations being equally salutary. Young women were so much gratified by the crisis that they wished to be thrown into it anew. They followed Mesmer through the halls and confessed that it was impossible not to be warmly attached to the person of the magnetizer." Mesmer was not an impostor by any means. He had deceived himself and had thus deceived others. But the Academy of Sciences in Paris believed that he was a mystic and a fanatic, and made it so hot for him that he was finally forced to leave France, where, however, he returned later. He died in 1815, and for a time animal magnetism fell into disrepute and Mesmer was denounced as an impostor. Before Mesmer's death, he moved from Paris to a secluded spot among the hills. We see him at the last — bitterly com- plaining of the treatment he had received, thoroughly convinced as to the truth of his pet theories, performing various cures for the peasants about him, and living the simple life of a hermit. Throughout Mesmer's career, the streets were not paved with gold. Many people died under his treatment, giving the belief that the treatment itself was the cause of death. He was treated with ridicule wherever he went. Papers, plays, etc., brought him even more prominently before the public in a more ridiculous light than his own hypothetical and mystical per- formances. A comedy, "Docteur Moderncs" brought his procedures on the stage. It severely criticised his "fanatical" enthusiasm for a quondam science and portrayed the supposed XXXVII [ 7 ] HYPNOTISM abuses of his treatment, ^i England notices like the following appeared in the leading journals : "The Wonderful Magnetical Elixir. Take of the chemical oil of Fear, Dread, and Terror, each 4 oz. ; of the Rectified Spirits of Imagination, 2 lbs. Put all these ingredients into a bottle of fancy, digest for several days, and take forty drops at about nine in the morning, or a few minutes before you re- ceive a portion of the magnetic Effluvia. They will make the effluvia have a surprising effect, etc., etc." Once, in 1785, a mock funeral oration upon Mesmer took place, making his exhibitions and theories seem more ridiculous than ever. Thus he was tossed about between ridicule and praise until, as we have seen, his life was hardly one of harmony or joy. Braid. Although a number of men followed Mesmer, appropriating his method, enlarging upon it and changing it somewhat — such men as de Puysegur — it will be impossible in such a brief essay to tell of all of them. However, there is one man who rose up in the chaos of the times and again added new facts and theories to the science. This man was Braid, a surgeon of Man- chester, England. Braid was born in the year 1795 on his father's estate in Fifcshire. He received his education at the University of Edinburgh, later being apprenticed to Dr. Chas. Anderson, of Leith. After graduating, he was appointed surgeon to the Hopetown mining works in Lanarkshire, later moving to Dumfries, where he engaged in practice with a Dr. Maxwell. An accident happening at that time brought to his town a Mr. Petty, who finally persuaded him to move to Manchester. It was here that he carefully worked on his new discovery and practised his cures. He died on March 25, i860. There is very little in Braid's life of especial interest, except his investigations in animal magnetism. His life seems to have been particularly free from the early struggles of a young practitioner. His interest in animal magnetism dates from the time he witnessed a seance by a M. Lafontaine, a travelhng XXXVII [ 8 ] HYPNOTISM mesmerist. He was extremely skeptical, but this one urged him to try experimenting himself. In 1866 this M. Ch. Lafontaine, a travelling mesmerist, published his "Memoirs of a Magnetizer." If it had not been for this, the electro-biologists of America, under one named Grimes, might have claimed prior right to the discovery of hypno- tism. M. Lafontaine thus describes the state of affairs at that time: "Having accomplished the cure of numerous deaf and blind persons," says he with modest assurance, "as also nu- merous epileptic and paralytic sufferers at the hospital (this was in Birmingham), I repaired to Liverpool, but only to meet with disappointment; few persons attended the seance; and on the following day I proceeded to Manchester, in which city my success was conspicuous. The newspapers reported my experiments at great length, and to give some idea of the sensa- tion I created I may say that my seances returned me a gross total of 30,000 f ranees. I put to sleep a number of persons who were well-known residents of Manchester. I caused deaf mutes to hear, operated a number of brilliant cures. After my departure, Dr. Braid, a surgeon in Manchester, delivered a lecture in which he proposed to prove that magnetism was non-existent. From this lecture Braidism, ajterwards called hypnotism, originated, ardent discussions arising, even from the beginning, over this pretended discovery. I received letters from Manchester entreating me to return, and I did so on a date when Dr. Braid had announced a demonstration. His experiments were given, but unfortunately on this occasion none of them succeeded; neither sleep nor catalepsy was obtained, and every moment I was appealed to. In the facts that were advanced on this occasion by Dr. Braid, there was in my opinion absolutely nothing that was remarkable, and had not that gentleman been honorably known in the town I should have supposed that he was mystifying his audience. The next day, and for six days consecutively, I experimented after his own fashion on fifty or sixty subjects and the results were practically nil. I then gave a magnetic seance and the results on Eugene and Mary were marked and positive." XXXVII [ 9 ] HYPNOTISM The value of the quo^iion rests solely on the opportune remark that Braid was the first to apjily the name liypnotism to animal magnetism. One should not forget that Eugene and Mary were two subjects whom Lafontaine carried with him from town to town and on whom he could rely for phenomena. Though Braid survived his discovery by not more than eighteen years, he lived to know that it was well on the road to acceptance by the competent opinion of the time. In the latter part of his life he said: "I feel no anxiety for the fate of hypnotism, provided it only has 'a fair field and no favor.' I am content to bide my time, in the firm conviction that truth, for which alone I most earnestly strive, with the discovery of the safest, and surest, and speediest modes of relieving human suffering, will ultimately triumph over error" ("Magic, Witch," P- 53)- The enemies of Braid were as vociferous in their denuncia- tion of him as his friends were earnest in their praise. And what may seem the greatest surprise and yet what seems to be a natural consequence of opposition, the Mesmerists themselves were the ones who were the loudest in opposing him. However, his method has stood the test of years and still prevails among those who practise the art nowadays. As was said before, the first exhibition that Braid ever attended was one given by this same Lafontaine. One fact, the inability of the patient to open his eyelids, arrested his atten- tion. He considered this a real phenomenon and was anxious to discover the physiological cause of it. "In two days afterward," he says, "I developed my views to my friend Captain Brown, as I had previously clone to four other friends; and in his presence and that of my family and another friend, the same evening, I instituted a series of ex- periments to prove the correctness of my theory — namely that the continued fixed stare, by paralyzing nervous centres in the eyes and their appendages and destroying the equilibrium of the nervous system, thus proved the phenomenon referred to. The experiments were varied so as to convince all present that they fully bore out the correctness of my theoretical views. My first object was to prove that the inability of the patient to XXXVII [ lo ] HYPNOTISM open his eyes was caused by paralyzing the upper muscles of the eyes, through their continued action during the protracted fixed stare, and thus rendering it physically impossible for him to open them. With the view of proving this, I requested Mr. Walker, a young gentlemen present, to sit down, and maintain a fixed stare at the top of a wine bottle, placed so much above him as to produce a considerable strain on the eyes and eyelids, to enable him to maintain a steady view of the object. In three minutes his eyelids closed, a gush of tears ran down his cheeks, his head drooped, his face was slightly convulsed, he gave a groan and instantly fell into a profound sleep, the respiration becoming slow, deep, and sibilant, the right hand and arm being agitated by slight convulsive movements. At the end of four minutes, I considered it necessary, for his safety, to put an end to the experiment." Braid became so convinced that his interpretation of the phenomena was the correct one that he used it universally, succeeding in a remarkable number of cases. His method was as follows: He would take any bright object, most often his lancet case, and, holding it about fifteen inches from the eyes, and in such a position as to strain them and still allow tlie patient to gaze stead- ily at it, he would carry it slowly toward them until the eyelids closed involuntarily. After a preliminary contraction of the pupils, they would dilate, and finally a tremulous motion of the iris would take place. If this did not succeed after a few minutes, he would try again, letting the patient understand that his eyes and mind had to be riveted on the one idea of the object before him. The primary fact was the fixation of the mind on a certain object. Nay, even the hypnotist himself, if he use the method of attraction, may be hypnotized, as Braid shows in the following example. Mr. Walker, Braid's friend, offered to hypnotize a certain person. When Braid went into the room where the experiment was going on he saw the gen- tleman sitting staring at Mr. Walker's finger. Mr. Walker was standing a little to the right of his patient with his eyes fixed steadily on those of the latter. Braid passed on, and when he returned he found Mr. Walker standing in the same xxxvn [ 1 1 ] HYPNOTISM position fast asleep, his arn^nd finger perfectly rigid and the patient wide awake, starin^it the finger all the while. After Braid, many men pursued the scientific investigation of the phenomena. The interest in the new science since 1875 has spread quickly over Europe. In Belgium, the eminent psychologist Delboeuf of Liege made a path for it. In Holland such men as Van Reuterghem, Van Eiden, and De Jong used hypnotism for curative purposes; in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden there were Johannessen, Sell, Frankel, Calsen, and Wetterstrand, of Stockholm, and finally Swedenborg. In Russia were Strembo and Tokarski; in Greece, Italy, and Spain hypnotism has greatly come into play in medical treatment. In England Carpenter, Laydock, Sir James Simpson, Lloyd- Tuckey, Mayo, and others have used it for curing the sick. In America the science also has its advocates. It is one of the subjects constantly appearing before the Society for Psychical Research. In South America it numbers among its adherents David Benavente and Octavio Maria, of Chili. The interest in hypnotism in France centred around two schools, the school of Salpetriere and the school of Nancy. The former was led by Charcot, whose luminous researches in this subject are epoch-making. The Paris school held that hypnotism is the result of an abnormal or diseased condition of the nervous system; that suggestion is not at all necessary to produce the phenomena; that hysterical subjects are the most easily influenced ; and that the whole subject is explainable on the basis of cerebral anatomy and physiology. But lately the followers of Charcot, who had been numerous in the beginning because he was so highly reliable a man, have begun to dwindle away and have turned to the school of Nancy. The reason for this is obvious to any one who has studied hypnotic phenomena. The first objection to the school of Salpetriere is that most of the experiments have been made on hysterical women. In the second place, this school ignores suggestion, which has been found to be one of the most important factors in hypnotism. They appreciate of course that it can be used, but assert that it is not necessary. The school of Nancy, led by Bernheim, met with equal XXXVII [12] HYPNOTISM success and is now upheld by more people than the other school. The theory of the school of Nancy may be summed up in a few words : first, the different psychological conditions in the hypnotic state are determined by mental action; secondly, people of good sound physical health and of perfect mental balance can pro- duce the best results; and thirdly, all the mental and physical actions are the results of suggestion. In fact suggestion is the all-important factor in producing the various phenomena. Liebault and Bernheim, his pupil, by bringing forth the idea of suggestion, have made themselves in a way the equal of Braid, for in continuation of the latter's method the method of the former is always used nowadays. The influence of Bern- heim over his patients is remarkable. His great success may be accounted for by the confidence his patients have in him. Of course the low intellectual state of the peasant class of France may have something to do with it, for one can hardly think that in any ordinary community this supreme belief and trust in a human being could exist. To Nancy people come from all over the provinces to visit this "Man of God," who performs experiments and cures which seem divine. Bernheim goes from one patient to another, shouting "Sleep I" Many of them having been hypnotized by him often, fall into the state im- mediately. When the experiments are over he goes the rounds of his patients, snapping his fingers, in which way he awakens them. To sum up, then, we may say the history of hypnotism may be divided into five epochs. The first, before the time of Mesmer; the second, the age of Mesmerism, when personal magnetism was supposed to be the attractive power; the third, the age of Braid, when the science was put on a physiological basis; the fourth, the age of Bernheim and Charcot, when the idea of suggestion was brought to the front and hypnotism was used indiscriminately; and lastly, the fifth, the age we are in now, where the tendency is to restrict hypnotism and to classify it for specific uses. XXXVII [ 13 ] HYPNOTISM The NATii^i of Hypnotism. Each individual has a separate state of consciousness which changes as do the thoughts therein. It is in the waking state that we have separate individuahties. Now let us see the gradations of this consciousness. At this present moment we shall say we are listening intently to a sermon. That is the thing uppermost in our minds, and as long as our minds are upon it we are exercising acute consciousness. But, even if our attention to this sermon is the central thing, in the fringe of our mental picture a number of other thoughts are jumping around, any one of which may be powerful enough to force its way into the middle of the picture and to usurp its place. For example, all the while we are listening to this sermon we are more or less conscious that the seats we are in are hard, that somebody is talking next to us, etc. Our seats may become so uncomfortable that it may occupy our whole attention, or something outside may seem of more interest. If our attention jumps from one thing to another, this is called diffused con- sciousness. The next step to diffused consciousness is the dreamy state where the mind is half way between waking and sleep. Anything may come into the mind while in this state and be the predominant idea, to be chased out again by a next idea. It is for this reason that dreams usually present such a chaos and jumble. Our thoughts tumble over one an- other to get from the fringe of consciousness to the foreground. Any external sensation will be greatly exaggerated and may turn the trend of our thought. A warm bed might feel like the fire of hell, a heavy dinner with indigestion like the battles of heroes using our poor bodies as the fighting ground. As dreams gradually fade away we approach our first hypnosis or sleep, which, in the beginning, is slight, but gradually deepens, finally consciousness being entirely lost. Thus we have traced the process of natural sleep to which hypnotic sleep is closely akin. The person at first has a diffused attention, he then confines his attention to sleep, he next passes into a dreaming state, then into a light sleep and lastly into a deep sleep. XXXVII [ 14 ] HYPNOTISM The differences between it and natural sleep are as follows : first, the state ordinarily is produced by another; secondly, the person must have faith ; and thirdly, the phenomena in the sleep must be produced by suggestion. The two latter were fully recognized years ago and have formed the basis of all psychical cures ever since. How the sleep can be produced by another was seen in the experiments of Braid, where one appreciates fully that the person really hypnotizes himself by gazing at an object. The full understanding between hypnotized and hypnotist has never been really understood, and so here we are stopped short. The theory of Dr. Hudson may put us on the right track. Because it is so convenient a theory and tends to make plausible a number of things which otherwise could not be understood, I am going to take the liberty of detailing it here. Dr. Hudson claims that every normal person is possessed of two minds, a subjective one and an objective one. The objective mind is the one we use every day, a mind fully capable of forgetting and the only one of which we are ordinarily cognizant. The subjective mind is the perfect mind wherein are stored up all the numerous thoughts that have ever come into it, there lying dormant, only to be reawakened when a new set of associations brings them forth. It is this mind which we may say is used in hypnotism, in somnambulism, the one which shows itself in altered personality and in various other abnormalities. Some authors consider this the subliminal or subconscious mind.^ That there is another mind far more perfect and which brings to our recollection many things forgotten, seems to be an un- disputed fact. When a drug like Cannabis indica is used, or when a person is drowning, there come before his mind's eye, in a single moment, the doings of years. And so in some re- corded cases of trance states the same thing is proved. A ' One cannot help realizing that this theory will never be fully ac- cepted. Most psycliologists are still quarrelling over concepts, and no two will agree as to what is meant by a subjective or an objective mind. XXXVII [ 15 ] HYPNOTISM highly interesting case is^ppi^cn by Mr. Coleridge in his "Bio- graphica Lileraria." Mr. Coleridge says: "It occurred in a Roman Catholic town in Germany, a year or two before my arrival at Gottingtn, and had not then ceased to be a frequent subject of conversation. A young woman of four or five and twenty, who could neither read nor write, was seized with a nervous fever, during which, according to the asseverations of all the priests and monks of the neighborhood, she became possessed, and as it appeared, by a very learned devil. She continued incessantly talking Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, in very pompous tones, and with a most distinct enunciation. This possession was rendered more probable by the known fact that she was, or had been, a heretic. The case had attracted the particular attention of a young physician, and by his state- ment many eminent physiologists and psychologists visited the town and cross examined the case on the spot. Sheets full of her ravings were taken down from her own mouth and were found to consist of sentences, coherent and intelligible each for itself, but with little or no connection with each other. Of the Hebrew, a small portion only could be traced to the Bible; the remainder seemed to be in Rabbinical dialect. All trick or conspiracy was out of the question. Not only had the young woman been a harmless simple creature, but she was evidently under a nervous fever. In the town in which she had been resident for many years as a servant in different families, no solution presented itself. The young physician, however, determined to trace her past life, step by step; for the patient herself was incapable of returning a rational answer. He at length succeeded in discovering the place where her parents had lived, travelled thither, found them both dead, but an uncle surviving, and from him learned that the patient had been charitably taken by an old Protestant pastor at nine years old, and had remained with him some years, even till the old man's death. Of this pastor the uncle knew nothing, but that he was a very good man. With great difficulty and after much search, our young medical philosopher discovered a niece of the pastor's, who had lived with him as housekeeper and had inherited his XXXVII [ i6 ] HYPNOTISM efiFects. She remembered the girl ; related that her venerable uncle had been too indulgent, and could not hear the girl scolded ; that she was willing to have kept her, but that, after her parents' death, the girl herself refused to stay. Anxious inquiries were then, of course, made concerning the pastor's habits; and the solution of the phenomenon was soon obtained. For it ap- peared that it had been the old man's custom for years to walk up and down a passage of his house into which the kitchen door opened, and to read to himself, with a loud voice, out of his favorite books. A considerable number of these were still in the niece's possession. She added that he was a very learned man and a great Hebraist. Among the books was found a collection of Rabbinical writings, together with several of the Greek and Latin fathers; and the physician succeeded in identifying so many passages with those taken down at the young woman's bedside that no doubt could remain in any rational mind concerning the true origin of the impression made on her nervous system." The same power of the subjective mind is many times seen in hypnotic phenomena. The case cited is but one of a number, all of which are just as wonderful. Being a mind so perfectly endowed, it is hardly too audacious to say that this mind exercises its influence over all bodily functions, so that any function may be inhibited or accelerated by its influence. For example, the following is related of Henry Clay. "On one occasion he was unexpectedly called upon to answer an opponent who addressed the Senate on a question in which Clay was deeply interested. The latter felt too ill to reply at length. It seemed imperative, however, that he should say something; and he exacted a promise from a friend who sat behind him that he would stop him at the end of ten minutes. Accordingly, at the expiration of the prescribed time the friend gently pulled the skirts of Mr. Clay's coat. No attention was paid to the hint, and after a brief time it was repeated a little more imperatively. Still Clay paid no attention and it was again repeated. Then a pin was brought into re- quisition; but Clay was by that time thoroughly aroused, and was pouring forth a torrent of eloquence. The pin was inserted XXXVII [ 17 ] HYPNOTISM deeper and deeper into t^T orator's leg without eliciting any response, until his friend gave up in despair. Finally Mr. Clay happened to glance at the clock and saw that he had been speaking two hours ; whereupon he fell into his friend 's arms, completely overcome by exhaustion, upbraiding his friend severely for not stopping him at the prescribed time. The fact that Mr. Clay, on that occasion, made one of the ablest specclies of his life, two hours in length, at a time when he felt almost too ill to rise to his feet, and that his body was at the time in a condition of perfect ancesthesia, is a splendid illus- tration of the synchronous action of the two minds, and also of the perfect control exercised by the subjective mind over the functions and sensations of the body ("Lav/ of Psychic Phenomena"). I now propose to attempt to explain some of the phenomena of hypnotism by reviewing thoroughly a specific example. On November 23, 1901, 1 was asked by a young lady to try to cure her of biting her fingernails. She was then about eighteen years of age. I immediately replied that I should be glad to do so if I had her full permission. Besides her and myself, there were four or five other persons in the room, including her father and mother. Getting her perfectly composed, I placed my hand on the top of her head, and told her to turn her eyes in the direction of the hand. This tired her eyes very readily. They became heavier, the eyelids twitched and inside of five minutes they fell and she was sound asleep. I first placed her in a cataleptic condition. I told her her arm was a piece of stone and therefore could not be bent. Two or three of those assembled tried to bend it, but failed. Then by more suggestions I placed her in an ancesthetic condition and rubbed the ball of her eye. She neither winked nor flinched. I then gave her a few post-hypnotic suggestions. For example, I told her that when she awakened she would go over and close the window, that she would then thank me for what I had done, and would feel no bad effects and also would remember nothing. Then I told her that the following Sunday I would come over, and, as soon as I told her to go to sleep, she would do so. When she awoke, she went over and closed the window, and then XXXVII [ 18 ] HYPNOTISM thanked mc for what I had done. She remembered nothing and felt much rested. Of course, suggestions were constantly given that she would not bite her nails. The following Sunday, I went over there again. She had not bitten her fingernails since the last time I saw her. I told her to lie down and that in three minutes she would be sound asleep. I used no method whatsoever. In fact, I was in another room. When the three minutes were up, I went in to her and found her in a deep sleep. I impressed on her a number of times that she would never bite her fingernails again. I placed her in a chair, tclhng her to open her eyes. She was to see or hear nobody but me. A number of people stood be- fore her, but she could not sec them. I asked her a question which she readily answered. Then somebody else asked her the same question, but no answer could be got from her. She seemed perfectly deaf to their words. I asked her if she heard anybody else and she answered "No. " I next procured a needle which was perfectly clean, and telling her she would feel no pain I ran it into her forearm for over half an inch. Very little blood appeared, as I had suggested, and she felt nothing. In fact, after the experiments were over she did not know anything about the wound. Taking a glass of water, I told her it was whiskey. She took a little with some show of difficulty in swallowing, and when I told her to walk about the room she reeled around as though she were overcome by the liquor. I then procured some salt, telling her it was sugar and that it would cure her of her dizziness immediately. She took the salt, a half teaspoonful, said it tasted sweet, asked for more, and was entirely herself again. Finally I placed her between two people, putting her head on one's lap and her feet on the other's. She became cataleptic on my suggestion and when two hundred and fifty pounds were put on her body she sustained them very readily. Before she awakened I gave her three suggestions: (i) That as soon as she awoke she would go into the front room and lie down on the sofa for a few minutes; (2) that she would go up to her parents and tell them that she was never going to bite her nails again; and (3) that two weeks from that night she xxxvn [ 19 ] HYPNOTISM would sit down after sup|^ and write me a letter, thanking me for what I had done. All these suggestions were carried into effect. On Monday, December g, two weeks and a day after the experiment had been made, I received the following letter : " Dec. 8th, 1 90 1. " Dear Mr. Hays: " I feel as though I owe you a note of thanks for the wonderful cure you have effected on nie. I have not bitten my nails since three weeks ago to-night, and lam very proud of them. I am writing this to try to let j'ou know how much I thank you. It seems remarkable that a little thing like hypnotism can do so much good, and I shall al- ways feel grateful and indebted to you for this. " Yours sincerely, "E." Not until after the letter had been sent did she find out that it had been I who prompted her to do it. This young lady has not bitten her fingernails since and is entirely cured. We have already found the primary cause of the sleep when produced by the tiring of the eyes. The eyelids droop because the muscles become temporarily paralyzed. There is one ad- vantage in placing the hand on top of the head. It is that it rolls the eyeballs upward, thus putting them in a natural position for sleep. The various other processes after the sleep has been produced are all dependent on the workings of the nervous system. Let us first try to explain the cataleptic state— how it is that the arm becomes so rigid that the bones can be broken before the arm will bend. The most plausible explanation to my mind is that impulses are sent from the brain which make one set of muscles counteract the influence of another set. For example, let us say that two men of equal strength are pulling with all their might on a thick stick. As long as the pull is the same on both sides, the stick won't move. How the mind can exert such an influence we do not know. This same idea of the counteraction of various muscles applies to the whole body as well as to one arm. Yet some one may ask how these muscles can have the power to stand more strain than they do in the waking state. It is only that as our normal selves we never use XXXVII [ 20 ] HYPNOTISM our full muscle power. This is because not enough stimulation is ever given to the muscle to make it work to its full extent. But in cases of great excitement or danger even the weakest seem to have superhuman strength. The loss of the sense of pain or anaesthesia can also be ac- counted for by the brain. When we say we have a pain in our finger, we don't really mean that. The cut is in the finger, but the pain is in the brain, and consciousness is necessary for us to have pain. Suppose a man is going to have an operation on his finger and is made unconscious. Now the finger is there, but the pain has disappeared, showing that pain is not located in various parts of the body, but in the domain of consciousness. So if, under hypnotic influence, you tell the patient that he will have no pain, he thinks the pain away, so to speak — knocks it out of his consciousness. How we can run needles into people and produce no blood seems still more remarkable, but physiologically it can be ex- plained. Let me say here that if any one should pierce a large artery with a needle serious consequences might result. Let us say that we penetrate the skin in a place where there are thousands of little capillaries. Each one of these vessels is connected with the nervous system by two sets of nerve fibres — those which can dilate the vessels, those which can constrict them. Now, suppose I give the suggestion that I am going to run a needle through a certain part of the arm. An impulse, sent from the brain, constricts the blood-vessels at this spot, inhibits the sense of pain, and the needle comes out again with- out a drop of blood following it. The explanation of the dizziness from water supposed to be whiskey and the cure by salt supposed to be sugar is that both are the result of an unexplainable force whereby the patient takes every word of the hypnotizer as gospel, though it is con- tradictory to his own ideas. For example, in one case a patient told me that he knew the glass contained water and yet it tasted like whiskey, and he also knew that the cellar contained salt and yet it tasted like sugar. The cure of the fingernail habit and all the post -hypnotic suggestions may be summed up briefly. All we should do is xxxvn [ 21 ] HYPNOTISM to refer back to the perfect or subjective mind, where all these suggestions are stored up, cind say that the objective mind draws nutriment from it, and in this nutriment these suggestions given under the hypnotic influence come into play. Before closing this portion of the essay I should like to say that I believe hypnotism is not an occult power, but is a simple, natural, physiological process. And again, anybody can use the power just as any one can become a good piano player, or student, or business man by training. Yet it is only those with the natural tendency toward personal power who will make the greatest success. It would indeed be pleasing to me to cite a number of won- derful cases where hypnotism has been used experimentally in order to show the great influence of the mind over the body — how a horse can be ridden over the outstretched body of a man in a cataleptic state, how illusions and hallucinations can be pro- duced, how we may even obtain negative hallucinations, how we can turn an adult into a child, how we can conjure before the mind's eye vistas grand and superb, panoramas gorgeous and elegant, how the commonest man may become an orator, a saint, an assassin perhaps. But all these things would be far beyond the scope of this essay. However, one case seems to be of especial interest, as it shows how far hypnotism may be used in the cure of various inflammations. " The experiment is on a nurse twenty-eight years old, who is not at all hysterical. She is a daughter of plain country people, and has been for a long time an attendant in the Zurich Lunatic Asylum, which Forel directs. He thinks her a capable, honest per- son, in no way inclined to deceit. The experiments were as fol- lows : A gummed label was fixed upon her chest on either side ; the paper was square. In no case was an irritating gum used. At midday Forel suggested that a blister had been put on the left side ; and at six o'clock in the evening a moist spot had ap- peared in that place; the skin was swollen and red around it, and a little inflammation also appeared on the right side, but much less. Forel then did away with the suggestion. On the next day there was a scab on the left side. Forel had not watched the nurse between noon and six o'clock, but had XXXVII • [ 22 ] HYPNOTISM suggested that she could not scratch herself. The other nurses said that the subject could not raise her hand to her chest, but made vain attempts to scratch. Forel repeated the experiment later; he put on the paper at 11:45 ^•^' ^^^ ^^' dered the formation of bhsters in two and one-half hours. Little pain was suggested, and the nurse therefore complained but little. At two o'clock Forel looked at the paper on the left side, for which the suggestion had been made, and saw around it a large swelling and reddening of the skin. The paper could with difficulty be removed. A moist surface of epider- mis was then visible, exactly square like the paper. There was nothing particular under the paper on the right side. Forel then suggested the disappearance of the pain, inflam- mation, etc." In time everything disappeared. Many investigators have been able to bring about a change in blood supply and other visceral changes of a similar kind. Changes in temperature have been made as much as three degrees centigrade. Bernheim found that by suggestion he could induce local reddening of the skin. This is undoubted- ly a vasomotor change. These local red spots were often found in the Middle Ages on the hands of monks and nuns after they had been looking steadily at a cross for hours. At that time it was supposed to be a miracle and a message from the Divinity. In i860, a woman was found with these spots or blisters caused by something unknown. It was learned that she got these while in the hypnotic state. The wounds healed in the nor- mal way, and all that remained to make it necessary for it to be commented upon was that it gave the investigators the idea of trying to produce these spots by artificial means. Krafft-Ebing, a noted German physician, produced certain results analogous to those cited above. He would put something in the patient's hand and give him the suggestion that it was burning. A red- dening would appear. He would take a scissors, a piece of metal, and a postage stamp (saying it was a mustard plaster), and would produce the same results. Wonderful as it may seem — that hypnotic suggestion can produce such grave organic changes — the physician has only to xxxvn [ 23 ] HYPNOTISM reflect for a moment on^fb powerful changes which the mind exerts over the course of a disease. He realizes only too well that the mental attitude of the patient toward his malady is of almost as much importance in the cure as the therapeutic measures he may advise. Processes of inflammation are purely physiological in the hght of modern medicine, and yet there can be no inflammatory process which cannot be made worse by concentrated mental worry. A sore finger to the phlegmatic individual is a trifle: but the hysterical woman makes a "moun- tain out of a mole hill" of it and thereby actually makes the inflammation worse. The Uses of Hypnotism. The general tendency has been in the last decade to use hypnotism indiscriminately; but, like every therapeutic agent, it in time will become restricted and used only in certain com- plaints. It surely should be included by every physician in his " therapeutic arsenal. " It has one thing in its favor which places it above all remedial agents, and that is that when it is used properly it can do no harm. We must recognize that in all the scientific literature on the subject there has not a single death been reported from its use. The unscientific application is its abuse. We must also recognize that there are many cases that are practically incurable by medical treatment, cases which defy the greatest physicians, cases which are surprising because of their persistency. When the last extreme has been reached, when physicians consult and pronounce the case as practically incurable, hypnotism may be tried. Before the advent of ether or chloroform, the possibility of using hypnotism for anaesthetic purposes was thought of and apparently its use in this direction met with success in a limited number of cases. In 1859, Dr. Guerineau announced that he had amputated a thigh under hypnotic anaesthesia. Some other reports are as follows: Jules Cloquent amputated a breast in 1845; Dr. Loysel of Cherbourg amputated a leg and XXXVII [ 24 ] HYPNOTISM removed some glands in 1846; a double amputation of the legs by Drs. Fanton and Toswel in 1845; amputation of an arm by Dr. Joly in 1845; and in 1847 a tumor of the jaw was re- moved by Drs. Ribaud and Kiaro of Poitiers — all under hypnotic anaesthesia (Bernheim's ''Suggestive Therapeutics"). But hypnotism was found to have more drawbacks than advantages in these cases of major surgery. In the first place, hypnotic anaesthesia is a difficult state to produce and even a more difficult state to maintain. Secondly, there is always the possibility of the patient awakening unexpectedly and dying from the shock of the operation. Although it has thus fallen out of use as an anaesthetic in these serious cases, still it is used constantly, and more and more every day, in minor surgery. In dentistry it certainly has its place; in outpatient departments of our hospitals it is often of value, as it has no after-effects. The various medical cases that have been treated by the hypnotic method are too numerous to recount. They in- clude nearly every form of mental non-equilibrium and also cases of general organic trouble dependent more or less on the mental attitude of the patient. They include habits of various kinds, such as onychophagie or fingernail biting, excessive smoking, dypsomania, nervous twitchings, etc., nervous head- aches, insomnia and neuralgias; chronic nervous constipation and diarrhoea and dyspepsia; local and general pain, insom- nia and neurasthenia. Nor is this all. Hypnotism's greatest blessing consists in the cure of psychic paralytics and psychic hysterics. In this connection we may say that it should be used unconditionally. Dr. Starr in a lecture at the College of Physicians and Surgeons cited a case of paralysis in the left arm from the shoulder to the elbow. A physician knows that it is impossible to get a true paralysis of this kind. Dr. Starr hypnotized the patient in his clinic and in less than three minutes the arm was in as good working order as ever. During the course of the past year, I have worked on a few hysterical cases for physicians where nothing but hypnotism could cure them. A remarkable case of true organic nature came to my notice over a year ago. A lady had a severe swelling on her XXXVII [ 25 ] HYPNOTISM finger which was so pai^l that I could hardly bandage it for her. I put her to sleep, suggested the pain away, told her the inflammation would subside the next day and awakened her. I could then do anything I wished to the finger without hurting her. I have left aside the part that hypnotism plays in mental and moral culture — a phase of the subject so vast that it deserves more consideration than could be given here, but the possibilities of which must suggest themselves to all. XXXVII f 26 ] XXXVIII THE WILL "ITS CULTIVATION AND POWER" BY JULES FINOT /^LOSE allied to hypnotism and the vast field of new thoughts, new possibilities, which it is opening to man, come the problems and possibilities of the Will. Its power may be de- veloped, trained, strengthened most amazingly, aroused to special lines oj effort, set to special duties. Among the most interesting, perhaps the most valuable of its possibilities, is that here dis- cussed by M. Jules Finot, the noted editor of the Paris Revue. Can life be visibly and definitely prolonged, not at some distant day by our far-off descendants, but here and now, for each and every one of us, usefully, by the rightful direction of the will ? What chances, what possibilities, does science thus hold out to us ! What shifting of the whole machinery of civilization, if we may continue our individual work and our progress for a century or beyond ! To the nineteenth century may be ascribed the virtue of having sanctioned and explained the actual existence of certain disturbing facts which have been pointed out by chroniclers and historians for many centuries gone by. These facts, formerly regarded as lies, have suddenly changed their aspect. The power of suggestion, which has been verified, controlled, and admitted, has at the same time reduced the number of the impostors and miracles of past times. The most unlikely XXXVIII [ I ] THE WILL phenomena have regained^cir veneer of reahty. They are no longer contested, because they appear to us natural, possi- ' ble, verifiable. Thus we admit that St. Francis of Assisi, or St. Catherine of Siena, may have felt the pains of the Passion. Their pro- longed attention fixed on the points where legend says the nails and the sword blade pierced the body of Christ, caused wounds. The blood flowed from them. These persistent wounds may, indeed, have induced in St. Francis, as well as much later in Louise Lataud, certain thickenings of skin covered with blood, which recalled the nail heads of the cross. Why should we deny this palpable effect of suggestion while so many others, much more strange, discover them- selves to our own eyes? Charles Richet and Barthelemy quote the case of a mother, a very nervous woman, who was present one day at an alarming spectacle: a heavy curtain- rod threatened to become detached and fall on her child kneeling close at hand. On the neck of the terrified mother a ring of erythema formed at the very place where the child might have been struck. The influence of our sensations and ideas on our bodies is as multifarious as the sensations and ideas themselves. Carpenter tells of a man who, in spite of great muscular weak- ness, lifted a very heavy weight one day because he thought it insignificant. Corvisart attended the Empress Josephine and obtained satisfactory results by the administration of bread pills. At all times faith in miracles has produced those very miracles. Those at Lourdes are only a repetition of the votive tablets recovered from the Tiber which testify to the extraordinary feats accompHshed by the Asclepiads. "In these last days," we read, "a certain Gains, who was blind, learned from the oracle that he must repair to the altar, offer up prayers there, and then cross the temple from right to left, rest his five fingers on the altar, raise his hand, and place it over his eyes. He immediately recovered his sight in presence and amid the acclamations of the people." If we take up the narratives published by Mr. Henri Las- serre in his "Lourdes," or by the Abbe Georges Bertin in his xxxvin [ 2 ] THE WILL "Critical History of the Events at LoQfdts," we find similar phenomena. A lady who had become epileptic as the result of a great fright, submitted herself for examination to a number of doctors. All the remedies of science proved powerless. But she was taken to the grotto, and that visit, together with a novena, restored her to health. Parallel to this is a story related by the ancients. A Roman soldier, Valerius Aper, recovers his sight because he follows the advice of the gods. In conformity with their command, he made a pomade of the blood of a white cock mixed with some honey, and with that he rubbed his eyes. We need only read once again what Charcot, Hack Tuke, and many others recount of recoveries by suggestion to doubt neither the miracles of Lourdes nor many other miracles dis- puted by the centuries, ancient and modern. Even Pom- ponace made the malicious observation that while on one hand certain cures were only the effect of imagination and of faith in certain relics, it sufficed on the other "to put in the place of a saint's bones the bones of quite another skeleton without any prejudice to the sick. The cure resulted as long as the sufferer was ignorant of the change that had been ef- fected." Following in the path of merciful tolerance in- augurated by Charcot, certain of his adepts practise a resi- dence at the grotto of Lourdes on their believing patients. They are put to sleep and the idea is suggested to them that they are in the sacred grotto. In the same way the Holy Virgin is made to intervene. The patients are given to drink of the water of the Marne or the Loire, and, with the help of saving faith, a gentle and kindly recovery is induced. The action on the body of our psychic hfe manifests itself thus in all forms. The discovery of the vaso-motor nerves, made by Claude Bernard, has enabled us to introduce a little order among the numerous and complicated effects pro- voked by suggestion both from without and from within (auto- suggestion). We now know the controlling action of the brain, which by means of the vaso-motor nerves has an effect on all our organs. The beating of the heart may become slower, quicker, or may even cease under the stress of emo- XXXVIII [ 3 ] THE WILL tions such as anger oi^?ar. A very great fright may e\X'n cause death through syncope. Intense attention, concentrated on any portion of our body, provokes manifest changes there. Thus redness or paleness may be induced in the face, or swellings on different parts of the body. Certain monks were found with the red marks of flagellation or with the signs of Christ's suffering, as the result of too prolonged or too often repeated hours of ecstasy. Charcot relates numerous cases of the phenomena of burns or ecchymoses appearing on the bodies of people as a consequence of suggestion directed to that end. By the aid of simple suggestion we can thus diagnose functional troubles, organic injuries and hemorrhages as well as curative vaso-constriction. The cases of cure by sug- gestion of the expectoration of blood, and especially of bleed- ing from the nose (epistaxis), are exceedingly frequent. This has been noticed chiefly in connection with loss of blood caused by wounds. Punctures, however deep, in the hypnotic state are never accompanied by a flow of blood. The ancients, to take Homer's word for it ("Odyssey"), were already familiar with the force of suggestion in this respect. The wily Ulysses, injured by a boar, had recourse to a special incantation in order to stop the blood escaping from his wound. By founding our theories on Claude Bernard's vaso-motor system we are able to explain in the same way a number of other phenomena which we owe to suggestion. Thus, con- ditions of our mind, its passions and sentiments, cause the strangest reactions on the organism. Faith enables you to cross mountains, as our ancestors used to say. Courage gets the better of the most redoubtable enemies. It is often not the medicines which cure, but the confidence people have in the doctor. In their most simple expression the passions cause phe- nomena which are easy to control. Strong emotions give rise to cold sweats, diarrhoea, anaemias, blood poisoning, arrested digestion. Hack Tuke relates the following interesting illus- tration of the curative effects of a railway catastrophe : a rheu- matic subject, seized with a most painful attack of rheumatism, took train in order to go home. His sufferings continued in XXXVIII [ 4 ] THE WILL their most violent form. A collision occurred, caused the death of one of the travellers in his compartment, and sud- denly put an end to all the patient's pains. It would take whole volumes to state the case for the effect of mind on matter — that is to say, the effect of our ideas, sensations, and sentiments on the body. One incontestable fact nevertheless stands out from the examples cited above — viz., psychic influences frequently produce the same effects as stimulants or mechanical influences. It would, however, be very difficult to place all the known cases under formal categories, for the simple reason that their number is unlimited. When individual impressionability lends itself to it we might call forth with the help of the psychic factors almost the whole gamut of phenomena yielded by material causes. What, for instance, could be more disturbing than this singular story reported to me the other day? In a dining- room where there were about twenty people, one of the hosts, brusquely interrupting in a voice choked with strong emotion, shouted : "Alas ! we are all poisoned ; the cook has gone mad and put arsenic in all the sauces!" Thereupon several people were seized with vomiting, others experienced pains like those of arsenic poisoning, while a woman fell to the ground over- come. . . . The mistake was discovered a few moments later, for the supposed arsenic was only mouldy flour that the drunken cook had mistaken for poison. Under the influence of severe grief the hair changes color in the space of a night. Certain emotions act in a special way on certain glands. The idea of sorrow experienced pro- vokes tears; rage acts on the salivary glands. Shame pro- duces a reddening of the cheeks just as the feeling of fear affects the functions of the heart and often of the digestive organs. Joy facilitates digestion, while anger poisons the organism and unsettles its primordial functions. On the other hand, serenity of mind quite appreciably induces well- being. In this condition all our organs perform their func- tions in a way which is nearer the normal, more healthy, and more in accordance with the prosperity of the body. XXXVIII [ 5 ] THE WILL II When we consider the undoubted reflex action of the mind on the body, we may easily rcaHze that nature has placed certain means at our disposal for increasing our happiness on the earth. We arc somewhat in the position of an owner of land in whose depths lie hidden rich veins of gold. What should we say of such a man who, while aware of his riches, refused to exploit them? And yet this is the case with almost all human beings. We know how easily handled and how evidently certain are these moral instruments which nature has put into our hands, and yet how many are there who have recourse to them ? The properly used forces of our mind may render us important services with regard to the prolongation of our life. As we have shown above, there is no doubt that ill-directed sug- gestion shortens it. Arrived at a certain age we poison our- selves with the idea of or with thoughts about our approach- ing end. We lose faith in our own strength, and our strength leaves us. On the pretext that age is weighing heavily on our shoulders, we take to sedentary habits and cease to pursue our occupations with vigor. Little by little our blood, vitiated by idleness, and our feebly renewed tissues open the doors to all sorts of maladies. Precocious old age lays siege to us, and we succumb earlier than we need have done, as a result of injurious auto-suggestion. Now why should we not endeavor to live by auto-suggestion, instead of dying of it ? We might keep before our eyes numerous examples of healthy and robust longevity and let our conscious- ness be invaded and conquered by the possibility of living be- yond a hundred years. Goethe said somewhere: "Man can command nature to eliminate from his being all the foreign elements which cause him suffering and illness." However, negative action is not sufficient. One must also proceed to a positive piece of work. One must store up in one's brain beneficent, serene, and comforting suggestions. Every one knows the fundamental basis of the sect of the "Christian Scientists," so wide-spread in the United States. In face of xxxviu [ 6 ] THE WILL an obvious illness, they affirm that it does not exist, and they suggest the idea that prayers can conquer every evil. Up to the period when, blinded by success, the representatives of this new^ belief pushed their method, which is excellent in itself, beyond the limits of common sense, unnumbered cures were effected by their invocations. These supposed "miracles" brought in thousands of adherents and millions of dollars to Mother Eddy, the celebrated foundress of this religion, which proves so lucrative for its priests. Ill On a closer study of the life of centenarians, we perceive how an optimistic belief in their strength has helped them to bear the weight of their years. Baron Waldeck, who died in Paris in 1875 at the age of 109, never ceased to entertain the "suggestion" that he had still long to live. At the age of 102 he undertook for the firm of Didot, so Pierre Giffard, his biographer, affirms, a three-volume encyclopedia, treating of archaeology. Consumed with his idea that the Egyptian civil- ization descended in a direct line from the Mexican, he ex- tracted from his ardent work reasons for going on living. Born under Louis XV. and having travelled at the time of La Perouse, this man breakfasted with Laharpe and the Abbe Delille, counted Camille Desmoulins among his friends, knew Bonaparte as a sub-orderly officer in Egypt and Thiers as a drawing master, was present at a series of revolutions, and passed away under MacMahon, almost in the plenitude of his intellectual forces. M. Rigaud, the senior Mayor of France, whom I met during the Exposition of 1900, told me that at the age of 92 he was in the habit of rising at four in the morning and immediately beginning work, after rubbing himself with cold water. "How about your 92 years?" I asked, smilingly. "I never look at them," he said good-naturedly. As a contractor for public works he was still at that period personally superintending his workmen. One of my friends, a most distinguished Englishman, XXXVIII [ 7 ] THE WILL M. W., whom, in spite of 1^87 years, I am careful not to call an old man, leads as acti\^a life as if he were no more than thirty. I shall never forget a walk of some hours' duration which we took together in order to visit, among other things, on the heights of Montmartre, the studio of L. Dhurmer, one of our greatest pastel painters. With intense curiosity M. W. set to work to study "the secret" of the master's procedure. The painter, who had heard tell of the venerable age of his visitor, said to him respectfully: "There are no longer any secrets to you. Admiral." "Don't you rely on that," said M. W., smiling. "I have plenty of time before me, and I may yet come into competition with you." And, as a matter of fact, in the following year, M. W. re- newed the lease of his London house for 99 years. Mrs. Margaret Neave, who died in 1904 in the island of Guernsey, at her estate Rouge Huyshe, at the age of iii, was by no means cut off, up to the end of her days, from the out- side world. She received visitors and questioned them on the affairs of the day. As long as Queen Victoria was alive, she never failed to send her an annual telegram of congratula- tions on her birthday. The Queen replied with affection and carefully examined the portrait of old Mrs. Neave, just as some women who are soon expecting to be mothers anxiously watch the faces of beautiful children. Mme. Viardot, the great friend of Tourgeneff, in spite of her advanced age of 84, continues to give singing lessons. To her active life and to the absence of all depressing sugges- tions she owes her youthfulness of spirit, which makes her one of the most agreeable talkers in Paris. I shall never forget the vivid portraits she sketched for me of some of the cele- brated personages she had met on her long journey. And is not "creation" the true gift of youth? Such was also the case with the beautiful Mme. Scrivaneek, the glorious rival of Dejazet, whom I saw, toward the year 1900, giving lessons and private tutoring, at the age of about 80. We ought to take a flying view in memory of the celebrated men who, as nonagenarians or centenarians, have always dis- XXXVIII [ 8 ] THE WILL tinguished themselves by their untiring activity and their faith in "their youth." When we think over their caees, we realize that it was the suggestion of force, the innate conviction that resistance is possible, together with the absence of de- pressing ideas, which chiefly contributed to the preservation of their health and their prolonged Hfe. So that we see how important it is to shut the door of one's heart, or rather of one's brain, to all injurious ideas as to stingy limits to life. Nature, who created poisons, has also created their antidotes. What, for instance, can be more painful to almost all mortals than the mere thought of inevitable old age? Nearly as many tears have been shed over this necessity as over that of death. For those, alas! who tremble at the dark, are quick to per- ceive its terrors. And yet this old age, so ill-spoken of and so feared, contains within it unsuspected delights. Every- thing depends on the angle at which we take up our position for observing and studying it. The author of the Epistles to Lucillus (XII.) goes into ecstasies over its charms. "Apples are not good," he tells us, "until they are beginning to go. The beauty of children appears toward the end. . . . Those who love wine take the greatest pleasure in the last draught they drink. All that is most exquisite in man's pleasures is reserved for the end." Renan also (" Discours de reception a rAcademie'') dis- covered an attractive canvas on which to paint old age, so abhorred of all. "Charming age," he says, "that of the Ec- clesiast, the most appropriate to serene gaiety, when one begins to see, after a most laborious day's work, that all is vanity, but also that a number of vain things are worth tasting at leisure." What a fragrant bouquet of dehcious and fortifying herbs might be culled from the delicate thinkers who have meditated long on old age. Try to train yourself in it, and you will taste, little by little, under their influence, the charm of quiet, in the place of the worries of fear. Yet bad suggestions come to us from all sides. We think too much of the diseases of our organs, of the using up of our tissue, and of fatal decrepitude. We distrust our physical and intellectual forces, our memory, our conversational gifts and powers of work. For enemies XXXVIII [ 9 ] THE WILL to our happiness lie in wait for us everywhere. The necessity for keeping them out bj^ood suggestions, and above all by deliberate auto-suggestion, thus becomes most obvious. IV We are more cruel to our own interests than nature has any idea of being. The human organism of which we speak so ill is marvellously solid. Probably there is not a single one of the mechanical inventions, on which we so pride our- selves, which could withstand with such impunity the many senseless shocks to which we subject our body. When one thinks of our way of life, which, from the tenderest age, con- stantly deranges the numerous wheels of the human machine, one cannot but be filled with admiration at its resisting power. Not content, however, with throwing it out of gear, we speak ill of it endlessly as well. Having used and abused our body for a certain number of years, we are then pleased to pro- nounce it old, senile, lost. And we proceed to neglect it with an absence of care which effects its ruin. After having suffered for many years from our excesses and our follies, it succumbs under the burden of our gratuitous contempt. And when the injury does not come from its own immediate proprietor, you may be sure that our neighbors, relations, or friends will not fail to throw it in its face. Poor human body! Source of so many joys which beautify, nourish, and sustain our life, it is nevertheless reduced to the rdle of a mere laughing-stock. The reproach of having a mind or a consciousness which is either senile or worn out creates in us a feeling of revolt. We cannot bear to have any one daring to doubt their strength or their youth. And yet how many are there who venture to animadvert on a sentence of senility unjustly passed upon them? Indeed, men who have reached a certain age bow all the more before such a reproach and do their best to deserve it. Our superstitions also have a share of the responsibility here as in all other things. Almost all of us experience that of pseudo-senility. Thus we imagine that at sixty years of age or even earlier our hour of retirement has sounded. From this moment we give up our occupations, our exercise, our XXXVIII [ ID ] THE WILL pleasures. We withdraw from life and it in turn withdraws from us. Now physiology is there to demonstrate to us that our organism may yet accomplish all the physiological func- tions of the preceding periods. And if our digestion or some other function is weak or paralyzed, we have not our years to thank, but the bad use to which we have put them. For, what is senility? It is the time of life at which a man, who has only a worn-out organism at his service, must die his natural death. Now this limit, which might theoretically be put at one hundred and fifty or two hundred years, exists even in real- ity much further off than we venture to believe. For a proof of this I will take a series of curious statistical tables of deaths from old age in Paris during a period of eleven years, which were drawn up by Dr. A. Block (Bulletin de la Societe d 'Anthropologic de Paris, 1896). The result shows that even in this city of Paris, which has such an unwhole- some effect on people's health and longevity, senility, such as we have just defined it, appears frequently at the age of from eighty to eighty-five, and even some years later. This is how the author shows the number of deaths from senility, for lack of other visible causes: 100 and Year. 80-85. 85-90. 90-95. 95-100. Over. 1880 393 213 60 10 I 1881 465 J 177 36 9 2 1882 413 214 48 8 I 1883 454 264 64 15 o 1884 437 221 59 6 I 1885 398 238 63 IS o 1886. 447 255 61 II I 1887 387 262 58 12 o 1888 441 271 75 13 I 1889 555 293 116 32 3 1890 519 307 116 18 2 The critical period for an old man in Paris therefore appears to be between eighty and eighty-five, for in these five years there are the most numerous deaths from senility. The author, in comparing all these facts, arrives at the apparently para- doxical conclusion that from the age of eighty illness has less power over an old man the older he becomes. In other words, XXXVIII [11] THE WILL after having passed this critical age, man has more chance of dying of a natural death-^nat is to say, of crossing the thresh- old of his centenary. What is the reason of this ? It is very simple. It often takes a man eighty years of experience to know how to direct the capacities of his organism with precision. The most important thing for us is that death from pneu- monia, heart disease, and cerebral congestion or hemorrhage, is by no means so frequent after the age of sixty as is ordinarily beheved. In other terms, the respiratory apparatus, the cir- culation, and even the digestive organs continue their functions, or rather they have no special reason for not continuing their functions. In any case, it is not senile decay, a natural cause, which deprives us of their use, but all sorts of accidental causes. Which of us has not met men who have passed the age of eighty and yet digest and breathe very well and are still enjoying all their intellectual faculties ? Rational economy in the use of our organs may preserve them for their work far beyond a century. Often all that is required is that we should be saturated from an early age with this truth in order to enable all who are in love with life to pass beyond this long stage of the journey. V Intelligent men have yet another means of prolonging their existence, which the poor in spirit cannot practise. I mean the control of life and its rational use. In his tract on the "Shortness of Life,"^ Seneca asserts with reason that "it is not that we have too little time, but we lose so much," and that "the smallest part of our life is the part we live." From that point of departure he combats the pessimism of Aristotle who poured out recriminations against nature which were hardly worthy of a sage. It is well known that the founder of Peripatetics complained bitterly against the immortal principle of things which had only considered "the animals whose existence was prolonged for five or six cen- 1 De brevitate vitce. "Non cxiguum temporis habcnius, sed multum perdimus," . . . " Exigita pars est vitcs, quam nos vivimus."- XXXVIII [ 12 ] THE WILL turies, while man, born for so great and various a destiny, found himself pulled up while still far within these limits." But according to Seneca, long life itself only becomes short because of our inaptitude in using it. And the philosopher makes the profound remark, which has never ceased to be true in spite of the number of centuries which stand between us and its author : "No man permits any encroachment on his field, and for the smallest dispute about a boundary stones and javelins are let fly, and each suffers his life to be invaded. . , . You cannot find any one who will share his money, yet each lavishes his life on all comers. All attach importance to the manage- ment of their patrimony, but, as soon as it becomes a question of loss of time, they are prodigal to excess with the one good thing of which it would be beneficial to be stingy." In taking up this point of view we see how cruel man is with regard to his own interests. We are all agreed as to the value of life and time, its supreme expression. Yet rare are those who really know how to honor it. Let each one pass in review the months and years lost in vices which shorten our existence, in a sort of moral or intellectual lethargy which ought to be deducted from life, and we can easily see that we are our own executioners. We must not believe in the control exercised by acts of the civil state, nor even in the outward signs of old age. Like the face of a clock, they perform the function of mechanical registration. The hidden truth rarely corresponds to these formal signs. Such and such a white beard or such and such a birth certificate pointing to two or three quarters of a century of human life, may perhaps only correspond to fifteen or twenty years. The squandering of individual lives only finds its equal in that of modern civiliza- tion with its armaments and its wars. Let each of us examine his conscience and he will tremble with indignation and horror at the lion's share of his life which has been destroyed by carelessness and lightness. Along with our own errors we must include those of our defective systems of education and instruction. The illnesses which might have been avoided, as well as XXXVIII [ 13 ] THE WILL the evils of the cducatia^P:)f youth, abstract from hfe more years than each would recjuire in order to become a centenarian. Thus we see that the science of life, the art of using it intelli- gently would distinctly prolong its limits. The people who groan at the years which in slipping away bring them nearer the fatal denouement remind one of the prodigals who lament the enforced outlay of a few halfpence, while they are tossing sovereigns out of the window. How true is the neat saying of Charron: "It is characteristic of a great master to enclose much in a little space." It is perhaps in this quarter that we might easily find one of the numerous keys to long life. VI But how are we to counteract the depressing influences which lie in wait for us every moment of our lives ? Consider the evil and the good, and what do we find ? It is often quite enough for some one to tell us some thing nice and pleasant to produce a condition of peace and serenity in our minds. More important still: often in the grip of analytical melan- choly or of unlimited despair we sit down to think over our case. After careful examination we find it by no means so exasperating. If we continue our thinking the calmer aspects of the event stand out with reassuring clearness. They even smile at us good-naturedly, and we may confidently abandon ourselves to their tender mercies. Thus unhappy impres- sions fade away, injurious or depressing sentiments become less acute, and, just as the surface of a lake which has been disturbed by the invasion of some body from outside regains its habitual stillness, so our conscious mind regains its equi- librium. For, in nature, there is nothing either absolutely good or absolutely bad. In the saddest things there is an element of sweetness, if not of gayety. It is our business to seek it, and having found it to make good use of it. A wise man will do still more. Instead of having recourse, on special occasions, to this beneficent fairy, he will wish to keep her always close to him. Looking into her smiling face, XXXVIII [ 14 ] THE WILL he will acquire renewed strength for each misfortune. He will let life's furrows be smoothed away by her musical laughter. Cross-grained philosophers and psychologists will no doubt say that this is optimism unworthy of superior men. What does that matter ? We may say what evil we like of optimism, but we must admit all the same that it is closely bound up with the fortunes of human beings. It is all very well to try to substitute the philosophy of ill-temper, in other words, gnawing pessimism, as the natural system of humanity. We have only to examine a man a little nearer and to observe with what joy he entertains the smiles of the good fairy and turns from the grimaces of pessimism to see which way nature draws him. If we cast a look round us we notice how in- stinctively a man lets himself be drawn along by his own optimistic tendencies. The many games of chance with their risks bordering on the unlikely; the thronging of the liberal professions where success is rare ; the faith in political panaceas, and the spectacle of so many other of the games of life where impregnable belief in a happy issue constantly dominates the fear of misfortune all go to prove it. Humanity left to itself, as Dr. Max Nordau says somewhere, gives way by prefer- ence and by instinct to happy influences. Consequently these have more chance of possessing us. All we need is to utilize them for our own happiness. I cannot contemplate the vast fields of international litera- ture without emotion. Millions of people of the writing profession make a living out of the misery and scorn of the public and the critics. Yet they continue to introduce their works often at the cost of appalling injuries to their self-respect. In their robust faith in the future they discount the glory of to-morrow and even that due to them from far-off generations. And yet they cannot ignore the fact that out of the thousands of works and of writers who preceded us, not more than a few hundreds have survived. In comparison with the chances which we have in the lottery of literary glory, a share in the Panama or the Credit Foncier of Paris might almost be considered a certainty of a big haul. XXXVIII [ 15 ] THE WILL What has become of tl^greatcst poets of Greece? Which of us has ever read a single Une of Simonidcs, who was fifty-six times a winner in the prize competitions; or of Philetas, whom Theocritus despaired of ever cqualhng? Max Bonnet, in his " Classical Philology," argues that Homer, Sophocles, and Eurip- ides have only survived because they have been made subjects for the practical studies of our youth! This is how the glory of these immortal poets is maintained from among all the men who had the opportunity of living in an epoch when, as is said, mankind was not suffering from any embarrass- ment of talent or genius. Were it not for our rooted opti- mism the millions of writers who spring up all over the world would no doubt snap their pens and take to more peaceful and, O irony supreme! more durable work. Thus there is nothing easier than to reach the port of happiness by trusting one's self to optimist currents. Yet those who feel incapable of putting this comforting philosophy in practice may have recourse to a surprisingly simple method. It is none the less ethcacious. Every one knows the story of the sick man, who, while suffering from neuralgia, argued so well with his pain that it finally disappeared. What is required is auto-suggestion for each given case, instead of falling back on some general doctrine. Does not psycho- therapeutics, the new departure in medicine, teach us that certain illnesses disappear as if by enchantment as the result of constantly repeated suggestions? Dr. F. Regnault relates that in treating a hypochondriac he advised him to write on the walfevery evening the words, "I am happy," and to go off to sleep in full view of them. After a few weeks happiness began to steal into his spirit. Which of us, in speaking of God, does not instinctively turn toward the sky? Neither science nor reason can prevail against the mechanical repeti- tion of the phrase, which is yet so contrary to the most ele- mentary notions of astronomy; "Our Father, which art in Heaven." In moments of distress, astronomers themselves may be found seeking for their God in some hidden corner of the universe! XXXVIII [ i6 ] THE WILL VII What endless resource is provided in this way against the invading years! Let us accept them with confidence and look on them with the softness which befits men of wisdom. Let us ever keep before our eyes comforting examples of serene old age and probable longevity. Little by little our opti- mistic visions will become a guard of honor. They will be on the watch that poisonous fears do not take possession of our consciousness. Those who are not sensitive to this sur- rounding atmosphere of reasoned thought may, on the other hand, have recourse to direct and repeated suggestion. Let us then repeat every day and at every moment when the fears of helpless old age come back to memory, first of all that it is a long way off, and secondly let us remind ourselves of its attrac- tions. This direct action on the mind will have extraordinary results. And as the hypochondriac comes to be always smihng by continually telling himself that he is happy, so people obsessed by the thought of old age and death may be restored to calm at their approach. Our unreasoned fears, by demoralizing our minds, only accelerate their destructive advance. In facing them with the careful consideration worthy of a well-informed man, we remove our limits. Our apprehensions are put to sleep [under the influence of thought just as, according to the Indians, the evil desires of love are by malalis. Let us especially put ourselves under the most powerful influence of all, that of work. Let us prolong our youth under the protection of these illusions. Let us use our minds rather than enfeeble our bodies for want of occupation. In a word, let us not give ourselves time to grow old! The inevitable visitation which must at some time lead in the two dreaded sisters, old age and death, will not only take place later, but, what is more essential, will become a thing almost to be desired. They will be awaited like guests who are to bring us at some distant, even at some very dis- tant, day, the attractive charm of their sweet and peaceful melancholy. XXXVIII [ 17 ] XXXIX THE HOPE "THE UNKNOWN GOD" BY SIR HENRY THOMPSON T/f/^E approach the close of our series. We have faced life from '^' many sides, examined it in many aspects. From the immaterial side, the side of creation, of godhood, and of mystery, we are perhaps ready to ask ourselves the 'final question, What shall we, what can we, what at heart do we believe of an existence beyond and above us? Upon this mighty subject each individual has meditated perforce, with whatsoever of profundity and ear- nestness lies within his nature. Positive conclusions, drawn partly perhaps from an inherited faith, partly from a limited personal experience, are held by some among us with a pas- sionate intensity which defies doubt almost as a crime. Others cry clamorously to their neighbors for fuller light. Others have pushed the question aside impatiently as beyond solution. What, let us ask ourselves, would a thoughtful man believe who had seen all life and studied all religions without, if such a case were possible, a preconceived partiality for any one among the^n ? What in brief will the man of the future believe when he has come to know all that may be knowable on earth? The first of these two questions we can answer partly, though not the second. We have here the words of a man famous in the annals of medicine, a noted English physician who until his recent death was not only a leader in his profession but a man of mark in the social world, a diplomat and ^^ friend of kings." Sir Henry Thompson ranked as "physician extraordinary" XXXIX [ I ] THE HOPE to more than one of the croitkd heads of Europe. He was not a professional writer, but early in lijc he began that serious and untratnmelled search into religion which here finds such striking literary expression. This summing up in a strictly logical way of the conclusions he had finally reached was Sir Henry's last important work, his legacy to the world. That he does not liter- ally accept Christianity need afflict no Christian mind. Rather should each one draw encouragement from the fact that while wholly ignoring "revelation'' this profound investigator has reached results so close akin to all its teachings. An attempt to seek, by a carefully made induction from available data, some certain assurance respecting the influence which the "Infinite and Eternal Energy from which all things proceed" has exercised on Man t^oughout his long career on Earth. "But amid the mysteries which become the more mysterious the more they are thought about, there will remain the absolute certainty that he (the Astronomer) is ever in presence of an Infinite and Eternal Energy, from which all things proceed." — Herbert Spencer, Nine- teenth Century Review, Jan., 1884. I SUPPOSE there can be no doubt in the mind of any intelligent student of Nature, by which term is to be understood the numer- ous and multiform phenomena which any and every part of the Universe within his reach presents, that careful investigation inevitably leads to a conviction that all are subject to a uniform order and regularity in their varied operations. And this reg- ularity is to be regarded as applying to all such phenomena, whether they be only mechanical movements of inert matter, or those more complicated forms of activity associated with what is termed — but not yet understood — as "Life," either in the animal or vegetable world. For an example, let us consider that magnificent array which we call the "Heavens," concerning which it is well known that millions of stars are individually identified and registered by the astronomer, and that each is a central sun, more or less like our own, pursuing a rapid course, absolutely uniform and therefore calculable, so that its exact position in the sky can be predicted for any future XXXIX [ 2 ] THE HOPE minute of time, even (say) in the next century. No less ordered in its movement is each of the smaller orbs constituting our own solar system; the eclipse of one by the intervening passage of another, or, may be, only by a shadow cast upon it in its course, being predicable with like certainty years before the event occurs. One more example, but from the no less wonderful and extensive world of the exceeding small. A competent observer may, on seeing attached to a certain leaf a minute ovum, be able infallibly to predict the future career of the animal which will emerge therefrom, its coming changes in size and form, the duration of its existence, and the fact that it will assuredly give rise to other beings like itself. Hundreds of like illustrations might be adduced, but the above amply suffice for the present purpose. II Familiar with the apparently universal presence of a uni- form order dominating the operations of all that is understood as Matter, roughly classed as organic and inorganic, it is almost impossible to conceive our observer capable of resisting a con- viction that some marvellous source of Energy exists behind, or is immanent in, the "Universe," accepting this as an appro- priate term by which to denote the sum total of all the phenom- ena within our reach. And thus the idea is naturally and strongly suggested, that what he knows as ordered arrangement as exercised among men is manifested in Nature, but with a more complete and far greater certainty and stability of result in the latter case. For "Man" being himself, beyond all question, the most perfect example of intelligent activity known to man, must necessarily be the type or measure by which he can attempt to estimate any other manifest source of analo- gous activity, however infinitely greater than himself, and con- ceived by him as the paramount and ever-present origin or Cause of all Existence. Let me then venture in pursuing this inquiry to suggest that the "Infinite and Eternal Energy" thus postulated as the pro- ductive source of all Natural phenomena may be regarded by XXXIX [ 3 ] THE HOPE man, notwithstanding hi^^ecessarily limited purview, as to a certain extent analogous — being dissimilar rather in the transcendent vastness of its scope than in the mode — with that by which a human will is exercised. This being granted, I cannot but conclude that the unknown source may, and can only, be studied, with the view of acquiring any knowledge respecting its nature, by the single method or instrument which man has hitherto employed to acquire all the knowledge he has obtained during the long period of his existence in this world, viz., by the careful study of phenomena, and by collect- ing all data respecting them which are proved to be absolute facts. These being collated and carefully considered, may in time enable him to infer, with more or less certainty, the exist- ence of manifest tendencies, denoting the possession of at- tributes or disposition manifested by the Unknown Power, and furnishing data capable of being appreciated or described as exercising a beneficial influence, or the reverse, on the Human Race, and also upon all lower forms of Animal Life. in But perhaps it might here be urged. Why not avoid the circumlocution involved by referring to a possible Supreme Cause of all things in such terms as "Infinite and Eternal Energy," or the like, and adopt one of the brief words which have been in general use, as " Jehovah," "Theos," " Jove," or " God"? I reply that they are avoided precisely because each of them has become so completely identified by long association of ideas with schemes of theological doctrine based on the alleged ex- istence of personal appearances on the earth of the beings thus named, founded on ancient legends which have served without doubt as useful provisional working hypotheses during the early ages of man's history, but for the scientific inquirer, i.e., the patient seeker after truth, are necessarily replaced by less defined and more abstract terms. For, as we have seen, no human mind can entertain, much less express, any definite idea of the nature or attributes pertaining to the Source of all power, "Infinite and Eternal," without conveying at the same XXXIX [ 4 ] THE HOPE time the idea of a Being or Personality; man's conceptions being limited by his knowledge of the highest achievements of his own race. Hence the universal use of anthropomorphic symbols, and the necessary formation of inadequate corresponding ideas, respecting the vast, inscrutable, and unknown source and origin of all things; whence an "eidolon" results, no better than those which have been carved by the hands of every race in its early history, possessing none but the crudest legends derived from necessarily ignorant ancestry. And thus every man to-day who has imbibed any idea of a material semblance representing in his mind a personal "God," conditioned by terms expressive of human attributes, has but made an idol for himself. And no two such men can ever by any possibility make the same; each of these impressions or concepts must be that of the indi- vidual alone, and from the very nature of things no two can be alike. To return then to the subject of our proposed inquiry: there is but one mode of prosecuting it to its farthest extent with the faculties which man at present possesses, viz., the patient diligent examination of natural phenomena on a large scale. And let it be remarked here that by the phenomena of the Universe, or Nature, are to be understood not only those im- pressions on our senses which arise by contact with what is understood as the external world, but also those impressions which are derived from a study of what we know as our own consciousness — a distinction without a difference, retained in deference to popular habits of thought, since every acquisition of knowledge involves an act of consciousness. In this way and by this alone can we be sure of attaining our object, at all events to some extent. It is impossible to com- prehend the vastness and sublimity of the idea which the terms "illimitable space" and "endless time" express; although doubtless strictly applicable to the source of the Infinite and Eternal Energy, concerning the nature and tendencies of which we but crave, if possible, humbly to learn something more than heretofore, by the mode of inquiry already suggested. An ob- ject which beyond all others is, perhaps, the sublimest and most attractive which our life and its surroundings can offer. XXXIX [ 5 ] THE HOPE IV We will next consider the question, What has Man ac- quired during his long career by the so-called Supernatural revelations alleged to have been communicated to him by a supreme and all-powerful Deity? Whatever he may have learned, "at sundry times and in divers manners," by means of "Divine Revelation," this fact at least must be universally admitted, viz., that the single ob- ject of all of them has been to inculcate Religious and Moral duties. The Religious duties have consisted chiefly in demand- ing constant and humble service to an Omnipotent Deity, one God, of whom, taking the words attributed to the Founder of Christianity as a command, he said, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment" (Matthew c, xxii., v. 37, 38) — a service the neglect of which, according to the tenets of Christianity, entails the severest punishment, not in the present, but in a future and eternal hell; while a never-ending life of supreme happiness is promised as the reward of faithful obedience. The Moral obligations enforced, that is, the conduct of Man to his fellows, are signified and enunciated by impressive exhortations to charity and kindness to the poor and afflicted. The passage above quoted continues as follows: "And a second like unto it is this, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself" (Matthew c. xxii., v. 39). Then follow the significant words, so opposed to the oppressive ceremonial of the ancient Jewish usages then in force: "On these two commandments hangeth the whole law, and the prophets" (v. 40).^ Subsequently Christianity, organized by the great Teacher's immediate followers, who were Greeks speaking and writing that language, took the form of the Greek or Eastern Church during the second century of our era. The doctrines of Chris- tianity are still taught in that tongue throughout Russia, where it is the National Church to this day. From this source the * Revised Version used throughout. XXXIX [ 6 ] THE HOPE Romish Church arose, and allying itself to the Imperial power the Bishop of Rome soon became the Pope, and an infallible head of the Catholic Church, requiring absolute obedience in all matters of faith and practice from her adherents. In England the Reformed or Protestant Religion is the National Church ; and notwithstanding its evident and admitted defects, its inevitable division into numerous hostile sects, differing seriously respect- ing matters of belief, it has doubtless been in past ages well suited to the nations who have embraced it and have been influenced thereby. Thus the establishment of public hospitals and other institutions for the care of the poor and afflicted are found among the European races who have adopted the re- ligious faith which is identified chiefly with the young Jew- ish devotee whose history, although imperfectly known as to matters of detail, affords little ground for doubt that he taught his followers very little or no dogma, but simply the worship of One God, "His Father" — and "Theirs" also — the practice of kindness, truth, self-denial and of a simple and blameless life ; and that he set them the example of going about doing good to others, even to their enemies. And such charity and care for the suffering is held in all parts of the world to be the duty of Man, wherever he has become civilized, as we shall hereafter see. And let it be added here once and for all, that each of the varied forms of Religion which have appeared on earth, although claiming to be supernaturally revealed, must be regarded as the natural outcome of Man's own wants and feelings, the sense of his desire to recognize a Power above him — "One that is greater than I" — worthy to be worshipped ; trusted in for help in time of need, for justice when oppressed; One that might hear his prayers and accept his sacrifice. All have been useful aids in his progress, and have arisen as the natural result of his own development. A brief sketch of the chief religions which have thus arisen in the later ages of the world's history may follow here. That with which we in this country are necessarily most familiar, by no means the oldest in point of date, is believed to have origi- nated among the ancient Semitic race, and was known as Juda- ism, still largely prevalent, but modified at a comparatively re- XXXIX [ 7 ] THE HOPE cent date, that adopted toi^rk our own era a.d., by the out-, growth and separation of an important and powerful religious organization and creed, which has been already noticed, Chris- tianity, now accepted by the greater part of Europe and its dependencies and by the United States of America. The most ancient of all known to us is the system of religious worship and rites of early Egypt, of which interesting records exist dating certainly to 5,000 B.C. After these should be named the re- ligions of Babylonia and Assyria, which follow Egypt closely in respect of antiquity. An ancient lawgiver in China, Con- fucius, who flourished about 550 B.C., was remarkable for his honest and upright rule, led a virtuous life, and had many disciples. He sought knowledge from every available source, and after death his acts and sayings were collected by them in several books, the chief of which is his " Code of Morals," which contained among many other precepts the precise words of the Golden Rule of Christian Scripture. But he taught nothing respecting a god or religious worship. The ancient religion of the Persians, now that of the Parsees, was to a great extent founded by Zoroaster, who lived at least 800-900 years B.C., possibly earlier. Subsequently it became related in some de- gree with Sanskrit. Its ancient writings form "the Zend Avesta" or commentaries. One great and good creator was recognized ("Ormuzd"), regarded as dual at a later period, whose emblem was fire; and evil spirits headed by (" Ahriman"), the spirit of evil, opposed him. Numerous sacrifices and pen- ances were enforced; strict purity of life was held essential in all the disciples of the faith. Somewhat later is the religion of Buddha, which possesses the largest number of followers of any religion in the world. Its origin dates from about 500 B.C., when its founder, a royal prince in Northern India (Prince Saddhartha), devoted himself to an ascetic life and contem- plation, and to a study of the causes of things, regarding ig- norance as the greatest evil. The records" made by his adher- ents became sacred books, and the cult flourishes not only in India, but throughout a large part of Chin^. It suffices only to mention briefly the religious Hierarchies of ancient Greece and Rome, constituted by large groups of deities, some arising out XXXIX [ 8 ] THE HOPE of historic legends. The divinities so-called of Greece were especially represented as exhibiting all the f oUies and vices of hu- manity. Those of Rome were related rather with the needs of husbandry, or of the shepherd and his flocks — as well as those of the house and the family: hence the "Lares and Penates." For the former the Greek poets and satirists had little respect ; while the philosophers derided the rites and ceremonies which were largely performed by the common people, but they in- culcated the advantages of a good Hfe as acceptable to the Gods.' Of any future state their views were at first indistinct, but gradually a belief was established in some system of future re- wards and punishments after death. There were no sacred books, and any idea of an evil spirit or devil was unknown. More recent than Christianity was the advent of Mahometanism (570-622 A.D.), in the divine origin of which its followers have the profoundest belief, adducing ample evidence thereof. It is more closely allied to Christianity than any other, since it recognizes one supreme God as the "Only God," together with the claims of Moses and the Jewish prophets, even those of Jesus Christ himself, to have received Divine authority; thence- forth, however, to be superseded by the Prophet. To its later date may perhaps be attributed his wise laws and regulations, which are minutely recorded in the Koran, and contain numer- ous incentives to the constant practice of charity, mercy, and kindness. Moreover, he absolutely proscribed the use of all intoxicating liquors, and also of betting and gambling, two vices which are disastrously prominent in all Christian coun- tries. V I propose now to make a brief outline of the history of Man's long and painful progress while slowly acquiring knowledge of the objects by which he has been surrounded, that is to say, ^Socrates, born 469 b.c, concerned himself with Ethics, and taught that virtue is knowledge and vice is ignorance; Plato, born 427 B.C., was the master of Aristotle, born 384 b.c. Both taught that goodness and truth are among the highest virtues, although the latter differed in many other things from his master. XXXIX ' [ 9 ] THE HOPE of the numerous and vai#ll conditions and influences to which the course of Nature has everywhere exposed him; and thus to demonstrate that he has attained his present position solely by his own unaided efforts. For as before stated it is cer- tain that no record exists to show that any divine or super- natural revelation has ever afforded man aid or instruction iii matters relating to his physical well-being during the laborious course he has pursued througliout countless ages of tardy and difficult progress, from the earliest savage life to the present day. Every advantage has taken place by the gradual improvement of his faculties through the development of a more complex brain through lower forms, until it has attained its present condition, with capability of increase in coming ages to an unknown extent. Man at first acquired an activity of brain and nervous system not possessed by those of his progenitors, now termed "Anthropoid Apes." These had gradually assumed a more or less upright position for special purposes of the body, thus differentiating the four legs of a lower animal into upper and lower extremities each employed for special and distinctive service. These large apes usually took shelter among the lofty branches of large forest trees, and lived chiefly on fruit and nuts, with now and then eggs and young birds. Like them, man probably at first used similar food, but in course of time added thereto the flesh of wild animals trapped in the forest and fish caught in the streams. Exposed to cold, wind, tempests, and inundations, he made himself clothes from the skins of the animals he learned to kill, and inhabited natural caverns which he probably excavated or improved for himself; at first, perhaps, by using for the purpose portions of the branches of trees blown down by the wind. Or of these he might also construct rude huts to protect himself and his young ones from the elements, and from the attacks of carnivorous foes of many kinds. He would soon learn to make long pointed stakes of hard wood, to be used as weapons for defence or to kill animals for food. Abundant evidence exists in many parts of the world that in prehistoric times flints were utilized as cutting instruments for such and other purposes; at first being rudely broken into thin flakes so as to produce a sharp edge. These have been found in XXXIX [ lo ] THE HOPE great quantity, some of them very skilfully made, in caverns and in other places of deposit. When the use of the bow as an instrument of propulsion for killing prey and in fighting had been discovered, it was rendered more efficient by tipping the arrows with sharp flint points as arrow-heads. From very large flints were also fashioned axes for cutting wood, etc., and for weapons. They were attached to wooden handles by a strip of hardened animal hide. Some of these flint instruments were ultimately made with serrated edges for use as saws. The bones of small animals were utilized for making needles and other finely pointed instruments. The Flint Age was succeeded by the discovery of copper and by the use of bronze, of which weapons and utensils were thenceforth largely made, and used almost universally for several centuries; to be superseded by the discovery in modern times of iron, and its conversion into steel for appliances of all kinds as at present. The process by which man acquired the first rudiments of the great faculty of speech must have been a very gradual one. The earliest attempts probably consisted in improving upon the rude sounds, and even musical notes, by which the lower ani- mals expressed tender emotions to their mates, and approached the rival or the enemy with loud and angry cries, which signified displeasure or even a challenge to combat. Language of a primi- tive kind followed, and took the place of signs, as association with his fellows slowly improved by experience; while the growth of family ties, often apparent among some of the lower animals, became naturally more highly developed by man, and the aggregation of families on some fertile or sheltered spot gave rise to the formation of a small community. These increased in size, until the larger combination of a tribe resulted, leading to the adoption of customs gradually acquired to promote the common welfare. By this means the principle of sacrificing a certain portion of personal liberty by each individual, for the good of the "commonwealth," was gradually discovered to be a wise arrangement and to promote the happiness of all. Man became social in his habits, and — without knowing it — learned the first lesson not only in law, but in ethics, the value XXXIX [ 1 1 ] THE HOPE of self-denial for the god#^of all. And it is worthy of note that each tribe, in course of time, generally became provided with its local Deity, and with some rudimentary form of re- ligious worship. Thus, various languages naturally arose in different parts of the world. The common objects daily seen, by the members of each tribe or community, would be identified by a sound or word, suggested perhaps by the appearance of the object, and adopted in order to denote it. All the first words were there- fore nouns; and by the same process their qualities came to be indicated, and adjectives were employed to describe them. Action had to be expressed, and verbs came into use; applicable to the past, present, and future in respect of deeds. While articles and pronouns appeared, for obvious purposes, and so on. In this manner a spoken literature was formed, and was transmitted as "hearsay" from father to son, in the forms of tradition, story, proverb, or song. Long after, written symbols were invented and the permanence of these traditions pro- vided for. Much interesting light on man's early history has been obtained by modern scientific researches in connection with ancient languages. The rights of personal ownership must have been recognized at an early period in man's social history. The maker of a flint axe or the builder of a hut would naturally be entitled to regard these as belonging to him for his own exclusive use, and the idea of property came to be realized. Then the mode of transferring of property from one owner to another had to be provided for. At first it was by barter only — a custom at present still extant among savage tribes. Then, as the community increased, some "common medium of exchange" was found, through objects generally prized, as skins, cowrie shells, etc., etc. It became necessary next to find some article which could be adopted as " a measure of value," and also one which could be stored without deprecia- tion in quality; which led to the use of the precious metals, gold and silver, copper and bronze being employed for articles of small value; and ultimately to the circulation of portions of each metal — known weights — as coins, and stamped as such by the chief authority. XXXIX [12] THE HOPE The discovery of fire, and the power of producing it at will, must have marked an epoch in his early history; friction be- tween two pieces of hard wood is known to have been practised for the purpose of producing it by the isolated savage inhabitants of distant islands in the Pacific, discovered by some early navigator some centuries ago. And continuous light was pro- vided for by rude oil lamps, which as well as common drinking- vessels were made of a primitive form of pottery. Agriculture, in an elementary form, became an occupation at a very early period, by the sowing of seeds which produced edible vegetables; and selection of the seed-bearing grasses, by cultivation of the best growths, led in the course of years to the production of the grains now known as rye, oats, wheat, maize, rice, etc. Meantime the gradual domestication and breeding of animals for flesh and milk as food, and also for employment in draught, such as of carts on rollers and rude wheels, etc., increased man's resources considerably. The hollow trunks of trees were utilized, and trimmed into shape, to form canoes and boats ; and these were equipped with sails when the art of weaving mats from dried wide-leaved plants from marshy soils had been attained. Not only by sailors for the purpose of navigation at night, but by the shepherds with their flocks on extensive plains, attentive observations to the course of the sun and moon by day, and of the greater stars by night served the purpose of timekeeping. And the sun's rays by day were made to record themselves automatically, by marking the process of a shadow from an upright stake in the ground — a rudimentary dial. These early attempts were followed by careful observers among the Chaldaeans, Chinese, and Hindoos. The first mentioned, prob- ably some 3,000 years B.C., named the chief stars and grouped some of the constellations, divided the day into hours, etc. The Ptolemaic system followed, and is a record of researches first made by Hipparchus, the Greek philosopher (about 150 B.C.), by Ptolemy of Alexandria (middle of second century a.d.), who extended his predecessor's work and left voluminous records which more or less maintained their influence until the appear- ance of the great mediaeval observers, soon to follow. XXXIX [ 13 ] THE HOPE Here it may be appr^-iute to recall the fact that up to a comparatively recent period the Western nations universally regarded the earth as a large circular plain with an undulating surface, forming the centre of the universe. Those especially who were acquainted with the records known to us as "Sacred Writ," learned from it that the "Heavens above" formed the special dweUing-place of "Jehovah," "God" of the universe, surrounded by ministering angels who executed His will, often indeed appearing in bodily form to man to announce His behests. From the same source he learned also that, on the fourth day of creation, "God made two great lights"; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night; he made the "stars also" (Gen., chap, i., v. i6). All these were supposed to be fixed in " a firmament " which revolved round the earth, the latter having no movement of any kind. Below this plain, at an unknown but not great depth, there was a region of gloom, which the spirits of the dead inhabited, known as "Sheol"; from which by means of the "Seer," they could sometimes be recalled to earth in order to foretell events ; since a few of those who, during fife, had been distinguished as favorites of Jehovah were believed to be capable of so doing. The very "recent period" named above may be more distinctly indicated by devoting a few^ lines to define the views of three of the principal early astronomers. Copernicus (1473-1543 a.d.) beheved the sun was always at rest, and formed the centre of the universe ; that the earth was a spherical body, which, with other planets, moved round it, but revolved on its own axis, thus causing day and night. He had no idea of the importance of the stars, but regarded them as lesser lights at an uncertain distance. Tycho Brahe (1546-1601 a.d.), who believed that the sun moved around the earth, will be named as holding a distin- guished position in the annals of the science. He had a noble observatory well furnished with instruments, and gave an im- pulse to astronomical studies. Galileo (1564-1642) was the first to employ an arrangement of lenses, for the purpose of forming an astronomical telescope, by which means he discovered the IMilky Way to be formed of XXXIX [ 14 ] THE HOPE separate stars. He afterward openly taught at Rome his belief in the rotation of the earth on its axis, and its annual passage round the sun; and was in consequence summoned before the Holy Inquisition, and was tortured and imprisoned when seventy years of age for persisting in his opinion, but he was ultimately set at liberty by the succeeding Pope. It now only remains to be said that unceasing and intelligent study and greatly improved telescopes in every part of the civilized world, aided by the recently discovered arts of photog- raphy and spectrum-analysis, have led to the astonishing re- sults achieved during the nineteenth century. The astronomical discoveries which, as above observed, man's own unaided labors have achieved, demonstrate beyond all possibility of doubt that the so-called Mosaic records, above quoted, are quite untrustworthy. Nevertheless, they are still accepted by all Christian Churches, and are publicly read, in turn with other extracts equally questionable, twice or thrice a week as "Holy Scripture." The earth is now known to be an insignificant speck, a mere atom of dust in the universe, and that the millions of stars, visible with any good telescope, are suns like our own, many being much larger, and that these are almost certainly surrounded by encircling planets; since spec- trum-analysis has proved that the same chemical elements which are so active in every part of our own system, are also the com- ponents of every one of the rest within our ken. Now it is im- possible for any one familiar with scientific chemistry to con- ceive that those potent elements oxygen, hydrogen, chlorine, nitrogen, carbon, calcium, sodium, the metals, and the rest, can be present there without activity. Hence we are impelled to believe that the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms are in course of development in each of those innumerable systems, and will become active with the stage of fitness, varying, of course, according to the temperature at which each in its history has arrived; a certain very moderate range only of heat being compatible with the existence of vegetable and animal Hfe. Hence it is impossible not to believe that a large proportion are inhabited by organisms more or less akin to those which flourish here. We, in our little home of earth, may well be devoutly XXXIX [ 15 ] THE HOPE humble in presence of th^^andeur of the universe, and in the still greater grandeur of the Author, if we may descend for a moment to the use of an anthropomorphic term to designate the Power of whom nothing can be truly known but by the study of the phenomena around us. VI I shall not furnish in detail any further history of Man's progress to illustrate what he has accomplished by his own unaided efforts; but shall simply enumerate, in a tabular form, some of the chief results which he has achieved thereby : I. All that is comprehended under the general term of "Fine Arts" — painting, sculpture, architecture, metal- work, fictile products, pottery, etc. II. The discovery of gravitation, and the laws* which govern force. At a later period, the conservation of energy. III. The discovery of the laws of light, heat, and sound. IV. All that is comprehended by the science of chemistry, and its innumerable practical applications to every department of human activity. V. The discovery of the existence and of the laws of electric- ity, the utility of which it is already impossible to overestimate. The word "Law," as used here and in other parts of this essay, has always the restricted sense of implying any ordinary sequence of events which a faithfully observed experience has led man to believe will continue. As Huxley says in his well-known " Essay on Decartes" : " 'Law' means a rule which we have always found to hold good, and which we expect always will hold good." . . . He further observes — explaining that all knowledge is relative to the individual, and that all the phenomena of Nature are known to us only as facts of consciousness — that the conclusions logically drawn from them are always verified by experience. (Vide Decartes, Discourse on Using One's Reason Rightly, etc." Huxley's Collected Works, vol. i., pp. 176 and 193.) "Thus the belief in an unchanging order — the belief in law, now spreading among the more cultivated throughout the civilized world, is a belief of which the primitive man is absolutely incapable. He is unable even to think of a single law, much less of law in general." — Herbert Spencer, Princ. of Psychology, § 48S. XXXIX [ 16 ] THE HOPE VI. The sciences of animal physiology, botany, and medicine ; the microscope in connection therewith ; the discovery of the cir- culation of the blood ; of the functions of the brain and nervous system; the laws of health and the nature and cause of disease. The omnipresent activity and importance of bacteria, with all that is understood as sanitary science ; the latter having had im- mense influence on the art of surgery, and enormously increas- ing the service it is capable of rendering to suffering humanity. VII. Man's knowledge of the condition of the earth and of its inhabitants in prehistoric time, as learned by palaeontological research, i.e., the discovery of the remains of animals which lived many thousands or even millions of years ago, and found in stratiiicd deposits far below the present surface. A science at present in its infancy, so small a portion of the earth's crust having been yet explored. PART II I have now finished that part of my work which has been devoted to the object of demonstrating two important statements: First, that Man has, throughout a long and very gradual course of development from his pre-historic origin, acquired all his stores of natural knowledge — in its widest sense — solely by his own unaided efforts. Secondly, that the authenticity of the ancient records, existing in several parts of the world, made at different periods of his history, and regarded as supernatural or "divinely" revealed, respecting the origin of the entire universe, especially that of the earth, including man himself and his duties to an alleged Creator, and asserting the existence of a future endless state of rewards and punishments for every individual after death, has never been substantiated, and is in fact unsupported by evidence. VII I now arrive at the interesting and important stage of our inquiry: What does our survey of man's history and ex- XXXIX [ 17 ] THE HOPE perience, and of his rclatilR to the phenomena of nature, teach us respecting the Tendencies, Disposition, and Purpose — if permitted to use terms suggested by purely human feehngs and ideas to convey a meaning which cannot be other^vise ex- pressed — manifested by that "Infinite and Eternal Energy" from which all things proceed? This incjuiry has exercised the minds of many; nay more, has been an absorbing study for the thinking part of mankind from very early times to the the present. Hypotheses and speculations innumerable, some of which were at first crude and obviously untenable, need not be referred to further now. The fact which alone con- cerns us here is, that they evince the existence of a deep in- terest in an all-prevading desire to solve, if possible, the mighty problem here presented. I declare my firm belief, and desire to repeat it, that one method alone can throw light on the subject, viz., a studious observation of the facts of nature and of the inferences which may be legitimately drawn from them. I shall consider what we may thus attempt to discover re- specting the "Source of Infinite and Eternal Energy" under three heads, regarding each as a form of its manifestation, viz.: I. Infinite Power. II. Infinite Knowledge. III. Tendencies or Disposition. I. Power; beyond man's faculties to grasp or comprehend. Eternal and all-pervading, therefore ever-present, wherever we may be, at every instant of our lives. In a certain sense by no means invisible, for its working is everywhere around us and with- in us, in every molecule of our bodies; in the curiously and beauti- fully arranged adaptations, not yet half discovered, by which we come into contact with external nature — the "not our self" — which meets us everywhere. Let me repeat that it is a fact be- yond controversy, always to be borne in mind, that Man is the most finished product known on earth of "Nature's" work — that is, which has resulted from the "Infinite and Eternal En- ergy"; the noblest and completest manifestation, so to speak, of the "divine afiiatus"— the "Temple of the Holy Ghost" in ancient language, used with undesigned prophetic purview xxxix [ i8 ] THE HOPE in times when men were ignorant of Nature's laws, and when faith in the Invisible must necessarily suffice for their needs, until discovery of scientific methods had revealed the existence of hitherto unknown powers within and around us; facts in place of fables. Then much which was formerly invisible is now visible; and we might adopt for ourselves the old expressive but mystic saying of "the Master," "Behold the kingdom of God is within you." II. Infinite Knowledge and Intelligence. — We possess no language adequate to express what must be the deep con- viction of all religious persons— and even of men in general, if they consider the question— respecting this subject. By far the greater part of the present essay has been really devoted to illustrating the transcendent Intelligence which has ordered the organization of the Universe, so far as we know and are able to understand it; and I have no stronger terms in which to express admiration. Nothing then remains but to bow in humility, and confess in the words of the Hebrew poet, "Such knowledge is too wonderful for me : it is high, I cannot attain unto it" (Ps. cxxxix. v. 6). III.— The third and last subject of inquiry is, What can we rightly infer relatively to the Tendencies, Disposition OR Purpose^ of the unknown "Source of Infinite and Eternal Energy from which all things proceed " ? I shall first revert to the unquestionable fact, on which I laid so much stress, and so fully illustrated at the commencement, of the history of Man's career and progress in this world— that it had been accomplished solely by "his own unaided efforts." For it constitutes the most important fact in his history; and is for me a signal illustration not only of the wisdom but especially of the beneficence of the great Source we are study- ing. Nevertheless, the first and most natural feeling suggested by a survey of that long and difficult course which man has trav- ersed through countless ages, may be for many one of pity — with a sense of regret that, had it been possible, aid should not 'Applying these terms as we should to the action of human beings; an analogy which must be permitted to Man's limited means of expression. XXXIX [ 19 ] THE HOPE now and then have been pi^ercd, perhaps at certain turning points in his history, when apparently it would have been greatly serviceable. And not a few have expressed inability to believe in the beneficent tendencies of the Unknown Source of all power, and have inferred evidence of neglect, or of indif- ference, in regard to man's progress and welfare. But, on the other hand, it is next to certain that had the human race received at any time a revelation, say, of the means of obtaining fire, or of the elements of agriculture, or of the means of obtaining complete relief from suffering which modern science has discovered, man would never have become the ef- ficient and highly endowed creature he is. He has fought his own way throughout, has overcome every obstacle himself, and passed through an educational course of the most perfect kind — self-taught, not "helped." The result of this survey of man's long struggle with the forces of Nature, so often apparently hostile, but which he has so completely dominated and rendered subservient to his will and conducive to his well-being, has, I beheve, established a fact which affords a complete and decisive proof of the beneficent tendency exercised by the Source of the Infinite and Eternal Energy. Nevertheless, doubt as to the existence of that beneficence has arisen in some minds from the fact that life mostly entails the endurance of so much pain and misery as to invalidate the grounds for that belief. I reply that life is universally regarded as a precious possession, and is enjoyed — in different degrees — by every individual in the entire animal creation; not one will part with its share without a struggle, if it has the power to de- fend itself. The universal sentiment of Humanity is — "Skin for (upon) skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give for his life." VIII I shall next present, in a tabular form, the following state- ments derived from that knowledge of natural history which is common to all, reciting the chief sources of pleasure or happiness possessed by the animal creation. XXXIX [ 20 ] THE HOPE 1. Enjoyment of Food through the senses of taste and smell. 2. Acquirement of Power by growth, and the enlarged experience which it brings. 3. The relations of love between the sexes. 4. Social relations with others — Friendship. 5. Appreciation of beauty — through the eye, of color, fonn — as presented in Man and especially in Woman. The chann of landscape, the cultivation of flowers (scents) and fruit; the garden. Impressions derived from grand sce- nery in all parts of the world — the pleasure of travel by land and sea. 6. Delight from Musical Art, through the ear. 7. The pleasure of Possession. 8. The Practice of Art in all its branches. 9. The Pursuit of Knowledge; acquisition of new facts — discovery in every depart- ment of life. 10. The pleasure derived from the exercise of Charity, from moral conduct, and in the exercise of the religious sentiment natural to Man, and already observed throughout all his history; becoming gradually developed and modified as he increases in his acquaintance with Nature, in the widest sense of the . term, and in his power of reasoning from the facts thus acquired. Enjoyed by the en- tire animal series, from the lowest conscious forms to the highest. Chiefly exemplified in Man, but em- bracing in a less degree some lower animals. To Man only. By the long process of Man's evolution, ethical rules have been evolved. Men have learned that it was not only wise, but productive of satisfaction and often of pleasure, "To do unto others as you would they should do unto you " ; that honesty was not only the best policy, but desirable for the reason just given. Thus it is that the "golden rule" has been enunciated in almost identical terms by the sages of other civilizations, even before the time of Christ. A code of morals has resulted by degrees as man himself has progressed, and is not the product of any super- natural revelation; a code which not only sets forth man's duties, but necessarily implies the existence of punitive conse- quences on any neglect of its articles. For due consideration XXXIX [ 21 ] THE HOPE will render clear the fact liRt every breach of Nature's laws, whether physical or moral, certainly brings with it punishment in this life, sooner or later. For example, the man who merely consumes improper food or drink, or takes more than he can digest, pays the penalty which the error entails. Again, if he exerts his strength far beyond his powers, as in athletic con- tests, etc., he runs great risk of injuring his heart and of damag- ing his constitution as the result ; one indeed too often met with. If he wastes his health and strength in debauchery, his punish- ment often speedily arrives, involving disease and shortened life, that possession which every sane man prizes above all other. So with every breach of moral law; any unjust act committed equally involves its penalty in this life. It brings long and bitter remorse in generous natures; in others, it surely tends to debase the individual; he becomes habituated to dis- honorable designs and acts, and sinks lower in the scale of morality, until he loses self-respect, that of others, and at last is trusted by none. No doubt an unprincipled man may have a successful career, but his punishment surely arrives after a time. On the other hand, in every department of life unblem- ished character is the highest attainment ; whatever of talent or of genius a man may display, he who has been proved by a past career to be a possessor of that, is the most valued and esteemed in any rank or condition of life, and is the most certain to se- cure success in the long run. To the foregoing let me add a quotation here, and ask at- tention to it, in which these sentiments are tersely and beauti- fully expressed by an ancient Hebrew poet, whose religious creed, let it he remembered, ignored any scheme oj rewards and punishments in a future life, Psalm xxxvii., vv. 35-37: "I have seen the wdcked in great power, and spreading himself like a green bay tree. Yet he passed away, and, lo, he was not : yea, I sought him, but he could not be found. Mark the perfect man, and behold the upright ; for the end of that man is peace." I shall conclude this section by simply observing that the religion of Nature, the laws of which and their working have thus been briefly illustrated, and which is based upon the de- XXXIX [ 22 ] THE HOPE termination not to believe anything which is not supported by indubitable evidence, must eventually become the faith of the future: its reception is a question for each man's personal con- victions. It is one in which a priestly hierarchy has no place, nor are there any specified formularies of worship. For, "Re- ligion ought to mean simply reverence and love for the Ethical ideal, and the desire to realize that ideal in life" (Huxley).^ IX The facts of suffering and death which affect mankind — the former mostly, the latter universally — have been urged by many as incompatible with the attribution of goodness and benevolence to the Author of the Universe. I shall first consider the last-named inevitable event, which each one of us must encounter. And I shall venture to state, as the known result of long and careful observation of the phenomena which then occur, that a really painful death from disease is never witnessed. Whatever of suffering may have previously occurred, which I shall deal with after this, the act of death is believed to be always preceded by a considerable period of insensibility. There may often be obvious automatic movements, not felt by the subject of them, but naturally dis- tressing to bystanders, because resembling those of pain. Acute and sometimes long-continued sufferings precede death, it may be for periods of considerable duration, sometimes for years. But thanks to man's scientific researches, especially to one of the most recent, the inhalation of anaesthetic vapors, all acute sufferings can be completely avoided. What untold and agonizing tortures would have been spared throughout his long history had this precious secret been revealed! How evident it is that "Revelation" was no part 0} the plan. In the ^Huxley's Collected Works, vol. v., p. 249. Vide also the follow- ing extract bearing on this subject: "There is a striking expression of Piderot's that all Revealed or National religions are only per- versions of the Religion of Nature; and it is true, if the words Religion of Nature be taken in the highest sense." — Extracts from a letter by Jowett to Professor Caird, Life of Jowctt, vol. i., p. 445. XXXIX [ 23 ] l^HE HOPE course of most chronic dis(^Rcs it is well known that some form of anodyne, of which several notable examples exist, can almost always be utilized so as to avoid severe suffering. No man should be a martyr to pain who can obtain a tolerably skilful medical attendant; and such are provided in all the public in- stitutions for the care of the poor, or at the hospitals which abound in London, and exist in almost every small country town. The sufferings of the lower animals are very far less than those of man. The sense of pain corresponds with the extent or the development of the nervous system; and this is extremely small among countless species of active living beings, e.g., the insects — flying, creeping, or jumping — and furnishing a popula- tion far exceeding the sum total of the human inhabitants of the globe on any five acres of cultivated land, to say nothing of the inhabitants of the waters which wash our sea-coasts. Among insects may perhaps be partially excepted those which form social communities, as the ants, bees, wasps, etc., who have highly developed instincts, and concerning whose possession of some degree of consciousness it is impossible to speak with certainty. Shakespeare greatly erred when he said that the poor beetle we tread upon feels a pang as great as when a giant dies. Like ancient authors of all time, he could, when deal- ing with natural history, only reflect the knowledge of his age. His insight into human character, and his knowledge of the human heart, have never perhaps been surpassed by any, and his mastery in expressing thought has made him a poet for all time. Similar qualities existing, more or less, among some of the poets and prophets of the Hebrew race give their pro- ductions a high value in no way lessened by the fact that they were ignorant, when writing, of the earth and its origin, and of its relation to the rest of the universe. It is impossible to state with certainty what amount of consciousness is present throughout the numerous species of animals which rank below the vertebrate series, but there is certainly ground for believing that they are incapable of suffer- ing much pain, and that even the fierce carnivora inflict lit- tle or none in the act of killing their prey, although belonging xxxrx [ 24 ] THE HOPE to the same order. For all are led by what is called instinct — probably inherited habit — to seize their victim at a vital spot, as by the neck, at the top of the spinal cord, which mostly de- stroys the power of movement and of sensation, of course in order to prevent struggles or acts of retaliation when possible. Some of the higher vertebrata, especially those who have long held intimate associations with man, have had their in- telligence and emotional powers much developed; for tv/o obvious examples take the dog and the horse. Such are sus- ceptible to pain and suffer much, and when inflicted, either by accident or design, should invariably be relieved, when possible, by the same anaesthetics employed for man. There is another consideration supporting the view here taken of the beneficent tendency of the great but unknown Source of Infinite Energy, not to be overlooked. Granting this view to be correct, it is impossible not to believe that the in- fiuence of the Supreme Source must not merely equal, but greatly transcend any like or analogous quality — such as care, com- passion, or kindness — which man can and does very largely exercise toward his fellows or dependents, all like himself having derived their being and its inherent qualities from that same Energy which pervades the universe. X Finally the cultivated and truly religious man finds his greatest happiness in the active and healthy exercise of all his functions — moral, intellectual, and physical. He is careful to promote the welfare of his fellow- creatures, not merely by works of charity but by enabling them to help themselves, and ex- ercises his judgment to that end. Whatever he does it is his aim to attain the best result possible, and thus to make the most of the priceless boon of life. His religious feelings do not sug- gest to him the validity of the Christian practice of prayer to a Deity for gifts of any kind, even for the purpose of obtain- ing moral or mental improvement, nor for the recovery of the sick or protection from personal dangers, etc. — a practice which is so common — well knowing that all events must follow XXXIX [ 25 ] THE HOPE the laws of nature, which ai^^nakcrablc. No doubt the act of prayer, on the part of one who beheves in its power to move the Deity to bestow a precious boon, brings consolation to the feel- ings of the applicant. It is a spiritual sedative which affords indescribable relief and enjoyment to many. Nevertheless, "Thy will, not mine be done," is the only prayer of the truly sensible Christian, and he may be grateful indeed that no other prayer can be acceptable. What a chaos would the world present if short-sighted men could interfere with the working of the laws which determine the course of events! For the religious man here described, adoration of the grandeur and of the beneficence which pervade the universe is the only senti- ment suitable for public or for private religious service. "Lord, how manifold are thy works, in wisdom hast thou made them all" (Ps. civ., v. 24), expresses the same sentiment in the lan- guage of the Hebrew poet, in terms suitable to his day. 1 o conclude, he is grateful, yet proud to feel himself a par- ticipant in the great and endless procession of the wise and good throughout the ages; trustful, without shadow of a doubt respecting any kind of future there may be in store, and con- cerning which it is needless for him to inquire or speculate. He "lives a life of Faith" in the Source of the Infinite and Eternal Energy, confident in the knowledge that the laws of the Universe are the outcome of perfect Wisdom and Beneficence. The old Faiths, founded on so-called "revelation, "have long been tested and are found wanting, and a natural religion will ulti- mately replace them. It is no part of this inquiry to dilate on what this comprehends. It is sufficiently defined in few and simple words at page 23 and note. But it is not to be forgotten that a large proportion of the population in all Christian countries is ignorant of, or indifferent to, the subject of religious belief, unless tl>e formal compliance with a certain slight ceremonial is considered to be religious worship. Concerning these it is not necessary to speak. On the other hand I have no desire to disturb the beliefs of those who derive comfort from the hope of a happy future in another world, and a motive for well-doing in this, which they derive from the Christian faith. It is especially undesirable to do so XXXIX [ 26 ] THE HOPE in relation to the poor and uneducated, whose lot is mitigated thereby, and also to those who, possessing an ordinary share of intelligence, have confidently and happily rested on its hopes and promises for many past years. I now close this essay, the materials for which in the shape of sundry notes I began to collect upward of 'twenty years ago. Others were frequently added, as I pondered much and often over what has long been a favorite theme, and it was not until a few years later that I copied into my note-book, on its first appearance in 1884, that striking passage from Herbert Spencer which is now quoted as a motto on the title-page. This indeed suggested the subject, respecting which, as it appeared to me, systematic research might be not only practicable, but might also be expected to yield some definite results. I commenced my task solely for the purpose of seeking the truth for my own personal needs and enlightenment, incited thereto by the numerous and conflicting claims of the various sects, some diametrically opposed to each other, into which what is termed "Christianity" is divided. The original paper was written without any intention that it should be seen by any other eye than my own ; nor has it been so seen until, having been con- siderably amplified, I submitted it to the judgment of a friend during the past year. For myself it has been a veritable "Pil- grim's Progress." The title, together with the form of the essay as it now stands, has been the result of the whole in- quiry, and was not a predetermined intention. I am now approaching the end, and find myself compelled to arrive at a conclusion, contrary, I gladly confess, to that which I at first entertained when engaged with the former part of the inquiry, and depressed by mentally realizing the miseries and hardships to which Man was exposed during the tardy de- velopment for unknown ages of what may be deemed the infancy and childhood of the race : a career which will probably continue many ages more before he approaches maturity. But when that long inquiry came to an end, and not until then, the Truth — as I profoundly believe it to be — almost suddenly impressed me: to wit, that interference of a super- natural kind with man's doings (supposing its exercise to be pos- XXXIX [ 27 ] THE HOPE sible within the limits of the great scheme of Nature) would have marred, if it did not arrest, the course of that development which has issued in the remarkable progress he has made, es- pecially during the last three centuries. I was now assured, by evidence which I could not resist, that all which man — with his limited knowledge and experience — has learned to regard as due to Supreme "Power" and "Wis- dom," although immeasurably beyond his comprehension, is also associated with the exercise of an "Absolutely Benefi- cent" influence over all living things, of every grade, which exist within its range. And the result of my labor has at least brought me its own reward, by conferring emancipation from the fetters of all the creeds, and unshakable confidence in the Power, the Wisdom, and the Beneficence which pervade and rule the Universe. Finally, let me add that no one can feel more forcibly than myself that the foregoing pages ofifer only a very slight sketch of a most extensive and important subject. It is but a syllabus thereof, and in this sense I venture to offer it to the consideration of my readers. Moreover, I desire to state my belief that the subject of this paper, "The Unknown God"? may be regarded as in progress of solution by following the process suggested, and that "the Infinite and Eternal Energy from which all things proceed" will not ever remain wholly unknown or "unknow- able," but may be still further elucidated as human faculties be- come highly developed in the progress of time, and rendered capable of receiving additional enlightenment respecting it. XXXIX [ 28 ] XL OUR GOAL "THE MAKING OF A NATIONAL SPIRIT" BY EDWIN A. ALDERMAN PRESIDENT OF THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA AND "EDUCATION AND DEMOCRACY" BY GEORGE HARRIS PRESIDENT OP AMHERST COLLEGE TIT' HAT then is the meaning, what the purpose, we have discovered in modern life? We have sought to glance over the whole broad field of human thought and human endeavor, to summon at each turning 0} the road the voice of some master spirit to direct and inform our jeebler knowledge. One would fain sum up the final result in a jew simple words such as a child might understand. But, alas, no such simple answer to the problem has as yet become clear to all men. Here and there we find the enthusiast who believes he has solved all difficulties with a single potent word; but to most of us the meaning of life seems manifold, and its purpose, if that may indeed be expressed by a single term, must find expression in organ tones as yet too vast for human tongue. Some effort, however, we can make toward understanding. Some effort we offer here in two remarkable speeches, delivered on notable occasions by two of our leading college presidents. At the last annual meeting of the New York Chamber of Com- merce, its one hundred and thirty-seventh anniversary dinner, the speech of the evening by President Alderman, D.C.L., LL.D., of the University of Virginia, was upon the future of our Ameri- can race, ^' the making of a national spirit.''^ By Dr. Alderman^s permission we print it here entire, except for one section in which XL [i] OUR GOAL he turns aside to refer to his beloved South. The address must be read oj course in the mood in which it was delivered to the eminent business leaders who sat listening; yet it manages to tell, with no uncertain note, high truths both brave and proud as to the progress and the spirit oj our nation. We present also the address made by President Harris, LL.D., of Amherst, on tJie occasion 0} his inauguration as head oj his college. Some portions oj this noteworthy speech were, oj necessity, personal to the occasion; these we have, with Dr. Harrises consent, omitted. The main address was, however, general, an analysis oj lije and its needs to-day. Conjronting tJie reader with this thoughtjul, comprehensive view, we shall leave him to answer jor himselj, in accord with his own hopes, his wisdom, and his jortunes, '^the meaning oj modern lije.'" I APPRECIATE, as a teacher, the privilege of speaking to this ancient and powerful Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York at a moment when I do think it not assembled to discuss commerce alone, or to scan the balance of trade, but to discern the movement of the national spirit and to con- tribute to the health and strength of the national conscious- ness and character. The speakers of the olden days proudly called you mer- chants, as they called my tribe schoolmasters and teachers. Now they call us — and a palatable brand of cracker — edu- cators, and they call you names — largely — plutocrats and magnates, oligarchs, and other jagged-looking epithets. Other points of likeness between the schoolmaster and the merchant encourage me in the effort to make this speech, which I do not mean to be hortatory, for I agree with Charles Lamb that it is difficult to feel quite at ease with a schoolmaster, because he comes, like Gulliver, from among his young folks, and cannot easily adjust the stature of his understanding. What we call business and stupidly think of as a coarse material machine is really the great cosmic university, to which nine-tenths of human beings go to learn truth-speaking — though they do not always learn it — and faith in men, and so prove themselves by suffering and service. What we call XL [2] OUR GOAL trade is a great university-extension scheme for civilizing and keeping the peace among nations. The teacher inculcates ideals, and the merchant incarnates them for good or ill to this generation. An unfaithful merchant indicates social dis- ease as surely as and more vividly than an immoral school- master, for the master rules of both are fidelity, truth, and honor. The rewards and the power of both are great. The merchant's reward, if he be of intelligent mind, rich in social sympathy, far-seeing in conception, is above the valor of the soldier or the opportunity of the statesman in this modern world. The schoolmaster's reward sometimes comes too late to sweeten the toil of his day, and is of a kind not greatly molested by thieves or rust, or even the most absent-minded of moths. But it has some infinite satisfactions, and its power is simply symbolized by some cultivated, clean, and fearless \ youth ready for life and fit to illustrate the majesty of repub- lican citizenship. I, therefore, do not think of you this evening as great mag- nates, or as the "beaked and taloned graspers of the world," as some one has gently called you, but as my fellow- crafts- men, as plain, extraordinary men, whose proudest fortune is the legacv of American opportunity and citizenship, and whose proudest achievement will be to hand down that inheritance untarnished and undiminished. It is fairly difficult these days to make a speech without mentioning Wall Street. I will begin pleasantly by saying that Wall Street is bracketed with Gehenna as a sort of sym- bol of sin in the minds of many good people. That is prob- ably going too far. The reflection that its giant activities are grounded on faith and integrity and credit gives even to it and its fellow-sinners, Lombard and State Streets, a certain aspect of goodness, and, considering all things, increases my pride in the essential dignity of the race. Sometimes I go down there, impelled by that wonder which Plato called the beginning of knowledge. I seldom stay long, for the atmosphere leaves something to be desired in the way of academic peace, and enables a mere human to understand the psychology of the lamb. But I do not come away ever without stopping for a XL [3] OUR GOAL look at the finest thing (lo\^i there — the regnant figure of an old Virginia country gentleman, who was the richest man and the most public-spirited citizen of a simple age, standing upon the steps of the Sub-Treasury Building, looking out with honest, fearless eyes over that sea of hurrying men. That statue is the most remarkable allegory that ever got placed, by historic chance, at just the right spot in the history of the world, and points forward surely to the higher social order, when the Place Vendomes and Trafalgar Squares of the world will celebrate the glory of the great citizen. My speech is not going to wander far from that statue. The conviction in the heart of George Washington that enabled him to be the richest man and the most public-spirited citizen of his time, this same conviction in the hearts of men in this Chamber, and everywhere in this nation, that enables them to be something of both, is the conviction with enough strength in it, if it be a conviction and not a spasmodic emo- tion, to carry this democratic experiment past a very serious peril. It is, therefore, pertinent to know what the conviction is, and to ask further if it can be reinf used in manly fashion into our republican life. Briefly put, it was the belief that a re- public is the final form of human society, and the common I individual man the sublimest asset of the world, that power ' rests on fitness to rule, that the sole object of power is the public good, and that service to the republic is a glory quite sufficient in itself. To Washington these ideas had a religious sanction, for they were in the air of an age of moral imagination and superb human enthusiasm which counted the dual standard for private and for public life as the essence of republican treason. These ideas had the force of religious sanction, too, to Jay and Hamil- ton and Clinton, whose figures adorn your building down town, and one cannot look into St. Gaudcns's face of Lincoln in Chicago, with its commonness and plainness, and yet with its sublimity and gentleness, without seeing those ideas shining there, revealing the real glory of that great common man, and teaching through that melancholy world-face the whole splendid rise of man to soul and mind and will. That XL [4] OUR GOAL noble and pathetic scene at Newburg, when Washington put aside all ambition, was not hard for him, and he probably did not realize what a type of self-effacement Newburg would become because of it. A century of trial has somewhat dulled the halo about democracy to fools and those of little faith, though the great optimism has abated sectarian fury, abolished legal slavery, protected and enlarged manhood suffrage, mitigated much social injustice, increased kindness and gentleness, preserved the form of the Union, conquered its wildernesses, developed great agencies of culture, and made it a S3Tnbol of prosperity. But it has also developed new and hateful masters in politics and new shapes of temptation and wrong-doing, and after a generation of amazing constructive effort, without sufficient leisure for ethical considerations, it is in danger of its own strength, and it must protect itself with its own strength. I am not railing against great constructive forces, or uttering cheap prophecies of damnation, or doubting that the future will be an industrial world, which means a republican world. I am simply claiming that democracy, like a man's character, is never out of danger. It is not selfishness or corruption alone which we have to fear, for we have vanquished these before, but as much the temper of despair and faithlessness which blinds the eyes of the youth to the heroic simplicity and love of freedom at the heart of the American people. And my concern is for youth, for the grown folks are generally \ past saving. The chief weapon of the protective strength of democracy I conceive to be the acceptance of the Wash- ington type of public spirit as a working form of patriotism upon as large a scale in the social and political order as the instinct for co-operation and combination has been accepted in the industrial world. By the measure in which United States Steel surpasses the blacksmith's shop in efficiency, by the measure in which municipal government surpasses the rural township in complexity of politics — in that measure must both politics and business cease to be regarded as a game or as war, or as a fixed code, or as a treasure-trove, and come XL [ 5 ] OUR GOAL to be thought of as a jhitoc function, as a public trust, not only in method and organi/.ation, but in moral responsibility. Docs this involve a moral miracle, or an utter change in human nature, or a surrender of democracy to state socialism or some other order? It certainly involves the reaffirmation of the founder's idea of public spirit as a dominant national motive and as a sort of inner well-spring of conduct, in place of the idea of headlong strength and achievement and speed, follow- ing, as a sort of spiritual corrective, the gigantic system of modern business, and the new brood of political conditions with which neither statute law nor public morals have been able to keep pace. In short, as an industrial democracy has carried to high efficiency a new philosophy of business and politics, so it must reaffirm and reincarnate its old philosophy of citizenship and patriotism. Patriotism, therefore, which is hard to define and new with every age, must redefine itself. It meant manhood rights when Washington took it to his heart, as it means to the Rus- sian to-day. It meant culture and refinement and mental distinction when Emerson, in his Phi Beta Kappa address, "besought the sluggish intellect of his country to look up from under its iron lids." It signified ideals and theories of govern- ment to the soldiers of Grant and Lee. It meant industrial greatness and splendid desires to annex nature to man's uses when the great leaders of the generation, whose statesman- ship and imagination no man will deny, built up their busi- ness and tied the Union together in a unity of steel and steam. To-day it means a vast reaction from an unsocial and predatory individualism to self-restraint and consideration for the general welfare, expressing itself in a cry for fairness and honor and sympathy in use of power and wealth, as the states of spirit and mind that alone can safeguard republican ideals. If in our youth and breathlessness there has grown up a spreading insanity of desire for quick wealth and a theory of life in lesser minds that esteems money as everything, and therefore is willing to do everything for money, that very fact lias served to define the patriotic duty and mood of the public XL [6] OUR GOAL mind. And is not tlie theory of our overlooking special Provi- dence borne out in the fact that, as in the period seeking to estabHsh manhood rights there stood forth at the head of the government the figure of Washington, a repubhcan saint around wliom a young nation should rally, so now in a period pausing to search its heart, after a certain madness of spirit, there stands forth the figure of a bold prophet of common righteousness and common service and common decency strong enough to be everywhere, and sincere enough and un- conscious enough to preach his doctrine in a thousand voices? This reawakened patriotism of the common good has the ad- vantage of appeal to a young public conscience not yet un- balanced by hysteria, and of being supported by a valid and unauthoritative public opinion, not yet dulled by content- ment. Sound public conscience and valid public opinion are the last unbreached strongholds of our old democracy. In proof of their soundness and authority I claim that if there be a man in America to-day who has an unjust fortune, and a pagan ideal of its use, he will not bask as cosily in the respect of his fellows, nor have as much fun, as Croesus or Louis XIV. The gift of one hundred and seven millions of dollars in one year by private individuals to the general welfare, a colossal development of the sense of social obhgation barely dreamed of by Washington, is the testimony on the affirmative side of this opinion. A servant of the people, in city or state, who is afield for exploitation rather than service is not as highly honored a man as was Robert Walpole, or Warren Hastings, or Aaron Burr, as the roll-call of some prison houses will show. The disposition which democracy has just shown, at the most inconvenient moment, to ask the powers that be whether they are the powers that ought to be, in Mr. Lowell's phrase, and the answer to the question, are the testimonies on the affirmative side of that opinion. Plain people, it is true, are not as awestruck at the names of the powerful as they once were, but one may note a growing ability to render awe where awe is due, which is a beautiful growth in dis- cernment. In a nobler, truer light shine for the people of America the names of those upright souls, in business and XL [7] OUR GOAL p> II Lies, in this Chamber dii out of it, who have held true in a heady time, who have kept quick and human their popular sympathies and their republican ideals, and, by so doing, have kept sweet their country's fame. What is the influence of the schools and the universities, the public conscience and public opinion, in this ever new remoulding of the national spirit? These schools and uni- versities have been changing their form from simplicity to power under the pressure of this same era of passionate strength, and educational ideals are more often the result of social press- ure than social ideals are the result of educational direction. What are the results? I claim this much for the schools: they are to-day more helpfully related to the public life of states and cities than ever before. They are closer to the needs of that body who are neither rich nor poor, and upon whom rests the solution of our problems. They are producing more abundantly and scattering more widely the results of their production. They speak with the authority of knowledge. The same protest of our time has therefore come out of them. The scholarship in them, neither radical nor subservient, is thoroughly permeated with a sense of public spirit and in- formed with a note of hopefulness and seriousness and old- fashioned belief in the mission of the republic. To be sure, this scholarship is not mere goodness, for untrained good- ness does not count for much in this world, whatever may be its felicities in the next; but it is scholarship that cannot be frightened, because it is capable, and cannot be corrupted, j; because it is fortified with faith and ideals; and it is unweakened ' by cynicism or despair, because it is made possible by the beneficence of the individual and the capacity of states. There- fore, I reckon, as Mr. Bryce did, that the most helpful aspect of the republic is the spectacle of the schools and colleges struggling to fashion the right sort of an American, tempting the rich to service, conveying to states the idea of civic duty, preserving the great popular heart from envy and hatred, and establishing a standard where men may repair and make a stand for the eternal values. XL [8] OUR GOAL '^"EDUCATION AND DEMOCRACY" ^ BY GEORGE HARRIS The objects and methods of education engage the atten- tion of thinking people at the present time as never before. This great interest was left, until lately, to professional edu- cators, while the people were comparatively indifferent, but now it is a theme of discuss'on in magazines and newspapers, on the platform and in conversation. All the way through, from kindergarten to professional school, the aims of educa- tion are undergoing severe scrutiny. The college does not escape, but is required to give an account of itself in justifica- tion of its achievements and in ready adaptation to the instruc- tion of all who are entitled to the advantages of liberal culture. The decisive question is the question of fitness, which the college as truly as the grammar school must answer. Fitness for what? Education is a means to an end. What end? Since, directly or indirectly, the people are taxed for the sup- port of the college, since the college is a public institution, a liberal education should prepare men for service in society, for citizenship in the free state. The subject, therefore, to which, without further preface, I invite your attention is "The Man of Letters in a Democracy." The function of culti- vated men in the modern state determines the aims and methods of their education. Every question of the college concerning choice of studies, modes of instruction, physical culture, and religious Hfe must be answered in view of the function of the man of letters in a democracy. He is not always successful in finding his place, nor, indeed, in finding any place among the people. Yet no man is capable of rendering greater ser- XL [9] OUR GOAL vice, and therefore of si#Riining greater obligation to the state, than the man of letters. A few axioms, briefly stated, define democracy. It is more than a form of government, since it exists under various forms of government. The function of the citizen involves more than voting and holding office, although these duties are important. Every value of Hfe is included in the state, or, better, all values are co-ordinated in the state. For democ- racy maintains and assures two things, freedom and justice. To every man his right — that is justice. It also is freedom. Every man, therefore, must defend the right of every other man, must see to it that his own objects do not conflict with the righteous and rightful objects of others, for thus only can all have freedom with justice. The right of every man is this : that he should make the most and best of himself, that he should possess and enjoy all the values he is able to possess and enjoy. Hence the material, intellectual, domestic, aesthetic, moral, and religious values are included and are protected in democ- racy which insures justice and freedom to all and to each. The attainment of one man is more largely in this direction, of another in that, but the state guarantees the right of every man in that freedom which regards the right of others to possess and enjoy all the legitimate values of life. Democracy is the true individualism, for it regards every person as an end, never as a means or a tool. It makes for the well-being of each, and therefore guards every institution, the family, the school, the church, — protects every pursuit that creates values, from the material to the spiritual; in a word, is itself the insti- tute of justice and so of the freedom that is grounded in justice. Democracy is the true socialism, which is not paternahsm, but is self-government by which free individuals so regulate society — that is, regulate themselves — that each may have the utmost freedom that is compatible with the freedom of other individuals in attaining the values of personal and social life. These axioms, put concretely, mean bread winning and bread eating, that is, just economic conditions. They mean home and friendship, they mean science and art, they mean free religion, they mean the things the state does as a state — laws, XL [ lO ] OUR GOAL rules, courts, tariffs, taxes, expansion or limitation of terri- tory. In all these things, democracy protects and even helps every man in coming to his ovi^n. This is no other than the religious conception of society, or at least is largely included in the religious conception. It is not too much nor too little to say that Jesus came preaching and founding democracy — the true individualism and the true socialism — in which every human institution, interest, and ideal has its rightful place. He called it the kingdom of God, which is God's purpose for humanity seen in the moral order of his- tory as it has evolved, seen in the Christian ideal of personal worth and mutual service, seen in the kingdom of God on earth in which we are brothers one of another. Define the true democracy, then define the kingdom of God on earth; and you will find you have simply given two titles to the same thing. Find me the man who is making the most and the best of himself in such ways that others may do the same and you have found me the modern saint. I need not say that democracy has not yet in any state fully secured its object, but the social ideal of democracy is the divine order of humanity, and it is the duty of every one to promote that ideal; by criticism, by reform, by eternal vigilance; by intelligent voting, by active influence, by fra- ternity ; above all and through all, by acting his own part as the righteous citizen in the free state, making the most and the best of himself, making his pursuit contribute to the common weal and thus converting the actual into the ideal republic. Surely modern democracy, if this view of it is correct, is roomy enough even for the man of letters — especially for the man of letters. Three attitudes, now, may be taken toward the democracy in which we have our habitation. One attitude is withdrawal. One may insulate one's self from vital concern in the actual life of the people. Having an assured income provided by others, a man may devote himself to pleasure, to travel, to literary culture, putting himself practically out of relation to the world of human struggle and attainment. Religiously this was the monastic Hfc of the Middle Ages — out in the wilder- XL [ II ] OUR GOAL ness, out of the world. ^Phc gcnllcman of leisure leading a luxurious life is the secular monk. The literary dilettante is the intellectual or aesthetic monk. The pietist who would save his soul by not doing certain things is the modern reli- gious monk. The second attitude is the parasitic, or, even more strongly, the piratical. One may go into the democracy for what one can get out of it for one's self, looking on the existing order as an arrangement out of which something can be had for one's own comfort or pleasure. Such a one Avould exploit democ- racy for his own benefit and pay as light a tax as possible. The generations and contemporaries have established a society holding certain values, and the exploiter, like a thief in the night, breaks through and steals. The State saves him the trouble of maintaining a band of armed retainers. Laws and courts are good, for they protect him in his thieving. The army is at his back that he may till his vineyard and run his mill. The one maxim of the pirate in a democracy is, "My rights, your duties." The third attitude is the reciprocal. A man looks out on democracy and contributes to it, putting in as much as he takes out, or more, paying his full tax, making his pursuit part of a whole which is for good. He is a Christian citizen of the modern world. His maxim for at least half of his Ufe is, "Your rights, my duties." The man of letters, by whom I mean the man that is liberally educated, the cultivated man, for practical purposes the college man — although there are men of letters that never saw a college and college men that are uneducated — the man of letters is expected to take this last attitude of contributing his part in promoting the ends of democracy, putting in as much as he takes out. He has been loudly accused of taking the first attitude, of insulating himself from public affairs, or at best of holding aloof as an impractical critic of the order of things, of standing on the shore declaring with many gesticulations how the ship of state should be sailed, but never handling a tiller or pulling a rope. There has been enough of this to bring reproach on academic discussion of affairs. By aca- XL [ 12 J OUR GOAL demic discussion of politics, for example, is meant theo- retical, impractical, doctrinaire. But there is an important and indispensable part for the man of talent and educa- tion to play. I do not say that his part is more essen- tial than that of the average working man, for all parts are necessary in the social organism. The eye cannot say to the hand, "I have no need of thee." But also the hand cannot say to the eye, "I have no need of thee." The state needs citizens of intellectual ability, of character, and of high standards, for leaders, rulers, and teachers, and has a right to look to the college for them. The college is an integral part of the system of education maintained by the state, and therefore the state has claims upon college-bred men. It is of little consequence whether colleges are established directly by the state or are privately endowed. In the latter case, the state grants im- munities and exemptions and refrains from maintaining col- leges and universities of its own. By cherishing higher educa- tional interests, the state signifies its need of cultivated men in the professions, in business, in legislation. By a process of selection, young men of promise and ambition continue their education for several years that they may render service of a higher order than manual labor — the service of leadership, which is as much needed as manual labor, without which manual labor is inefficient. That is to say, the state expends on a selected class a thorough training that they may be fitted for highest service to the state, whether they hold political office or not. And this class is the real aristocracy. We have outgrown the crude notion that democracy is equality and that it has no use for an aristocracy. Some belated doctrinaires are still proposing schemes for equalizing the con- dition of men, and so for equalizing men. But it is not the probler" of democracy to raise all men up nor to draw all men down to a common level. Its problem is to place its best men in its highest places, to put power in the hands of the wisest and most capable persons, to recognize superiority, always to put the right man in the right place. For the aristocracy of birth it has no great regard, although it does not forget that blood tells. For the vulgar aristocracy of wealth it has supreme XL [13] OUR GOAL contempt. To the accideW of rank and title it is indifferent. But it recognizes the aristocracy of merit, knowledge, character. Democracy would replace the aristocracy of birth by the aris- tocracy of worth; w^ould set aside the aristocracy that buys place with gold for that which earns place by capability and distinguished service. Democracy needs nothing so much as it needs such an aristocracy. Otherwise it is a mob, a crowd, a horde, a mass of unorganized and disorganized units. The very word "aristocracy" means the rule of the best, the best men in power. If the best men have guidance and control, progress is constantly made. If they are set aside in favor of the incompetent, there is confusion and every evil work. There are enough capable men in the United States to fill all positions of trust and honor, to be a political, economic, intellectual aristocracy. Put them in their rightful places, let the aristocracy of merit be enthroned as well as acknowledged, and there will be that government, that national welfare, that pros- perity which constitute social well-being and insure progress. So the state does not regard all citizens as equal and draw rulers and leaders by lot, but wants true, wise, able, educated men for guidance, organization, and service. Therefore in a democracy there must be higher education for the few who are fit by nature and may become fitter by training for leader- ship. Professor Paulsen, tracing the educational ideal of the future, says that "The society corresponding to that ideal would be that of an aristocracy of mind," and asks, "is this the type toward which we are leaning? Is the aristocracy of birth and wealth to be supplanted by the aristocracy of personal worth and merit?" "This," he says, "has been the philoso- pher's dream from the day of Plato's republic to the present hour. It is the tendency of nature. It would be the aris- tocracy of nature to have every individual stand independently upon his own personal merit, and not upon the achievements of his father, while the influence of heredity, in the sense of the transmission of personal characteristics, would not be diminished. This is the aristocracy to which historical de- velopment seems to point. Both church and state have made considerable advancement toward the realization of this XL [ 14 ] OUR GOAL ideal of a personal elite, by bestowing position and influence according to the degree of personal talent and efficiency with- out regard to birth and position." Education makes this ideal definite. The educated man is aware of the personal and social ideal of democracy, and can direct his energies intelligently toward its realization in the sphere of his own action. The movements of our time affect many who do not understand them. Not until changes have occurred do the uneducated discern them. Anybody can com- pare the close with the middle of the century and perceive advance in means of locomotion and communication — even in education, politics, and religion. Many who do not under- stand the significance of great movements are borne along by them to their own material, intellectual, and moral advantage. But educated men perceive tendencies in the making and foresee results not yet attained. To be sure, no one can read the future as one reads the past, for God's purposes in humanity are partly disclosed, partly concealed. Yet there is a direction of the path of progress out of the present into the future, a direction tolerably plain to one who knows the past and knows men. All liberal studies are for the one purpose of showing the ideal — the personal and social ideal — not only that it may be perceived but that there may be direction toward it in new and changing conditions. XL [15] I— THE OUTLOOK QUESTIONS LEADING TO A COURSE OF COLLATERAL READING ON THE THOUGHTS SUGGESTED BY MR. LOW 1. When and under what circumstances began the "era of revolution " which opened the way for the nineteenth century? See Great Events, Vol. XIV., p. xiii et seq. 2. When and how did modern education begin? See Great Events, Vol. XIII., p. 364. 3. What were the great " transportation" triumphs of the past century in America? See Great Events, Vol. XVI., p. 94; Vol, XVIII., p. 287. 4. What triumphs equally great were elsewhere achieved? See Great Events, Vol. XVIII., pp. 175 and 275. 5. What started the vast emigration to Australia and to Africa? See Great Events, Vol. XVII., p. 238; Vol. XVIII., p; 225. 6. In what did the banking system of the United States originate? See Great Events, Vol. XIV., p. 230. 7. Whence sprang that of England? See Great Events, Vol. XII., p. 286. 8. How were the markets of China opened to the world? And those of Japan? See Great Events, Vol. XVI., p. 352; Vol. XVII., p. 265. 9. What has been the course of democracy's struggle in England? See Great Events, Vol. XI., p. 311; Vol. XII., p. 200; Vol. XVI., pp. 175 and 252; Vol. XVII., p. 11. 10. How has this struggle progressed throughout the world? See Great Events, Vol. XVI., p. 281; Vol. XVII., p. XIV et seq. I REFERENCES FOR FURTHER CONSULTATION FOR STANDARD ACCOUNTS OF SUBJECTS BROUGHT UNDER DIS- CUSSION IN "THE OUTLOOK," see as follows: See Lecture I Page. 6. The great revolution in science and the earliest application of the new methods are described in History of Philoso- phy, by George Henry Lewes, or Great Events, Vol. XL, p. 116. 6. The application of scientific methods to the problems of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics is explained in The Dawn of Civilization, by G. C. C. Maspero, or Great Events, Vol. L, p. xxxviii et seq. 7. The full story of the religious struggle against the accept- ance of the teachings of Copernicus is given in Great Astronomers, by Sir Robert Ball, or Great Events, Vol. IX., p. 285. 11. The origin of the American banking system is detailed in History of the Bank of North America, by Alexander Hamilton, or Great Events, Vol. XIV., p. 230. 20. The history of the gradual extension of the franchise in England is narrated in The Constitutional History of England, by Sir Thomas May, or Great Events, Vol. XVI., p. 252. 20. The tumult occasioned in Germany by the lack of suffrage and the repressive measures of the government is de- scribed in Prince Bismarck, by Charles Lowe, or Great j5wnte,Vol.XIX.,p. 104. 23. Anarchism, its history, hopes, and aims, are explained in King Stork and King Log, by Sergius Stepniak, or Great Events, Vol. XIX., p. 70. 23. The hopes of the socialists, and also the growth of their party in politics, are explained in History of Socialism, by Thomas Kirkup, or Great Events, Vol. XVIII. , p. 141. U-THE DANGER QUESTIONS LEADING TO A COURSE OF COLLATERAL READING ON THE THOUGHTS SUGGESTED BY PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT 1. When and where have the American farming classes proved their devotion to the country? See Great Events, Vol. XIV., p. 1. 2. Where have the laborers proved their value? See Great Events, Vol. XVIIL, p. 12. 3. When were the financial straits of the country and the distress of all classes most severe? See Great Events, Vol. XIV., p. 230. 4. What was the feeling of our Revolutionary leaders as to the equality of men? See Great Events, Vol. XV., p. xxi. 5. When were class distinctions most sharply emphasized here, and the classes politically opposed? See Great Events, Vol. XVI., p. 143. 6. What was the beginning of the Roman strife between Patricians and Plebeians? What was its outcome? See Great Events, Vol. II., p. 1. 7. What led to the downfall of the Athenian Republic? See Great Events, Vol. II., p. 48 8. How was the First French Republic overthrown? See Great Events, Vol. XIV., p. 339. 9. What led to the downfall of the Second? See Great Events, Vol. XVII., p. 230. 10. What were the principles of Washington to which President Roosevelt refers? See Great Events, Vol. XIV., p. 206. II REFERENCES FOR FURTHER CONSULTATION FOR STANDARD ACCOUNTS OF SUBJECTS BROUGHT UNDER DIS- CUSSION IN "THE DANGER," see as follows: See Lecture II Page 4. The dangers introduced into the Roman repubUc by class legislation are pointed out in the History of Rome, by Theodor Mommsen, or Great Events, Vol. II., p. 259. 4. The failure of the French nation to maintain its liberty against the despotism of Napoleon is fully told in the Life of Napoleon, by William Hazlitt, or Great Events, Vol. XV., p. 76. 5. For details of the way in which the "government of a mob" brought modern France into desolation consult Contemporary France, by Gabriel Hanotaux, or Great Events, Vol. XVIII., p. 351. 5, The intrigues aroused by class government in ancient Greece are depicted in many of Plutarch's Lives, or in Great Events, Vol. II., p. 12. 5. The utter corruption of the so-called republics in mediceval Italy is revealed in the works of Machia- velli, or Great Events, Vol. VIIL, p. 360. 6. The internal strife of the Flemish cities and their consequent downfall are portrayed in H. Denicke's work, Von der deutschen Hansa, or Great Events, Vol. VI., p. 214. 10. President Lincoln's purposes and hopes in the Civil War are fully explained in his own works, or see Great Events, Vol. XVIIL, p. 70. 10. The sore struggles of soul which beset General Grant are revealed in his Memoirs, or see Great Events, Vol. XVIIL, p. 153. Ill -THE BELIEFS QUESTIONS LEADING TO A COURSE OP COLLATERAL READING ON THE THOUGHTS SUGGESTED BY SIR OLIVER LODGE 1. How did religion and science harmonize in earliest history? See Great Events, Vol. I., p. xxv et seq. 2. What was their feeling toward each other just before the advent of Christianity? See Great Events, Vol. III., p. xiv et seq. 3. In mediaeval days what attitude did religious leaders assume toward doubters? See Great Events, Vol. V., p. 340; Vol. VI., p. 173; Vol. VII... p. 229. 4. What was the reason for this attitude? See Great Events, Vol. VII., p. 301. 5. What was the " Reformation," and what its causes? See Great Events, Vol. IX., p. xiii et seq. 6. What attitude toward science did the Church adopt after this period? See Great Events, Vol. XL, p. 27. 7. For what reasons? See Great Events, Vol. XL, p. 184 et seq. 8. What was the attitude of science toward the Church at this time? See Great Events, Vol. XL, pp. 184 and 116 et seq. 9. When did scientific philosophy rise to open and equal antagonism against Christianity? See Great Events, Vol. XIIL, p. xvi et seq. 10. What disastrous consequences followed? See Great Events, Vol. XIIL, p. 144. Ill REFERENCES FOR FURTHER CONSULTATION FOR STANDARD ACCOUNTS OF SUBJECTS BROUGHT UNDER DIS- CUSSION IN "THE BELIEFS," see as follows: See Lecture III Page 2. For a historical account of the Bible, and especially its translation into English, see How We Got Our Bible, by J. P. Smyth, or Great Events, Vol, VII., p. 227. 3. The chief struggles of the mediaeval church to buttress its faith against doubters are narrated in the Close of the Middle Ages, by Richard Lodge, or Great Events, Vol. VII., p. 284. 4. For the sad story of the Crucifixion read Archdeacon Farrar's Life of Christ, or Great Events, Vol. III., p. 23. 4. The turn which the preachings of St. Paul gave to the Christian faith are suggested in the Origin of Christianity, by I. M. Wise, or Great Events, Vol. III., p. 69. 5. The tragic story of the opposition of the Church to scientific progress is detailed in our author's own volume, Pioneers of Science, or see Great Events, Vol. XL, p. 14. 12. As to Plato's dreams and plans for posterity consult his own works, or Great Events, Vol. II., p. 87. 18. The aid which Herodotus has offered to Egyptologists is emphasized in M. Maspero's work, The Dawn of Civilization, or see Great Events, Vol. I., p. 1. 19. For the marvels narrated by Herodotus, one must read his History, or Great Events, Vol. I., p. 354. IV-THE SUCCESSES QUESTIONS LEADING TO A COURSE OF COLLATERAL READING ON THE THOUGHTS SUGGESTED BY PRESIDENT ELIOT 1. What chief contributions to modern civilization were made by the ancient races? See Great Events, Vol. IV., p. xi et seq. 2. How far had civilization progressed when the colonization of America began? See Great Events, Vol. X., p. xiii. 3. In what country at that time was man's progress most advanced, and why? See Great Events, Vol. X., p. 8. 4. What gave special impetus to progress among the American Colonies? See Great Events, Vol. XL, pp. 93 and 153. 5. Since, as President Eliot points out, the ordinary causes of war have been inoperative in America since 1759, from what have our wars originated? See Great Events, Vol. XV., p. 241; Vol. XIX., p. 235. 6. How did the United States first formally attempt to sub- stitute arbitration for war? See Great Events, Vol. XVIII., p. 367. 7. How and where was religious toleration first established in America? See Great Events, Vol. XI., p. 303. 8. What had been Europe's attitude upon this matter? See Great Events, Vol. XI., p. xiii et seq. 9. What was the attitude of Europe in the nineteenth century toward democracy and "manhood" suffrage? See Great Events, Vol. XVI., p. xiii et seq. 10. What were America's earliest contributions to the practical inventions of the world? See Great Events, Vol. XIII., p. 130; Vol. XIV., p. 211. IV REFERENCES FOR FURTHER CONSULTATION FOR STANDARD ACCOUNTS OF SUBJECTS BROUGHT UNDER DIS- CUSSION IN "THE SUCCESSES/' see as follows: See Lecture IV Page 2. The struggle of the Dutch for freedom is described in the celebrated work of Schiller, The Revolt of the Netherlands, or Great Events, Vol. X., p. 81 2, The teaching of Europe by France in the eighteenth century is pointed out in G. W. Kitchin's History of France, or Great Events, Vol. XIII., p. 144. 2. For the two mighty upheavals of German sentiment consult History of Germany, bv W. Menzel, or Great Events, Vol. XV., p. 281, and Vol. XVII., p. 152. 3. The circumstances and value of the Geneva Arbitra- tion are described by Theodore D. Woolsey, in a special monograph. See Great Events, Vol. XVIII., p. 367. 4. The bitterness of the strife between England and France in America is depicted in W. H. Withrow's History of Canada, or Great Events, Vol. XIII., p. 181. 5. The naval events of the War of 1812 are given by Theodore Roosevelt in his Naval War of 1812; the land strife, from contemporary partisan standpoints, in the histories of Agnes Machar and David Ramsay, or see Great Events, Vol. XV., p. 241 and p. 268. 6. The Monroe Doctrine is fully explained in a mono- graph by Captain A. T. Mahan. See Great Events, Vol. XVI., p. 80. 13. The tremendous influence of the Crusades is dis- cussed by G. W. Cox in The Crusades, or in Great Events, Vol. V., p. 276. V— THE. BEGINNINGS QUESTIONS f LEADING TO A COUESE OF COLLATERAL READING ON THE THOUGHTS SUGGESTED BY MR. ROBINSON 1. What were the views of the ancient Egyptians as to the origin of man? See Great Events, Vol. I., p. 4 et seq. 2. What in Babylonic chronicles were the relations of gods and men? See Great Events, Vol. I., p. 15. 3. Had the ancient Asiatics any scientific conception of the problems involved in man's creation? See Great Events, Vol. I., p. 42 et seq. 4. What was the attitude of Greek philosophy upon man's origin? See Great Events, Vol. II., p. 88 et seq. 5. How did the Roman world regard the problem? See Great Events, Vol. III., p. xv. 6. When and in what region did man make his first great step away from the "developed bmte"? See Great Events, Vol. I., p. xxv. 7. What was the first important step in man's recognition of his true relation to the rest of creation? See Great Events, Vol. II., p. 245. 8. When and how 'did the Biblical narrative come to be accepted in an overliteral sense? See Great Events, Vol. III., p. 87. 9. When did modern science first begin to realize the error of the religious historians? See Great Events, Vol. VII., p. 113 et seq. 10. What has so far been the culmination of this movement? See Great Events, Vol. XIX., p. 282. V REFERENCES FOR FURTHER CONSULTATION FOR STANDARD ACCOUNTS OF SUBJECTS BROUGHT UNDER DIS- CUSSION IN "THE BEGINNINGS," see as follows: See Lecture V Page 2. Darwin's own feeling as to the consequences of his doctrines is expressed in Life and Letters of Charles Darvnn, by his son, or Great Events, Vol. XVII., p. 326. 4. The methods of Newton's analysis and approach to his great discovery are explained in Life of Sir Isaac Neiuton, by Sir D. Brewster, or Great Events, Vol. XII., p. 51. 11. The strife of Northern Europe against the South is best portrayed in Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. See Great Events, Vol. IV., p. 1. 18. The struggles and sufferings attendant on dawning civilization in the regions of northern cold are sug- gested by Tacitus in his Annals, or Great Events, Vol. III., p. 1. 19. For the birth of language consult also Great Events, Vol. I., p. xxietseq. 20. The earliest historic form of Aryan civilization is described by Sir William Hunter in his Brief History of the Indian People, or in Great Events, Vol. I., p. 57. VI -THE ORIGIN OF LIFE QUESTIONS LEADING TO A COURSE OF COLLATERAL READING ON THE THOUGHTS SUGGESTED BY MR. BURKE 1. What belief as to the origin of life existed in ancient Greece? See Great Events, Vol. I., p. 105. 2. What ideas are suggested in the Roman tales of Livy? See Great Events, Vol. I., p. 132 et seq. 3. What are the legends of Japan as to the vital source? See Great Events, Vol. I., p. 140. 4. What were the myths of India? See Great Events, Vol. I., p. 62. 5. Did mediaeval science make any advance upon these views? See Great Events, Vol. VII., p. 130. 6. What terrible disasters opened the way to the recognition of the existence of bacteria? See Great Events, Vol. XII., p. 29. 7. What was the earliest scientific study made of them? See Great Events, Vol. XIV., p. 366. 8. What practical results were obtained from this? See Great Events, Vol. XIV., p. 372. 9. What practical knowledge of crystallography has been acquired from African mining? See Great Events, Vol. XVIII., p. 225. 10. How have vigorous changes of scientific thought been previously received? See Great Events, Vol. XVI., p. 338; Vol. XVII., p. 1. VI REFERENCES FOR FURTHER CONSULTATION FOR STANDARD ACCOUNTS OF SUBJECTS BROUGHT UNDER DIS- CUSSION IN "THE ORIGIN OF LIFE," see as follows: See Lecture VI Page 2. The scientific attempts of Harvey to trace the con- nection between life and the flow of blood are described by Thomas Huxley in a monograph on Harvey. See Great Events, Vol. XL, p. 50. 2. The beginnings of modern scientific experimentation are told bj^ George Henry Lewes in his History of Philosophy, or Great Events, Vol. XL, p. 116. 3. The antagonism and disputes into which scientists have sometimes been drawn are suggested in Sir Oliver Lodge's Pioneers of Science, or Great Events, Vol. XL, p. 14. 5. The character and peculiarities of African diamonds are explained by G. F. Williams in his work, The Diamond Mines of South Africa, or Great Events, Vol. XVIIL, p. 225. 6. The first practical result of research into the world of microscopic life is described by Sir Thomas Petti- grew, in his Medical Portrait Gallery, or Great Events, Vol. XIV., p. 363. 8. For the earliest practical study of electricity see John Bigelow's Complete Works of Benjamin Franklin, or Great Events, Vol. XIIL, p. 130. VII— THE BIRTH OF CONSCIENCE QUESTIONS LEADING TO A COURSE OF COLLATERAL READING ON THE THOUGHTS SUGGESTED BY PRINCE KROPOTKIN 1. What was the nature of the revolution caused by Darwin? See Great Events, Vol. XVI., p. xxii. 2. What was the nature of that earUer thought revolution with which Prince Kropotkin compares the epoch of Darwin ? See Great Events, Vol. II., p. 116. 3. On what famous "first conclusion" is modern philosophy founded? See Great Events, Vol. II., p. xvi. 4. What is Darwinism itself as contrasted with evolution, with the origin of species, and other allied questions? See Great Events, Vol. XVI., p. 326 et seq. 5. Do present-day scientists accept the Darwinism of 1859? See Great Events, Vol. XVI., p. 326. 6. Have the Japanese the same view as we concerning animals and their relation to man? See Great Events, Vol. I., p. 156. 7. Have the Chinese? See Great Events, Vol. I., pp. 291 and 296. 8. What have been the chief broad social movements of humanity? See Great Events, Vol. V., p. xiii; Vol. VII., p. XIII et seq. 9. In what ages has this social "instinct" seemed feeblest? See Great Events, Vol. II., p. xii. 10. At what period did the feeling of political union begin to supersede that of religious union among European races? See Great Events, Vol. XL, pp. xiii-xv. ^11 REFERENCES FOR FURTHER CONSULTATION FOR STANDARD ACCOUNTS OF SUBJECTS BROUGHT UNDER DIS- CUSSION IN "THE BIRTH OF CONSCIENCE," see AS follows: See Lecture VII Page 2. The conditions in Russia which led to the exile of Prince Kropotkin are described in Wilhelm Mueller's Political History of Recent Times, or Great Events, Vol. XIX., p. 1. 2. For the character and influence of the work of Darwin consult the Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, by his son, or Great Events, Vol. XVII., p. 326. 6. The story of Bodisatta, or Buddha, is narrated in Buddhism, by J. W. Rhys-Davids, or Great Events, Vol. I., p. 160. 6. The gradual Development of Christian Doctrine is pointed out by Cardinal Newman in his work of that name. See Great Events, Vol. III., p. 88. 11. For the period of government by logic, and "benevo- lent despotism," see Great Events, Vol. XIII., Out- line Narrative. 11. The spirit which underlay the foundation of religious schools in the Middle Ages is analyzed by J. A. Symonds in The Renaissance in Italy, or Great Events, Vol. VII., p. 110. 18. The many beast legends of the mythologies of the East are discussed by W. W. Hunter in his Brief History of the Indian People, or Great Events, Vol. I., p. 57. 19. For the sacred respect shown the crocodile in Egy])t see G. C. C. Maspero's Dawn of Civilization, or Great Events, Vol. I., p. 1. VIII-THE SOUL IN BEASTS QUESTIONS LEADING TO A COURSE OF COLLATERAL READING ON THE THOUGHTS SUGGESTED BY COUNTESS CESARESCO 1. What idea of animals was held in ancient Babylonia? See Great Events, Vol. I., p. 37 et seq. 2. What was their place in the religious faith of Egypt? See Great Events, Vol. I., p. 6 et seq. 3. What attitude toward animals was held by the people of India? See Great Events, Vol. I., p. 60. 4. What importance is given beasts in Japanese legend? See Great Events, Vol. I., p. 149. 5. What importance is given them in the Buddhist faith? See Great Events, Vol. I., p. 165 et seq. 6. How did the early Christian Church regard those who dis- puted its doctrines? See Great Events, Vol. III., p. 299. 7. At the time of "beast trials" in the courts of Europe, what sort of justice was meted out to men? See Great Events, Vol. VII., p. 51. 8. Did sense or superstition guide the courts? See Great Events, Vol. VII., p. 356. 9. How did the Eastern fairy-tales of beasts become spread through Europe? See Great Events, Vol. VII., p. 270. 10. When did science begin to make valuable use of vivisection? See Great Events, Vol. XL, p. 52. VIII REFERENCES FOR FURTHER CONSULTATION FOR STANDARD ACCOUNTS OF SUBJECTS BROUGHT UNDER DIS- CUSSION IN "THE SOUL IN BEASTS," see as FOLLOWS : See Lecture VIII Page 1. The attitude of both repubhcan and imperial Rome on reUgious questions is summed up in Niebuhr's Lectures on the History of Rome, or Great Events, Vol. IL, pp. 313 and 333. 2. The religious influence of Egypt on the western world is discussed by J. P. Mahaffy in his Empire of the Ptolemies. See Great Events, Vol. II. , p. 295. 3. The growth of early Christian dogma is described by A. P. Stanley in his History of the Eastern Church. See Great Events, Vol. III., p. 299. 4. The attitude of the Inquisition toward the fantasies of its day is explained in W. H. Rule's History of the Inquisition, or Great Events, Vol. VIII. , p. 166. 8. The persecution of the Albigenses is described by T. F. Tout in The Empire and the Papacy, or Great Events, Vol. VI., p. 156. 12. For the aesthetic enjoyment of animals and their beauty, which came with the Renaissance, consult Jacob Burckhardt's Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, or Great Events, Vol. VII., p. 93. 15. The difficulties with the Church in which Descartes became involved are detailed in G. H. Lewes's His- tory of Philosophy, or Great Events, Vol. XL, p. 116. IX-THE FAILURE OF EVOLUTION QUESTIONS LEADING TO A COURSE OF COLLATERAL READING ON THE THOUGHTS SUGGESTED BY MR. WALLACE 1. What evidence does human history give us as to possibili- ties of modification through environment? See Great Events, VoL I., pp. xxiv et seq. and 66. 2. Did the laws established by man in Greece tend to modify or emphasize the survival of the fittest? See Great Events, Vol. I., p. xxxiii. 3. Did the "fittest" survive under the domination of Babylon and Assyria? See Great Events, VoL I., p. iii et seq. 4. To what extent were the matrimonial customs of the time possibly responsible for this? See Great Events, VoL I., p. 25 et seq. 5. Where has this natural law of selection shown marked evi- dence of failure in its application to mankind? See Great Events, VoL XI., p. xviii; VoL XIIL, p. XIV. 6. Has civilized man ever really succeeded in acquiring the supposedly hereditary characteristics and abilities of the savage? See Great Events, VoL XIL, pp. 108 et seq. and 297. 7. Has recent history offered any marked justification for Mr. Darwin's despondent view of man's future? See Great Events, VoL XIX., p. 70. 8. What justification does it offer for Mr. Wallace's optimism? See Great Events, VoL XIX., p. 282. 9. To what extent have Mr. Wallace's natural checks on popu- lation actually operated in past ages? See Great Events, VoL IV., p. xiv; VoL V., pp. 22 and 130. 10. Is war likely to be less destructive of life in the future? See Great Events, Vol. XIX., p. ,381. IX REFERENCES FOR FURTHER CONSULTATION FOR STANDARD ACCOUNTS OF SUBJECTS BROUGHT UNDER DIS- CUSSION IN "THE FAILURE OF EVOLUTION," SEE AS follows: See Lecture IX Page 6. The feebleness of the Romans as compared with the barbaric invaders is shown in the Roman History of Ammianus MarcelUnus, or in Great Events, Vol. III., p. 352. 6. The degeneration of the Roman race under the Em- perors is graphically portrayed in Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, or see Great Events, Vol. III., p. 263. 10. For the ancient laws upon the indissolubility of mar- riage consult the Code of Laws of Justinian. See Great Events, Vol. IV., p. 138. 10. The gradual advance of monogamy in the course of civilization is pointed out in Great Events, Vol. IV., Introduction. 12. The checks upon population caused by war may be vividly realized from Dr. Gardiner's work on The Thirty Years' War. See Great Events, Vol. XL, p. 50. 12. The effects of pestilence in checking population are summarized in The Black Death, by J. F. Hecker, or Great Events, Vol. VIL, p. 130. 14. The limitations placed upon population by the neces- sities of savage life are shown in Great Events, Vol. IV., p. XII et seq. X-THE LATEST KNOWLEDGE QUESTIONS LEADING TO A COURSE OF COLLATERAL READING ON THE THOUGHTS SUGGESTED BY IRA REMSEN 1. What ancient races were foremost in the early development of science? See Great Events, Vol. I., p. xxvi. 2. Did mediaeval science exert any genuine control over disease? See Great Events, Vol. VII., pp. 130 and 187. 3. What were the first important steps in modern scientific advance? See Great Events, Vol. IX., p. 285. 4. What was the last great horror in which man's ancient helplessness before disease was manifested? See Great Events, Vol. XII., p. 29. o. How has science revolutionized the theories of medical practice? See Great Events, Vol. XIV., p. 36.3. 6. How has science revolutionized traffic? See Great Events, Vol. XV., p. 1,59; Vol. XVI.. p. 157. 7. How has it altered art? See Great Events, Vol. XVI., p. 338. 5. What has been the greatest triumph of mathematical science? See Great Events, Vol. XVII., p. 25. 9. How has science revolutionized war? See Great Events, Vol. XVIII., p. 38. 10. What have been its chief triumphs in electricity? See Great Events, Vol. XVII., p. 1; Vol. XVIII., p. 175. X REFERENCES FOR FURTHER CONSULTATION FOR STANDARD ACCOUNTS OF SUBJECTS BROUGHT UNDER DIS- CUSSION IN "THE LATEST KNOWLEDGE," see AS follows: See Lecture X Page 3. The state of science in the earliest historical times is shown in The Dawn of Civilization, by Ci. C. C. Mas- pero. See Great Events, Vol. L, p. L 3. The efforts of medical science to alleviate the suffer- ings of our race are illustrated in J. C. Hecker's Epidemics of the Middle Ages, or in Great Events, Vol. VIL, p. 187. 6. The commercial condition of Chili and the value of its mines are pointed out in Sir Clements Markham's work, The War between Chili and Peru, or in Great Events, Vol. XIX., p. 50. 9. The enormous wealth of India is shown in Ledger and Sword, by H. B. Willson, or in Great Events, Vol. XL, p. 30. 10. For the early struggles of medical men to introduce inoculation against disease consult Sir Thomas Pettigrew's Medical Portrait Gallery, or Great Events, Vol. XIV., p. 363. 13. The industrial advance of Germany is described by Emil Reich in his Foundations of Modern Europe, or in Great Events, Vol. XVIII. , p. 340. 13. The attitude of the generation of men first called on to discard the idea that the earth was flat is depicted in Pioneers of Science, by Sir Oliver Lodge, or Great Events, Vol. XL, p. 14. XI -OUR COUNTRY QUESTIONS LEADING TO A COURSE OF COLLATERAL READING ON THE THOUGHTS SUGGESTED BY PRESIDENT WILSON 1 . Where do we find the beginnings of constitutional govern- ment in America? See Great Events, Vol. XL, p. 76. 2. By what steps did it develop previous to the Revolution? See Great Events, Vol. XI., pp. 153 and 205; Vol. XII., p. 241; Vol. XIII., p. 289. 3. How was the United States Constitution finally established? See Great Events, Vol. XIV., p. 173. 4. Where did English constitutional government begin? See Great Events, Vol. VI., pp. 75 and 246. 5. In what sense has the war of 1812 been specially regarded as "making the nation"? See Great Events, Vol. XV., p. 241. 6. What events opened the way for the westward progress of our nation? See Great Events, Vol. XV., pp. 39 and 284. 7. What was the first great effort of Eastern capital to facili- tate communication with the West? See Great Events, Vol. XVI., p. 94. 8. Under what stimulus did settlers first cross the great plains of the Central West? See Great Events, Vol. XVII., p. 94. 9. What led them to the Pacific coast? See Great Events, Vol. XVII., pp. 34 and 188. 10. What sentiment of disunion found^expression in the " Hart- ford Convention " ? See Great Events, Vol. XV., p. 326. XI REFERENCES FOR FURTHER CONSULTATION FOR STANDARD ACCOUNTS OF SUBJECTS BROUGHT UNDER DIS- CUSSION IN "OUR COUNTRY," see as follows: See Lecture XI Page 2. The views of early American statesman as to the strength and permanence of the union of the States are given by Andrew Young in The American States- man, or Great Events, Vol. XIV., p. 173. 2. For the spirit of the American nation in 1812 consult President Roosevelt's Naval War of 1812. See Great Events, Vol. XV., p. 268. 4. The early and increasing dissatisfaction felt by the Southern States at the high tariff laws is explained in the speeches of Senator Calhoun. See Great Events, Vol. XVI., p. 217. 6. The truly national desire for union which persisted in the South in 1860 is shown in Jefferson Davis' Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, or Great Events, Vol. XVIII., p. 1. 9. The way in which the American colonies were forced into united action by England is perhaps best illus- trated in Bancroft's History of the United States. See Great Events, Vol. XIII., p. 289. 12. Washington has himself told us the story of his con- nection with the French and Indian war. See his Works, or Great Events, Vol. XIII., p. 163. 14. For the views of Jefferson on the Louisiana Purchase and the difficulties he encountered consult the Life of Thomas Jefferson, by H. S. Randall, or Great Events, Vol. XV., p. 39. 16. The Missouri Compromise has been fully discussed in a recent monograph by James A. Woodburn. See Great Events, Vol. XVI., p. 14. XII -PATRIOTISM AND POLITICS (QUESTIONS LEADING TO A COURSE OF COLLATERAL READING ON THE THOUGHTS SUGGESTED BY CARDINAL GIBBONS 1. How was "party spirit" roused among the politicians of Athens, and to what length did it go? See Great Events, Vol. I., p. 329; Vol. II., pp. 15, 28. 32, 45, and 87. 2. What extremes of political corruption do we find revealed in Greek history? See Great Events, Vol. I., p. 350; Vol. II., p. 25. 3. How did the enemies of Greece take advantage of this corruption? See Great Events, Vol. II., pp. 68 and 166. 4. What w^ere the early political parties in Rome, and in what disasters did their strife involve the city? See Great Events, Vol. I., p. 313; Vol. II., p. 1. 5. What gross abuses did the increasing wealth of Rome bring into its politics? See Great Events, Vol. II., p. 259. 6. To what heights of patriotism were the Athenians roused by Pericles? See Great Events, Vol. II., p. 42 et seq. 7. What did the Romans endure for the love of country in the war with Carthage? See Great Events, Vol. II., p. 179. 8. What sacrifices to patriotism were made by the ancient Jews? See Great Events, Vol. III., pp. 150 and 222. 9. How did the founders of the American Republic show their confidence in the patriotism of succeeding generations? See Great Events, Vol. XIV., p. 173. 10. What opposing problems of patriotism arose in the Ameri- can Revolution? See Great Events, Vol. XIV., p. 30. XII REFERENCES FOR FURTHER CONSULTATION FOR STANDARD ACCOUNTS OF SUBJECTS BROUGHT UNDER DIS- CUSSION IN "PATRIOTISM AND POLITICS," see AS follows: See Lecture XII Page 2. The Elizabethan methods of dramatic presentation as compared with the modern stage are shown in Halli- well-PhilUpps' Memoranda on Hamlet, or Great Events, Vol. X., p. 287. 3. The story of Brazil and the flight of its Emperor are told in Sketches in Brazil, by D. P. Kidder, or Great Events, Vol. XV., p. 18L 3. The development of American patriotism is well [illus- trated in the literary Works of Lincoln, or in Great Events, Vol. XVIII. , p. 70. 5. The tale of Leonidas and his Spartans is told by Herod- otus in his History. See Great Events, Vol. I., p. 354. 5. The story of Marathon and the probable effect the victory of Xerxes would have had upon civilization are discussed in Sir Edward Creasy's Fifteen Decisive Battles, or Great Events, Vol. I., p. 322. 6. The deeds of Horatius and the other early Romans are narrated in Liddell's History of Rome, or Great Events, Vol. I., p. 300. 7. The submission to civil government shown by the early Christians is described by Archdeacon Farrar in his Early Days of Christianity, or in Great Events, Vol. III., p. 134. 8. For the American notion of a State see the Declaration of l7idependence, and Works of Thomas Jefferson. See Great Events, Vol. XIV., p. 39. 10. The debauchery of the electorate, by which Caesar won election to office, is shown in Mommsen's History of Rome, or Great Events, Vol. II., p. 259. XIII -AMBITION QUESTIONS LEADING TO A COURSE OF COLLATERAL READING ON THE THOUGHTS SUGGESTED BY DR. NORDAU 1 . What are the changes in the constitution of society which have given impetus to ambition? See Great Events, vol. V., p. 1 et seq. 2. What was the first of the written free constitutions which stand as the basis of modern Ufe? What were its provisions? See Great Events, Vol. XI., p. 205 et seq. 3. What is it that has mainly stimulated what Nordau calls " the democratic transformation of the peoples "? See Great Events, Vol. XIV., pp. xiii, xiv, and XVIII. 4. In what period did the " human spirit " first attain to self- conscious freedom? See Great Events, Vol. VII., p. 112. 5. What were the " conditions of success " at the time of the early Renaissance? See Great Events, Vol. VIII., p. 136 et seq. 6. Of the later Renaissance? See Great Events, Vol. VIII., p. 360 et seq. 7. What were the "conditions of success" in the ages of chivalry? See Great Events, Vol. V., p. 109. 8. What were the ambitions of a still earlier age? See Great Events, Vol. V., p. 117 et seq. 9. When did literary success first become the most powerful means of influencing the world? See Great Events, Vol. XIII., pp. xiii and xv et seq. 10. What was then the general character of that influence? See Great Events, Vol. XIII., p. 144. XIII REFERENCES FOR FURTHER CONSULTATION FOR STANDARD ACCOUNTS OF SUBJECTS BROUGHT UNDER DIS- CUSSION IN "AMBITION," SEE AS FOLLOWS: See Lecture XIII Page 2. Feudalism, its value and also its destructive influenct through all Europe, are fully discussed in The Con- stitutional History of England, by William Stubbs or Great Events, Vol. V., p. 1. 5. For Leonardo, Michael Angelo, and the whole awaken- ing joy of their era, consult J. A. Symonds' The Renaissance in Italy, or Qreat Events, Vol. VIL, p. 110; Vol. VIIL, p. 134. 6. The history and also an appreciative criticism of Dante's poems are given by R. W. Church in his Dante. See Great Events, Vol. VIL, p. 1. 13. The story of Newton's advance toward the great dis- covery of gravitation is more fully told in the Life of Newton, by Sir David Brewster. See Great Events, Vol. XII., p. 1. 16. The literary struggles of Bunyan and the other writers of his time are fully described in History of English Literature of the Eighteenth Century, by Edmund Gosse, or see Great Events, Vol. XIIL, p. 100. 16. For Schiller's thought and work consult German Thought, bv Karl Hillebrand, or Great Events, Vol. XIIL, p. 347. 16. The tragedy of Byron's life is narrated in John Nicol's Byron. See Great Events, Vol. XVL, p. 65. XIV- OUR PAST QUESTIONS LEADING TO A COURSE OF COLLATERAL READING ON THE THOUGHTS SUGGESTED BY M. MAETERLINCK 1. In the early, ages, what great men recognized for thenj- selves the superior importance of mental experiences over outside life? See Great Events, Vol. I., pp. 94 and 270; Vol. II., p. 147. 2. When did philosophy first teach the dominance of the subjective? See Great Events, Vol. I., p. 160. 3. What are the Hindu doctrines as to this? See Great Events, Vol. I., p. 161 et seq. 4. Have these ideas had any marked influence upon the Hindu race? See Great Events, Vol. I., p. 57. 5. How did the Greeks estimate the dominance of the past? See Great Events, Vol. II., p. 87. 6. What were the views of Socrates upon this? See Great Events, Vol. II., p. 99 et seq. 7. When did the civilization of Rome become unprogressive, weighed down by pride in its past? See Great Events, Vol. II., p. 133. 8. How did this weight palsy the efforts of even the noblest of her Emperors? See Great Events, Vol. III., p. 263. 9. When has the history of Europe seemed to grow stagnant behind similar barriers? See Great Events, Vol. XII., p. 1, 10. How did this blight come to fall with deadly effect upon the land of Spain? See Great Events, Vol. X., p. 251. XIV REFERENCES FOR FURTHER CONSULTATION FOR STANDARD ACCOUNTS OF SUBJECTS BROUGHT UNDER DIS- CUSSION IN "OUR PAST/' SEE AS follows: See Lecture XIV Page 4. A remarkable progressive development in character under this influence of the past may be studied in the Life of Luther, by Julius Koestlin. See Great Events, Vol. IX., p. 1. 5. This stagnation in a nation whose moral growth has ceased is grimly illustrated in The Civilizations of India, by Gustave Le Bon, or Great Events, Vol. I., p. 52. 8. The spirit by which the Romans con(iuered the world is shown in Niebuhr's Lectures on the History of Rome, or Great Events, Vol. II,, p. 313. 8. The power and rectitude of vision which enabled Napo- leon to triumph are shown in Sir Walter Scott's Life of Napoleon, or Great Events, Vol. XIV., p. 339. 8. The early sense of the power and influence of the dead is revealed in all savage races, as in the introduction to the Law Code of Hammurabi of Babylon. See Great Events, Vol. I., p. 14. 9. The contrast between a fading past and a vigorous present are illustrated in the lesson Tacitus tries to draw for Rome from the German tribes. See Annals of Tacitus, or Great Events, Vol. III., p. 1, XV-ART QUESTIONS LEADING TO A COURSE OP COLLATERAL READING ON THE THOUGHTS SUGGESTED BY MR. HOWELLS 1 . What views were held by the earliest nations as to the value of art in life? See Great Events, Vol. I., p. xxv. 2. What progress had they made in the development of art? See Great Events, Vol. I., p. 1. 3. What place did art hold in the Grecian world? See Great Events, Vol. I., p. 181. 4. How did the power of Grecian art finally prove more en- durant than that of Roman military genius? See Great Events, Vol. II., p. xix. 5. When did the power and value of art begin to reassert themselves after the Dark Ages? See Great Events, Vol. VII., p. 1. 6. What caused the remarkable awakening known as the Renaissance? See Great Events, Vol. VII., p. 110. 7. At what period did architecture hold the highest place among the arts? See Great Events, Vol. VIII., p. 46. 8. When was poetry crowned with this distinction, and what was predicted as to its future? See Great Events, Vol. VII., p. 93. 9. When did music hold a similar pre-eminence? See Great Events, Vol. XIII., p. 33. 10. What faith did music lovers then hold as to its future? See Great Events, Vol. XIII., p. 42. XV REFERENCES FOR FURTHER CONSULTATION FOR STANDARD ACCOUNTS OP SUBJECTS BROUGHT UNDER DIS- CUSSION IN "ART," SEE AS follows: See Lecture XV Pace 2. The lack of artistic interest or knowledge in patrons of art is illustrated in Margaret Oliphant's Makers of Rome, or Great Events, Vol. VIII., p. 46. 3. The attitude of the modern public toward artistic work found its first expression and example in their treat- ment of Dante. See Dante, by R. W. Church, or Great Events, Vol. VII., p. 1. 5. The combined subtlety and simplicity of Shakespeare are displayed by Halliwell-Phillipps ^in his Memo- randa of Hamlet, or Great Events, Vol. X., ]). 287. 7. The abdication of Charles V.,with its causes and con- sequences, is fully described in Robertson's History of the Reign of Charles V., or Great Events, Vol. IX., p. 348. 9. The modern change of attitude toward work and work- ers is revealed in William Stubbs' Constitutional History of England, or Great Events, Vol. V., p. 1. 9. For a modern example of work by those who need not work consult Charles Lowe's Prince Bismarck, or Great Events, Vol. XIX., p. 104. 2L The delight of mediaeval and renaissance artists in painting the Madonna is explained by Charles Clem- ent in his Michael Angelo, or Great Events, Vol. VIII., p. 369. XVl-ART AND MORALITY QUESTIONS LEADING TO A COURSE OF COLLATERAL READING ON THE THOUGHTS SUGGESTED BY M. BRUNETIERE 1 . What was the origin of the French Academy? See Great Events, Vol. XL, p. 347. 2. What was the general moral tone of the French drama of the seventeenth century? See Great Events, Vol. XL, p. 347 et seq. 3. What work is generally accepted as the culmination of dramatic literature, and why? See Great Events, Vol. X., p. 287. 4. Who were the iconoclasts and what their attitude toward art? See Great Events, Vol. V., p. 191. 5. What attitude did early Christianity assume toward art? See Great Events, Vol. IIL, p. 247. 6. When did art dominate morality in Italian life? See Great Events, Vol. VIL, p. 121. 7. In the Italian Church? See Great Events, Vol. IX., p. 2. 8. What union was established between art and religion? See Great Events, Vol. VIII. , p. 369. 9. When did art first recognize the beauty of nature? See Great Events, Vol. VIL, p. 93. 10. When did nature and emotion dominate art? See Great Events, Vol. XIII. , p. 40. ^ REFERENCES FOR FURTHER CONSULTATION FOR STANDARD ACCOUNTS OF SUBJECTS BROUGHT UNDER DIS- CUSSION IN "ART AND MORALITY," see as follows: See Lecture XVI Page 4. The really pagan nature of the Greek and Roman gods is shown in Lytton's Last Days of Pompeii. See Great Events, Vol. II., p. 207. 9. The environment of French life in the eighteenth cen- tury is described in the History of France, by G. W. Kitchin, or Great Events, Vol. XIII., p. 160. IL The conditions of Italian life in the fifteenth centur}' are described in the History of the Italian Republics, by Sismondi, or Great Events, Vol. VIII., p. 265. 11. The criticism quoted is from J. A. Symonds' Renais- sance; see also Great Events, Vol. VII., p. 110. 15. For the lives of Moliere and Racine consult the His- tory of French Literature, bv H. Van Laun, or Great Events, Vol. XL, p. 347. 19. For Samuel Richardson consult the History of English Literature in the Eighteenth Century, by Edmund Gosse, or Great Events, Vol. XIIL, p. 101. 23. The influence of the Papac}^ on Rome is delineated by Gregorovius in his History of the City of Rome. See Great Events, Vol. VI., p. 378. 23. France, under the regime of the seventeenth century, has been depicted in a monograph, Louis XIV., by J. C, Morison, or Great Events, Vol. XII., p. 1. XVU -WOMAN QUESTIONS LEADING TO A COURSE OF COLLATERAL READING ON THE THOUGHTS SUGGESTED BY ELIZABETH S. DIACK AND WILLIAM LILLY 1. Was Cleopatra an exception to the condition of women in Egypt? See Great Events, Vol. II., p. 295. 2. What was the general condition of Grecian morality in the time of Aspasia? See Great Events, Vol. II., p. 12. 3. Was the "mother of the Gracchi" the typical Roman woman, or exceptional? See Great Events, Vol. II., p. 259. 4. What position did woman hold amid the orgies of Nero? See Great Events, Vol. III., p. 139. 5. How was she regarded among the primitive Christians? See Great Events, Vol. III., p. 254. 6. Whence arose the mediaeval glorification of woman? See Great Events, Vol. V., p. 109. 7. To what extent did it influence her practical condition? See Great Events, Vol. V., p. 125. 8. What great divorce case aroused strife between the Papacy and France, and how was it settled? See Great Events, Vol. VI., p. 156. 9. What were the circumstances of the still more serious di- vorce question between the Papacy and Henry VIII. of England? See Great Events, Vol. IX., p. 137. 10. How did the German Empire and the Papacy become em- broiled over this same dispute, and -mth what disastrous results? See Great Events, Vol. IX., p. 124. XVII REFERENCES FOR FURTHER CONSULTATION FOR STANDARD ACCOUNTS OF SUBJECTS BROUGHT UNDER DIS- CUSSION IN "WOMAN," SEE AS follows: Lecture XVII Page 2. The peculiar marriage customs of ancient Egypt are described in The Empire of the Ptolemies, by J. P. Mahaffy, or Great Events, Vol. II., p. 295. 2. The sufferings of women under the later Egyptian tyranny are set forth in The Mameluke or Slave Dynasty in Egypt, by Sir W. Muir. See Great Events, Vol. VI., p. 240. 3. For the position of woman among the Babylonians see the Law Code of Hammurabi, in Great Events, Vol. I., p. 28. 7. The condition of women in early Rome is described by H. G. Liddell in his History of Rome, or Great Events, Vol. I., p. 300. 7. The Roman women of Nero's day are well depicted by Sienkiewicz in Quo Vadis, or Great Events, Vol. III., p. 108. 10. The position of the aboriginal women in Britain is de- scribed in Goldsmith's History of England, or Great Events, Vol II., p. 285. 16. The broad question of the assertion of supremacy by the Roman pontiffs is historically discussed by T. F. Tout in The Empire and the Papacy, or Great Events, Vol. VI., p. 156. 18. The general Catholic estimate of the Reformation may be gathered from Audin's Life of Luther, or Great Events, Vol. IX., p. 26. XVIII -UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE QUESTIONS LEADING TO A COURSE OF COLLATERAL READING ON THE THOUGHTS SUGGESTED BY FRANCES POWER COBBE AND WILLIAM K. HILL 1. What share had women in the government of any of the early nations? See Great Events, Vol. I., pp. 9, 73, and 120. 2. What was their legal status in Greece? See Great Events, Vol. I., p. 236. 3. In Rome? See Great Events, Vol. IV., p. 151 et seq. 4. What was woman's status in mediaeval law? See Great Events, Vol. V., p. 1 17 et seq, 5. Is Mr. Hill justified in his estimate of the narrowness of Queen Elizabeth's statesmanship? See Great Events, Vol. X., p. 8. 6. How much power did Isabella of Spain really exercise upon her contemporaries? See Great Events, Vol. VIII., p. 202. 7. To what extent was she swayed by others? See Great Events, Vol. VIII., p. 166. 8. What were the real aims and successes of Margaret of Denmark? See Great Events, Vol. VII., p. 243. 9. Were the triumphs of Joan of Arc intellectual or spiritual? See Great Events, Vol. VII., p. 233. 10. In which light were they regarded by her contemporaries? See Great Events, Vol. VII., p. 350. XVIII REFERENCES FOR FURTHER CONSULTATION FOR STANDARD ACCOUNTS OF SUBJECTS BROUGHT UNDER DIS- CUSSION IN "UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE," see as follows: See Lecture XVIIl Page 2. The purely personal government of ancient Greece is shown in Grote's History of Greece, or Great Events, Vol. I., p. 203. 2. The autocratic power of Louis XIV. is described by J. C. Morison in his Louis XIV., or Great Events, Vol. XII., p. 1. 3. The character of the Rig Veda is described, with extracts, in W. W. Hunter's Brief History of the Indian People, or Great Events, Vol. I., p. 57. 6. The full story of the struggles and triumphs of Maria Theresa is given by W. Smyth in his Lectures on Modern History, or Great Events, Vol. XIII., p. 108. 6. An excellent account of Russia under the rule of Catharine is given by W. K. Johnson in his Catha- rine II., or Great Events, Vol. XIII. , p. 250. 12. The influence of St. Paul in changing the practical application of Christianity is pointed out in the Origin of Christianity, by I. M. Wise, or Great Events, Vol. III., p. 69. 14. For the sources of Joan of Arc's success consult Michelet's History of France, or Great Events, Vol. VII., p. 350. 14. A careful analysis of the causes of Queen Elizabeth's greatness is made by H. R. Cleveland in his Queen Elizabeth or Great Events, Vol. X., p. 8. XIX SOCIETY QUESTIONS LEADING TO A COURSE OF COLLATERAL READING ON THE THOUGHTS SUGGESTED BY LADY PONSONBY 1. What was the origin of the modern aristocratic system in Europe? See Great Events, Vol. V., p. 1. 2. From whom are the aristocracy of France and Germany descended? See Great Events, Vol. V., p. 22. 3. From what race sprang the upper classes in England? See Great Events, Vol. V., p. 204. 4. How did the French nobility become changed fl'om feudal barons to courtiers? See Great Events, Vol. XI., p. 129. 5. How did Voltaire regard the " society " of his day? See Great Events, Vol. XIII., p. 144. 6. How did the " society " regard Voltaire? See Great Events, Vol. XIII., p. xv. 7. To what extent was the French Revolution caused by the upper classes? See Great Events, Vol. XIV., p. 212. 8. Did they meet it in a way to justify their repute? See Great Events, Vol. XIV., p. 295. 9. Was the English Revolution of 1688 caused by the lower classes or the aristocracy? See Great Events, Vol. XII., p. 200. 10. What great events mainly fastened the rule of an aristoc- racy upon England? See Great Events, Vol. VI., p. xviii. XIX REFERENCES FOR FURTHER CONSULTATION FOR STANDARD ACCOUNTS OF SUBJECTS BROUGHT UNDER DIS- CUSSION IN "SOCIETY," SEE AS FOLLOWS: See Lecture XIX Page 3. The vast influence of Moliere's Les PrScieuses Ridicules is described by H. Van Laun in his History of French Literature, or Great Events, Vol. XL, p. 347. 3. The career of Mazarin in France, and his influence on society, are cUscussed by Arthur Hassall in his Mazarin, or Great Events, Vol. XL, p. 285. 7. The pose of "honor" set up by Francis I., and its downfall, are detailed by Robertson in his History of the Reign of Charles V ., or Great Events, Vol. IX., p. in. 14. The trials of the French noblewomen in the Reign of Terror are depicted by Guizot in his History of France, or Great Events, Vol. XIV., p. 311. 14. The conditions of life in England in the eighteenth century may best be gathered from W. Lecky's History of England in the Eighteenth Century, or Great Events, Vol. XIII. , p. 57.. 15. English society of the early nineteenth century is por- trayed in Justin McCarthy's Epoch of Reform. See Great Events, Vol. XVIL, p. 11. 20. The contrasting natures of mediaeval and modern society are illustrated in Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. See Great Events, Vol. IV., p. 138. 22. Swinburne's celebrated account of the Scottish Queen is given in a monograph, Mary Stuart, or see Great Events, Vol. XL, p. 51. XX-THE CHILD QUESTIONS LEADING TO A COURSE OF COLLATERAL READING ON THE THOUGHTS SUGGESTED BY MR. WELLS 1. How was the infant received and how were its needs recog- nized in ancient Babylon? See Great Events, Vol. I., p. 30 et seq. 2. What training was given it among the East Asiatic people? See Great Events, Vol. T., p. 273. 3. What under the Buddhist system? See Great Events, Vol. I., p. 55. 4. Why did the early Aryan races specially value children? See Great Events, Vol. I., p. 161. 5. How were children welcomed in early Roman days? See Great Events, Vol. IV., p. 151. 6. When did present-day ideas of early training first take root? See Great Events, Vol. XL, p. 194. 7. To whom had the training of children been successfully intmsted before? See Great Events, Vol. XL, p. 192. 8. What were the principles announced by Ccmenius, the founder of modern education? See Great Events, Vol XL, p. 200. 9. What was the origin of the kindergarten system? See Great Events, Vol. XIIL, p. 364. 10. What were the chief precepts of Pestalozzi? See Great Events, Vol. XIIL, p. 368. XX REFERENCES FOR FURTHER CONSULTATION FOR STANDARD ACCOUNTS OF SUBJECTS BROUGHT UNDER DIS- CUSSION IN "THE CHILD," SEE as follows: See Lecture XX Page 8. The earliest effort at teaching very little children according to modern ideas is described in Pesta- lozzi's Method of Education, by G. Ripley, or Great Events, Vol. XIII., p. 364. 12. For the causes and the probability of the loss of early languages see Introduction to Great Events, Vol. I., p. XXI. 12. The destruction of the old Sanskrit as a literary language was completed by the Mahometan con- quest of India. See History of Hindustan, by Alexander Dow, or Great Events, Vol. V., p. 151, 12. The vigor of the English tongue in the sixteenth cen- tury is depicted by H. R. Cleveland in his Reign of Elizabeth, or Great Events, Vol. X., p. 8. 15. The substitution of England's rule and England's language for that of Holland in Cape Colony is detailed in the History of South Africa, by H. A. Bryden, or Great Events, Vol. XV., p. 127. 16. The struggle between old politics and new policies is depicted in Wilhelm Mueller's Political History of Recent Times, or Great Events, Vol. XIX., p. 1. 18. The beginning of our nursery rhymes is to be found in the poetry of the old Aryans, such as the Rig Veda, which are illustrated in Sir W. W. Hunter's Brief History of the Indian People, or Great Events, Vol. I., p. 57. XXI -LIFE'S INTERCOURSE QUESTIONS LEADING TO A COURSE OF COLLATERAL READING ON THE THOUGHTS SUGGESTED BY PRESIDENT WHEELER 1. To what extent did Alexander's conquests fasten the Greek language upon the ancient world? See Great Events, Vol. II., p. 141. 2. How far did the Roman tongue aid in Romanizing Europe? See Great Events, Vol. II., pp. 265 and 362. 3. How did the Greek tongue come to reassert itself as the official speech of the Roman Empire? See Great Events, Vol. III., p. 320. 4. How deep was Rome's impress upon Great Britain, as measured by language? See Great Events, Vol. II., p. 285; Vol. IV., p. 182. 5. What record does the English language preserve of the chief historical modifications of the race? See Great Events, Vol. V., p. 204. 6. Of what value did the Greeks' ancient language prove to them in their war for freedom? See Great Events, Vol. XVI., pp. 1, 65, and 112. 7. Through what agencies had this language been mainly altered? See Great Events, Vol. VII., p. 147; Vol. VIII., p. 55. 8. What national influences moulded the French language? See Great Events, Vol. IV., p. 334; Vol. V., p. 276. 9. When did it almost achieve supremacy as a world language? See Great Events, Vol. XIII., p. xiii. 10. What prevented its dominance? See Great Events, Vol. XIII., p. 347. XXI REFERENCES FOR FURTHER CONSULTATION FOR STANDARD ACCOUNTS OF SUBJECTS BROUGHT UNDER DIS- CUSSION IN "LIFE'S INTERCOURSE," see as follows: See Lecture XXI Page 2, The story of Navarino and its effect is fully told by Harriet Martineau in her History of England, or Great Events, Vol. XVI., p. 135. 3. The struggle and survival of the Eastern or Greek Catholic Church are narrated by H. F. Tozer in The Church and the Eastern Empire, or Great Events, Vol. v., p. 189. 3. The late Greek-Turkish war is described by Sir E. Ashmead-Bartlett in his Battlefields of Thessaly, or Great Events, Vol. XIX., p. 208. 4. For the importance which Rome and its language still hold in modern civilization see the Law Code of Justinian, or Great Events, Vol. IV., p. 138. 5. The thoughts and language of Buddhism, with quoted examples, are given in Buddhism, by J. W. Rhys- Davids, or Great Events, Vol. I., p. 160. 5. For the growth of the German language under the influence of the Reformation see J. Koestlin's Life of Luther, or Great Events, Vol. IX., p. 1. 6. The difficulties confronting Austria-Hungary, with its two languages, are shown by C. A. Fyffe in his History of Modern Europe, or Great Events, Vol. XVIIL, p. 163. 8. The attitude and feelings of the literature of ancient Greece are well illustrated in Plato's Phcedo. See Great Events, Vol. II., p. 87. XXII— THE BOY QUESTIONS LEADING TO A COURSE OF COLLATERAL READING ON THE THOUGHTS SUGGESTED BY PRESIDENT GILMAN 1. What ideas as to the teaching of youth were held in the ancient world? See Great Events, Vol. I., p. 34. 2. What was the Spartan system of training? See Great Events, Vol. I., p. 181 et seq. 3. What the Athenian? And what contrasting results were achieved by each of these? See Great Events, Vol. I., p. 235 et seq.; Vol. II., p. 12. 4. Are there any early historic instances of the value of home influence? See Great Events, Vol. II., p. 259. 5. To what extent did the father hold authority over the son under Roman law? See Great Events, Vol. IV., p. 148. 6. When and under what conditions was a Roman youth judged old enough to assume his own guardianship? See Great Events, Vol. IV., p. 157. 7. When and under whom were schools first organized in modern civilization? See Great Events, Vol. IV., pp. 366 and 368. 8. What were the first efforts at education among the English people? See Great Events, Vol. V., p. 78. 9. Into what hands was the training of youth committed in mediaeval days? See Great Events, Vol. XI., p. 192. 10. What was the condition of education in Elizabethan England? See Great Events, Vol. X., p. 8. XXII REFERENCES FOR FURTHER CONSULTATION FOR STANDARD ACCOUNTS OF SUBJECTS BROUGHT UNDER DIS- CUSSION IN "THE BOY/' SEE AS follows: See Lecture XXII Page. 5. The earliest efforts to educate youths as indi\iduals are discussed in Comem'iis: His Life and Educational Works, by S. S. Lawrie, or Great Events, Vol. XI., p. 192, 6. The development of Franklin from boyhood, and his re- markable career, are detailed in Comj)lete Works of Benjamin Franklin, or Great Events, Vol. XIII., p. 130. 7. The attempt of Pestalozzi to train children by sympathy, practically the beginning of modern education, is described in Pestalozzi's Method of Education, by George Ripley, or Great Events, Vol. XIII., p. 364. 8. The arrested development of the Emperor Charles V., and his slow advance to the maturity of his power, are described in History of the Reign of Charles V., by W. Robertson, or Great Events, Vol. IX., p. 34S. 8. The story of Sir Richard Church and the aid extended by him to the Greeks in their war of independence is narrated in Greece in the Nineteenth Century, by Lewis Sergeant, or see Great Events, Vol. XVI., p. 65. 13. The words and teachings of St. Paul are enlarged on in Origin of Christianity, by I. M. Wise, or Great Events, Vol. II., p. 88. 16. Something of the wonders achieved by modern astronomy is suggested in Pioneers of Science, by Sir Oliver Lodge, or Great Events, Vol. XVII., p. 25. XXllI-HOW TO THINK QUESTIONS LEADING TO A COURSE OF COLLATERAL READING ON THE THOUGHTS SUGGESTED BY DR. HALE 1. How do the underlying principles of Asiatic or Eastern thought differ from those of the West? See Great Events, Vol. I., p. xxvii. 2. What effect has this difference had in deciding the his- tory of East and West? See Great Events, Vol. I., p. 161. 3. What is the spirit of fatalism which underlies Mahometan thought? See Great Events, Vol. IV., p. 237 et seq. 4. What effect has this had on the career of the Mahometan races? See Great Events, Vol. IV., p. 247. o. What were the teachings of St. Paul as to the freedom of thought and will? See Great Events, Vol. III., p. 74 et seq. 6. What has been the usual attitude of the Christian Church upon this doctrine? See Great Events, Vol. III., p. 300 et seq. 7. Has memory played any appreciable part in the develop- ment of art? See Great Events, Vol. VII., p. 1 10. 8. Of music? See Great Events, Vol. XIII., p. 32 et seq. 9. Into what terrible tragedy did uncontrolled imagination lead the early Puritans? See Great Events, Vol. XII., p. 268. 10. In what well-known warfare did a vigorous use of the imagination lead to success? See Great Events, Vol. XVII., p. 334. XXIII REFERENCES FOR FURTHER CONSULTATION FOR STANDARD ACCOUNTS OF SUBJECTS BROUGHT UNDER DIS- CUSSION IN "HOW TO THINK," see as follows: Lecture XXIII PAGE 1. The days of Dr. Samuel Johnson and his friends are well described by Justin McCarthy, in his History of the Four Georges, or in Great Events, Vol. XIII., p. 117. 3. The teachings of the Apostle Paul are pointed out by I. M. Wise in his Origin of Christianity, or in Great Events, Vol. III., p. 69. 4. The thoughts of Mr. Ruskin as to art and its origin are exemplified in his Stones of Venice. See Great Events, Vol. IV., p. 95. 5. The power of man to control and guide his will was preached in England as early as the days of the Venerable Bede; see his Ecclesiastical History of Britain, or Great Events, Vol. IV., p. 182, 6. That man may train his memory long after he has lost the plasticity of childhood is shown in the story of Alfred the Great, by Thomas Hughes. See Great Events, Vol. V., p. 49. 7. For the tragic fate of Louis XVI. and 'his unhappy son consult Guizot's Popular History of France, or Great Events, Vol. XIV., p. 311. XXIV-THE GIRL QUESTIONS LEADING TO A COURSE OF COLLATERAL READING ON THE THOUGHTS SUGGESTED BY MR. REID 1. What was the state of " society " in New England in colonial days? See Great Events, Vol. XII., p. 125. 2. What in the Southern States? See Great Events, Vol. XI., p. 81. 3. In what way were the " seriousness and faith " of our ances- tors proven? See Great Events, Vol. XL, p. 303; Vol. XII., p. 153. 4. Into what great tragedy did the delusion of " equality " lead mankind? See Great Events, Vol. XIV., p. 295. 5. To what dangerous political extremes have the United States been already led? See Great Events, Vol. XV., p. 20 et seq. 6. Where, before our own days, did the desire for amusement rise to even higher extravagance? See Great Events, Vol. IL, p. 301; Vol. TIL, p. 265. 7. Was it the dominant purpose of the French noblesse in the eighteenth century? See Great Events, Vol. XIII., p. xiii, 8. How have the United States disturbed the law of nations by over-sympathy with Ireland? See Great Events, Vol. XVI., p. 325. 9. How has Ireland deserved that sympathy? See Great Events, Vol. XVII., p. 84. 10. What were the chief dangers of the reconstruction period in the United States? See Great Events, Vol. XVIII., p. xviii. ^ XIV REFERENCES FOR FURTHER CONSULTATION FOR STANDARD ACCOUNTS OF SUBJECTS BROUGHT UNDER DIS- CUSSION IN "THE GIRL," SEE AS follows: See Lecture XXIV Page 2. The number and influence of the lawyers engaged in forming the American Union are shown by Andrew Young in his American Statesman, or Great Events, Vol. XIV., p. 173. 3. The " excesses of Democracy " are illustrated by James Parton in his Life of Andrew Jackson, or Great Events, Vol. XVI., p. 143. 5. The change of type which has come over the American nation may be seen by reading C. W. Elliott's The New England History, or Great Events, Vol. XII., p. 241. 8. The steadiness in a political policy displayed by the American colonists is described by James Grahame in his History of the Rise and Progress of the United States, or Great Events, Vol. XIII., p. 289. 8. The readiness for change inherent in French politics is shown by Lamartine in his History of the Restora- tion of Monarchy in France, or Great Events, Vol. XVI., p. 207. 8. The prominence of various other factions in American politics at the time of the formation of the Republi- can party is pointed out by Lincoln in the Lincoln and Douglas Debates. See Great Events, Vol. XVII., p. 256. 9. The tale of the late Spanish- American war is told by H. H. Bancroft in The New Pacific, and by A. S. Draper in The Rescue of Cuba. See Great Events, Vol. XIX., pp. 227 and 235. 11. A full account of the various efforts to build a Panama canal is given by A. M. Law in a monograph on the subject. See also the speech of Senator Depew, or Great Events, Vol. XIX., p. 360. XXV— MANHOOD QUESTIONS LEADING TO A COURSE OF COLLATERAL READING ON THE THOUGHTS SUGGESTED BY PRESIDENT ANDREWS 1. What limitations were imposed upon the selection of one's life-work among the ancient Egyptians? See Great Events, Vol. I., p. xxv. 2. How, in mediaeval days, did the Feudal system affect the free choice of a career? See Great Events, Vol. V., p. 4. 3. What preparations were then required for entering the ministry? See Great Events, Vol. V., p. 231; Vol. IX., p. 27. 4. What training had the early Protestant ministers? See Great Events, Vol. IX., p.l76. 5. Under what denomination did preaching become almost wholly dissociated from preliminary training? See Great Events, Vol. XIII., p. 57. 6. What was the status of the legal profession in Roman times? See Great Events, Vol. IV., p. 140. 7. Why and when were the Americans called "a nation of lawyers"? See Great Events, Vol. XIII., p. xxv. 8. What was the position of the medical profession in mediaeval days? See Great Events, Vol. XL, p. 51 et seq. 9. When did " business " or trade become the chief means of accumulating wealth? See Great Events, Vol. VI., p. xvi. 10. What warlike qualities were then demanded of the man of commerce? See Great Events, Vol. VI., p. 214. XXV REFERENCES FOR FURTHER CONSULTATION FOR STANDARD ACCOUNTS OF SUBJECTS BROUGHT UNDER DIS- CUSSION IN "MANHOOD," SEE AS follows: See Lecture XXV Page 2. For the fitness of Robert E. Lee for the profession of arms see Rossiter Johnson's History of the War of Secession, or Great Events, Vol. XVIII., p. 53. 2. The most celebrated example of a man pursuing a single overmastering ambition from childhood is that of Alexander the Great. See Creasy's Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World, or Great Events, Vol. IL, p. 14L 3. The life of Bach shows us a musician similarly secure of his intent. See H. Tipper's The Growth and In- fluence of Music, or Great Events, Vol. XIII., p. 31. 3. Caesar is often quoted as one whose early career of debauchery gave no indication of his later power, as is shown by Napoleon III. in his History of Julius CoBsar, or Great Events, Vol. II. , p. 267. 4. For a man wholly misunderstanding his own abilities and finding his mission by accident, we have Clive. See Lord Clive, by Sir A. J. Arbuthnot, or Great Events, Vol. XIII., p. 185. 5. As an example of a man driven by inward compulsion to a life wholly different from his original plans, see Loyola and Jesuitism, by Isaac Taylor, or Great Events, Vol. IX., p. 261. 11. A teacher following his instinctive bent from child- hood is shown in Ripley's monograph on Pesta- lozzi, or Great Events, Vol. XIII. , p. 364. XXVI -THE COLLEGE GRADUATE QUESTIONS LEADING TO A COURSE OF COLLATERAL READING ON THE THOUGHTS SUGGESTED BY PRESIDENT THWING 1. What nation formed the great business people of antiquity? See Great Events, VoL IL, p. 179. 2. How did the wild Teutons who overthrew the Roman world learn to be men of business? See Great Events, VoL IL , p. 364 ct seq. 3. What was the social position of the merchant in mediaeval days, and to what extent was he apt to be a man of culture? See Great Events, VoL VIL, p. 6. 4. Where and how did modern business men first rise to con- trol the government of their state? See Great Events, VoL VL, p. xvi. 5. In what sense were the maritime discoveries of the fifteenth century economic victories? See Great Events, Vol. VII., p. 266; VoL VIII., p. 299. 6. When and how did the frenzy of speculation sweep the aristocracy into "business"? See Great Events, Vol. XIII., pp. 1 and 22. 7. Has any age before our own felt the difficulties of over- education? See Great Events, Vol. XIV., p. xiii. 8. To what extent did "tradesmen" control the American Revolution? See Great Events, Vol. XIII., p. 289. 9. What was the first great economic victory of the past cen- tury on land? See Great Events, Vol. XVI., p. 94. 10. What victories have been achieved over the ocean? See Great Events, Vol. XV., p. 159; VoL XVIII., p. 175. XXVI REFERENCES FOR FURTHER CONSULTATION FOR STANDARD ACCOUNTS OF SUBJECTS BROUGHT UNDER DIS- CUSSION IN "THE COLLEGE GRADUATE," see AS follows: See Lecture XXVI Page 2. The first invention and employment of the steam loco- motive are described by Samuel Smiles in his Life of George Stephenson, or Great Events, Vol. XVL, p. 157. 2. The greatest of American railroad achievements is de- tailed by J. P. Davis in The Union Pacific Railway, or Great Events, Vol. XVIIL, p. 287. 2. For the first establishment of banking institutions in America consult Hamilton and Lewis' History of the Bank of North America, or Great Events, Vol. XIV., p. 230. 3. The beginnings of modern education are to be found detailed in S. S. Laurie's Comenius, or Great Events, Vol. XL, p. 192. 4. For the early successes of engineering before it was an established profession see Andrew D. White's Riche- lieu, or Great Events, Vol. XL, p. 129. 6. The first awakening of Englishmen to the value of secular education is described by J. R. Green in his History of the English People, or Great Events, Vol. IX., p. 137. 9. The beginning of an intellectual study of the fine arts appears with the Renaissance. See The Medici and the Italian Renaissance, by W. Smeaton, or Great Events, Vol. VIIL, p. 134. 11. The nature of the power and triumphs of Gladstone is outlined by Justin McCarth}^ in his Epoch of Re- form, or Great Events, Vol. XVIL, p. 11. XXVII- SPORT QUESTIONS LEADING TO A COURSE OF COLLATERAL READING ON THE THOUGHTS SUGGESTED BY PRESIDENT CLEVELAND 1. When were hunting and fishing still the business of the majority of men, instead of being merely sport? See Great Events, Vol. I., p. xxi. 2. What were the chief sports encouraged among the Greeks? See Great Events, Vol. I., p. 199. 3. How were these given religious sanction? See Great Events, Vol. I., p. 181. 4. What effect did these physical exercises of the Greeks have upon the history of the world? See Great Events, Vol. I., p. 185. 5. What were the sports of ancient Rome? See Great Events, Vol. III., p. 273. 6. To what extent were sports approved by the early Christian Church? See Great Events, Vol. III., p. 329. 7. How did William the Conqueror arrange ground for hunting in the early days of England? See Great Events, Vol. V., p. 245. 8. What was the chief sport of the yeomen of England, and of what value did it prove? See Great Events, Vol. VII., pp. 78 and 320. 9. When did the Church in England place itself in flat opposi- tion to sport, and what was the result upon the English nation? See Great Events, Vol. XI., p. 378. 10. What effect did existence on the edge of a wilderness have upon the love of " sport " in colonial America ? See Great Events, Vol. XII., p. 125. XXVII REFERENCES FOR FURTHER CONSULTATION FOR STANDARD ACCOUNTS OF SUBJECTS BROUGHT UNDER DIS- CUSSION IN "SPORT," SEE AS follows: See Lecture XXVII Page 1. The aptitude of our Southern ancestors in sport of every kind is shown in W. Sargent's History of an Expedition against Fort Du Quesne, or Great Events, Vol. XIII., p. 163. 1. The earliest modern recognition of the beauty and joy of outdoor life is described by J. Burckhardt in his Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, or Great Events, Vol. VII., p. 93. 3. For evidence that the early kings of England were eager sportsmen it is only necessary to consult the old Domesday Book, or Great Events, Vol. V., p. 242. 3. The extravagant excesses to which devotion to sport may lead is illustrated by the career of Commodus, as narrated in Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, or Great Events, Vol. III., p. 263. 4. The relative prowess shown in our Civil War by the Northern soldiers as opposed to the Southrons, with their open-air life, is pointed out by Horace Gree- ley in The American Conflict, or Great Events, Vol. XVIIL, p. 26. 5. Striking evidence of the advantage of physical ac- tivity and alertness was furnished by the success of the Japanese itti their recent war. See the mono- graph on The Russo-Japanese War, by Charles F. Home, or Great Events, Vol. XIX, p. 381. XXVIII-THE TOILERS QUESTIONS LEADING TO A COURSE OF COLLATERAL READING ON THE THOUGHTS SUGGESTED BY PRESIDENT WRIGHT 1. What was the position of labor in the Middle Ages? See Great Events, Vol. VI., pp. xiii and xvi; Vol. VIII., p. XIII. 2. What early, unsuccessful revolts did the laboring classes attempt, and with what result? See Great Events, Vol. V., p. xxiii; Vol. VII., p. 164; Vol. IX., p. 93. 3. Where and when did the great labor " guilds " rise to control nations? See Great Events, Vol. VII., pp. 23 and 68. 4. When and how did the participation of the lower classes in government begin in England? See Great Events, Vol. VI., p. 246. 5. In France? See Great Events, Vol. VII., p. 17. 6. Was the French Revolution an uprising of the laboring classes? See Great Events, Vol. XIV., pp. xviii and 212. 7. When and how did democracy, the power of the masses, become supreme in America? See Great Events, Vol. XV., p. xx at seq. 8. When and through what strife did the common people secure some share of power in Europe? See Great Events, Vol. XVI., p. xiii at seq. 9. To what extremes has the labor movement been driven in Germany? See Great Events, Vol. XIX., p. 115 et seq. 10. Under what new guise has the labor question appeared in connection with the Panama Canal? See Great Events, Vol. XIX., p. 360. XXVIII REFERENCES FOR FURTHER CONSULTATION FOR STANDARD ACCOUNTS OF SUBJECTS BROUGHT UNDER DIS- CUSSION IN "THE TOILERS," see as follows: See Lecture XXVIIl Page 1. The condition of the laboring masses in England in the eighteenth century is depicted by W. Lecky in his History of England in the Eighteenth Century, or Great Events, Vol. XIII. , p. 57. 2. The position of the slaves in the Southern States is shown by J. K. Ingram in his History of Slavery and Serfdom^, or Great Events, Vol. XVI., p. 296. 3. The early efforts of the masses for recognition in the United States Government are pointed out by H. von Hoist in his Constitutional and Political History of the United States, or Great Events, Vol. XV., p. 18. 3. The final success of the uneducated populace in secur- ing control of the American national government is described by James Parton in his Life of Andrew Jackson, or Great Events, Vol. XVI., p. 143. 6. The struggles of the English lower classes for an ade- quate share of government are narrated in the Con- stitutional History of England, by Sir Thomas May, or Great Events, Vol. XVI., p. 252. 12. The gradual rise of Socialism is detailed by Thomas Kirkup in his History of Socialism, or Great Events, Vol. XVIII., p. 141. 13. The position of the serfs of Russia is described in a monograph by Andrew D. White, and in one by Turgenieff. See Great Events, Vol. XVII., p. 353. J XXIX -THE SOIL QUESTIONS LEADING TO A COURSE OF COLLATERAL READING ON THE THOUGHTS SUGGESTED BY MR. WALLACE 1. When in ancient history was there an agricultural war? See Great Events, Vol. III., p. 109. 2. How did the land of Europe come into possession of the ancestors of the present owners? See Great Events, Vol. V., p. 22. 3. Under what system was it distributed and how paid for? See Great Events, Vol. V., p. 1. 4. What was the earliest armed rebellion in mediaeval times against the usurpers of the soil? See Great Events, Vol. VII., p. 164. 5. What is the story of More's martyrdom? See Great Events, Vol. IX., pp. 137 and 206. 6. What were the effects of Rousseau's preachings of reform? See Great Events, Vol. XIII., p. 153. 7. How was the American Revolution associated with the French declaration of the Rights of Man? See Great Events, Vol. XIII., p. xxiv. 8. How has the " rapid growth of steam power " influenced the civilization of our own land? See Great Events, Vol. XVIII., p. 287. 9. What was the first of the series of reform bills which have marked England's legislation in the past century? See Great Events, Vol. XVI., p. 175. 10. What was the most important of these bills? See Great Events, Vol. XVI., p. 252. XXIX REFERENCES FOR FURTHER CONSULTATION FOR STANDARD ACCOUNTS OF SUBJECTS BROUGHT UNDER DIS- CUSSION IN "THE SOIL," SEE AS follows: S66 Lecture XXIX Page 2. The earliest modern attempt at overturning the es- tablished order of society is described by Johann Neander in his History of the Christian Religion and Church, or Great Events, Vol. V., p. 340. 2. The story of Wat Tyler's rebellion is told in Lingard's History of England, or Great Events, Vol. VII., p. 217. 5. The confusion of all political theories consequent upon the Napoleonic wars is pointed out by William Haz- litt in his Life of Napoleon, or Great Events, Vol. XV., p. 76. 7. The remarkable results from the nineteenth-century development of photography are detailed by W. J. Harrison in his History of Photography. See Great Events, Vol. XVI., p. 338. 7. For the manner in which the hopes of the common people were betrayed after the overthrow of Napo- leon see Charles Maurice's Revolutionary Movements of 1848-1849, or Great Events, Vol. XVI., p. 1. 10. The blind persistence of kingly faith in the doctrine of "divine right" is well shown in Knight's Popular History of England, or see Great Events, Vol. XL, p. 311. 18. The story of the plundering of the abbeys by Henry VIII. is fully told by J. R. Green in his History of the English People, or Great Events, Vol. IX., p. 203. 18. The Catholic view of this and similar transactions is given by Jean Audin in his Life of Luther, or Great Events, Vol. IX., p. 26. XXX-ANARCHISM QUESTIONS LEADING TO A COURSE OF COLLATERAL READING ON THE THOUGHTS SUGGESTED BY COUNT TOLSTOI 1. What is Nihilism? See Great Events, Vol. XIX., p. 71. 2. When in European history has anarchy held open sway? See Great Events, Vol. IX., p. 93. 3. What has been the most recent and tragic example of anarchy in full control of a great city? See Great Events, Vol. XVIII., p. 351. 4. Has anarchy ever sprung from the highest instead of the lowest strata of society? See Great Events, Vol. II., p. 259; Vol. III., p. 108. 5. What conquerors have been most anarchistic in their sub- version of order? See Great Events, Vol. IV., pp. 1 and 72. 6. What was perhaps the hugest of slaughters caused solely by the selfish ambition of kings? See Great Events, Vol. VII., p. 169. 7. Where is anarchism most prevalent to-day? See Great Events, Vol. XIX., p. xvi. 8. What approach to anarchy has appeared in Germany? See Great Events, Vol. XIX., p. 115. 9. How was this met by Bismarck? See Great Events, Vol. XIX., p. 1 16. 10. When was Nihilism in Russia once upon the eve of armed revolt? See Great Events, Vol. XIX,, p. 83 et seq. XXX REFERENCES FOR FURTHER CONSULTATION FOR STANDARD ACCOUNTS OF SUBJECTS BROUGHT UNDER DIS- CUSSION IN "ANARCHISM," see as follows: See Lecture XXX Page 1. The trial and execution of Louis XVI. are powerfully described in Carlyle's History of the French Revo- lution. See Great Events, Vol. XIV., p. 295. 1. The story of Maximilian's struggle in Mexico and of his death is told by his Aide, Prince Salm-Salm, in My Diary in Mexico in 1867. See Great Events, Vol. XVIII., p. 186. 2. The eventful career of Henry IV. of France is recorded in the Memoirs of his trusted comrade, the Due de Sully, extracts from which are in Great Events, Vol.'X., p. 276. 3. The tragedy of Russian slaughter at Plevna is told by William Mueller in his Political History of Recent Times, or in Great Events, Vol. XIX., p. 1. 3. The unfortunate results of Italy's colonization at- tempts in Abyssinia are described in a special monologue by Frederick A. Edwards. See Great Events, Vol. XIX., p. 194. 5. The invasion of China consequent upon the Boxer tumults is described by W. A. Martin in his Siege of Pekin, or in Great Events, Vol. XIX., p. 333. 9. The causes which led to the restoration of Charles II. and the feeling of the English people toward Crom- well are portrayed in the Diary of Samuel Pepvs. See Great Events, Vol. XL, p. 357. XXXI-WAR QUESTIONS LEADING TO A COURSE OF COLLATERAL READING ON THE THOUGHTS SUGGESTED BY PRESIDENT JORDAN 1. Who was the earliest historic leader famous for works of peace instead of conquest? See Great Events, Vol. I., p. 92. 2. How was a general peace once established and maintained throughout the civilized world? See Great Events, Vol. III., p. xii. 3. What disrupted this? See Great Events, Vol. III., p. xvii. 4. How did the "spirit of equaHty" perish at Philippi? See Great Events, Vol. II., p. 348. 5. How did Caesar try to make up for the decay of Roman men? See Great Events, Vol. II., p. 317. 6. How did the early Christians uphold their doctrine of peace? See Great Events, Vol. III., p. 240. 7. When did the Church definitely declare for warfare and employ the sword? See Great Events, Vol. V., p. 276. 8. What was the greatest of rehgious wars? See Great Events, Vol. XL, p. 62. 9. What sovereign next to Napoleon did most to destroy France by destroying her stronger men? See Great Events, Vol. XIII., p. xiv. 10. What was probably the most awful holocaust in the world? See Great Events, Vol. XIX., p. 402. XXXI REFERENCES FOR FURTHER CONSULTATION FOR STANDARD ACCOUNTS OF SUBJECTS BROUGHT UNDER DIS- CUSSION IN "WAR," SEE AS follows: Sec Lecture XXXI Page 2. The character and wisdom of Franklin may be gathered from Bigelow's Complete Works of Benjamin Frank- lin, or Great Events, Vol. XIII., p. 130. 3. The founding of Philadelphia by the Quakers and the adoption of its name are described by G. E. Ellis in his William Penn, or Great Events, Vol. XII., p. 153. 7. The tale of the early Roman republic and its mighty men has been often told. The Roman, Livy, is our best early authority in his History of Rome. See Great Events, Vol. II., p. 224. 8. The change in Rome from the " spirit of freedom " to that of domination is recognized and described by the Roman, Lucius Florus, in his Epitome of Roman History, or Great Events, Vol. II., p. 179. 9. The wickedness of Nero and the Roman aristocracy is depicted by Farrar in his Early Days of Chris- tianity, or Great Events, Vol. III., p. 134. 10. The story of Romulus Augustulus and the feebleness of the last days of Rome is told by Bury in his History of the Later Roman Empire, and by Gibbon in his Decline and Fall. See Great Events, Vol. III., p. 364, and Vol. IV., p. 1. 16. Of the many recent histories of Napoleon consult the one quoted here, or that of Pierre Lanfrey. See Great Events, Vol. XV., p. 115. 16. The Moscow campaign is fully described by Fyffe in his History of Modern Europe, or Great Events, Vol. XV., p. 231. XXXII - ARBITRATION QUESTIONS LEADING TO A COURSE OF COLLATERAL READING ON THE THOUGHTS SUGGESTED BY MR. CARNEGIE 1. Into what wars was Pericles forced against his will? See Great Events, Vol. II., p. 34. 2. How did Cicero, the preacher against war, become involved in its strife? See Great Events, Vol. II., p. 345. 3. How did the Christian doctrine of submission shift to one of armed compulsion? See Great Events, Vol. III., p. 289. 4. What was the attitude toward the early Church assumed by "Julian the Apostate"? See Great Events, Vol. III., p. 333. 5. Did Luther endeavor to bring peace to man? See Great Events, Vol. IX., p. 1. 6. What was the extent of his success? See Great Events, Vol. IX., p. 93. 7. What was the Amphictyonic council of the Greeks, and what were its efforts toward arbitration? See Great Events, Vol. I., p. 181. 8. How did the Alabama claims arise? See Great Events, Vol. XVIII., p. 124. 9. Why was their settlement specially important in the his- tory of Arbitration? See Great Events, Vol. XVIII., p. 367. 10. What was the feeling of the mass of Chinamen during the Peking siege of the legations? See Great Events, Vol. XIX., p. 324. XXXII REFERENCES FOR FURTHER CONSULTATION FOR STANDARD ACCOUNTS OF SUBJECTS BROUGHT UNDER DIS- CUSSION IN "ARBITRATION," see as follows: See Lecture XXXII Page 3. The views of Homer upon war, and the story of the Trojan war, are given in Grote's History of Greece. See Great Events, Vol. I., p. 70. 5. The story of Josephus and of the wars into which he was plunged are best told by the hero himself in his The Jewish War, or Great Events, Vol. III., p. 150. 7. Pen pictures of most of the " Fathers of the Church " may be read in A. P. Stanley's History of the Eastern Church, or Great Events, Vol. III., p. 299. 8. For the difficulties between Philip of France and John of England, and the character of Pope Innocent's interference, see John Lackland, by Kate Norgate, or Great Events, Vol. VI., p. 86. 11. The life and death of the great Swedish King are described in the History of Gustavus Adolphus, by Benjamin Chapman, or Great Events, Vol. XL, p. 174. 15. The lack of a declaration of war in the late Russo- Japanese struggle is discussed in a monograph by Charles F. Home, or see Great Events, Vol. XIX., p. 381. 18. For the peace conference at The Hague consult the monograph by Thomas Erskine Holland, or Great Events, Vol. XIX., p. 282. 21. The Boer war and its disasters are officially detailed by Sir A. Conan Doyle in The Great Boer War, or Great Events, Vol. XIX., p. 296. XXXIII -HISTORY QUESTIONS LEADING TO A COURSE OF COLLATERAL READING ON THE THOUGHTS SUGGESTED BY PRESIDENT HAZARD 1. Who was the Father of Historians? See Great Events, Vol. I., p. 354. 2. In what earlier forms were the records of man preserved? See Great Events, Vol. I., p. xxii. 3. When did history begin to moralize? See Great Events, Vol. II., p. 68; Vol. III., p. 1. 4. Why is the period of the Reformation usually treated as the beginning of modern history? See Great Events, Vol. IX., p. xiii. 5. In what relation does American history stand to that of the world at large? See Great Events, Vol. XIII., p. xxiv; Vol. XIV., p. XIV. 6. What was the character of the men who wrote our own early histories? See Great Events, Vol. XI., p. 93. 7. What was the earliest account of the British colonies in America? See Great Events, Vol. X., p. 211. 8. What were the main events in the establishment of the Spanish-American colonies? See Great Events, Vol. IX., pp. 72, 156, 254, 277; Vol. X., p. 70. 9. In the founding of the French settlements? See Great Events, Vol. X., p. 366; Vol. XL, p. 232; Vol. XII., pp. 108, 248, and 297. 10. Why has Charles Stuart been made the subject of so many Scottish songs? See Great Events, Vol. XIII., p. 117. XXXIII REFERENCES FOR FURTHER CONSULTATION FOR STANDARD ACCOUNTS OF SUBJECTS BROUGHT UNDER DIS- CUSSION IN ''HISTORY," SEE AS follows: Sec Lecture XXXIII Page 2. The character of Sir Philip Sydney is portrayed by W. R. Cleveland in his monograph on The Reign of Elizabeth, or in Great Events, Vol. X., p. 8. 2. For the vigorous quality of Macaulay's style consult any of his works, or Great Events, Vol. XI., pp. 223 and 311. 4, The splendid stories of Swiss heroism are preserved in The Model Republic, by F. Grenfell Baker, or see Great Events, Vol. VIL,~pp. 28 and 238. 4. The Scotch struggle for liberty under Sir William Wallace is described in the History of Scotland by Sir Walter Scott. See Great Events, Vol. VL, p. 369. 5. The later struggle which culminated at Bannockburn is detailed by Andrew Lang in A History of Scotland, or in Great Events, Vol. VII., p. 41. 6. For the tragic tale of the plundering of Poland see James Fletcher's History of Poland, or Great Events, Vol. XIIL, p. 313. 6. The final downfall of Poland is also described by Sir A. Alison in his History of Europe, or in Great Events, Vol. XIV., p. 330. 7. The most noted of the histories of Motley is his Rise of the Dutch Republic. See Great Events, Vol. X., p. 202. XXXIV -THE POWER OF RELIGION QUESTIONS LEADING TO A COURSE OF COLLATERAL READING ON THE THOUGHTS SUGGESTED BY PROFESSOR BALDWIN 1. What was the earhest known form of reUgion? See Great Events, Vol. I., p. xxv. 2. How did it assert its power over the ancient world? See Great Events, Vol. I., p. 14. 3. What was the first proselyting faith? See Great Events, Vol. III., p. xv, 4. What faith has owed its spread chiefly to the sword? See Great Events, Vol. IV., p. xvii et seq. 5. How did religion lessen the fall of the Roman civilization? See Great Events, Vol. IV., p. 17. 6. How did the Roman Pope gain political rule over Rome and the surrounding territory? See Great Events, Vol. IV., p. 332. 7. When did religion assume official control of the state affairs of Europe? See Great Events, Vol. V., p. 231. 8. When did it cease to be the foremost question in statecraft? See Great Events, Vol. XL, p. xiii. 9. Why is the peace of Westphalia accepted as ending the great religious wars? See Great Events, Vol. XL, p. 285. 10. What was the last sectarian war fought directly in the name of the Christian faith? See Great Events, Vol. XVIIL, p. 316. XXXIV REFERENCES FOR FURTHER CONSULTATION FOR STANDARD ACCOUNTS OF SUBJECTS BROUGHT UNDER DIS- CUSSION IN "THE POWER OF RELIGION," SEE AS follows: Lecture XXXIV Page 3. The beginnings of modern government in America are detailed by Charles Campbell in his History of Virginia, or in Great Events, Vol. XL, p. 76. 3. Its beginnings in France are well summarized by William Hazlitt in his Life of Napoleon, or in Great Events, Vol. XIV., p. 212. 5. A full account of the Holy Alliance and its downfall is given by C. E. Maurice in his Revolutionary Movements of 18Jf8-Jf9',0Y inGreat Events, Vol. XVI., p. L 13. The unity of spirit that pervaded Europe in the Middle Ages is pointed out in the History of Latin Christianity, by H. H. Milman, or Great Events, Vol. VII., p. 201. 15. The racial spirit kept alive in Greece by the church during the centuries of [subjection is described by Finlay in his History of Greece, or in Great Events, Vol. VIIL, p. 55. 18. The enforced union of Ireland with England and the accompanying religious difficulties are narrated by William O'Connor Morris in his Ireland, or in Great Events, Vol. XV., p. 1. 18. The beginnings of the religious breach between Rome and the French Church are detailed by Rene Rohrbacher in his Histoire universelle de VEglise Catholique, or in Great Events, Vol. VII., p. 378. 20. The colonial policy of France in the Far East is dis- cussed by Sir Robert Douglas in his Europe and the Far East, or in Great Events, Vol. XIX., p. 120. 28. The career of England in Egypt is fully reviewed by J. F. Bright in his History of England, or in Great Events, Vol. XIX., p. 86. XXXV— CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION QUESTIONS LEADING TO A COURSE OF COLLATERAL READING ON THE THOUGHTS SUGGESTED BY COMMISSIONER HARRIS 1. What is the origin of human society? See Great Events, Vol. I., p. xxi. 2. What has been the extremest form of "paternal" legisla- tion? See Great Events, Vol. XIX., p. 119. 3. .What was the position of Egypt in the history of religion? See Great Events, Vol. I., p. 2. 4. Where occurred the earliest known development of an- cestor worship? See Great Events, Vol. I., p. 270. 5. When did the spirit of love become the dominant note of religion? See Great Events, Vol. I., p. 160. 6. What new ideas did Christianity add to man's religious thought? See Great Events, Vol. III., p. xv. 7. When was the first authoritative decision established set- ting bounds and laws to the Christian faith? See Great Events, Vol. III., p. 299. 8. What addition to the body of Christian faith was made by St. Bernard? See Great Events, Vol. V., p. 340. 9. What was the real nature of the addition made by the Reformation? See Great Events, Vol. IX., p. xiii. 10. What was the counter-Reformation within the Catholic Church? See Great Events, Vol. IX., p. 293. XX XV REFERENCES FOR FURTHER CONSULTATION FOR STANDARD ACCOUNTS OF SUBJECTS BROUGHT UNDER DIS- CUSSION IN "CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZA- TION," SEE AS follows: See Lecture XXXV Page 3. The influence of Voltaire upon Christianity is dis- cussed by John Morlev in his Voltaire, or in Great Events, Vol. XIII., p. 144. 4. A vivid account of the Reign of Terror may be found in Guizot's Popular History of France. See Great Events, Vol. XIV., p. 311. 5. The early struggles of polygamy to establish itself in the United States are detailed by T. L. Kane in The Mormons, or in Great Events, Vol. XVII., p. 94. 7. The strife between Islamism and the holders of the Brahmanic faiths of India is described by Alex- ander Dow in his History of Hindustan, or in Great Events, Vol. V., p. 151. 8. The incidents of Mahomet's early career are given by Washington Irving in Mahomet and His Successors, or in Great Events, Vol. IV., p. 198. 11. The early Israelite attitude toward religious faith is shown in H. H. Milman's History of the Jews, or in Great Events, Vol. I., p. 92. 13. The story of St. Dominic and of his missionary labors leading to the enforcement of the Inquisition is told by W. H. Rule in his History of the Inquisition, or in Great Events, Vol. VIII., p. 166. 13. The Catholic view of these same events is given by J. Balmes in his European Civilization, or in Great Events. Vol. VIII., p. 182. XXXVl-THE MYSTERIES QUESTIONS LEADING TO A COURSE OP COLLATERAL READING ON THE THOUGHTS SUGGESTED BY PRESIDENT BARRETT 1. Has the Christian Church in the past accepted the teach- ings of those who would bring science to its aid? See Great Events, Vol. IX., p. 285; Vol. XL, p. 184. 2. What has been its attitude toward seers of visions, ghosts, and similar experiences? See Great Events, Vol. III., pp. 251 and 292; Vol. IV., p. 128. 3. To what extent have these "manifestations" been ac- cepted by other faiths? See Great Events, Vol. I., pp. 94, 162, and 273; Vol. III., p. 247. 4. What great religious order had its foundation in a vision? See Great Events, Vol. IX., p. 261. 5. To what ^tent were the apostles of Christ affected by visiondf See Great Events, Vol. III., pp. 42 and 46. 6. What amount of faith had the ancient Hebrews in their prophets? See Great Events, Vol. I., p. 160. 7. What marked examples can we find in ancient history of that sympathy between a man and his age of which President Barrett speaks? See Great Events, Vol. II., pp. xvi and xxi. 8. What in later history? See Great Events, Vol. VI., p. xiv; Vol. VII., p. 2; Vol. VIII., p. 134. 9. What mighty visions stand at the basis of the Buddhist faith? See Great Events, Vol. I., p. 164. 10. Of the Mahometan? See Great Events, Vol. IV., p. 234. XXXVI REFERENCES FOR FURTHER CONSULTATION FOR STANDARD ACCOUNTS OF SUBJECTS BROUGHT UNDER DIS- CUSSION IN "THE MYSTERIES/' see as follows: See Lecture XXXVI Page 3. The "assault on the outworks of rehgion" as it was begun in Scotland is described by P. H. Brown in his History of Scotland, or in Great Events, Vol. X., p. 21. 3. The assault as begun in France is described by A. M. Fairbairn in his Calvin and the Reformed Church, or in Great Events, Vol. IX., p. 176. 3. The strong inherent tendency of man to be influenced by authority in matters of faith is illustrated in Lec- tures on Mediceval Church History, by R. C. Trench, or see Great Events, Vol. VII., pp. 284 and 294. 4. The wholly inexplicable character of some of the ap- pearances which led the mediaeval ages to reject the conclusions of far-sighted seekers after truth is emphasized in the letters of Columbus. See Great Events, \o\.Nlll., p. 224. 5. The story of the discovery of the mystic force of gravi- tation is told by Sir David Brewster in his Life of Sir Isaac Newton, or in Great Events, Vol. XII., p. 51. 11. A remarkable example of the laws of attraction and their scientific study occurred in the discovery of Neptune. See Sir Oliver Lodge's Pioneers of Science, or Great Events, Vol. XVII., p. 25. 15. The similar fear which retarded the introduction of vaccination is described by Sir T. Pettigrew in his Medical Portrait Gallery, or in Great Events, Vol. XIV., p. 363. J XXXVII --HYPNOTISM QUESTIONS LEADING TO A COURSE OF COLLATERAL READING ON THE THOUGHTS SUGGESTED BY DR. HAYS 1. What are the earliest historical evidences of the undue power of one niind upon another? SeeGEEAT Events, Vol. I., pp. 4 and 9. 2. What is the most recent work written with faith in " witch- craft" as opposed to "suggestion"? See Great Events, Vol. VII., p. 200. 3. What mystic ceremonies have long been practised by the Brahmins of India? See Great Events, Vol. I., p. 65. 4. What mystic results were attained among the Hebrews? See Great Events, Vol. I., p. 100; Vol. III., p. 73. 5. Should hypnosis be considered as explaining any of the phenomena in the early Christian Church? See Great Events, Vol. III., p. 254. 6. What hypnotic frenzy was well recognized among the Greeks? ,^ , , ,^, See Great Events, Vol. I., p. 191. 7. By what appeals to superstition did Attila control his Hunnish hordes? See Great Events, Vol. IV., p. 79. 8. What remarkable sympathetic or hypnotic disease spread through Europe in the Middle Ages? See Great Events, Vol. VII., p. 188. 9. What more recent manifestations have been seen of similar character? . See Great Events, Vol. VII., p. 187. 10. What were the views and the method of Paracelsus upon these hypnotic cases? See Great Events, Vol. VII., p. 198 [^ VII REFERENCES FOR FURTHER CONSULTATION FOR STANDARD ACCOUNTS OF SUBJECTS BROUGHT UNDER DIS- CUSSION IN "HYPNOTISM," SEE AS follows: See Lecture XXXVII Page 3. The history of the Greek Church and its separation from the Roman is told by H. F. Tozer in his The Church and the Eastern Empire, or in Great Events, Vol. v., p. 189. 3. Some account of the hypnotic effects noted in medise- val days is given by J. F. Hecker in his Epidemics of the Middle Ages, or in Great Events, Vol. VII., p. 187. 7. Most celebrated of the sarcastic plays directed against the medical profession are those of Moliere described by H. Van Laun in his History of French Literature, or in Great Events, Vol. XL, p. 347. 17. An account of Henry Clay's remarkable services and speeches is given in the monograph on the Missouri Compromise, by J. A. Woodburn, or see Great Events, Vol. XVL, p. 14. 23. For the signs and evidences of suffering attested by saints of mediaeval days see Villari's History of Girolamo Savonarola, or Great Events, Vol. VIII. , p. 265. 23. The impressions made upon Loyola by his sorrows are described by I. Taylor in his Loyola and Jesuit- ism, or in Great Events, Vol. IX., p. 261. XXXVIII -THE WILL QUESTIONS LEADING TO A COURSE OF COLLATERAL READING OCvT THE THOUGHTS SUGGESTED BY M. FINOT 1. What ancient mler was specially noted for his strength of will? See Great Events, Vol. II., p. 313. 2. Through what trials of the will did Gautama Buddha pass before discovering his faith? See Great Events, Vol. I., p. 163. 3. Through what intensest trial of will did Jesus pass tri- umphant? See Great Events, Vol. III., p. 23. 4. What firm power of will was displayed by Socrates? See Great Events, Vol. II., p. 106. 5. What evidence did the Romans give that the entire race were strong of will? See Great Events, Vol. II., p. 187 et seq. 6. What masses of men proved their devotion in opposition to the Romans? See Great Events, Vol. III., pp. 222, 231, and 246. 7. How did Charlemagne face the approach of age? See Great Events, Vol. IV., p. 368. 8. What great English king persisted despite almost super- human obstacles? See Great Events, Vol. V., p. 49. 9. When has an entire modern nation bid defiance to suffer- ing? See Great Events, Vol. X., p. 145. 10. What one man, unaided, by sheer will power revolution- ized a nation? See Great Events, Vol. XII., p. 223. XXXVIII REFERENCES FOR FURTHER CONSULTATION FOR STANDARD ACCOUNTS OP SUBJECTS BROUGHT UNDER DIS- CUSSION IN "THE WILL," SEE AS follows: See Lecture XXXVIII Page 2. A good account of the Empress Josephine is given by William Hazlitt in his Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, or in Great Events, Vol. XV., p. 76. 2. The legends of ancient Rome are detailed and dis- cussed by Niebuhr in his History of Rome, or in Great Events, Vol. I., p. 116. 4. Homer's tales of Troy are given in condensed form by Grote in his History of Greece, or in Great Events, Vol. I., p. 70. 7. The character of the Mexican civilization is described by Prescott in his History of the Conquest of Mexico, or in Great Events, Vol. IX., p. 72. 7. The Egyptian civilization is portrayed in G. C. C. Maspero's Birth of Civilization, or Great Events, Vol. I., p. 1. 7. For the career of Thiers consult Lamartine's History of the Restoration of Monarchy in France and Guizot's History of France, or Great Events, Vol. XVI., p. 207, and Vol. XVIL, p. 137. 7. For the career of Macmahon consult Von Moltke's Franco-German War and Hanotaux's Contemporary France, or see Great Events, Vol. XVIII. , pp. 302 and 351. 15. The tragic tale of France's shame at Panama was outlined by Senator Depew in a speech in Congress, or see Great Events, Vol. XIX., p. 360. XXXIX -THE HOPE QUESTIONS LEADING TO A COURSE OF COLLATERAL READING ON THE THOUGHTS SUGGESTED BY SIR HENRY THOMPSON 1. What seems to have been the earUest impression acquired by man as to the powers outside himself? See Great Events, Vol. I., p. xxiii et seq. 2. What ancient people showed themselves most dissatisfied with the human life around them? See Great Events, Vol. I., p. 165. 3. What people were most happy to live their lives on earth, and ignored the Beyond? See Great Events, Vol. II., p. xiii. 4. In what lay the peculiar power of Christianity's appeal to a future life? See Great Events, Vol. III., p. 70 et seq. 5. Hew did this come to be emphasized by the apostles? See Great Events, Vol. III., p. 52. 6. What influence had the idea of a future life upon the Mahometans? See Great Events, Vol. IV., p. 247. 7. At what period did the belief and planning for a future life lead men almost wholly to ignore the present one? See Great Events, Vol. VII., pp. 18 and 22, 8. When did they become rearoused to the joy and worth of our present existence? See Great Events, Vol. VIII., p. 134 et seq. 9. How did the joy of life invade the Catholic Church, and with what unfortunate results? See Great Events, Vol. VIII., p. xxiii, 10. How did it ally itself to the forces of the Reformation? See Great Events, Vol. IX., pp. 128 and 137. XXXIX REFERENCES FOR FURTHER CONSULTATION FOR STANDARD ACCOUNTS OF SUBJECTS BROUGHT UNDER DIS- CUSSION IN "THE HOPE," SEE AS follows: See Lecture XXXIX Page 5. For the anthropomorphic conceptions of their gods by the early races see Hammurabi's Law Code, or Great Events, Vol. I., p. 14. 6. The condition of Jewish ceremonial in religion at the time of Christ is described by Renan in his The Apostles, or in Great Events, Vol. III., p. 40. 6. The formation of the Eastern Church and growth of its doctrines are detailed by J. L. Mosheim in his Institutes of Ecclesiastical History, or in Great Events, Vol. III., p. 299. 6. The spread of this Eastern Church through Russia is described in A History of the Church of Russia, by Andre Mouravieff, or in Great Events, Vol. V., p. 128. 7. The progress of the Roman Papacy to the leadership of Europe is depicted by A. R. Pennington in The Church in Italy, or Great Events, Vol. V., p. 231. 7. The circumstances of the establishment of the Angli- can Church in England are given by John Richard Green in his History of the English People, or in Great Events, Vol. IX., p. 203. 9. The character of the Koran is illustrated in Simon Ockley's History of the Saracens, or see Great Events, Vol. IV., p. 198. 9. The brightest flowering and the decay of the Mahome- tan power are depicted by S. A. Dunham in his History of Spain and Portugal, or in Great Events^ Vol. v., p. 256. XL- OUR GOAL QUESTIONS LEADING TO A COURSE OF COLLATERAL READING ON THE THOUGHTS SUGGESTED BY PRESIDENTS ALDERMAN AND HARRIS 1. Where did the growth of the modern "citizen" begin? See Great Events, VoL V., p. xxiii. 2. When did the merchant or middle class become the leaders in modern life? See Great Events, VoL XVIL, p. xiii et seq. 3. What were the principles which Washington proclaimed in his Wall Street address and also in his Farewell? See Great Events, VoL XIV., p. 197. 4. In what other land has republicanism also been accepted as " the final form of human society " ? See Great Events, VoL VIIL, p. 336. 5. What did patriotism mean to the soldiers of Grant and Lee? See Great Events, VoL XVIII., pp. 26, 46, 77, and 110. 6. In what sense is education the cornerstone of democracy? See Great Events, VoL XIV., p. xiii. 7. Whence has sprung the education of to-day? See Great Events, VoL XI., p. 192. 8. By what world-benefiting deeds have Americans won glory for their country in the last seventy years? See Great Events, VoL XVII., pp. 1 and 265; Vol. XVIII., pp. 175 and 287. 9. What is the most recent evidence of the increasing strength of republican government and the growing faith in universal brotherhood? See Great Events, VoL XIX., p. 352. 10. What other voluntary federations has the pa^ century witnessed? See Great Events, VoL XVIL, p. 334; VoL XVIII, pp. 196 and 340. XL REFERENCES FOR FURTHER CONSULTATION FOR STANDARD ACCOUNTS OF SUBJECTS BROUGHT UNDER DIS- CUSSION IN "OUR GOAL," SEE AS follows: See Lecture XL ^^ Page J^^ 4. The strong faith of the "fathers" in republicanism is shown by their labors on our Constitution as described by Story in his Commentaries, or Great Events, Vol. XIV., p. 173. 4. For the victory with which Washington closed the Revolution see Dawson's Battles of the United States and Lord Cornwallis's Correspondence, or Great Events, Vol. XIV., p. 97. 6. The spirit of patriotism which stirred our ancestors may be read in the Works of John Adams, or of Franklin, Jay, and Laurens, or see Great Events, •^Vol. XIV., p. 137. 6. The spirit of patriotism shown by the Russian peasan- try, even in their late disastrous war, may be gathered from the account of The Russo-Japanese War, by C. F. Home. See Great Events, Vol. XIX., p. 381. 7. The enormous development of America's industries is illustrated by C. W. Dabney's monograph on The Cotton Plant. See Great Events, Vol. XIV., p. 271. 9. The spreading interest in education undoubtedly begins with Pestalozzi's work. See the monograph on Pestalozzi by G. Ripley, or Great Events, Vol. XIII., p. 364. 10. The principles of American democracy as laid down by its chief exponent, Jefferson, are given in his Works, or in Great Events, Vol. XV., p. 18. 10. The contrast between these doctrines and Socialism may be gathered from Thomas Kirkup's History of Socialism, or Great Events, Vol. XVIII. , p. 141. Li-A^ vvu I iHmimmmmmm^^^ LlBR/^p^ m